Chapter 10: Nobody calls Hermione Granger stupid!

The next morning, Hermione threw herself into Ron's arms as soon as they crossed paths on their way to the Great Hall. Draco had to take quick strides as the girl started running towards her friend to avoid anyone getting hurt by the invisible wall.

"Oh, Ronald, dear," she said, still with her arms around his torso and her head resting on his shoulder. "I got the news. I'm sorry I wasn't there."

She hugged him a little tighter against her body. Only Harry, Ginny, and she knew that he was gay, and despite always trying to make him see that he had nothing to be ashamed of, for Ron it was a delicate topic that he had hidden with great care for many years. And despite Hermione's initial surprise that her friend's first romantic interest was none other than Blaise Zabini, she was glad he had finally found a way to show himself to others as he really was, though she supposed it hadn't been easy for him to take that step.

She might have felt guilty for not providing some emotional support before the big news if she hadn't seen the huge smile adorning his face when they finally separated.

He had lifted a great weight off his shoulders by shedding the stigma he had imposed on himself regarding his sexuality. She wondered then what it would be like to confess that Draco Malfoy attracted her more than he should. Would she also feel relieved to shake off such a tremendous weight?

She decided she would never know the answer. It was useless to dwell on something that wasn't going to happen.

She smiled at her friend, took his hand, and the four of them headed to the Great Hall.

"Neville didn't come down for breakfast today either," she said to Pansy when she surprised her by sitting next to her and greeting her enthusiastically, as if they were suddenly best friends. "We should tell Dumbledore when we go to his office tomorrow to undo the punishment spell."

Pansy urgently shushed her.

"Are you crazy?" she snapped under her breath. "I told you I had a plan."

"But he could be in danger," argued Hermione, who no longer felt comfortable letting more time pass without knowing what the hell was going on with the boy.

Neville didn't have many friends, so she felt doubly responsible. If something had happened to him and she hadn't lifted a finger to help... she couldn't live with that much guilt.

"Do you really want to miss out on the fun of discovering for ourselves what the Greengrass sisters did to him?"

Hermione raised an eyebrow.

"Why do you assume it was them?"

"I don't assume, I know."

"Alright," she replied, starting to lose patience. "Well, if you know, tell me. I have the right to know if I'm going to be part of 'your plan.'"

"Fine, you win," she said, rolling her eyes, and then leaned in close to Hermione to speak in whispers. "I think I was the last person to see him alive..."

"Neville is not dead!" Hermione exclaimed suddenly, but Pansy coughed loudly (a clearly forced gesture) to prevent others from hearing what she was saying.

When she looked around and finally decided no one was paying attention, she continued:

"Yes, yes, well, we'll see. What I mean is that when I last saw him (and that was one or two days before the punishment), he was... guess with whom. Exactly. He was with Astoria, in a secluded and rarely used corner, and they seemed to be whispering something... It seemed strange to me, but I was late for a stupid class and couldn't stop to eavesdrop as much as I would have liked. After that, apparently, Longbottom disappeared from the face of the Earth. By the way, isn't it worrying that a student disappears and no one notices, not even the teachers or the headmaster himself? Hogwarts, the safest place in Scotland, they said..."

Hermione ignored the sarcasm in her words and focused on their content. If Pansy was telling the truth and had seen Neville with Astoria in a situation like the one she described, then... could she have something to do with his disappearance?

Something about all this was starting to give her a bad feeling...

After breakfast, Blaise put an arm around Ron's shoulders and they headed for the castle grounds, probably to cuddle under the shade of a tree near the lake.

Pansy went in the opposite direction, dragging Harry to a place she said she wanted to show him. Hermione thought she saw the girl wink at her before disappearing around the corner, though... why would she do that? It didn't take long for her to conclude she had imagined it.

The day for Draco and Hermione didn't look too promising, so the Gryffindor insisted on going to the library to get a book to entertain herself during all the idle hours ahead. She hoped that, with a bit of luck, it would also make her forget that the next day they would break the spell that bound them and, therefore, separate her from him permanently.

She would no longer have an excuse to be close to Malfoy, not even a reason to talk to him. And the truth was, she didn't quite know how to feel about it.

On the way to the library, the boy's weakness caused his legs to give out and he took a nasty tumble down the stairs just as they were about to reach the fourth floor. As a result, Hermione was pushed by the invisible wall and thrown through the air down the stairs. When she landed, she was momentarily surprised not to feel all the pain she had imagined she would suffer in the few seconds she had to process the situation. But now, as she could analyze things carefully, she understood that the reason was that she hadn't entirely landed on the floor.

Her right side hurt, but only that, because most of her body had ended up on top of Draco Malfoy, who lay on his back on the hard stone floor. Hermione's left knee was bent between Draco's legs, dangerously close to the boy's groin, who had suddenly stopped groaning in pain. Hermione's head had ended up resting on his shoulder, and the force of gravity had pressed her full lips against the Slytherin's neck for an instant, just below his earlobe. Hermione quickly pulled away, placing a hand on his chest to get up, and they exchanged a strange look that neither of them could break.

What was that in their eyes... what was it? That feeling they had experienced while being on top of each other. The wild heartbeat of Malfoy under Hermione's palm. The weight of the girl on the Slytherin's body and the warmth radiating from him that had nothing to do with the heat caused by the fall...

Could all that be... desire?

But neither Draco nor Hermione had time to find out, because someone cleared their throat and they remembered at the same time that they were not alone, that there were students and teachers coming and going in all directions and passing by them, that they still had their legs entangled and one on top of the other.

People were staring at them and whispering, some with wide eyes due to surprise, others laughing quietly with excitement, even malice for the gossip that would flood the castle in the coming days. Cristopher (the nosy Ravenclaw boy) was also there, and they were both sure he would make sure to spread in great detail the position they had been seen falling in. Hermione feared he wouldn't forget to mention the long seconds they had spent there, looking intensely at each other on the floor, while the rest of the world seemed to have disappeared for a moment for them.

Damn, not even the news that Ron and Blaise were dating would be as sensational.

Hermione thought she felt a bulge against her pelvis the instant before she jumped to her feet.

Oh. Dear. Merlin.

If there was one thing she was certain of at that moment, it was that her blood was boiling under her cheeks. She felt such a level of heat in her face, ears, and neck that her head had started spinning in a way she was sure was very unhealthy... and she doubted any of it had to do with the fall.

When they reached the library, they were still embarrassed by the incident, so much so that they had put all their effort into avoiding any eye contact as they walked through the aisles looking for a book that would interest Hermione.

When she finally found something that caught her attention (an illustrated volume of ancient and currently unused potions, located in one of the less frequented sections of the library), she reached out to grab it but groaned in response to a sharp pain that started in her shoulder and shot through her entire right side.

Draco Malfoy, who was standing behind her, took a step in her direction.

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

She nodded, still unable to turn to look at him.

Cold fingers gently brushed her skin when, to the girl's surprise, Malfoy slid her shirt collar aside to assess the damage.

"We should go to the infirmary. You have a nasty bruise on your shoulder," he informed her.

Hermione suspected as much, since her whole right side hurt. However, all that pain took a back seat when she started to feel the light touch of his fingertips on her back, leaving a tingling on the surface of her skin and a constant burning in her insides, which were suddenly in turmoil.

The girl tilted her head slightly to the left as a reflex action of her body to desire.

Something inside her (a part that was blinded by love and didn't heed reason or logic) had hoped to receive a kiss at the base of her neck... but that kiss, of course, never came. So she turned her head to, instead, look at him out ofthe corner of her eye.

"I can't..." she started to say, feeling an uncomfortable dryness in her throat and a deep disappointment in her heart. "I can't imagine how you must be then, having taken the brunt of the fall."

She saw the hint of a smile appear on his lips, still with his eyes fixed on the skin of her back.

Wait, what was happening?

A surge of adrenaline from feeling those fingers on her body had clouded her reasoning and she hadn't been thinking clearly, but now that she could see again... everything seemed too strange.

Why was he doing that? Looking at her and touching her as if there was something between them?

He had already made it clear that his feelings belonged exclusively to Daphne.

Had he realized that Hermione had been feeling something for him these days and now thought he had some right over her?

Was that what he was doing, playing with her feelings? Confusing her?

Because that would be very typical of a Slytherin.

She grabbed her shirt and pulled it back into place with a quick motion, which seemed to bring the boy back to reality.

Hermione ignored him and made a move to grab the book again. She even stood on tiptoes to reach better.

But Draco Malfoy took another step towards her, almost pinning her between his body and the bookshelf, and grabbed the volume first. Then he handed it to her and she took it, confused and angry at how little control she had over herself when he got a little too close.

How stupid she was! She was just clearing the way for him to keep laughing at her.

She looked away, thanked him almost reluctantly, and then they both headed to the infirmary, for the second time that week, so Madam Pomfrey could give them some remedy to cure the pain from the fall and get rid of the bruises.

Hermione clutched the book to her chest more tightly as she realized everyone was staring at them as they passed.

Without a doubt, they were the new gossip of the castle.

"Have you found out anything about your friend, 'the broomstick charmer'?" Malfoy asked as they walked, his eyes looking ahead and not at her. "I still want to get revenge for what he did."

The girl pursed her lips in disapproval, although she knew he had probably asked that to distract himself from the hundreds of eyes on them and the social pressure they were under at the moment. They hadn't been more than five meters apart during the past week, so he knew perfectly well that she hadn't made any progress on the matter... though come to think of it...

"I've been talking to Parkinson this morning..."

"Yes, I saw you," he said. "Quite strange, if you ask me..."

"She says the last time she saw Neville, he was with Astoria."

She saw out of the corner of her eye how Malfoy arched an eyebrow.

"And?"

"Well, I don't know, maybe she has something to do with his disappearance."

The Slytherin made a strange face.

"And they call you the…?"

But Malfoy closed his mouth before finishing the sentence.

The book slipped from Hermione's hands and fell open to the floor at her feet, but she didn't bend down to pick it up because she couldn't take her eyes off the boy.

"What were you going to say? Go ahead, don't stop halfway," she snapped, and there was a good dose of accusation in her words.

Malfoy discreetly glanced around. Everyone was watching them, eager to hear whatever he had to say to her.

And suddenly, the typical Slytherin pride overrode any other emotion he might have been feeling at the moment, and he said:

"I was going to say that I can't believe they call you the smartest witch of our generation. Sometimes you say the stupidest things, Granger."

Hermione already knew he wouldn't like her accusing his... girlfriend's sister of having something to do with Neville's disappearance, but... was it necessary to insinuate that she was stupid to come out on top? Because she had every right to suspect whoever she wanted. Besides, no one called Hermione Granger stupid! And she was more than willing to prove it to him right then and there.

"Oh, really? Well, for being so stupid, I managed to figure out how to get you out of that stupid cu..."

Hermione would never have seen it coming in a million years, but suddenly, and in front of a bunch of curious onlookers who didn't take their eyes off them, Draco Malfoy's lips sealed hers with a kiss.