The Gralfoy Affair (or, The Oblivious Ones) - Dramione

Chapter Seven

"Nothing, why are you--"

"The bracelet. You touched it, you called."

She looked down at her hand, clamped around her opposite wrist, palm pushed against her St. Mungo's hospital bracelet. "Oh, I didn't--didn't mean to at any rate. I was just overwhelmed talking to Ron."

He rolled his eyes dramatically enough for his entire head to swivel. "Let me get some sleep, would you Granger?"

"Sorry. And you were right," she called to Malfoy as he was retreating behind her closing door. "You were right about the scandal. It's all a mess over at the hospital, and at the Burrow."

"Well, of course."

"And I've told Ron that, for now, he doesn't need to worry about me. He's not responsible for me."

Malfoy stepped back into the room, a flush of pink across his cheeks. "Yeah, well that makes two of us. When my house was hunting you, I felt compelled to intervene. It was Malfoy magic, even if it wasn't exactly mine. But don't get used to it. Now that we're clear of the manor, I'm claiming that equal partnership I was promised when I agreed to all of this."

She took a step toward him, brow furrowed. "Have it. I never intended anything less than independent collaboration."

"Then snap out of it, Granger. Pay attention to our surroundings. Shape up. Read a real book."

"I am an extremely accomplished reader!"

"Then be as bright as everyone tells us you are. Have a care."

"I'm trying, Malfoy." She swore at him. "I am trying, but I'm sick. Doesn't anyone believe me? I'm sick."

She sat down hard on the edge of her bed, easily resuming her crying.

He groaned, hating it. "Look, just--get some rest, yeah?"

Outside her door, Draco Malfoy went down the stairs instead of up, out into the streets and Swindon's weekday nightlife. The high street was all but empty, nothing open but a chemist, a liquor store, and greasy kebab shop where people ordered food at a window and disappeared to eat it alone. Perfect. Connecting with hunger again was a healthy sign. Maybe it was a benefit from eating his mother's cooking after so long, canned and preserved for years though it was. He leaned against a bus bench and ate away at the kebab, the sound of trains rumbling through the town, going to and from London masking the nearly unbearable sound of his teeth and jaws working. He needed his own advice. He had to stop thinking like a hospital patient and start thinking with coolness and calculation again. With Granger flagging the way she was, it might be the only chance they had to keep this up all the way to Canada.

Play nicely, Draco. Mother--what had she been playing at in the manor today? Why come out fully hostile toward Granger? Surely his parents weren't they still bent on that purity nonsense--that flimsy, sickening excuse for grasping at other people's wealth, status, and power. Those conjurings today, the flowers and perfumes--what were they meant to tell him, to force him toward? Entertaining the idea that they might not have been attacks would have been too risky so he'd cut off his mother's advances as soon as he sensed them. But maybe there was more to them, machinations he still couldn't see through, not in this state of mind.

He wiped his face and hands on a paper napkin, disgusted at the smell of food on his skin. His apparation legs were returning to their normal steadiness. His third trip should be perfectly normal, even solo. He could go back to the manor alone, while Granger slept, and let his parents reach him, find out their schemes if it was for no purpose other than to inoculate himself against them, making sure he didn't become their little white pawn again. He'd put off contacting them long enough. Wasn't that what Berlant had been trying to tell him? What it was all coming down to, what was forcing the crisis, was the question of whether his mother had been trying to separate him from Granger, or push them together, rehabilitating the damaged Malfoy name through an alliance with British wizarding society's favourite Muggle-born hero, Hermione Granger.