Eight and Eighth--Chapter 17
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, and Humor. I can't write a fanfic without humor leaking its way in.
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.
Eight and Eighth--Chapter 17--The Joys of Studying
Draco was only halfway through with his breakfast, despite the fact that he was not entirely enamored by the seating arrangement. The reason for this seemed to be some sort of trouble in the kitchens. He’d thought of having toast, only to find that there was neither butter nor marmalade nor any other kind of preserve in sight, and when those finally did appear, his toast had popped away into inexistence. Reaching for some eggs, the serving spoon had disappeared. Reaching for his fork, it disappeared.
Stupid elves. Someone had probably spiked their drinking water.
He’d finally grabbed up a pancake with his bare hands when he heard footsteps echoing through the hall, and he turned his head to spot Granger pausing at the perimeter of the table. Her eyes swept up one side and down the other, carefully avoiding him, until they paused on the empty space beside Astoria Greengrass.
Astoria looked first at Granger, then very deliberately to Draco, and then back to Granger, a devilish smirk curling up under her nose. She removed her bag, and Granger hesitated slightly before taking the empty seat.
This could only lead to trouble.
O
“Hello, Granger,” the girl beside her said, wearing a saccharine expression that Hermione highly doubted was in any way sincere.
“Hello,” Hermione responded politely but coolly.
Astoria balanced a green grape in her hand, rolling it across her palm and then tossing it in the air to catch it again. “He’s looking at us, you know.”
Hermione felt every nerve ending in her entire face pinch as she blushed. “Who is?” she stammered, though there really wasn’t any use in pretenses. They both very well knew who.
“The one who’s decided you’re the flavor of the month, of course.” She pinched the grape so that it popped, sending a mist of juice squirting every which way. “But it’s been more than a month, hasn’t it?” Had it? The idea of him feeling… feelings about her for that long was disconcerting.
“And what makes you think,” she began, very slowly, trying to choose her words, “that he does consider me his, er, flavor?”
Astoria wiped her fingers off delicately. “Someone around here has to be intuitive.”
“But surely,” Hermione said, gritting her teeth now in an effort not to appear frazzled, “there must be something that gave you that impression?”
Astoria placed a single knuckle on her chin, turning a quarter so that she was facing her. “If you must know, Granger, he turned me down when I asked him on a date.” She didn’t blink.
“But-” and now Hermione was getting slightly flustered, “how exactly does that mean that….”
“And then after you and your oaf were finished, he was practically giddy. Giddy,” she stressed.
“Well, that’s natural. He doesn’t exactly like-”
“But since you’ve figured out who it is I’m talking about already, I’m sure that there’s really no reason for me to be justifying my claims. Obviously, he’s done something to justify them on his own.” She popped another grape in her mouth. “Isn’t that right?”
Hermione didn’t answer, choosing to ignore the girl beside her as much as humanly possible.
O
Draco sat fully dressed in his bathtub, doing his Charms homework. Swish, double-flick, slash left. As far as he could tell, his manacle worked both spatially and temporally. Ordinarily, it only allowed him to do magic within the confines of one of his classrooms at the time the class was scheduled for, yet this little cubic foot of space seemed to be an exception, as if someone had to lay out a map of where he was allowed to do magic and had missed a spot or even accidentally added a spot. An extra drop of ink, perhaps, so small that the cartographer hadn’t paid it any mind.
The problem was that most spells required too much “foolish wand-waving” to even fit within the confines of the cubic foot, but he had been able to practice a few spells. That was far better than nothing.
The process of practicing his spells, if nothing else, served as a wonderful distraction. A wonderful distraction from the fact that he had literally scared Granger into going home for the holiday after all. After breakfast, she had marched up to McGonagall and informed the aging professor that she’d be leaving to go home that afternoon. McGonagall had given her leave, seeing how Granger was a legal adult and not a felon, like some people, and he hadn’t seen her since.
He was mentally preparing himself for three weeks of boredom.
O
Her parents were already in Canada, visiting her estranged relatives without her. This posed a serious problem. Well, perhaps serious wasn’t the best word to use. It made going home for the holiday extremely pathetic because there was no one at home to see, and Hermione, despite all
evidence of the voluntary seclusion she submitted herself to in the library, did want to be around people on Christmas. Ordinarily, there would have been a very simple, painless, and very cheerful solution to her problem. Going to the Burrow this year, however, was simply not an option. Even if she did suck in her pride and agree to being around Ron for a fortnight and a half, there was no guarantee that she’d even be welcome. Mrs. Weasley had not been privy to all of the details of the break-up, and Hermione had too much pride to correct her. If the woman wanted to believe that there was no possible scenario in which Ron could have been at fault, then tough. She knew better, and that was all there was to it.
Packing her trunk, she couldn’t help but feel like she was running away from her problems, which wasn’t exactly the most Gryffindor thing to do. Avoidance wasn’t an answer; it was an out. However, her inner Ravenclaw told her that she was simply subtracting a variable from an equation. Hermione minus Malfoy is equal to peace of mind.
She collapsed into a heap at the foot of her bed, groaning and causing Crookshanks to move grumpily to her pillow. The door to the room was closed, and it was taunting her. It was a nice door: five panels, ash, dark finish, a glossy white porcelain doorknob.
For all she knew, he could be lying in wait outside of it again.
He couldn’t enter the room. She knew that much. She’d cast a few charm-revealing spells at the beginning of term and found there were wards in place in both dormitories that prevented anyone of the incorrect gender from crossing the thresholds without feeling an incredibly aggravating itching sensation.
Not that she really thought he’d be of the mind to actually try to enter the room. The almost-kiss had not been pre-meditated, and she doubted he’d be that bold if they were both on their guard.
One thing that bothered her was the fact that he didn’t seem exactly averse to what this entire situation could do to his reputation. Unless Amorell’s lessons on tolerance had actually sunk in-doubtful-then he should still be thinking of her in Mudbloodian terms.
Of course, his reputation wasn’t exactly going places at the moment. With the exception of the very suspicious Astoria Greengrass, most of Slytherin house had been treating him as if he barely existed. Maybe if there were other Slytherin Eighth Years, things would be different.
Standing again, Hermione poked her head under her bed to retrieve a few books, and an odd feeling that somewhat resembled guilt ran through her, except that guilt was not the correct emotion. By leaving now, she would be abandoning her claim to the library… correction, to her library. She’d spent enough time in there over the years that she might as well have a stake in the floor with her name proclaiming the stacks as her own. Leaving now would mean Malfoy having the endless resources available to him and she having whatever she retrieved from under her bed and nothing else.
She hated these sorts of dilemmas. If it weren’t such a ludicrous idea, she might have thought he had planned this on purpose. Pretend to want to kiss her, scare her, drive her away from the library so that he could best her in all their subjects, beat her in their NEWTs because of a three-week head start, then gloat over the fact forever. Right.
“I’ve already told McGonagall I’d leave,” she muttered to herself, fingering a copy of an Ancient Runes text. No one ever said she wasn’t allowed to change her mind, of course. Then again, Malfoy had overheard her telling McGonagall, and it just wouldn’t do to surprise him with her presence again.
O
Draco frowned. There was a knock at the bedroom door. It took him a moment to hobble out of the tub, and he quickly put his wand aside before opening the door, not quite sure who to expect. The ghost of Snape, maybe.
Granger stood there with her wand out, holding it almost menacingly. “Look here,” she said, with the tiniest jab in his direction. “I’ve decided to stay for the remainder of the holiday, and if you know what’s best for you,” another jab, “you’ll stay away from me.”
“You’re staying?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“Interesting.” He loved that word. “You can put your wand down; I’m not very well going to jump you, you know.” He leaned back into the door jamb, enjoying the mix of ferocity and nervousness at play on her face.
“You’ll forgive me for being wary.” She kept her wand aloft.
“Granger?”
“What?” she spat.
“How about a study date?”
The best word he could think of to describe the look on her face was flummoxed. “Excuse me?” she spluttered.
“We go to the library; we share a table; we help one another. Mutually beneficial. You can choose how to interpret the date part on your own. I wouldn’t exactly call it romantic, so that should help assuage your fears.”
She bit her lip, and her hesitation was like a blessing to him. “I’m not going on a date with you, Malfoy.”
“So we’ll call it a study session, and I’ll forgo pulling out your chair for you. What do you say?”
He could see the way she was mentally calculating, probably listing pros and cons and weighing them out in a large mental scale made out of gold and rubies. He smiled slightly, and her expression tripped, splaying into something unidentifiable and broken. She took a breath, whimpered, and grit her teeth. “Fine, but you stay at least three feet from me at all times.” She didn’t jab her wand.
As his smile grew, so did her frown. “Wonderful.” He swept an arm towards the stairs. “Ladies first.”
“I don’t know if I like that idea,” she said through gritted teeth.
He laughed. “But if I go first, there’s no guarantee I won’t stop in my tracks and let you bump into me, now is there?”
She blushed crimson, hopefully remembering the last time she’d bumped into him on the way up the stairs. She turned and sped up the spiral as quickly and uncoordinatedly as possible. Draco enjoyed the view very much.
O
This was a bad idea. The little fantasy scenario she’d had not-so-very long ago was literally being played out before her, with the exception that Malfoy would definitely not be holding her hand anytime soon… or ever. But they were in the library together, and they were studying together, and it was, oddly enough, peaceful.
He shoved a book toward her, pointing to a paragraph. “What do you think, one lacewing fly or two?”
“One and a half.” He moved his book away again.
“Thought as much. How would you divide that? Symmetrically or along the thorax?” He leaned his elbow on the table and rested his head on his hand, looking at her.
“Symmetrically,” she said with a nod.
“Excellent.” He made a note on a piece of parchment he’d taken from the table beside the card catalogue. He’d also grabbed one of the itsy-bitsy self-inking quills the library provided, which had always made her think of the stubby pencils at her library back home. His lips were curved slightly upwards, as if he were enjoying a private joke.
She cursed his smile. It had been what convinced her to come with him in the first place. She could resist his smirks; those were abundant enough. But his smiles were rare, and as such, they were addicting.
They continued studying in silence for awhile, only the turning of pages and the scratching of quills to be heard. Far across the room, Madam Pince was compiling a list of overdue books that
few students had a chance of returning during the break. “How’d it go with Amorell?” Malfoy asked, conversationally.
“Bearable,” Hermione mumbled, trying to block out her memories of certain responses she’d made earlier that day.
“She pull the Rorschach test on you?”
“Yes,” she answered curtly, hoping he wouldn’t press for any further information on the matter.
“That woman is beyond barking. As if there’s anything to inky blobs.” He grinned to himself, and Hermione wondered if she were going insane or if there were something she was missing. There was a long pause, his grinning dropping away so that his mouth set into a tight line in a bipolar sort of way. “I don’t suppose she asked about your experience with… my aunt?”
She didn’t need him to clarify which aunt or which experience. “No.” Funny that. That she should be sitting here peaceably with a boy whose aunt had tortured her in his house only last spring. He nodded, looking slightly relieved and yet slightly green, and she wondered if he would delve into that night when he had stood uselessly at the side of the room while she screamed bloody murder under his aunt’s hand. “Did she ask you about it?”
“A bit,” he admitted. The air he’d had about him only a minute previously had fizzled away to be replaced with somberness, and his shoulders drooped. “Good thing you left our joint session early, isn’t it?”
“It was probably for the best,” she agreed. The memory of her birthday wasn’t exactly a cheerful one, but it was nice to know that her sacrifice of marks had been necessary. There was no chance that they’d have ever been able to look one another in the eye again if they’d been forced to relive that particular experience in tandem.
He sneaked a look at her, and Hermione wanted to tear her gaze away. Things were getting much too personal with Draco Malfoy today. “I never did thank you, did I?” he asked. He looked uncomfortable. She felt uncomfortable.
“No need.” With what was probably a very unnatural transition, she turned back to her book, and he watched her for a second longer before going back to his own.
Roughly two hours later, and Malfoy sat with his head in his hand, looking just about ready to either nod off or kill himself from boredom. “Granger?” he asked, and she looked up from the notes she’d been scribbling down with less fury than usual, probably owing to the fact that her rival was so obviously not getting ahead of her in his studies for the moment.
“Mm-hmm?” she asked, dotting an i before finishing the sentence she’d been halfway through.
“I think my stomach is about to digest itself. Maybe some lunch?”
She checked her watch. It was half past noon. “Go ahead.” She moved her wrist back into place over her parchment, pressing the tip of her quill down.
“I was hoping you’d come with me,” he intoned.
“And I’m not hungry yet, nor am I obliged to do any such thing.” She scratched a capital T into her parchment.
He laughed lightly. “You may not be obliged, but I am.”
She looked up, frowning at him. “How’s that?”
His features gathered to look sarcastically grave. “Well, according to Professors Amorell and Trelawney-who are obviously experts on such matters and should be blindly trusted at all times-you’re to be my wife someday, and in which case, I can’t very well allow you to starve, now can I?”
She knew she should have been petrified, irate, and disgruntled, but instead she let go of something between a snort and a laugh, actually sending some spittle into her hand as she clutched her face.
O
It was good to see her laughing, even if it was at the thought of any sort of future together, not that he could blame her. It was much, much too early in their… relationship? to vocalize in any sort of seriousness. Besides, she didn’t even like him that way, or at least she preferred not to admit it.
Hell, he preferred not to admit it.
“I would like it if you’d come, though. The seating arrangements… not so wonderful.”
She sobered herself, her cheeks looking tense after the fit of laughter. “Go sit with Greengrass. I’m sure she’d be happy to keep you entertained.” She looked annoyed, but there could have been any number of reasons for that.
“Oh, I’m sure she would,” he grumbled facetiously, rising to his feet just as his stomach gurgled loudly. “Sure you aren’t even a tad hungry? Breakfast this morning wasn’t exactly easy to keep hold of.”
She didn’t answer, and he took it as a no.
O
Hermione looked up as the door to the library closed. Truthfully, she was hungry, but there was no chance of going to the Great Hall with him. Studying together was one thing. Eating together was far too familiar.
She’d go to visit Hagrid. Rock cakes were better than nothing. Barely.
O
A.N.: Today is my birthday. May I have reviews, please?
So yesterday I set my alarm clock for the wrong time and ended up getting up fifteen minutes before I needed to leave for class. It was like I was reliving the last chapter. lol
Also, I had to do some rereading of DH, and as I did so, I discovered a canon issue with 8 & 8th. Narcissa said Draco was home for Easter Break. Meaning he did go to school during the seventh book. I'm choosing to disregard that one sentence, the stinker.
My dad has a slight obsession with five panel doors. Therefore, their dormitories have five panel doors. :-P
I was not expecting to write half the content in this chapter. In fact, I was going to send Hermione home and force both characters to spend Christmas in miserable solitude.
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