Hermione Granger was against the whole idea, right from the very start. Something from the pits of her guts tells her that all of this is leading straight to a trap. But she has always been a clever girl, brave enough to take risks if it means saving her bestfriend and Dumbledore's Army from Umbridge's literal claws.
They were able to be rid of Umbridge. It doesn't matter now that the centaurs hate her for it, they helped them.
But a new problem was resurfacing.
Besides the members of the D.A. was an extra person.
Said person was struggling against a body bind curse between Ron and Ginny. Said person is swearing up and down that Harry is going to die if he goes to the Department of Mysteries. Said person managed to headbutt Neville even with his whole body frozen. Said person refused to look her in the eye. Said person is the saddest, meanest person she has ever met. But also arguably-- mostly to her self-- the most beautiful.
"We're taking him with us," Ron said, anger lacing his deep voice. "They've got Sirius and now we've got this git. Sounds just about right, ain't it?"
"Ron, I don't think--"
"Hermione, this is not the time for thinking, this is for doing! We voted on this!" Neville and Ginny seemed to agree. Ron's bright blue eyes were wide with expectation. He had always had high expectations of her. Like how he expected that she and him... Him and her... That somehow they'd end up together at some point like it was supposed to be. Like everyone is in on the idea. Everyone aside from her.
Screw her for being her own person.
Despite everything-- another evidence of her stubbornness-- she still refused to believe that Draco meant everything he did. Everything about this whole ordeal confuses her.
"I think he might be my cousin," Luna blank pointedly mentioned, her voice soft and dreamy, like she was discussing him over tea and scones.
"We don't have time for this, we either take him or knock him out! Sirius could be dead as we speak!" Harry shouted in agitation, "If you don't take this seriously as I do then I'd rather go alone. My godfather needs me."
His words pierced Hermione and she held his hand. "We're with you, Harry."
Harry nodded with apprehension and squeezed her hand.
The Boy Who Lived will always need the Brightest Witch of Her Age. Just as much as she needs him.
It should go without saying that the rest is history.
But it will not go that way, not with Draco Malfoy's name added to the list that Death had to choose from.
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Draco Malfoy didn't expect to end his fifth year in Hogwarts like this.
Not like a sack of luggage carried on the shoulder of a gaptoothed, redhead sent by the devil himself to antagonize him. What a ballsack.
"Look over there, Weasley. That tank has more brains than all of your clan," he pointed out just to have something to say. Everyone was scared shitless, he knows that if push comes to shove Weasley will abandon him there and there without a second fleeting thought.
He doesn't want-- can't be dispensable, he's Draco Malfoy!
To his surprise the Weasel didn't spit fire at him but merely walked towards the gigantic aquarium of swimming brains as if on a trance. "Brains... Brains... Brains..."
"Oy, Weasley! Snap the fuck out of it, will you? I'm on your shoulder, you daft goon! For fu--"
He couldn't contain his scream as a brain flew from the tank and attached its tentacles right at Weasley's torso. His body hit the ground the same time as Draco felt the curse get lifted from his body. They were the only two in the brain room, the doors revolved too fast for anyone else to be with them. He got his wand from Weasley's back pocket just in time to protect himself from latching brains. They were soppy and soggy against the floor, slapping sloppily against the flat surface, he had to pull the Weasel towards the god forsaken door just because Hermione will have an episode of something definitely unpleasant if the useless log wood dies.
Leaving Weasley hallucinating with a brain twitching at his side, Draco seek out to find Hermione and the rest of the Death Squad or Dumb Alliance or whatever the fools call themselves. They are going to get killed! Who do they think they are? Student wizards and witches, not even of age yet, going against seasoned Death Eaters.
He'd like to see one of them dodge an Unforgivable. Idiots!
"Hand over the prophecy, Mister Potter, and none of your little friends get hurt!"
An undeniable coldness stopped Draco right in his tracks as he approached walls of glowing orbs. Prophecies. Each and and everyone of them a destiny foretold. His father's voice was cold and deep. He didn't hear the reply but he imagined Harry Potter's voice to be small but determined.
And he might just be correct as someone yelled 'REDUCTO!' and thousands of prophecies came crashing down. He ran around them trying to find the source of the voices. Closer now. Closer. The shelves are toppling over themselves, a demented chain reaction.
There was a whip of brown hair and wild eyes that caught his vision, "Hermione!" He shouted.
She looked his way in shock. There was something in her eyes that said 'Stop' but it was all too fast.
A Death Eater was in front of them. "Well, well. If it isn't Lucius' eldest. Care to get this party started, sonny boy?"
He can hear the chain reaction coming their way. It won't be long now. It won't be long now.
Draco drew his want toward the Death Eater. He was shaking from head to foot. Scared to death. If he could close his eyes, he could. He's terrified of death. He knows that he might die, but it's him before her. She can't die. Nothing will make sense if she did. Everything will be for nothing. She's everything.
"Want to dance?" He said with a cool smirk.
"Blood traitor!" The man behind the mask growled. "All for this ugly, filthy little mud--"
"ZEEPIRO!"
Soap sods and a sponge flew towards the Death Eater's face and started scrubbing his disgusting mouth. Draco took this as their chance to run. "Go, go, go!" He urged Hermione forward while the Death Eater is distracted.
Hermione took his hand so he can run beside her, "Don't fall behind."
He should be panicking himself to death but why does he feel so light? Like he's doing something good.
They dodged hexes and jinxes as glass orbs fell all around them. Dark storey high shelves collapsed and blocked their way. Why must it be that he only feels complete when they are together but everything around them just crumbles?
"Draco!"
The voice stopped both of them in the tracks. They looked back and saw Lucius Malfoy, mask removed, pointing his wand at both of them. "What insolence is this?"
Draco felt his blood run cold. The words are not forming in his head and that is just as well because his tongue felt like unmolded clay. He can't feel anything but Hermione's pulse in her wrist. She let go of his hand and stood between Draco and Lucius, her hands on either side of her trying to cover him. "I'll hold him off, Draco. Run!"
Instinct and everything else said that self preservation should win. But it didn't that particular afternoon. All he could remember was his father shouting insults at Hermione, her eyes looking unfazed and determined to let him leave-- live, and the sting of the curse that he took for her as he pushed her out of the way.
Everything was pandemonium but as she held him, crying and calling out his name, under an umbrella of Protego under falling orbs of light everything was static. He felt calm and he could just...
It's not your time.
The ice has melted.
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He's the most beautiful person she has ever seen. No use arguing with herself anymore about it.
She wiped the perspiration from the snow white skin of his forehead and wondered how it was so that the person who has the best complexion in Hogwarts happens to be a boy. They all eat the same things, right? But why is his skin so clear?
It's unfair.
Hermione shook her head and sighed. She's done with distracting herself from worrying about it anymore. It has been eight hours now and he hasn't even stirred, everyone else has left the infirmary and any second now Madam Pomfrey will usher her out.
It was a killing curse stopped midway when Lucius saw that it was his only son that was going to get hit. She couldn't bear think of the implications if the spell was cast in its entirety. So she held on to his ice cold hand. She knew the risks of coming to the Ministry of Magic, she knew that she could lose her life but it was for a friend, someone she cared for but Draco jumped in front of a spell for her... Are they even friends? Aside from this attraction that she undeniably feels about him-- what are they?
What does he feel about her?
"Why did you take the curse?" She whispered, looking down at his sleeping face. Try as she might to criticize him he looked angelic with his fair hair and even fairer skin and full lips that seemed to only stop scowling in sleep. "Why?"
The long lashes fluttered and he stirred. He was beginning to mumble something.
"What?"
She stood up from the chair and sat on the bed to be closer to his face so much so that she can smell hints of his cologne-- that wretched one of a kind smell. Soon, they're faces were only inches apart as she tried to listen on the words that he's mumbling in his cursed sleep.
"...Her..mio..ne. Don't hurt..."
The words broke her heart. Are they really meant to always end the year in the infirmary? Only civil when one of them is unconscious?
"Draco, I'm here," she caressed his face with her fingers, gently brushing away the fringes of his soft, silky hair. It is not styled now, not pushed back as usual so that his fringes touched his brow. He looked less guarded and less in control. More real.
He slowly opened his eyes, the gray looked silver in the pale light, it glinted like a newly minted coin. He looked at her warily. Like he was not believing she was real.
She didn't remove contact with his cool skin, warm fingers gently touching either side of his face.
"I'd like to sit up."
Hermione helped him sit up against the headboard of the bed. The bed creaked with both of their weights. Neither of them said a word, he simply held her hand, absentmindedly drawing small circles on her skin.
"Hermione, come over here," he requested, she obliged and peered closer to him, "I'll let you in on a secret." His warm breath tickled her ear and she felt her heart race in anticipation. No one else can make her feel this way. Like something bad will happen but at the same time she wants to be there when it does. Like holding on to a dynamite and waiting for the wick to run. It could be a wide explosion with thousand casualties or plain beautiful fireworks. She waited but he said nothing.
"What--"
His mouth caught her mid sentence which seemed to be his plan, now that he didn't have to make her open her mouth to receive him. Kissing Draco always begins rough, like he wants to always be in control, like he'd bite your whole lip off just to see to that but when you start to kiss him back he always submits-- always eager to give in. He likes to just hold her and get held it return. All it takes, perhaps, is the reassurance that you want to kiss him too. That you'd hold him instead of him holding you in place. That you want him. That you are choosing him over everything and anything.
And who wouldn't want to kiss Draco Malfoy?
Hermione held the back of his head and let her fingers run over his hair, she has never touched it like this-- it's so much softer without wax or anything that keeps it in place. He rested his forehead on hers, their breaths fanning over each others swollen lips. His eyes are closed but the scowl on his lips have returned, the walls are up again like an attack can happen at any time. Hermione knows that this is another useless complication in an impending war, another cause of pandemonium. But how can it be wrong when his mouth tastes like her favorite thing in the world?
The kiss left her flushed and when they both regained their breaths she hit him playfully with a pillow just so she'd have something to look at instead of him. Only him. Always just him. "Draco, you insufferable git! How dare you! You almost died! That was your father-- !
He laughed and squeezed her nose.
Hermione hit him harder with the pillow across the face. Feathers flew around them.
"Arresto momentum."
The cloud colored feathers looked like they stopped falling but they aren't, they are going to reach the infirmary floor either way. "Hermione," he brushed away a feather from her hair, he did it so gently that she had to try hard to feel it. "I'd like to remember you this way."
Again? So soon. No. There has to be... No. Stop.
There's no other way.
Her brilliant mind understood immediately, but her freshly broken heart cannot comprehend. It wanted to cling to him-- fight uphill pointless battles for him. But her mind won like it always does.
"What do you mean?"
"Do you remember when I asked you to give me a favor when I win the duel?" He didn't wait for her reaffirmation, "I want you to never speak to me again."
A tear fell from Hermione's eye. She wiped it away and looked at him. He was smiling at her, only her, not smirking. He's only ever shown her that smile, like a crack of light in the stormy sky. Both his eyes are bloodshot and misty. Maybe she was luckier that she gets to cry, maybe she should do the crying for both of them. She wanted to say that it will be alright but such is not the case. It will only get worse. Sirius is dead and his father was sent to Azkaban and he'd have to go home to his mother. Voldemort is back and everyone knows it.
"Hermio..." His voice broke, it was raspy and uneven as if holding on to a sob, "Hermione Granger, when the last feather hits the floor you'd be dead to me and I..." Another break... "I to you."
She embraced him slowly and cried on his shoulder while he nuzzled his face against her curls.
Both of them realized then and there that there are things worse than death.
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