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Chosen	By : TillieJupiter Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 8284 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: In its use of intellectual property and characters of Harry Potter belonging to JK Rowling, Warner Bros, Bloomsbury Publishing, et cetera, this work is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this wor

Chapter List
- 5
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- 7
The snow that was falling from the sky onto the already blanketed ground created a low rumble in the wind. Hermione sat in silence on a bench in the courtyard and let the snowflakes fall onto her. She was dressed in a light wool jacket with no other winter protection; her hair was beginning to dampen and freeze from the snowflakes that drifted down and landed in her mane. With each breath, she saw her essence escape in earthy bellows of fog. It was a Saturday afternoon, and she found herself captivated by the snow and the perfect, glimmering flurry underfoot.
“You’re going to catch a cold if you stay out here,” a voice said from behind her.
Hermione turned around and saw Ginny walking towards her. Ginny’s steps were heavy as she carefully made her way through the thick snow. “Hey, Ginny,” Hermione said, smiling.
Ginny made it over to Hermione and haphazardly cleaned off a seat next to her on the bench and then sat down. “Hello, Hermione.” Ginny smiled at her friend. “You’re not even wearing a hat!” the girl mused as she took in the sight of her friend.
Hermione laughed a little, and put her hands to her hair to feel the dampness that had collected.
“Not even gloves?!” Ginny laughed and pointed at Hermione’s bare hands; Ginny was wearing a complete winter wardrobe, as if she might go on a long trek north.
“You’re becoming even more like your mum,” Hermione teased.
“Take that back!” Ginny laughed.
“Sorry, I only speak the truth!” Hermione laughed with her friend.
“So, what are you doing out here?” Ginny asked when their laughter died down.
“I don’t know,” Hermione said softly. “I just saw it snowing and I wanted to watch.”
“Well, you look a tad mental. It’s freezing out here!” Ginny whined as she crossed her arms over her chest.
“Honestly, I was getting a little stir crazy,” Hermione confessed gently. “Sometimes, I think the Head Boy and Girl quarters are more suffocating than the old Gryffindor quarters.”
“Well, I don’t blame you,” Ginny said. “I don’t think I could take being around Malfoy for more than a few moments, let alone sharing quarters.”
“I mean, we don’t even interact very often. It’s just…confusing,” Hermione admitted.
“What do you mean ‘confusing’?” Ginny asked, with an inquisitive look on her face.
“Maybe it’s just natural,” Hermione continued as if she didn’t hear the girl’s question.
“What’s natural?” Ginny asked again, looking confused.
Hermione then seemed to be awoken from her trance and looked over at Ginny with a smile. “I’m sorry, I’m just talking to myself,” Hermione said shaking her head of her thoughts as if it were a Muggle Etch-a-Sketch.
“Are you okay, Hermione?” Ginny asked her friend with some concern.
“I’m fine, Ginny. Sorry to bother you. It’s just strange being around someone so much—especially when you’re supposed to hate him,” Hermione explained. “But you’re right—I am cold. We should get inside.” Before Ginny had the opportunity to ask her friend any other questions, Hermione stood up and started back to the castle, and Ginny followed. They passed by the empty spot where the destroyed bench used to lie, as a relic of Draco Malfoy’s fury. In the back of Hermione’s mind, she took note of its absence.
“So, where’s Harry?” Hermione asked. She was breathless from their slightly arduous march back.
“What? I can’t exist without him?” Ginny teased as her breathlessness matched Hermione’s.
“No! I mean, it is hard to get you alone,” Hermione admitted.
“Have I really gotten that bad?” Ginny asked sincerely.
“No, no, don’t listen to me,” Hermione said trying to cover her previous words—she didn’t want Ginny to feel bad. “Maybe, I’m just jealous,” she admitted humorously.
“Oh, well, in that case, good!” Ginny laughed as she opened the door into the castle. She knew her friend meant about her relationship in general and not about the person she was in a relationship with—everyone knew that Harry and Hermione just had a purely platonic friendship.
When they got in, they wiped the melting elements off their bodies and stomped their feet to rid the snow from shoes.
“I think I need a cup of tea and to sit by a fire now,” Ginny said resentfully.
“Sorry,” Hermione laughed. “Though, you really should buck up.”
“I hate the cold,” Ginny groveled.
“Obviously,” Hermione laughed again. When they finished ridding their persons of the snow, they looked at each other for a moment.
“So, do you want to hang out with us in Gryffindor?” Ginny suddenly asked, expectantly.
Hermione looked at the girl for a moment thoughtfully and then smiled. “Sure! But I think I should change—my clothes are rather wet,” she said. Though she was wearing a coat, its fiber and her exposed parts had absorbed a fair amount of moisture.
“Great!” Ginny beamed. “I’ll meet you back there. Everyone will be ecstatic!” Ginny said as she started excitedly back to the Gryffindor quarters. “See you soon!”
“See you soon.” Hermione smiled as she turned to return to her own quarters to change her pants, shoes, and take her jacket off.
Hermione strolled back to her quarters with a smile on her face. The visions of the falling snow and cold breeze had filled her soul with a feeling of optimism, and it seemed fortuitous for Ginny to come along. Now, for once, Hermione actually felt like being social with her fellow Gryffindor classmates as she felt slightly dizzy by her isolation, especially as her thoughts had taken a strange turn towards being somewhat considerate towards the Slytherin Head Boy. As she walked closer to the portrait door of the Head Boy and Girl quarters, she started to take off her soggy wool coat in preparation for her planned activities with her friends.
“Lucios lemos,” Hermione said cheerfully to the painting. The painting slowly swung open with the familiar screech as she held her weighty jacket in her hand.
“No! No! Fuck! No! NO!” screamed from deep within the quarters. The sound of glass shattering filled the air followed by masculine howls. The ruckus seemed to be coming from the shared bathroom up the stairway. More sounds of shattering glass filled the air as rhythmic hammering sounds.
Immediately, Hermione dropped her coat and ran towards the sound in a slight panic. As she ran into her room, Hermione swung open the unlocked door into the bathroom and found a shocking sight, which made her gasp. On the other side of the bathroom, Draco stood in front of the now shattered mirror, with thousands of pieces of his reflection scattered all over the floor. Hermione watched him angrily punch the mirror again—mostly hitting the wood underneath—as some of the remaining fragments of the glass fell as he screamed at his broken reflection.
“Malfoy, what’s going on–” Hermione began to ask, slightly hysterically. She watched him with wide eyes as he spun to look at the person who had just walked in on him. He looked wild: his nearly white blond locks chaotic from him pulling at them; his face pallid and covered in sweat; his mouth slightly agape as he took in fervid, shallow breaths; and his eyes reflecting more fear and panic that was consuming. He displayed more emotion than Hermione had ever seen in a person, and the vision in front of her almost made her feel embarrassed to share such a moment with someone like Draco Malfoy.
Suddenly, Draco lunged at her and Hermione stepped back, but before she could get out of his reach—which was her immediate reaction—his hands roughly gripped at the collar and sides of her button-up shirt. It was then that Hermione realized his hands were stained with blood, no doubt as a result from his relentless pounding of the glass mirror. He began to shake her, almost violently, ripping a couple buttons from her shirt. Hermione’s hands instantly went to grip his wrists that held her tightly.
“What color are my eyes?!” he bellowed at her in panic as he shook her.
“Wh-What?!” Hermione cried out in bewilderment.
“WHAT COLOR ARE MY EYES?!” he screamed again as he shook her harder, his crimson blood staining her crisp white shirt.
“Gray! Gray! Your eyes are gray!” Hermione screamed back as she looked into his panic-stricken, glistening pools. Her face displayed shock and panic, but also incredulity as he desperately shook her for an answer.
With her answer, he seemed to let out a deep breath as if he had been holding it trapped within him like the demons that overwhelmed him. He had stopped shaking her violently but still clasped onto her shirt.
“They’re gray?!” he asked against desperately, this time softer as his voice cracked.
“Yes!” Hermione yelled back.
And then his face fell and he looked at the floor, and instantly Hermione heard the boy begin to cry. Her hands fell from his wrists—feeling almost intimate in the touch—but also in her shock at the developing scene before her. His breathing became quick and thin, coming out in bursts to match his sobs as he squeezed his watering eyes shut. He still clutched at her shirt and she felt the weight of his arms begin to pull at her as his body began to sink into misery. True disbelief filled Hermione at the sight of the Head Boy—the Prince of Slytherin, and her tormentor—weeping in front of her. The embarrassment she had felt before when she had come upon a panic-stricken Draco now seemed childish compared to the way she felt now; it almost felt like the scene before her must be a nightmare and she hoped to wake from it at any moment.
“Draco,” Hermione breathed.
He continued to sob, his face not meeting hers, but his body began to give out from the weight of his emotions and failing physical strength from his ordeal. He continued to clutch at the Head Girl’s shirt. As he began to slowly fall to the ground, he pulled her with him, and Hermione found herself sitting on her knees on the bathroom floor as Draco curled into a fetal position before her. With his hands still tangled in her now blood-stained shirt, he pulled himself close to her and rested the top of his head against her belly and continued to cry.
The emotions that overwhelmed Draco were almost like nothing he had felt before—except once last year where he found himself in fight or flight with Harry Potter and chose to duel it out with the other boy that nearly ended in his blood going down the drain. This time, however, he had come face-to-face with a non-hostile, and he immediately fell into despair rather than quick, violent, and useless action. The panic he had felt when he looked into the mirror was so consuming that the only way he could express the necessity of jumping out of his skin was to destroy his own reflection and bloody his own hands, as if to destroy himself. The fear, shock, panic, anger, and sorrow he felt was so resounding within his soul that his identity—and reputation—was of no consequence; he needed comfort, even if from a supposed “enemy”.
Hermione found herself gripped by the boy, his blood and tears staining her shirt as she sat on the floor with him as a prop in his misery. She was lost for words and even thoughts—her mouth was agape in her disbelief at the situation she found herself in and she could do nothing but remember to breathe. But not only had she become tongue-tied—which was a rarity for the bright witch—she was beginning to feel a pain within at the sight before her. The humanity she had seen before when she had watched Draco in the Common Room was magnified exponentially to a point where Hermione wondered if she had ever been part of a situation that was so intimate in its outpouring of true emotion.
“Draco,” Hermione breathed again; her voice was soft and somewhat consoling, and his name—his real name—was all her mind could form. Her hands, which felt awkward, were at her side stiffly being held up as if not to touch the delicate person in front of her, but then she felt that she had to do something with them to ease the situation. Hermione reached out and with her right hand began to lightly stroke his hair in almost invisibly light touches—afraid of his reaction if her impulse was wrong. When she found that he did not react negatively, she began to add more pressure to fully stroke his hair in downward motions of comfort. The small amount of blood that was on her hands that had dripped down on his wrists where she had previously held him added to the light pink streaks that were already imbedded in his locks. It was only in this position that she noticed the streaks that displayed his previous frenzy.
She continued to find herself speechless, and she simply acted on her impulse to help him; she had never witnessed such abandon of sanity before as his eyes had displayed pure terror. Hermione felt like she had little option but to act as a means of comfort to a person, any person, even Draco Malfoy, who found him grappling with the demons of psychology.
They sat there for a while as Draco’s sobs became quieter. He eventually let go of her collar and he fell into her lap where he nuzzled his head as if into his childhood pillow. Hermione felt slightly embarrassed by their position, but realized that he was probably completely unaware of any possible questions of impropriety, so she felt it was inappropriate for her to assign those thoughts or feelings to the situation. She continued to stroke his hair, as it seemed to be calming him, and her other hand rested on the back of his shirt where she just let the weight portray her proximity and support.
As the initial shock of the situation settled within Hermione, and she looked down onto the boy who had been reduced to a crumpled pile on the floor, his hands bloodied and face wet with tears, she felt her feelings get the best of her. Within her, the empathy she had previously felt for the boy turned into sadness and she felt her hazel eyes fill with tears as her mind analyzed the deep despair that the Draco Malfoy must be feeling. She felt heartbroken for him, and found tenderness in her touch and thoughts of him as he was broken before her, like the reflective glass that was strewn about the bathroom in symbolic disaster. Though she did not know the demons he was battling within him, she felt compassion as she watched those demons tear him apart. Tears fell down her cheeks as she continued to stroke his hair consolingly.
Draco.
Draco realized it was late as he opened his eyes and the moonlight from his bedroom window rested upon his face. He was in his Head Boy bed, still in the clothes he was wearing before. For a few moments, he lay and confusedly wondered how he had gotten there and what had happened to explain why he had ended up in his bed, and then the memory flooded back to him. The last thing he remembered was being curled up in a ball on the frigid flagstone floor of their bathroom, his head in Hermione’s lap, and his arms wrapped around her waist as he cried himself into a dreamless sleep as chaos surrounded him.
His head was still pounding, and he found it was the familiar searing pain as if the broken shards from the mirror he had destroyed were slicing him into pieces for dissection. He groaned as he brought his hands to his head in agony. While he rubbed his eyes and head in a useless action to try and make the pain go away, he suddenly realized his hands did not hurt. In the darkness, he looked at his hands and inspected them as best as his eyes could and noticed there were no signs of the self-inflicted injury caused by the shattered mirror. Groaning again, Draco suddenly realized the part the Head Girl had in his panicked state; not only had she been there to be his comfort in his moment of need, but she had obviously not only helped him to his bed but healed his hands.
Though his memories and realizations were clear, his emotions were so spent and the pain in his head so raw that the voices that would normally be there to chastise, shame, and scream were quiet. He simply accepted the situation for what it was in that moment and sat up in his bed wondering what time it could be. Feeling around his nightstand, his hand came in contact with his wand that was left on the corner ready for him. Lifting the wand up, with a small wave the candles lit next to his bed. The glare of the flame at first hurt his weary eyes, but soon he found himself adjusted. On the nightstand he saw a glass of water was left and a small vial. With curiosity, he leaned over and saw a piece of parchment was left and read it.
Drink this tonic. –HG
Sighing, he quickly uncorked the small vial and downed the bitter liquid before gulping down the entire glass of water. Letting out a throating grunt as his dry and strained throat absorbed the cool liquid, he sat on the side of the bed as he tried to regain his physical bearings. As he felt the blood begin to circulate through him, the pain and stiffness that his limbs felt began to fall away. Suddenly, he realized his feet felt cool and he looked down and saw he was no longer wearing shoes. Within him he felt a twinge of annoyance at how considerate the Head Girl had been in her care for him.
As he felt his physical energy renew from the tonic, Draco noted he still felt numb emotionally as if all the feelings he was capable of feeling were spent and he was empty inside—he didn’t even have anything left for the shame, embarrassment, or anger he was supposed to feel. Leaving his wand behind, Draco stood up and heavily walked to the door of his room and opened it. A slight orange light lit the small hallway and stairs that led to the Common Room below, that had a half-spent fire blazing.
From the corner of his eye he caught candle light on the other side of the room where he found Hermione peering at a book as she stood up in front of his bookcase. Hearing the noise of his door opening, Hermione’s head whipped around to catch his eyes that looked down at her. Immediately, she closed the book and put it back in the bookcase as if she had been caught in the act, but Draco’s mind was so clouded and exhausted he didn’t think anything of the scene. Quickly, Hermione walked towards the stairway as if to meet him with her candle in hand. Draco slowly made his way down the stairway, his heavy steps, jostled clothes, and wild hair portraying his ordeal and exhaustion. Hermione watched him with anticipation, but remained silent.
“What time is it?” he asked groggily.
“I think about one o’clock,” she said softly.
“Why are you still up?” he asked as he came face-to-face with her at the bottom of the stairs. The candle light lit both of their faces in a secret ancient glow.
Hermione had changed her clothing, but had not changed into her pajamas as if she had previously been sleeping or expecting to sleep anytime soon. Her hair looked slightly wet as if she had taken a shower in the past few hours with her curly tendrils still wet and fragrant. Her face looked neutral, but her eyes were wide and attentive, and held no anger, hate, or disgust—which was what Draco was used to. She didn’t answer his question, and for a moment he just looked at her and realized that the answer would be embarrassing for both of them—she was waiting up for him. He didn’t know if she was waiting to interrogate him, but her silence made him think she was waiting simply for his benefit and not to squelch her curiosity.
Draco walked past her, the candle flame flowing in his direction as his form moved by, and sat down on one of the couches. He stretched his legs out and set them on the coffee table in the center with little regard for its historical significance.
Feeling awkward, Hermione walked over and sat on the opposite couch silently and set the candle down in the center when she couldn’t think of anything better to do. Though she had purposely stayed up figuring he might wake up, and maybe in a panic again, she had not thought about what to do—or say—when she did see him again.
Ten or so minutes passed, and Draco stared off groggily into the flames that were beginning to soften past their half-life, with his eyes filled with a tired melancholy. Hermione’s eyes switched between various places within the dorm in her feeling of awkwardness—the fire, the floor, the ceiling, and Draco in sly peeks. As it became clear that they could possibly sit in awkward silence forever, Hermione decided that she had fulfilled her purpose of verifying the Head Boy was okay—or at least better—and that it was probably time to go to bed.
“I’m going to go to bed,” Hermione said softly as she stood up, and took the candle holder in hand before peeking at Draco for a moment. When he did not look up from his gaze at the fire or respond, she started for the stairs. “Goodnight,” she said softly again as she turned and looked at him again for a reaction, which he did not give. Hermione went up the stairway, opened her bedroom door, and walked in, but before she closed it she heard his voice.
“Hermione?” she heard, and she peeked out to look down at him.
“Yeah?” she replied, as she looked out from behind the door. He turned his head to look at her from below, their eyes meeting.
“Thanks,” he said gently.
Hermione offered a slight smile and then closed the door slowly to her room as she felt a blush rise to her cheeks when her eyes quickly averted at his words of appreciation—words and sentiment she thought she would never hear from him. As she disrobed, dropped her clothes forgotten on the ground, put on a nightdress in distraction, and then made her way into her welcoming bed, her mind focused on her confused thoughts of the Head Boy—the Slytherin Prince and her long-time tormentor. She could not have fathomed events within such a short period of time could make her thoughts on Draco Malfoy shift so dramatically.
Her anger, annoyance, and even hate of him had shifted towards sadness, empathy, and non-hate of the boy. This shift in her feelings not only made her feel confused, but a little ashamed as she thought of what her friends—specifically Harry and Ron—would think of this. But then she remembered how secluded and different she had become from her friends in the past several months, and wondered if this is what life was all about—evolution, progress, and change. And these past months had really shown how different she was from her friends, even in her thoughts of the Head Boy. Unlike them, she didn’t hate him with such a passion that there was no reason or rationale—which was typical of both Harry and Ron.
Maybe, when she put her feelings of hurt from his cruelty aside, which as the years had gone by had become less painful—other than recently when he hurt her feminine ego—she really didn’t hate him as much as her friends had convinced her she had. Then, the feelings of shame subsided as she started to feel maybe in her maturity she was simply growing as a person, which even included forgiving those who seemed unforgivable. And then she felt her mind and body become calm and she drifted into a peaceful slumber.
Draco.

Chapter Note(s):
Special thanks to Beta Reader Free_Buckbeak.
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