Reviews: Thank you Nicconicco, xxorangexxmonkeyxx, and LadyOfTheLancashireManor! I'm glad you like it:D
AN: Yay, Read and Review please! Suggestions and stuff are more than welcome:D I like this chapter but I liked the previous one more. I think humor is really fun to write, don't you!
Chapter 7. Beauty and the Beast
Hermione and Draco stepped cautiously into the dining hall, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. It was a Sunday, their free day, so most dancers were still stocking up on sleep. They walked up to the counter and ordered their food, french toast for Hermione eggs benedict and toast for Draco. After about a minute of awkward silence, their meals appeared on the counter in carrier bags.
"Where to?" Draco asked lazily, leaning on the counter and running his hand through his blonde hair.
"The enchanted gardens, maybe?" Hermione answered, trying to be as amicable as possible. "I heard it's rather pretty and also massive, so I doubt we'll run into the cameras or anybody else there. It's magicked so that you will never enter into the same area of garden twice."
"Trying to seduce me, Granger? First breakfast, and now a garden stroll. What next, we get lost in the greens and fall madly and passionately in love? Reading too many romance novels, I'd wager."
Hermione looked at him with a pained expression on her face and started to walk. "Honestly! Must you always twist my words to insinuate something?"
"Christs sake! Lighten up, Granger. Have you heard of this little thing that normal people often do...it's called joke." Malfoy replied snidely as he took long strides to enable him to catch up with her.
"I will not dignify that question with a response," she told him snippily as he drew level with her. Shaking her head at the absurdity of it all, she let out a strained laugh. "Truly, Malfoy, we will never manage to have a proper conversation. Our exchanges consist purely of snide remarks and witty comebacks."
Malfoy looked quite disconcerted. "You know I hate agreeing with you...but I suppose you're right."
They entered the gardens through an intricate iron wrought gate. The place was lush with greenery and beautiful blossoms. Elegant trees, like birches and weeping willows, and muggle and wizarding flowers in shades such as white, pink, red and yellow, just coming into bloom, lent the place an air of etheral mystery and romance.
"It's gorgeous," Hermione breathed, sinking down on a painted white bench.
"It's like home," Draco whispered, his eyes filled with something akin to actual emotion.
"Pardon, what did you say?"
"Nothing." The unreadable mask was back, and he carried on in the same conceited vein as before. "It looks like a poor imitation of the gardens in the Malfoy Manor thats all."
"Oh." Hermione seemed unconvinced but she gestured to the place beside her on the bench. Malfoy took the hint and sat down, but not without making a disgusted face first. They both removed their food from the carrier bags. The blonde haired boy smartly transfigured the carrier bag into a table, but it appeared to be too small. Hermione took out her wand.
"Engorgio." The table enlarged to the ideal size. Both witch and wizard set their food on the table and began to eat. It was once again, awkward and tense, causing Hermione to think that if they couldn't taunt each other they had nothing left to say. The whole situation seemed wrong. They were sitting together, side by side, eating breakfast. It was too intimate, too personal an arrangement. This isn't going to work, she thought desperately.
"Hello, my name is Hermione Granger," she said suddenly, in a over bright, cheery voice. Malfoy started, and looked at her as if she'd grown another head. She persevered on. "I'm from Hogwarts. I was in Gryffindor, and I was valedictorian and Head Girl. Some people say I'm a bossy, know it all, cranky muggleborn mugger with no life, but I can be fun and socialable if I want to be and if some people are friendly in return."
"What," Malfoy said slowly, enunciating each word, "On god's green earth do you think you're doing?"
"I was trying to introduce myself. Have a conversation, like normal people do."
"Newsflash Granger. I'm anything but normal. I'm a cut above the rest."
"I think you established that in the first five seconds that I met you back at Hogwarts. Can you tell me anything, I swear, anything about yourself, other than you being a high and mighty Slytherin who fancies himself as a regular charmer, and comes from a filthy rich family that has been inbreeding for the past few centuries?"
Hermione downed the remainders of her french toast while watching Draco furrow his brow in thought and she realised, sarcasm aside, that was really all she knew about the enigmatic Draco Malfoy.
"I love ballroom dancing," he said uncertainly, after awhile.
"Really?" Hermione hadn't expected that.
"Yeah, really. Back in third year," he paused to sneer at her, no doubt remembering the stinging slap she had delivered to him that time. "I lost a bet to Pansy on whether Black would finish Potter off or not. I had to follow her to her salsa dance class. Something about it...captured my attention. It intrigued me. I continued taking private lessons secretly, arranged by my mother. I was very good at it."
Hermione sniffed.
He ignored her and continued, "My teacher reckoned I should take contemporary or ballet for a bit of background and technique, so I took contemporary, it appealed to me more. Less rigorous and strict, and left more to my own interpretation-"
"Too right!" Hermione interrupted, latching onto the subject with abandon and forgetting that she was talking to the pompous Draco Malfoy. They proceed to discuss the finer points of dancing, sharing what they liked, or disliked about certain styles.
(Disclaimer: I don't own Beauty and the Beast! Its disney's opening line and I adore it)
"Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a young prince lived in a shining castle. Although he had everything his heart desired, the prince was spoiled, selfish, and unkind. But then, one winter's night, an old beggar woman came to the castle and offered him a single rose in return for shelter from the bitter cold. Repulsed by her haggard appearance, the prince sneered at the gift and turned the old woman away. But she warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within. And when he dismissed her again, the old woman's ugliness melted away to reveal a beautiful enchantress. The prince tried to apologize, but it was too late, for she had seen that there was no love in his heart. And as punishment, she transformed him into a hideous beast and placed a powerful spell on the castle and all who lived there...The rose she had offered was truly an enchanted rose, which would bloom until his 21st year. If he could learn to love another, and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time. As the years passed, he fell into despair and lost all hope. For who could ever learn to love a beast?"
Hermione paused to take in a deep breath. Who knew Malfoy would be so fascinated by muggle tales! They had spent the past hours chatting non stop, as if they were long lost friends instead of long time enemies, progressing from dance, to Ancient Runes, which was their favourite subject, to books, and finally to muggle stories where Hermione had ended up telling him about fairytales that included the use of magic.
"So the old hag was a witch? Was she performing wandless magic? And how did she enchant the rose?" Malfoy asked intently.
If it had been anyone other than Hermione, they would have laughed at his intense analysis of the fairytale. However, it was Hermione and she had admittedly done some research on the said story herself when she first came to Hogwarts.
"Malfoy, it's a beautiful tale meant to enrapture you, not for you to dissect and evaluate," the witch chided but then she added, "But I did do some research on it in the library and I found out that there is a spell to do bind the transfiguration to an object like she did to the beast form and the rose. It's very complex magic, especially if you want to add a time frame to it but I can't exactly remember exactly how it goes...is there a library here?"
Malfoy smirked. "Granger, Granger, Granger. You honestly want to go to the library, on a sunday?"
Hermione gave him a contemptuous look.
"Ooh, scary," he mocked, then held up his hands to show he was kidding. "So, won't telling these kind of stories to muggle kids make them..."
"Desire desperately to work magic?" Hermione supplied. "Yeah, actually it did."
She cringed and prompted by some unseen, reckless force she continued on. "I used to pretend I was a fairy." she confessed. "I would fashion myself a wand out of paper and pretend to mix potions in my mom's pots and mess up the kitchen."
"No way. Badass little kiddo weren't you, cooking up chaos in your mother's kitchen."
Hermione burst out laughing. "Ginny was right, you are a card."
"Hey! That's an insult you know," he insisted, pretending to be affronted.
"Right, so well I was ecstatic when I got my Hogwarts owl. At first I thought it was a prank but McGonagall actually paid my parents a visit to explain everything. It feels like my world has completely changed, but in a good way," she smiled, looking so carefree.
Draco glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Funny how he felt so comfortable with her, the girl he had taunted for most of his school career, just talking and teasing like they had been friends for eons and eons. It felt so good to have a honest-to-goodness conversation, not just the mindless chatter that he had grown used to with Blaise. He noticed how her brown hair tumbled down her shoulders in disarray, how her cheeks were tinged pink and how her face was suffused in a sort of glow from the shine of the mid afternoon sun. Huh. Stop right there Draco. Don't think anymore, he warned himself.
"We should get back," he said abruptly and stood.
"Oh." She looked startled. She thought they had been getting along, having fun.
"I'll leave first so we won't have to be seen together."
It was the wrong thing to say. Hermione's eyes flashed. "Why? Too ashamed to be seen with me, a muggleborn? Scared your pal Blaise will turn his back on you? Not that you have many friends, do you Malfoy!"
"Watch it, Granger," he growled. "I may not have many friends, but at least I don't ride the coattails of the famous Mr Potter!"
Hermione knew she was overeacting but somehow she couldn't help it. Being with Malfoy heightened her emotions. She felt like she had been swinging across the extreme ends of the emotional spectrum, from despair to indecision to elation and now she was going to crash and burn. Subconsciously she knew she would regret it later but right then she knew exactly what button to push and come hell or high water, she was going to push it.
"Oh thats rich, really. You, backed by your Malfoy name and riches and...ooh wait. Not so much of that ever since you crossed over to our side is there!"
"Do not talk to me about the war," Draco stalked up to Hermione, stuck his face right in front of hers and looked straight into her eyes, his own darkening with fury. "Do not mention it ever again."
She shoved him. "Oh? So I shouldn't mention Seventh Year too, like how you completely screwed me over in our Heads duties and how you made me feel like the dirt underneath your feet?" she hurled back, furious that she could have misjudged him so, that she had let her guard down, that five minutes ago, she had actually been laughing with him. "And how although I told everyone that you degrading me every chance you got didn't matter, but it really, really did? And how about just now? Want to pretend that didn't happen to? Ashamed that you got all chummy with a Mudblood?"
"Granger! Would you just shut up!" He gripped her shoulders. "You don't understand! It's not like that!" he yelled, frustrated, angry, confused.
Hermione shrank back from his touch. "Make me understand."
"No."
She watched the blonde hair boy turn away and take long, quick strides towards the gate, his body stiff with anger. Suddenly weary, and drained of all feeling, she rested her weight on the table she and Malfoy had transfigured.
Remembering what she had told Malfoy, she whispered to herself. "Although he had everything his heart desired, the prince was spoiled, selfish, and unkind..."
She turned to leave also, feeling that the words were somehow relevant, poignant, but she didn't know how.
"But she warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within."