Feeling infuriated with her growing curiosity with Draco Malfoy that vied Harry’s own, Hermione unbuckled her bag to retrieve the Marauder’s Map…when she realized it wasn’t there. With a spasm of horror when she realized she’d left it in the library, she raced to the library, her bag swinging wildly. To her relief, the map was in the same place she’d left it. She gave it a cursory glance and scanned it for Draco Malfoy. He was in the Great Hall with the other Slytherins”nothing unusual. “Mischief managed,” she muttered, and the map was wiped innocently blank and she made her way to the Great Hall.
“What kept you?” Ron inquired after swallowing a considerably large mouthful of food.
“Oh, I was in the erm, library…” Which was perfectly and predictably true, but she turned red for reasons she didn’t know herself. This didn’t go unnoticed by Harry and Ron, who exchanged looks. Pretending she hadn’t noticed their identically bemused expressions, she helped herself to food without tasting it, her mind still on the boy who had become increasingly prominent in her thoughts.
It was fast approaching night, but the darkening sky didn’t daunt Draco. The lone flier on the Quidditch pitch, Draco flew still higher around the hoops, feeling suddenly despondent that he wouldn’t even be able to play in the first match of the year (Gryffindor vs. Slytherin) if Nott had his way. Giving up Quidditch the first time had been terrible, but the respite had been temporary once he’d been anointed on the team once again as Chaser. To give it up a second choice would be inconceivable and it was a thought that made his stomach plummet. He couldn’t give up the only outlet he now had. But if Nott really did know…but there was the tiniest possibility that Nott’s threat had been an empty one.
But no, there had been a gleam in his eyes that Draco hadn’t liked”a wicked sort of gleam. He definitely knew. Flying once more around the pitch, he landed, soft as a ghost, and wondering grimly just how much worse life could get. I’ll give you a day to think about it, Malfoy. He envisioned telling Montague again that he was resigning from the Quidditch team, of Nott’s victorious smirk, of Zabini’s curious surprise. His imagination’s take on the events would probably become reality. Death is terrible, he thought, Moaning Myrtle’s words coming back to him for some inexplicable reason.
He hadn’t made a decision, and he had a feeling sleep wouldn’t be coming too easily anytime soon. In any case, he felt wide-awake with worry.
Passing by the capacious depths of the lake on his way back to the castle, he caught his reflection looking back at him”a tall figure clutching a broomstick in one hand and an expression he didn’t recognize for never having seen it on his own face before…a few moments passed before he realized the expression was one of fear and uncertainty, and he didn’t like it at all.
Hermione was temporarily distracted by her desire to complete her work by a vision that she was sure she could not be seeing. It was Ron, chattering happily away to a girl that definitely wasn’t her. The realization that the girl was Lavender Brown, who looked like she meant business in a very un-business-like fashion, annoyed her.
“That was so funny!” Lavender professed, fluttering her eyelashes in an immodest way, which irked Hermione still further. Ron looked rather thrown by the attention, but also flattered. Her work quite forgotten, she almost made to stride towards Ron and Lavender but stopped herself in time, trying to pass off her half-motion to stand up to smooth the front of her robes.
“It’s revolting, isn’t it?” Ginny Weasley remarked with pronounced distaste. “But then, my dear brother never really has experienced much female attention, if any at all, so I guess you can’t blame him for looking like such an idiot. I wonder what Lavender sees in him…”
Hermione made an indistinct noise that could have been made for assent. Ginny stared at her for a moment, looking agog. “No way!” Ginny suddenly ejaculated in a hushed voice.
“No way what?”
“You fancy my older brother…well, I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised, but…”
“I don’t fancy Ron,” Hermione said, wrinkling her noise at the casual use of the word ‘fancy’ in regards to her and Ron. What a ridiculous notion”her feelings for Ron were completely platonic. Only, what might have been jealousy that was igniting through her body said otherwise. But still.
“Yeah, whatever,” Ginny said dismissively, positively grinning with her shrewd discovery of feelings Hermione hadn’t even known she had…until now, of course. “Your body movements, your awkwardness after my accusation five seconds ago…it sort of gives you away, Hermione.”
Hermione was aghast and at a temporary loss for words. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone,” Ginny assured her hastily. “But if you intend on stopping Lavender from pouncing, which I think it’s safe to say she plans on doing, well, I’d do something. And make that soon.”
“Pouncing?” Hermione repeated, chancing a glance at Ron and Lavender, who was laughing uproariously at something Ron had said. A tad too uproariously for Hermione’s liking, if she were honest with herself. This was entering danger city.
“Well, excuse my free rein with the English language. But seriously Hermione! Lavender looks practically besotted, God help her…and you, for that matter. But I’ll be upfront”I’d rather you be with Ron than her. Oh, there’s Dean, I’ll talk to you later about this, Hermione.”
I’d rather you be with Ron than her…
Nothing besides Lavender would obstruct that particular barrier of pouncing Ron, to use Ginny’s free rein of the English language. She was mystified when the face of Draco Malfoy found its way into her mind suddenly for no reason at all.
It’s just because you’ve been observing him a lot lately, but that thought gave her even less comfort. She’d been observing him for innocent reasons”well, not that innocent, but because he was up to something. Innocent enough. There was no reason for her to think any further about the matter. Ginny got up from her seat and winked very mischievously, her red hair flying behind her as she walked towards Dean Thomas, leaving Hermione in solitude with her work.
What can you do to make Hermione Granger feel differently about me? Hadn’t those been the impishly spoken words Malfoy had said to Snape that day? Her uneasiness stifled any further thought of work. She hadn’t thought of that question since the day she’d heard them, but there was no forgetting them.
What, what was that question supposed to mean? She could deduce as much that Lord Voldemort had given Malfoy some kind of task that Snape knew about. But why had her name been dragged in the unpleasant conversation? What did feelings have anything to do with it? She needed answers, preferably now, but that wasn’t realistic. She supposed she’d have to confront Malfoy after Potions the next day…the thought practically made her blood curdle, but her need for answers was stronger, as was the unidentifiable feeling in her stomach that had resurfaced that she was getting used to having.
Draco retreated from the dungeon as fast as humanly possible at the blessed sound of the bell, his things already packed and his feet carrying him out of the dungeon at alarming speed. Close on his tail was Hermione Granger, but he wasn’t to know that until she was right in front of him with a strangely determined expression.
“Malfoy,” she said simply without preamble, “are you a Death Eater?” The baldly stated question threw him, and it took him a moment to reassert the cold, calculating expression that had once been second nature and now took all his efforts to summon.
“Granger,” he hissed, playing for time. Are you a Death Eater? What the hell was he supposed to say to that? Yeah, I am, and I’m supposed to bring you to the Dark Lord and your best friend to your death like a tea party. Charming.
“Well?” she pressed impatiently. “Are you? Because I erm, overheard um, a conversation you and Snape had…and my name was brought into it.”
“Overheard?” he said mordantly. “More like eavesdropped, Granger. And what’s it to you if I’m a Death Eater?”
“So you are then,” she concluded, staring at him impassively.
Angrily, he roughly dragged her arm out of the hallway leading to the dungeon, where everybody else would be leaving in a matter of seconds and led her to a more distant corridor, immediately dropping her arm when necessity to was no longer.
She was panting slightly and gripping her arm where he had dragged her as if he’d hurt her once they’d reached the darkest area of the unoccupied corridor. Draco felt an odd twinge at the sight of her clutching her arm in pain.
“Keep your bushy hair out of my business, Granger,” he snapped, nettled with both her interrogatory behavior and with himself for letting her get away with it.
“Voldemort gave you a plan, and I’ve got something to do with it. Tell me now or else,” she said, brandishing her wand in a manner that was clearly intended to look threatening, but somehow struck him as comical, even in this time.
“Don’t say the Dark Lord’s name,” he snarled.
“Tell me,” she repeated again, softer but more dangerously. Even in their third year when she’d smacked him round the face hard, he had never seen her in such a state, and it unnerved him, in spite of himself. And I let her die, he thought, remembering the dream with its blood, ice, and anguish…
An impulse struck him”the same one in his dream that had given her the rose, that had let him pour out his soul to Moaning Myrtle. A nanosecond later, he realized who this was”Hermione Granger, the Mudblood friend of Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. The hell with true confessions.
“Leave me alone.”
“I’d love to,” she retorted, her brown eyes chockfull of hatred and her bushy hair practically crackling with antagonism.
“Then do it,” he suggested coolly.
“No, not until you tell me what’s going on,” she said doggedly. Damn her to hell, she was persistent.
“Yeah, ‘cause I’d really want to share secrets of my life with a Mudblood,” he said sarcastically.
Granger’s eyes flashed with anger. “Don’t call me a Mudblood.”
Draco raised an eyebrow. “Bothers you, does it, me calling you a Mudblood? Gets under your skin?” He felt vindicated, a brutal sort of pleasure in ragging her about her filthy blood status. Her wand rose still higher, and a wicked smile played with his mouth. “Going to curse me, Granger? Well, I’d love to see you try.”
A pause, as the two of them silently acknowledged just how much closer they were to the other.
Her mouth opened in a snarl, but shut pronto to that. “We can do this the easy way or the hard””
“Please, Granger. Anyone can tell that’s the first threat that’s ever came out of your mouth. Let me show you a real threat,” he said, and raised his own wand at level with her own.
Something flickered in those brown eyes”fear? Alarm? Anger? All three? An almost unreal excitement flushed in his pale face at the sight of their wands pointing straight into each other’s faces.
“You wouldn’t dare,” he goaded her, a single green spark shooting out of his wand and bouncing off a wall noisily.
“Incarcerous!” Granger recited, as if a poem and obscenely tight ropes were conjured, binding him painfully, his wand hand useless.
Her wand still aloft, she said softly, almost demurely, “I could reverse this. But only if you wanted me to.” His wand was clamped tightly in an arm that could no longer move was of no real use just now. He groaned”he needed her to counteract the spell.
He glared at her, and she took his glare for acquiescence, and lifted the spell nonverbally. An infuriatingly teasing, triumphant smirk was on her face now, the same one he used to wear himself. Damn her. It was she who was getting under his skin now, crawling and prickling, but he couldn’t scratch the itch.
“That wasn’t funny, Granger.”
“But I dared, didn’t I?” she said, almost playfully, meeting his icy grey eyes. “And you didn’t think I would…Now, I’m certain you don’t want to repeat what just happened, so just tell me what’s going on. Now.” All hint of playfulness in her voice was gone, replaced with pure and cold anger. That’s more like it, Draco thought.
With a heavy sigh, he slumped against the wall and didn’t speak for a long time. He was too tired to maintain animosity just now, tempted as he was to. She crouched beside him in an obligatory fashion, her anger replaced with anticipation for the words he feared to speak.
Reluctance was evident in the slow, hesitant manner he lifted the robe sleeve covering his left arm.
“The Dark Mark,” she whispered, her mouth in the shape of an O, clearly dumbstruck at the image of the combined skull and serpent.
“Yeah,” he said in a low voice that surprised them both in its intensity.
“And the task…” she urged him.
“I can’t tell you,” Draco said, still in the same low voice. A resurgence of his old self flared, and he added in a louder, more forceful voice, “I can’t tell anyone, Granger. Leave me alone.”
She stood up again, looking livid. “Fine, then. But you can count on me to find out what I need to know, Malfoy.”
“The library can’t help you, Granger,” he sneered, watching her depart and feeling detached from the whole thing, his left arm sleeve covering the Dark Mark once more.
She rounded on him from a distance, as if she were compelled to look at him when she spoke to him. She parted her lips and said haughtily, “But you can,” and without another word, left him there with only his insolent thoughts for company.