Not In Kansas Anymore

Chapter Three: The Faces of Solace

Her flat was barren, and it was only after a few moments hard thinking that she remembered selling the flat to a young couple. Then to her even further distress she recalled that all her stuff was in the place she and Ron had bought. Tired and still rattled from the day's events she went to the only person she knew who wasn't going to ask annoying questions.

*

Draco looked up as she entered the common room, he was sitting back in the chair she had deemed his 'throne'. She was carrying her usual bag of books and was in the state after tears that precedes anger.

She completely ignored him and stormed off to her dorm, slamming the door behind her. "Hello to you too," he mumbled sarcastically, placing his book on the table and following her into her dorm.

He scarcely gave the door a glance before he walked into room, uninvited. She was standing in the middle of turmoil, papers were fluttering to the ground, hangings were ripped down from her magnificent four-poster, and feathers that he assumed were from her pillow stuck to her hair.

"Want to talk about it?" he asked, leaning casually against the doorframe.

"No," she breathed heavily and Draco could just see the tendrils of dragon smoke leaking out of her flared nostrils.

"Stop that, it makes you look like McGonagall."

She shot him a nasty stare, then broke into gut wrenching laughs, she doubled over, and when they had finally subsided she looked up at him and pointed to the door. "Out," she said firmly.

Draco held up his hands in defeat. "Okay, when you want to talk I'll be reading about Alternate Dimension Transfiguration, or snoring, but whichever I won't ask dumb questions."

*

Hermione had finally decided to take him up on that offer, but it still startled her a bit when she found herself standing before the heavy gates barring Malfoy Manor from the world. She was just starting to wonder what to do when a voice met her ears, "Granger?"

"Draco?" she breathed, almost not daring to believe the fact that she might have found solace.

"Its all over the Evening Prophet, come in." The large gates creaked open and she walked up the twisting gravel path drinking in both his intuition and the green grass. There were a variety of trees rooted deeply into the fine lawns, each one older than the previous the bark thick and the knots possessing an eerie personality. By the time she saw the light from the open doorway she had a stitch in her side. Silhouetted in the light pouring from the hall that undoubtedly lead up to the door was a tall figure with no distinct features but an anxiously tapping foot and a wrist being raised to glance at his watch.

Hermione finished her trek up the drive and immediately felt awkward. It was only then that she remembered she was still wearing Harry's robes and that she hadn't combed her hair since that morning.

That morning seemed so long ago and she swatted those painful flashes away from her thoughts. "Hermione," said Draco, always brilliantly astute.

"Draco," she said climbing the three marble steps and then following him into the magnificent entrance hall that she had predicted. It was white marble arched gracefully to support a ceiling mural so detailed that it rivaled that of the Sistine Chapel. Pagan god and goddesses floated on clouds, woven in with Zodiac symbols, Latin phrases, and what Hermione recognized as Arithmancy calculations.

"Big isn't it?" asked Draco, though he had not bothered to look up at it. In fact he was already across the room at another doorway, but he waited patiently as Hermione made her way over to him, walking backwards and sideways still looking heavenward.

Searching for the words to describe its grandeur she said, "Its so...tormenting, with all its hopes and happiness, its surreal to know its got what we can never have."

"That's it I'm never getting married! If it makes people sentimental like you I want no part of it," he said wickedly grabbing Hermione's elbow and guiding her into his study.

When he closed the door behind then it had a sound of such finality that Hermione was jolted back to her senses. She was in a small square room lined with rare books, a fire crackled merrily, a tremendous desk took up most of the room, and a leather chair the other half. Draco was standing by an antique side table where crystal glasses and tall liquor bottles were scattered over the surface.

*

There was a war raging on the other side of the tower walls but Gryffindor Common Room was a gay uproar of noise, laughter, celebration, and drunken muck. Hermione held in her hand a tall, full, glass of what Ron had so eloquently slurred, "A Cssmip-p-plaatun" [Cosmopolitan]

Hermione looked at the pink drink and tossed it into the fire, she was seventeen and had no desire to encounter a hangover in the morning, from the way Harry and Ron described them they were hell.

A brief explosion followed the Cosmopolitan waterfall; the entire common room was hung with the smells of sweat and liquor, lipgloss and smoke. Hermione gave Harry and Ron disgusted looks and slithered out of the room, her butt was pinched a few times and drinks shoved her way every few seconds, but she ignored them all.

The solitude of her common room greeted her, she was glad Draco seemed to have evaporated to the Slytherin Common Room and she was blissfully alone...

She woke up in the morning her body slung over the sofa, an empty bourbon bottle in one hand, and a pounding headache.

"Happy New Years," said Draco from his chair where he was rubbing his head and nursing a strong hangover potion.

*

"Never again," said Hermione, smiling widely for the first time all-day and situating herself on the brown leather of the sofa with nice, healthy, water.

Pouring himself a glass of finest port he leaned against his desk and lifted his glass saying, "May you someday break that promise."

Hermione laughed before it settled down on her why she was here, "Err...Draco, can I ask a really big favor of you?"

"There is a bedroom that adjoins with the library you can have until you can find a place of your own," he said.

"How much did the paper say?" she asked, her spine straightening apprehensively.

"Oh, just the basics...you walk down the isle in a cheap dress that illuminates you like a human skeleton, then you faint, the article says you suffer from dramatic anorexia, and that you are no longer with Ronald Weasley." He supplied chinking shards of ice against the sides of the sparkling glass.

Hermione looked down at the ground. "And how much do you believe?"

Draco laughed a bit. "I don't ask questions and I don't believe what the papers tell me, so none of it then."

"Thank you Draco."

He stood up straight, shoved his extra hand into the pocket of his jeans, and nodded for her to follow him. "Come on, I'll show you the way."

*

Harry held Hermione's hand as he guided her through the halls of Hogwarts, she was completely lost as to their locality, it felt like they had tracked over the entire school with Harry giving her directions so she wouldn't fall.

"About twelve steps here," said Harry tugging her anxiously up an anonymous staircase, as her shoe caught blindly on the thirteenth stair Hermione wished she could take off the thick blindfold.

"Harry, where are we going?"

"Just follow me."

Finally Harry positioned Hermione where he wanted her and whispered, "We're here," before lavishly removing her blindfold. A rush of sound berated her ears and a mad mess of colors assaulted her shocked eyes that were still adjusting to the light.

It was the Gryffindor Common Room; confetti rained down on her head and a large banner hung over across the wide wall. It read, in large flashing letters that had been very poorly charmed, CONGRATULATIONS HERMIONE! PERFECT N.E.W.T.s!

Happily and slightly embarrassed Hermione accepted the butterbeer Ron thrust into her hand and sunk into a sofa with his arm tossed lightly over her shoulders.

Later Hermione found Harry in the mob. "Just follow me," she looked him straight in the eye and he shrugged innocently. "Never again, we left from the common room I tell you..." she went away muttering.

*

"I don't actually remember anybody staying in this room," said Draco as he opened an average door that was embellished with the Malfoy Family Crest.

Hermione unsheathed her wand, pointed it at the crest, transforming the cross with black roses wrapped around it into a ferret, and erased the Latin to say Amazing Bouncing Ferret!

"That was uncalled for Miss Granger, it was just another poor show of your talent where you attempt to reassure yourself of false superiority! Five points from Gryffindor!" said Draco in an uncanny impression of the late Professor Severus Snape.

Hermione burst into a second fit of uncontrollable laughter; Draco watched her quietly waiting for her cackles to subside, standing up Hermione looked at Draco. "And what gives you the authority to take points from my house Mister Malfoy."

"Absolutely no deity under the sun," he said dryly, then he smiled. "This is your room Hermione, that door joins the library and that wardrobe should have some better suited clothes in it."

Again Hermione became conscious of the fact she was still in Harry's overgrown robes, smoothing her hair self-consciously she said to Draco, "Thank you."

He was half way out of the room when she opened her mouth again to ask a question, "Um...Draco...would you mind terribly--"

"Yes, I'll go with you tomorrow to get your stuff from Weasley," he looked at Hermione, his hand still in his pocket and his blond hair falling over his gray eyes. Meeting her eyes with his he said, "When you want to talk I'll be here."

Then he left.

*

Hermione was sitting on her bed in her dorm, the curtains tightly drawn around her. She was rocking back and forth in tune to her sobs, occasionally she would look down at her ring and another fresh burst of tears would escape.

Part of her was so happy and that's why the angel on her right shoulder cried, but part of her was worried, anxious for the future, and that's why her left eye wept.

She heard her door open, but didn't move or call out to see who it was, she just drew her knees in closer to her chest. Perhaps if she stayed quite long enough who ever it was would just go away.

For a moment the room was silent, and then a freckled hand threw back the curtains and Ginny Weasley revealed herself. She leaned back against a bedpost with her arms crossed over her chest, looking Hermione straight in the eye.

A quiet linked them and all they did was look at each other, Ginny incredulous of Hermione, and Hermione cowering a bit under Ginny's apparent rage. Neither broke the silence and it stretched long and thin as the shadows grew.

In the distance an owl hooted on the hunt and both girls heard Draco enter the portrait from the corridor, "When you're ready to talk you know where to find me."

Then she left.

*

Hermione pulled on a thin white shift she found in one of the wardrobe drawers; it was a fine silk, very thin and dangerously delicate. Inside of it Hermione felt like a china doll. Catching sight of the vanity she sat down on front of it and picked up the gilded hairbrush in her hand, it felt heavy, like it was important. She ran the bristles though her matted hair, she combed away the hairspray and styling gels, she brushed away the terrible memories of that day.

Ron's loving eyes broken, as though she were a meddlesome five-year-old who had thrown a baseball at him breaking his will. Fred and George guiding her, the hopes of all the people in the hall, Dumbdlore's rumbling words, the sterile stench of the hospital, the loss in the woman at the Underground's face...the destruction in her wrinkles, the warmth in Harry's arms, and the acceptance of Draco.

She ran her hand through hair that was now silky smooth and wandered to the door leading to the library. It was massive and powerful, she would never have time to cover the entire collection in ten lifetimes, so she settled with reading Hogwarts; A History for what must have been the thirty-ninth time.

The book was heavy and bothersome in her arms as she carried it back to her bed, she slithered under the welcoming duvet and put the book on her lap, but after a bit the spine grated into her knee and she shifted it about. The pages and words had a comforting air to them; they were so similar, changed so little since the last time she had turned these pages.

The next morning found her using the book as a pillow, her thin fingers clutching at the book covers and hair blanketing it.