Hermione was relishing the school year like she hadn't done in a very long time. It felt so good to finally have some emotional stability in her life. Whether she had been too busy worrying about her feelings for Ron, He Who Must Not Be Named, the lives of her friends, or all of those at once, not one of her years at Hogwarts had ever been as peaceful as she was now feeling and it felt immensely good being free to enjoy what she had suddenly realized was her last year at Hogwarts.
It saddened her to think that in a few short months she'd have to leave the place that had always been like a second home to her. In fact, though she'd never admit it to anyone, she had actually given a second's thought to purposely failing her classes so she could come back for another year. This wasn't, of course, a real option, so when the unexpected thought had passed, she had been forced to accept that the end of the year would bring about a solemn farewell to her beloved school.
It would be a bittersweet goodbye. While she would be sad to leave, she couldn't deny that she was eagerly looking forward to stepping out into the wizarding adult world. Her plans surrounding S.P.E.W had never taken off during her time at Hogwarts, but her passion for house elves' wellbeing had not dwindled and Hermione was prepared to start working on it again the moment she graduated. Something inside her told her that it was time to act. If Draco's mind had changed on the whole pureblood fixation, surely there were others that were now renouncing the old beliefs. She felt strongly that the wizarding world was ready to start turning from the old ways, the ways that supported the ideals of dark wizards like Voldemort and Grindelwald and she was eager to help them do so.
It encouraged her to know that her headmistress seemed to feel the same way. From what she'd heard at the speech she'd attended at the Ministry, McGonagall was taking a similar approach towards unity, just ahead of what Hermione hoped to be the cusp of progress. Hogwarts was just the start. An important and strategic start. If the past few decades had proven anything, it was that change was necessary. And though Hermione readily acknowledged change as a slow-moving, uncontrollable, enigmatic force, she was greatly optimistic, for she believed that it was also imminent.
If any of her plans would come to pass, however, she would, of course, need to make it through the school year first. Though her free time had been disburdened of a great deal of stress from her personal life, it remained limited. As each day passed, she was increasingly aware of her N.E.W.T.S drawing closer and closer and was doing all that she could to prepare. She followed the study guides she had drawn up near-religiously, pouring over books and writing till her wrist ached but had a great deal to show for the effort, managing to start her second read-through of her long list of reading materials and keeping ahead of schedule in her classes.
She still set aside meager amounts of time here and there for non-academic activities, taking a page from the notes of her third year self. Working too much was not only very much a thing, but was also incredibly unwise and unproductive long-term. One of these instances was when she went to support Ginny and, in extension, the entire Gryffindor quidditch team at a match against Hufflepuff. Hermione had never had any real interest in quidditch, yet in all her years at Hogwarts, she always made time to attend matches or practices if her friends were playing.
It was an exciting match from start to finish. Ginny continually amazed with how well she was handling the team. And even without Harry as the team's seeker, the fourth year Gryffindor that had replaced him was doing a decent job in his stead. Hermione suspected that Ginny was to thank for that. She was unreasonably skilled in just about all of the team positions.
The match ended when Gryffindor's seeker caught the snitch, making the score a total of 240 points to Hufflepuff's 70. After the game, Hermione made her way back to the Gryffindor common room behind the wildly excited duo of Dean and Seamus, pride welling within her for Ginny's sake and she couldn't help but smile. Once the team had returned to the common room, having donned fresh clothes and discarded their sweaty quidditch robes, Hermione even stayed for the celebration, ignoring the desk that beckoned her upstairs to be consumed by letters in number in favor of a few shots of firewhiskey and a pint of butterbeer.
They had every reason to celebrate. The only match left was against Slytherin, who had done so poorly in the past season that there was no outcome in which Gryffindor would not take the quidditch cup. To place third, a win by nearly a thousand points was necessary, a sum they hadn't come close to in all of their games combined. Gryffindor had secured the victory again, led there by Ginny's expert management.
None of the Hufflepuffs seemed particularly happy about this outcome, but no one took it worse than the McMillan triplets. In the week following the quidditch match, the trio did everything except launch an attack on the Gryffindor common room. A good number of students ended up in the hospital wing with the symptoms of any number of the ailments caused by treats from the Weasley's skiving snackboxes, others had been jinxed or hexed, yet the great multitude of those affected had found firecrackers hiding somewhere in their robes. The three young Hufflepuffs seemed to have developed a signature brand of chaos.
Hermione had been keeping her guard up since the attacks on her house had started, checking her robes every morning and evening, just in case. Sure enough, later that week she was targeted, but not in the way she had expected. She and Draco were getting ready to head off to the library after meeting in the entrance hall following their lunch period when a strange sound came from above them. Hermione looked up just in time to see a massive brown-green blob plummeting from a staircase above them and managed to throw her herself out of the way just in time. Draco had not been so fortunate and yelled as the strange substance covered him in slimy goo.
She heard him utter a few choice curses and then shout up towards the snickering above them. "Thirty points from Hufflepuff! You're going to regret that you little prats!"
Hermione suppressed a laugh. Then the smell hit her. She immediately pulled her robes up over her nose in an attempt to mask the eye-watering odor wafting over to her. He gave her a disdainful look.
"Just my luck, huh? Ten galleons says they were actually aiming for you." She knew he was almost certainly right. Other than their love of chaos, the triplets didn't have a motive for pranking Slytherins, as Hufflepuff had steamrolled them in quidditch not two weeks prior.
"What even is this awful stuff?" he said, gagging as he raised his arm to get a closer look.
"From the smell of it, I'd say it looks like they've successfully managed to infuse flobberworm mucus with dungbombs," she said in a muffled voice from behind her robes.
"How do the little gits come up with this sort of rubbish anyways?" he growled savagely as he began tearing off his outer robes. Hermione shrugged helplessly and drew out her wand.
"Don't worry, I'll have it gone in a second." Tergeo. The thick greenish mucus began to siphon off of him and into the tip of her wand.
Though his clothes were now clear of the horrid substance, the smell did not subside.
"Oh for heaven's sakes," Draco said impatiently. "Don't tell me…" his voice dropped off. It was too late to stop him by the time she realized what he was doing.
"Draco! What on earth?" she cried as he removed his white button-up shirt and tossed it aside. She looked away, slightly embarrassed at the sight of him standing half-naked in the middle of the entrance hall.
He cursed loudly. "The smell won't go away!"
"Well then we'd best go see Madame Pomfrey." She spoke hurriedly in hopes of discouraging him from removing any more pieces of clothing. While her head was still turned away, she heard him snicker.
"What is it Granger? Is my glorious body too much for you to handle?"
"Hardly," she shot back at him, willing herself to make eye contact. "If anything, you make the smell worse." She made a fake gagging face and felt smug when she saw his smirk fade. It was always wonderful when the opportunity to perforate his overly-engorged ego arose.
"Now come on and put your clothes back on. We should take you up to the hospital wing."
Before looking away, she stole an inadvertent glance down his figure. She would be lying to herself if she didn't admit that she was at least a little impressed by what she saw. Her eyes darted over his pale toned chest and down his slim torso to rest on a faintly chiseled abdomen.
Well, if I'd known he'd been hiding a body like that under his school robes, I'd have given him a drunken kiss a lot sooner. The thought came out of nowhere and she immediately snapped her eyes away as Draco began to redress, pulling herself out of a momentary stupor.
Hermione scolded herself for the unwarranted thought. Their unfortunate kiss was hardly something joke-worthy, given the disastrous outcome it had produced when she'd been forced to tell Ron about it. She truly had no desire to think of him in that sort of way anyways. He was a colleague, albeit, a highly entertaining colleague, but she viewed that as a well-deserved bonus given all she'd had to put up with from him. It was one thing to get along with him, it was entirely another to actually like him. She was still convinced that the only person he really loved was himself.
Most wouldn't deny that he was handsome and even she couldn't turn up her nose, try as though she might. His strong jawline and startling grey eyes tripped her up nearly every time. She'd considered herself immune to his draw over the years, able to fight off the allurement of his devilish charm and good-looks with the ever constant flow of rubbish from his mouth. As far as Hermione was concerned, being a prick was one of the greatest turn offs. Any and all "crushes" had never gone beyond "You're pretty, but you're an absolute twat, so I don't really like you." Finding someone attractive and wanting to be around them were two entirely different things, she had discovered. Besides, she had found it far too easy to hate someone who loathed her equally in return for her to ever have let her imagination run wild.
Once Draco had re-garbed, they made their way easily through the corridors up towards the Hospital ward. The smell that wafted off Draco repelled any and all students they came across, making their journey quick and easy. She walked a few steps in front of him the entire way there in hopes of staying ahead of the scent as he shuffled miserably behind her.
Unsurprisingly, Madame Pomfrey knew just what to do and in no time was whisking him off to soak in a bath of a strange amber colored liquid similar to honey except that it smelled, ironically, little better than he did. Hermione informed him she'd be waiting for him in the library, and promptly left to get started on her work.
The pair of them were spending an awful lot of time together outside of school both intentionally and unintentionally. Whether they were working together on their head duties or separately on homework, both could almost always be found in the prefects' study room. And often times the two activities overlapped, like when they would get together to plan and take "study breaks" every so often. Study breaks, ironically, were not breaks from studying. On the contrary, they were periods taken aside from head boy and girl work to complete homework or revise.
When the time came for actual breaks, they would often wander down to their meals together, bantering back and forth as a means of entertainment. On long evenings they would pack up and head back together until the time came for them to part ways and head off to their separate dormitories.
And that's how she and Draco ended up as they did that evening: standing face to face in the corridor on their way back to their dormitories after a long day of work. She looked at him oddly as he fidgeted uncomfortably in front of her, seemingly struggling to get whatever words he had to say out of his mouth.
When he did, she first thought she hadn't heard him properly. But as her brain began to register his words, all logic was thrown out the nearby window as she grappled helplessly to find a meaning for the most baffling thing she'd ever heard come from his mouth.
"I sort of like you… a lot."
A/N: I'm SORRY! So, I know what you're thinking and I have no answer for you because I ask myself the same question daily. Y am i liek this? ;-;
Guaranteed it's not actually the meanest double cliffhanger in history, but it might be pretty close and I'm sorry again BUT I CAN'T HELP MYSELF. With patience, all will be resolved soon!
Also, I almost didn't include that whole scene where Hermione is ogling over Draco's body, but it's a little parody I wrote to make fun of the whole "so that's what Granger was hiding under her robes" cliché, so hopefully it made you chuckle or idk, grunt in approval. ? can u tell i know nothing about human beings?
Thx 4 reading ur way thru this special, 144p edition of andromedellla's author's note and 4 the support of my story. Ur all gr8.