Hermione seized Draco as Madam Pomfrey ran onto the pitch to assist Seamus.
“Sit down and shut up!”
Draco tilted his head, strands of silver and gold falling into his face, and altered his tone of voice as he noticed Hermione’s hand on his.
He turned his fingers deftly, captured hers, and suddenly Hermione was staring in horror at a lazily wicked pair of grey eyes looking at her over her hand.
“Don’t worry,” he said in a low purr. “You’re first on my list.”
Hermione reflected that people like Malfoy should be forced to take a test proving they could be trusted out on the streets looking so gorgeous.
She also reflected that in such a test, Malfoy would have failed and then shamelessly tried to seduce the examiner.
While thus distracted, she neglected to yank her hand away.
Bad mistake.
As she became extremely aware when she felt curling lips open on her palm, and something warm trace along her lifeline.
She stared at Draco in shock. Those eyes danced amid the locks of that hair, like dust motes glinting in golden sunlight.
All attention suddenly left the Quidditch pitch.
Draco released her hand a second before Hermione had the chance to snatch it away in outrage.
“No, not you,” he said. “Oh dear. I feel this is going to be a long day. Who’s next? Anyone volunteer?”
Hermione was almost killed in the rush.
Harry Potter, The Boy Who Was Just No Fun, had to call half time and convince Draco that this was no way to find the master criminal.
Neither Parvati nor Lavender spoke to him for weeks.
Millicent Bulstrode commented on Harry’s masterful manner until Harry borrowed some of Seamus’ Prozac.
Then he weaved slightly as he flew for the rest of the match.
Hermione refused to answer Lavender and Parvati’s urgent inquiries, and was extremely relieved when Lavender went off to visit Seamus in the infirmary.
“But Hermione,” Parvati wailed, “if you would just tell me what—”
“No!” said Hermione.
She, Harry, Ron and Ginny were sitting around the table composing a letter to Mrs Weasley, and Hermione tried very hard to project an air of being Really-Far-Too-Busy-To-Talk-About-Malfoy,-Yes-Even-About-How-He-Smells-And-That-Means-You-Parvati.
A hand tapped her on the shoulder.
Hermione snapped. “All right! Fine, he smells like oranges, if you have to know! Oranges and winter nights and—”
“Do go on,” Draco said solicitously. “I was most interested.”
Hermione went quiet.
“What are you doing, my little Gryffindolts?” Draco inquired amiably, pulling up a chair.
“We all write a letter to my mum together,” Ron answered warily, remembering about fifty thousand insults to his entire family.
Draco’s memory seemed rather defective, except on the subject of sweets.
There he was spot on.
“You mean the woman who sent that excellent coffee cake to you last week? That was really good.”
“Well, we wouldn’t know, would we?” asked Harry. “Since you ate it all.”
“You can write something too, if you like,” said Ginny, who seemed to have a bit of a soft spot for Malfoy.
Hermione often wondered why she had surrounded herself with redheads.
Mrs Weasley’s letter ended up bemusing and horrifying her slightly.
Dear Mum,
It’s Ron and Ginny again! In answer to your question of the past five letters, yes, Ron really does have a girlfriend.
Really.—Ginny.
Ginny and Harry are going out, but neither of them is planning the names of your future grandchildren yet. Sorry.—Ron.
I’m sure we would have liked your cake, but an owl ate it.
The articles in the Daily Prophet about mad orgies in the Gryffindor boys’ dormitory were greatly exaggerated.—Ginny.
Total lies!—Ron.
And if they weren’t lies, they certainly didn’t happen to me.—Ron.
I need another bedsheet. Someone ran off with mine.—Ron.
The story about Gryffindors on drugs has a tiny grain of truth in it, however. We call him Seamus Finnigan.—Ginny.
Er, I can’t take Fluffy home from the holidays to show you. He’d need an extra bed, and anyway his father would storm into the house and kill us all.—Ron.
Long story. He’s writing a postscript at the end.—Ginny.
We were sorry to read in your letter that the Gryffindors of sixth year had a worse reputation than the Slytherins. There is an explanation for that. Like we said, he’s writing a postscript at the end.
Remember to tell the neighbours that I have a girlfriend!—Ron.
Love, Ginny and Ron.
P.S.—Dear Mrs Weasley, thanks so much for the sweater. Have won my 999th Quidditch match. Have not yet conquered the Dark Lord, but am working on it! My intentions towards your daughter are entirely honourable. I’m sure I would have enjoyed that coffee cake, but—I think someone dropped it.—Harry.
P.P.S—Dear Mrs Weasley, I’m top of the year again. Thank you for asking, I do work hard. I don’t really want you to set me up with Percy for the Yule Ball, though. I’d write more, but the forces of evil are jogging my elbow.—Hermione.
P.P.P.S.—Salutations. I am Draco Malfoy. Remember me? I saw you four years ago when your husband was on top of my father. I really liked your coffee cake, and I will return Ron’s bedsheet. I am in the process of corrupting the entire tower, including your two youngest spawn.
Sooooo… seven kids, huh? Mr Weasley must be a Viking in the sack.—Draco
They enclosed a photograph. When Mrs Weasley saw the disreputable blond in the jeans and the sunglasses leering on the left, she almost fell down.
“That’s a letter for us from Mrs Weasley,” Harry said, “and an injunction to stay away from her babies addressed for you.”
“So nice to be appreciated,” murmured Draco. “Unless I get at least one death threat a day, I feel like I’m not making an impact.”
At this juncture Hermione strode in, and flashed a distraught gaze upon them all.
She saw the boys collected in front of the fire. Harry curled up with Quidditch Through the Ages, Neville busy making coffee, Ron setting up the chessboard with a determined look and Malfoy lounging in a chair with the air of an elegant pale-blond cat, long jeans-clad legs stretched out before him.
She dismissed them all with a perfunctory greeting.
“Pleasure, Harry.”
“A joy, Ron.”
“Enchanted, Neville.”
“Sod off, Malfoy.”
“I like to think we have a special connection,” remarked Draco, stretching gracefully.
Hermione stomped off to the girls’ dormitories.
“Don’t mind her,” said Harry. “She always gets like this when she realises that the Christmas holidays will be over soon, and she hasn’t started studying for summer.”
“Now, Malfoy,” Ron said grimly, “let’s see who’s the Chess Champi—”
The chessboard was knocked off the table by a suddenly alert and panicked blur of blond.
“Oh my God!” he exclaimed. “She’s right! What have I been thinking? Oh, I bet everyone else has started studying by now! Damn those tricky Ravenclaws!”
“Er,” said Neville, blinking.
“There is no time for chess, you imbecilic redhead! There is no time to breathe! Oh, oh, death, ruin, academic failure!”
Exit Draco Malfoy, apparently pursued by an invisible bear.
Ron blinked. “Well, that was… distinctly terrifying.”
“Don’t you people get it?” Hermione asked somewhat hysterically. “Colour-coded charts are the only way to revise. Without them, we are doomed!”
“Quiet, Hermione,” Parvati said crossly. “Gary is just about to have his baby.”
“I don’t care!”
The other girls found this tantamount to treason.
Hermione remained indifferent, and began to arrange her revision notes alphabetically. She had to make a chart. She should have made a chart weeks ago, there was something terribly the matter with her, rats turning into boys all over the place had distracted her… but the teachers were not going to accept Draco Malfoy as a reason for a grades drop.
Parvati and Lavender had tried last year.
Well, that’s it, Hermione promised herself. I’m not going near him again. I won’t even look at him in the corridors.
Draco came in.
There was general uproar.
“Malfoy!” Parvati shrieked. “This is the girls’ dormitory! We could have been naked!”
Malfoy bit his lip. “Maybe next time.”
He glanced over at Hermione, who was giving him a cold look over her notes.
“Hi,” he said. “I was thinking we could study together.”
Hermione raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Malfoy, but I happen to be actually serious—”
“I know, I know,” Draco interrupted, pushing his hair back with a distraught gesture. “I’m not serious about it. I’ve been totally neglectful with all this rat stuff. The Ravenclaws probably began to study months ago, but we have to make do with what we have. All I can think of is making more detailed notes on our class notes, possibly with reference to more advanced texts, and of course—”
He turned and dragged something from the threshold.
“A colour-coded chart.”
Hermione gave him a long look.
“All right,” she conceded. “We could try it.”
“But Gary’s having his baby, Draco!” Parvati protested.
Draco dived for Hermione’s bed.
Once he had snatched what he wanted, he looked reproachfully at Parvati, two pillows clutched to his ears.
“Tempt me not with your siren song, woman!” He turned back to Hermione. “So. Let’s talk Arithmancy.”
“Can you believe that Hagrid hasn’t set a written again?”
“I call it an outrage,” Draco said. “I mean, why did I spend all my time making notes on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them?”
“You just get so discouraged.”
“Yes, exactly.”
Hermione had never had this much fun outside the library.
Malfoy was lying on her bed, blond head pillowed on his arm, and doing incredible things to her Arithmancy notes with a highlighter.
Once Truly Madly Deeply was over the others had cleared out, away from the crazed scholarly folk.
Hermione was just about to bring up the subject of Charms when Malfoy looked over at her again.
“You know,” he said in meditative tones, “the way your nose wrinkles when you’re excited is really extremely fetching.”
This bed is too small!
Hermione valiantly pretended that she had not heard.
“You’re blushing,” observed Draco the demon after approximately three seconds.
“I always blush when I study,” Hermione answered stiffly and absurdly. She wished she could get off the bed without seeming self-conscious.
She stopped and recalled that this awful boy had, in fact, shared her bed plenty of times before. In fact, she recalled one night when she had talked to Fluffy about… about her lack of success with boys…
Oh, God.
Hermione’s face thumped into a pillow.
After a moment, she felt a hand on her hair.
“I mean, I was turned into a rat and infiltrated Gryffindor tower for you,” Draco commented in a neutral tone. “What else do I have to do?”
“You were turned into a rat by a lunatic against your consent,” Hermione told him in a muffled voice.
“Well, yes. But must you obsess over every detail? What I’m asking you is a question. What else do I have to do?”
Hermione lifted her face and found grey eyes disturbingly close.
“There’s nothing you can do,” she snapped. “The answer is no.”
Malfoy bent forward.
Hermione slapped him.
“I said the answer was no!”
Draco smiled and leaned back.
“Oh, well. At least it’s body contact.”
Hermione stared at her hand. She had never been a violent person. She had never touched anyone else in anger before.
Anyone else.
I don’t like being out of control, Hermione thought.
“Get out.”
“If I go, my chart goes with me.”
Talk about tempting with siren songs.
“Oh…” Hermione sighed angrily. “All right. But pull up a chair.”
Draco stretched luxuriously.
“Why? I’m very comfortable here.”
Gahhhh…
Hermione had always planned on a sensible relationship. She had a methodical mind, and planned her life very much as she planned her study timetable.
Her future was all but colour-coded.
Even the Weasley’s‘ loving home was too full and muddled for her taste, Mr Weasley more eccentric than she would have chosen. Hermione wanted the picture postcard version, a scrubbed white kitchen, a Labrador, white picket fence, two charming toddlers and a loving, dependable partner who understood Muggle and wizard culture.
Ron Weasley had been given the push because he was too intense. Hermione was waiting for perfection.
Her idea of perfection was nothing like Draco Malfoy.
Hermione had had an idea that her ideal would have brown eyes, be kind to animals… be everything, in short, that Draco Malfoy was not.
Draco Malfoy, bigot, narcissist, spawn of Death Eaters. Draco Sorry-I-Was-In-The-Bathroom-When-They-Gave-Out-Morals Malfoy. Too good-looking to be safe, too self-obsessed to be loving, too Malfoy to be dependable.
Draco Malfoy was most emphatically not what Hermione had in mind.
So, she decided to ignore this new idea of his, this insane notion of them together. She hoped that he would get the hint, and she told herself that she was being very mature, and she was quite sure that nothing he could do would change her mind.
Draco Malfoy, on the other hand, did not plan his future.
He was used to getting what he wanted, though. And he was not used to taking no for an answer.
Hermione had a very peaceful time of it the next day. There was no Draco insisting on studying with her, forcing her to watch imbecilic programmes or causing a commotion.
He had stopped harassing her. Everything was back to normal.
Which was very nice. And she was not being irritable or distracted at all, Harry Potter, thank you very much!
If that boy made any more such observations, she’d hit him with her fork.
Hermione glanced over to the Slytherin table—just making sure that Malfoy was in his place! Just because…
He wasn’t in his place.
Hermione’s mind filled with randomised dread just as the lights in the Great Hall went down, and the dread became intense and very specific.
“And now,” Dumbledore said, “Mr Malfoy has requested the honour of favouring us with a song.”
Draco appeared, walking slowly and holding Dean Thomas’ guitar. The dim light reflected off his hair, making it glow like a halo. Beneath that moonbeam shine, his eyes sparkled wickedly.
A hundred breaths caught in a hundred girls’ throats.
He leaned forward over the guitar, shadows underlining angular cheekbones and sweeping lashes.
Hermione was furious to find herself mesmerised.
Oh no, oh please don’t let him be—
He was coming over, making his way directly to hers. His eyes were blatantly fixed on her and the look in them was distinctly… evil.
He knew she didn’t want this! And he knew, damn him, he knew exactly how aware she was of him right now, he knew that she wasn’t going to leave!
He began to sing, fingers gliding across the guitar strings, voice lower and huskier than his speaking voice.
Hermione was appalled to find herself shivering.
They all sat there fascinated, watching him, quivering as the strings did under his hand. He was Draco Malfoy, manipulator extraordinaire.
And then a few heads jerked up as they realised what he was singing.
Hermione inhaled a sharp, shocked breath.
Draco kept his eyes on her, and kept singing at her.
I am everything you want
Indrawn breaths across the Hall. Hermione almost smiled at his sheer nerve, and recalled him lying on her bed drawling, “What else do I have to do?”
I am everything you need
Draco’s mouth on her palm at the Quidditch game.
Draco in Arithmancy saying “I’m trying to get your attention.”
I am everything inside of you that you wish you could be
I say all the right things
Draco leaning towards her now, magnificently ignoring the rest of the Hall. Draco Malfoy, exactly what she shouldn’t want, vain, untrustworthy, and spoiled to the end—trying to grab what he wanted.
At exactly the right time
But I mean nothing to you and I don’t know why.
Why?
Hermione looked up into cool grey eyes, and tried to work out… something.
There was a moment of stillness, a moment in which that liquid voice was quiet. Draco simply stood in front of her, silver locks falling into his face, and waited for her to respond.
But Malfoys never waited long.
He blew her a kiss and left the hall, not waiting for the applause.
It rang out around her instead, a cacophony to which she tried to set her thoughts. She gripped the table, still shaken and incredulous. She was coming to understand one thing.
Malfoys did not give up.
Draco sat by the fire in front of the Slytherin common rooms, staring into the fire.
This brooding hero thing was, since it was him, very picturesque—but it was getting ridiculous.
Life was generally getting ridiculous.
Friendly with the Gryffindors. Rejected by a woman.
And not just any woman. The woman. The one who mattered.
Actually, there being a woman that mattered was ridiculous too. It was totally against the Malfoy Code.
But… there it was.
Draco was trying not to think too much about it.
He was also trying not to think about how his father would react.
Of course, the Daily Prophet had already interviewed Pansy Parkinson and Seamus Finnigan, and the Harry Potter/Ron Weasley/Draco Malfoy story had broken last week.
His mother had been forced to write to him, as Lucius Malfoy believed he was having a stroke. Draco’s portrait had now been hung in the torture chambers beside Uncle Ethelfride’s.
There was only so much more his father could do to him.
Draco tried to distract himself by thinking of something more soothing.
Like, who was trying to kill him?
It was a bit unsettling.
If coffee could be poisoned, this person was clearly mad. He must hold nothing sacred.
He was also clearly not a member of the sixth year Gryffindor dormitories, since it would have been easy to get hold of Draco then.
Just as clearly, he had to be a Gryffindor. And he had to be someone who was friendly enough with the sixth years to be sitting close enough to poison Draco’s coffee…
But there was nobody in school who had the Potions skill to manipulate the Potion except for Blaise, Hermione and Draco himself.
I’ve got it, Draco thought. It must have been the Invisible Man. Mwhahaha.
He must have made other attempts to get Draco. Who had been trying to cause distractions around him lately…?
And what the hell had been the taste in Draco’s mouth?
Muggle plastic. Who carried pieces of Muggle plastic in their hands?
There was something nudging insistently at the back of Draco’s mind. He sat forward in his chair, face intent, the firelight exploding pale orange in his eyes and along his cheekbones.
Across the room, Pansy Parkinson sighed happily and rested her chin on her hands. Getting in some quality gazing time.
Come on, Draco thought. I just need one thing to slot into place, I just need something to…
To…
Click.
Who had charged up the Quidditch bleachers to tell Hermione that Harry and Ron were having a fight, and offered to hold Draco?
Who had been rumoured to be dating Blaise Zabini? Blaise, who was not only extremely talented at Potions but who was in Draco’s Potions class?
Who had been near enough to poison the coffee, and who constantly had a plastic Muggle artefact in his nasty hands?
Draco got up, to Pansy’s intense disappointment.
“I’ll kill him,” he said.
Harry and Ron were playing a game of chess when Draco came in, striding toward the dormitories, his eyes cold points of steel.
“Can’t talk now. Must destroy.”
The chessboard went flying.