Dolor Draconum

Chapter the Fifth

They're all gathered around Hagrid's hut for a Care of Magical Creatures lesson. It's on these strange fluffy creatures called Tribbles, and the name nags at Hermione's mind. She knows it from somewhere. Anyway, they're cute and harmless and they make soothing sounds when petted, so no one can find anything to complain about except Ron, who's actually saying they're boring. Well, Harry is objecting, they're better than flobberworms.

After the lesson Hagrid takes Hermione aside and asks if she'd like to take care of a special project for him, since he has his hands full with a winged lion that keeps burping slugs. Hermione is curious, though not about the lion. It would explain what had happened to Hagrid's vegetable patch, though.

Hagrid leads her to a dungeon that Hermione recognises as being near the Slytherin common room. The walls are cold stone and the windows are simple slits. As they walk Hermione realises that this isn't Hogwarts at all. Hagrid's taken her to Azkaban!

The door of the cell they stop outside of creaks ominously open. Hermione peers inside, but she can't see the room's occupant. It's a prison cell, Hermione reminds herself sternly. Who knew what might be in there. It could even be Lucius Malfoy!

But still... it's awfully bare. Cheerless. Whatever's in here, she decides, she'll at least bring it a blanket and some pictures to cheer the room up. Light glints off something in a corner, but Hermione dismisses it. Another thought has occurred to her. Just as much as it might be Lucius, it might also be Sirius!

Hermione rejects that idea. She's aware now that this is a dream, though that awareness is slightly disturbing in itself. Besides she knows better than to fool herself with drams of Sirius being alive. He wasn't going to come back. They hadn't taken him to Azkaban again. They hadn't sent him on some quest. Sirius was dead. Lucius was in prison.

Hagrid pushes her abruptly into the cell and shuts her in. It's cold and dark even though she now knows that this is just a dream Hermione can't help but be scared. She turns and starts banging on the door, keeping one eye on the room behind her. Even if it is just one of Hagrid's pets, it's probably dangerous. Hagrid probably hadn't realised, she rationalises, so he'd shut the door to keep it from getting out while she got to know it, and he'd be back in a bit. Sometimes she wants to scream at him.

Oh god, what if it's another dragon. What if he's got another Norbert locked up in Azkaban, because there's nowhere else to keep it?

Dream, she reminds herself.

A soft mewling sound distracts her, and she turns to peer into the corners of the room. A scaly arm emerges briefly from the shadows, but then withdraws again.

Hermione moves slowly towards the corner, wand out. The scaly arm stretches out to her again, and with her free hand she reaches down and holds its hand. With a sob, the creature flings itself on top of her, and she screams in panic. Just as abruptly, it withdraws into the shadows again. But she's seen who it is now, and it is a 'who', not a 'what'.

It was a boy, covered in scales, a dragonboy. When Hermione reaches out to the dragonboy again, it cringed away. The damage is done.

Hermione had always equated dreams with stress, only remembering her nighttime wanderings during exam times, usually. But she wasn't under any particular stress, right now. Sitting up in bed, she wondered what was going on. She'd never remembered a dream so clearly. And, she realised abruptly, she'd known she was dreaming. She'd heard that lucid dreaming was impossible.

She could remember every single detail.

Hermione took a deep breath and determined to cast the strange vision from her mind. She would focus on mundane things. Potions was hell, Defence Against the Dark Arts was tedious, and she had, as usual, found the other lessons ridiculously easy. Still, several weeks into the first term, and the work was building up. Never unmanageable, but she had found herself going to bed at three AM after rewriting an entire Potions essay after spotting a spelling mistake in the middle of a paragraph where she couldn't correct it easily.

She hadn't had much of a chance to contemplate her time in the library with Draco. She put her own recent mood swings down to hormones, and found it a remarkably convenient excuse, since it also explained the butterflies she got when Draco looked at her. She was absolutely determined never to mention it to Ron and Harry, since merely imagining the look on their faces was enough to scare her witless.

It was about five in the morning, and the school was dark. That hour between set of the moon and the rise of the sun. A few stars were still grimly clinging to the night sky, shades of purple and navy blue interrupted by gaps of colour where a few clouds scudded across the sky. Hermione focused on these details, staring out of the dormitory window and concentrating on finding new adjectives to describe what she could see. What came to mind was: scaly, piteous, sinuous, wretched, lean, broken, crushed, dejected, rejected, dispirited, hopeless...

She couldn't get the dragonboy out of her head. The oily patterns of its scales, the luminescent eyes, the tautness of its trembling muscles ...It had been beautiful, and she cried because she had hurt it and she missed it.

The window wasn't helping. With a defeated sigh Hermione turned away from the window, but a flash of unexpected starlight made her spin back. She squinted into the half-light, trying to work out where the flash had come from. She wished desperately that she had Harry's omnioculars, but a simple charm would have to do instead.

"Oculum extravideo," she murmured. Her eyesight telescoped abruptly, leaving her dizzy and disorientated. She could see each blade of grass as though she was actually outside, walking across the grounds. Come to think of it, that would have been a more sensible idea.

The charm only lasted a few minutes, and Hermione made use of that time to scan the grounds. When she caught sight of the windowpane all her disorientation returned and she collapsed backwards, unable to cope with the sensation that the window was huge and rushing towards her. As she fell she caught sight of the light again, and guessed it was by the lake. Knowing her luck, it was probably just a ripple caused by the giant squid, but she wasn't going to get any sleep again tonight, so she might as well check it out.

As her eyesight returned to normal she scrambled to her feet. Dressing as quietly as she could, she sneaked out through the common room and down the stairs to the nearest exit onto the grounds. So wrapped up in her task was she, she failed to notice a shock of red hair sticking out over the top of one of the chairs in the common room. Ginny Weasley stared openly as Hermione crept away.

Something about the texture that had reflected the light had set off warning bells in Hermione's mind. It was like the light in the dream, glinting off something in the shadows. Not scales, no, but hair. White-blond hair.

She stared down at the thin body, sleeping in a foetal position, and sighed. The gauzy silk shirt was almost as pearlescent as the scales in her dream, but she was relieved to note a lack of claws.

She had butterflies again. Fine, she could admit that Draco was moderately attractive, but that didn't make him any less of a bastard. It was the vulnerability, she decided. Damn him for bringing out the mother hen in her. He looked so delicate, curled up like that. It didn't take a genius to figure out that he was out here because his house was ostracizing him. She wondered how they could do it, then remembered who she was looking at. Sure, he was pretty, but he was also cruel, prejudiced, arrogant, bigoted and, in general, a complete prick.

"Just because you have one doesn't mean you have to be one," she whispered viciously, inexplicably angry with him. It wasn't fair that he could need her so much and be so evil. It wasn't fair on her. "Be ugly or be nice," she told the sleeping body.

"I suppose when faced with the same options you took the first?" a sharp voice snapped. Hermione jumped and stared down, absolutely aghast, as one grey eye opened to regard coldly. "Come to gloat?" Draco asked, sitting up slowly and pulling his cloak tightly around himself.

"Perhaps I ought to," Hermione replied, equally coldly. "What are you doing out here?"

"As if you don't already know," Malfoy sneered.

"They actually kicked you out?" Hermione asked, surprised that even the Slytherins could be that cruel.

"No, but I couldn't have stayed," Malfoy stared at his feet. "Bastards, the lot of them."

"I could have told you that," Hermione said scornfully. "What did they do?"

"Oh, the usual. You strike me as the sort to read those dreadful girl's boarding school books. Apple-pie beds, hand in warm water, flobberworms in your shoes, sewing up the ends of sleeves... Nothing I couldn't tolerate normally, you understand, but I felt like a little peace and quiet."

Hermione wondered who the witchy equivalent of Enid Blyton was, and what the books would be like. Quidditch instead of Lacrosse, flying instead of long runs in the rain, flobberworms instead of earthworms in someone's boots...

"What are you thinking about?" Malfoy demanded. "You haven't said anything yet."

"I got sidetracked," Hermione said crossly. "Honestly, why is it whenever anyone's nice you get so defensive?"

"Me?" Malfoy scoffed. "You think I'm defensive? You fly off at the handle at everything! Not every word I utter is an insult aimed personally at you. I follow you into the Gryffindor common room, you fly off the handle at me. You wake me with insults, I reply in like but suddenly you're the victim. The world doesn't revolve around you, Ms Hermione Granger. Things going on in my life are nothing to do with you, and you're being an interfering busybody right now!"

"Is this the bit where you start yelling at me to go away until you start crying again?" Hermione asked scathingly.

"How dare you throw that in my face!" Malfoy's face paled in sheer fury. "How... how dare... how, how... you... how..."

"Do you need me to slap you?" Hermione asked, voice low and equally angry.

Malfoy stood up and walked away, unable to talk. He wanted to slap her. She had no right to bring their encounter in the library up. That was private. It had taken a lot to even mention it, to admit to himself that being treated like this by his fellow Slytherins hurt. That it still hurt.

He wrapped his arms around himself and stared at his reflection. He didn't need simpering idiots like Pansy Parkinson to tell him he was attractive. He didn't need false words to comfort him and flatter him. If they wanted to believe they loved him, let them, but he wasn't their fool. They loved his looks, his money, his confidence... He wanted to ask them what his favourite colour was, what he liked to eat, where his ideal date would be. He wanted to see them stutter and stammer and say what they'd like him to think, not what he actually thought.

In the library, no matter how painful it was to think of it, Hermione had learnt a little of what he actually thought. She hadn't simpered or made eyes at him, she'd handed him a tissue and let him get on with it. She was practical. She said what she thought. She was an ignorant, rude little mudblood, but Draco found himself admiring her for her boldness and stubbornness nevertheless.

His reflection looked less miserable when he thought of her in that light, and he scowled at it. Okay. Fine. She was attractive. His hormones had made that perfectly clear to him. Hermione Granger, witch of no magical blood, was physically attractive. So were many Muggles. That didn't mean he was going to even consider a relationship with them. Mona Lisa could beg at his feet, Helen of Troy could declare everlasting love, Marilyn Monroe could sell her soul to the devil for him, Draco Malfoy wouldn't care. Wouldn't even consider it.

Still... no. Absolutely not. So what if his body had reacted to her closeness in the library? Perfectly natural. Who cares if he'd dreamt about her three times since then? Didn't mean anything. He'd seen her stark naked. Any hotblooded male would have reacted the same way. Most of the Potions class had. And why should it matter that Hermione was angry right now?

Draco Malfoy sighed. His worst enemy was his only confidante. She hated him, he hated her. Anything he said would be used against him. If she knew he, well, found her attractive in the basest possible way, she'd no doubt think he was dirty and perverted, and let the whole school know. But if she was angry with him, she was far more likely to tell people, right?

That was how he rationalised it to himself as he turned around. He had no intention of apologising, but he didn't want things to get any worse. She was a forgiving sort of person, right?

But Hermione was long gone.