How Reason Sways to the Beat of a Tambourine

How Reason Sways to the Beat of a Tambourine

It did not matter which direction she chose. It was as if she was a hamster in a cruel maze and would always end up scrabbling at the same section of transparent wall.

Her eyes felt dry, just like the aged parchment before her, and very tired. Yet there was none of the smug triumph she usually basked in at the end of a long day of study. She knew it was time for her to leave when the heatless flames in the library started to flicker, even as the approaching footsteps of Madam Pince measured every futile second to her ultimate defeat.

She breathed deeply, trying desperately to seek perspective, to be calm and look at the situation in a collected fashion. It wasn't the end of the world, she told herself: so what if she got less than a perfect mark on her first major DaDA project in her N.E.W.T year? It happened; she should really 'deal'. Wasn't that what Ron had said? She could listen to Reason, even if it spoke though the unlikely mouth of one Ronald Weasley, even if it was enunciated less than clearly from behind masticated potato. She. Could. Deal.

But what Hermione Granger did not do was compromise. Her frantic rationalising left her unconvinced, because there was still one avenue left unexplored, one stone that remained defiantly unturned. This, she decided, as she packed her bag with fumbling fingers, was It.

Her Do or Die-- not quite registering on the Harry scale, but right up there on the Academic Crisis scale.

By the time she had traversed the seven corridors and four staircases to the head common room, she had built up an impressive repertoire of arguments to support her case. As she headed towards the suit of armour that guarded the entrance to the common room, she was seething with righteous indignation at having to ask for something that should be freely available to all, rather than be the restricted domain of the fortunate few.

'Open, Sir Tate!' she cried, and such was the indignation in her voice that the suit of armour, instead of making its customary lewd reply, promptly jumped aside with nary a clank, and gave access to the entrance behind.

Hermione stepped through the door and saw the subject of all her pleading. She paused, knowing that Anger would get her nowhere, but Reason could see her home. She took a deep breath, planted a smile on her face, so to begin the most desperate plea of her life; only she did not intend to make it quite a plea, for did she not speak with the voice of Reason? And Reason would bow to nothing.

She patted her hair to give it some semblance of order, deliberately smoothed out the frown gathering on her forehead, and then began her case.

She argued long and eloquently, with sundry examples, both obscure and immediate. She used religious philosophy and metaphor with the ease of a skilled orator. She even wove in a joke or two, and finished with the coup de grace of Reason, Logic and Truth. She argued so vigorously that a few buttons of her blouse came undone and her skirt inexplicably hitched itself up a couple of inches. She later explained it as accidental magic.

Then she waited with bated breath to hear the verdict.

'Okay.'

She turned away in defeat, sighing, and yet strangely pleased that she had Tried; she could now admit defeat knowing that every stone had been turned. Not only Turned but alphabetised and categorised by mineral content and approximate position on the Mohs scale.

Then she did a doubletake, and then another, after realising that it was a doubletake she had done. She idly wondered if that constituted a quadrupletake, even as she turned to face the perpetrator responsible for this use of unaccustomed reactions on her part. She just did not do doubletakes. They were the preserve of Ron, who was slow, and easily surprised, even Harry on a particularly distracted day, never hers. And she had not just thought that way about her best friends. She, who could calculate the value of zddah in a diurnal orbit of Jupiter up to 22 decimal places in the time it took to swish and flick...Why, it was unheard of!

Yet there he was, lounging elegantly, entirely unaware of what he had just done.

Malfoy appeared utterly unaffected by her turmoil, or by her heaving bosom and flushed face. In fact, he ignored her completely.

The fire flickered in the hearth, casting comforting shadows in the common room. The old clock over the mantle-piece ticked away the passing moments. Crookshanks yawned a gullet-baring yawn and composed himself for another nap at green-slippered feet. In Gryffindor Tower, yet another house-elf yelped unheard in unpleasant surprise as it almost touched a scarf cleverly concealed between two cushions...

Malfoy, golden head turned at a particularly seemly angle, slowly and deliberately turned the page of his first-edition Horace, the sound jarring and unreasonably loud, considering it was only pampered flesh touching fine paper.

Hermione snapped.

She stepped in front of him, hands on hip, dislodging an orange cat and thus interrupting a racy feline dream involving a particularly frisky Mrs Norris and a Giant Squid made entirely of catnip.

'Malfoy, I just asked to borrow your copy of the Asswattham Puran for my DaDA project. The only known copy of an ancient wizarding text, which supposedly contains the mystery to eternal life. The one your great-grandfather paid a hundred thousand galleons for at auction... Were you listening at all when I was speaking to you a couple of minutes ago?'

She would have liked to have ended with something more scathing, but it was important to determine first that he had not been stuck by a stray curse that caused temporary deafness.

That, patently, was not the case.

Grey eyes tore themselves reluctantly from an apparently fascinating text, and then looked up through a fringe of thistledown and morning sunshine.

'I heard you, Granger, and my reply implied agreement.'

Hermione sat down weakly on the other armchair. 'Oh!' she said. Which seemed a completely appropriate response to her brain.

Malfoy had that leer back on, the one she was definitely not affected by. The one that said 'I'm here, people. Lock up your daughters and nubile witches.' But only to other people, never to her. Of course.

'However, as you yourself rather tediously pointed out, it is a unique text, and cannot be moved out of the Manor library. But you may use a Projector spell to access the contents,' he continued, as if commenting on the weather, or on the Weasleys' lack of material wealth. Like it was normal.

Hermione knew there was no other way of asking the next question.

'So,' she asked, sitting up straighter. 'What's the catch?'

The boy opposite waved a white hand elegantly.

'You might need special permission to go to the Manor to do your research tomorrow, but as you seem to have Dumbledore twirled around your little finger, that shouldn't be a problem, should it?'

Hermione knew that this was not the catch, so she continued to look at him with the stare that was labelled 'cold, hard bitch' in her mental catalogue.

Sighing dramatically, the blond laid the purple vellum carelessly on the little table beside his chair. 'And then, of course, there is the small matter of the dance.'

'Dance? What dance?' Hermione was aware that her voice rose unattractively with each syllable.

Then softly, tentatively, like the first exposure to a paradigm shift in arithmancy: 'You want to take me to the end-of-year Ball?'

In all the Multiverse, in all the infinite possibilities that danced and skirted around each other, there was not one, nary a single one, where Draco Malfoy, Pureblood, would ask Hermione Granger, Mudblood, to the end-of-year Ball. No, not even on that one world without shrimp that Professor Vector had proven theoretically to the Guild of Arithmancers, to thus win her Flamel Prize. This Hermione Granger knew, and it constituted one of the few constants in her world, and so there was no wonder that her tone was tentative. So tentative, that it hurt.

Just as hurtful as the easy, careless dismissal in the next sentence. 'The end-of-year Ball, Granger, is at the end of the year. And as ill-luck would have it, the head-students have to attend together anyway. No.'

Now he turned to gaze at her with mirror and mercury eyes, shielded by impossibly long lashes.

'The dance I have in mind is the dance of the seven veils. The full version, as described in ibn Batuta. I,' here he flicked invisible lint from his green silk robe, ' would like to see it.'

'But that's just a description! Anyway, it's lewd and dangerous. Whoever heard of dancing with embers and daggers and swords ? And anyway, I doubt if it's performed these days, not even in Arabia, where I hear they are very strict about these things... Though, I suppose, I could do research and book you a performance if ...'

Malfoy just sat there, gazing at her with that stupid leer. And then it dropped. The long overdue penny. The look of incomprehension on her face left quickly, angered that its first occupation had been so short-lived. Comprehension returned, to be swiftly followed by anger, and then disbelief.

'You're joking! You want me to perform the dance? Me. For you !'

'That's just low and yet completely characteristic!'

' I would never demean ...'

'Chauvinistic, male... '

'Evil...'

'As if I would ever stoop to...'

'Nothing on earth would...'

'Christmas Eve is always a good time, don't you think, for letting one's hair down?' He quirked a lazy brow and returned to his interrupted perusal of poetry.

Late on Sunday evening, Hermione returned to the library. Madam Pince seemed unusually talkative as she passed her wand over the titles Hermione had laid out on the counter.

''The Arabic Tradition of Entertainment,' Miss Granger? I haven't given that one out since the headmaster took up chamber music instead. And 'The Principles of Seduction in Witchcraft'? A good book, if I do say so myself. So how did your Defence project go? A perfect mark as usual? Of course, of course... It is nice to see a dedicated student these days...'

Hermione took her newly stamped books and fled.