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Research Encounters	By : Vivian_Mirabilis Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 6606 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter and I'm not earning any money from writing this fic. Anything you recognise belongs to J.K.Rowling.

Chapter List
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A/N: Hey all, so this is the 2nd chapter. Once again please read and review. This is my first fanfiction and I cannot express how much all your feedback means to me! I am still desperately looking for a beta, let me know in a review if you're interested! English is not my native language and although I try my best, I'm sure my texts are full of grammar mistakes and places where they just look strange to a native eye :P
Answering your reviews of the 1st chapter:
@starr Yes, they are :) I thought it would be nice to see them like that, since in most of the fanfics where they are 'grown ups', they are either friendly or already in a romantic relationship. I'm doing my best to update quickly! I really enjoy writing this story, so don't worry there's more to come soon :)
@TheLadyGranger-Malfoy Thank you :) I hope you enjoy the next chapters :))
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Hermione spent the next two days in the library, carefully reading trough “The Hogwarts Castle”. It had taken some time, but at least she had the feeling that she was finally getting somewhere. The blank parchments that she had brought to the library on the first day, were now filled with notes, tables and scribbles. She was pretty sure she had at least worked out the general area of the castle where the secret room was waiting to be found. She decided she would go there the next day and try out various revealing spells, and, with luck, she might find the secret entrance.
In the morning, she decided to go to the teacher's common room first. She hasn't been there for the last few days and she didn't want to cause any suspicion. She missed talking to her friends as well. She had vaguely considered telling Ginny about the hidden room, but in the end she decided that her red-haired friend wouldn't be able too keep it secret for long. Besides, she didn't even know whether it actually existed.
The room was supposed to be located somewhere in the middle of the whole building. It made perfect sense - Hermione had assumed it wouldn't have any windows – if it did, it could be easily recognizable from outside.
Nearing the area, she slowed down to look for any possible clues. She quickly realized that there wouldn't be any. It was probably the most boring spot in the whole of Hogwarts. It was a maze of seemingly endless corridors of stone walls, decorated with nothing more than side-lamps, which shone dull, dim yellow light. From time to time she would approach a turn or an intersection. The doors in this section usually led to storage rooms, old, unused classrooms or lecture halls. Not even ghosts cared to haunt that area.
There were few exceptions – the longest corridor was the direct way from the Great Hall to the Ravenclav dormitories, so it was full of students, and another one was a short-cut to the library – it was also pretty crowded.
She remembered most of the passing students from the classes she had taught. For a moment her gaze drove off towards the crowd to see how many of them she could recognize. That was when, to her surprise, she noticed another very familiar face, though not one she was particularly happy to see.
Draco Malfoy. What was he even doing in that part of the castle?
He didn't notice her, luckily, as he was storming through the crowd, in an apparent hurry. Luckily - because it had saved her the embarrassment she would have to face if he had mocked her in front of all of the students.
Hermine took a moment to make sure Malfoy was gone and got back to the careful examination of the stone walls.
She took a turn on the nearest cross-section and ended up in another empty corridor. Having the advantage of not being seen by the students any longer, she began to try casting revelation spells at random spots along the corridor's walls. It was a tedious task, and after an hour or so, she began to lose faith in succeeding to find the hidden room. She was just about to resign from her quest, turn back and head towards the teacher's room and she decided to cast one last spell at the cold stone wall.
"Aperio!" she mumbled in a bored voice.
What happened next, left her stunned, standing frozen with her jaw dropped down for a good few seconds. In front of her, where a sturdy stone wall was just a moment ago, there now was an elegant pair of old, wooden doors. They looked very ancient, and in an instant Hermione knew that she had found exactly what she was looking for.
It had taken her another half an hour to find the right combination of spells to unlock the door (they were protected by a powerful magical locking technique, which Hermione had thought to be much more modern than it - apparently - was).
Upon entering, she immediately realized that the locking charms were in fact as modern as she had thought them to be, same went for most of the things inside the room.
The chamber was rather small, and, as she had correctly guessed, had no windows. It was lit up by a number of magical light clouds, floating just below the ceiling level. It was a very modern kind of lightning. Hermione supposed they must had been bought at one particular shop in Hogsmeade, where she had seen identical cloud-lights on the display. With the help of a summoning spell, she made one of the clouds come down to her eyes level. Indeed, it did have a modern brand tag. She let the cloud fly back up to the ceiling, and for a moment admired the nice, ambient light emitted by the artificial clouds.
'That's weird', she thought.
It meant that someone had already discovered the room. That person couldn't had revealed this to anyone else, since the room had not been incorporated into any of the official Hogwarts maps. It wasn't depicted on the Maruder's Map either (she had checked that earlier with Harry, not telling him exactly what she was looking for). Very intrigued to find out more about the person who had beaten her at this discovery, she turned her gaze back down to check out the rest of the room.
There were two dark wooden desks, each supporting a messy pile of parchments, and a third, larger one, which, upon closer examination, turned out to be a lab table. There was a set of shelves and drawers placed underneath the table, all of which were filled with various kinds of potion brewing equipment. Some of the utensils were simple, others seemed very complex. Hermione could swear she recognized some of the flasks and beakers as official Hogwarts' instruments. There was also a number of supplies, both old and new, that she could only guess the purpose of, since she had never seen anything like them before.
Carefully, she picked up one of the delicate glass beakers which had a particularly strange shape. She wasn't sure, but she thought that it might have been something called a 'Klein bottle'. It was made of a very delicate kind of magical glass, and when she held it slightly above her head to look through it's suface in the direction of the cloud-lights, she saw a pretty display of iridescent colours flickering inside the glass structure. Such kind of glassware was very expensive, usually tailor-made for a particular purpose, and definitely not something that Hogwarts would pay for. No, this must have been someone's private collection.
Suddenly, the door opened with a loud creak and she dropped the glass beaker. The beautiful flask inevitably obeyed gravity's law and broke down into thousands of tiny pieces.
Hermione looked up to see Draco Malfoy, standing in the doorway with a very shocked expressions on his usually emotionless face.
They stood like that for a minute or so, both too surprised to say anything. Then Malfoy approached the lab table in a few quick steps, and bent down to pick up one of the pieces of the broken flask. It was the piece which had a number and a company logo engraved in it.
Straightening up, he towered over Hermione, and held the broken piece at her face level.
'Of all the glassware I have here, you just had to break this one, Granger, didn't you?' He said icily.
'Look... I'm sorry...' she began, 'I canbuy you a new one. Besides, you're the one who startled me. What are you doing here? This is not an official room,' she answered, sheepishly.
Defensively, Hermione stepped back and was now eyeing him suspiciously. How did he find the room before she had?
'You couldn't afford it anyway,' Malfoy retorted, throwing the piece he was holding back onto the floor.
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It was obvious that the vial was irreparable. It had been shattered into a million pieces all over the floor. Draco backed away from Granger and casted a quick spell to clean up the mess.
After all, he had a much bigger problem now. The secret he had managed to keep hidden for two years had just been discovered. Of all the people who could have found the room it had to be her. Well, obviously, it had to be. Wasn't she the smart one?
Draco had discovered the room after reading an article published by some ancient books researcher who was too stupid to follow the clues himself. He had, however, placed all the necessary quotes from the original book in his text, and it was enough to get Draco interested in further research. He had in fact been worrying, that Granger (or someone else, if there was anyone who read all the publications like she did) could find the idiot's newest publication interesting, read up on his earlier works, and find the secret room same way Draco did.
What would she do now? Would she report the room? In such case it would be incorporated as one of Hogwarts' official chambers and probably serve as a new classroom or private office for some older and more important researcher than either of them. What a waste that would be. But knowing Granger, he started mentally preparing himself for the unpleasant prospect of having to go back to the common room.
'Alright, Granger, congratulations, you found my private study room. Now get out.' Draco said, more to break the silence, than in expectation that she would actually leave.
'Excuse me? Your room? And what makes you think it is your room, Malfoy?' Her voice expressed both irritation and astonishment.
'I found it first,' was all he managed to think up.
Granger's face expression changed from anger to amusement. She would not take this easily.
'Oh, you don't say? Well, I found it now. I can leave, but I'm reporting it immediately. Do you want me to do that, ferret boy?'
Granger took a few steps in the direction of the door, but then she halted, as if daring him to stop her.
Wait, was she considering not revealing the hidden room to the public before she knew he had found it earlier? Could that mean she wanted it for herself? That was very much against the rules and Draco found this possibility amusing and intriguing. Maybe he didn't know the bookworm that well after all...
He looked at her, distrustfully. She was a bit nervous, which seemed to confirm his belief. He could almost picture the gears in her brain turning. She had been counting on having the room for herself, and now that it was no longer an option, she was ready for some kind of deal, which he would have to respect, otherwise none of them would get the room.
'Is that blackmail? How very Slytherin of you, Granger,' he said slowly, giving her his trademark smirk. 'What do you propose?'
'From now on this is going to be my study room, too. I get half of the space,' she decided.
Granger walked across the chamber and sat on top of one of the desks.
'And this desk is now mine,' she concluded.
Draco couldn't believe what he had just saw. She was proposing a deal, and he had to admit it was a reasonable proposition. Or it would have been if they hadn't been enemies for the last twenty years. They had never actually gotten a chance to be alone in one room, since they had always avoided any contact with one another. Their arguments, fights, mocking and trying to humiliate each other had been always played out in front of their peers. He didn't even really mean most of the comments he had targeted at Granger, and he had been mean to her out of habit, or because he had felt he was expected to. Of course, he greatly enjoyed riling her up, but he couldn't help thinking that half it was for the pleasure of the spectators.
If the deal was to be set, the two of them would be spending time alone in the room every day. Even though Draco knew he should hate the prospect of spending time alone with Granger of all people, he was somehow irritated to realise that he felt thrilled, if not excited by that possibility. As if, unconsciously, he had been waiting for an opportunity like this to happen. Suppressing his own unexpected enthusiasm, he looked at her with an emotionless expression.
'Right,' he said, 'just know that I require a quiet environment for my work. And I brew potions in here, so you'll have to tolerate the smells and fumes. As long as you can live with that, I can suffer through your presence here.'
'Like you have a choice,' she muttered quietly, but then changed her tone to a louder and more confident one. 'Then we've got a deal, Malfoy.'
She stretched her arm and walked over to him, offering a handshake. Draco, who was leaning casually against the wall, didn't make a move and couldn't help but chuckle at the sight of her standing awkwardly with an outstretched arm.
'What, are you twelve, Granger?' He grinned at her mockingly.
Just as she made an angry and slightly embarrassed face and was about to withdraw her hand, he quickly got up from the wall and snatched it. He shook her hand, keeping the grin on his face.
Even though she was at arm's length away, the subtle fragrance of her perfume hit his nostrils, and suddenly he remembered their little encounter in the corridors from the week before. She smelled of cherries, vanilla and liquorice. It was a very distinct, unique fragrance, different from any other women he knew. Last time he had smelt it, his nose had been buried in the mass of her brown curly hair, and now he was able to recognise the perfume immediately, anywhere. He couldn't help but think that it suited her perfectly. Her smell was as unique as the whole of her person.
He let go of her hand and turned towards his desk, where he kept some of his notes. He opened a drawer and pulled out a small piece of parchment, handing it to Granger.
'I suppose you've found your own way around the locking and concealing spells, but anyhow, here are the exact instructions. Try not to break the charms, it took me three days to set them up, and it's not easy when the adjoining corridor is full of people.'
'If it took you three days, I could probably do it in an hour,' she retorted, but took the parchment anyway.
'Suit yourself, know-it-all. Next time they wear off, you're the one responsible for repairing them.'
He raised his hands in a gesture of defeat, and turned towards the door.
'Guess I'll see you around, Granger. Don't get too comfy.' With that last remark, he left the room.
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A/N So that's it guys, I know this one didn't have a lot of action, but I promise to include some juicy bits in the next chapter :P Your reviews keep me writing, so please please please, do review! :)
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