Friday, 12 March 1999
As expected, Ginny had been talking about Gwenog Jones and the Holyhead Harpies pretty much non-stop for the past seven days. Hermione was really happy and proud that her lifelong dream of playing professional Quidditch seemed to be coming true, but that didn't change the fact she could only listen to it for so long before it started to annoy her. She didn't think she would ever develop a genuine interest in the sport.
She had cut her lunch short and left the Great Hall in favour of the quiet of the library, only to find a group of restless fifth-year Ravenclaws at her usual table, stressing over their O.W.L. preparations. When Madam Pince had shushed them for the fifth time in as many minutes, Hermione had collected her belongings with half a mind to angrily stomp out of the library, only to remember that she was the Head Girl now and that her title came with certain privileges. Making her way over to the librarian's desk instead, she requested permission to enter the Restricted Section. Once granted, Hermione took a seat at the only table there and revelled in the peace and quiet.
Nearly five hours later, the metal entrance gate to the Restricted Section creaked, indicating that she wasn't going to be alone for much longer. Glancing up, she fully expected Madam Pince to walk in, telling her she had to leave. Instead, she found the Head Boy making his way over, and Hermione's stomach flipped in a very uncomfortable way.
It wasn't like her to endlessly overthink things after they had happened, but her kiss with Malfoy was something so unusual that she hadn't been able to stop herself. In a way, Hermione was incredibly grateful that Ginny had been so occupied with her own life that she hadn't noticed how often Hermione had been mentally absent from the conversation.
Still, not talking about it wasn't going to change the fact that it had happened, and the longer she kept it quiet, the more it would seem like this kiss was some big happening, and Hermione was determined to avoid that. The whole thing had been confusing enough without there being any importance attached to it.
Malfoy came to a halt in front of her table and leaned forward a little to rest his forearms on the back of the chair across from her, his hands folded together. Without saying anything, Hermione glanced up at him expectantly, quietly awaiting the reason for his arrival.
"I thought it was bad when Weasley cornered me and interrogated me about your current whereabouts after lunch," he began without so much as a greeting, "but then Loony Lovegood made an appearance during dinner with the same questions, so I thought I'd take it upon myself to try and find you before they decided to bring in the whole Auror department to search for their lost war heroine."
Hermione let out a long exasperated sigh and frowned up at him. "Her name is Luna," she bit out in annoyance, "and you could just as easily have told me that my friends are looking for me without all the dramatics."
The blond gave a shrug. "I know I could have, but what would have been the fun in that?" He dragged the chair backwards and sank down on the seat, scanning her face with a frown on his brows. "What's with the hide-and-seek, anyway? I hear you've been missing since you abruptly left lunch."
"I wasn't missing, I was just very much in need of some peace and quiet," she answered, surprising herself with how snobbily the words came out. "I don't really know why I thought the library was a good idea."
The Restricted Section went quiet for a while, and Malfoy continued to stare at her with narrowed eyes. "What is going on with you?" he finally asked sharply. "Because something tells me your foul mood is somehow my fault, so why don't you do the mature thing and tell me what it is that I've done?"
Hermione sniffed indignantly. "It's not your fault. I wanted to be alone for a while."
"That doesn't answer my first question," Malfoy countered. He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms in front of his chest, raising his eyebrows at her.
She had to literally bite down on her tongue to keep herself from snapping at him. Mentally counting to ten, Hermione took a deep breath and slowly exhaled as she redirected her gaze to the tabletop.
Her bad mood wasn't his fault. She knew this; truly, she did. The kiss they had shared just left her with a lot of uncertainty that she wasn't used to dealing with, and it made her unreasonably irritable. She glanced back up at Malfoy, who seemed surprisingly patient in waiting for her response. The fact that he wasn't his usual snippy self somehow only worsened her annoyance.
After taking another deep breath, Hermione briefly averted her eyes again. "I think I may have lost the ability to be rational," she murmured. Malfoy leaned forward and put his arms down on the table. There was surprise and confusion in his eyes and he remained quiet. She sighed. "I know I said I don't regret it… but it's messing with my head more than I had expected," she confessed softly.
"In what way?" Malfoy asked.
Hermione frowned. "I wanted us to have an easier time working together, but what happened the other day only complicated things for me. I have no idea how to work with you now."
"So you do regret it," he stated. She could tell that he was trying to shrug it off, but his hands had formed fists of their own accord and his shoulders betrayed tension. She opened her mouth to say something, perhaps offer her apologies, but when Malfoy held up his hand she immediately pressed her lips together again.
"I told you I had been picking up signals," he said. His voice was soft, but there was still a harsh tone to it and Hermione could tell that, despite his efforts to try to keep it buried, Malfoy was angry with her. "I told you to walk away if my observations were wrong, but you didn't," he continued. "And instead of pushing me away, you even pulled me closer."
Unable to keep her mouth shut any longer, Hermione let out an exasperated groan. "Malfoy, why does this bother you so much?" she bit out. "You told me yourself that the kiss didn't mean anything; that we were aiming for a friendship and that you don't snog your friends. So why does it matter that I'm feeling conflicted about it?"
"Because you said you vouched for me!" he snapped at her, and she flinched at the sudden rise in volume of his voice. "You vouched for me in front of our entire year, and now you're stomping around the castle, clearly regretting what we did, and everyone with half a brain can see that you're avoiding me!"
The wooden legs of his chair scraped harshly against the stone floor as he pushed it backwards, getting to his feet and none too gently pushing the chair back toward the table. For a moment, Hermione was fully convinced that he was going to storm off, but instead, he took a deep breath before glaring down at her again.
"This is not on me, Granger. Whatever you're feeling right now, I suggest you get your act back together." He pressed his lips together in a tight line as he looked her up and down with an angry stare. "I gave you plenty of opportunities to leave, but instead you only encouraged me. I don't give a rat's arse that your big brain has since started to over-analyse the situation, but that is not on me."
He leaned toward her over the table and pressed his palms flat on the surface, and Hermione inadvertently leaned back in her chair, though she maintained their eye contact, albeit cautiously. "It seems that our precious war heroine has finally realised just how stubborn prejudice can be, hasn't she?" Malfoy sneered softly. "It's been really easy to judge me for holding on to the way things have always been, but when you're expected to let go of the past yourself it's not quite as easy as you liked to have me believe, is it?"
He sniffed indignantly, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Remember when you told me about my dear Aunt Andromeda, and how you suggested that I should have followed in her footsteps of distancing myself from my parents—the only actual family I have left—because it would have been the right thing to do? And now look at yourself. You're so concerned with what the entire school would think of you if they were to find out that we snogged in a deserted corridor that you can't even admit to yourself that you liked it."
Hermione could only stare at him; her desire to argue with him had long vanished. To have Draco Malfoy of all people call her out on prejudiced behaviour… She couldn't pretend that it didn't sting and that she wasn't a little ashamed of herself right now, because somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew he was right.
Malfoy straightened up to his full length again, looking at her down his nose. "You're a lot of things, Granger, but I never expected this much hypocrisy from you." With those words, he spun around and marched away from her, and with a hard push against the metal entrance gate, he was gone.
Even after he had long disappeared from view, Hermione still stared at the exit of the restricted section while the metal gate slowly creaked shut again, with only the gnawing feeling of guilt as her company.
Saturday, 13 March 1999
Ginny sat up a little straighter and cleared her throat dramatically. "Oh no, he's not going to kiss me again," she said in a high-pitched, very poor imitation of Hermione's voice. "I told him very sternly that he couldn't, and of course Draco Malfoy listens to me!"
Next to her, Luna chuckled softly but didn't say anything in response, instead turning the page of the book in her lap in silence. Hermione had found the two sixth-years together in the Great Hall for breakfast, and not wanting to be mean, she had asked Luna to come with them into one of the nearby classrooms on the ground floor. As odd as the blonde Ravenclaw was, Hermione knew she could trust the girl to keep this to herself. Plus, she would never judge her.
"Yes, I clearly miscalculated," she muttered, rolling her eyes at Ginny's playful mockery. Still, she much preferred this over her friend's anger, which could have been just as likely a response as being made fun of. "But he maintains that it didn't mean anything and that it happened to eliminate the tension that had built up between us."
"Oh, come off it!" Ginny exclaimed, throwing her hands up in a frustrated gesture. "That's twice he has kissed you now! This is just vehement denial at this point. There is something there, and while that doesn't necessarily mean he's in love with you, whatever it is, it's obviously enough to make him uncomfortable."
"Yes, and anger is quite a powerful emotion," Luna added, sounding vaguely absent. "If it really didn't mean anything, he wouldn't have gotten angry with you; he would just feel indifferent about it."
"Exactly!" Ginny forcefully pointed at her blonde friend while nodding her head, as though underlining their mutual agreement. "And normally I wouldn't be so quick to say this, because most boys will do just about anything to get some action, but with all the history between you and Malfoy, it just doesn't make sense for him to go after you for something meaningless. It's not like you're the only girl in this school."
Hermione listened to her two friends picking apart the earlier events that had transpired between her and the Head Boy. Their conclusions made a lot of sense, and even though she had long come up with these reasonings herself, it felt good to have them validated.
She had considered that Malfoy might just be using her to get back into good graces with the rest of the student body, but if she really thought about it, that theory didn't make much sense. After all, she had been the one to initiate most—if not all—of the contact between them. She had tried to keep the peace. She had tried to get to know him in the hopes of making their assigned partnership bearable. She had kept an eye out for him so she could help him out.
Once he had started opening up to her, Hermione hadn't noticed anything about his behaviour that would indicate that he might regret doing that. After having resisted her attempts to get a glimpse of what went on inside his head for so long, he had finally started to come around. Some of the things he had entrusted her with just seemed too personal to be scripted.
And as much as it hurt to admit, he had been right when he had confronted her yesterday. She was afraid of what people might say when they found out that she and Malfoy had kissed, and that instead of pushing him away she had encouraged his advances and had actively kissed him back.
She didn't really care that much about the opinions from most of her fellow students here at Hogwarts, but the thought of the news reaching Harry and Ron before she could tell them herself, in person… It made her incredibly anxious.
Still, she had to acknowledge that it had happened, and she had to be honest with herself: it had been a great kiss. Malfoy had done everything right, and had he been anyone else she would gladly have repeated it sometime. The fact that he had even taken the time to ease her mind directly afterwards meant a lot to her, and it showed how far Malfoy had come since his days as the petty courtyard bully.
Hermione sighed and closed her eyes. She could still picture the way he had held her hand, and the look he'd had on his face when he had confessed why he had wanted to kiss her. To have you of all people be nice to me… It makes it easier to forget what I've done. He had looked so crestfallen, and despite feeling conflicted about the whole thing, she couldn't deny that she was glad that she could make him feel better.
She slowly exhaled through her nose. It was starting to become clear to her that beneath the bully, beneath the boy who had gone wrong during the War, there was a young man who was struggling to figure out how he might fit into the world. He had shown her a vulnerable side of him, and Hermione realised that Draco Malfoy might have tried to turn to her for guidance. After encouraging him to do just that for months, she had all but rejected him as soon as he had finally gathered the courage to do so.
Glancing back up at her two friends, Hermione sighed again. Ginny and Luna had moved on from discussing Malfoy, instead returning to their earlier conversation about their Defense Against the Dark Arts essays that were due after the weekend.
"Thanks for listening to me and for offering your input," she interrupted them softly while getting down from the table she had been sitting on. "There is something I have to do, but I'll see you at supper tonight, alright?"
Ginny nodded her head, smiling, and Luna gave her a wave. "See you later, Hermione."
Leaving the two sixth-years alone in the empty classroom, Hermione began her trek through the castle to the Owlery. She had to find a way to apologise to Malfoy; a way that would make him receptive to it. She just hoped that what she had in mind would work.
Sunday, 14 March 1999
Hermione didn't notice that Dean took the seat next to her. She didn't notice the double-take he gave her, and the amused glance he then exchanged with Ginny. It wasn't something she was conscious of at the moment, but when explained to her later she would understand how strange it was that she hadn't greeted any of her friends, and instead remained weirdly transfixed on the Slytherin table.
"Come on, Hermione," Ginny eventually said loudly, sending a pea over the table and hitting her right on the nose, finally snapping her from her trance. "You're making the rest of us Gryffindors look bad. Just go over there and apologise already!"
"Who is she apologising to?" Dean wondered aloud between bites, and Hermione turned her head to her two friends just in time to see Ginny roll her eyes at him.
"Draco Malfoy," the redhead answered. "I think it's stupid, but little miss Head Girl over there feels that it's important to maintain a civil, respectful work environment."
The dark-skinned seventh-year shrugged his shoulders. "That doesn't sound unreasonable. I think it's kind of admirable, and it's probably why she is the Head Girl, don't you think?" He gave her a pleasant grin that Hermione returned without even thinking about it.
"I was hoping to catch him alone," she said with a sigh. "I could really do without an audience of sneering Slytherins."
"The longer you wait the more you'll dread it," Dean commented wisely. "Just rip off the band-aid, you know?"
Hermione took a deep breath, knowing full well that Dean was right. She briefly locked eyes with Ginny, who momentarily stopped chewing her mouthful of pudding to give her what she thought was meant to be interpreted as an encouraging smile. Despite the dread in her stomach, she couldn't contain a laugh, but as soon as she rose from her seat her amusement ebbed away again.
"Well, wish me luck," she muttered, and both Dean and Ginny echoed the sentiment back to her while she swung her bag over her shoulder and moved to the other side of the Great Hall with more confidence than she felt.
Malfoy was seated next to Nott, with Greengrass sitting across from them with her back to Hermione and the three other House Tables. As she neared the Slytherin table she locked eyes with Nott, who wasted no time curling his lip in a sneer, just as she had predicted.
She shifted her gaze to Malfoy and saw that he kept his eyes down on his plate. Clearly, he had already seen her approach them, and clearly, he was actually, seriously angry with her. The fact that he opted for plainly ignoring her rather than to insult her or glare at her was rather worrying.
"Are you lost?" Nott asked harshly when she came to a halt at their table.
"No, but thanks for your concern," Hermione bit back sarcastically, shooting the gaunt boy a glare. "Malfoy, I was hoping we could have a word," she announced in a friendlier tone, turning her attention back to the Head Boy. When he continued to ignore her, she hesitated for a second before slowly sinking down on the seat beside Greengrass, who immediately moved a bit further away from her. The Slytherins directly surrounding them had begun to stare, none too subtly whispering amongst each other.
"I would like to apologise to you," Hermione pressed on, paying no attention to Nott and Greengrass' mocking huffs. "I'm sorry."
Malfoy's eyebrows raised ever so slightly, but he still refused to make eye contact with her and instead sighed with exaggerated boredom as he redirected his gaze to make eye contact with Greengrass.
Hermione had been prepared for Malfoy's incredible stubbornness, and with a sigh of her own she moved her bag onto her lap and reached for the metal clasps to open it. The movements of her hands paused before she did, and she blinked her eyes as she attempted to control how irritable she felt about his behaviour.
Given the way he was acting right now, she assumed that Malfoy was currently operating under that belief, but Hermione had not come here because he had successfully bullied her into apologising. Rather stubborn herself, she never would have given in to that; she wanted to make things right because she realised she hadn't been fair to him.
Right now, though, she realised that he would probably hold it over her for the rest of the school year if she allowed this behaviour from him without any pushback. Narrowing her eyes at the blond, Hermione took a deep breath and lifted her chin a little, ready to just give in and release her annoyance.
"I hope you'll come to forgive me," she said slowly, and her voice sounded alarmingly sweet, even just to herself. A deep frown quickly formed between Malfoy's brows, and Hermione leaned forward a little, plastering an insincere smile on her lips. "I've given it a lot of thought and I've come to realise that you were right all along."
She paused for a short moment, allowing for the silence to build up some tension. Surely Malfoy had begun to realise that she was about to call his bluff? If he had, his face betrayed absolutely nothing, and Hermione sat up straight and squared her shoulders.
"So again," she said, slowly getting up from the bench while she spoke, "I'm very sorry for the way I acted. Please know it had nothing to do with the kiss, and that I'll work on my closed-mindedness in case we ever share another one."
To her right, a loud clattering sound betrayed that Greengrass had dropped her spoon, and while Hermione kept her eyes fixed on Malfoy, from her peripheral vision she saw that Nott's face was rapidly turning red as he lost himself in a coughing fit.
Malfoy had tensed up completely, his eyes widened and a light, pink blush slowly spread over his cheekbones. Hermione allowed herself a pleased smile, happy that she had been right. Malfoy had a loud bark and it had almost worked, but she should have realised from the start that he himself wouldn't have been very forthcoming about their post-patrol activity from the other day either. She understood that her comments might have left him with a dejected feeling, but he wasn't entirely justified in calling her a hypocrite.
Still smiling, she turned around and made her way over to the exit of the Great Hall. Only mere inches into the Entrance Hall she heard loud and urgent footsteps behind her, and instinctively she knew that Malfoy had followed after her. Not even five seconds after this realisation, a hand closed around her left upper arm, giving a firm and painful yank that made her spin around immediately.
"What the hell was that?" Malfoy snarled at her, causing her to blink her eyes in rapid succession from the shock of the sudden rise in volume. She quickly recovered and pulled her arm from his grip, glaring back at him with the same intensity as he directed at her.
"What the hell was what?" she snapped back.
He took a step in her direction, towering over her, and Hermione was suddenly reminded of the argument they'd had back when she had caught him mid-snog with Parkinson in the Head's common room. Malfoy could be very intimidating when he wanted to be, and right now Hermione doubted that she could fool anyone into believing she didn't feel a little shaken by his anger.
"What the hell," he hissed through his teeth, "did you think I meant when I told you that what we do is no one's business but ours?" He took another step toward her, and the little voice in the back of her mind finally warned her that she might not be able to win this stand-off.
"I thought I'd show you just how concerned I am with what people think about us snogging," she still replied snobbily, without fully thinking it through.
Malfoy seemed on the verge of losing his self-control. "By outing me—outing us—to my pureblood supremacist friends during supper? And they said you were supposed to be the smart one." He sniffed, wrinkling his nose in disgust as he looked her up and down, still with that same intense glare. "If I had done this to you with Potter and Weasley you'd have slapped me across the face again and called it justice. Your hypocrisy disgusts me, Granger."
"What do you want from me, Malfoy?" She fully turned toward him, raising her chin to show him that she refused to be intimidated. "I can't feel conflicted about our kiss because that apparently means that I regret it, but I also can't talk about it because apparently this was supposed to stay a secret. It seems I can't do anything right at this point!"
"I thought we wanted the same thing."
The sudden softer tone of this voice took her off guard, because it didn't match the expression on his face. Malfoy was still glaring at her, though there was an unmistakably vulnerable edge to his tone. His lips formed a tight line and he remained silent for a moment before letting out a sigh and averting his eyes for the briefest of moments.
"You said you wanted mutual respect, and I thought we had achieved that. But what you just did in there—" he vaguely waved his arm toward the double doors that led to the Great Hall, "—that just screamed unresolved resentment of some sort, and you haven't even given me the courtesy of explaining why."
Her annoyance ebbed away a little, leaving Hermione with the nasty suspicion that she made a mistake with her approach of the whole situation, and finally the realisation that she wasn't really angry. Instead, she was thoroughly confused and a little insecure, and she had no idea how to eloquently put it into words so that Malfoy might understand.
Part of her just wanted to fight with him. She normally despised the stupid animosity, but the distance between constant arguing and snogging was too big to wrap her head around. How was she supposed to tell her two best friends that she had willingly locked lips with their school nemesis, someone who had carelessly poisoned Ron and had pledged loyalty to the wizard who orphaned Harry?
Draco Malfoy had worked hard to redeem himself this year. He deserved her friendship, unquestionably, but they had only snogged once, and despite maintaining that it didn't mean anything, it had now repeatedly caused conflict between them. It didn't matter how great a kiss it had been. No kiss was worth this much trouble.
She didn't realise she had uttered the last sentence out loud until she heard Malfoy exhale loudly and with impatience.
"It's not the kiss itself that is the problem and you know it, it's the fact that you can't seem to get off your high Hippogriff for long enough to admit you liked it," he snapped.
"I liked it!" she shouted, losing her composure, and Malfoy immediately fell silent. He stared at her as if she had just slapped him across the face, wide eyes full of questions, and Hermione drew in a deep breath, knowing the lid had come off and that there was no going back now.
"I am nineteen years old," she managed at an indoor volume. Hot, angry tears trickled from her eyes, but she didn't care about them this time, and she made no attempts to wipe them away. It was time he saw and heard just how she felt. "For the past eight years, all I've been doing is adjusting. To a new world, a new identity, new dangers…" Hermione averted her eyes and sniffed, her anger rapidly morphing into sadness.
"I've never had the chance to be a normal teenager," she continued softly. "At first I was busy proving myself, then I was busy making sure my two best friends stayed alive, and then the darkest wizard in recent history came back and declared war on account of my kind, so when I thought I could finally be a normal girl with normal wants, I had to go and fight in a war to make sure I wouldn't be killed off for embracing what I was literally born to be."
She forced herself to look back up and into Malfoy's eyes. His face had become a carefully constructed mask of neutrality, betraying nothing. "The person I've loved for the past few years lost his brother during the Final Battle," she spat bitterly. "He has been so heartbroken that he hasn't been able to let me in, and so our relationship was over before it had even begun."
"What does this have to—" Malfoy began, clearly feigning annoyance to cover up his confusion, but Hermione did not give him the chance to cut in.
"I lived through a war," she interrupted him harshly. "Instead of dating, all I've done is fight, and it cost me the chance at normality with the person I thought was the one for me."
She wiped her sleeve across her eyes to dry her tears before glaring up at him. "And now here you are, snogging me when we should really have no business snogging each other at all, and while it's apparently fine that you keep saying that it didn't mean anything, for some reason it's outrageous that I'm struggling to understand how I feel about kissing you? I have lost enough time, Malfoy. I don't want to waste more time doing things that don't mean anything."
Hermione averted her glare and focused on actually opening the metal clasps of her bag this time. "Here," she said, brusquely pulling the box from her bag and pushing it in Malfoy's hands without even making sure he held on to it properly. She just didn't care anymore. "Because I actually felt bad about this whole thing before I realised you were just manipulating me into feeling that way."
With that, she turned away and hurried up the Marble Staircase without looking back, leaving behind a thoroughly confused Draco Malfoy.