HP -- Getting a Life V: The Third Mistake
Title: Getting a Life
Chapter: 5. The Third Mistake
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Draco/Hermione
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,184
Warnings: tomfoolery, and regular foolery
Summary: Hermione Granger loves metaphors. Draco Malfoy loves Muggle cigarettes. What happens when the king of Slytherin and the queen of the library collide?
Author's Note: Your first mistake was reading this far. Whoa-ho.
HERMIONE
I didn’t tell Harry and Ron about Malfoy when they came back for a series of reasons. First of all, they were tired, sweaty, and irritable after what had apparently been a less-than-stellar Quidditch practice. Second, I didn’t think that it was any of their business what allergies plagued a surprisingly susceptible Slytherin. And thirdly, they would have made a joke out of it-out of his near-death experience-and would have berated me for helping him. As far as I was concerned, he was conceited and elitist, yes, but those flaws didn’t merit a death sentence by any means. I couldn’t think of anyone who deserved to die for the things he’d said and done.
Well, there was Voldemort, I guess.
All the same, I didn’t so much as allude to Draco Malfoy.
“What’ve you been up to?” Ron inquired grudgingly as he and Harry trudged into the common room, as if he thought it was his duty to ask even though he didn’t really care.
I shrugged and smiled in a way that I hoped seemed blithe and innocent. “Homework,” I answered.
The two of them blinked at me.
“Bookworm,” Ron remarked, dismissing my attention to study as a futile pastime-typical Ron, of course.
I raised my shoulders again briefly and then moved on. “Well, that’s about all I’ve got to do for tonight anyway.” The lie came smoothly as I collected my things and started for the stairs. “Sleep well.” I didn’t give them time to call me back. Fortunately, their recent exertion had effectively deprived them of the energy that would have been necessary to puzzle me out, and they let it go.
Most of the next day passed calmly, probably because we didn’t have any classes with the Slytherins. Though I did get into a pretty heated argument during lunch-about a spell, and with a Ravenclaw girl. I was right, as it turned out, which was good, because I wasn’t really allowed to be wrong.
It was just after that, as I looked up from my victory and glanced around to see who my supporters were and whether they were rejoicing appropriately, that I noticed one pair of eyes on me that were uncharacteristically soft and unassuming. Thinly, but without the trademark hint of malice, Draco Malfoy smiled. I had time only to blink at him before he returned his full attention to his meal, leaving me to wonder hesitantly if I’d fabricated the whole thing in my mind. But why would I imagine something like that? Surely I didn’t care-didn’t care about Draco Malfoy, didn’t care about his interest, didn’t care about the attention. Besides, the remotest sign of his interest probably indicated nothing more and nothing less than a plan for revenge. I should be wary, not excited.
I’d like to think that I couldn’t help myself, but that might very well be a lie, and we all know that lying to yourself is “categorically detrimental to [your] psychological well-being.”
Psychology and You, if you were wondering.
In the early hours of that afternoon, the ample traffic in the Gryffindor common room drove me to the library (no pun intended). There, in my fragile sanctum, glares from Pince kept the gigglers and the gossips in check. And people wondered why I liked the library so much. Had they ever considered the fact that it was the only place on campus boasting both books and silence?
As I worked on one of my longer assignments for the evening, I can say without (much) vanity that I epitomized the kind of intense focus that teachers loved and students hated-writing briskly but neatly, cross-referencing every statement with a few reliable sources, my forehead furrowed, my hair tied back to keep it out of the ink, the tip of my tongue caught between my teeth. Other kids despised that sort of a display, because they weren’t willing to put in the effort required to duplicate it. Professors cherished it like a family heirloom, loving it all the more because it was so rare. I was the supreme prizewinner of a rare breed: students who put schoolwork before Quidditch, before Hogsmeade, and before indulging in absurd romantic intrigues with fellow slackers.
But it is true that, in a car or on a bike or on a pair of ice skates, the faster you go, the worse it’s going to hurt when you fall. The road was slippery, the sidewalk was uneven, and the ice was thin, but I was cocky, and I didn’t take the time to evaluate my surroundings. That omission was going to cost me, and it was going to cost me big.
When someone sat down in the chair across from me and put his feet up on the table, I assumed that it was Harry, or, more likely given the way in which my visitor had casually desecrated the library’s sanctity, Ron. That was the first of my mistakes.
It was a mistake because I didn’t look up for a little while, and when I did, my visitor was Draco Malfoy.
I looked at him, hearing the ink fall from my suspended pen and land on my paper-drip…drip…drip. He looked back. After a moment, he smirked.
“Granger,” he greeted me, neutrally enough.
“Malfoy,” I responded slowly. I stuck the pen back in the ink bottle.
“I think we need to have a heart-to-heart,” Malfoy announced.
“You’ve developed a heart, then?” burst out of my mouth without my approval.
I saw a flash of anger in his light, light eyes, eyes that hinted of a midwinter moon in a frozen sky, eyes like ice wreathed in silver, but then he smiled. It looked like it might have taken some effort to produce that smile, but it was the apparent difficulty that made the expression almost…noble.
Before I could shudder at the very prospect of Draco Malfoy acting with some semblance of grace, he spoke again.
“I’m not here to fight with you, Granger,” he said calmly, a smirk tugging at his lips again.
I watched him carefully, but not carefully enough. “Then what do you want?” I asked. Letting him continue-that was my second mistake.
With earnest interest tempered by his indomitable calm, he leaned forward. “I want us to understand each other,” he told me. “I want to be on even footing for once. I want us to put our weapons away; I want us to take our teeth out of each other’s throats. I want peace for once. I want a truce-a cease-fire. I want to be able to sit in Potions and not have to consider the possibility that there’ll be a knife in my back the next second.” He sat back and looked at me discerningly. “Does that sound feasible?” he prompted.
A man that could use “feasible” in a sentence correctly merited an answer.
“That sounds perfectly feasible,” I said. I wasn’t sure if it was true.
He put his hand out to shake, and when I took it, he presented me with a small gift in return: a little smile. Not a smirk, not a grin, not a grimace; no whiff of supercilious smugness rising from it like the fumes from a fetid corpse; no sardonic twist to his lips or acrimonious arch to his eyebrow. It was the smile of a smaller boy, an innocent boy, a naïve boy, a boy beleaguered on all sides by an unsympathetic and inimical world. It was the smile of a boy who could see the tongues of flame licking their way towards his stronghold, which, for all its height and grandeur, was very, very flammable.
When you read as much as I do, it comes as little surprise when you read into things. I read a lot into that little smile, and what I perused there convinced me that there was more to Draco Malfoy than I had seen before. That little smile promised me that he had more than two dimensions, that he was a genuine human being, that he nurtured his hopes and his dreams and his fears in the solitary dark of the night like everybody else, and that he was far more vulnerable than he was willing to admit.
I saw all those things, and then I released his hand, but he wasn’t finished.
“I don’t want to blame anyone,” he said, quietly now, folding his arms and meeting my eyes, “but we’ve done a lot of stupid things-both of us have. We’ve treated each other like children, like jealous children, and that’s inexcusable. We’re not fighting for the same toys, are we? Not seeking the same affections? So why bicker? Why spit in each other’s faces and blacken each other’s eyes?” Ever so slightly he shook his head, and white-blond hair fluttered like a dove’s feathers and then settled. “What we’ve been doing, the way we’ve been acting, is destructive and, worse, pointless. I say we put an end to it.” His piercing eyes found mine and burrowed into my pupils, rooting around in the dregs for something of worth. I was suddenly desperate to give it to him.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I responded.
I had always unhappily conceded, inwardly at least, that Draco Malfoy was an attractive individual. Now, true to my belief that circumstances can alter perceptions, he was better-looking than ever. There was a rakish tilt to his brief grin, and the deliberate, definite lines of his face, cut quickly and confidently from pale, rich marble, looked more regal than snobbish.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” he asked me. With a nod to the books I had open on the table, he added, “I understand if you’re busy.”
With incredible speed and dexterity, especially for someone with a bit of a tendency to trip over thresholds and run into poles, I slammed all my books shut and jammed them into my bag. “I’m not,” I declared. “Where would you like to go?”
He shrugged. “Around.”
Around ended up entailing a quick exit from the castle, where prying eyes might seek us out and stare at us in utter disbelief, and a quick escape down to the lake, of which we began to stroll the perimeter idly. The insistent breeze squirming through the trees and slapping at the water wreaked havoc on my hair, which was soon out of its restraints and free to whip into Malfoy’s face as much as it pleased. To my surprise, instead of shoving me into the frigid water to die when this event occurred, Malfoy laughed-if more dryly than enthusiastically.
Some time between the first and the second circuit of the lake, we started talking, and it was then that the palisades really came down between us. We dismantled them personally, piece by piece, subject by subject, and, without the obstruction, we had a clearer view of each other than I ever would have thought possible.
“I feel like I have to prove myself,” I said dully. “I mean, if everybody’s out there shouting, ‘Mudblood, Mudblood,’ I’ve almost got an obligation to show them that I can do as well and better than any wizard else. You know what I mean?”
Malfoy nodded slowly, his eyes on the grass beneath his feet. “And, on the flip-side of that,” he responded in a low voice, “if my father’s not going to think I’m a disgrace to the entire extended family, I’ve got to prove that I can do even better than you.” He glanced up and gave me a glimpse of an ironic smile. “Which I can’t.”
“At least you have an ounce of common sense to go with your good grades,” I replied with a thin smile of my own. “If there was an exam for practical intelligence, I’d fail it.”
“Granger,” he said, “I don’t think you’re physically capable of failing an exam.”
“It would be a monumental first,” I noted, “but it would happen.”
He smirked.
As we wandered back into the castle to the silent serenade of the sunset, I reflected that things were going remarkably well. Illogically well. Impossibly well.
We both paused, rather reluctantly it seemed, at the diverging corridor where we had to part ways.
“Well,” I attempted awkwardly, “I…guess I’ll see you in Potions tomorrow.”
When he nodded, I started to go, but he called me back.
“Granger,” he said.
I turned, and he put a hand on my shoulder, pulled me towards him, and kissed me.
I didn’t know much about kisses, but Draco Malfoy’s was wonderful. I could have drowned in it and died happy. It was everything I’d hoped for and a thousand things I’d never dreamed of.
But it didn’t last long, because he pulled away and, looking horrified and disgusted with himself, bolted down the hallway without giving me time to call after him.
I stood blinking for a moment, and then I turned and stumbled dazedly back to my dorm.
The third mistake that I made that afternoon was falling in love with Draco Malfoy.
[Chapter IV] [Chapter VI]
Chapter: 5. The Third Mistake
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Draco/Hermione
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,184
Warnings: tomfoolery, and regular foolery
Summary: Hermione Granger loves metaphors. Draco Malfoy loves Muggle cigarettes. What happens when the king of Slytherin and the queen of the library collide?
Author's Note: Your first mistake was reading this far. Whoa-ho.
HERMIONE
I didn’t tell Harry and Ron about Malfoy when they came back for a series of reasons. First of all, they were tired, sweaty, and irritable after what had apparently been a less-than-stellar Quidditch practice. Second, I didn’t think that it was any of their business what allergies plagued a surprisingly susceptible Slytherin. And thirdly, they would have made a joke out of it-out of his near-death experience-and would have berated me for helping him. As far as I was concerned, he was conceited and elitist, yes, but those flaws didn’t merit a death sentence by any means. I couldn’t think of anyone who deserved to die for the things he’d said and done.
Well, there was Voldemort, I guess.
All the same, I didn’t so much as allude to Draco Malfoy.
“What’ve you been up to?” Ron inquired grudgingly as he and Harry trudged into the common room, as if he thought it was his duty to ask even though he didn’t really care.
I shrugged and smiled in a way that I hoped seemed blithe and innocent. “Homework,” I answered.
The two of them blinked at me.
“Bookworm,” Ron remarked, dismissing my attention to study as a futile pastime-typical Ron, of course.
I raised my shoulders again briefly and then moved on. “Well, that’s about all I’ve got to do for tonight anyway.” The lie came smoothly as I collected my things and started for the stairs. “Sleep well.” I didn’t give them time to call me back. Fortunately, their recent exertion had effectively deprived them of the energy that would have been necessary to puzzle me out, and they let it go.
Most of the next day passed calmly, probably because we didn’t have any classes with the Slytherins. Though I did get into a pretty heated argument during lunch-about a spell, and with a Ravenclaw girl. I was right, as it turned out, which was good, because I wasn’t really allowed to be wrong.
It was just after that, as I looked up from my victory and glanced around to see who my supporters were and whether they were rejoicing appropriately, that I noticed one pair of eyes on me that were uncharacteristically soft and unassuming. Thinly, but without the trademark hint of malice, Draco Malfoy smiled. I had time only to blink at him before he returned his full attention to his meal, leaving me to wonder hesitantly if I’d fabricated the whole thing in my mind. But why would I imagine something like that? Surely I didn’t care-didn’t care about Draco Malfoy, didn’t care about his interest, didn’t care about the attention. Besides, the remotest sign of his interest probably indicated nothing more and nothing less than a plan for revenge. I should be wary, not excited.
I’d like to think that I couldn’t help myself, but that might very well be a lie, and we all know that lying to yourself is “categorically detrimental to [your] psychological well-being.”
Psychology and You, if you were wondering.
In the early hours of that afternoon, the ample traffic in the Gryffindor common room drove me to the library (no pun intended). There, in my fragile sanctum, glares from Pince kept the gigglers and the gossips in check. And people wondered why I liked the library so much. Had they ever considered the fact that it was the only place on campus boasting both books and silence?
As I worked on one of my longer assignments for the evening, I can say without (much) vanity that I epitomized the kind of intense focus that teachers loved and students hated-writing briskly but neatly, cross-referencing every statement with a few reliable sources, my forehead furrowed, my hair tied back to keep it out of the ink, the tip of my tongue caught between my teeth. Other kids despised that sort of a display, because they weren’t willing to put in the effort required to duplicate it. Professors cherished it like a family heirloom, loving it all the more because it was so rare. I was the supreme prizewinner of a rare breed: students who put schoolwork before Quidditch, before Hogsmeade, and before indulging in absurd romantic intrigues with fellow slackers.
But it is true that, in a car or on a bike or on a pair of ice skates, the faster you go, the worse it’s going to hurt when you fall. The road was slippery, the sidewalk was uneven, and the ice was thin, but I was cocky, and I didn’t take the time to evaluate my surroundings. That omission was going to cost me, and it was going to cost me big.
When someone sat down in the chair across from me and put his feet up on the table, I assumed that it was Harry, or, more likely given the way in which my visitor had casually desecrated the library’s sanctity, Ron. That was the first of my mistakes.
It was a mistake because I didn’t look up for a little while, and when I did, my visitor was Draco Malfoy.
I looked at him, hearing the ink fall from my suspended pen and land on my paper-drip…drip…drip. He looked back. After a moment, he smirked.
“Granger,” he greeted me, neutrally enough.
“Malfoy,” I responded slowly. I stuck the pen back in the ink bottle.
“I think we need to have a heart-to-heart,” Malfoy announced.
“You’ve developed a heart, then?” burst out of my mouth without my approval.
I saw a flash of anger in his light, light eyes, eyes that hinted of a midwinter moon in a frozen sky, eyes like ice wreathed in silver, but then he smiled. It looked like it might have taken some effort to produce that smile, but it was the apparent difficulty that made the expression almost…noble.
Before I could shudder at the very prospect of Draco Malfoy acting with some semblance of grace, he spoke again.
“I’m not here to fight with you, Granger,” he said calmly, a smirk tugging at his lips again.
I watched him carefully, but not carefully enough. “Then what do you want?” I asked. Letting him continue-that was my second mistake.
With earnest interest tempered by his indomitable calm, he leaned forward. “I want us to understand each other,” he told me. “I want to be on even footing for once. I want us to put our weapons away; I want us to take our teeth out of each other’s throats. I want peace for once. I want a truce-a cease-fire. I want to be able to sit in Potions and not have to consider the possibility that there’ll be a knife in my back the next second.” He sat back and looked at me discerningly. “Does that sound feasible?” he prompted.
A man that could use “feasible” in a sentence correctly merited an answer.
“That sounds perfectly feasible,” I said. I wasn’t sure if it was true.
He put his hand out to shake, and when I took it, he presented me with a small gift in return: a little smile. Not a smirk, not a grin, not a grimace; no whiff of supercilious smugness rising from it like the fumes from a fetid corpse; no sardonic twist to his lips or acrimonious arch to his eyebrow. It was the smile of a smaller boy, an innocent boy, a naïve boy, a boy beleaguered on all sides by an unsympathetic and inimical world. It was the smile of a boy who could see the tongues of flame licking their way towards his stronghold, which, for all its height and grandeur, was very, very flammable.
When you read as much as I do, it comes as little surprise when you read into things. I read a lot into that little smile, and what I perused there convinced me that there was more to Draco Malfoy than I had seen before. That little smile promised me that he had more than two dimensions, that he was a genuine human being, that he nurtured his hopes and his dreams and his fears in the solitary dark of the night like everybody else, and that he was far more vulnerable than he was willing to admit.
I saw all those things, and then I released his hand, but he wasn’t finished.
“I don’t want to blame anyone,” he said, quietly now, folding his arms and meeting my eyes, “but we’ve done a lot of stupid things-both of us have. We’ve treated each other like children, like jealous children, and that’s inexcusable. We’re not fighting for the same toys, are we? Not seeking the same affections? So why bicker? Why spit in each other’s faces and blacken each other’s eyes?” Ever so slightly he shook his head, and white-blond hair fluttered like a dove’s feathers and then settled. “What we’ve been doing, the way we’ve been acting, is destructive and, worse, pointless. I say we put an end to it.” His piercing eyes found mine and burrowed into my pupils, rooting around in the dregs for something of worth. I was suddenly desperate to give it to him.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I responded.
I had always unhappily conceded, inwardly at least, that Draco Malfoy was an attractive individual. Now, true to my belief that circumstances can alter perceptions, he was better-looking than ever. There was a rakish tilt to his brief grin, and the deliberate, definite lines of his face, cut quickly and confidently from pale, rich marble, looked more regal than snobbish.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” he asked me. With a nod to the books I had open on the table, he added, “I understand if you’re busy.”
With incredible speed and dexterity, especially for someone with a bit of a tendency to trip over thresholds and run into poles, I slammed all my books shut and jammed them into my bag. “I’m not,” I declared. “Where would you like to go?”
He shrugged. “Around.”
Around ended up entailing a quick exit from the castle, where prying eyes might seek us out and stare at us in utter disbelief, and a quick escape down to the lake, of which we began to stroll the perimeter idly. The insistent breeze squirming through the trees and slapping at the water wreaked havoc on my hair, which was soon out of its restraints and free to whip into Malfoy’s face as much as it pleased. To my surprise, instead of shoving me into the frigid water to die when this event occurred, Malfoy laughed-if more dryly than enthusiastically.
Some time between the first and the second circuit of the lake, we started talking, and it was then that the palisades really came down between us. We dismantled them personally, piece by piece, subject by subject, and, without the obstruction, we had a clearer view of each other than I ever would have thought possible.
“I feel like I have to prove myself,” I said dully. “I mean, if everybody’s out there shouting, ‘Mudblood, Mudblood,’ I’ve almost got an obligation to show them that I can do as well and better than any wizard else. You know what I mean?”
Malfoy nodded slowly, his eyes on the grass beneath his feet. “And, on the flip-side of that,” he responded in a low voice, “if my father’s not going to think I’m a disgrace to the entire extended family, I’ve got to prove that I can do even better than you.” He glanced up and gave me a glimpse of an ironic smile. “Which I can’t.”
“At least you have an ounce of common sense to go with your good grades,” I replied with a thin smile of my own. “If there was an exam for practical intelligence, I’d fail it.”
“Granger,” he said, “I don’t think you’re physically capable of failing an exam.”
“It would be a monumental first,” I noted, “but it would happen.”
He smirked.
As we wandered back into the castle to the silent serenade of the sunset, I reflected that things were going remarkably well. Illogically well. Impossibly well.
We both paused, rather reluctantly it seemed, at the diverging corridor where we had to part ways.
“Well,” I attempted awkwardly, “I…guess I’ll see you in Potions tomorrow.”
When he nodded, I started to go, but he called me back.
“Granger,” he said.
I turned, and he put a hand on my shoulder, pulled me towards him, and kissed me.
I didn’t know much about kisses, but Draco Malfoy’s was wonderful. I could have drowned in it and died happy. It was everything I’d hoped for and a thousand things I’d never dreamed of.
But it didn’t last long, because he pulled away and, looking horrified and disgusted with himself, bolted down the hallway without giving me time to call after him.
I stood blinking for a moment, and then I turned and stumbled dazedly back to my dorm.
The third mistake that I made that afternoon was falling in love with Draco Malfoy.
[Chapter IV] [Chapter VI]