Snippets
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hermione's feet dangle as she sits atop the exam table while waiting for Healer Greengrass. She twiddles her fingers in her lap for a handful of minutes before she hears the tell-tale double knock on her door.
Healer Greengrass enters the room and smiles brightly at Hermione– a sentiment which Hermione returns happily.
Hermione had been– rightfully– apprehensive all of those months ago when she had made her first appointment with Healer Greengrass, but now she is grateful that she had followed through on Padma's suggestion. Healer Greengrass has become a constant in her life and she has grown to trust her implicitly since their reintroduction.
"How was your weekend, Healer Greengrass?" Hermione asks, realizing that– though it is her job– Healer Greengrass is always the one asking the questions. Hermione spends at least one hour per week with this witch and she isn't sure that she has ever even so much as asked her how her day is going.
"It was lovely, Ms. Granger, thank you for asking," Healer Greengrass smiles, taking a seat on her rolling stool and crossing her legs at the knee. "And yours?"
Hermione replies that her weekend was also lovely before Healer Greengrass flicks open her file and begins the part of the appointment which actually pertains to Hermione's illness.
"Have you had any visions since our last appointment, Ms. Granger?" Healer Greengrass asks, her quill at the ready to take any notes that she sees fit.
"Yes," Hermione frowns, remembering immediately her most recent vision which featured a particular platinum-blonde wizard. "I had another one about the man."
Healer Greengrass nods her clinical nod.
"May I ask you something quite frankly, Ms. Granger?" Healer Greengrass asks, her voice somewhat apprehensive, though she straightens her shoulders confidently.
"You may," Hermione responds, and she has a feeling that she knows what Healer Greengrass is going to ask– or at least close to.
"This man whom you see in your visions– does he know about them?" Healer Greengrass wonders, and Hermione knows that that isn't exactly the question her Healer had had in mind and that this will be more than just a 'yes' or 'no' conversation.
"He does. He doesn't know all of the details of every vision, but he has the general idea," Hermione sighs, her chest tightening slightly at the reminder that the man from her visions is now no longer her friend– and that he is also Healer Greengrass' brother-in-law, but that is neither here nor there.
"And how does he feel about them?" Healer Greengrass continues, scribbling out a few notes on her parchment.
"I wouldn't know. We're not really speaking at the moment."
Healer Greengrass nods once more although Hermione does notice one of her blonde eyebrows arch slightly in surprise.
"I see," Healer Greengrass states, but there's a harshness in her voice, though it doesn't appear to Hermione that that harshness is directed at her.
Healer Greengrass seems to pause for a moment, centering herself, before she speaks again.
"Ms. Granger, you understand that we are operating based on the assumption that your visions will continue to come to pass, yes?" Healer Greengrass questions, and it surprises Hermione slightly. Yes, she is aware of that fact.
Hermione nods, scrunching her eyebrows together in confusion.
"I want you to be prepared because your visions– especially in relation to this man– have seemed to run the gamut. Of course, that is to be expected because relationships can be complicated, but I'm wondering what your thoughts might be when you think about the visions as a whole, as well as your feelings with regard to the man in reality."
Hermione sighs and thinks for a moment. How does she feel? She knows that she has realized since the dissolution of her friendship with Draco that she might have some feelings for the wizard– after all, he had jumped head first into helping her research her condition in spite of their tumultuous past.
Even despite her disappointment at Draco telling her that they couldn't be friends anymore, she still understood his motive. She can't fault him for not wanting to relive the loss of his wife.
"He's a good man," Hermione starts, shrugging her shoulders. "I never would've pictured myself with him– not until I was forced to, anyway."
Hermione laughs lightly and the corner of Healer Greengrass' lips tilt up slightly. Leave it to Hermione's subconscious to plant ideas in her head that otherwise wouldn't have been there.
"He's kinder than I expected. He was helping me research my condition. We didn't find anything, but he was giving up hours of his time every week to help me."
Healer Greengrass nods, leaning forward slightly toward Hermione.
"So, what changed?" she asks.
Hermione bites her lip. She knows that she has to be careful here. Draco's reason for ending their friendship had been because of Healer Greengrass' younger sister– and his late wife– Astoria.
"I'm sick," Hermione shrugs. "Perhaps it just got to be too much to handle."
Healer Greengrass makes a surprised, albeit dissatisfied sounding 'huh' noise before closing her file on her lap.
Before Healer Greengrass is able to continue– because Hermione is sure that that isn't the end of her Healer's questions regarding the man in the visions– Hermione decides to bring up the prospect of continuing her treatment.
"I'd like to do another session of the treatment spells," Hermione declares, though her voice does waver slightly. She's sure that this is what she believes is best for her in this moment, but that doesn't negate the trauma that the first round of spells caused.
"You did have some complications during your first treatment, Ms. Granger. I would just like to be clear that I cannot guarantee that you wouldn't also experience the same or similar complications this time, as well."
Hermione nods in understanding. She knows that she's taking a risk by doing this, but she also knows that it could be her only chance at ridding herself of her visions.
"I know– and I still want to do it. I have to try."
Hermione arrives home from work and with a sigh, she drops her beaded bag onto the table beside her front door and unwinds her scarf from around her neck.
Hermione is exhausted today, as it had seemed almost as if every one of her cases had included some sort of headache-inducing detail.
First, was the centaur legislation rewrite which required her immediate attention lest the centaurs be forced out of even more of their own land by pompous, bureaucratic wizards.
Next, was the unexpected arrival of a recently freed– and quite disgruntled– house elf in her office declaring that he had felt slighted by his former master's insistence on paying him a 'fair wage'. The elf in question had reminded Hermione immediately of Dobby and she had had to take a moment to tend to the painful twinge that such a revelation had caused in her chest before she was able to sort out the decidedly-not-Dobby elf's complaints.
Finally, her last case of the day had been that of another Veela-related domestic dispute, which had caused Hermione's left eye to twitch for the better part of an hour as she tried to diffuse the situation.
So, when Hermione arrives home to her flat, the second thing that she does– after removing her beaded bag, scarf and shoes– is collapse onto her sofa in a fairly undignified heap.
Hermione thinks that she might've been content to stay in that exact spot for perhaps the rest of her life if not for the fact that she had promised herself that she would wash her hair tonight after nearly singeing it via a rogue spell thrown by the Veela. It is for this reason that Hermione heaves herself off of her sofa and trudges reluctantly to her hall restroom.
Hermione strips her work robes off of herself and twists the knob on her shower to let the water warm. She waits for a moment before stepping underneath the spray, tipping her head back to allow the warmth of the water to soothe her headache.
Hermione's mind, as usual, wanders as she goes about the business of washing this incredibly draining day from her person– and much to her chagrin, it wanders in the direction of a strikingly blonde man and his stormy eyes.
Hermione washes her face in an attempt to quell the lingering hurt that has taken root in her chest, though it doesn't appear to help much.
Hermione misses her friend– she can admit that much– but a not-insignificant part of her knows that there is more to it than just that. She thinks that perhaps she had realized that somewhere between asking Draco to be present with her at her treatment and him kissing her goodbye at the gala, but had suppressed and denied it as vehemently as possible until being questioned by Ginny Weasley-Potter in Bulgaria– not to mention the fact that (almost) all of her friends had, in essence, given her their blessing to like Draco Malfoy the evening following her aforementioned interrogation.
Of course, Hermione doesn't need her friends' blessing, but it certainly begs the question of why her friends are so Team Draco now. Perhaps they've seen the same sorts of changes in the wizard which Hermione has noticed herself.
He's different than he was in school. At Hogwarts, Draco was a bully at best. At worst, he was an actual Death Eater– the proof of that allegiance tattooed on his forearm, which he has kept carefully under wraps every time she has seen him since their friendship began. Draco hasn't said as much, but Hermione is positive that he had, at one time, actually believed in Voldemort's hateful rhetoric. He had believed in what his parents had taught him.
However, Hermione genuinely trusts that he doesn't believe in those ideals now. There is no part of her which believes that Draco ended their newly formed friendship for any other reason than for the one he gave. She absolutely does not believe that he walked away from her due to her blood-status.
Hermione moves on to lathering with her green apple scented shampoo to remove the lingering fragrance of charred hair as she continues to question her thoughts and feelings with regard to Draco Malfoy, though it's not until she is smoothing her similarly-scented conditioner through her curls that she seems to come to a conclusion.
Hermione decides that yes, she has feelings for Draco which are not strictly platonic. He's handsome and kind. He's intelligent, which Hermione knew based on the fact that he was always just behind her in marks, but he has continued to demonstrate such a quality as she has grown to know him recently. He's compassionate, which leads Hermione to believe that he is likely an exceptional Healer. He's protective, if Hermione's limited experience with the way he positioned himself between her and his friends is any indication. And he looks bloody fit in his reading glasses.
Hermione shivers slightly at the reminder of the way that he would often dangle his aforementioned reading glasses from the tips of his long, pale fingers as they spoke in his library. She might've never expected something so innocuous to be so enticing, but, well, there it is.
In spite of all of that, though, Hermione still decides that she is not going to chase after a wizard who has made it clear that he cannot be friends with her, let alone anything more. She decides that her feelings for Draco are largely irrelevant and that she will do whatever she can in order to move on from them.
After Hermione is finished rinsing her hair and washing her body, she steps out of the shower, nearly slipping on the smooth tile when a loud knock on her front door sounds throughout her small flat.
Hermione scrunches her eyebrows together in confusion as she wraps a towel around herself and steps out into the hallway, allowing the steam from her shower to escape the small room behind her.
"Just a minute!" she calls whoever is on the other side of her door as she dashes into her bedroom and grabs the first clean articles of clothing that she can find.
Hermione quickly throws on the pair of black leggings and the gray, floral-patterned t-shirt which were on the top of her laundry pile and casts a hasty drying-charm over her hair as she nearly runs down the hall and out toward the entryway of her flat.
Hermione breathes heavily and places a hand on the doorknob in preparation of yanking the aforementioned door open, internally questioning who would possibly be knocking on her door. The most recent person to do such a thing had been her downstairs neighbor asking to borrow a cup of sugar, and the person before that had been Pansy.
Since then, Hermione has given Pansy her floo address, so the witch has used the more magical means of showing up unannounced at Hermione's flat more recently and Harry, Ron, Ginny and Padma each utilize Hermione's floo, too, so Hermione is particularly at a loss for who might be gracing her doorstep this evening.
Hermione unlocks her deadbolt and flings her door open, regretting immediately that she hadn't spent just another handful of minutes in the shower so as to miss the knocking on her door.
"I tried to stay away from you. Salazar, I tried, but– but I had to see you."
Hi, friends! Happy Tuesday! (:
... Sorry, lol. I know how much y'all love cliffhangers. :P
I don't have much to say this week, apart from, as always, thank you all so, so much for spending a bit of your time here with me this week. It genuinely means more to me than you know. Thank you.
If you feel so inclined, please leave a review. Reviews are like candy to me and there are few things in this life that I enjoy as much as I enjoy reading all of your reviews. (:
(Also, shameless plug, last Friday, I uploaded a one-shot that I really enjoyed writing. It's called Night Shift, if you'd like to read it. It's Fremione, not Dramione, but I promise, just give it a chance, lol. I wasn't a Fremione shipper either until I read a random fic by an author I liked and it was all downhill from there, lol. And if it's still not your thing, there's a new Dramione one-shot going up this coming Friday, 08/09. :P)
See you again next week! (: