Parade of the Sun - Dramione

PART THIRTY.

9:24pm

He still wasn't sleeping. The image of Harry and Ron like that was haunting the darkness behind her eyeballs too, but she knew it was a lie. Draco hadn't even bothered putting the fire out or lying down yet. Maybe he saw his parents, however he might have seen them, and it brought back the worst of what he had been fearing for the two years before and during the war. Maybe it was some type of bad memory.

He looked pensive and lost, and the dagger turned over and over again in his hand. He looked like he really needed a hug, and while Hermione had never been one to refuse, she really didn't think he would appreciate one at the moment. The only time he had let his guard down long enough to accept any of her comfort was when he felt like he killed a person. If she tried to do that now, he would probably push her away and roll his eyes. Maybe get angry at her for always trying to help people, even when they didn't need or ask for it. It would be a revisit to their house-elf argument.

"What's that constellation right there? Do you know?" She had been curious about it since she had lain down. She liked the layout of the stars.

He glanced at her before rolling his eyes up to the sky, and she was glad it brought him out of whatever dark paths his mind was traveling down. "Which one?"

"That one." She pointed.

He looked at her finger, up at the sky, and then gave her a frustrated look. He sighed in aggravation as he got up, walking over to her, and squatted down beside her. She pointed again and he looked up. She watched his throat bob as he swallowed, followed the line of his jaw, and then lifted her eyes back to the sky.

"I don't know."

"I thought you took Astronomy for almost all of Hogwarts?" 

"I never learned that shi--"

"You're as bad as Harry and--"

"I will not hesitate to set your penguin on fire."

She rolled her eyes, looking back at the sky. "I always found the stories interesting, but I never really studied them."

He hummed, and she glanced at him from the corner of her eye when she heard him sit down next to her. "Do you see that star? Right there?"

"The one in the middle?"

"Complete whore."

She laughed. "A whore?"

"Shagged every person she saw. Ended up with eleven different diseases, and was killed by her husband - that one - before he threw a house-elf out the window." She gasped at his fake story as he lay down next to her, and he nodded. "Some of these are scary, Granger. Are you sure you can handle them before bed?"

"I think I'll be just fine, Malfoy. Don't scare yourself, though. I wouldn't want you--"

"That one, there, Hermiona Grange, was--"

"Terribly clever name alteration."

"Do you want to hear the story or not?"

"Does it involve horrifying things happening to Draca Malfe?" 

"Of course. He met Hermiona Grange."

She laughed and elbowed him as he smirked, his shoulder settling against hers. He was pointing out all the stars that made up Hermiona's hair when she fell asleep against his warmth.

November 5; 2:19pm

She stood with trepidation down to the marrow of her bones for two different reasons. The first, and obvious, was the set of stairs that stood before her. She couldn't even call them something as little as a set. They were a mountain of stairs. She had counted up to three hundred before she stopped, and she hadn't even been a quarter of the way through. They were killer stairs.