Eight and Eight--Chapter 4
Title: Eight and Eighth
Author: Marmalade Fever
Characters: Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, and more.
Genres: Romance, Drama, weird combo of in-Hogwarts and post-Hogwarts
Spoilers: DH (though no epilogue)
Overall Rating: PG-13
Summary: Up from the ashes of seventh year grow the roses of the eighth. Eight students return for their final year at Hogwarts, and Hermione Granger would never have thought Draco Malfoy would or could be one of those roses.
8 & 8th-Chapter 4-Amoral Amorell
By Marmalade Fever
Directly after lunch, Hermione found herself in the former Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, staring swiftly around at the seven other students. It seemed as if this class, Grief Counseling, House Unification, and Tolerance-she was sure it needed a nickname of some sort-was to be the only one that all the Eighth Years would have together and without the presence of any of the true Seventh Years. It was rather odd. Her Arithmancy class didn’t have very many students either, but this seemed like a ridiculously small class size.
Before she could really get into the semantics of the significance of their having this particular class together, Professor Amorell stepped into the room.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” she said, setting her satchel down and promptly sitting on the edge of her desk. She was barefoot. That seemed rather odd as well. She smiled cheerily at them, her scar creasing. “To start, I’d just like to make a clarification. You’ll all be signing up for a grief counseling session with me-outside of class. If I feel it’s needed, there may be follow-up sessions.” Her eyes flitted briefly to Harry’s. He grimaced.
“Now,” she continued, “the object of this class is pretty clear from its course title.” She waved her wand and the tediously long name appeared on the chalkboard. “If I’m not mistaken, it should generally be a lot of fun, though you might not always think so.” Amorell laughed, though Hermione wasn’t entirely sure why. A feeling of absolute foreboding stole over her.
“We have been very fortunate, it seems. It was my request to take you all, you Eighth Years, you, alone. Since there’s an even number of you, we have an excellent opportunity to divide you up into pairs.” She smiled broadly.
“So here’s what we’re going to do. I want each of you to find someone of the opposite gender who is not, I repeat, not of your house. This person will be your partner for most activities throughout the year.”
Hermione had the grave misfortune of having a brain that worked quickly, and it was at this point that she panicked completely. Her eyes swept over the room in desperation, but there was really no hope for it. Harry had just paired up with Hannah. Ron seemed torn between August and Padma-either the girl who didn’t like the Cannons or the one who was still slightly bitter over their date in the Fourth Year. Dean was looking indecisive as well.
Finally, she looked at Malfoy. He was trying, rather unsuccessfully, to catch Padma’s gaze. Ignoring him, Padma sped toward Dean, who smiled, looking relieved with his choice of partners.
Catching on, Ron grudgingly walked over to August, who was wearing a Holy-Head Harpies pin.
And that was that.
He was the only boy in their class who was not a Gryffindor, which meant he had to be her partner by default. Hermione strode cautiously toward him. She could do this, she told herself. She was the diplomatic one. She was the one who was so keen on Inter-House Unity.
But it was bloody Malfoy, she pouted.
He frowned as she approached him. “What, you?” he asked.
“Yes, me.” She crossed her arms over her chest and faced the front.
“Bloody unbelievable,” he muttered under his breath. He had his wand out, she noted. She was guessing that he was currently reveling in being able to use it now that they were in class. And by the expression on his face, she could tell that he’d realized their forced partnership as well.
“All paired?” Amorell asked, her voice much too cheerful, considering the situation. “Today’s will be a lesson in trust. And I do apologize if this seems at all cheesy or cliché, but I’m going to have each of you do something that you might not be very keen on doing.” Hermione was growing more and more nervous by the minute. Malfoy didn’t look especially ecstatic, either. “I want all of the girls to line up at my desk. Boys, you will be catching your partners as they fall off the desk backwards.”
Hermione’s eyes grew as round as dinner plates, if not larger. Her entire body had gone as tense as a loaded spring. Slowly, Malfoy turned to face her. “This should be interesting,” he said, sounding like a cat preparing to eat a very large mouse.
“And then, of course, girls, you’ll be catching the boys… assuming they aren’t too heavy for you,” Amorell added. “Maybe I’ll lower the desk a bit.”
“I won’t drop you if you don’t drop me,” Hermione said, her voice thick with panic as Malfoy’s smirk grew.
“Drop you? Why, I’d never dream of it.” He sniggered.
Reluctantly, Hermione took her place at the end of the short queue. August was already on top of the desk, Ron standing with his arms out to catch her. Despite her apprehension, Hermione had to smile at the oddity of the sight. Ron was nearly a foot and a half taller than August. Catching her would be easy for him. The opposite-August catching Ron-would be impossible, unless she used a cushioning charm.
“Now, you’re sure you’ll catch me?” August was asking.
“Yes,” Ron said.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” he grunted.
“Do you have your arms up?”
“Yes.” Ron was starting to look beyond peeved by now.
August took a breath. “Okay.” And she fell down off the desk, Ron catching her easily. She clutched onto his arm for a moment, looking terrified while Ron laughed and set her on her feet.
Padma was next, and Dean fumbled with her, causing the girl to grumble a bit before she stalked off to sit at a desk. Harry caught Hannah as if she were nothing more than an over-large Quaffle. Finally, it was Hermione’s turn.
On shaking legs, she got first up on the chair and then onto the desk, and then… she refused to turn around. “Don’t worry,” Ron called out, “we’ll make sure he catches you.” He emphasized this by smacking his wand against the palm of his hand. Purple sparks shot out, and he shook his singed hand, grimacing.
Malfoy rolled his eyes. “Get on with it, Granger,” he said, tapping his fingers against his bicep.
“Uncross your arms, first,” she barked. “And I’m warning you, I won’t hesitate to dock House Points if I must.” She was having a flashback to her days of swimming lessons. She had always hated jumping into the deep end, and she had always just stood there, frozen, until she’d finally convince herself to jump. This time, it looked and felt as if she were blindly jumping into the open jaws of a shark.
He held his arms up, still looking horribly bored. Reluctantly, she turned around. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, she chanted. And then she just allowed herself to fall.
She had just enough time to feel the soles of her shoes scrape against the edge of the desk before she felt two strong arms wrap themselves around her. One was at the back of her thighs, the other around her shoulders.
Too soon-and why that thought came to her, she had no idea-he had set her on her feet and was dusting his hands and robes off.
“Merlin, Granger, what do you eat? Feathers? It’s like I could throw you through a Quidditch hoop without even trying.” Hermione scowled, though she thought it rather sounded like a veiled compliment.
Amorell started clapping. “Minor change of plans. I don’t think it would be especially safe if Miss Moon tried to catch Mr. Weasley, so I’ve come up with a different trust game for you all.” Hermione groaned. She had a feeling she wasn’t going to be enjoying this class at all. “So here’s the plan: I’m going to be casting a very temporary blinding spell on you boys. Girls, you’ll be leading them around the classroom, maybe even the castle if you’d like. Just be sure to be back ten minutes before the end of class so that I can announce your homework and remove the blinding spell.”
When Malfoy turned his eyes on Hermione this time, he was the one who looked frightened. Hermione smirked evilly. “Scared, are you?”
O
Draco stared as Granger’s look of annoyance turned to a smirk to rival any of his own.
Professor Amorell’s name reminded him distinctly of three things. The first was rather silly: a morel mushroom. He was fond of them, browned and served in a cream sauce over pasta. The second was what came to his mind at this moment, watching Granger’s smirk growing larger and larger by the nanosecond. Amoral. The woman was definitely amoral if she were forcing them to do bonding games like this. The third? Amore. Of which, he was feeling very little from the cheery professor, nor Granger, for that matter.
“Come along, Malfoy,” she said.
“I think you might understand my hesitation, Granger,” he said, frowning. He wasn’t about to budge from his spot until she wiped that horrifying smirk off her face.
But Amorell had her own ideas. “Mr. Malfoy and Miss Granger, I presume?” she asked. She had a roll sheet with little photographs of each of them pasted next to their names. Draco was pleased to note that his image had an aristocratic expression on its face, left eyebrow raised partially. Most people were only able to raise one eyebrow. Draco could raise both, though the right rose up higher than the left. But after much contemplation in front of mirrors over the years, he had decided that he preferred the more subtle rise of his left brow than the more blatant rise of his right. The left signified power. The right signified disbelief and mockery.
“Yes, that’s right,” Granger answered for the both of them, oblivious to Draco’s contemplation of the connotative psychology of eyebrow raisings.
“Ah, yes,” Amorell said, nodding her head and drawing checkmarks beside each of their names. “And I see here, Miss Granger, that’s you’re a muggleborn. Is that correct?”
Granger’s own eyebrows drew together, not out of puzzlement but out of wariness, he decided. “Yes,” she said slowly, as if testing the waters with the new teacher.
“Interesting.” There was that word that Thomas seemed so worked up about. “I’ll be very pleased to see how your partnership develops.”
“About that…” Granger began.
“It’s teams like this that are really at the heart of this class’s core concern,” Amorell continued, as if she had not heard the younger girl. “Inter-house unity and tolerance,” she stressed. “It’s my hope, and that of the School Governors, that we may be able to prevent any future wars by stifling all of this pointless bunk about superiority due to blood purity and, though never really the Hogwarts Founders’ intention, House rivalry based-in the most loose of origins-on simple character traits.” Dear Merlin, the woman was smiling again. “And so you can’t begin to realize just how pleased I really am with how the two of you have been partnered. The deepest contention lies between the Muggleborns and the Purebloods and the Gryffindors and the Slytherins. And you both played such opposing roles during the course of the War.” And then what was truly a frightening grin took over the woman’s face, wrinkling her scar horribly. “And of course, another part of tolerance lies in breaking down the walls of sexism, which is why I’ve paired everyone off boy-girl.”
With that, the woman turned on Draco, muttered the blinding spell, and everything went thoroughly dark.
For a long moment, absolutely nothing happened. Draco just stood there, waiting for what was bound to be one of the worst (and embarrassing) non-War-related experiences of his lifetime. After a moment, he found himself concentrating on Granger’s breathing pattern.
“Well?” he asked at last.
“Quiet, I’m thinking,” she said, a frown in her tone.
“Newsflash, Granger. You’re always thinking.” Despite his worries, he knew that of the three Gryffindor hellions, she would be the least likely to do anything unnecessarily childish or scornful.
And then he felt his sleeve being tugged upon. “I was thinking of how best to go about this without actually being forced to touch you,” she confessed.
“You don’t want to hold hands? I’m hurt, truly I am.”
“Lies don’t become you, Malfoy,” she replied rather snippily. She had begun leading him off in what he was pretty sure was the direction of the classroom door. There was a change in the air as they stepped into the hallway, and Granger began leading him to the right.
Draco tried to concentrate on where they were, or, at least, where he assumed they were. If he was correct, they weren’t very far from a flight of stairs, and he automatically slowed down his steps until Granger was practically struggling to get him to follow her. “What?” she asked.
“You weren’t going to warn me, were you?” he asked. He would have crossed his arms if he didn’t currently have a parasite on one of them.
“Warn you about what?”
“The stairs, Granger. I’m not stupid, you know. I’m not about to let you topple me down them.”
To his surprise, she laughed. “Malfoy, you are stupid. We’ve got another fifteen feet or so.”
He glared sternly at her, though truthfully, he wasn’t entirely sure where her head was located. He might have been glaring sternly two feet off his mark. “And why should I believe that?”
She groaned. “Well, for one thing, I’d have to go down the stairs first, wouldn’t I? I think you might feel it.” She bounced his arm around inside of the sleeve. “But if you’re scared, I’ll turn around, and we’ll head the other direction.” He heard the scraping sound of her footfalls, and the tug at his sleeve, but he wouldn’t move.
“I’m not scared,” he growled. “There’s nothing wrong with self-preservation in the face of Gryffindor trickery.”
She snorted lightly. “You make it sound like I’m Peeves. I suggest you start putting a little of that trust that this exercise is supposed to generate into your actions.”
He laughed. “And is that what you were doing when you threatened to dock House Points from me a moment ago?”
“Touché.” She tugged on his sleeve again, and he begrudgingly let her turn them in the opposite direction. Being led about blindly was a truly disorienting experience. Half the time, he was certain she was about to tug him straight into a wall or out the window.
They had just gone around a corner-he assumed it was a corner-when she came to an abrupt stop and he stumbled into her back. His nose poked right into the back of her head for a moment and he wiped furiously at his face, trying to get any hairs off of him.
And then, she grabbed hold of his actual wrist and tugged him in the opposite direction, moving surprisingly quickly. “What’s wrong?” he gabbled as he began to stumble up some stairs. His shins were being banged up, so she had better have a good explanation.
“Trelawney,” she hissed.
Draco had never taken Divination. He’d known well enough not to bother. But it surprised him that the Teacher’s Pet would have such a negative reaction to the bug-eyed professor.
It wasn’t a good enough explanation. He came to an abrupt halt and immediately wished he hadn’t. Granger rebounded as she pulled on his arm and fell back, knocking them both down the stairs again and into a heap on the floor. Her elbow was pushed into his spleen, and he had yet another face full of honey-scented hair.
“Ow,” he moaned as she scrambled to her feet. There was a sound of more feet shuffling down the corridor.
“Oh, it’s you, Miss Granger,” an airy voice said, a hint of derision in the tone. “What are you doing out of class?”
Granger’s tone was haughty. “You mean you don’t know? And here I thought you could foresee.”
O
A.N.: There, some Draco/Hermione interaction at last! Next update will probably be in April. RL is calling for awhile. Speaking of:
If you ever meet me in real life (doubtful) ask me to do the eyebrow wave.
Click the tag for list of chapters. :)
<< >>
Author: Marmalade Fever
Characters: Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, and more.
Genres: Romance, Drama, weird combo of in-Hogwarts and post-Hogwarts
Spoilers: DH (though no epilogue)
Overall Rating: PG-13
Summary: Up from the ashes of seventh year grow the roses of the eighth. Eight students return for their final year at Hogwarts, and Hermione Granger would never have thought Draco Malfoy would or could be one of those roses.
8 & 8th-Chapter 4-Amoral Amorell
By Marmalade Fever
Directly after lunch, Hermione found herself in the former Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, staring swiftly around at the seven other students. It seemed as if this class, Grief Counseling, House Unification, and Tolerance-she was sure it needed a nickname of some sort-was to be the only one that all the Eighth Years would have together and without the presence of any of the true Seventh Years. It was rather odd. Her Arithmancy class didn’t have very many students either, but this seemed like a ridiculously small class size.
Before she could really get into the semantics of the significance of their having this particular class together, Professor Amorell stepped into the room.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” she said, setting her satchel down and promptly sitting on the edge of her desk. She was barefoot. That seemed rather odd as well. She smiled cheerily at them, her scar creasing. “To start, I’d just like to make a clarification. You’ll all be signing up for a grief counseling session with me-outside of class. If I feel it’s needed, there may be follow-up sessions.” Her eyes flitted briefly to Harry’s. He grimaced.
“Now,” she continued, “the object of this class is pretty clear from its course title.” She waved her wand and the tediously long name appeared on the chalkboard. “If I’m not mistaken, it should generally be a lot of fun, though you might not always think so.” Amorell laughed, though Hermione wasn’t entirely sure why. A feeling of absolute foreboding stole over her.
“We have been very fortunate, it seems. It was my request to take you all, you Eighth Years, you, alone. Since there’s an even number of you, we have an excellent opportunity to divide you up into pairs.” She smiled broadly.
“So here’s what we’re going to do. I want each of you to find someone of the opposite gender who is not, I repeat, not of your house. This person will be your partner for most activities throughout the year.”
Hermione had the grave misfortune of having a brain that worked quickly, and it was at this point that she panicked completely. Her eyes swept over the room in desperation, but there was really no hope for it. Harry had just paired up with Hannah. Ron seemed torn between August and Padma-either the girl who didn’t like the Cannons or the one who was still slightly bitter over their date in the Fourth Year. Dean was looking indecisive as well.
Finally, she looked at Malfoy. He was trying, rather unsuccessfully, to catch Padma’s gaze. Ignoring him, Padma sped toward Dean, who smiled, looking relieved with his choice of partners.
Catching on, Ron grudgingly walked over to August, who was wearing a Holy-Head Harpies pin.
And that was that.
He was the only boy in their class who was not a Gryffindor, which meant he had to be her partner by default. Hermione strode cautiously toward him. She could do this, she told herself. She was the diplomatic one. She was the one who was so keen on Inter-House Unity.
But it was bloody Malfoy, she pouted.
He frowned as she approached him. “What, you?” he asked.
“Yes, me.” She crossed her arms over her chest and faced the front.
“Bloody unbelievable,” he muttered under his breath. He had his wand out, she noted. She was guessing that he was currently reveling in being able to use it now that they were in class. And by the expression on his face, she could tell that he’d realized their forced partnership as well.
“All paired?” Amorell asked, her voice much too cheerful, considering the situation. “Today’s will be a lesson in trust. And I do apologize if this seems at all cheesy or cliché, but I’m going to have each of you do something that you might not be very keen on doing.” Hermione was growing more and more nervous by the minute. Malfoy didn’t look especially ecstatic, either. “I want all of the girls to line up at my desk. Boys, you will be catching your partners as they fall off the desk backwards.”
Hermione’s eyes grew as round as dinner plates, if not larger. Her entire body had gone as tense as a loaded spring. Slowly, Malfoy turned to face her. “This should be interesting,” he said, sounding like a cat preparing to eat a very large mouse.
“And then, of course, girls, you’ll be catching the boys… assuming they aren’t too heavy for you,” Amorell added. “Maybe I’ll lower the desk a bit.”
“I won’t drop you if you don’t drop me,” Hermione said, her voice thick with panic as Malfoy’s smirk grew.
“Drop you? Why, I’d never dream of it.” He sniggered.
Reluctantly, Hermione took her place at the end of the short queue. August was already on top of the desk, Ron standing with his arms out to catch her. Despite her apprehension, Hermione had to smile at the oddity of the sight. Ron was nearly a foot and a half taller than August. Catching her would be easy for him. The opposite-August catching Ron-would be impossible, unless she used a cushioning charm.
“Now, you’re sure you’ll catch me?” August was asking.
“Yes,” Ron said.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” he grunted.
“Do you have your arms up?”
“Yes.” Ron was starting to look beyond peeved by now.
August took a breath. “Okay.” And she fell down off the desk, Ron catching her easily. She clutched onto his arm for a moment, looking terrified while Ron laughed and set her on her feet.
Padma was next, and Dean fumbled with her, causing the girl to grumble a bit before she stalked off to sit at a desk. Harry caught Hannah as if she were nothing more than an over-large Quaffle. Finally, it was Hermione’s turn.
On shaking legs, she got first up on the chair and then onto the desk, and then… she refused to turn around. “Don’t worry,” Ron called out, “we’ll make sure he catches you.” He emphasized this by smacking his wand against the palm of his hand. Purple sparks shot out, and he shook his singed hand, grimacing.
Malfoy rolled his eyes. “Get on with it, Granger,” he said, tapping his fingers against his bicep.
“Uncross your arms, first,” she barked. “And I’m warning you, I won’t hesitate to dock House Points if I must.” She was having a flashback to her days of swimming lessons. She had always hated jumping into the deep end, and she had always just stood there, frozen, until she’d finally convince herself to jump. This time, it looked and felt as if she were blindly jumping into the open jaws of a shark.
He held his arms up, still looking horribly bored. Reluctantly, she turned around. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, she chanted. And then she just allowed herself to fall.
She had just enough time to feel the soles of her shoes scrape against the edge of the desk before she felt two strong arms wrap themselves around her. One was at the back of her thighs, the other around her shoulders.
Too soon-and why that thought came to her, she had no idea-he had set her on her feet and was dusting his hands and robes off.
“Merlin, Granger, what do you eat? Feathers? It’s like I could throw you through a Quidditch hoop without even trying.” Hermione scowled, though she thought it rather sounded like a veiled compliment.
Amorell started clapping. “Minor change of plans. I don’t think it would be especially safe if Miss Moon tried to catch Mr. Weasley, so I’ve come up with a different trust game for you all.” Hermione groaned. She had a feeling she wasn’t going to be enjoying this class at all. “So here’s the plan: I’m going to be casting a very temporary blinding spell on you boys. Girls, you’ll be leading them around the classroom, maybe even the castle if you’d like. Just be sure to be back ten minutes before the end of class so that I can announce your homework and remove the blinding spell.”
When Malfoy turned his eyes on Hermione this time, he was the one who looked frightened. Hermione smirked evilly. “Scared, are you?”
O
Draco stared as Granger’s look of annoyance turned to a smirk to rival any of his own.
Professor Amorell’s name reminded him distinctly of three things. The first was rather silly: a morel mushroom. He was fond of them, browned and served in a cream sauce over pasta. The second was what came to his mind at this moment, watching Granger’s smirk growing larger and larger by the nanosecond. Amoral. The woman was definitely amoral if she were forcing them to do bonding games like this. The third? Amore. Of which, he was feeling very little from the cheery professor, nor Granger, for that matter.
“Come along, Malfoy,” she said.
“I think you might understand my hesitation, Granger,” he said, frowning. He wasn’t about to budge from his spot until she wiped that horrifying smirk off her face.
But Amorell had her own ideas. “Mr. Malfoy and Miss Granger, I presume?” she asked. She had a roll sheet with little photographs of each of them pasted next to their names. Draco was pleased to note that his image had an aristocratic expression on its face, left eyebrow raised partially. Most people were only able to raise one eyebrow. Draco could raise both, though the right rose up higher than the left. But after much contemplation in front of mirrors over the years, he had decided that he preferred the more subtle rise of his left brow than the more blatant rise of his right. The left signified power. The right signified disbelief and mockery.
“Yes, that’s right,” Granger answered for the both of them, oblivious to Draco’s contemplation of the connotative psychology of eyebrow raisings.
“Ah, yes,” Amorell said, nodding her head and drawing checkmarks beside each of their names. “And I see here, Miss Granger, that’s you’re a muggleborn. Is that correct?”
Granger’s own eyebrows drew together, not out of puzzlement but out of wariness, he decided. “Yes,” she said slowly, as if testing the waters with the new teacher.
“Interesting.” There was that word that Thomas seemed so worked up about. “I’ll be very pleased to see how your partnership develops.”
“About that…” Granger began.
“It’s teams like this that are really at the heart of this class’s core concern,” Amorell continued, as if she had not heard the younger girl. “Inter-house unity and tolerance,” she stressed. “It’s my hope, and that of the School Governors, that we may be able to prevent any future wars by stifling all of this pointless bunk about superiority due to blood purity and, though never really the Hogwarts Founders’ intention, House rivalry based-in the most loose of origins-on simple character traits.” Dear Merlin, the woman was smiling again. “And so you can’t begin to realize just how pleased I really am with how the two of you have been partnered. The deepest contention lies between the Muggleborns and the Purebloods and the Gryffindors and the Slytherins. And you both played such opposing roles during the course of the War.” And then what was truly a frightening grin took over the woman’s face, wrinkling her scar horribly. “And of course, another part of tolerance lies in breaking down the walls of sexism, which is why I’ve paired everyone off boy-girl.”
With that, the woman turned on Draco, muttered the blinding spell, and everything went thoroughly dark.
For a long moment, absolutely nothing happened. Draco just stood there, waiting for what was bound to be one of the worst (and embarrassing) non-War-related experiences of his lifetime. After a moment, he found himself concentrating on Granger’s breathing pattern.
“Well?” he asked at last.
“Quiet, I’m thinking,” she said, a frown in her tone.
“Newsflash, Granger. You’re always thinking.” Despite his worries, he knew that of the three Gryffindor hellions, she would be the least likely to do anything unnecessarily childish or scornful.
And then he felt his sleeve being tugged upon. “I was thinking of how best to go about this without actually being forced to touch you,” she confessed.
“You don’t want to hold hands? I’m hurt, truly I am.”
“Lies don’t become you, Malfoy,” she replied rather snippily. She had begun leading him off in what he was pretty sure was the direction of the classroom door. There was a change in the air as they stepped into the hallway, and Granger began leading him to the right.
Draco tried to concentrate on where they were, or, at least, where he assumed they were. If he was correct, they weren’t very far from a flight of stairs, and he automatically slowed down his steps until Granger was practically struggling to get him to follow her. “What?” she asked.
“You weren’t going to warn me, were you?” he asked. He would have crossed his arms if he didn’t currently have a parasite on one of them.
“Warn you about what?”
“The stairs, Granger. I’m not stupid, you know. I’m not about to let you topple me down them.”
To his surprise, she laughed. “Malfoy, you are stupid. We’ve got another fifteen feet or so.”
He glared sternly at her, though truthfully, he wasn’t entirely sure where her head was located. He might have been glaring sternly two feet off his mark. “And why should I believe that?”
She groaned. “Well, for one thing, I’d have to go down the stairs first, wouldn’t I? I think you might feel it.” She bounced his arm around inside of the sleeve. “But if you’re scared, I’ll turn around, and we’ll head the other direction.” He heard the scraping sound of her footfalls, and the tug at his sleeve, but he wouldn’t move.
“I’m not scared,” he growled. “There’s nothing wrong with self-preservation in the face of Gryffindor trickery.”
She snorted lightly. “You make it sound like I’m Peeves. I suggest you start putting a little of that trust that this exercise is supposed to generate into your actions.”
He laughed. “And is that what you were doing when you threatened to dock House Points from me a moment ago?”
“Touché.” She tugged on his sleeve again, and he begrudgingly let her turn them in the opposite direction. Being led about blindly was a truly disorienting experience. Half the time, he was certain she was about to tug him straight into a wall or out the window.
They had just gone around a corner-he assumed it was a corner-when she came to an abrupt stop and he stumbled into her back. His nose poked right into the back of her head for a moment and he wiped furiously at his face, trying to get any hairs off of him.
And then, she grabbed hold of his actual wrist and tugged him in the opposite direction, moving surprisingly quickly. “What’s wrong?” he gabbled as he began to stumble up some stairs. His shins were being banged up, so she had better have a good explanation.
“Trelawney,” she hissed.
Draco had never taken Divination. He’d known well enough not to bother. But it surprised him that the Teacher’s Pet would have such a negative reaction to the bug-eyed professor.
It wasn’t a good enough explanation. He came to an abrupt halt and immediately wished he hadn’t. Granger rebounded as she pulled on his arm and fell back, knocking them both down the stairs again and into a heap on the floor. Her elbow was pushed into his spleen, and he had yet another face full of honey-scented hair.
“Ow,” he moaned as she scrambled to her feet. There was a sound of more feet shuffling down the corridor.
“Oh, it’s you, Miss Granger,” an airy voice said, a hint of derision in the tone. “What are you doing out of class?”
Granger’s tone was haughty. “You mean you don’t know? And here I thought you could foresee.”
O
A.N.: There, some Draco/Hermione interaction at last! Next update will probably be in April. RL is calling for awhile. Speaking of:
If you ever meet me in real life (doubtful) ask me to do the eyebrow wave.
Click the tag for list of chapters. :)
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