This chapter does borrow some events from the Half-Blood Prince, but I tried once again to tweak things here and there to make it feel as original as possible. That being said, I do not own Harry Potter or any of the other lovely characters I am borrowing.

Chapter 23

The next month settled into something resembling normalcy for both Draco and Hermione, and it was blissful. Apparition lessons started up after their fight and subsequent reconciliation and both of them were determined, each for their own reasons, to perfect the skill. Hermione's determination came, in addition to her thirst to know everything there was to know about magic, in the knowledge that is was a skill she would need when Voldemort's powers grew to a point where she, Harry, and Ron would be forced to flee from the safety of Hogwarts. Draco's determination stemmed from the thought of being stuck under the Dark Lord's thumb without any means of escape.

Harry hadn't had any new lessons with Professor Dumbledore since the day after their return from Christmas break. Apparently, there was nothing new they could learn until Harry retrieved the true memory from Professor Slughorn, who was still avoiding her best friend as if he had a nasty case of Dragon Pox.

Ron was still together with Lavender but had taken to hiding from the exuberant witch in random spots throughout the castle. This entertained and amused Hermione to no end, but she did at least attempt to conceal her amusement when in front of Ron, believing that it would be unkind to take such obvious amusement in his discomfort.

As for Hermione, she had achieved the perfect balance between her schoolwork, researching Horcruxes (or at least attempting to do so; the library had been infuriatingly unhelpful on the subject), and soaking up every minute that she could get with Draco.

Draco himself was finding that things had settled down somewhat, as well. He had gained back almost all of the weight he had lost while unintentionally starving himself at the beginning of the year, during his obsession with the Vanishing Cabinet. His grades had also been steadily improving thanks to his ability to focus on things aside from his task; he was once again right behind Hermione for top spot in their year, a position that had been slowly but surely slipping away from him prior to their friendship.

He was also working on being a better friend to Blaise and Theo, and any minute that wasn't spent with Hermione or out on the Quidditch pitch was spent with them. He wanted to make sure that they were clear of the Dark Lord, that their parents couldn't set them on the same path that Draco himself had been put on. Hermione had convinced him that being there for them was the best way to achieve that. After all, isolation made people do desperate things.

The best thing for Draco, however, was his time spent with Hermione in the Room of Requirement. Whenever he was able to hold her close, he felt…whole. Sometimes they just sat together and worked on their schoolwork, sometimes they would snuggle up together on the sofa and read, and sometimes they would kiss. Kissing almost always led to touching, which invariably led to the shedding of clothes and exploring of bodies until both of them lay, sweaty and spent, on either the bed or the plush rug in front of the fire.

He remembered her reaction the first time she had seen the vicious scar that now adorned his left side: token of his failure and an ever-present reminder of the Dark Lord's anger and displeasure with his youngest servant. Their first time together, she had been too lost in the moment and in her passion to pay much attention to his naked torso. That time, however, she had seen it, and he had watched under lids gone heavy with desire as she had fretted over the ugly scar and the meaning behind it. She had pressed gentle kisses to the jagged flesh, and the tears she had shed for his pain on that day had gone a long way in healing the gaping hole that had been ripped open in his heart on the day that the Mark had been branded into his skin.

Everything had been going along so perfectly. Almost too perfectly, as a matter of fact. He should have known that something would come along to shatter the peace.

Hermione sat in the library, doing extra research on the spell Cave Inimicum for Professor Snape's class that coming Monday. It was Saturday, so she had spent most of her day in the Room of Requirement but, after dinner, she had made her way to the library. She had been trying to be more aware of her tendency to disappear for an entire day on the weekends, hoping to prevent the boys from suspecting something, so she did make an effort to actually spend some time in the library, if only to assuage her guilty conscience.

The charm that they were to cover in Monday's class had been intriguing, and she thought that it would likely come in handy one day, so she had decided to do some extra research outside of the parameters of their assignment for class. It's purpose was to shield those inside from anyone outside, making them invisible, silent, and even odorless when the spell was cast properly. It was the perfect spell for hiding in plain sight and as such, she had determined that it was definitely a spell worth knowing well.

Suddenly, Ginny raced into the library, earning a heartily reproachful glare from Madam Pince. The younger girl was out of breath and looked pale and frightened. Hermione was instantly on alert. She knew without asking that something had happened to either a member of the Weasley family or to Harry. She rose up from the desk so quickly that she sent her chair toppling to the floor.

"Ginny!" she exclaimed quietly, wanting to get the witch's attention but ever mindful of the fact that they were in the library. Madam Pince would descend upon them and throw them out faster than she could say 'Quidditch' if either of their voices rose above a loud whisper. "Ginny, what happened? What's wrong?"

She saw the tears well up in her friend's bright brown eyes.

"Hermione, it's Ron; he's been poisoned!"

Hermione felt her heart plummet. Poison! How could this have happened? She packed her things up into her bag with a quick wave of her wand and flung the it over her right shoulder as she followed Ginny out of the library. They raced through the corridors and down to the hospital wing, Ginny explaining in more detail as they ran.

"Apparently, Ron ate some chocolates that Romilda Vane had given Harry for Valentine's Day. The skank tainted them with love potion," Ginny spat, her distaste for the witch only second in her anger over someone trying to trick Harry, for whom she had always carried a bit of a torch. "Because they sat around for so long, the love potion grew strong enough that Harry had to take Ron to Professor Slughorn's office to get him an antidote. Then, Professor Slughorn gave them each a glass of mead; Ron downed his first, of course. Apparently he nearly died before Harry had the foresight to shove a bezoar down his throat."

Hermione was surprised at Harry's quick thinking to use a bezoar but was immensely grateful that he had: it seemed like the thought had not occurred to their Potions Master. She and Ginny entered the hospital wing to see Harry slumped in the chair next to Ron's bed. Ron lay tucked securely into the stark white sheets and from distance she honestly hadn't been able to tell if was unconscious or merely sleeping. The two girls dashed over to take up posts on either side of Ron's bedside, each of them grabbing one of his hands. Hermione felt her eyes grow a bit damp at the realization that, while she had been absorbed in her own hurt feelings and emotions, she had nearly lost him.

Suddenly a commotion at the door caught her attention, and she looked up to see Lavender burst through the doors of the hospital wing. Her eyes were wide and overflowing with tears, face red and splotchy from the tears that had already been shed. Clearly word of Ron's poisoning had already begun to spread around the school and someone had been kind enough to inform Lavender that her boyfriend was in the hospital wing. Lavender raced over to the bed, but pulled to an almost comically quick stop when she saw that Hermione was already there.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, more than a bit belligerently.

"I'm his friend, Lavender," Hermione retorted with clear annoyance, releasing Ron's hand to cross her arms over her chest as a mulish frown descended over her face. "I'm quite certain that I am allowed to be here, whether you like it or not!"

"His friend?" the other girl scoffed darkly. "Oh, please! You haven't spoken to him in months, Hermione! And now, just because he's been poisoned, you think you can just worm you way right into his life as if nothing ever happened? You think he'll just forgive you, just like…"

Lavender's tirade was abruptly cut short when Ron shifted on the bed, muttering under his breath. Everyone grew deathly silent, and it was so quiet in the cavernous room that they could have heard the flutter of a pixie's wings in the room as they all waited to see if he was going to wake up.

"Her… Herm…i..o…ne…" Ron's voice was weak, but the word was clear and heard by everyone in the room.

Hermione, Harry, and Ginny all turned as one to look at Lavender, whose face had turned a particularly unattractive shade of puce. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish as she searched her brain for something to say. Then, with a strangled cry of hurt and frustration, she turned and fled the hospital wing, her loud wails following her from the room.

"Ha…rry…" Ron said.

"It's okay, Ron," Hermione said, grabbing his hand once more and sitting down in the chair beside his bed. "Harry and I are both here. Ginny's here, too. You're going to be just fine."

They watched as he settled into a restful sleep, and Hermione looked up at Harry and Ginny with a ghost of a smirk on her lips.

"Well," she said dryly, looking into her best friend's bright green eyes, "it looks like he finally found a way to rid himself of poor Lavender."

Harry's and Ginny's strangled laughter filled the room until Madam Pomphrey finally emerged from her office to shoo them from the room.

"This young man needs rest. Since you cannot keep yourselves quiet, you can see yourselves out," she said firmly, her tone broking no arguing.

That night, Hermione slowly made her way to the Room of Requirement. She really hoped she was wrong, but she had her suspicions about where the poisoned mead may have come from; she needed to know for sure. Harry had told her that, before she and Ginny had arrived in the hospital wing, Professor Slughorn had explained that he had acquired the bottle of mead shortly after the start of term and had planned to give it to the Headmaster as a Christmas present. She had begun to wonder if it was possible…

She walked into the Room of Requirement and saw Draco there, waiting for her. He made his way over to her, reaching out to pull her into his arms but, before he could embrace her, she held out one hand to stop him.

"Draco," she said, deciding that the direct, Gryffindor approach was best. "I'm sure you heard, but Ron was poisoned and nearly killed today. It was a bottle of poisoned mead that Professor Slughorn said he had intended to give to Professor Dumbledore."

She watched as the color leached from his already pale face and knew that her fears had not been unfounded. It had been his fault. Her heart sank, feeling as though it had dropped all the way down to her feet. Draco had poisoned the mead that had nearly killed one of her closest friends. So, where was she to go from here?

"It was me," Draco said, voice full of regret and resignation. "I poisoned it back before you took me to Dumbledore to get his help. I snuck it into Slughorn's office the week before I gave that cursed necklace to Bell. It isn't the type that Slughorn prefers but rather, Dumbledore's favorite, so I was banking on the fact that he would regift it to Dumbledore; clearly, he didn't, thankfully. I would have gone to steal it back after, but I honestly forgot about it. I never meant for anyone else to get hurt, but clearly that's the one thing that I'm best at…hurting people…"

Hermione was torn. She knew that Draco hadn't intended for Ron to get hurt. She also knew that his intentions had changed drastically since then; that his heart was now in the right place. On the other hand, though, one of her best friends had been moments away from death due to his desperate and reckless actions.

She forgave him for what he had unintentionally done. As she pulled him into her embrace and held him close, however, she wasn't sure that she would ever be able to forget.

Draco didn't see Hermione once over the following week, apart from in the classes that they shared and from across the expanse of the Great Hall at mealtimes. Considering the fact that Weasley had yet to be released from the hospital wing by Madam Pomphrey following his near-fatal poisoning, he understood. To be honest, he was still shocked and humbled by the fact that she had forgiven him after he had, albeit inadvertently, nearly murdered one of her best friends.

He could see the worry that she carried for Weasley wearing on her; the dark circles under her cinnamon-colored eyes were clear to see even from across the Great Hall. He could see her shoulders bowed under the weight of worry. To say that he felt guilty for his part in adding to her stress would be the greatest understatement of all time.

He knew that all the stress she was under could be laid directly at his feet. After all, it was his fault that Weasley was in the hospital wing; it was his fault that she was being forced to keep secrets from her best friends, the biggest secret of all of them being her relationship with him.

He had known all along that he had never been deserving of a single iota of love from her. Now, for once in his narcissistic life, he would finally do something that would make him worthy of it. He was going to have to put aside his own selfish desires for once and place someone else's well being above his own. He would need to find the strength to push her away from him, and away from his task that she had taken on as her own. In doing so, he would ensure her safety once and for all.

Song Inspiration: Breath of Life – Florence + the Machine

Poor Draco...he has such a hard time accepting the fact that Hermione is too stubborn to let him give up...I wonder if she'll live up to that reputation after this?

sbz