Bad Medicine

Additional disclaimer: Lyrics in this chapter are from Jon Bon Jovi's song "I'd Die for You" written by Jon Bon Jovi, Ritchie Sambora, and Desmond Child from the 1986 album Slippery When Wet released by Mercury Records. Thus completes my fanfic tribute to Jon Bon Jovi.

Chapter Seventeen

Hermione avoided Draco for the next few days. She took her meals in the common room, informing Harry and the others that she needed to study, and spent much of her time buried in books before the Gryffindor fire. She avoided the library, even if she needed to look something up. Several times she sent Neville or Ginny out to bring her a specific tome. Ginny thankfully said nothing about her newfound hermitlike tendencies.

Classes were the worst torture. She survived by arriving at the last possible instant and fleeing as soon as class ended. She avoided all attempts by Draco to catch her eye. She skirted all alcoves in which he could hide. He went so far as to blatantly drop a note on her table in Herbology, but she immediately snatched it up and incinerated it, unread.

Harry let her be, but Ron noticed her skittish behavior with puzzlement.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he asked one evening. "You usually have your head buried in a book, but this is ridiculous. You won't come visit Hagrid with us, you run from half our classes like your skirt is on fire, and you scurry through the halls like a bloody acromantula! You won't eat--look at yourself. You're wasting away."

"Leave it, Ron," Harry warned.

"No, I won't leave it; what is wrong with her, anyway?" He looked from Harry to Hermione and back with narrowed eyes. "You bloody well know, don't you? What's so damned secret you have to keep it from me?"

Harry shrugged. Hermione dropped her gaze, unable to meet his eyes.

"Well, come on. Spill it or I'll... I'll walk out of here and never speak to either of you again."

"Hermione's in love," Harry said woodenly. She gasped until she remembered she hadn't sworn him to secrecy. And it really was unfair not to tell Ron. Except that Ron would not be nearly so understanding as Harry, since he hated Malfoy with a deep and abiding passion.

Ron sat down hard next to Hermione.

"You're joking."

She glared. "Is it that hard to imagine?" she demanded.

Ron coughed. "Erm... no, it's just... Is it Viktor Krum?"

Hermione shook her head. She had barely thought of Krum since his departure back to Durmstrang.

"Someone at Hogwarts?" Ron queried.

Hermione nodded. Ron looked at Harry with eyes narrowed.

"Someone I wouldn't approve of, or you would have said something by now. Or Harry would have."

Hermione blushed and Harry nodded grimly.

"Is it Harry?"

They both gaped at him and then at each other. Hermione burst out laughing.

"You wouldn't approve if she were in love with me?"

Ron flushed scarlet.

"Well, I wouldn't have... disapproved, exactly. I mean, if you were in love it would be..." He scowled. "Frankly, it would be a bit weird."

"Fear not," Harry said snappishly. "She's not in love with me."

"Hopefully, I'd ken if it were me, so I'm guessing... a Ravenclaw. Terry Boot? Carmichael? Chambers?"

His guesses were so identical to Harry's that she could only stare in amazement.

"No? A Hufflepuff then? Cedric Diggory? Everyone thinks he's a catch since the whole Tri-Wizard Tournament, you know. Even Ginny was goggling at him. Zacharias Smith?"

"It's Draco Malfoy," Harry said, apparently unable to stand the suspense any longer.

Hermione winced and waited for the explosion.

"Seriously," Ron said. "Who is it?"

It took another fifteen minutes for them to convince Ron that they were absolutely not joking. By then Hermione was nearly in tears and Harry's hair was much more disheveled than usual. Ron, surprisingly, did not even shout. He just sat on the couch and kept repeating two words until Hermione felt like screaming.

"Draco Malfoy. Draco. Malfoy. Draco Malfoy."

"Ron, I'm going to petrify you and put you in bed if you don't assimilate this and be done with it," she threatened finally.

"But how did it happen?" he asked with a glare. "Did he cast a spell on you? Or give you a love potion, or..."

She wished she could use the love potion defense. At least Ron could forgive her for that. She shook her head.

"It just happened, Ron. I didn't expect it and I don't want it. He doesn't love me, as you might well imagine, so I've been avoiding him. Eventually I'll get over it."

Ron heaved a sigh of relief.

"Well that's the first intelligent thing I've heard in the past few minutes. Good plan. You just stay in here for as long as it takes to get over the git." He reached over and patted her hand helpfully. "Maybe Harry can fix you up with Cedric Diggory."

"I think I'll work on one problem at a time, if you don't mind, Ronald," she said dryly.

Ron might have thought it a good plan, but her self-imposed exile drove her stir-crazy after awhile. The walls of Gryffindor tower began to close in on her. One night, she woke from a nightmare of Draco calling her.

She sat up and tried to rub the tiredness from her eyes. She knew she wouldn't get back to sleep, so she got up and shrugged her school robe on over her nightgown. She had given Harry's invisibility cloak back to him after her last foray to the hospital wing. She tiptoed down the stairs to the common room, gazed longingly at the portrait hole, and finally went out.

The Fat Lady recognized her.

"It's a bit late to visit your boyfriend, don't you think?" she asked with a yawn.

"I overslept," Hermione lied. "He's probably not waiting for me anymore, but I have to check."

"Of course you do. Run along," the Fat Lady said with a tired wave.

Hermione went, treading an unhurried path to her secret room, heavy with the knowledge that Draco would be fast asleep at this hour. He most likely despised her now anyway, after the way she'd been treating him.

She stopped at the long row of windows and looked out. It was snowing. Huge flakes obscured everything outside. It would have been dark in the hallway but for the odd reflective quality of snow clouds that picked up the lights of Hogwarts and handed them back as a strange, dim glow.

Hermione breathed on the frosted glass, obscuring a pane. She lifted a hand and drew on the glass as a child would. An H. And then a heart. And then a D. She sighed. A foolish dream. She felt like crying, but she'd done enough of that in her bed at night to fill the lake.

"Finally emerged from your exile?" a voice asked behind her, nearly startling her out of her skin. She moaned and pressed her forehead against the glass, welcoming the icy coldness to cool the heat that suddenly filled her.

"Please go away," she whispered.

Draco snorted. "Not on your life. I've been staking out this corridor for four nights in a row. I've been living on twenty minutes of sleep every night. As you might well imagine, I'm not in a very good mood."

"Well that makes two of us," she retorted.

He spun her around to face him.

"You can't avoid me forever."

"I can try."

"Are you telling me you never want to see me again?"

"Isn't it obvious? And you say Ron is thick."

"Don't compare me to Weasley," Draco warned. "I already told you you're a horrible liar."

"I'm not lying!" Hermione burst out. "I never want to see you again!" Her hands clenched into fists. "Never! Do you understand?"

"No. I don't understand. Tell me why."

His words were perfectly calm. She fought their lulling effects.

"You know why. Because you don't love me. Because you can't love me and I can't love you and this whole thing we started has turned into a fiasco that I can't control. I need to be free of you! Can't you see that? I need to be free!" She stepped forward so he could see the tears that now sparkled in her eyes. She reached out and gripped his Slytherin cloak in desperate hands. It was difficult to be so close to him, to look into his fathomless eyes and utter her next words, but she had to. "Please, Draco, you have to let me go. Promise you'll never see me again. Promise me!"

He reached up and placed his hands over her clenched fists and gripped them tightly.

"Who ever said I don't love you?" he asked softly.

It was the last thing she expected to hear from him. Her tears released from the floodgates and he released one hand to tip her lips up to meet his. She clung to him helplessly, unable to even formulate a response to his question. He kissed her searingly until she struggled to breathe. He finally released her mouth long enough to ask her a question.

"Do you still want me to leave you?"

"Yes."

He kissed her again, bruising her lips, punishing her, and his tongue forced its way in to caress the roof of her mouth, sending shockwaves of pleasure through her body. His hands slid over her back from shoulder blades to spine, pressing her tightly against him. Her senses reeled and her heart pounded like a frightened rabbit. His lips left hers and made a burning path down her neck to the hollow of her collarbone. His tongue caressed it gently. She shuddered and inhaled sharply, trying to fight the sudden onrush of desire.

"Do you still want me to leave you?" he asked again.

She whimpered, unwilling to answer. His mouth left her collarbone and moved lower. She suddenly knew he wouldn't stop until he had the truth.

"No, damn you! I don't want you to leave me. Not now and not ever! Are you satisfied?" she gasped out.

Draco's grip on her relaxed slightly. His lips still hovered at the neckline of her nightgown. He bit one of the buttons off, raised his head, and poinked it over her shoulder before he looked at her wickedly through shining silver eyes.

"No, I'm not quite satisfied," he said and kissed her again. She was drowning instantly and found that she no longer cared. When he was this close to her, doing what he was to her, she couldn't think clearly. All she could do was feel and what she felt now... was so incredibly good... She would worry tomorrow, she decided. Tonight she would be with Draco and let everything else be damned. He was her tormentor and she welcomed him.

"I want to dance with you," he said against her ear. She stared at him in a fair daze of bewilderment, particularly since he had bitten off two more buttons from her gown and she rather expected him to keep going. She glanced toward the room with the phonograph.

"No. Here," he said and began to sing.

"I might not say I'm sorry

Yeah, I might talk rough sometimes

And I might forget the little things

Or keep you hanging on the line

In a world that don't know Romeo and Juliet

Boy meets girl and promises we can't forget

We are cast from Eden's gate with no regrets

Into the fire we cry"

His voice was like magic and he pulled her into a sweet, languorous dance while the snow fell in sparkling glitter outside.

"I'd die for you

I'd cry for you

I'd do anything

I'd lie for you

You know it's true

Baby I'd die for you"

He remembered every word and sang it flawlessly while they danced. If she thought she had loved him before, the feeling was nothing compared to how she felt when he finished. She couldn't seem to stop the tears from falling, now that she admitted to herself that she didn't want to live without him.

He stopped and brushed the tears away from her cheeks with his thumbs.

"I don't know how it happened, but I do love you," he said and kissed her tenderly.

Pansy Parkinson watched them from the shadows at the end of the corridor. Tears of rage stung her eyes and her fingernails dug into her palms until she thought they would bleed.

She had been watching Draco closely since the incident at the Quidditch match. She had been relieved when Hermione had not appeared in the hospital wing. It had given her immense satisfaction to see Hermione avoiding Draco once he returned to classes, although her blood boiled at the remembrance of Draco's distress. He had acted like a man possessed. He had paced the common room floor constantly and treated Crabbe and Goyle more viciously than usual, railing at them for every perceived annoyance. Pansy he had nearly ignored completely.

Each night since his recovery he had disappeared, prompting her to follow him. She had been beyond relieved to find him wandering the halls alone and she had wondered how many nights he planned to continue his vigil.

Until tonight when her worst fears had been realized. She watched them dance, still not believing her eyes. Draco was singing. She'd never had the slightest inkling that he could sing, much less that he would. She wanted to hurt them both. She wanted to take her wand and Crucio them until they couldn't move, until they begged her for mercy.

It wouldn't be enough. She vowed revenge. And then suddenly she knew how to get it.