Dolor Draconum

Chapter the Twenty-Sixth

Draco shot Hermione a look. It was Arithmancy, and they were sitting together again, now apparently a normal thing, much to the rest of the Slytherin's disgust. Hermione was staring disconsolately at her paper, doodling little circles all over it instead of taking notes. Hermione, not taking notes? Clearly time to return the favour and cheer her up.

"Hey," he murmured, nudging her, while Professor Vector drew lines and circles and squiggly lines across the board. Dean Thomas, sitting towards the back, was convinced it was a plan for tactics during a football game.

"Hey," Hermione smi- no, she didn't smile at him. Her lips moved, twisting up at the corners, and she even bared her teeth, but it wasn't a smile. The skin around her eyes didn't crease like it did normally when she smiled, and she didn't get that cute dimple in her left cheek, and he couldn't see her canines, which he could when she really beamed at him.

"What's up?" Draco asked softly. His fingers brushed hers; drawing her attention to the fact she hadn't written a single word down. Hermione found herself more focused on the sensation of skin on skin, and she hooked her middle finger over Draco's, holding his hand down.

"Fight with Harry," Hermione said honestly. "He's been so touchy recently and Ron and I, and everyone else, really, indulged him. And, well, I told him that I wasn't going to do that any more."

"About time," Draco agreed with her.

"I think I screwed up big time," Hermione shook her head. "This isn't like one of our normal fights, where we make up afterwards. It's not a fight, really. I told him there was an aspect of his personality I don't like."

"And thanks to Professor Kelp, we know that that's one of the things which will put people at their most defensive," Draco sighed.

"Yes, like challenging someone's world view. Especially, say, their prejudices?" Hermione shot him a sly look.

Draco grinned. "Yes, yes," he said shaking his head. "I got a little defensive at Christmas. Can you blame me, after I put up with so much?"

"No, I can't," Hermione told him. "I can't blame Harry, either," she returned to her original problem. "Not for how he is, and not if he starts to avoid me. I don't think he'll stop talking to me altogether, we'll just, sort of fall out of friendship. I don't want that, I really value his friendship."

"I don't know how I can help," Draco said. "I guess 'wait it out' is the most advice I can offer."

"It's the best advice anyone could offer," Hermione told him. "I know it's all I can do. I can't... I feel like I ought to feel guilty, or angry with myself, or angry with him, or something. But my common sense says I did the right thing."

"Common sense is a good thing to listen to," Draco told her. "God knows letting 'your heart be your guide'," he said with air quotes, "is an idiotic thing to do."

"I know!" Hermione agreed vehemently. "I don't understand why people would want to do that. I couldn't bear to be so impulsive, so disorganised. Everything would depend on other people, you wouldn't be able to predict anything about yourself, you couldn't make any plans... It's like walking into an exam without revising, and doing it all on faith."

"I don't understand those people," Draco nodded. "Like Potter, I suppose. Always letting his hero complex do the thinking."

"His loyalty to his friends," Hermione corrected.

Draco shrugged. "Near enough."

"You really haven't had any healthy platonic relationships, have you?" Hermione sighed.

"Isn't this one?" Draco asked hopefully.

"I hope not," Hermione mumbled under her breath, and flushed. Draco pretended not to hear, but he was hurt. Was Hermione that much against a relationship with him?

Hermione glanced across at him. "Do you know what platonic means?" she asked, reading the disappointment he was trying to conceal.

"Yes," Draco snapped.

"Oh?"

"... no," Draco admitted.

"Look it up," Hermione told him, and stood up. Draco frowned as she walked past him and out of the classroom. Why wasn't Professor Vector objecting?

"Are you going to sit there all day, Malfoy?" Lavender Brown called down the room. Draco still had enough pride left to ignore her as he strode out of the now empty classroom, managing to make it look like she had made the mistake, not him.

* * *

Ron wasn't going to take sides. Absolutely not. Not between friends. God, was this how Harry felt when he and Hermione fell out, or how Hermione felt when he and Harry weren't talking?

Except they were talking. It was just strained. No one was angry, no one was crying, no one was stuck on his or her own. Harry and Hermione were being polite to each other. They were talking about school. They were discussing DADA. Hermione had brought up Dumbledore's Army again, and Harry had politely declined to restart it. They spoke, very neutrally, about Professor Kelp and the Legilimency and Occlumency she had finally begun to explain.

It was all so bland. Ron sat between them and despaired. All of the passion Hermione reserved for academic debates had fizzled out, all of the righteous anger Harry put into their disagreements had faded to a nod and an agreement to disagree. Ron had asked both of them what had happened, and they'd both been honest with him. Hermione didn't like Harry. Or, at least, that was the impression Ron got. It made no sense, not when they'd been so close for so long. Ron couldn't think of the last time Harry and Hermione had fallen out, not including times when he'd been involved too.

There was a knock on the portrait door. Ron leaped to answer it, desperate to escape the awkwardness that the trio had been plunged into.

Turns out he would have preferred the awkwardness. Malfoy was standing there.

"Hi, Weasley," he said. "Granger there?"

"What do you want with her?" Ron growled.

"I figure she doesn't want to spend the evening making nice to Potter just now," Draco said, "and I wanted to chat with her."

"You think I'm letting you just go off with her?" Ron asked, keeping his voice low.

"What can you do to stop her if she wants to go?" Draco asked snidely. "Face it, Weasley, I'm the one she wants."

"I'm not denying that," Ron ground out. He could face the truth, even if it hurt. "I wouldn't place any faith in it lasting, if I were you," he added. "She feels sorry for you, and it's biasing her. Sooner or later you'll stop being such a miserable git and when you're your bastard self again she'll come to her senses."

"You can believe what you like, if it'll make you feel better. Now, send her out here," Draco snapped, finally getting bored.

"No," Ron said. He stepped away from the portrait hole. Draco flinched and took a step back involuntarily, expecting Ron to slam the picture in his face, but instead Ron merely gestured into the room. "Come in."

The room silenced as Draco Malfoy, Slytherin's fallen angel, stepped into the Gryffindor common room.

"Thank God," he said, looking around at the stunned faces. "You got rid of those appalling Christmas decorations."

Stony silence.

Draco ignored the majority of Gryffindor and sat himself down, with perfect grace and composure, in Ron's seat. Ron glowered at him briefly, but pulled up another chair and sat on Hermione's other side. Hermione was staring at him, mouth hanging open. Harry's eyes had narrowed, and without a word he stood up and walked stiffly up the staircase leading to his dormitory. The common room looked expectantly at Ron, who never took his eyes off Draco. When it was obvious that Ron wasn't going to follow his best friend, conversation eventually resumed.

"What on earth is going on?" Hermione hissed, not even certain which boy was to blame.

"He wanted to talk to you, so I thought it would be 'polite' to invite him in," Ron said, eyes sparking like pieces of flint. It wasn't a look Hermione had seen in his eyes before, but she recognised it from the old Draco.

"So why are you here?" Hermione turned her attention to the blond.

"Platonic," Draco said, voice carrying across the common room. Yet again, the Gryffindors fell silent. "Adjective. Free from physical desire." He paused, and looked around the room, capturing the eye of each member of his captive audience. "Named after the philosopher and wizard Plato, who believed the most pure form of relationship was between an older man and a younger man since there would be no lust and both men would gain something from the relationship."

Hermione laughed.

"What?" Draco turned to her. "I'm right, I know."

"Yes, you are," she grinned, "but do you honestly think that Plato's intentions towards those boys was purely, well, platonic?"

Draco leered at Ron. "If only he was still alive to teach here. I'm sure some would happily pursue platonic relationships with various members of staff."

Ron ground his teeth, but after rejecting several possible comebacks he chose to glower in silence. He could hear, on the cusp of audible sound, the whisper that were scattering amongst the Gryffindors. You learnt to speak without making a sound at Hogwarts, mouthing to each other behind teacher's backs and using gestures making meanings implicit. Ron could guess what they were saying, but tradition forbade him from turning around and asking.

Draco had his own issues with the whispers. Perhaps it was the fact he was sitting across from Ron, perhaps because he was in the Gryffindor common room, or perhaps he was just socially suicidal and intent to dragging everyone down with him. A mix of pride and vengeance and cruelty bubbled up inside of him.

"Hermione," he said abruptly, pausing to let the whisperers fall silent again so they would know this was important. "Hermione, I was wondering if you'd like to come down to Hogsmeade with me, the weekend after Valentines' Day."

Hermione stared at him. Ron stared at him. Gryffindor held its breath.

"You bastard," Hermione said under the breath, eyes narrowing. The tension thickened, and everyone in the room leaned in, responding to a subconscious urge. "You utter bastard."

"Hermione?" Draco stared at her. A 'no' or a 'yes', that was what he had expected. Not to have mortally offended her.

"Do you know what kind of position you've put me in?" She stared at him.

"What, you can't give either answer without offending one of your friends?" Draco sighed. "Okay, if I'm honest, perhaps I was just trying to rub our relationship, still purely platonic," he shot a glare at Ginny, who had crept up to beside Ron's chair to get a better view and was giving them significant looks, "in Ron's face, just a bit, but that doesn't mean I don't honestly want you to come to Hogsmeade with me. On a date."

"Rub it in Ron's face?" Hermione stared at him.

"Oh. Shit." Draco grimaced.

Ron bit his lip. Was this how he wanted to profess his love to Hermione? Through Draco's cruelty and blundering? No.

"He knows I don't like him, and well, I'm still not okay with what's going on," Ron said quietly. His heart ached. The worst part was, he wasn't even lying. "I mean, your friends are up to you, and I'm not going to abandon you just because I loathe Malfoy, but I may draw the line at you two actually dating."

"Ron..." Hermione looked at him. To his horror, he found he couldn't meet her gaze. Her eyes narrowed, and her head snapped around to glower at Draco. "You utter bastard!" she growled again. He stared at her, grey eyes widening. "I promised myself I would never do this again," she went on, "I thought I'd matured past it. But no, once again your sheer selfish arrogance drives me to it."

Draco opened his mouth, but closed it before he could asked the very stupid question "do what?"

Hermione slapped him. Hard.

"Get out of our common room," Ginny said in a low voice. Funny how Draco went from good-looking through average right to damn ugly, all long face and small features and snooty posture.

Draco looked around the room, seeing nothing but hostile faces. With a sigh, he walked through the rows of dark eyes and stopped in the portrait hole.

"I'm sorry, Hermione," he said solemnly. "I didn't ask just to be spiteful. Just... consider it, okay? I only want a 'yes' or 'no', neither of which you've given me yet." Hermione's jaw dropped, and Draco ducked through the portrait hole before she could give him a very emphatic 'never'. If he'd given her that chance, they'd both have regretted it later.