Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

How Did This Happen?!	By : dracoyoflam Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 6368 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the potterverse or characters. I just like to play with the already created world and characters. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 10
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- 12
Draco had searched approximately half of the school grounds before he gave up and decided to go back to the common room to rest and think. He lounged on the bed, his head propped up against the headboard.
‘I’ll just close my eyes for a moment.’ He thought before falling into a deep slumber.

Hermione had stopped crying, her eyes were burning and itching as she sat at the broken window looking out at the unused Quidditch field. Oh how much she missed Harry and Ron! She wished that she could wake up and find that this had all been a terrible nightmare! Just a dream, a figment of her subconscious.

But it wasn’t a dream and she was reminded of that wherever she looked at the damaged castle, and listened to its silence due to the absence of people. The castle reminded her more of a solemn crypt than the dynamic school environment.

She hated being alone, being away from her friends – but being unable to help them felt even worse! She was used to helping them, to pulling them out of the holes they’ dug for themselves! She truly hated feeling so useless! She couldn’t handle the thought of something happening to the people that she cared about; especially as she wasn’t there to sort everything out afterwards.

Hermione leaned against the wall, staring out at the pitch. Her thoughts drifted to the happy memories she had of this school before this happened…
... Harry and Ron. Where were they? Were they hurt? Were they dead? Her eyes started to fill with tears and when she couldn’t hold them any longer she at last let them drop down her face.

In the meantime…

Draco’s dream almost seemed real. He was back at that house again from his last vision, only this time he was able to go inside. The house was very dark and dirty but it had an ominous feeling to it. There was a filth that was more substantial than the dust and dank… something foul lived here.

The house had minimal furniture, cracked, broken and uncared for; the carpeting was just as dark as the walls, only the threadbare patches of filthy grey breaking the gloom. There was so little light that it would be easy to walk into a wall or piece of broken furniture because you couldn’t see.

Suddenly he realized he wasn’t alone. He walked with his Father through the house and finally met another being in one of the dark hallways.
The being was dressed in monotonous black, a long black cloak trailed behind him like a sinister mockery of a wedding dress trail. Draco saw the being’s skin glowing faintly in the darkness, and probably would have made a remark about the odd appearance, had it not been the Dark Lord himself he was standing before.

Draco would have been lying if he’d said he was unaffected. He was terrified of the man, if ‘man’ is what you could have called him. The man’s face was distorted, flattened, like a snake. His nose was almost completely flat, slits opened to reveal crimson eyes.

Draco found himself to too distracted by the Dark Lord’s appearance, he’d never been this close to him before. He could see the faint shadows around the scales on his cheekbones, the forked tongue that flicked as he spoke, ears that didn’t protrude like a normal human…he didn’t hear anything that the two men had said to each other.

The next thing he knew, they were in a room just as gloomy as the rest. It was full of figures in dark robes with their faces covered with the skull masks to maintain anonymity.
His father was talking out to everyone in the room but Draco could only barely make out some of the words.
“We will be watching… The plan will succeed I guarantee you all… she will fall, no doubt.”
This was making no sense to Draco, what was he talking about?
“He will… she will be vulnerable to our powers… defeat. We will have victory for our lord.”

Draco was only catching about half of what he was saying. He couldn’t quite make out the rest of what he was saying. It was like he was hearing the conversation underwater, the other words were slurred or garbled in his hearing. It finally hit Draco what his father and ‘The Lord’ had been blabbing about as if they had said it again just so he would hear them.

“Someone pure of heart, Harry Potter will die to insure our victory against her… this potion will help you my son. This will make it easier to do your part.”
Everything went black and he awoke in a cold sweat and had absolutely no idea what it all meant. His neck hurt from the position he’d fallen asleep in. He’d only wanted to close his eyes for a moment, he’d been asleep for almost an hour!

‘What does all this mean?’ he thought, wishing he had Granger’s logical mind… ‘Wait! Hermione’ he thought, getting up and resuming his search for her.
He searched in every part of the castle that he was able to get to, presuming that if he couldn’t get into a room, that she couldn’t either. After three hours, he started to fear the possibility that she had left Hogwarts without him, he decided to check the one place that he hadn’t reached yet.

He finally made it up the stairs of the astronomy tower to think about his nauseatingly strange dream. What did it all mean? Who was going to fall? What’s did a pure heart have to do with potty Potter? Why was it always about him, there were much more capable and dangerous wizards in the world – but the Dark Lord was… obsessed with Potter!

He saw her as he walked into the room. Hermione had fallen asleep by the windowpane on the opposite side of the room, she leant against the cold stone near the jagged edge of the glass, and she was slowly sliding towards the sharp edge of the window’s remains. Draco slowly walked over to her and picked her up gently in his sturdy arms.

‘Its only to stop her scratching her face more on the wall and poking out an eye on the window!’ he thought to himself.
She sighed in her sleep and turned her head towards his chest, snuggling into his warmth; one of her arms crept around his waist.
‘Wow’ He thought. ‘She is so beautiful when she sleeps; she looks just like a nymph.’

He just stood there looking at her face, even with the scratches from the castle wall that had been her pillow, he had to admit she was pretty. It had taken him a long time to admit that when she wasn’t trying to be a know-it-all, that she was actually a fine figure of a witch. She wasn’t one for the latest diet or the newest fashions! She was sensible with her body and respected it.
He’d noticed her figure, but had never noticed how obviously pretty her face was and he hated that he hadn’t seen it before.

Soon after…

He laid her down on the bed in the common room, and watched her sleep for a few moments more before shaking the dust from a blanket and covering her up and tucking her in. He sat next to her, watching her chest rise and fall with every breath… he was somewhat surprised to feel something inside of himself that he had never felt before.

He wasn’t sure if he liked feeling those things, and decided ignoring them and keeping busy was a better plan than trying to work out what these odd flutterings of emotion were, but he couldn’t ignore them!

He slowly stood up and left the room to head for the kitchen. He grabbed what food he could and packed it into a little bag he had found to bring upstairs for Hermione and himself. He pulled a small cloth from his pocket and packed it full of ice before he started back for the common room. He sat out all of the food and other items on a table that he had just spent the past few minutes repairing and cleaning.

He knew that nothing short of a miracle would cause Hermione to forgive him, but he wanted to take care of her the best he could before she woke up to find him there with her.
He slowly walked over to Hermione and very carefully placed the cloth full of ice onto her already bruised and slightly swollen cheekbone, she had a black eye on one side and scrapes from the stonework down the other. As soon as he placed the cloth on her face, she woke up and looked him in the eyes.

At first he thought that maybe she was about to smile but then the look in her eyes changed. He could tell that he was about to get it so he tried to calm her before she did anything… painful.
Hermione sat up so fast that she practically fell out of the bed and Draco stood so quickly that he practically fell over from tripping over his feet. Their wands were both drawn and aimed at each other.

“What are you doing Malfoy?! Leave me alone, I can’t believe that you would actually have the nerve to try and speak to me again after what you did. You’re actually trying to touch me… what is wrong with you?! Leave now!” she said with a calm voice, quiet and menacing. Harry and Ron knew better than to argue when she used ‘that voice’… Draco didn’t. He hadn’t associated ‘that voice’ with barely suppressed rage, he’d associated it with being sleepy and a bit upset.
“Hermione, I can explain…”

A very pissed off Hermione cut him off, “Don’t even try to call me by my name! You have lost that right! You are not even close to being good enough to call me anything! Go away now, leave me alone!” Her voice was still calm, her wand hand steady; but the flashing sparks in her eyes gave him an indication of just how enraged she really was with him.

Draco walked backwards over to the door, not turning his back to her, It was an eternity before he finally opened his mouth to speak, he hung his head as he thought of something to say.
“What are you doing? Leave!” She hissed in frustration.

Draco was slightly less depressed at the fact that Hermione probably couldn’t see his face, because much to his surprise he actually had tears in his beautiful grey eyes.
“Her...umm, I just wanted to let you know before I go that I’m so incredibly sorry. I mean… errr… there aren’t good enough words that I can even use to describe how sorry I am… you know, for what I did. If it helps, I didn’t mean to do it and if I could take it back I would do it without hesitation.” He paused for a moment and then continued, “All I want to do is comfort you right now and I can’t because I’m the one who has created the discomfort.”

Hermione stared at him and felt herself getting more frustrated by the minute. “Honestly, I could care less about what you have to say right now so if you could just leave me alone, that would be great.”
Hermione was giving him a death glare, and Draco was honestly glad that looks couldn’t kill. She waited for him to finally walk out of her sight. Draco took a step like he was actually going to turn leave, but before he went any further he froze and looked her in the eyes as he spoke his last (rehearsed on the way back from the kitchens) words to her.

“Hermione, I know that you’re mad at me and I don’t blame you. You have every right to be mad at me right now, but before you decide that you hate me I just wanted to let you know something…”
He stopped and changed his body composure to something that Hermione couldn’t read because she had never seen it before, she’d never seen Malfoy talk to his shoes. He wouldn’t look at her, but evidently his footwear were wonderful to converse with! His lack of bravery in facing her rankled.

Draco took another deep breath and continued in a whisper, “Hermione, I… I think I might love you. I think, I’m not really sure what it feels like to be honest. People have said that love is a beautiful thing that makes you as light as air. People have said that when you hurt the one you love that you’ll feel the hurt tenfold… I hurt so badly when I see you angry at me! Its as if I struck myself… but when I’m with you, everything feels like it will be alright – even though I know it isn’t.

“I think I might love you more than anything in this world, more than anything in existence… I’ve nothing to compare this to! I think this is odd to say the least! I’ve never actually loved anyone before, let alone said it… Well I just had to tell you this before I left you here by yourself… erm… Goodbye.” With these last words said, Draco turned on his heel and walked briskly, almost running out of the tower and down the stairs without looking back.
If he’d have looked back, he’d have seen Hermione sat there trying to decide if she had been dreaming or not.
..
....
..
Hermione stayed in the tower by herself for hours thinking about what to do and how she should handle the situation. Finally she couldn’t take the pain of her cheek or the problem with Draco. She summoned some sleeping potion and was glad to have the vial fly into her hand! Atleast something had survived the devastation! She read the label and was pleased to see the almost illegible script of Professor Snape, equally pleased to read the potion hadn’t past its ‘drink by date’. She drank down the entire potion in one big swallow, and sleepily decided that she would approach Draco later, after she woke.

Later on…

Hermione ended up sleeping through the rest of the evening and most of the night before she finally awoke up to find that she was still alone and a little cold. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and walked down from the tower to the bathroom. She turned the knobs on the shower wall and made herself some comfortably warm water to shower in. She stripped off her clothes and slowly slid into the warm bath. At least this bathroom still had running warm water – even if the bubbles didn’t work.

The water felt wonderful as it soothed her aching muscles and washed away her worries for the moment. She loved the feel of the water swirling around her soft body. Slowly she put her head back, letting the water soak through her long hair.

Hermione thought to herself, ‘oh, there’s nothing else in the world that could feel better at this moment!’
At this thought she stood up from the water, frozen like a deer in headlights. ‘Wait.’ She thought, ‘The best feeling is the way I felt when Draco told me…’

She couldn’t stop the warm feelings when she whispered lightly, “…He loves me.”
- 10
- 11
- 12
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How Did This Happen?!