Fic: "The Absence" (1/2)
Title: The Absence
Ship: Draco/Hermione
Rating: R
Summary: It all begins when Draco is declared insane.
A/N: Two years ago, I promised (probably in exchange for some Orlando/Leila fic) onecrimsontie a D/Hr fic. So, for onecrimsontie--for international phone calls and cheer packages, everything in between.
Big thank you to streetscribbles for reading this monster and brainstorming titles with me :D It's been a long, painful process. Thank you for helping me with it!
Hello
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
~ Comfortably Numb, Pink Floyd
Hermione doesn’t understand why Draco Malfoy isn’t sent to St. Mungo’s. Just because they don’t know what’s wrong with him-well, they do, that seems rather obvious, it’s more like they don’t know the cause-or the fact that he’s the son of known Death Eaters surely doesn’t mean they wouldn’t admit him.
Granted, paranoia is very much the feeling in the air right now. People are very suspicious of Purebloods with a long lineage. Old prejudices have resurfaced, and it is entirely probable that he has been refused help because of who his parents are, condemned by the very blood he valued so much. Still, it doesn’t seem right, or fair.
New travels fast: within a day, beginning four minutes after Terry Boot leaves the hospital wing without the toothache he had gone in with, passes the library and sees the first student he happens across, it starts. The wildfire has caught the dry grass.
Draco Malfoy is crazy.
No one went to see him, as far as she knew. Many students gossiped, but for the most part he had died, or rather, ceased to be. Apparently, many of them were under the impression that it was contagious.
The loss of his mind seems to mean the loss of humanness. Hermione has seen a few students pantomiming what they clearly think is the behavior of a lunatic to the jeers and laughter of their peers-lolling tongues, drool, and crossed and rolling eyes.
She suspects that Harry lost his temper in Potions on purpose, that he had been waiting for Snape to provoke him so he could run his mouth off because Snape has always been liberal in giving Harry detentions for even the most minor infractions. Harry isn’t famous for his self-control. No suspicions would be aroused; it is the perfect cover.
When Harry informs them at lunch that Filch has assigned him to clean the bedpans without magic, there’s something unsaid and furtive in his voice, and he blinks and gulps down his food to avoid any questions and in his haste, almost gags on a piece of chicken. There’s subterfuge in his eyes.
That night, Hermione stares at page 287 in Healing Herbcraft for an hour before she stands up, the book sliding from her lap to the floor, landing with a soft plot of bending pages on the thick carpet. The boys in Harry’s dorm are engaged in a heated discussion about what will happen to the Quidditch game, how the points are going to be awarded, and she runs upstairs unnoticed.
Harry never locks anything, but she’s brought her wand just in case. He’s made it easy for her though; the Invisibility cloak, silky, cool, and sleek, is lying right on top of everything in his trunk, and it blossoms out, pooling in her hands. Its absence from the trunk disturbs a few other objects: Harry’s socks that she guesses were from Dobby, his broom-maintenance kit, and pieces and small splinters of a broken mirror.
The cloak swishes close as she draws it around her, and the material is so lightweight that she feels colder with it on than without it.
She passes through the double doors of the hospital wing. The moonlight pours forth through the windows at the head of each bed on the right of the large room, and each bed gleams with bright whiteness. It’s beautiful how white the beds are. Each bed is severely tucked down, not a wrinkle in the sheets, not a shadow of a dent in the feathered pillows, shining. There is snow drift piling up outside on each windowsill. The hospital wing is filled with a cold, planetary light, and she breathes in for a moment, enjoying the smell of cleanness and freshness, Muggle hospitals with antiseptic and bacterial sprays and latex a very distant memory.
There’s a muted light on in Madam Pomfrey’s office, and she spots Harry dutifully wiping out a bedpan. Occasionally his eyes dart to the only private screen that is drawn up fully around the bed, but for the most part he keeps his eyes lowered, scrubbing halfheartedly at the bedpan, a chastened student doing his detention. Hermione wants to whisper to him that she’s there, but she doesn’t and she’ll never know why she didn’t.
She almost trips over a small footstool but catches herself, freezing in an awkward pose with her leg back and her arms flung out to grab at the nearest bed, cringing all the while and her eyes flying to Harry, who doesn’t notice a thing.
The back of her neck hot, she concentrates on stealth as she eases the partition open a bit, checking back at Harry and Madam Pomfrey briefly. She’s all right; she takes a moment to steady herself, darting a nervous glance at Harry again before composing herself. She slips past the screen and is on the other side.
Draco Malfoy is lying on the bed, and she almost loses all composure in a scream but catches herself, breath whistling sharply through her mouth because his eyes are open and he’s staring at the spot where she’s standing, concealed by the Invisibility Cloak. No, not at her, just at a point past her shoulder.
But he’s not moving, just staring, and nothing else. Nothing changes in his eyes. Her breathing evens, and then catches again as she watches him. He’s lying in a bed with sheets perfectly tucked around him, pulled up high, an inch away from the base of his throat. He is paler than usual, and even though he looks emaciated, thinner, gray in his wan face, red at the corners of his eyes, he seems lovelier, almost in an effeminate way. It’s the way he appears fragile. His sharp features, the jaw, the patrician nose, made even more pointed when he narrows his eyes and flattens his lips in a smirk, have been taken away by what keeps him in this bed.
Pressing a shaking hand to her mouth, she moves closer to Malfoy. She moves so close that she can see the pulse at his throat. His breathing is quiet and not labored. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him other than the physical signs of a tired, hungry body. Other than that he seems all right.
Hermione studies the faint blue veins, the paperthin lids, the soft skin at his temples. Just as she’s stretching out a hand, Harry appears, edging around the screen without so much as a sign of disturbance.
In her haste to get away from him, Hermione bumps backwards into a corner of the screen. Harry is pressing forward, gaping at Malfoy and doesn’t notice. Clearly, whatever Harry meant to find, it wasn’t Malfoy lying like this, thin and pale enough to see bone.
“Malfoy,” Harry tries, testing the waters as he moves around to stand at the foot of the bed.
Hermione steps back again, edging to the side some more, but Harry continues to move forward until they face each other on either side of the bed. They both look down at Malfoy.
“Malfoy,” Harry whispers again, and the way he says it is a wave of his hand in front of the bedridden boy’s eyes, uncertain and tentative.
Malfoy doesn’t stir, of course, he just stares, unseeingly, or maybe seeing something past the screen, the hospital wing, the walls of Hogwarts.
Harry shifts uncomfortably.
They stand on opposite sides of the bed, quiet and subdued. She leaves when Harry does, and when she looks back at Malfoy, she makes the conscious decision to come back and stay a little while longer.
***
Students have more to gossip about the next day.
“I think he’s finally lost it,” says Susan Bones in hushed tones in the Charms corridor as they walk back from Herbology.
“Completely around the bend,” Ernie Macmillan murmurs in knowing agreement. “I had to deliver a note to Madam Pomfrey, and Dumbledore and Snape were there.”
“What was Snape doing?” Harry wants to know.
“From what I’ve heard, he’s been pouring potions down Malfoy’s throat, but he doesn’t seem to change,” Ernie confides. “I heard Snape’s really forcing Malfoy to take these remedial potions, for some reason, Malfoy doesn’t want them.”
“I think he’s faking it,” Ron voices. “Trying to get out of the tests, maybe…”
“I don’t think so,” Ernie dismisses this notion, and interjects self-importantly, “I watched him when Madam Pomfrey was in her office. He just stared at the ceiling. I watched him for five minutes; he didn’t even blink once.”
“Do they know what’s wrong with him?” Dean Thomas asks curiously, part of another group passing by and slowing down at this discussion, eager to hear more.
Everyone looks expectantly at Ernie, who has been there and seen the invalid.
“Well…no.” As though he couldn’t bear the disappointed and unsatisfied looks around him, he adds quickly, “But I heard Dumbledore say that he was truly non compos mentis.”
Hermione glances away quickly. Everyone absorbs this silently.
At night, twilight time, Hermione goes back. She does without Harry’s Invisibility Cloak this time because she’s prepared an excuse for Madam Pomfrey. But she happened to know that the school nurse liked to take a drink at this time with Sprout and McGonagall in the staff room.
Malfoy is half-reclined, half sitting up in the bed, a book propped up in his lap.
“I knew it,” Hermione breathes quietly. “I knew you were only pretending.”
***
He slams the book shut.
“You can’t complain, can you, because then they’d know you’re not crazy,” she declares triumphantly.
“Why do you force your repulsive presence on people who don’t want it?” he retorts, glaring hatefully at her.
There’s a sinister current running through the air between them.
“What I don’t understand is why you’re doing this,” she said. “People are saying it’s because of the war.”
“Mudblood, Mudblood, Mudblood,” Draco chants, his eyes fixed on her.
“Malfoy, shut up,” Hermione snarls, advancing on him. “I know you’re faking-”
“MUDBLOOD!” Draco screams at the top of his lungs.
She forces the slur not to matter. It hadn’t mattered before, not the first time he said it when she had understood it to be something truly awful, and yet it was his word, not a word in her dictionary and so it hadn’t mattered. For some reason, it does now. Maybe it’s because she knows its definition. It is part of her vocabulary.
“Silencio,” Hermione snaps, aiming her wand at him.
Draco continues howling at her, but the insult has been muted. He’s sitting on the bed, fists clenched, chest heaving, his face red.
Hermione glances hastily around the partition. Unfortunately, she can hear footsteps hurrying down the long corridor. She frantically withdraws the spell from Malfoy, who seems to be louder than before, and runs out of the Hospital Wing, hearing his screams echo down the hallway after her.
***
“Miss Granger,” says Snape after Advanced Potions, his voice sour and deriding, halting her hasty exit, “I assume you’re going to visit Mr. Potter in the hospital wing.” At her uncomprehending nod, he pushes a small stack of books across his desk. “Then would you be kind enough to bring these books up to Mr. Malfoy.” It is not a question.
The question leaps off her tongue before she thinks. “Is he awake?”
Snape looks at her coldly. “To my knowledge, Mr. Malfoy is usually awake and it is a question of whether he is cognizant or not, but I fail to see how the private, personal issue of another student is any of your concern.”
Does Snape know? “Then what are the books for?”
“Ms. Granger, you are in danger of yet again not minding your own business,” Snape warns, glaring at her. “Five points from Gryffindor for questioning a teacher.”
She takes the books and leaves.
Ron is craning his neck wildly, attempting to catch a glimpse of Malfoy, but he subsides when Hermione sits down on the other side of Harry’s bed, blocking his view.
“Weird, isn’t it, that Malfoy’s just over there?” Ron comments. “I never thought…” He lapses into silence again, avoids Hermione’s eyes, and glances out the window.
Harry eyes the books she’s carrying. “Are those for me, Hermione?”
“No, for Malfoy. Snape asked me to bring them up.”
Harry frowns, and she is sure he is remembering what Malfoy was like, alone at night, just staring. Thankfully, he doesn’t ask any questions.
She sets the books aside and turns her attention to Harry, who took a bludger to the back in Quidditch practice.
“Hermione,” Harry says awkwardly, wincing as she hovers over him, “Really, I’m fine. You don’t have to…”
“Shut up,” Ron mutters under his breath. “Just play along…let her mother you.”
As they’re distracted with furtive whispers they think she can’t hear, Hermione sneaks another glance at the other occupied bed in the otherwise empty hospital wing. The screen is still pulled around the bed, and inside the protective space, she sees the silhouettes of Madame Pomfrey and Dumbledore, standing beside the bed, conferring in low, discreet voices.
The next day, Hermione goes to Madam Pomfrey and makes a formal request to assist in the hospital ward. Hermione is interested in studying as a Mediwizard in the future, and could she please familiarize herself in the actual setting of a hospital ward?
Madam Pomfrey is only too glad to have the help of such a reliable, clever witch and consents immediately.
***
Hermione casts a charm around the space within the screen before he speaks. There, he can scream as loudly as he wants to, she tells him.
“Get out of here,” Draco hisses venomously. “Don’t contaminate me.”
“From what I hear, I’m the one who should be afraid of catching something foul,” says Hermione coolly. “Tell them you’re not crazy.”
“This isn’t any of your business!” Draco explodes. “Stop meddling!”
“Tell them,” Hermione snaps, her wand gripped tightly in her sweaty hand.
“I am crazy,” he snarls. “I’m gone. There’s nothing here.” He gestures wildly at his head, and the twisted, jeering smile he wears is ugly.
It scares her, but she doesn’t let it show. “No, you’re pretending-”
“It comes and goes,” Draco interrupts, and he is wearing the most hateful expression she has seen from him. “Sometimes I’m fine, and sometimes I’m eight years old. I know. When I’m fine, Madam Pomfrey and Snape still talk to me like I’m crazy before they realize I’m not anymore. So who are you to tell me about myself, you stupid Mudblood.” He’s so angry he’s spitting.
She tries desperately to defuse the situation, but it is another major blunder. “Is this about the war? It’s clever and effective, pretending to be so insane that you’re bedridden. You don’t have to be afraid, Draco, there’s people who can help you-”
He has been glaring at her with immense derision and dislike, and at this, his eyes widen and he spits, “I’m not scared.”
She laughs at how obvious he is, and he colors, cheeks flushing a deep red that looks unattractive in his pale face.
“I’ve nothing to be afraid of,” he says scornfully. “It’s you who should be afraid. There’s going to be a new world, and there’s no place for your kind in it.”
“You’re racist.”
“Yeah, what of it? I believe we are the better kind. Stronger, smarter…”
“You’re the leper.” She glares at him, breathing hard. “People like you should be locked up where they can’t contaminate everyone else with your foul, ridiculous, ludicrous ideas…”
This time, he laughs a short, hoarse sound of disbelief in her face. “Did you just plagiarize my words, Granger? Because that’s odd, innit, that’s what I said of you. It’s what I’ve been saying for years. Typical. You’ve never had an original idea in your life.”
What he says hurts. She supposes, that after trying so many times, the odds are that he has to get it right eventually, has to hit the spot that would just render her speechless and without refutation. She’s defenseless, and he’s relentless.
“You think you’re better than I am…you think you’re smarter than I am, better, and that I don’t think for myself. And you look down on me for it.”
“That’s rich,” she chokes out, “That I don’t think for myself.”
“You think I’m a bully,” Draco continues in his feverish outburst, overriding her voice, “but what the bloody fuck do you think you are when you rush to answer every single question in class, and then outside of classes, when in normal, real people conversations, you act like you just can’t believe it when someone hasn’t read the same boring book you have that’s full of pointless trivia that you just toss out to show that you know something they don’t. I’ve heard you,” he accuses viciously with relish, “talking that way to Potter and Weasel, so don’t deny it. You patronize them for not knowing something obscure and POINTLESS. I don’t know how they put up with you, I really don’t. Face it, Granger, you are not the opposite of me.” Draco looks like he wants to hit her, or throw something sharp and heavy at her. “I’m not your antithesis, far from it. You’re blind, dumb, and ignorant. Face it.”
She can’t believe he sees her that way. She could tell him what she sees of him and his future-nothingness, not even a footnote in history textbooks about Harry Potter. She could tell him that she sees him as petty, spoiled, coward, stupid, not even second best, not even considered worthy competition, lying here, pathetic and weak, weak, weak.
“You want to know when I’m crazy? You want to know when I’m not pretending?” His chest heaves, and he leans forward, fists bunched tight, body taut, muscles stressed, and he says in a harsh whisper, “It’s when I can tolerate you.” He smiles with satisfaction. “That’s right. It’s when I can stand to have you in the same room as me and not want to strangle you. I know the curse for it, my aunt taught it to me. She said it would be a useful spell, one of the most entertaining ones. ‘If you don’t want to get their dirty blood on you,’ she said. You make them strangle themselves, they’ll even bleed from the eyes sometimes if you do it right.”
Hermione gasps, and she’s scared. She’s never been so scared that she’s at a loss, not since first year when she panicked in face of the very real Devil’s Snare. Her wand is slack, dangling from limp fingers. She’s afraid because she’s choking, she can’t force enough air into her lungs, and the oxygen that she does get is so cold and sharp it feels like her lungs and throat are being cut to ribbons from glass inside her. She’s scared because for a long moment, she thinks Draco Malfoy has just done as he told her: he’s strangling her to death. Her hands fly to her throat, and she realizes that he hasn’t done anything, that she’s not being murdered, and that it was all just her imagination.
“Get out of here,” Draco snarls, turning his face away from her.
***
He is not a lost boy, Hermione reminds herself as she steals back to Gryffindor Tower in the early non-hours. Draco Malfoy is not a project you can fix. He doesn’t want pity. He doesn’t even really want attention anymore.
Hermione realizes that it isn’t quite sympathy that draws her back to the hospital wing every night. She feels curiosity churning in her stomach, digging deeper into her mind, and when she closes her eyes tiredly in her bed and sees him behind her eyelids, she knows what it is. The need to know, to understand has wormed into her; she recognizes it and turns over onto her side towards the window and away from the other slumbering occupants in the room. Her pillow becomes wet and her face cold because she’s just lost herself to the need to know the truth.
***
She thinks she can see the madness in his eyes, the loss of reason.
She has never understood him. How could someone think like that, after all? His racism she had reasoned away as jealousy that she was far more talented and smarter than he, or else it could have been explained by his upbringing; he had been conditioned to “think” that way, to behave so mindlessly. His hatred of her had made sense only in a forced formulaic way, in a way that it was expected, and normal for him to hate her. But she had never understood the cause.
Now she can see that it was really crazy because the crazy people never knew or would admit they were crazy; they clung to denial that was impenetrable. He was impervious to reason.
Now she can see the madness, it is obvious. It’s there in his eyes. Delirium. It manifests in so many little signs. But most of all, it is as he said-sometimes he can tolerate her, other times he is consumed by his hatred for her. She has learned to identify those times and to excuse herself from working in the infirmary.
She doesn’t think he’s faking it. Vomiting, seizing up, his fits…He’s not strong enough for that. She cannot believe that he would allow his dignity to be so trampled. Draco Malfoy is not strong enough to fake this. He’s a coward, a weakling-he likes to play at being the leader, but he’s really a follower. The opposite of Harry, who resents attention and leadership, but accepts it anyway because is comes naturally to him, just as Draco Malfoy has always been naturally inclined to seek attention and status, gravitating towards others like him. Pride is everything.
The times when he doesn’t seem to mind her, she brings him books, discusses the philosophy of magic with him, the anatomy of a spell, the composition of a wand. The war feels very distant from her, for the both of them.
***
“A first year’s parents were killed,” says Hermione, her eyes and mind faraway. “He couldn’t stop crying and screaming. I heard him, when I walked past McGonagall’s office.”
She’s sitting on the end of Draco’s bed, legs drawn up to her chest, chin resting on her knees, arms wrapped around herself in the manner of holding herself together. Her shoes are on the floor, and through her socks, her toes are digging into the sheets. In the silence of the hospital wing, she can hear the raw scream echoing again, ringing in her ears.
Draco is hunched in on himself, like he is trying to curl in on himself, and his body shakes slightly from the cold that presses in from outside. He sneers a bit. “What am I supposed to say?”
Hermione shakes her head, her eyes troubled, her tone abstracted. “There’s nothing you can say.”
Draco stares unblinkingly at the ceiling. He can do this for an abnormally long time. “Practice,” he had told her before, sounding pleased with himself. She can remember when he used to blink a lot, furtive and up to something, or else he was sneering so his eyes narrowed to a squint, or else he was furious and losing control of all reason and temper, or else he was scared.
She remains quiet, not regretting bringing up the day’s event, but not wishing to be the first to speak.
Draco wets dry lips with his tongue, still staring at the ceiling, looking straight up, and says, “You should tell him that there’s no one in particular for him to be angry at. You should tell him that he should not go home to his relatives because they will treat him like he’s incompetent of dealing with his grief, and he cannot be complacent. He shouldn’t be. That’s the last thing he should be because then it’ll be harder for him later on, and he’ll either be an outcast because no one knows what act around him, or he’ll be pitied for the rest of his life. And you should make sure he knows that there’s no one for him to be angry, and that being righteously angry is the worst Gryffindor trait you can possibly have, and that its only resolution is to end up in a box next to his parents. You should tell him that before it’s too late. Or else you’ll just have someone else obsessed with getting even, and I should think you know by now that that’s not exactly living.”
This is the most he’s ever said that wasn’t said in a heat of anger. His words are carefully chosen, she can tell, and his tone is precisely controlled.
Hermione begins uneasily, “Is that-” but thinks again and cuts herself off before she can fully ask, is that what you would have wanted to hear? Would that have made you different, given you powers to change your mind, redirect you so you wouldn’t have ended up here? Would that have changed you?
Draco smiles a hard, patronizing smile at her, more like a sneer than anything else, mocking her with grey eyes, knowing what she was about to say but not helping her out. “Anyway,” he says, returning his gaze back to the ceiling, “that’s what I would say.”
Hermione is silent, digesting his words and seeing how they fed her stomach. Not too well. She feels unsettled, disturbed, and this seems to be something he does to her so well. She relives his words (so unnaturally calm for Draco Malfoy! she marvels, and so unnaturally wise, the right thing to say), hearing again the cold consciousness of what he was saying. She hears some truth, and it sounds both foreign and familiar. She is riveted by him; what he says resonates in her head, rippling through her mind, disturbing every thought she’s had.
***
He’s twisting in the sheets when she gets there the next morning, moaning and thrashing. He tries to throw up on Madam Pomfrey, who is holding Draco’s left arm. She shies instinctively behind the partially drawn-up screen.
“Really, Severus!” Madam Pomfrey exclaims, highly aggravated. “The illness can’t possibly be as bad as this!”
“Would you prefer the boy linger like this or chance that this potion will restore his mind?” Snape snarls back, gripping Draco’s other arm.
“His health is at risk here! Perhaps we ought to Stun him-”
“Father!” Draco howls above them. “Father help me!”
“No,” Snape rejects, sneering derisively, his sallow face pale. “There’s no telling whether that will counter the potion. This affliction is to his mind; he must remain conscious!”
“You,” Draco screams at Snape. “You’re supposed to let me do what I want! Father said!”
His voice is abruptly cut off and for a moment, he chokes. His spine has become as rigid as a board, and yet he is still straining up against Snape and Pomfrey.
Snape sees her. His sallow face becomes livid in an instant. Snape’s almost apoplectic with rage as he chokes out, “Miss Granger-interfering-none of your business-points-GET OUT!”
Draco doesn’t seem to remember the incident when she returns in the evening, so she doesn’t bring it up. She fills his silence with empty drivel about her day, preparations for the N.E.W.T.s, the Quidditch game between Ravenclaw and Slytherin.
Draco shivers again, and this time she sees. “Cold?”
“It’s just the room, it’s bloody drafty.”
She peels back the sheets tucked down beneath the mattress around him. She slides into the bed beside him, she turns to face him because he can’t look at her, and she wraps her arms around him. Their weight on the bed dips them closer; they sink into each other. She feels momentarily grounded that they still have substance, that they can push at something and there will be give from their force. Because sometimes she feels like she and Malfoy are sunbeams, bright and light but insubstantial, and it is surprising how easily this fear is quelled just by the way their bodies are solid. She moves, bends, curves so she’s lying flush against him, from ankle to hip. He shivers in her arms, she eases him into her to absorb the tiny jerks of his body like recoils with hers. Her breath heats his skin, and she laves his skin with her whisper, “I’ll keep you warm.”
***
It’s killing her, the not knowing. She can’t sleep, eat, study, she can’t talk to Harry and Ron, she becomes quiet, withdrawn, thinking, considering all the possibilities of what might have happened. She speculates that perhaps he ran into a boggart or some other magical creature that stole his soul away, and she pores through the books, fingers tumbling down spines and trapping pages, trying to find something that would drive someone insane.
There’s a lot of historical evidence, a lot of spells, a lot of jinxes, charms, curses, objects, creatures that might make someone lose their senses. There’s almost too much.
She’s overweighed by both personal research and schoolwork, and she tried to juggle them at first, devoting every break, every spare moment to her studies and every night to gathering, absorbing information. But it doesn’t work; she’s slipping in classes and coursework as the scales tip heavy with her curiosity.
Her professors notice, and now they are concerned, many of them puzzled and a few of them alarmed by her unusual behavior. Hermione Granger is known for her excellence in academics. Hermione Granger is a girl with good priorities. This is not Hermione Granger.
“Are you quite all right, Ms. Granger?” Professor McGonagall stares at her, eyes boring into her. “Is there something on your mind?” she inquires more kindly.
Hermione bites the inside of her cheek hard. “No, I guess I’m just overwhelmed by all the work.”
“Perhaps you want to consider dropping a course,” Professor McGonagall says gently. “It’s perfectly all right, shouldn’t harm your academic standing at all. Seventh year is particularly demanding. It is a point where many outstanding students falter. No one would think less of you if you were to lighten your courseload.”
“I think I’ll be better after the holidays,” she tells Professor McGonagall. “I think I just need a break.”
“Yes,” considers McGonagall, “I quite think you do.”
***
She feels like she barely talks to Ron and Harry anymore. They aren’t in as many of the same classes as they used to be; she’s taking more Advanced classes than they are. But when their paths do cross, she still feels very distanced, as though she and the boys have their own sets of very different problems that occupy them.
“They say you spend a lot of time with Malfoy,” Harry says on one of his rare trips to the library. He has come to talk her out of the castle because it’s a good day and she’s been holed up for too long that she’s starting to look sick. “What do you two talk about?”
Outside, the weather is much colder than it is indoors. Winter feels like clear notes like a sharp whistle on still air, and she wraps her arms around herself to ward off the chill. This year they saw early snows, and the Hogwarts grounds have been completely transformed. Harry isn’t the only one to have an idea to go out walking around; she sees in the distance other groups of people walking slowly through the snow.
“Who says that?” Hermione demands.
Harry falters. “Just-people, you know.”
“He’s just there. I work there. No one goes to see him. What am I supposed to do?”
“Nothing. I don’t care-I don’t mind, Hermione, I just asked. Look,” he says, exhaling shortly. “Ron wants you to come stay with him. Us. For Christmas, and maybe afterwards. Your parents say it’s all right; I’ve spoken to them. Come on,” he says, interpreting her silence. “You’ve always liked being at the Burrow. And besides, everyone really wants to see you.”
“Christmas at the Burrow?” She considers this for a moment. “Yes,” she says at last, “But I can’t spend the summer there. I planned on asking Dumbledore if I could stay at school, help out, or work at St. Mungo’s. I have to come back,” she said apologetically, because Harry looks pained.
A spasm of emotion crosses Harry’s face, but he controls it quickly. Besides, she’s preoccupied with other things on her mind. “Yeah,” Harry says thickly. “That’s fine, too.”
***
Lamps lit, moonlight, dark pale floor cold floor snow pure white beds curled around each other facing out, toes sticking out in the cold, feet trapping the inner edges of the blankets.
She leaves in the morning for the Burrow with Ron and Harry. “I’ll be back in three weeks,” she promises strongly.
“No one’s coming for me,” he says in response. “My father. He’s not coming. And he’s probably forbidden my mother to come too.”
“Why don’t they send you to St. Mungo’s? Why are you still here?”
Draco gave her an odd look. “Maybe because I’m a lost cause.”
Hermione doesn’t know what lost causes are. The Gryffindor in her resents giving up without having exhausted all possible solutions and still she doesn’t accept defeat gracefully. And the rational part of her argues that the odds say there’s always a solution.
She tucks her head beneath his chin and breathes in. For some reason, she has the oddest feeling that she could forget him, and very easily it would be like this had never happened.
***
After Christmas, he’s still there, the same as before.
Pale trees bloom, white birches peeling. Tiny buds are developing, not quite blossoming yet. It’s spring in the air.
It’s stupid and silly, but Hermione has a thought hoping for the best of this year, that he’ll be regenerated whole and not remain a spirit. Springtime is renewal.
Even though she knows he hates it and it’s not right to (and she would hate it, too), she feels sorry for him. She pities him for the talent wasting away, and that he isn’t stronger and more able. He doesn’t ever feel sorry for himself. On the contrary, at times he seems to like it.
Draco has taught her how to sense, she realizes as she walks down the hallway to the hospital wing. He probably hadn’t intended to, but there it is. She sees colors of things, she notices the smells, the sounds, the texture and even the air she tastes. It’s because of how sharp everything is around him.
“Hermione, welcome back,” Madame Pomfrey greets her. “I thought you would have gotten your fill of the hospital wing by now.”
“Oh, no. I become more and more interested in healing as a job when I leave Hogwarts,” Hermione responds earnestly. “Do you need any assistance now? I just wanted to come up and say hello.”
“No, not at the moment, but it’s still flu season so I expect there’ll be students coming up here soon enough. I do need someone to watch the ward while I speak with Professor Snape. I’ll be just about an hour, dear. I am sorry to put you to work just when you’ve arrived.” Madam Pomfrey glances at Draco’s bed somberly. “Although, I am sad to say, perhaps watching over the wing is a futile gesture…”
Her eyes flick nervously to Draco’s bed even as she smiles cheerfully, “Of course not, I don’t mind at all.”
Madame Pomfrey has left the ward to Hermione’s supervision for the next hour, so she rolls the next bed over beside Draco’s after moving aside the screen. Hermione leans back against the headboard and inhales deeply the hospital wing and its perfume of spicy Pepper-Up Potion, the faint smell of chrysanthemum tea (it had healing properties, and Madame Pomfrey was trying something new), the coolness of the air, waiting for Draco to wake up. When she opened her eyes, Draco was awake and staring at her.
“It smells clean,” she defended, embarrassed and nervous because he hadn’t yet spoken and she couldn’t tell who he was.
“It doesn’t smell like anything,” he says bluntly. “You smell.”
At a loss for words and insulted, she finally managed to say coldly, “Excuse me?”
“You smell like lotion and other things.” Draco smiles. “You smell like the library.”
She colors, pink cheeks, the back of her neck heating up, blood rushing red. “What do you mean, like the library? Like old books?” She thinks of mothballs and dust.
“Like paper, a lot of paper. Like the wood of the tables and shelves, and new parchment and ink. Mostly you just smell like a small forest that no one has found yet and so it’s fresher. Cleaner.” He contemplates for a moment, wrinkling his nose, and adds thoughtfully, “Also it has to do with your shampoo. Something fruity.”
“Oranges,” Hermione says blankly, staring at the base of his throat. “Clementine.”
He nods, enlightened. “Yes, that’s right. I thought tangerine.”
Her face is hot, and she feels naked, her hands wrung tightly together in her lap, fingers and knuckles white. She can feel her pulse hammering away, and she isn’t quite sure where to look. But Hermione is a Gryffindor, so she finally stops her wild, darting gaze to look at him, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip.
Draco is looking back at her. His face has flushed a blotchy, dull red also, and he’s sitting rather stiffly.
“Thank you,” Hermione finally speaks, floundering for a moment. “That was…kind.”
“Did you bring more books?”
“Yes.” She drags them out of her suitcase and places them on the nightstand beside his bed. “As you requested. And one of my favorites.”
Draco barely glances at New Theory of Numerology. “I thought your favorite was Hogwarts, A History.”
“That’s just for fun reading. Well, this is fun too.” She says awkwardly, “How was your Christmas?”
He says drolly, “Uneventful. Everyone went home. No one new came around.”
“I’m sorry. But I got you…something.” She hands him a cheerily wrapped present and wishes she hadn’t bothered with wrapping paper after all. It seems like a taunt.
“What is it?” Draco looks at the object in his lap.
“It’s just-just open it.”
“Chocolate,” he reveals a moment later.
“You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted to do it.”
“Thanks, anyway.”
“You’re welcome,” Hermione says softly. She slides off her bed and begins to push it back into its original position, explaining, “Madam Pomfrey will be back any minute. I’m tired, so…I think I’ll just see you tomorrow?”
“Sure,” he says.
It’s a mistake, she thinks to herself as she drags her suitcase on her way to Gryffindor Tower, it’s a mistake to think that Draco has no one else but her, that he waits for her. He has nothing to do but wait for her.
***
Hermione stops short inside the infirmary.
“What’s this?” she asks nervously.
He raises a hand; it jerks to a stop by the leather ties binding him to the bed. “What is there to explain?”
“Why? What did you do?”
“You always think it’s me,” he says sourly. When she doesn’t answer, he says shortly, “I tried to leave.”
Her hand flutters over the knot on his left wrist.
“Don’t bother. They’re magicked, you’ll need your wand.”
It would be no trouble to dispense with the magical binds, but she senses correctly that he doesn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he’s restrained. Hermione sits down on the edge of his bed. “Where were you going?” she asks after a moment.
Draco frowns at her. “It’s none of your business.”
“The dungeons? Out of Hogwarts? Where?” she persists.
“Away,” he snaps and swears softly, “Fucking nag, you’re just like Parkinson.”
This stings, but she doesn’t let it show, or point out that Pansy hasn’t been to see him, ever. Before she can speak, he continues, blowing out his breath impatiently. “I don’t know what you keep coming around here for anyway. Potter and Weasel not giving enough stimulating conversation you have to talk to someone who’s lost his mind?” Under his breath, he mutters, “Don’t understand you.”
“Maybe you can’t understand me, but I can understand you.” Hermione moves closer to the bed.
He’s watching her, looking strangely arrested. He’s changed again. Hermione pauses, tense, waiting to see who emerges from his silence. She studies the mercurial grey eyes carefully and prompts, “Draco?”
He’s assessing her, giving her a masculine appraisal, pewter-grey eyes roving her face, lingering on her lips and meeting her eyes.
“I just want to,” he whispers. “I just want to do this…” and he groans, aching. He arcs upwards. “Kiss me, Hermione.”
She can see some self-hate clouding his eyes; he hates that he’s asking, on the brink of begging. He hates giving in, and in some way this is like losing the Snitch to Harry for him. And still he can’t stop himself.
Hermione settles down on him, her knees pressing deep into the soft mattress, her arms taking her weight as she places her hands carefully on either side of his head. “Like this?” she whispers anxiously above his lips. “Like this?”
His eyes crinkle even as they turn dark like mercury. “I don’t know; you’re not kissing me.”
She covers his lips with hers. His lips are soft and a little chapped. His mouth is very dry, his lips slightly chapped. He tastes bitter, the taste of the last potion Snape made for him; he tastes like healing herbs and there, that’s probably crushed rattleroot, and that’s powdered bezoar…
It is a mysterious slide of tongues and taste of his mouth and it is the sweetest, strangest, most beautiful kiss anyone has ever given her.
His long fingers brush hers, and the sensation ripples through her, feeling like magic and when she raised her wand in Ollivander’s and gave it an experimental flick. The warmth floods through her. She feels powerful, and there is that absolute, certain feeling of rightness.
Hermione wants him. Like the first touch of magic, she wants more. She wants his hands on her, and she crushes herself to him, sinking down into him so she can lie against that lean, hard body. His tongue flicks, tickles the roof of her mouth. They break away, and he runs his teeth down the line of her neck as she bows her head over him, resting her forehead against his; she shudders, shaking on top of him. His eyes are grey, dull from lack of health, but his lips curve and she feels his breath warm against her mouth.
“There, now I have it too,” says Hermione softly, beaming down at him, her hair curtaining their faces from the hospital wing.
They kiss and kiss and kiss until both their faces are flushed red, smiling at each other nervously.
She grips his larger hands, his long fingers, twines them together so their knuckles bump. “If you could, what would you do right now?” she asks seriously.
His eyes are serious. “If I could I would spread your hair across the pillow and I would kiss you again.”
She smiles. “Okay.”
He smiles wanly back. “Okay.”
***
The next day, he is unwell again. Madame Pomfrey doesn’t let her into the Hospital Wing. He is bawling something indecipherable; it is so bad that Dumbledore and the other Hogwarts staff have gathered in the room.
He loses energy and health every time his mind lapses. That night, he is withdrawn and appears even thinner. She wants to curl around his body, share the space and warmth, but she can’t tell what he knows tonight. So she lets the space have him. She eases onto a bed, drawing her legs up and sitting cross-legged as she waits for morning.
He appears resigned to her presence, and only when she’s sure that he’s asleep does she unfold cramped legs and stumble her way to his bed. Hermione huddles closer to the bed. She leans over him. His eyes are shut.
“I want to pick you apart,” she whispers. “I want to get lost in you, but I want to find you, too. I want to see your mind. But I don’t, also, because you’re more mysterious to me than you’ve ever been. I always thought I knew who you were, childish and cruel, but now I think I know you, and I still don’t know you well enough. I want to unlock you and see the workings of your mind, but I don’t want to solve you.”
She wishes her breath would be enough to warm him and her touch enough to heal. She flutters her fingers briefly over his closed eyes before returning to Gryffindor tower.
***
Hermione rests her chin in her hand as she examines his closed face.
“Why are you here?”
“Why are you here?” he asks in return.
Hermione frowns at him in annoyance and clarifies, “How did you get like this? What happened?” When he doesn’t respond, she adds impatiently, “Don’t you think it’s time we stopped avoiding it?”
“I looked into the mirror.”
“What?”
“The mirror…” Draco’s voice is wistful. “The Mirror of Erised.”
Part 2/2
Ship: Draco/Hermione
Rating: R
Summary: It all begins when Draco is declared insane.
A/N: Two years ago, I promised (probably in exchange for some Orlando/Leila fic) onecrimsontie a D/Hr fic. So, for onecrimsontie--for international phone calls and cheer packages, everything in between.
Big thank you to streetscribbles for reading this monster and brainstorming titles with me :D It's been a long, painful process. Thank you for helping me with it!
Hello
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
~ Comfortably Numb, Pink Floyd
Hermione doesn’t understand why Draco Malfoy isn’t sent to St. Mungo’s. Just because they don’t know what’s wrong with him-well, they do, that seems rather obvious, it’s more like they don’t know the cause-or the fact that he’s the son of known Death Eaters surely doesn’t mean they wouldn’t admit him.
Granted, paranoia is very much the feeling in the air right now. People are very suspicious of Purebloods with a long lineage. Old prejudices have resurfaced, and it is entirely probable that he has been refused help because of who his parents are, condemned by the very blood he valued so much. Still, it doesn’t seem right, or fair.
New travels fast: within a day, beginning four minutes after Terry Boot leaves the hospital wing without the toothache he had gone in with, passes the library and sees the first student he happens across, it starts. The wildfire has caught the dry grass.
Draco Malfoy is crazy.
No one went to see him, as far as she knew. Many students gossiped, but for the most part he had died, or rather, ceased to be. Apparently, many of them were under the impression that it was contagious.
The loss of his mind seems to mean the loss of humanness. Hermione has seen a few students pantomiming what they clearly think is the behavior of a lunatic to the jeers and laughter of their peers-lolling tongues, drool, and crossed and rolling eyes.
She suspects that Harry lost his temper in Potions on purpose, that he had been waiting for Snape to provoke him so he could run his mouth off because Snape has always been liberal in giving Harry detentions for even the most minor infractions. Harry isn’t famous for his self-control. No suspicions would be aroused; it is the perfect cover.
When Harry informs them at lunch that Filch has assigned him to clean the bedpans without magic, there’s something unsaid and furtive in his voice, and he blinks and gulps down his food to avoid any questions and in his haste, almost gags on a piece of chicken. There’s subterfuge in his eyes.
That night, Hermione stares at page 287 in Healing Herbcraft for an hour before she stands up, the book sliding from her lap to the floor, landing with a soft plot of bending pages on the thick carpet. The boys in Harry’s dorm are engaged in a heated discussion about what will happen to the Quidditch game, how the points are going to be awarded, and she runs upstairs unnoticed.
Harry never locks anything, but she’s brought her wand just in case. He’s made it easy for her though; the Invisibility cloak, silky, cool, and sleek, is lying right on top of everything in his trunk, and it blossoms out, pooling in her hands. Its absence from the trunk disturbs a few other objects: Harry’s socks that she guesses were from Dobby, his broom-maintenance kit, and pieces and small splinters of a broken mirror.
The cloak swishes close as she draws it around her, and the material is so lightweight that she feels colder with it on than without it.
She passes through the double doors of the hospital wing. The moonlight pours forth through the windows at the head of each bed on the right of the large room, and each bed gleams with bright whiteness. It’s beautiful how white the beds are. Each bed is severely tucked down, not a wrinkle in the sheets, not a shadow of a dent in the feathered pillows, shining. There is snow drift piling up outside on each windowsill. The hospital wing is filled with a cold, planetary light, and she breathes in for a moment, enjoying the smell of cleanness and freshness, Muggle hospitals with antiseptic and bacterial sprays and latex a very distant memory.
There’s a muted light on in Madam Pomfrey’s office, and she spots Harry dutifully wiping out a bedpan. Occasionally his eyes dart to the only private screen that is drawn up fully around the bed, but for the most part he keeps his eyes lowered, scrubbing halfheartedly at the bedpan, a chastened student doing his detention. Hermione wants to whisper to him that she’s there, but she doesn’t and she’ll never know why she didn’t.
She almost trips over a small footstool but catches herself, freezing in an awkward pose with her leg back and her arms flung out to grab at the nearest bed, cringing all the while and her eyes flying to Harry, who doesn’t notice a thing.
The back of her neck hot, she concentrates on stealth as she eases the partition open a bit, checking back at Harry and Madam Pomfrey briefly. She’s all right; she takes a moment to steady herself, darting a nervous glance at Harry again before composing herself. She slips past the screen and is on the other side.
Draco Malfoy is lying on the bed, and she almost loses all composure in a scream but catches herself, breath whistling sharply through her mouth because his eyes are open and he’s staring at the spot where she’s standing, concealed by the Invisibility Cloak. No, not at her, just at a point past her shoulder.
But he’s not moving, just staring, and nothing else. Nothing changes in his eyes. Her breathing evens, and then catches again as she watches him. He’s lying in a bed with sheets perfectly tucked around him, pulled up high, an inch away from the base of his throat. He is paler than usual, and even though he looks emaciated, thinner, gray in his wan face, red at the corners of his eyes, he seems lovelier, almost in an effeminate way. It’s the way he appears fragile. His sharp features, the jaw, the patrician nose, made even more pointed when he narrows his eyes and flattens his lips in a smirk, have been taken away by what keeps him in this bed.
Pressing a shaking hand to her mouth, she moves closer to Malfoy. She moves so close that she can see the pulse at his throat. His breathing is quiet and not labored. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him other than the physical signs of a tired, hungry body. Other than that he seems all right.
Hermione studies the faint blue veins, the paperthin lids, the soft skin at his temples. Just as she’s stretching out a hand, Harry appears, edging around the screen without so much as a sign of disturbance.
In her haste to get away from him, Hermione bumps backwards into a corner of the screen. Harry is pressing forward, gaping at Malfoy and doesn’t notice. Clearly, whatever Harry meant to find, it wasn’t Malfoy lying like this, thin and pale enough to see bone.
“Malfoy,” Harry tries, testing the waters as he moves around to stand at the foot of the bed.
Hermione steps back again, edging to the side some more, but Harry continues to move forward until they face each other on either side of the bed. They both look down at Malfoy.
“Malfoy,” Harry whispers again, and the way he says it is a wave of his hand in front of the bedridden boy’s eyes, uncertain and tentative.
Malfoy doesn’t stir, of course, he just stares, unseeingly, or maybe seeing something past the screen, the hospital wing, the walls of Hogwarts.
Harry shifts uncomfortably.
They stand on opposite sides of the bed, quiet and subdued. She leaves when Harry does, and when she looks back at Malfoy, she makes the conscious decision to come back and stay a little while longer.
***
Students have more to gossip about the next day.
“I think he’s finally lost it,” says Susan Bones in hushed tones in the Charms corridor as they walk back from Herbology.
“Completely around the bend,” Ernie Macmillan murmurs in knowing agreement. “I had to deliver a note to Madam Pomfrey, and Dumbledore and Snape were there.”
“What was Snape doing?” Harry wants to know.
“From what I’ve heard, he’s been pouring potions down Malfoy’s throat, but he doesn’t seem to change,” Ernie confides. “I heard Snape’s really forcing Malfoy to take these remedial potions, for some reason, Malfoy doesn’t want them.”
“I think he’s faking it,” Ron voices. “Trying to get out of the tests, maybe…”
“I don’t think so,” Ernie dismisses this notion, and interjects self-importantly, “I watched him when Madam Pomfrey was in her office. He just stared at the ceiling. I watched him for five minutes; he didn’t even blink once.”
“Do they know what’s wrong with him?” Dean Thomas asks curiously, part of another group passing by and slowing down at this discussion, eager to hear more.
Everyone looks expectantly at Ernie, who has been there and seen the invalid.
“Well…no.” As though he couldn’t bear the disappointed and unsatisfied looks around him, he adds quickly, “But I heard Dumbledore say that he was truly non compos mentis.”
Hermione glances away quickly. Everyone absorbs this silently.
At night, twilight time, Hermione goes back. She does without Harry’s Invisibility Cloak this time because she’s prepared an excuse for Madam Pomfrey. But she happened to know that the school nurse liked to take a drink at this time with Sprout and McGonagall in the staff room.
Malfoy is half-reclined, half sitting up in the bed, a book propped up in his lap.
“I knew it,” Hermione breathes quietly. “I knew you were only pretending.”
***
He slams the book shut.
“You can’t complain, can you, because then they’d know you’re not crazy,” she declares triumphantly.
“Why do you force your repulsive presence on people who don’t want it?” he retorts, glaring hatefully at her.
There’s a sinister current running through the air between them.
“What I don’t understand is why you’re doing this,” she said. “People are saying it’s because of the war.”
“Mudblood, Mudblood, Mudblood,” Draco chants, his eyes fixed on her.
“Malfoy, shut up,” Hermione snarls, advancing on him. “I know you’re faking-”
“MUDBLOOD!” Draco screams at the top of his lungs.
She forces the slur not to matter. It hadn’t mattered before, not the first time he said it when she had understood it to be something truly awful, and yet it was his word, not a word in her dictionary and so it hadn’t mattered. For some reason, it does now. Maybe it’s because she knows its definition. It is part of her vocabulary.
“Silencio,” Hermione snaps, aiming her wand at him.
Draco continues howling at her, but the insult has been muted. He’s sitting on the bed, fists clenched, chest heaving, his face red.
Hermione glances hastily around the partition. Unfortunately, she can hear footsteps hurrying down the long corridor. She frantically withdraws the spell from Malfoy, who seems to be louder than before, and runs out of the Hospital Wing, hearing his screams echo down the hallway after her.
***
“Miss Granger,” says Snape after Advanced Potions, his voice sour and deriding, halting her hasty exit, “I assume you’re going to visit Mr. Potter in the hospital wing.” At her uncomprehending nod, he pushes a small stack of books across his desk. “Then would you be kind enough to bring these books up to Mr. Malfoy.” It is not a question.
The question leaps off her tongue before she thinks. “Is he awake?”
Snape looks at her coldly. “To my knowledge, Mr. Malfoy is usually awake and it is a question of whether he is cognizant or not, but I fail to see how the private, personal issue of another student is any of your concern.”
Does Snape know? “Then what are the books for?”
“Ms. Granger, you are in danger of yet again not minding your own business,” Snape warns, glaring at her. “Five points from Gryffindor for questioning a teacher.”
She takes the books and leaves.
Ron is craning his neck wildly, attempting to catch a glimpse of Malfoy, but he subsides when Hermione sits down on the other side of Harry’s bed, blocking his view.
“Weird, isn’t it, that Malfoy’s just over there?” Ron comments. “I never thought…” He lapses into silence again, avoids Hermione’s eyes, and glances out the window.
Harry eyes the books she’s carrying. “Are those for me, Hermione?”
“No, for Malfoy. Snape asked me to bring them up.”
Harry frowns, and she is sure he is remembering what Malfoy was like, alone at night, just staring. Thankfully, he doesn’t ask any questions.
She sets the books aside and turns her attention to Harry, who took a bludger to the back in Quidditch practice.
“Hermione,” Harry says awkwardly, wincing as she hovers over him, “Really, I’m fine. You don’t have to…”
“Shut up,” Ron mutters under his breath. “Just play along…let her mother you.”
As they’re distracted with furtive whispers they think she can’t hear, Hermione sneaks another glance at the other occupied bed in the otherwise empty hospital wing. The screen is still pulled around the bed, and inside the protective space, she sees the silhouettes of Madame Pomfrey and Dumbledore, standing beside the bed, conferring in low, discreet voices.
The next day, Hermione goes to Madam Pomfrey and makes a formal request to assist in the hospital ward. Hermione is interested in studying as a Mediwizard in the future, and could she please familiarize herself in the actual setting of a hospital ward?
Madam Pomfrey is only too glad to have the help of such a reliable, clever witch and consents immediately.
***
Hermione casts a charm around the space within the screen before he speaks. There, he can scream as loudly as he wants to, she tells him.
“Get out of here,” Draco hisses venomously. “Don’t contaminate me.”
“From what I hear, I’m the one who should be afraid of catching something foul,” says Hermione coolly. “Tell them you’re not crazy.”
“This isn’t any of your business!” Draco explodes. “Stop meddling!”
“Tell them,” Hermione snaps, her wand gripped tightly in her sweaty hand.
“I am crazy,” he snarls. “I’m gone. There’s nothing here.” He gestures wildly at his head, and the twisted, jeering smile he wears is ugly.
It scares her, but she doesn’t let it show. “No, you’re pretending-”
“It comes and goes,” Draco interrupts, and he is wearing the most hateful expression she has seen from him. “Sometimes I’m fine, and sometimes I’m eight years old. I know. When I’m fine, Madam Pomfrey and Snape still talk to me like I’m crazy before they realize I’m not anymore. So who are you to tell me about myself, you stupid Mudblood.” He’s so angry he’s spitting.
She tries desperately to defuse the situation, but it is another major blunder. “Is this about the war? It’s clever and effective, pretending to be so insane that you’re bedridden. You don’t have to be afraid, Draco, there’s people who can help you-”
He has been glaring at her with immense derision and dislike, and at this, his eyes widen and he spits, “I’m not scared.”
She laughs at how obvious he is, and he colors, cheeks flushing a deep red that looks unattractive in his pale face.
“I’ve nothing to be afraid of,” he says scornfully. “It’s you who should be afraid. There’s going to be a new world, and there’s no place for your kind in it.”
“You’re racist.”
“Yeah, what of it? I believe we are the better kind. Stronger, smarter…”
“You’re the leper.” She glares at him, breathing hard. “People like you should be locked up where they can’t contaminate everyone else with your foul, ridiculous, ludicrous ideas…”
This time, he laughs a short, hoarse sound of disbelief in her face. “Did you just plagiarize my words, Granger? Because that’s odd, innit, that’s what I said of you. It’s what I’ve been saying for years. Typical. You’ve never had an original idea in your life.”
What he says hurts. She supposes, that after trying so many times, the odds are that he has to get it right eventually, has to hit the spot that would just render her speechless and without refutation. She’s defenseless, and he’s relentless.
“You think you’re better than I am…you think you’re smarter than I am, better, and that I don’t think for myself. And you look down on me for it.”
“That’s rich,” she chokes out, “That I don’t think for myself.”
“You think I’m a bully,” Draco continues in his feverish outburst, overriding her voice, “but what the bloody fuck do you think you are when you rush to answer every single question in class, and then outside of classes, when in normal, real people conversations, you act like you just can’t believe it when someone hasn’t read the same boring book you have that’s full of pointless trivia that you just toss out to show that you know something they don’t. I’ve heard you,” he accuses viciously with relish, “talking that way to Potter and Weasel, so don’t deny it. You patronize them for not knowing something obscure and POINTLESS. I don’t know how they put up with you, I really don’t. Face it, Granger, you are not the opposite of me.” Draco looks like he wants to hit her, or throw something sharp and heavy at her. “I’m not your antithesis, far from it. You’re blind, dumb, and ignorant. Face it.”
She can’t believe he sees her that way. She could tell him what she sees of him and his future-nothingness, not even a footnote in history textbooks about Harry Potter. She could tell him that she sees him as petty, spoiled, coward, stupid, not even second best, not even considered worthy competition, lying here, pathetic and weak, weak, weak.
“You want to know when I’m crazy? You want to know when I’m not pretending?” His chest heaves, and he leans forward, fists bunched tight, body taut, muscles stressed, and he says in a harsh whisper, “It’s when I can tolerate you.” He smiles with satisfaction. “That’s right. It’s when I can stand to have you in the same room as me and not want to strangle you. I know the curse for it, my aunt taught it to me. She said it would be a useful spell, one of the most entertaining ones. ‘If you don’t want to get their dirty blood on you,’ she said. You make them strangle themselves, they’ll even bleed from the eyes sometimes if you do it right.”
Hermione gasps, and she’s scared. She’s never been so scared that she’s at a loss, not since first year when she panicked in face of the very real Devil’s Snare. Her wand is slack, dangling from limp fingers. She’s afraid because she’s choking, she can’t force enough air into her lungs, and the oxygen that she does get is so cold and sharp it feels like her lungs and throat are being cut to ribbons from glass inside her. She’s scared because for a long moment, she thinks Draco Malfoy has just done as he told her: he’s strangling her to death. Her hands fly to her throat, and she realizes that he hasn’t done anything, that she’s not being murdered, and that it was all just her imagination.
“Get out of here,” Draco snarls, turning his face away from her.
***
He is not a lost boy, Hermione reminds herself as she steals back to Gryffindor Tower in the early non-hours. Draco Malfoy is not a project you can fix. He doesn’t want pity. He doesn’t even really want attention anymore.
Hermione realizes that it isn’t quite sympathy that draws her back to the hospital wing every night. She feels curiosity churning in her stomach, digging deeper into her mind, and when she closes her eyes tiredly in her bed and sees him behind her eyelids, she knows what it is. The need to know, to understand has wormed into her; she recognizes it and turns over onto her side towards the window and away from the other slumbering occupants in the room. Her pillow becomes wet and her face cold because she’s just lost herself to the need to know the truth.
***
She thinks she can see the madness in his eyes, the loss of reason.
She has never understood him. How could someone think like that, after all? His racism she had reasoned away as jealousy that she was far more talented and smarter than he, or else it could have been explained by his upbringing; he had been conditioned to “think” that way, to behave so mindlessly. His hatred of her had made sense only in a forced formulaic way, in a way that it was expected, and normal for him to hate her. But she had never understood the cause.
Now she can see that it was really crazy because the crazy people never knew or would admit they were crazy; they clung to denial that was impenetrable. He was impervious to reason.
Now she can see the madness, it is obvious. It’s there in his eyes. Delirium. It manifests in so many little signs. But most of all, it is as he said-sometimes he can tolerate her, other times he is consumed by his hatred for her. She has learned to identify those times and to excuse herself from working in the infirmary.
She doesn’t think he’s faking it. Vomiting, seizing up, his fits…He’s not strong enough for that. She cannot believe that he would allow his dignity to be so trampled. Draco Malfoy is not strong enough to fake this. He’s a coward, a weakling-he likes to play at being the leader, but he’s really a follower. The opposite of Harry, who resents attention and leadership, but accepts it anyway because is comes naturally to him, just as Draco Malfoy has always been naturally inclined to seek attention and status, gravitating towards others like him. Pride is everything.
The times when he doesn’t seem to mind her, she brings him books, discusses the philosophy of magic with him, the anatomy of a spell, the composition of a wand. The war feels very distant from her, for the both of them.
***
“A first year’s parents were killed,” says Hermione, her eyes and mind faraway. “He couldn’t stop crying and screaming. I heard him, when I walked past McGonagall’s office.”
She’s sitting on the end of Draco’s bed, legs drawn up to her chest, chin resting on her knees, arms wrapped around herself in the manner of holding herself together. Her shoes are on the floor, and through her socks, her toes are digging into the sheets. In the silence of the hospital wing, she can hear the raw scream echoing again, ringing in her ears.
Draco is hunched in on himself, like he is trying to curl in on himself, and his body shakes slightly from the cold that presses in from outside. He sneers a bit. “What am I supposed to say?”
Hermione shakes her head, her eyes troubled, her tone abstracted. “There’s nothing you can say.”
Draco stares unblinkingly at the ceiling. He can do this for an abnormally long time. “Practice,” he had told her before, sounding pleased with himself. She can remember when he used to blink a lot, furtive and up to something, or else he was sneering so his eyes narrowed to a squint, or else he was furious and losing control of all reason and temper, or else he was scared.
She remains quiet, not regretting bringing up the day’s event, but not wishing to be the first to speak.
Draco wets dry lips with his tongue, still staring at the ceiling, looking straight up, and says, “You should tell him that there’s no one in particular for him to be angry at. You should tell him that he should not go home to his relatives because they will treat him like he’s incompetent of dealing with his grief, and he cannot be complacent. He shouldn’t be. That’s the last thing he should be because then it’ll be harder for him later on, and he’ll either be an outcast because no one knows what act around him, or he’ll be pitied for the rest of his life. And you should make sure he knows that there’s no one for him to be angry, and that being righteously angry is the worst Gryffindor trait you can possibly have, and that its only resolution is to end up in a box next to his parents. You should tell him that before it’s too late. Or else you’ll just have someone else obsessed with getting even, and I should think you know by now that that’s not exactly living.”
This is the most he’s ever said that wasn’t said in a heat of anger. His words are carefully chosen, she can tell, and his tone is precisely controlled.
Hermione begins uneasily, “Is that-” but thinks again and cuts herself off before she can fully ask, is that what you would have wanted to hear? Would that have made you different, given you powers to change your mind, redirect you so you wouldn’t have ended up here? Would that have changed you?
Draco smiles a hard, patronizing smile at her, more like a sneer than anything else, mocking her with grey eyes, knowing what she was about to say but not helping her out. “Anyway,” he says, returning his gaze back to the ceiling, “that’s what I would say.”
Hermione is silent, digesting his words and seeing how they fed her stomach. Not too well. She feels unsettled, disturbed, and this seems to be something he does to her so well. She relives his words (so unnaturally calm for Draco Malfoy! she marvels, and so unnaturally wise, the right thing to say), hearing again the cold consciousness of what he was saying. She hears some truth, and it sounds both foreign and familiar. She is riveted by him; what he says resonates in her head, rippling through her mind, disturbing every thought she’s had.
***
He’s twisting in the sheets when she gets there the next morning, moaning and thrashing. He tries to throw up on Madam Pomfrey, who is holding Draco’s left arm. She shies instinctively behind the partially drawn-up screen.
“Really, Severus!” Madam Pomfrey exclaims, highly aggravated. “The illness can’t possibly be as bad as this!”
“Would you prefer the boy linger like this or chance that this potion will restore his mind?” Snape snarls back, gripping Draco’s other arm.
“His health is at risk here! Perhaps we ought to Stun him-”
“Father!” Draco howls above them. “Father help me!”
“No,” Snape rejects, sneering derisively, his sallow face pale. “There’s no telling whether that will counter the potion. This affliction is to his mind; he must remain conscious!”
“You,” Draco screams at Snape. “You’re supposed to let me do what I want! Father said!”
His voice is abruptly cut off and for a moment, he chokes. His spine has become as rigid as a board, and yet he is still straining up against Snape and Pomfrey.
Snape sees her. His sallow face becomes livid in an instant. Snape’s almost apoplectic with rage as he chokes out, “Miss Granger-interfering-none of your business-points-GET OUT!”
Draco doesn’t seem to remember the incident when she returns in the evening, so she doesn’t bring it up. She fills his silence with empty drivel about her day, preparations for the N.E.W.T.s, the Quidditch game between Ravenclaw and Slytherin.
Draco shivers again, and this time she sees. “Cold?”
“It’s just the room, it’s bloody drafty.”
She peels back the sheets tucked down beneath the mattress around him. She slides into the bed beside him, she turns to face him because he can’t look at her, and she wraps her arms around him. Their weight on the bed dips them closer; they sink into each other. She feels momentarily grounded that they still have substance, that they can push at something and there will be give from their force. Because sometimes she feels like she and Malfoy are sunbeams, bright and light but insubstantial, and it is surprising how easily this fear is quelled just by the way their bodies are solid. She moves, bends, curves so she’s lying flush against him, from ankle to hip. He shivers in her arms, she eases him into her to absorb the tiny jerks of his body like recoils with hers. Her breath heats his skin, and she laves his skin with her whisper, “I’ll keep you warm.”
***
It’s killing her, the not knowing. She can’t sleep, eat, study, she can’t talk to Harry and Ron, she becomes quiet, withdrawn, thinking, considering all the possibilities of what might have happened. She speculates that perhaps he ran into a boggart or some other magical creature that stole his soul away, and she pores through the books, fingers tumbling down spines and trapping pages, trying to find something that would drive someone insane.
There’s a lot of historical evidence, a lot of spells, a lot of jinxes, charms, curses, objects, creatures that might make someone lose their senses. There’s almost too much.
She’s overweighed by both personal research and schoolwork, and she tried to juggle them at first, devoting every break, every spare moment to her studies and every night to gathering, absorbing information. But it doesn’t work; she’s slipping in classes and coursework as the scales tip heavy with her curiosity.
Her professors notice, and now they are concerned, many of them puzzled and a few of them alarmed by her unusual behavior. Hermione Granger is known for her excellence in academics. Hermione Granger is a girl with good priorities. This is not Hermione Granger.
“Are you quite all right, Ms. Granger?” Professor McGonagall stares at her, eyes boring into her. “Is there something on your mind?” she inquires more kindly.
Hermione bites the inside of her cheek hard. “No, I guess I’m just overwhelmed by all the work.”
“Perhaps you want to consider dropping a course,” Professor McGonagall says gently. “It’s perfectly all right, shouldn’t harm your academic standing at all. Seventh year is particularly demanding. It is a point where many outstanding students falter. No one would think less of you if you were to lighten your courseload.”
“I think I’ll be better after the holidays,” she tells Professor McGonagall. “I think I just need a break.”
“Yes,” considers McGonagall, “I quite think you do.”
***
She feels like she barely talks to Ron and Harry anymore. They aren’t in as many of the same classes as they used to be; she’s taking more Advanced classes than they are. But when their paths do cross, she still feels very distanced, as though she and the boys have their own sets of very different problems that occupy them.
“They say you spend a lot of time with Malfoy,” Harry says on one of his rare trips to the library. He has come to talk her out of the castle because it’s a good day and she’s been holed up for too long that she’s starting to look sick. “What do you two talk about?”
Outside, the weather is much colder than it is indoors. Winter feels like clear notes like a sharp whistle on still air, and she wraps her arms around herself to ward off the chill. This year they saw early snows, and the Hogwarts grounds have been completely transformed. Harry isn’t the only one to have an idea to go out walking around; she sees in the distance other groups of people walking slowly through the snow.
“Who says that?” Hermione demands.
Harry falters. “Just-people, you know.”
“He’s just there. I work there. No one goes to see him. What am I supposed to do?”
“Nothing. I don’t care-I don’t mind, Hermione, I just asked. Look,” he says, exhaling shortly. “Ron wants you to come stay with him. Us. For Christmas, and maybe afterwards. Your parents say it’s all right; I’ve spoken to them. Come on,” he says, interpreting her silence. “You’ve always liked being at the Burrow. And besides, everyone really wants to see you.”
“Christmas at the Burrow?” She considers this for a moment. “Yes,” she says at last, “But I can’t spend the summer there. I planned on asking Dumbledore if I could stay at school, help out, or work at St. Mungo’s. I have to come back,” she said apologetically, because Harry looks pained.
A spasm of emotion crosses Harry’s face, but he controls it quickly. Besides, she’s preoccupied with other things on her mind. “Yeah,” Harry says thickly. “That’s fine, too.”
***
Lamps lit, moonlight, dark pale floor cold floor snow pure white beds curled around each other facing out, toes sticking out in the cold, feet trapping the inner edges of the blankets.
She leaves in the morning for the Burrow with Ron and Harry. “I’ll be back in three weeks,” she promises strongly.
“No one’s coming for me,” he says in response. “My father. He’s not coming. And he’s probably forbidden my mother to come too.”
“Why don’t they send you to St. Mungo’s? Why are you still here?”
Draco gave her an odd look. “Maybe because I’m a lost cause.”
Hermione doesn’t know what lost causes are. The Gryffindor in her resents giving up without having exhausted all possible solutions and still she doesn’t accept defeat gracefully. And the rational part of her argues that the odds say there’s always a solution.
She tucks her head beneath his chin and breathes in. For some reason, she has the oddest feeling that she could forget him, and very easily it would be like this had never happened.
***
After Christmas, he’s still there, the same as before.
Pale trees bloom, white birches peeling. Tiny buds are developing, not quite blossoming yet. It’s spring in the air.
It’s stupid and silly, but Hermione has a thought hoping for the best of this year, that he’ll be regenerated whole and not remain a spirit. Springtime is renewal.
Even though she knows he hates it and it’s not right to (and she would hate it, too), she feels sorry for him. She pities him for the talent wasting away, and that he isn’t stronger and more able. He doesn’t ever feel sorry for himself. On the contrary, at times he seems to like it.
Draco has taught her how to sense, she realizes as she walks down the hallway to the hospital wing. He probably hadn’t intended to, but there it is. She sees colors of things, she notices the smells, the sounds, the texture and even the air she tastes. It’s because of how sharp everything is around him.
“Hermione, welcome back,” Madame Pomfrey greets her. “I thought you would have gotten your fill of the hospital wing by now.”
“Oh, no. I become more and more interested in healing as a job when I leave Hogwarts,” Hermione responds earnestly. “Do you need any assistance now? I just wanted to come up and say hello.”
“No, not at the moment, but it’s still flu season so I expect there’ll be students coming up here soon enough. I do need someone to watch the ward while I speak with Professor Snape. I’ll be just about an hour, dear. I am sorry to put you to work just when you’ve arrived.” Madam Pomfrey glances at Draco’s bed somberly. “Although, I am sad to say, perhaps watching over the wing is a futile gesture…”
Her eyes flick nervously to Draco’s bed even as she smiles cheerfully, “Of course not, I don’t mind at all.”
Madame Pomfrey has left the ward to Hermione’s supervision for the next hour, so she rolls the next bed over beside Draco’s after moving aside the screen. Hermione leans back against the headboard and inhales deeply the hospital wing and its perfume of spicy Pepper-Up Potion, the faint smell of chrysanthemum tea (it had healing properties, and Madame Pomfrey was trying something new), the coolness of the air, waiting for Draco to wake up. When she opened her eyes, Draco was awake and staring at her.
“It smells clean,” she defended, embarrassed and nervous because he hadn’t yet spoken and she couldn’t tell who he was.
“It doesn’t smell like anything,” he says bluntly. “You smell.”
At a loss for words and insulted, she finally managed to say coldly, “Excuse me?”
“You smell like lotion and other things.” Draco smiles. “You smell like the library.”
She colors, pink cheeks, the back of her neck heating up, blood rushing red. “What do you mean, like the library? Like old books?” She thinks of mothballs and dust.
“Like paper, a lot of paper. Like the wood of the tables and shelves, and new parchment and ink. Mostly you just smell like a small forest that no one has found yet and so it’s fresher. Cleaner.” He contemplates for a moment, wrinkling his nose, and adds thoughtfully, “Also it has to do with your shampoo. Something fruity.”
“Oranges,” Hermione says blankly, staring at the base of his throat. “Clementine.”
He nods, enlightened. “Yes, that’s right. I thought tangerine.”
Her face is hot, and she feels naked, her hands wrung tightly together in her lap, fingers and knuckles white. She can feel her pulse hammering away, and she isn’t quite sure where to look. But Hermione is a Gryffindor, so she finally stops her wild, darting gaze to look at him, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip.
Draco is looking back at her. His face has flushed a blotchy, dull red also, and he’s sitting rather stiffly.
“Thank you,” Hermione finally speaks, floundering for a moment. “That was…kind.”
“Did you bring more books?”
“Yes.” She drags them out of her suitcase and places them on the nightstand beside his bed. “As you requested. And one of my favorites.”
Draco barely glances at New Theory of Numerology. “I thought your favorite was Hogwarts, A History.”
“That’s just for fun reading. Well, this is fun too.” She says awkwardly, “How was your Christmas?”
He says drolly, “Uneventful. Everyone went home. No one new came around.”
“I’m sorry. But I got you…something.” She hands him a cheerily wrapped present and wishes she hadn’t bothered with wrapping paper after all. It seems like a taunt.
“What is it?” Draco looks at the object in his lap.
“It’s just-just open it.”
“Chocolate,” he reveals a moment later.
“You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted to do it.”
“Thanks, anyway.”
“You’re welcome,” Hermione says softly. She slides off her bed and begins to push it back into its original position, explaining, “Madam Pomfrey will be back any minute. I’m tired, so…I think I’ll just see you tomorrow?”
“Sure,” he says.
It’s a mistake, she thinks to herself as she drags her suitcase on her way to Gryffindor Tower, it’s a mistake to think that Draco has no one else but her, that he waits for her. He has nothing to do but wait for her.
***
Hermione stops short inside the infirmary.
“What’s this?” she asks nervously.
He raises a hand; it jerks to a stop by the leather ties binding him to the bed. “What is there to explain?”
“Why? What did you do?”
“You always think it’s me,” he says sourly. When she doesn’t answer, he says shortly, “I tried to leave.”
Her hand flutters over the knot on his left wrist.
“Don’t bother. They’re magicked, you’ll need your wand.”
It would be no trouble to dispense with the magical binds, but she senses correctly that he doesn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he’s restrained. Hermione sits down on the edge of his bed. “Where were you going?” she asks after a moment.
Draco frowns at her. “It’s none of your business.”
“The dungeons? Out of Hogwarts? Where?” she persists.
“Away,” he snaps and swears softly, “Fucking nag, you’re just like Parkinson.”
This stings, but she doesn’t let it show, or point out that Pansy hasn’t been to see him, ever. Before she can speak, he continues, blowing out his breath impatiently. “I don’t know what you keep coming around here for anyway. Potter and Weasel not giving enough stimulating conversation you have to talk to someone who’s lost his mind?” Under his breath, he mutters, “Don’t understand you.”
“Maybe you can’t understand me, but I can understand you.” Hermione moves closer to the bed.
He’s watching her, looking strangely arrested. He’s changed again. Hermione pauses, tense, waiting to see who emerges from his silence. She studies the mercurial grey eyes carefully and prompts, “Draco?”
He’s assessing her, giving her a masculine appraisal, pewter-grey eyes roving her face, lingering on her lips and meeting her eyes.
“I just want to,” he whispers. “I just want to do this…” and he groans, aching. He arcs upwards. “Kiss me, Hermione.”
She can see some self-hate clouding his eyes; he hates that he’s asking, on the brink of begging. He hates giving in, and in some way this is like losing the Snitch to Harry for him. And still he can’t stop himself.
Hermione settles down on him, her knees pressing deep into the soft mattress, her arms taking her weight as she places her hands carefully on either side of his head. “Like this?” she whispers anxiously above his lips. “Like this?”
His eyes crinkle even as they turn dark like mercury. “I don’t know; you’re not kissing me.”
She covers his lips with hers. His lips are soft and a little chapped. His mouth is very dry, his lips slightly chapped. He tastes bitter, the taste of the last potion Snape made for him; he tastes like healing herbs and there, that’s probably crushed rattleroot, and that’s powdered bezoar…
It is a mysterious slide of tongues and taste of his mouth and it is the sweetest, strangest, most beautiful kiss anyone has ever given her.
His long fingers brush hers, and the sensation ripples through her, feeling like magic and when she raised her wand in Ollivander’s and gave it an experimental flick. The warmth floods through her. She feels powerful, and there is that absolute, certain feeling of rightness.
Hermione wants him. Like the first touch of magic, she wants more. She wants his hands on her, and she crushes herself to him, sinking down into him so she can lie against that lean, hard body. His tongue flicks, tickles the roof of her mouth. They break away, and he runs his teeth down the line of her neck as she bows her head over him, resting her forehead against his; she shudders, shaking on top of him. His eyes are grey, dull from lack of health, but his lips curve and she feels his breath warm against her mouth.
“There, now I have it too,” says Hermione softly, beaming down at him, her hair curtaining their faces from the hospital wing.
They kiss and kiss and kiss until both their faces are flushed red, smiling at each other nervously.
She grips his larger hands, his long fingers, twines them together so their knuckles bump. “If you could, what would you do right now?” she asks seriously.
His eyes are serious. “If I could I would spread your hair across the pillow and I would kiss you again.”
She smiles. “Okay.”
He smiles wanly back. “Okay.”
***
The next day, he is unwell again. Madame Pomfrey doesn’t let her into the Hospital Wing. He is bawling something indecipherable; it is so bad that Dumbledore and the other Hogwarts staff have gathered in the room.
He loses energy and health every time his mind lapses. That night, he is withdrawn and appears even thinner. She wants to curl around his body, share the space and warmth, but she can’t tell what he knows tonight. So she lets the space have him. She eases onto a bed, drawing her legs up and sitting cross-legged as she waits for morning.
He appears resigned to her presence, and only when she’s sure that he’s asleep does she unfold cramped legs and stumble her way to his bed. Hermione huddles closer to the bed. She leans over him. His eyes are shut.
“I want to pick you apart,” she whispers. “I want to get lost in you, but I want to find you, too. I want to see your mind. But I don’t, also, because you’re more mysterious to me than you’ve ever been. I always thought I knew who you were, childish and cruel, but now I think I know you, and I still don’t know you well enough. I want to unlock you and see the workings of your mind, but I don’t want to solve you.”
She wishes her breath would be enough to warm him and her touch enough to heal. She flutters her fingers briefly over his closed eyes before returning to Gryffindor tower.
***
Hermione rests her chin in her hand as she examines his closed face.
“Why are you here?”
“Why are you here?” he asks in return.
Hermione frowns at him in annoyance and clarifies, “How did you get like this? What happened?” When he doesn’t respond, she adds impatiently, “Don’t you think it’s time we stopped avoiding it?”
“I looked into the mirror.”
“What?”
“The mirror…” Draco’s voice is wistful. “The Mirror of Erised.”
Part 2/2