Dolor Draconum

Chapter the Twelfth

Voices erupted in Draco's consciousness as he struggled back to the land of the living. He found them distracting; he was having a hard enough time thinking without the added annoyance of other people intruding on him like that. Where was he? Why was he there? What had happened? Who was talking and why wouldn't they just shut up?

Hermione was interrupted in her account to Dumbledore by Draco's growl. The group gathered around the bed, including Hermione, Dumbledore, Snape and Madam Pomfrey. Aurora had put in an appearance earlier, to find out why yet again two students were skipping her lesson, but Madam Pomfrey had shooed her out on the basis that she was irrelevant to the situation.

Draco opened one eye. When he saw who was there, he grudgingly opened the other as well, and changed his mind about yelling for every on 'bugger off'. He tried to make some pertinent comment, but before he could think of one his mouth acted for him

"Huh? Whazza... Ow." Apparently his brain was still objecting to being conscious again, and had gone on strike. Draco couldn't blame it, being awake hurt.

"Quite, Mr Malfoy," Dumbledore smiled at him. "How are you feeling?"

"Muh. Ow."

"Professor Dumbledore, please," Madam Pomfrey said without much hope. She'd spent her life trying to eject the headmaster from sickbeds, and she knew that he'd only go when he was ready, and not before. Still, there was always a first time or everything. "He needs to rest. Now's not the time for an inquisition."

"Of course not," he soothed her.

Draco wondered if any had ever told the headmaster to 'bugger off'. If people kept talking he might give it a go. His head hurt like hell and he had to concentrate to remember to breathe. He didn't need that kind of distraction.

He settled on, "G'way. Ow."

"Professor Dumbledore," Madam Pomfrey pleaded, with an undertone of sternness that implied that if begging didn't work she'd pick Dumbledore up and carry him out.

"Poppy, I just want to ask him one question," Dumbledore smiled as charmingly as he could. Madam Pomfrey folded her arms. "Just one, please?"

She gave an exasperated sigh and turned back to the painkilling potions Snape had provided, but hadn't bothered to label. She held it up to the light and glowered at the Potions master through it, who ignored her entirely.

"Draco, can you hear me?" Dumbledore sat down on the side of the bed. Draco's every instinct screamed at him to move away, that it was never good to be that close to a teacher, but apparently his body had gone on strike too.

"Ngh," Draco said by way of 'yes'. Dumbledore frowned and Draco gave an internal sigh. Great, he was actually going to have to put some concentration into this. "Yesss," he said carefully, enunciating very precisely. He was pleased with the result, though perhaps a bit more volume would have been advisable. Dumbledore had had to lean right over him to hear, and Draco was now subjected to a wonderful view up his nose.

"Good. Now, Miss Granger tells us you were attack by members of your house. Professor Snape says you denied this earlier, but Madam Pomfrey tells me that you have injuries you didn't have last time you were here. And that was only a week ago. So - are you still paying attention? Still conscious? Good - can you tell us what happened to you?"

Draco stared up at him. He was suddenly glad that he couldn't move; he didn't have to look at Hermione. She'd done a lot for him recently, but he couldn't betray his fellow housemates for the sake of a Mudblood's feelings. He was related to half his house, dammit, and what was thicker than blood? Well, sewage, for a start, a treacherous part of his brain muttered. Draco was used to ignoring that part of his mind. It was the part that objected to his father's beatings and wondered if Mudbloods and Muggles really were inferior and asked irritating questions like 'how would you feel if someone said that to you?' and 'are you sure you're not just jealous of Potter?'

"Fell down stairs," Draco breathed. The lie came as easily as ever, but the irritating little voice forced him to turn his head to look at Hermione. Draco had expected horror or betrayal, but not apoplectic anger.

"He's lying!" Hermione almost shrieked. "He's scared they'll hurt him more if he tells!"

"Silence! You're being ridiculous," Snape snarled at her. "No one in my house would hurt another Slytherin."

"But-" Hermione began again.

"I fell down... the stairs," Draco croaked a little louder, before she could tell them about how he was being shut out by the rest of his house. "I didn't... say anything... because I thought I was... okay. Embarr...assed, too."

Dumbledore knew he was lying. One look into the elderly face told Draco that. He tensed, waiting for the onslaught. It never came. Dumbledore just sighed and gave him a disappointed look. It was the look Draco's mother used to wear when he did something that his father didn't agree with. It was worse than all the beating and shoutings put together. It said 'you really are a hopeless case then, I was a fool for thinking you were redeemable'.

"If you're sure, Mr Malfoy, I suppose we better leave you in peace before Poppy puts us under the Imperius Curse and orders us away."

Dumbledore put his hands on Hermione's shoulders and guided her gently out of the room, Snape following them. Draco caught sight of Hermione glaring at him as Madam Pomfrey closed the curtains around the bed. He relaxed onto the pillow and blamed the ache in his chest on the broken ribs.

* * *

"I bet Snape knows!" Hermione ranted to Ron and Harry. "I bet he's just covering up because he doesn't want his House to get a bad reputation, or because people might think he's a bad House Head. I mean, how could you miss it? Look at Draco, just look at him! There're practically footprints in his stomach!"

"Well..." Ron began.

"And that's another thing!" Hermione was off again. Apparently she had just paused for breath. "Draco lied. Why? Why would he lie? He can't like Crabbe and Goyle, so he can't be defending them. He can't. Why lie?"

"Perhaps..." Harry tried to interject.

"And Dumbledore just accepted it! I don't understand that. I'm sure he's got his reasons, but I could just tell he knew Draco was lying, and I think Draco could too."

"Hermione!" They both yelled together.

"What?"

"Just shut up for a second, will you?" Ron said. "Please!"

Hermione lapsed into a sulky silence.

"Look," Harry said desperately, "Hermione. I bet Dumbledore does know, but perhaps he just didn't think it was appropriate to talk about it in front of you. I mean, he knows you and Malfoy can't stand each other-" Ron made a grumbling comment, but Harry shot him a look and kept talking, "- so he probably didn't want you to know any more than you already do."

Hermione shook her head. "Come on, Harry, you can do better than that," she said, smiling despite herself. "This is about Draco lying, and he knows I know. He told me himself!"

Ron gave her an exasperated look. "This is Malfoy we're talking about. Why should it matter? Everyone knows the Slytherins are gits anyway. I bet he's been just as much of a bastard as they have."

Hermione couldn't find anything to say to this.

"See?" Ron said triumphantly. "Now come on, I need you to help me with my Potions essay."

"When you say help, you mean write most of it for you while you play chess with Harry, don't you?" Hermione said in mock irritation.

"No!" Ron objected. "We're going to play exploding snap."

* * *

Hermione wanted to tell Draco exactly what she thought of him and his lying. She tried to find the exact words to express how disappointed and angry she was with him. She searched for adjectives and adverbs, even going so far as to find a thesaurus to look new ones up in, to explain how badly she would hurt him if he didn't stop hurting himself like this. What could he hope to accomplish by lying and covering up for his friends like that?

Hermione wanted to tell him what she thought of him, but November slipped by and December sprung upon them with its tinsel and baubles and still Malfoy had yet to start attending lessons again. Anger turned to worry and disappointment to concern. Surely he hadn't been hurt that badly? Even if he did have a resistance to healing spells (which Hermione doubted; none of her research had suggested that Veela blood could cause that kind of problem, and Fleur had never seemed to suffer unduly during the tournament), he ought to have been out by now. She felt certain that there'd have been an announcement if he'd died, and Crabbe and Goyle, and who ever else was in that dormitory, would have been expelled.

"You look like you failed Arithmancy," Ginny commented one evening as they arranged the ivy over the fireplace. Hermione had decided not to burden the house elves with decorating, and as the term drew to a close decorating the common room had become quite popular with the Gryffindors. The common room was mostly empty of students at the moment, but their presence remained felt in the form of hundreds of clashing decorations all provided by well meaning parents and the bargain bin from the party shop in Hogsmeade.

"What do you mean?" Hermione picked at the leaves, praying they hadn't picked poisonous ivy. She and Ginny were standing on chairs to reach the top of the huge fireplace, trying to bring some kind of order to the mess of colours and designs scattered across it.

"Oh come on, it's getting so obvious. You're moping over Malfoy," Ginny chucked her a bauble. Hermione watched it sail past her shoulder, making no effort to catch it. It smashed on the floor into a thousand glittering shards.

"Reparo, Accio," Hermione murmured. "I'm not moping over him," she told Ginny as she attached the bauble to the end of the ivy. "I'm just getting a bit worried. The only time I can think of that any one spent so long in the infirmary was when I turned myself into cat-woman and Madam Pomfrey couldn't find a charm to turn me back."

"Maybe it's just to keep him out of the way," Ginny suggested. "If he's being bullied in the dormitories perhaps Dumbledore decided he'd be better off in the infirmary until they can find a solution."

"Expel the bullies, that's a solution," Hermione said bluntly. Years of being the smallest and easiest picking had left a lasting imprint on her mind. Most students from wizarding families didn't attend school before Hogwarts, but as a Muggle born she had gone through seven years of junior school, and she'd been bullied throughout all of them. She hoped that one day there's be a school reunion, and she could turn all those bullies into slugs. That'd teach them.

"Hermione? Hermione!"

"Huh?" Hermione wrenched herself out of the daydream.

"You were scaring me, I've never seen you smile like that," Ginny said seriously. "You're not going to do anything, well, stupid, are you? I know how you feel about Malfoy..."

"No, you don't," Hermione said. "Because I don't. He's so vulnerable and I just want to help him, but I still think he's an arrogant, prejudiced aristobrat. And I just don't understand why he'd lie to defend people who hate him."

"Maybe he's punishing himself," Ginny said quietly. She jumped off the chair she had been standing on and sat down. Hermione sensed that this was going to be an intensely personal revelation, and she moved to sit on the arm of her chair.

Ginny gave her a weak smile. "Those bullying him, well their fathers went to prison too, didn't they? I think he's feeling a bit guilty; he knows Crabbe and Goyle are angry with him because his father was the ringleader. He knows it's not his fault, but that doesn't stop the guilt. After... after the Chamber of Secrets ordeal I felt so bad. I knew it wasn't my fault, but that didn't stop me from feeling like it was. Everyone was creeping around me like I was so delicate and fragile, and it was sending me crazy. Everyone said they didn't blame me, but it felt like they did."

"What did you do?" Hermione asked, sliding an arm around the younger girl.

Ginny sighed and leant into Hermione. "Made a point of getting on everyone's nerves until they started yelling. I wanted people to yell at me. After spending all summer teasing Percy about Penelope and winding up Ron and 'accidentally' breaking some of the twins' experiments people stopped treating me like I was fragile. They started treating me normally again. The stupid thing is, they never understood that they'd been treating me differently in the first place."

Hermione wanted to say that Draco was different, that he wanted people to be nice, but something stopped her short. The lake. They had sat by the lake and he had wound her up until she yelled. He had made her angry with him, and encouraged her to confirm everything he thought about himself.

"So what do I do? Yell at him?" Hermione asked, half to herself.

"He needs to recognise that it's not his fault and he shouldn't be punished for it. I mean, his mother walked out on him. That's punishment enough." Ginny sighed. "He's screwed up. He always has been. I mean, his father's a Death Eater and his mother's an empty headed narcissist who took the money and ran. You can tell just from looking at his father that he believes in hitting his son. And he's grown up very sheltered. And he's an only child-"

"Hey! So am I," Hermione objected. "There's nothing wrong with that."

Ginny laughed. "There is if you've got parents like the Malfoys. Imagine - he's spent his childhood only being exposed to his them and the people they like."

"Ouch," Hermione agreed. "No wonder he's such a bastard."

"Who?" a voice interrupted behind them. Ginny twisted around to see Harry, nose and ears red from the cold. He had his hands in his pockets and a smile on his face. "Let me guess, we're talking about Malfoy."

"Who else?" Hermione grinned. She had to tread carefully here. The boys understood that she didn't like Malfoy, she just felt sorry for him, but then, they didn't know she'd kissed him in the library. Until recently she had been content to hate him, but as horror follow horror for him that hatred ebbed away to leave sympathy and maybe even a grudging respect.

"I can't believe he's still skipping classes," Harry said, sitting opposite the two girls. "Even with the Hippogriff scratch he only managed to get out of class for a week."

"Madam Pomfrey wouldn't let him stay in the hospital wing that long unless it was serious," Hermione said, dread settling in her chest. "He fainted, didn't he? Perhaps he's got a brain tumour or something. If he was hit in the head hard enough, like when he nose dived off of his broom, he could have developed a blood clot or something."

"That's a bit much, isn't it?" Harry asked incredulously. "I mean, I've landed head first several times, and I'm okay."

"That's up for debate, isn't it?" Ron grinned. "What are you doing in here? We have Quidditch practise, remember?"

"Oliver Wood never made us practise on the last week of term," Harry grumbled. "Look, Hermione, if you're so worried about Malfoy, why don't you just go up to the hospital wing and see him?"

Ron stared. "What? No! Why are you worrying about Malfoy?" He bent over Hermione. "What's wrong with you?"

Hermione laughed and pushed him away. "I just want to find out how he's getting away with staying out of lessons for so long. Ginny thought that perhaps Dumbledore was keeping him there until they got this bullying mess sorted out."

Ron frowned at her suspiciously. "Don't let him fool you into liking him," he warned. "He'll go out of his way to hurt you. Just because he's been through a lot doesn't make him a nice guy. You've got too much heart, Hermione."

It was a compliment, in a Ronnish kind of way, and Hermione smiled. They were just worried about her, that was all. Ron was startled when Hermione hugged him suddenly, giving him a peck on the cheek. She disappeared out of the portrait hole with a wave and a goodbye, but she didn't look back.

"You have to tell her," Ginny said, staring at her beetroot red brother. "She has no idea."

"Ginny's right, mate," Harry grinned. "Come on, how hard can it be? It's Hermione, for heaven's sake. You've been best friends for years"

"Exactly," Ron said morosely. "It's Hermione. We're friends. She doesn't think about me in that way."

"Well, girls are unpredictable. Cho never liked me in that way for ages," Harry said awkwardly. "Besides, maybe she really likes you too, but neither of you are ever going to work up the nerve to say anything to each other."

Ron gave him a scathing look. "Yeah, and maybe You-Know-who will start breeding fluffy little bunny rabbits and painting pictures of rainbows. What world are you living in, Harry? Hermione's more likely to fall for Malfoy than me," he said in the tone of voice usually reserved for flying pigs.

Ginny, who had been about to say something to comfort her brother, closed her mouth quickly and stared into the fire. She'd love for Hermione and Ron to get together, but if she liked Malfoy more... Shoot. Why did relationships have to be so damn messy?