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Atonement	By : absumoaevum Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 13720 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor to I make any money from this story. These characters are JKR's, I just play with them.

Chapter List
- 4
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Chapter 5

I Was an Island

Hermione secretly wished she could stay in the library forever. But by dinnertime she’d run out of homework and Ginny would be wondering where she had gotten to, so she packed up her books and folded her essay parchments carefully and headed down to the Great Hall.

On the way, she stopped by the girl’s loo and ended up staring at her gaunt, harassed-looking face for a long time in one of the cracked mirrors. She didn’t like who stared back. Her eyes were muddy brown; her hair was a mess. She was a mess.

What was she doing anyway? What was she playing at coming back to school and pretending like she didn’t just spend the last year of her life hunting down horcruxes with Harry and Ron and getting tortured and escaping impossible situations and watching the people she loved die horribly?

It felt like a game, like a clever ruse to trick herself back into normalcy. But her life had never really been normal, had it? Not since McGonagall had showed up at her front doorstep to explain that the wonderful things she could do were magic, that she was a witch, and that she was invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Every day since then had been an adventure.

And now it was supposed to stop. Now she was supposed to be the golden girl of Gryffindor and a Witch Weekly celebrity and a student and a normal girl whose adventure had finally, finally come to an end.

Her eyes ached from reading the tiny print of library books. Her hand ached with the strain of writing essays and drawing diagrams and taking notes. Her head ached with trying to sort out her priorities, trying to focus on school. Her heart ached with missing Ron and Harry. Especially Ron. Why didn’t they write? Why didn’t she write them? Why did she feel so desperately lonely, so isolated?

Hermione turned on the faucet and splashed the cool water over her face. She tried to get a handle on her fly-away curls. She patted her wet skin dry on a hand towel without looking at herself again.

She was going to finish her seventh year and take her N.E.W.T.s and go on to have a brilliant career and that was just the way things were going to be. This feeling of listlessness, of loneliness, would pass.

Dinner. She should go to dinner.

Hermione swept out of the bathroom and down the corridor to the Great Hall and the sound of hundreds of chattering voices. As she walked, she forced her shoulders back and her chin up. Everything was going to be fine.

+++

Draco followed Sprout down the staircase leading off the Entrance Hall to the corridor below. About halfway down the hallway and near a conspicuous-looking painting of fruit, they came to a halt. They were standing before a shadowed recess full of massive barrels. This is the entrance to Hufflepuff?

Professor Sprout patted him on the shoulder and stepped forward. “Second barrel from the bottom, middle of the second row. Easy enough to remember,” she said with a smile over her shoulder to Draco. “Just tap the rhythm of ‘Hel-ga Huf-fle-Puff’ with your wand like so— ” she demonstrated with her own wand “—and voila!” An opening had appeared at the top of the barrel.

“We go down there?” asked Draco, unsure of how to proceed. “How?”

“There’s a ladder, dear,” replied Sprout. She clambered over the rim of the barrel and disappeared into its depths. Draco heard her call “Come on!” at him as if from a great way down.

It required some finagling with his tender ribs and sore leg, but Draco managed to climb into the barrel with his backpack in tow. He took each rung of the ladder one at a time, careful to get his footing. Perhaps he was being overly-cautious, but he wasn’t completely sure he wanted to see the common room below. The feeling of otherness grew with each step of his descent. He caught glimpses of yellow and black wall hangings and the colorful blooms of large, leafy plants.

Finally, Draco reached the worn rug at the bottom of the ladder and turned to see the Hufflepuff common room for the first time. It was large, low-ceilinged, warm and comfortable. Sprout stood a little ways away with her hands on her hips near some younger students who seemed to be waiting for Draco to move so they could make their way up to dinner. Draco hobbled out of the way, taking deep wheezing breaths after the effort of climbing down the ladder (Madame Pomfrey had told him it would take some time for his lungs to heal, but this was ridiculous!), yet no one moved.

“Well, here we are!” said Professor Sprout into the utter silence, gesturing around the room. The Hufflepuffs were staring at him unabashedly. It must have been a strange sight. Here he was, Draco Malfoy, still in his Slytherin uniform, standing in their cozy, fire-lit common room. He supposed that he’d be giving him those quizzical, suspicious looks too if their places were reversed. Still, it didn’t help the situation.

Sprout toddled over to a short girl with long blonde hair plaited down her back. “Susan, this is Draco Malfoy. He’ll be joining us in Hufflepuff,” she said to the girl. Taking her arm and practically dragging an apparently stunned Susan over to Draco, Sprout continued introductions. “Draco, this is Susan Bones. She’s back for her seventh year, too.” Susan was ogling open-mouthed at Draco. She didn’t speak, she simply stared.

Professor Sprout tried again. “Terwilleger! Come here!” she snapped at a weedy-looking boy who sat frozen in one of the squashy armchairs near the fire. Terwilleger stood and walked over to Professor Sprout without a glance at Draco. “Draco, this is Jameson Terwilleger. He’s good in Herbology but he could use a little help in Potions. You’re good in Potions, aren’t you, Draco?”

Again, the silence lengthened. Draco had to hand it to Sprout, she was making a real effort, but the Hufflepuffs all seemed petrified to even speak to him and Draco had no idea what to say. He sort of nodded at Terwilleger, and the boy nodded back. That was something.

Just then, a tall, sandy-haired boy with an upturned nose rounded the corner into the common room from a hallway in front of Draco. Immediately, Draco recognized him as the new Head Boy, Zacharias Smith. “What the bloody hell—” Smith shouted upon catching sight of Draco standing awkwardly near the ladder, but he broke off when he noticed Professor Sprout. He stopped mid-step, presumably to take in the full scene, his eyes roving bemusedly over Susan Bones staring at her sneakers, Jameson Terwilleger gazing firmly up at the ceiling, and the rest of the Hufflepuffs looking shiftily at him.

“No need for that kind of language, Smith!” chided Sprout from between Bones and Terwilleger.

“Sorry, Professor Sprout, I just—”

But Sprout cut him off. “This is Draco Malfoy. He’s going to be sharing your dormitory from now on.” Her words had a sharp-edged feeling of finality to them, as if she’d had quite enough of this behavior from her House.

“He—I—What?!” stammered Smith, seemingly in a transport of bewildered indignation.

“I said,” Sprout began again, her eyes closing as she tried to mask her irritation with calm, “that Mr. Malfoy will be sharing your dormitory here in Hufflepuff House. So you’d better hop off and show him where it is, hadn’t you?”

Smith seemed to struggle inwardly for a long moment before speaking again. “Yes, Professor.”

“Your trunk ought to be in there already, dear,” she said to Draco. “Just follow Smith and he’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping. I’ll wait here for you.” Then she addressed the room at large: “The rest of you, off to dinner!”

There was a sudden rush for the ladder and Draco had to sidle out of the way to avoid being trampled. He was about to join Smith at the entrance to the hallway when a muscular, dark-skinned boy with a yellow Quidditch Captain’s badge pinned to his sweater blocked his path.

“You played seeker for Slytherin, right?” said the boy, his brown eyes locking intently with Draco’s gray.

“Yeah,” Draco replied. The very last thing on his mind right now was quidditch, but the boy nodded curtly and said, “Tryouts are next Saturday. We need a good seeker.” Then he stuck out his hand to shake. “I’m Prescott Cadwallader. See you on the pitch?”

Draco smiled in spite of himself and shook hands with Cadwallader. “Definitely.”

+++

So far, dinner for Hermione was a silent affair. Ginny and her friends discussed their classes and the new professors (Ginny had a lot to say about Percy’s performance as Transfiguration teacher), seemingly oblivious to the fact that Hermione did not participate in the conversation. She listened, but could not work up the enthusiasm to join in. Instead, she played with her food and worried about her Charms essay.

She did, that is, until the absolute strangest thing she’d ever seen walked into the Great Hall. Hermione felt her fork slide from her hand, heard it plop into the gravy of her mashed potatoes, but she couldn’t close her gaping mouth and she couldn’t take her eyes off of Draco Malfoy.

He was striding alongside Zacharias Smith, who was looking sour but not nearly sour enough, in Hermione’s opinion. Professor Sprout walked a step behind, smiling to herself with her hands in the pockets of her patched and dusty witch’s robes. The two boys had sat down a little distance from each other at the Hufflepuff table and Sprout was well on her way to the staff table before Hermione recovered herself. By that time, however, Ginny had noticed something was amiss by Hermione’s befuddled expression.

“What…” Ginny started, but she trailed off as she followed Hermione’s gaze to Malfoy, who was now spooning green beans onto his plate. Cadwallader sat opposite him, and as they watched, he offered Malfoy a dish of roast beef. “How…” Ginny didn’t seem capable of finishing a sentence. Hermione couldn’t blame her.

The rest of the Great Hall seemed to have noticed this singularity as well. There was a rush of whispering and a lot of craning of necks as students struggled to get a glimpse of Malfoy at the Hufflepuff table. In fact, the only people not itching with curiosity or stunned into silence by the sight of Malfoy among the Hufflepuffs appeared to be the Hufflepuffs themselves. If they felt a hint of confusion, they showed no sign of it.

Ginny found her voice again. “What in the name of Merlin’s saggy balls is Draco Malfoy doing at the Hufflepuff table?”

Ginny’s friend Vicky Frobisher and her boyfriend Ritchie Coote practically stood up to get a better look. “Holy hippogriffs,” muttered Vicky in disbelief, and Ritchie added, “That has got to be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. That is weirder than the time Hagrid showed us how bowtruckles mate. That is weirder than—”

“I agree with you, Ritchie, but please shut up,” said Ginny, cutting across him. She turned to Hermione. “Do you think this has anything to do with the fight Malfoy was in with those Slytherin gits yesterday?”

Hermione thought about it as she stared at Malfoy. He took a bite of roast beef. Cadwallader was talking to him about something animatedly. Malfoy nodded and chuckled a little stiffly.

This was unprecedented. This was crazy. Draco Malfoy couldn’t be in Hufflepuff, could he? Well, could he?!

“I don’t know,” Hermione said to Ginny, but Ginny was distracted by something else. She’d turned full around in her seat and was gazing across the Great Hall at the Slytherin table. Over there, a group of boys were making quite a lot of noise, pointing and shouting at Malfoy.

“Hey Malfoy!” one of them catcalled, “Don’t tell me you’re in Hufflepuff now! I didn’t think that being a slimy little fink could get worse, but I think you’ve managed it!”

“Malfoy!” shouted another boy, brandishing his wand in the air, “Glad those wankers would have you, ‘cause we sure won’t miss you!”

If Malfoy could hear them, he ignored them. The rest of the Hufflepuffs, however, glared over at the Slytherin table in disgust, including Cadwallader, who made a crude hand gesture in their direction.

“Hey Malfoy! Malfoy! Is that your boyfriend now?” yelled the first Slytherin boy.

Hermione glanced up at the staff table, where McGonagall was focusing on a treacle tart. The desserts had appeared. Then a bang echoed through the Hall, quickly followed by another, this time accompanied by a flash of brilliant purple light. Hermione’s head snapped back to face the Slytherin boys, one of who was now writhing on the table in agony with many slimy green tentacles protruding from his exposed skin. They wiggled through the air comically as he thrashed around on the desserts, rolling over right into a huge chocolate gateau. His mates staggered back, some falling out of their seats in alarm.

And there, standing alone at the Ravenclaw table with her wand in her hand, was Luna Lovegood. Luna’s back was to the Gryffindor table, but that long, wavy blonde hair could belong to no one else. “Leave him alone!”

Hermione was speechless. She glanced back at Malfoy. No longer pretending to ignore the goings-on behind him, Malfoy had joined the rest of the Great Hall in staring at Luna.

“That will do, Miss Lovegood!” came a carrying, severe voice from the staff table. McGonagall was on her feet. Everyone turned to look at her. Somewhere at the Slytherin table came an anguished cry from the boy with the tentacles. No one bothered to look at him now, though. “Fifty points from Ravenclaw, and another one hundred from Slytherin. Vaisey, you may escort your friend to the Hospital Wing. Madame Pomfrey will meet you there.” No one moved. “GO!” McGonagall bellowed. Hermione watched Vaisey jump with fright and try to extricate what appeared to be Harper from the puddings.

A few strained minutes later, the two boys went reeling from the Hall with all eyes staring at their backs. Madame Pomfrey wiped her mouth at the staff table and hurried off behind them.

“I will not tolerate fighting at this school,” said McGonagall into the general stupor of the Hall. “Really, this is ridiculous. We have all had a trying few years, but that is absolutely no reason to brandish wands at each other like a bunch of drunken warlocks. The next students to be caught dueling on school grounds will be expelled. Now, prefects, please escort your Houses back to their dormitories. I don’t want to hear another peep out of any of you for the rest of the night.”

Ginny stood up at once and looked pointedly around at the Gryffindor prefects. “You heard her,” she hissed. Everyone else got to their feet in silence and started for the Entrance Hall. Hermione watched Malfoy follow the Hufflepuff House prefects out of the Great Hall, still flummoxed by the scene she’d just witnessed.
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Atonement