Bad Medicine

Chapter Three

Watching Hermione became Draco's new habit. Every afternoon he would drift up to the deserted hallway. Sometimes she would be there and sometimes not. If not, Draco would return to the Slytherin common room and bully Crabbe and Goyle mercilessly, unable to explain his vicious mood. Once she very nearly caught him. He was ambling down the windowed corridor and heard her footsteps behind him. He threw himself into the lion alcove and snatched himself behind the statue, banging his knee sharply in the process. He bit down on a curse as she walked past. It was a miracle she hadn't heard him.

Cursing her for the pain in his knee, he very nearly did not slip into the room to watch her, but the siren song was too strong. Luckily for him, her routine was sporadic or his friends would have begun to suspect his disappearances. Draco wondered how Granger was explaining her absence to the other two lemurs, but then he noticed her workouts often coincided with the Gryffindor Quidditch practice sessions, which made it far easier to plan his spying missions.

The three Draco referred to as The Lemur Trio were in the library pouring over their Astronomy homework.

Hermione looked up from the dusty tome she was reading: Goblin Hygiene - Where Did It Go Wrong? She chanced to see Draco across the library. He was looking at her with that infuriating half-smirk of his. She gave him a halfhearted glare. His smirk curled into an actual smile, but his eyes did not sparkle with the pure hatred she normally caught from him. Instead, he looked at her as though he shared a secret - as if he knew something wicked about her.

She flushed suddenly, thinking about her workout sessions. He couldn't possibly know about that! She calmed her momentary panic with stark rationalization. If Draco did know her secret, he would have the entire Slytherin house ridiculing her. He would probably have buttons printed that mocked her!

She glanced at him again to find him still watching her through half-closed eyes. No, it was more likely he was plotting something.

"Draco is up to something," she said to Ron, who sat across the table from her. "Don't turn around!" she hissed. Ron perked up; far more interested in a potential Malfoy plot than the homework he studied.

"Why do you say that?" he asked mildly. Harry, next to Ron, sneaked a glance at Malfoy and looked at her questioningly. Draco had been remarkably absent lately, but for the usual battering of insults on the Quidditch field, he mentioned.

"He's always watching me," Hermione admitted. "He has to be plotting something."

"Maybe the git's finally noticed you're a girl," Ron offered. "After all, it's hard not to spot those gargantuan melons you sprouted over the summer," he continued and jerked a thumb at her chest. Harry coughed to cover a laugh.

"Ron!" she gasped and her cheeks burned. "They are not gargantuan!"

"Well, they're pretty damn noticeable, 'specially when you wear that fuzzy blue jumper of yours--"

"This one?" she asked archly and yanked open the neck of her robes to reveal her chest encased in the soft blue material.

"Cor, Hermione!" Ron choked loudly. "Warn a guy before you level those cannons at him! I'm like to have a heart attack!"

Hermione had to giggle. "Honestly, Ronald--" she began, but stopped when a chance gaze at Draco revealed he no longer smiled at her. In fact, he sat rigidly in his chair and glared at her so venomously it nearly took her breath away. As she watched, he stood and stalked from the room. She bit her lip as he disappeared through the doorway. He was acting so strangely. She would have to keep an eye on him.

Draco stormed out into the hallway. He fairly seethed with rage. He took out his wand and considered casting Incendio on a nearby suit of armor. Instead, he hit it with a shrinking spell and felt barely a glimmer of satisfaction when it popped down to the size of a coin. It wasn't enough. He needed to destroy something. He needed to destroy Weasley.

Blast it all; what was affecting him like this? He was acting like an idiot. It was just when Hermione had flashed her chest at Weasley, Draco had suddenly felt like casting a Cruciatus curse at him.

What the hell was wrong with him? What did he care if the damned mudblood showed her goods to the lemurs? What did he care if she slept with them both? In rotation or together? He didn't care! He took a number of steadying breaths and headed for the front door. He needed some air.

"Draco!" Pansy called from behind him, but he didn't turn back.

Hermione watched Draco more closely after that and was quite surprised at how often he was near and how often his eyes were upon her. At first, she thought he must be watching Harry or Ron in order to plan some malice, but he often turned up in the library when she was there alone. At those times, he would always pause to recommend a book to her, such as Muggle Scum and Why They Should be Exterminated or Fifty Ways to Cook Muggleborn, so he was never particularly out of character.

However, she would find him watching her when she was in the courtyard, or outside near the lake, or on her way to class. It was damned disconcerting.

Once she, Ron and Harry were lying on the grass studying the uses of wax plant and vervain for Herbology. The day was unseasonably warm and all the students had discarded their school robes and lounged casually in shirtsleeves. Hermione removed her tie and unbuttoned the top buttons of her blouse when a welcome breeze sprang up. She felt eyes upon her and looked up quickly to see Draco leaning against a nearby tree. His Slytherin pack was nowhere in sight. He was not smirking, nor did his eyes glow with ephemeral hatred. Instead, he stared at her with such an intense look that it took her breath away.

She felt heat explode instantly from her chest to her face. She looked down in confusion. When she looked up again, he was striding away.

"He did not just look at me like that," she muttered. She had to have imagined it. Draco Malfoy would never look at her with anything even remotely akin to lust. It was impossible.

The worst of it was, once she started to consider it, she began to wonder if it really was impossible. She bumped into him once in a crowded corridor and their eyes met for a surprised moment. His grey eyes were fathomless pools and the heat of his arm burned into hers where they touched.

"Watch it, filthy mudblood," he said, but his voice was a bare whisper that caressed rather than cut her.

She bolted for the bathroom and was actually late for class while she regained her composure. Ron looked at her askance when she finally made it to her seat.

"Not feeling well," she said vaguely. Harry and Ron shot worried looks at her throughout the remainder of the class and by the end of it, she really did feel ill.

How could she possibly feel attracted to Malfoy? It was absurd. The fact that he was blindingly handsome did not make up for the fact that he was evil through and through. Well not blindingly handsome, surely that was overstating it. Stunningly handsome, perhaps, or painfully handsome. After conjuring and discarding a number of adjectives, she admonished herself for wasting time trying to quantify Malfoy's attractiveness. Why was she thinking about him at all? She would cease immediately.

The next day she walked though a cloister aisle and her eyes were instantly drawn to Malfoy as he sat upon a stone railing with his back against a column pier. (extremely handsome, damn it all) He watched Crabbe and Goyle as they tormented a much smaller third-year boy. Malfoy was grinning. Hermione's blood suddenly boiled and she marched into the garth to confront Crabbe, whose fist was twisted in the collar of the boy who struggled to escape.

"Why can't you pick on someone your own size?" she yelled. "Like a black rhino or a mountain troll?"
Crabbe and Goyle, as usual, looked straight to Draco, who hopped lightly from his perch and sauntered over to her.

"Why don't you try keeping your dirty little Gryffindor nose out of our business, mudblood?" he asked mildly.

She stared at him venomously. He was gorgeous, she admitted to herself. The sun on his pale hair made it look almost white and a lock of it had dropped sensuously over his smooth forehead. His chiseled features were that of a Greek god and he moved with the lithe grace of a stalking panther. Devastatingly handsome, she thought, unable to stop herself.

His silver eyes were unreadable. He suddenly reminded her of a hunting wolf. Beautiful and deadly. He would strike her down without a thought and leave her savaged with no remorse. She felt a weight lift from her chest.

"Thank you, Malfoy," she said with a small smile. His expression became guarded.

"What for?"

"For reminding me how much I hate you," she said brightly. At that, she turned and marched away without noticing the third-year still trapped in Crabbe's grip.

Draco watched her leave and scowled. He looked at Crabbe, who shook the boy once more.

"Let him go. Granger probably hurried off to get Dragonogall," he said, though he doubted his own words. He pondered Hermione's. What had she meant by that? He remembered the way she had looked at him in the corridor earlier. Shocked and... what?

He sighed. Whatever it had been, it was gone now. Her expression was the same disdainful hatred she had displayed right before she punched him in their third year. He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully at the memory. He still owed her for that.