Rating:
PG
House:
Astronomy Tower
Ships:
Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger
Characters:
Hermione Granger
Genres:
Romance Character Sketch
Era:
The Harry Potter at Hogwarts Years
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban Goblet of Fire Order of the Phoenix
Stats:
Published: 06/12/2006
Updated: 06/12/2006
Words: 9,177
Chapters: 1
Hits: 2,448

How to be Dead

attica

Story Summary:
"But you do," his face breaking into a brilliant smile, summoning little jackhammers upon her heart, as if he was pleased and delighted with this piece of terrible news. "You do fancy me. Dear Merlin, Hermione Granger, you're in love with me." Draco&Hermione.

Chapter 01

Posted:
06/12/2006
Hits:
2,450


No, she didn't think of them as a "thing." Shame would rattle her if such a thought ever crossed her mind, even in the circumstance of being unconscious. Maybe they'd had a "thing." But that word - "thing" - Merlin, how awful did that sound? It sounded horrendously tacky to describe anything, anything at all. But the other word - the word she blanched at and caused a fire to erupt on her face and an explosion of heat that'd made it look like she'd burst a blood vessel - was far more terrible than "thing." Or was it? After all, "thing" was such a vague and unspecific word that led to no direction or idea whatsoever.

But maybe that was why it worked. Maybe that's why she called it that. Because it wasn't nearly half as treacherous as the other word, and it didn't cause her to become flustered and anxious. At least, not as much.

Kiss.

That was the other word. Even thinking it, seeing the letters form in her head like slipping refrigerator magnets sent her mind into a ruinous catastrophe of guilt and disgrace. It made her inwardly gasp to feel that prick of her conscience. Flashes of his lips on hers, warm and moist and everything she wished it wasn't and imagined it wouldn't be, blinked inside her skull like a warning siren. Only, she knew well by now, that it wasn't a warning siren at all. If anything, it was far too late, and therefore could not be considered some Take Heed bell.

Now, she was certain, it was just some sort of mental tool of torture.

But that was it. That was the thing. She couldn't just sit there with Harry and Ron and act as if nothing happened. They didn't know and a part of her felt horribly pinched every time silence befell them, like they were waiting for her heavy confession to just spill from her lips. But - she couldn't tell them! No, she couldn't! What would they take from it? Nothing good or self-praising, undoubtedly! They would only find it as another excuse to rue the day they ever saw Malfoy's pointy pale little face. Needless to say, she felt the same as well. Only she, as an individual, passionately rued the day she walked into the kitchens.

It was just that she never would have guessed tickling the pear would eventually lead to being attacked by, she reckoned with a blushing face, a hormonally-charged Draco Malfoy. And she - appalling more than anything else - hadn't even objected. Not vocally, anyway. Or physically. Thing was: she was in shock, and everyone knows that shock temporarily delays all of the human body's reflexes and impulses and logical thinking. Hermione had learned that everyone had two brains: the cerebral cortex (where all the intelligence was wired into, magically or not), and the primitive animal brain (where all the not-so-intelligent thoughts lay adrift). See, the primitive brain was the one every person in the world was born with. It was the one that spoke of rage and jealousy and all of the dirty naughty things one thinks of sprouting up in the glory of adolescence. The primitive brain is usually subdued and merely blocked out by the cerebral cortex, but there were some things that occasionally make way for the chaos of the animal wit.

That was exactly Hermione Granger's problem. Her primitive brain had been set free and caused things to go amuck. Thus her lips had instantly responded after a half-second or so, only thinking of the way he tasted like butterbeer and peppermint and the way his warm mouth invited her like nothing else she had ever known before. It was the animal inside of her that made her play along for as long as she had, letting him touch her and kiss her like he had.

Because of the stupid primitive brain.

Amusing how a second of shock could lead to humiliation and absolute moral degradation.

Not.

She didn't know why she had done it, really. Except for the shock and primitive brain part, she was still quite at a loss. She found herself solemnly trying to make up the loose ends like it was the frayed sleeves of her favorite jumper. Why had she let Draco Malfoy kiss her? Why did she kiss him back? She would've gagged if she weren't so busy envisioning how it would feel to have him kiss her again.

She knew it was sinful, but she was a woman. While it was definitely rare for her to imagine a boy kissing her for she was too busy trying to do all of her work, she only just realized that sometimes it couldn't be helped at all. Her willpower wilted away just as her legs turned into jelly and she suddenly found that she had zero resistance whatsoever. Sure, when she returned of sane mind she would regain every ounce of resistance in the world, but it was almost as if it was her weakness.

Kissing.

But really - how shallow was that? To have her heart shudder with delight and bliss as she tried to remember how his tongue had slipped in against hers? It wasn't her fault he hadn't had a disgusting forked tongue like they said. It wasn't her fault it'd felt fantastic. She wasn't even surprised recalling the details of snogging that Lavender and Parvati had conversed about, feeling her heart flutter when she discovered that it was ten times better than they'd ever told her.

However, currently fumbling with the askew strap of her bookbag, something in her chest performed something very similarly to a somersault when she looked up and glimpsed a flash of tall silver hair sneaking into a supposedly deserted Ancient Runes classroom. In a spur of spontaneity, curiosity, and a desperate thirst for answers, she looked around the swarming crowd of swishing black robes and indecipherable cacophony and slipped past, making sure no one was looking. She followed after him and walked into the classroom with a feline grace she'd never known she had.

It was an abandoned ancient classroom, but the emptiness or its musty smell was not the surprising bit. It was what she found rummaging in the classroom, Draco Malfoy's head ducked into a cupboard and swinging back, tufts of his pale hair catching a misplaced ray of light, as he grabbed something from the top shelf. Hermione sighed silently, feeling fascination crop in her chest as she saw what he held in his hands. It looked like a bottle made of sea glass, glimmering in a short second of radiance, light shimmering through the glass particles and sending a rainbow of vibrant speckles dancing around.

The moment quickly vanished, however, as he rapidly tucked the bottle in the pocket of his robes before she could read what the label had said. He closed the cupboard silently, a loose spew of dust fluffing out in front of him. Then he turned his head and finally noticed her.

He didn't seem surprised, however, as he acknowledged her presence by calling her what he had always called her - "Granger" - but Hermione was only glad that he hadn't called her the other name he had dubbed her. She could feel her muscles tense the moment his eyes, like tinted glass right through a light, bore into her. Like the sea glass's effect from the light, she felt warm glowing spots start to pulsate inside of her.

Somehow, for a strange reason, she could feel the absence of his famed hostility. He didn't sneer at her and only looked at her expectedly, albeit slightly annoyed that she had been watching all this time.

"Well?" he asked her in his same drawl, though there was something off-key about it. Not on the exterior, of course... but on the interior, uncannily. And as she finally got a good look at him, she discovered with a solicitous burning in her throat that there was something wrong with him. He looked off-color. He was so pale he was sallow now - unnaturally sallow.

Almost like... she didn't know. It was a strange feeling, having the knots in her stomach bunch up like penguins in the winter when it had been just fine seconds ago. But she could feel something, something imminent and wrong, that didn't match. Her ability to quickly catch abnormalities wasn't the bothersome part, but whom she had sensed it from.

Malfoy.

"Are you just going to stand there or what?" he asked her, though it sounded as if he was merely bored and not preparing to bite her head off. "Because I don't have all day, if you must know."

"Malfoy," she finally blurted, her voice a spurt of loudness that surprised even herself. Her reeling whirlwind of emotions and thoughts had overwhelmed her to an extent she could not think straight. "What... what are you--"

"Funny, I think I should be asking you that question," he quipped, though not maliciously. "Don't tell me you've picked up another hobby. After all, with stalking taking up all your time, I think your books will be feeling quite lonely."

"I mean what's in your pocket?" she asked, her voice on the verge of releasing a slight tremor. From what and why, she didn't know.

"None of your business, that's what," he said a-matter-of-factly. "Now are you going to tell me why you're here? I answered your question."

"I'd hardly call that an answer," she answered back, regaining more of her composure.

"Take it or leave it," he told her. "I'm not going to give you another one."

"How do I know you aren't stealing?" she found herself saying, though she hadn't planned to say that at all.

He scoffed. "If I wanted to steal, I would steal a desk or a chair for firewood to aid in my scheme of vengeance of trying to burn Gryffindor Tower down."

"Don't joke with me, Malfoy," said Hermione, almost glaring at him now for his impertinence. "I want to know what it is you've got in your pocket."

"Is that really why you're here? Or is it your nagging curiosity to know about what happened in the kitchens?"

Hermione froze. His expression was vague, almost expectant, as if he knew. Then he sat down on the teacher's desk, never taking his eyes off of her. He motioned for her to come sit down next to him. Hermione barely recognized the gesture in all of her confusion until he rolled his eyes and demanded that she get over there or he was leaving.

Tentatively she set her things down by the door and walked over to where he was, hoisting herself up and sitting down on the firm wood. She had made sure there was enough space between them with caution, her eyes flickering down to their feet, nervous. She couldn't look him in the eye. Like glass, when shattered, it was sharp and dangerous.

"Here's the thing, Granger," he told her, though she didn't know if what she heard in his voice was amusement or fear. Or neither. Or both.

"The thing is... I'm dying."

It took a moment for Hermione to fully comprehend the words that had been pushed from his throat. It came so fluidly, almost so nonchalantly but in the very way he had toned his voice - with struggle - she got the hint of pain. She, herself, felt it as well. But in a tumble of fright and shock, she looked up at him, her neck jerking up suddenly. Her tongue felt as if it had crumbled away.

"What do you mean you're dying?" she said, without thinking. "Malfoy, is this some sort of sick joke?" Her voice suddenly became hoarse, a knot tightening inside her and sending jolts of painful tension. "Because if it is, I swear--"

"You swear what? You'll kill me?" he snorted. "Sadly, I am disappointed to tell you, that somebody has already beaten you to it."

If she looked closely, really closely, he wasn't disappointed to tell her, as he had said. He was calm - sad, but calm. Beneath his blond eyelashes she could see his ice-colored eyes flicker with embers of emotion that she could not distinctly make out. But when he looked up to meet her gaze, she actually found herself holding her breath.

She had extraordinary moments with his eyes. Sometimes they gleamed like terrible knives speckled from the rain, sometimes they were fogged over with frost like glass windows in the winter, and sometimes they were just... ice. Pure ice. Cold but magnificent. Hold it too long and it bit, but it was still beautiful. Beautiful even when shattered. But as she looked into his bottomless eyes now, chameleon like nothing she'd ever seen, she received the gist of something different. They almost looked like... telescopes. As if there were many settings to them, wind it to see far or near - whatever distance one would desire. Of course, you would never really know until you saw what you were looking for.

And that's what Hermione felt right then, looking at him. She didn't know until she saw it. And right now, right this moment - she did. She didn't know what it was, but she did. It made her heart stop, the beats still echoing in her brain like a boisterous crescendo sweeping the empty room, and she felt a swell of blending sensations tingle through her body. Like stars, little bits of stars, and even a bit of glass swimming through her bloodstream to create a commotion of sharp pain and foreign alienation.

She reckoned words lost sense for those few minutes. What could one say, really? Her mind was too busy feeling the tide of turbulent winds and swirling change to try and conjure up intelligent words to make her seem unaffected and nonchalant. Because even if she did hate him for all that he did, death seemed a little too cruel for him. After all, he was Draco Malfoy. He was young. Just like her, Hermione Granger. Maybe even younger.

"Dying?" she finally got herself to say. Her words came choked and rough. "You aren't joking?"

"I never joke about death," he grimly chided. "Most especially my own."

"But--" The word flew from her lips like a mad canary. Her eyes danced wildly with alarm and bewilderment. "How can that possibly be? You-you're Malfoy! Rich and arrogant and annoying! A ferret! And ferrets can't die!"

"On the contrary," he said, slightly amused with her remarks. "Everything dies. And - I'm not a ferret."

"But I don't understand," said Hermione, getting off of the desk and starting to pace. "How can you be dying? You can't just--"

"Would you like me to explain the cycle of life for you?" he sarcastically offered. "It's like this, Granger, maybe you can finally take a grasp - you're born, you live, then you die. That's all there is to it. Death," he said firmly, looking her in the eye, "is inevitable."

"Oh, shut up," she spat. "Who are you to be teaching me about the basics of life - I can very well comprehend them myself, thank you!"

"Don't get shirty with me just because I offered my assistance."

Then she was quiet, looking at him, breathing rapidly.

Draco sighed. "Point is: I'm sick. Have been, actually, just didn't know it. Lucius is a bastard, d'you know that? Oh wait, of course you do," he muttered. "He was the only one who knew about my condition, so it was real convenient for him to be sent off to Azkaban," he drawled sarcastically.

Honestly. The boy was dying but he still had his sarcasm. That really was something.

"How-how long has he known?"

"Years," Draco sighed again. The word seemed to carry poignant, enormous weight for him. "I can't believe it either, but years."

"But--"

"Is that all you're capable of saying?" he said. "Because as far as I can see, there are no 'but's in life. Besides, I don't know why you're so wrung up all about it. I'm the one dying, not Potter."

Hermione felt rage overcome her oceanic feelings of depth and realization, her face flushing. "Unlike you, I am capable of showing sympathy and concern towards others besides myself," she bit out in retaliation.

Something twitched on his face. "Even me?" he asked, intrigued.

Hermione looked at him, pursing her lips, and chose not to answer.

"So, in your pocket--"

"Is a potion to help me keep up my strength," he finished off for her. "I had a choice - die slowly but live longer, or die quickly but have more energy to live the remainder of my pitiful life. Guess which one I chose."

Hermione furrowed her brows, looking pointedly concerned. Was Draco Malfoy off his rocker? Had he really finally gone batty? "I'm finding it awfully hard to percept this with your sense of humor," she said seriously. Her throat was gravelly and rough for a reason beyond her logic-span. "Nor do I understand it."

"Wouldn't expect you to," he said haughtily. "See, Granger, it's different for me than it is for you. You're on the outside, looking in. You see me and you see some dangerously ill boy, just months from ending his short-lived life. I see me and... well, I see a dangerously ill boy as well, but what I'm trying to tell you is that it really doesn't matter how you see it. It doesn't affect you. It doesn't affect anybody else except myself. I can choose whether to look on this and cry my poor heart out, miserable and wasting away all my bloody time, or look on this with a more humorous view. It's hard enough trying to gag down revolting tonic. I don't want to become reduced into some wimpy, melodramatic sod, too."

Hermione looked at him, really looked at him. God, he was a beautiful boy. She could see the fine profile of his face, the perfect and sweeping outline of his jaw. He'd changed since she'd last seen him - he looked exhausted, yes, but as she observed him she realized with butterflies in her stomach that he resembled more of a man now than an annoying little ferret boy. His hair, like spun silver, fell and almost hid his eyes, but she knew better than to think that. Nothing could ever hide his eyes. It'd always been common knowledge that his orbs held some sort of white fire in them, enchanted, swirling with magic. They were beautiful. So much potential. Yet, now, as she looked in them, she saw traces of a slow death.

"See, I'm not ignoring my situation, but I'm not broadcasting it, either," he told her, smirking. Hermione remembered his lips. Warm, soft, moist and passionately rough against hers. Unbridled fervor. Where had that come from? Was it him or was it something else? Just then, she felt her throat contract with her fiery curiosity and she tore her gaze away from his mouth, instead focusing on his handsome face. He was looking expectedly at her.

"But you're... you're dying," she whispered, still in awe of the word. It was a horrible word. It made her tongue feel slimy and cold yet like sandpaper. "Malfoy, you're dying. Don't you feel... sad?"

"Oh yeah, real sad," he said a-matter-of-factly. He was still smiling at her and even in the binds wound firmly around her heart, it beat ecstatically. "But you get used to it. It ceases to become a looming shadow, a burden, but a mere fact to accept. And I've accepted it. I'm dying. I'm going to die. Big deal. Everyone dies."

"But you," said Hermione, feeling an odd sort of anger bubble within her. She didn't comprehend his sense of blithe or nonchalance and it frustrated her. "Don't you feel unhappy when you think about all of the things you're going to miss? Graduating? Getting married?"

It wasn't about their kiss anymore. It wasn't about Draco Malfoy, arrogant and self-important prick, or Hermione Granger, girl on the opposing side, vowed to hate him forever and beyond. There weren't sides anymore - not a single trace, not even a sliver. Past was blurred away. Future was blurred away. The Present was booming with clarity yet stinging her eyes with its inapprehensible brightness. Right now he was just a boy, and she was a girl. Misunderstood and misapprehended. They were down to the basics now. He was just a boy and she was just a girl.

No goodness, no evilness. Just life and death.

"I thought about that," he replied. "Long and hard. But, to be honest, I wasn't expecting anything extraordinary. I wasn't expecting a happy marriage. So it wasn't much of a loss, not really. When you're brought up in the mind-set of destruction and darkness, of living and rotting in your own wicked deeds, you haven't got much to look forward to. Death is a goal. Death is peace."

"Are you mad?" sputtered Hermione. "Can you hear yourself? Death is a goal? Death is peace? Aren't you going to--"

"Granger, you're blowing this way out of proportion," he informed her, chuckling. "I thought you'd be over the moon. It's another victory for you, after all. Draco Malfoy won't be around any longer to harass you and your friends. It'd also finally boost Potter's self-esteem - everyone knows I'm the most gorgeous of the lot, and now the crown's being passed."

"It isn't about that. It's about your sick grasp on life and death."

"Is it sick?" he mused with a funny look on his face. "I thought it was accommodating. Honestly, Granger, would it make you feel any better if I started to bawl my eyes out?"

"No," she answered truthfully. "But it just seems you're taking all of this far too lightly."

"And you're taking this too seriously. Are you feeling all right, Granger? I'm starting to think that perhaps you just might fancy me."

Hermione froze, looking at him with a surprising, gnarled fist of horror and shock and anticipation embedded but volcanic in her stomach. She could feel the blood drain from her face at his words, instead sending the rushing blood to pound in her head and ears. She felt as if she'd just been tided to the shore by a sixty-foot wave: dazed, salty and confused. Her mouth felt horribly dry.

Draco seemed to have registered the look of a pale revelation on her face, staring at her intently. Then he spoke, certainly as shocked as she was.

"Bloody hell. You do fancy me."

"No, no, I don't," said Hermione, shaking her head, feeling frazzled and very disoriented. She felt the skin on her face begin to heat up at a scarring speed. "I don't fancy you. I mean, I shouldn't. You're Malfoy, and you're dying, and you have this horrible fancy of humor in the image of your own death."

"But you do," his face breaking into a brilliant smile, summoning little jackhammers upon her heart, as if he was pleased and delighted with this piece of terrible news. "You do fancy me. Dear Merlin, Hermione Granger, you're in love with me."

"Are you certain you aren't just concussed?" she spat, in complete denial. She began to rapidly fidget, pivoting her heels. "Because you're getting all of these twisted delusions of things that aren't true--"

"I say, you have perfect timing," he gleefully told her with sparkling eyes, obviously finding much amusement in this. "Shack up with me and - not a single possibility of a long-term relationship whatsoever. You'll get off scot-free, no commitment. Because I'll be dead by then."

Hermione wanted to shake him by the shoulders and scream some sense into his air-filled head. Suddenly, the words scorching inside of her finally flew from her lips - uncontrollable and brash, hinted with every drop of confusion and agony and frustration boiling in her skull. "Why did you kiss me?"

Draco fell silent.

"Why did you kiss me, Malfoy?" she ranted. "In the kitchens? I just walked in, looking for Dobby - and then bam, you're there, and you're kissing me."

He looked mystified. "Why? Didn't you enjoy it?"

"That isn't the point!" she almost shouted at him. "Why - did - you - kiss - me?" Because that was all she had wanted to know in the first place. She hadn't walked in here, in this stuffy, dusty classroom, to find out about his illness. She hadn't walked in here to discover the nauseating hilarity he had in the concept of his own death. She hadn't walked in here to look into his eyes and see something important yet unclear and vague, grainy and just waiting to form into the full, startling picture. She hadn't even walked in here to find out that she actually cared whether Draco Malfoy lived or died. She had walked in here to know why he had kissed her.

He stared at her for a moment, serious and almost thoughtful - in that ambivalent Malfoy way he always did, when his face seemed impassive and blank but with grim consideration written across every pore of his skin. She stared into his eyes fiercely at first, with as much defiance and fire she could muster, but as she delved and plunged herself headfirst in his pensive silver orbs she found with a roaring clarity that she could not get herself out of them. Not now, not never. Not even if she wanted to. And that somehow, in some mad, mad and ambiguous way, she had undone the edge of her seams and sewn him in. Draco Malfoy.

She could question how, and why, and what. She could question the circumstances brought upon her now, like a sudden blindfold, to wander aimlessly in the dark until she bumped into something and discovered her obscured boundaries. She could ask herself just how in the world Draco Malfoy had gotten himself tangled in the messy hands of Death. But what good would any of it do? There was no one except her and him in this room. No one except her and him to answer those useless, soul-exhausting questions. It was then Hermione realized that this might be the feeling that'd been left unspoken all of her life: acceptance of something unknown, but great, and maybe even terrible. Confusing. Foreign. A would-be that could change her life, to make it all worse, or possibly better.

Or it could make no difference at all.

Then a muscle - something - twitched on his face. Very subtly that if she hadn't been watching him very closely she might have missed it. Something began to roll over his eyes like a sheen of happiness, or thunderclouds rolling in before a storm. She was struck with misunderstanding. She'd never seen this look on his face before.

"Just curious, Granger," he said to her, the corners of his mouth quirking up into a smirk. Hermione hadn't resumed her pacing just yet. "Why is it do you think I kissed you? Care to venture a guess? Any guess?"

"No, I would not like to venture a guess," she told him, doing her best to make it sound vicious and spiteful. She tried to calm the restless forces rumbling riotously inside of her head. "I would just like to know. Now. Answer my question."

"But it'd be fun," he teased her. "It's not every day I snog a girl in the kitchens and then have her terribly confused and angry with me the next day."

"I'm this close from threatening to hex you," she warned him. "I didn't want it to come to this, since you're already dying, but--"

"Oh, God, I think you live to bore me," he drawled. Then something strange and unexpected happened - his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. Hermione froze, her words dissolving on her tongue and in her throat into a salty nothing, her eyes widening as she looked at the contrast of their skin. She had always thought she'd been more than fairly pale, but compared to Draco she was as tan as toast. Not so, at least, but tanner than she'd ever been. In fact, as her eyes zeroed in at the way his hand was firmly but gently enclosed around her wrist, feeling the pressure of his warmth sending zings of pleasure and excitement through her skin, she couldn't help but think that it was somewhat attractive. His skin with hers.

"Malfoy--"

"Look, do you want to know or what?" He then sighed, looking exasperated, then swung his head slightly around to see if anybody else by some chance had stumbled into the room and they hadn't noticed. No one had. "I was there because I'd missed lunch and dinner, serving detention, and... well, obviously, you were there too. You had your determined look about you and that ugly scrawled letter in your hand... and, well," - he looked uncertain and greatly hesitant now - "you'd always been adorable with your ridiculous S.P.E.W. rubbish. Somewhat."

"Rubbish?" Hermione was able to stammer out, though that was not what her mind was concentrated on at all. She wasn't even thinking about S.P.E.W. She was just thinking about what he had said - what she'd thought he'd said - about her being adorable. Somewhat.

"Yes, now don't get hung up on the insignificant details," he quickly said. "But it is what it is. It was one of those chances. After all, I am dying. And I promised myself that I couldn't die before I had the chance to prove my father wrong."

Hermione, still dazed and startled, heard her voice lightly float out from her lips. "Prove him wrong how?"

Then Draco began to smile again, right at her. Hermione realized she had to get used to this, him smiling at her. It was so unfamiliar and stunning that it made her heart leap and convulse, worrying her and making her nervous at the same time - and not just about her health.

"My father always had this saying to keep me from Muggle-borns, and the fool actually thought I was that gullible," he chuckled, laughter sparkling in his oceanic eyes. Then he noticeably sobered, but still kept his smile intact to make it obvious to her that it was all good-natured. "He told me that were I to kiss a Mudblood, I would taste nothing but mud."

Hermione, her defense popping back into place, was offended. Her eyes became focused and narrowed at him, her lips thinning. "What?"

"That was his theory," he clarified. He was still holding her wrist and her nerves were rioting inside of her. Despite herself, despite all of her logic and all that she was, despite his uncanny resemblance to a superior creep - she wanted to pull him to her and kiss him. "But, as you know, my father lived in his own little world," he shrugged nonchalantly. "I wouldn't take it personally."

She jerked her wrist away, his fingers quickly brushing against her humming, excited skin. Her eyes glinted with annoyance. "How could I not take it personally?"

"You're focusing on the negative, Granger," he told her, his hand lying limp on his knee. "Weren't you listening? I proved him wrong. You don't taste like mud at all. Now if you'd untwist your knickers, then maybe we'd get along with this conversation without you spitting at me." He made a sour face at her.

But the thing was, Hermione couldn't focus. She couldn't focus on anything at all. Her mind was everywhere. Leaping, jumping, skyrocketing from one idea to the next. Draco Malfoy had just told her she didn't taste like mud - yet he'd had to kiss her just to prove so. She was focusing on the negative - but would it be any safer to focus on the positive? From the way her mind and body was reacting, just from the single act of physical contact of him holding her wrist, she knew well what the answer was.

No, it would definitely not be safer to focus on the positive. At all.

However, instead of yelling at him like the Gryffindor inside her commanded, she simply and merely looked at him. If she were to yell at him now, what could she say? That he was stupid for believing his father in the first place? That he was stupid, incomparably stupid, to have to kiss her to prove the contrary of his megalomaniac and mad father's dim-witted quotable phrases? Of course that much was true. He was dying, but that didn't mean he was imperceptible to apparent realities.

Although sometimes it did appear that way.

Something changed about Draco Malfoy. No - scratch that, many things had changed about Draco Malfoy. So many things that Hermione couldn't pinpoint all of them, even though every part of her wits was itching to do so. It amazed her. Even frightened her. It was ghastly, what had happened. Death had turned Malfoy nice. Bearable. Death had turned Draco Malfoy into an almost amiable, risk-taking, kissing-the-S.P.E.W.-fanatic-in-the-kitchens, Death-is-lovely, smiling and laughing nut job! Had hell literally frozen over?

"See, I'd always known I'd be the one to make you speechless," he triumphantly told her.

Hermione shook her head in an attempt to shake out all of the niggling shivers and shepherd her rebelling thoughts. "Shut up."

"Why should I? I know for a fact that my voice is music to your ears," he teased. "Considering that you're in love with me and all."

"I am not in love with you!" Hermione spat. "Stop saying that!"

"Tell you what," he said to her, so business-like that it gave her chills. She then noticed, feeling her head spin and her hands tighten into fists, that his face was dangerously close to hers. His silver, ostensibly smiling eyes were staring right into her own, and he was so near that she could feel his warm breaths tickling her face. Instantly - her body's functions ignoring each of her objections - she felt herself warm all over. "You don't show up at the Astronomy Tower tomorrow evening at midnight, then you aren't, in fact, in love with me. But if you do--"

But Hermione had already turned and walked towards the door, gathering up her things, preparing to leave.

"All right then, see you there!" Draco called out as she stormed out.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hell really had frozen over. Because Hermione Granger did, in fact, honest to God, literally did show up at the Astronomy Tower at midnight, where Draco Malfoy was waiting for her, still clad in his school uniform. She'd instantly thought about heading back and perhaps banging her head against every wall in the castle to possibly regain her wits and also because she was due for punishment for her idiocy, but he'd already seen her and it was too late. She could see his wide contented smile all the way from where she was standing. Her heart jumped.

"I told you so," he haughtily said as she stiffly walked over.

"I couldn't sleep," Hermione said.

"Ah, that's because you're in love with me," he said. "And being in love with Draco Malfoy is a prison."

Hermione had to bite back her tongue. She was going to agree. It really was a prison. But then that would be verbally confirming that she was in love with him. And she couldn't be. She was simply curious - very different from being in love with him. She'd only shown up because she hadn't been able to stop thinking about all the things he had told her back in the classroom. He'd sparked intrigue in her that day, and when such happened, the only way to cure it was to prove that it really was nothing special to get so worked up about. He would be the same bumptious git, calling her a Mudblood and insulting her bloodline. He would prove to her himself that he hadn't really changed. He was still the same.

She was counting on that.

"So what'd you have to tell Potter and Weasley?" he asked her. Hermione gave him a baffled look, and he went on. "You couldn't have possibly gotten away with, 'Oh, I'm meeting Draco Malfoy up at the Astronomy Tower - and I have a feeling it's going to be loads of fun.' "

Hermione snorted. "Believe it or not, I don't have to make up excuses to my friends."

Then Draco faintly smiled, looking out into the night sky. Hermione was watching him, and as a brilliant but faint trace of a grin quirked along his face, she was instantly mesmerized by him. He looked Godly in the moonlight, and she almost felt her hand reaching out for his on the balcony arm, somehow wanting to feel if he was still as warm as she'd remembered him to be, back when he'd kissed her in the kitchens. He was dying. Draco Malfoy was dying. She felt herself fighting back the words to ask him how it felt to find out and how he felt, right now. Knowing that he was going to die. Was he sad, at all? He had to be. Maybe he could tell her that it was no big deal, but it was, and she knew it. It wasn't because she had common sense or logic, but because of the way he looked now. Contented, but unhappy. Melancholy. The look, she knew, that could only be associated with the knowledge of death.

And right then, at that moment as she was watching him transform from a haughty prick to a smiling, sick boy... she'd wanted to hold his hand. Never mind that she didn't want to touch him, ever, but she received the weighty gist that he needed comfort. And then it occurred to her that perhaps she was the only one who could give it to him. No one else knew. He couldn't have told anyone else.

Just her.

She found it awfully ironic. Here she was, standing beside a smiling Draco Malfoy in the Astronomy Tower, alone, together, wanting to hold his hand because she wanted to somehow, some way, tell him that everything was going to be all right. But she didn't even know that, herself - for how could she possibly know? It was true she knew a lot of things, but not that. Never that. But she knew his secret; most likely the biggest secret of his entire life, and it just confused her so terribly that she didn't know what to do at all. What did he want from her, exactly? What had he aimed to accomplish by telling her he was dying? Did he want sympathy? Pity? No. Draco Malfoy was not like that at all.

"You told them that you were going to bed, didn't you?"

Hermione looked away, not wanting to meet his eyes. Standing here beside him made her sorrowful. She didn't know why. He was her enemy - her obnoxious bully. But no matter how much she insisted that he didn't deserve her sadness or sympathy or worry, it was no use. He was a still a person, a person of substance and feeling. And she found it hard to let that go.

"Technically, I was," she sighed. "But then I came here."

He nodded, his smile slowly, ever so slowly, rubbing away with a look of contemplation.

Hermione swallowed hard, her eyes flickering down to her feet, before looking up at him again. "Look, Malfoy, I... I'm sorry."

He looked at her, locking his captivating eyes with hers. "Sorry for what, Granger?" He looked mystified.

"For... that you're dying," she said feebly. "I mean, you're so young. You've got so much ahead for you. And, you're... you're not going to be able to experience any of it." She'd succumbed into a whisper. "At all."

He snorted, again, as if it was no big deal, and Hermione was getting a bit frustrated with his Don't Care attitude. "Good Merlin, Granger. Get a hold of yourself, would you? Don't be so melodramatic. I'd rather there be no waterworks."

Hermione suddenly wanted to hit him, right there, on the chest. Where his heart was supposed to be, but she was now thinking - even with her recent revelations about his unmistakable and inexorable humanity - that perhaps she'd been wrong. Maybe there was just a bucket in there. A bucket full of maggots and ice chips.

"Would you stop with the act?" she found herself hissing to him, angry. "Don't you feel anything at all, Malfoy? You're dying! You're sick! Don't tell me you aren't the least bit sad, or-or scared! You're leaving behind your youth and your wealth, and your--"

"Don't say 'friends,' Granger," he said lowly, still not looking at her. "Because if you do, then I'm afraid you're very sadly mistaken."

Hermione sighed, still looking at him with a somewhat imploring look. Somehow, she could feel a dry, hot tumor at the very base of her throat, but it was growing. Tangling up her vocal chords, flustering her, sucking out all of the moisture from her brain. The cold air tried to soothe her burning face. "I wasn't going to." Then she hesitated, turning away from him and looking at the exact spot in the night sky she reckoned he was looking. There were scarcely stars around here anymore. She'd thought it was only the weather; the changing of the seasons, but there'd been fewer twinkles around Hogwarts these last months. Less joyful and optimistic. She supposed that perhaps it was nature's way of hinting something to Draco.

"It's just... have you ever tried to make any friends, Malfoy?" she asked, feeling sad for him. "I'm sure you could have, if you tried. Anyone can."

"I think your lecture's a bit too late," he chuckled, as if amused. "But I told you, it isn't a big deal, Granger. It was meant to be. I've always had the feeling that I'd be dying young, anyhow."

"But do Crabbe and Goyle, and Pansy, do they know?"

Draco had a slight smile. "No, they don't," he replied. "But I'd rather it stay that way. They wouldn't believe it even if I told them."

"But I think they'd want to know-"

"Don't kid yourself, Granger. Slytherins don't care about the stuff you Gryffindors do," he smirked at her. "When someone's weak or wounded, we leave them for dead. Each man for his own. When there's nothing you can do, then it's better to save yourself than to go down with them."

Hermione had a hurtful look on her face, disheartened by the Slytherin mindset. "That's cruel," she whispered, feeling new scornful feelings budding for Slytherin House.

They were silent for a while. Hermione was looking out at the dark sky, hurting something deep for someone whose true depth she questioned. She didn't like it, didn't like it at all - whatever happened to being skeptical of his situation? What if he really wasn't dying and was just playing some mean trick on her? But would Draco Malfoy be so stupid as to do that? And... whatever happened to calling her "Mudblood"? Whatever happened to acting like a prat who suffered from a face impediment that made him sneer all the sodding time, all the while insulting everything about her and her friends? Hadn't she come to let her sole expectation - that he hadn't changed at all - be proven right?

So, then, why was it looking like he wasn't the same anymore? Why was she hurting for him - truly hurting - as if he actually meant something to her? She'd never once liked him in any situation, not even a little bit. She'd hated him with a fiery passion and she knew the feeling was indeed mutual. But where had these feelings come from? Of wanting to comfort Draco Malfoy? It was acceptable to feel sorry for him, but to actually want to comfort him? And talk to him? What exactly was she doing here in the Astronomy Tower?

Could it be possible that no matter how vile their history was, how positively explosive their encounters had been in the past - that it didn't actually matter anymore and that she was in love with him? Could one kiss truly change everything?

Could she possibly be so stupid and emotionally confused as to let that happen?

"I guess this is like karma then, isn't it?" he then grinned, breaking the silence with his self-sadistic thoughts and hurtling Hermione from her suffocating questions. She looked at him, startled. "Make other people's lives a living hell for six years and here I am, with a maximum of six months left to live. If that isn't funny, I don't know what is." And then he laughed, as if it truly was funny.

Hermione, meanwhile, did not find a single drop of amusement or hilarity in it at all. All she felt was the sickness in her stomach, churning volcanically, threatening to swell up her throat, bitter and mordant, like acid.

"I think you're sick," Hermione finally said, her words rough and coarse, feeling a sudden gritty but overwhelming rush of rashness. She was pale with anger. "You're mental, you really are. Let me ask you something, Draco Malfoy, if you were perfectly capable of humanity and being polite and decent, why on earth have you spent the last six years of your bloody life trying to show us otherwise?" she spat, furious for a reason she could not fathom. "Why the bastard charade? Why all the sodding effort on trying to push people down and make them feel like the lowest of shit? Why would you do that - how could you possibly have mustered enough cruelty - to do that? To us? To Harry? To me?"

She saw something flash in his eyes, although she could feel her own begin to sting with heat and passion. In his silver orbs, capable of icing over the sun, there was a poignant flicker of emotion that made her heart shudder. In a moment, a single moment of vulnerability, even hurt, she saw honesty. For once. Honesty.

"Because," he calmly told her, "just like everyone else, I thought I was untouchable. I did everything I could to be untouchable. I was untouchable. Then I discovered that that was a bad thing."

"Untouchable?" She shuddered with rage.

"Yes, untouchable," he confirmed, earning a furious glint in his eye that rivaled hers. "Don't you get it, Granger? I know I was a petulant child. I know what I did. I know what I did to you. But I grew up. In that single moment when they told me, I grew up because I had to. Unlike you, I don't have the time anymore. It's now or never. I'm sorry if I made your life such of a hell that you felt the need to spit it back in my face --"

"But that's just it," said Hermione, cutting him off, fuming. "Do you really know? Because there's a difference between comprehending the idea and comprehending the damage done. Which one is it?" She swallowed hard, staring vindictively into his eyes as his face hovered just inches from hers. "Are you really guilty? Is that why you brought me up here? To apologize? Or to start your own pity-party?" she hissed.

"I wasn't the one who brought you up here, Granger," he frostily retaliated. "You were the one who came, who walked on up here and lied to your friends. I didn't force you to come."

"Yes, but you knew I was going to come, didn't you? You knew. Now you've got to tell me why. What did you really mean to accomplish by telling me about your illness, and about that potion, and about - everything! Why did you tell me?" she cried, and hot, tiny tears sprung to her eyes, her chest crumpling inwards as if she was being crushed. She was so terribly confused. She was desperate for answers. What had started out a meager attempt to find out why he had so randomly kissed her in the kitchens had turned into something dire and almost painful. Why had he told her?

"Do you think I wanted to know?" she continued on, her words soaked with warring hurt and demand, febrific. "To spend hours thinking about you and your stupid sickness and your death? The revolting humor you find in the fact that no later than six months from now, you're going to be buried in a hole in the ground? That you don't even have any real friends - and your lackeys that follow you everywhere you go, you don't even bother to tell them? Why on earth, Malfoy, out of all the people in this castle, did you choose to tell me?"

He stared at her, his face tense and taut but his eyes wild with fire. The moonlight made his face fierce, like an angry God about to carry out the works of his uncontainable temper.

"Weren't you listening to anything that I said?" he said through gritted teeth, glowering at her. "About being tired of being untouchable? About growing up? About taking chances?"

"So you told me because you considered it taking a chance?" she scoffed, yet feeling her heart roll with thorns, even more befuddled than before. "What does that even mean? You could have painted it all over the castle walls and that would have been considered taking a risk! You could have told the Fat Lady, who could never keep a secret to save anyone's life - or Peeves, who would have sung it out to the world in falsetto!"

"Granger! Would you just listen to me?" he yelled.

"Why? So you could give me even more nonsensical answers about taking chances?" she bit out.

"No!" he shouted. "I can't believe I even have to tell you this - I thought you were supposed to be smart! Context clues, Granger - haven't you ever heard of those before? I made it so bloody obvious a blind person could have seen it!"

"Seen what? What are you talking about?"

"I like you!" Draco said, aggravated. Hermione, stunned, her jaw falling open, heard her ears ringing and wasn't certain if she'd heard him correctly. The heat from their yelling and shouting had made her face flush with color, her cheeks warm. His sharp words ricocheted off the walls.

She wondered subconsciously if anybody had heard them and was presently making their way up right now to catch them and give them both detention and deduct points for disobeying curfew and being so inconsiderately loud.

Then she thought that Draco shouldn't be made to serve detention. His life was already shortened as it was.

On the other hand, this was all his bloody fault, in the first place.

"What?" she was able to stutter out once her ears had stopped its trill ringing. Her heart was leaping inside her unraveling chest, feeling exactly like a spool on a wheel - being undone, fast, layer by layer, bit by bit. It was an overwhelming feeling, like nothing she'd ever felt before. Terrible. Great. Wonderful. Confusing as hell.

"I like you," he repeated, firmly. "Merlin, are you dense or what?" he snapped. "Why else would I have kissed you in the kitchens? I don't go around just kissing every flustered, S.P.E.W. letter-carrying bint, you know." He sighed, turning away and running his fingers through his white-blond hair.

"B-b-but why?" Hermione was able to articulate (though not as intelligently as she'd hoped) after a moment of trying to comprehend what was really happening. Draco Malfoy liked her? Liked her? Where was she? In the interval of those ten minutes, had she somehow - obliviously because of her anger and vexation - crossed over into the Twilight Zone?

"Why?" he repeated, wrinkling his nose, looking at her. Then his face calmed into a look of blankness, though not utter blankness. In the Malfoy way he did - ambivalent, but with seriousness. Contemplation. Looking straight at her, feeling her entire body tremble with a foreign, frightening feeling of anticipation, dread, and desire all at the same time, he looked away and said, nonchalantly, "God knows."

God knows.

Honestly.

He was so lucky she was still suffering from shock or else she'd have hit him. She usually didn't go around hitting sick people, but for him she'd have made an exception.

Then, before she was about to scold him about his stupid answers to everything, he spoke. Hermione could only see the side of his face now, having turned back to the sight of the Astronomy Tower. His slender figure was silhouetted in the moonlight yet obscured with darkness, as if, somehow, it had already claimed him. While the light, peaceful, just touched him, barely. It lit up his face like a holy kiss, his hands as they rested on the arm. And the rest of him, almost smearing away into the inkiness of the place, was shrouded by shadows.

Hermione felt pain just gazing upon it. A sting, deep inside of her bumbling heart, that slowly passed over every single vein and nerve, making her shiver.

"Maybe it's just one of those things we'll never know, Granger," he said evenly. "Maybe one we aren't supposed to know. Life's mysteries. People can spend their whole life searching for the meaning of everything, and some of them find it in religion or in politics... but some of us, we aren't meant to." He smiled. "But it doesn't matter, does it? Just as long as we have something that means something to us in the end. And, somehow, it makes not knowing everything bearable. A little, but enough."

Then, feeling her heart pound in her chest and a poignant feeling waving over her, Hermione neared him, planting herself right beside him. She looked at him, earnestly searching his face that still radiated with regal beauty even with sickness running through his veins. And, finally, she crept her hand closer to his on the balcony arm, letting her fingers rest on his for a second, cool against her skin, yet warm in a profound way, feeling the tingles of something unexplainable but great ripple all throughout her body. And then she found their fingers entwining, their palms clasping against each other's, firmly. And she felt his pulse, a growing pulse, right against her own, and marveled at the simple notion of holding hands. Right then and there, holding his hand, feeling his pulse and warmth against hers, she felt as if their hearts were beating right alongside each other's.

And Draco, looking out at the night sky with the fading stars, smiled.