Stepwise

Stepwise

--Voldevie

"And breathing is a foreign task and thinking's just too much to ask,

and you're measuring your minutes by a clock that's blinking eights.

This is incredible, starving, insatiable. Yes, this is love for the first time.

Well, you'd like to think that you were invincible.

Yeah, well, weren't we all once before we felt loss for the first time?"

--The Brilliant Dance, Dashboard Confessional

Ancient Runes was not a popular subject; only a handful of students took it at N.E.W.T. level, much to the dismay of Professor Hegarty. However, the students who took Ancient Runes were more enthusiastic than, say, the ones who were forced to attend Muggle Studies (which was, according to Draco, a joke. He had been told to take it in his Sixth Year but was so disruptive that Professor Leyland begged the headmaster to reconsider).

No, Draco liked Ancient Runes: it was a challenging, logical and complex subject which required intellect and better-then-average problem-solving skills. And Draco was good at solving problems.

Today, June the twenty-first, was the day of the exam. It would be his last ever Hogwarts exam and, truth be told, he was relieved it would soon be over. Of course, he was nervous about this one. Along with Potions, this was probably the only other subject he cared about and strived to do well in, attempting, just for once, to beat Granger.

Granger was Head Girl, and the amount of achievement badges littering her school robes was enough to make the most accepting person glare with envy. Justin Finch-Fletchley was Head Boy. Draco didn't have much to say about this arrangement, though his father had.

"A Huffleuff beat you to the top, Draco?" he had mocked quietly after making several enquiries to his contacts to find out why his son had not yet received his Head Boy letter. "A Hufflepuff? Have you no shame, boy?"

Perhaps Draco did have no shame; he couldn't find the energy to insult Finch-Fletchley (which only peeved Justin more) and though Granger got under his skin more than ever with her high-horse attitude to her new position, he couldn't be bothered using the ineffective "Mudblood" term again. Draco was sure she secretly revelled in telling him off for the slightest movement.

Hannah was standing outside the classroom, looking visibly distressed, when Draco arrived. She acknowledged his presence with a small inclination of her head, but otherwise continued to fidget nervously and twirl her plaited blond hair. Draco was feeling anxious just by looking at her, so he leaned against the wall with his arms folded, staring at the carpet boredly.

He hoped this would go well. Maybe he could beat Granger for once; that would serve her right for defeating a Pureblood.

---------

Hermione Granger awoke with a start, her eyes dreading to look at the bedside table where her alarm clock lay. Through the gaps between her fingers she peered at the luminous clock's face: it was quarter-to-eleven. The Ancient Runes exam started at twenty-to.

She was late. For an exam.

No, she couldn't be -- it had to be a mistake. Justin must have thought it would be funny to bring the clock's little hand forward. She looked out the window; if it were Tuesday, Harry would be at Quidditch practise just now.

The brilliant blue sky stared back at her innocently, white wisps of cloud frolicking playfully in front of the blinding sun... and there it was: the omen of failure: Harry flying through the clouds at breakneck speed.

Glancing down at her attire -- stripy pink-and-white pyjamas -- Hermione wanted to cry. Her unruly hair was a mess of tangles and her eyes were clouded with sleep.

She grabbed her schoolrobe, which she had laid out over the back of her chair the night before, and scrambled for the door while simultaneously shrugging the cloak on over her pyjamas.

Down, down, down the stairs she spiralled, a flurry of cloth and hair. Hermione's breaths were sharp and painful, but she continued to fly down the steep steps, repeatedly muttering, "Please, Gods, no."

The stairs changed, which only delayed Hermione further.

---------

Granger wasn't there. That was Draco's first thought when the six students were ushered into the room. Wooden desks were lined in rows like anonymous soldiers waiting for battle. The yellowed parchments were neatly piled on each desk, just waiting to be scribbled on.

"Sit down," the chief examiner said. Draco sat nearest the door. "You know the drill: there will be no talking, no cheating, no looking at other's work. You have been given special quills that you must use. If you make a mistake, cross it out tidily; don't scribble it out." He glanced at his watch, watching the hand tick onto twelve. "You may begin. Good luck."

The large hourglass at the front of the classroom swung upside-down, grains of golden sand trickling down into the globe below. Each swing signified ten minutes; it would swing a further six times in the duration of the exam.

The paper, Draco discovered when trying to decipher question one, was absurdly difficult. It was as though it was written in gobblety-gook (which, in all fairness, was true). Everything was there but he was expecting further explanations on most questions. Hegarty had told them that it would all be psychological and that they would be sure it was the hardest paper they'd ever sat. Maybe so, Draco thought grimly, but this paper was hard.

There was a question lost somewhere in an essay of unnecessary information and only one about a harder topic. After all the fretting about how that question would crop up, Draco was miffed to find it only worth three marks.

He finished the exam, placing down the feathered quill, with ten minutes to go. Emitting a frustrated sigh, he absently looked for Granger to see if she had finished before him, but she wasn't there. Draco was becoming uncharacteristically worried. Where was she? There would be no time to resit the exam -- this was it; her last chance.

The hourglass spun, as if in slow-motion, for the last time before falling stationary. Hermione had automatically failed for not turning up.

Draco noticed that everyone walked out the room looking rather dazed. Hannah, especially, was looking more stressed than when she went in the room. He presumed she'd go back to the Hufflepuff common room to cry and scream and act hysterical.

"Blaise!" he called out to the only other Slytherin who took Ancient Runes. "What did you put for question ten?"

"Oh, I forget. Merlin, but that paper was hard!" the other boy said, stating the obvious.

They walked down the corridor in a companionable silence. Draco was feeling rather calm. It didn't matter if he passed or failed: Granger didn't sit it; there was no challenge any more.

"I am so jealous of you right now. How can you be calm?" Blaise asked, totally perplexed.

Shrugging, Draco said, "It's not the end of the world."

Blaise snorted, as though Draco was being sarcastic. "If you say so. Anyway, I want to go and check my notes again," Blaise said glumly. "I'll see you later, Draco." He went in the other direction after walking down the stairs.

Draco sighed. No one was around and it was eerily quiet. In a moment of spontaneity, Draco lay down upon the hard bottom step, staring up at the ceiling, with his arms tucked under his head. It was relieving to know that everybody else found it so difficult -- at least he was not alone if he failed. Draco couldn't bring himself to think about his father's inevitably enraged expression when -- if, he reminded himself dryly -- he would learn that his son had failed. Right now Draco was completely relaxed, almost sleepy. He breathed lightly and welcomed the silence of the castle.

He observed the ceiling -- how the colours seemed to merge together and the chandeliers sparkled dreamily, like something from an Impressionist painting -- and was sure he was drifting off to sleep when a figure hovered above him.

"Hmm... what?" he wondered aloud, sitting up to look at who had disturbed him.

The bushy hair told all.

"Granger?" he asked uncertainly. "What are you doing? You missed the exam! Where were you?"

"I'm going to the exam," Granger said calmly. There was something not quite right about her attitude to all this.

"Granger, you've missed it." Draco squinted from the light of the chandeliers. "You failed it." Initially, he couldn't wait to tell her those three words, but now he regretted saying it. To clear up his confusion, he added: "Mudblood." It sounded childish and meaningless when it reached his ears.

Hermione stared at him, her face blank. "I'm going to the exam," she repeated, a sad smile on her lips.

Draco rubbed his head. "You must have slept in and what I said hasn't penetrated your mind yet. Well, I'm telling you now that you're going to become more hysterical than Hannah."

She just stood there.

"Well, you might as well go!" Draco snapped, becoming slightly agitated. He waved her away with the flick of his wrist. He lay back down on the floor.

"Goodbye, Draco."

"Right," he mumbled, his eyes closed. A few seconds later what she said sunk in. His eyes suddenly flickered open. "'Draco'?" he whispered, not knowing he was even speaking at all.

Sitting bolt upright, Draco looked up at the stairs where she would have climbed to get to Hegarty's class, but she had gone. He thought about going after her and demanding to know why she had called him by his first name, but then realised how paranoid that sounded.

Besides, the girl was obviously half-asleep when she said it.

---------

A cluster of pupils were cluttered around the bottom of the next flight of stairs, shrieking wildly. Draco thought for a moment that this was Hannah meeting with her group of Hufflepuff friends to discuss how the exam went, but there was a different atmosphere here. Here the commotion was a suffocating blanket of panic and trauma.

"What's going on here?" Draco cried out, shouldering his way to the front.

What he saw answered everything: Granger was lying crumpled on the floor, her hair fanned out in a pillow of dark brown waves. Her pale face was nearly paper-white, her lips the colour of a pink carnation. Someone behind him called for help, but Draco couldn't register it properly; he was too busy staring intently at the girl in front of him. Another person explained that she must have fallen when the stairs changed. He didn't register this, either.

He only registered that, moments before, she had called him Draco. He had seen her as someone caught between life and death. She had said goodbye to him -- to him, her challenger.

And now she was gone.

Draco's breath caught in his throat. She was dead.

...No, not "she": Hermione was dead.

---FIN---