Chapter Twelve
In the Library
Snape entered his private chamber and sat down in the nearest armchair, his hands shaking. What Weasley had said had hit him hard. He had been trying to put the Death Eaters behind him—all that he'd done, all the people he'd hurt—and the death of Lily, his first real friend, whom he'd met back in Diagon Alley while shopping for his school supplies all those years ago. Part of him still wondered if there had been a way to save her, if there had been anything he could have done…
The prank war had, for him, been a break from his past, from the regrets and the bitter thoughts that plagued him—and now, not only was the prank war probably over, but he'd been forced to remember his past.
For the first time in a long time, Snape found himself wishing he had someone to talk to, someone who would listen. He ran through the small list of people he could count as friends, but no one seemed right just now. Albus would listen and then offer some wisdom, and Snape had a feeling he might try to smack the headmaster if Albus played the sympathetic wise man right now. Minerva was a possibility, but Snape wasn't sure she was the right person to go to for a conversation about all the heinous crimes he'd committed. The only other person in the school who didn't currently think he was an asshole was Granger, and even if he didn't think having a real heart-to-heart with her was laughable, he'd never be able to chat with her chained to Draco Malfoy. If only… wait.
Snape was surprised it had never occurred to him before—the one person alive he still liked, who knew exactly what it was like to pretend that the Death Eater's activities were anything more than sickening. His one real friend that had been in almost the same situation as he had… who was just as grief-stricken and unhappy and bitter.
"Of course," he muttered, marching over to the fireplace and grabbing his box of Floo powder. If one person would listen, would empathize, would understand, it would be her.
Hermione froze, her eyes wide with horror. Oh, no, she wailed silently, god, not here! I'll never hear the end of this!
She forced herself to get it together and spun to face him angrily. "For the last time, Malfoy," she snarled, "I don't have a tattoo!"
"Yes, you do, Granger, don't try to deny it," Draco said smugly. "A rose, with its stem twisted around a dagger. I saw it with my own eyes."
Gasps and whispers were breaking out all over the room. "You did no such thing!" Hermione said shrilly.
"Yes, I did," he retorted gleefully. "Come on, Granger; at least tell me how long it's been there? Or, if nothing else, why you chose to put it on your ass?"
"There is no tattoo on my ass!" Hermione fairly screamed. She drew her wand angrily; at that point, Harry grabbed her arm again and began hauling her towards the portrait hole with a laughing Draco being pushed after them by Ginny.
They were forced to stop outside the portrait hole, as Draco was laughing too hard to continue walking and collapsed on the floor, shaking. Hermione's hands twitched into claws and she started towards him, Harry quickly holding her back. He grabbed the chain, pushing her gently ahead of him and dragging Draco along for several feet until Draco got enough control over his laughter to stand and walk with them.
"Oh, that was priceless," Draco said, fairly skipping down the corridors behind them. "Absolutely priceless. I feel so much better now… ooh, there are so many things I could do from here, sleeping in the Gryffindor common room, tied to Granger… and now everyone knows about her tattoo!"
"Damn it, Malfoy, learn the value of intrapersonal communication! If you're going to talk to yourself—or at all—do it in your head!" Hermione snapped; she looked completely livid as she stormed down the hall. "Hurry up!" she added as Draco just chuckled. "God, I need the library… I really, really need the library…"
"Going to have sex there, are you?" Draco said mischievously.
Hermione whipped around to face him. "Come on, Herm; ignore him, remember?" Harry said soothingly. "Malfoy is just an annoying fly. An evil, ugly, annoying fly. One day we will swat him. One day soon, when we're better able to hide the evidence."
Hermione giggled and Ginny laughed outright. "What would I do without you, Harry?" Hermione said fondly, lacing her fingers with Harry's and ignoring Draco's faked retching noises.
"Probably get into a lot less trouble," Harry said lightly as they continued towards the library. "And speaking of trouble," he went on, "tomorrow's Saturday; why don't we go visit Hagrid and see how he's coming with Pig?"
"What'll we do with Malfoy?" Hermione asked, biting her lip.
"Shut him outside the door, of course. Or feed him to Pig; we could always say it was an accident," Ginny piped up.
"Nah, Hagrid might get into trouble," Harry said sadly. "But last I heard Pig was doing pretty well, anyway. He's now just a seven-foot-tall owl. Hagrid's trying to figure out if it's safe to use a shrinking charm or not."
"Hagrid has a seven-foot-tall owl named Pig?" Draco said curiously, completely forgetting that his company wasn't exactly friendly. They ignored him, and he rolled his eyes.
The four of them finally reached the library, where more whispers greeted them; after all, it wasn't every day that Draco Malfoy went wandering around with Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley. Draco considered mentioning the tattoo again, but didn't want to overuse—and in doing so, wear out—his best form of entertainment, so he decided to save it for a better time; besides, he didn't want to get kicked out of the library, especially since it was really his only hope of getting Granger off his arm.
Unable to split up (well, Draco and Hermione weren't able to, and Ginny and Harry weren't going to let Hermione deal with Draco on her own), it took a rather long time to get a good selection of books. Hermione thought carefully about each book and read its summary while Harry glanced at titles and picked them up if he thought they might be useful. Ginny managed to find a few things here and there but kept seeing things about interesting curses or other spells and adding those to her pile, forgetting their mission. For a moment, they thought Draco had a system, as he was methodically selecting texts, but then they realized that he was simply pulling every third book off the shelf.
They chose a table at the back of the library, away from the majority of the students and the librarian's desk, and began sifting through books. Draco started humming, still pleased with himself about calling Hermione out in the common room, but none of the Gryffindors found his humming too annoying; Hermione was feeling much better with Harry and Ginny by her side, Harry was too concerned about Hermione and Ginny was too guilty about the duel to complain about Draco. Every so often, the three Gryffindors would comment on something they read or say a paragraph aloud to see if the others thought it was helpful, but they made little to no progress.
"Ooh, chained to another—no, this is for some weird love spell…"
"Un ojo del gato… oh, wait, this is in Spanish…"
"To destroy chains! No, wait, it's for non-magic chains…"
"Guys, listen to this! 'To make your enemy sexually attracted to rabbits—'"
"Ginny, hun, even if I wanted to use that, now isn't the time to learn."
"Sorry. Still, you gotta admit, it would be funny…"
"Let me see that book, Weasel!"
"Sod off, Malfoy!"
"Keep looking, Gin, I know we'll find it," Hermione said. "The library's never failed us before."
"Except over that gillyweed thing," Harry muttered, but smiled innocently at Hermione's glare and quickly returned to the nearest book. "Oh, look, this says… um… no coma las colas de la rata… why do I get all the Spanish ones?"
"Have a French," Ginny said, laying one of her books on top of his.
"And an Italian," Draco said absently, adding another tome to Harry's pile and grabbing one of Harry's for himself. Draco was silent for a few moments as he looked through it. "Hmm… wait, I think we have a winner! 'Man and woman, bound by golden chains… of love?' That can't be right… hey, who slipped me the book on love potions? God, who writes this stuff? I bet it's some monk, sitting all lonely in the cloister or whatever, dreaming of the glory days before he took his vows."
Harry chuckled, then froze, realizing he'd just laughed at one of his worst enemy's jokes. "Oh, god, we've got to look faster," he said desperately, pulling a large stack of books closer.
"I'm tired," Draco whined. "I want to go to sleep."
"So go ahead," Harry, Hermione and Ginny said in unison, each thinking how nice it would be to have him stay quiet.
"I'm not sleeping here! The smell is too creepy."
"The library does not smell!" Hermione exclaimed indignantly, looking for all the world as though he'd just horribly insulted her.
"It does too! It has that old book smell, dust and knowledge and forgotten power."
"That was almost poetic," Ginny said, giving him a nervous look and edging her chair farther away from his.
Draco rolled his eyes. "Whatever, Weasel. Listen, let's just—"
"What are you four doing back here?" barked Madam Pince, the librarian.
"Nothing," all four answered truthfully—which looked twice as suspicious.
"Don't try to pull a fast one on me," Madam Pince said irritably. "All of you, out."
"What? Why? We're just looking at books," Ginny protested.
"Right," Madam Pince said, casting a pointed look at Draco and then Harry. She glanced down at the books. "And I suppose you've a perfectly innocent reason to be looking up curses? And love potions?"
"That one was an accident," Draco said firmly, putting the love potions book in front of Harry.
"You heard me—out! And leave all these books here!"
Grumbling, Harry, Hermione, Ginny and Draco got up and filed out of the library. "Great," Hermione moaned. "Now she won't let us back in there together."
"Well, we'll just have to check stuff out and look at it in the common room," Ginny said determinedly. "And if she won't let us check out what we need, we'll get other people to check it out for us. Neville's done it for me before. Don't worry. Anyway, I'm sure Dumbledore will have a word with her soon."
Hermione sighed. "I'm chained to Malfoy, Ron's pissed at us, and now I've been kicked out of the library. Could things get any—"
"Don't say that," Harry and Ginny interrupted at the same time. "You'll jinx yourself," Ginny added.
"Besides," Draco said cheerfully, "you forgot: now everyone knows about your tattoo."
"Shut up," Hermione snapped.
Harry gave her a shrewd glance but didn't say anything about it. "Come on; let's go back to the common room. Might as well get some sleep; it's been a long day, and I've got a lot of homework to do tomorrow."
Draco wrinkled his nose, not looking forward to sharing a room with Granger, let alone a room in Gryffindor tower. He'd been avoiding thinking about it; now, there wasn't much he could do but face it; he'd have to sometime, though. Hopefully it would be over soon; it was a Saturday tomorrow, so they wouldn't have to face classes any time soon. Surely it wouldn't be more than one night.
They got back to the common room to find it mostly empty; the majority of the Gryffindors were either out gossiping with their friends, studying in the library or sleeping. "Are you going to be all right, Hermione?" Ginny asked worriedly as they stopped in front of the wall leading to the guest rooms.
Hermione nodded, trying to look braver than she felt. "I'll be fine, Gin."
"Yell if you need me," Ginny said, and Hermione gave her a rather forced smile as Ginny reluctantly disappeared up the girls' dormitory staircase. Harry, however, didn't budge.
"Hermione… do you want me to stay with you?" he blurted out. "I mean, so you won't have to be alone?"
Hermione bit her lip, not wanting to burden Harry but not wanting to be alone—asleep—in the same room as Draco. She knew Draco wasn't stupid enough to curse her while she was tied to him, but she didn't want to take that risk. She'd done plenty to upset him recently, and she suddenly recalled the way he'd looked at her outside Snape's office all those weeks ago, staring down her shirt. Part of her was terrified of Draco, given his past, but she knew that if Dumbledore thought there was even a small chance of Draco hurting her, they wouldn't be sharing a room without supervision.
"I don't mind," Harry continued softly, watching her expression as she argued with herself.
"Hey, I mind!" Draco protested angrily. "One of you is bad enough!"
Harry and Hermione ignored him. "Um… are you sure, Harry?" she asked tentatively.
Harry nodded and grinned at her reassuringly. "I'll be right back; I just need to get some stuff. Besides, it's not like I have a lot of people in my dorm I want to hang out with right now," he added darkly.
Hermione gave him a relieved smile, knowing that he'd much rather sleep in the same room as Ron and Dean than Draco, even under the circumstances (hell, he'd probably prefer to sleep in the same room as an angry Blast-Ended Skrewt) and yet he still wanted to support and protect her.
"Potter is not sleeping in my room!" Draco snapped as Harry ran up to his room.
"Yes, he is," Hermione said calmly.
"No, he isn't!"
Hermione grinned. "Scared, Malfoy?"
"Scared? Of Potter? Ha!"
"So there's no problem, then," Hermione said coolly.
"There is too a problem! Where's he gonna sleep, anyway? The couch?"
"In my bed, probably," Hermione said, rolling her eyes. She and Harry had slept in the same bed before—at the end of fifth year, when Harry had come to Grimmauld Place, he'd been really upset, believing Sirius to be dead. Hermione had gone to his room to comfort him and she'd ended up holding him for so long that they'd fallen asleep together; she'd continued to sleep in his bed, curled up with him, for the rest of the summer. Neither saw it as anything more than a strange sort of extended hugging; she still did it sometimes, when he was upset and didn't want to be alone. Their friendship was too strong for them to see each other as anything more than friends.
Draco, however, looked shocked. "Hmm… well, at least I'll have something else to tease you about come morning."
Hermione glared at him. "Come on, Malfoy. You really think anyone's going to believe I slept with Harry? My boyfriend's best friend?"
"Well, I'd say most everyone believes you have a tattoo, and that's hard to believe, too," Draco retorted. He grinned at her. "Come on, Granger—tell me when you got it?"
"Would you shut up about my tattoo?" she snarled.
"Ooh, so you admit it, do you? Finally!"
"I'm not admitting it! I don't know what you're talking about!"
"It's there, Granger, you know damned well I've seen it—right there…" He reached over and poked a spot just above her butt, causing her to shriek and slap at him.
"Don't touch me!"
"Admit it, then! You've got a tattoo!"
"Hermione?" Harry had emerged from the boys' dormitories in record time, wearing his pajamas and carrying his book bag, which was stuffed full of clothes and other overnight items. "You okay?"
"Yes," she said, glaring at Draco. She sighed. "Let's just… just get some sleep."
"Fine," Draco said cheerfully. "Oh, there's just one tiny problem, though."
"What?" Hermione said, exasperated.
"I have to go to the bathroom."