Puzzle Pieces

Section 10:

I got in the habit of walking on eggshells around Draco. It was hard to tell what might set him off. Thanks to my caution, we managed to last a whole four days before we had another fight. It started when he actually suggested that I go and study with Hermione. That was a first. In fact, that was exactly what I said to him.

“You *want* me to go study with Hermione?”

Draco bristled, the way he always did when anyone questioned him. “That’s what I said, wasn’t it? Need your hearing checked?”

“Why would you *send* me to her?” I asked, genuinely bewildered.

“Well, you’re the one who had to go and make *friends* with her, weren’t you?”

In spite of myself, I felt my temper rising. “Is that what this is about? Do you want me to stop being friends with Hermione? Because we’ve *had* this argument, and I’m pretty damn sick of you thinking that you need to protect me from making my own decisions!”

“What the hell is so wrong with me trying to protect you?” Draco yelled.

“Since when does protecting me include pushing me away?”

“Since now!” he snarled. He turned away from me abruptly. “Go join your little Gryffindor,” he sneered with his back to me. “There’s nothing for you here.”

Stunned speechless, I numbly gathered my bag and headed for the library, on instinct. Sure enough, Hermione was there. I think she could tell just from looking at me that something was wrong, but she knew me well enough not to ask. Instead, she did the kindest thing possible, which was to act as if nothing at all was out of the ordinary. She had been going through Potions texts searching for information for an essay due the next week, and immediately engaged me in a discussion on the properties of the potion we were supposed to study.

I didn’t even like Potions, but I had to admit that discussing it with her was surprisingly restful. It was nice having someone good enough at reading my moods to know just how to calm me down. I had a small, internal chuckle over the idea that Hermione Granger had become the normalizing element in my life.

However, the more I thought about it, the less I felt like laughing. I was starting to feel suffocated from burying my head in the sand, especially when I thought of her. I had always based my allegiances on whatever made things easier for Draco, since he was the only one who ever really mattered to me, but the enigmatic Miss Granger had formed a place in my life at some point, and there was now no denying that she mattered to me as well. The Death Eater business that was coming over Christmas wouldn’t involve me, but it might involve her. It isn’t true that Slytherins are without consciences; we have them, just like everyone else; the only difference is that most of the time, they’re asleep. Mine was still groggy, but it was waking up, just for Hermione. Suddenly, I couldn’t stand to just sit there, studying and pretending nothing was wrong anymore.

“You have to be careful with the dragon bile,” she stated absently, flipping through the pages of the book, “since if you add too much, the potion will make you break out in orange spots.”

Throwing my quill down on the table, I turned to her and blurted out, “Don’t you think this is strange?”

She blinked once, then answered. “Yes, I think your sweater is strange.”

“I… what?” I glanced down. Yes, it was still the emerald green sweater I had put on that morning. “What’s wrong with my sweater?”

“Honestly, Zabini, just because you’re a Slytherin doesn’t mean that you *have* to wear green and silver twenty four hours a day. Green’s not your best color. You should have been a Ravenclaw. I bet you’d look smashing in blue and bronze.”

Damn her and her uncanny ability to throw me off guard and make me blush! “Not red and gold?” I retorted, trying to hide my embarrassment by teasing her back.

“Red and gold would suit you, of course,” she stated contemplatively, leaning back to take a good, long look at me, up and down, which did absolutely nothing to help me get rid of my most unSlytherin-like blush. “You have a dark enough skin tone to pull them off well. But I do think blue would become you best. It would bring out your eyes. They really are your best feature, you know.”

Getting rid of the blush was rapidly becoming a lost cause. I was growing rather more concerned with how hard a person could blush without causing physical damage to himself. Hermione, meanwhile, was grinning like the proverbial Cheshire Cat. The harder that I blushed, the more she grinned, until she couldn’t hold it back anymore, and burst into giggles.

She looked quite lovely when she laughed like that. I wondered if anyone had ever bothered to tell her that before. Even though I knew she was laughing at me, I couldn’t help but want the laughter to continue. I even found myself thinking it was almost worth the humiliation of blushing like a little girl to see the way that she absolutely lit up, inside and out, when she laughed.

I tossed a bit of crumpled up parchment at her. “Witch,” I taunted playfully. She giggled a bit more at that. “Merlin, how did we even get *on* this topic of conversation?”

“You asked if I thought this was strange,” she reminded me, once she had gotten her giggles under control. “But you didn’t specify what you were referring to, forcing me to draw my own conclusions.”

“Liar. I didn’t *force* you. If you didn’t understand the question, you could have asked. I certainly didn’t do anything to make you turn the conversation onto my appearance, just so you could make me blush.”

“True,” she replied, grinning. “You didn’t make me. That was just a bonus.” The most mature response I could come up with was to chuck another bit of crumpled up parchment at her.

“So are you going to answer my question or not?”

“Maybe if you actually got around to *asking* it…”

“Fine, then! Don’t you think it’s at all strange to have a Gryffindor helping a Slytherin with his studying?”

“What’s so strange about it?”

I struggled with how to word it. “All the things we’ve gone over in these study sessions… they’ve really helped me a lot, you know.”

She beamed proudly. “I’m glad. You’re doing loads better work now in the classes we have together; I knew you could do it.”

“But that’s the thing!” I argued, forcing myself to ignore the fact that she had complimented me again. If I let myself think about it, I’d get distracted again. “I’ve gotten loads better, like you said, and it’s because of *you*. You’re… okay with that?”

She looked genuinely confused now, and I could tell that this wasn’t an act. She really had no idea what I was talking about. “Why wouldn’t I be okay with it?” she asked slowly, her forehead furrowing in concentration and she tried to figure out what I was getting at.

She looked so damn *innocent* as she tried to think her way through the problem I had presented her. How on earth could she be that innocent, that oblivious? Didn’t she know that there was a *war* going on? Didn’t she know that people were out there who would take advantage of that innocence, and that vulnerability, and that honest desire to help people? Didn’t she know that she was setting herself up as a target by not being more suspicious? She had let me get close to her so easily; what if she let *everyone* get that close? Didn’t she know she could get hurt? I wanted to wrap my arms around her and hold her close, keep her safe, but that wasn’t an option. So instead, I needed to get her to see the truth.

“I’m a Slytherin, Hermione. I’m… not a Death Eater, but I won’t lie to you. There’s a chance I will be, someday. And there are lots of people I know who are already on their way to taking the Mark. Thanks to you, I’m a better and more powerful wizard than I would have been otherwise. Aren’t you worried that you’re… training your enemy into a stronger opponent?”

Her face cleared and her worried tension melted into a relieved smile. “For a moment, you actually had me worried that something was wrong.” I opened my mouth to tell her that something was wrong, *very* wrong, but she held her hand up to forestall me, and I closed my mouth again, letting her finish.

“Zabini, you’re looking at the situation instead of trying to *understand* it, again. I’m pleased and proud if the things I’ve taught you have made you a better wizard, but that wasn’t really the point of the lessons.”

“It wasn’t?” I couldn’t help but ask.

She shook her head and smiled at me again. “I wanted to make you a better *thinker*. I wanted to teach you to think for *yourself* instead of just accepting what others told you to be true.” She sighed and her smile faded a bit. “You don’t need to wear Slytherin green to remind me what house you’re in. I know that you’re a Slytherin and that most of your allegiances, both personally and as a Zabini, are tied in with the Death Eater cause. Whether you ever actively become a Death Eater or not, we’re still more likely to be on opposite sides in the future than the same one. There’s nothing I can do about that. But the one thing I can do and *have* done is to teach you to do your own thinking. You may one day be a servant of Voldemort’s, but you will never be one of his mindless lackeys. Whatever decisions you make, you’ll make with your eyes wide open. I’m in no position to tell you which decision to make, but if I’m responsible for driving you to *think* about your decisions instead of making them automatically, then I have to say, I’m quite proud of my work.”

She smiled at me brightly, and reluctantly, I smiled back. Sensing my need to end the moment, she abruptly changed the subject.

“Of course,” she concluded in her best lecturing tone, “if you forget to add the dragon liver, then the potion becomes highly poisonous.”

“Naturally it does,” I retorted, segueing gratefully into her change of topic, “because why would Snape want to give us a potion that didn’t have the fun benefit of *killing* us if we do it wrong?”

“Zabini, you know that’s not true,” Hermione scolded. I braced myself for a lecture on why we should respect our professors and was thus completely off guard by the next thing she said. “Professor Snape isn’t nearly so limited; he also enjoys assigning us potions that kill us if we do them *right*.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “We should have Draco studying with us,” I added jokingly. “No seventh year knows more about brewing poisons than him. He could tell us *all* the ways we could use these ingredients to kill ourselves and each other.”

“Maybe we could get him to join us,” Hermione suggested thoughtfully. She glanced over in the direction of the Arithmancy stacks, Draco’s usual haunt when spying on us, and to my shock, I caught sight of that unmistakable platinum blond hair. He was spying on me after all. It was oddly comforting.

I laughed again, convinced that she was kidding, only to have my laughter fade when I realized that she might actually *mean* it.

“You can’t be serious… can you?” I asked nervously.

“I don’t see why not,” she retorted. “He needs to work on his essay just like us. It’s silly for him to waste this valuable time by pretending to read Arithmancy textbooks while spying on us.”

“Yes, Granger,” I replied sarcastically, “That’s a wonderful idea. I’m sure if you asked nicely, Draco would just *love* to sit down and have a lovely discussion with you about potions ingredients. Maybe we could get the house elves to bring up some tea and scones which we’d eat while standing on our heads, as well.”

“Well, you needn’t make it sound as silly as all that,” Hermione sniffed defensively, clearly annoyed that I had laughed at her suggestion. “We’re not first years, you know. It’s not as if we can’t be in the same room without hexing each other. Heaven knows, we’ve kept our wands to ourselves during these study sessions, even though it’s *very* trying to sit here and attempt to study, knowing that there’s a wand pointing at me somewhere in the room, ready to strike if I make a single wrong move!”

“I doubt he’s actually pointing his wand at you the whole time,” I replied thoughtfully. “I dare say his arm would get tired eventually if he kept it aimed for too long. Besides, Draco really prides himself on being a very quick draw.”

“Oh yes, please tell me again about his famous dueling skills because that makes me feel *much* better,” Hermione muttered sarcastically while shuffling through her notes.

“Don’t worry, Granger,” I teased. “You haven’t done anything lately to warrant a first-hand demonstration on why he’s top ranked in our age bracket. Just don’t go asking him to join us, and you should be fine.”

Something sparked in her eyes and I bit back a groan. I recognized that look. Merlin knew, I had seen it countless times on Draco’s face. It was the look that a bull gave a red flag. It was look of challenge issued, and accepted. Considering that look, I wasn’t even surprised to hear the next words out of her mouth.

“I bet you I could. I bet I could get him to join us.”

“What did you have in mind to bet?” I asked warily.

“Winner’s choice?” she suggested innocently.

“Not a chance.”

She pretended to pout. “Spoil all my fun, why don’t you. Alright then, since you *insist* on concrete terms… how about a butterbeer next Hogsmeade weekend?”

Mentally weighing the offer, I nodded slowly. “Alright. I accept. What’s the time limit on the bet?”

“What do you think is fair?” she countered.

“End of the week?”

She grinned. “If it were up to me, I’d say end of the day. Either way works for me, really. I know I’ll win.”

“Cocky, aren’t we?”

“Confident, actually. And perceptive. Soon you’ll see how that’ll pay off.” With that, she let the subject drop, and gave no further sign that she was even thinking about it. Without so much as a pause, she slipped straight back into our discussion of potentially poisonous combinations of potions ingredients.

“But you have to remember that most poisonous ingredients can be neutralized when used in the right combination,” she stated, about half an hour later. Her voice had grown a bit louder by this point, and while I didn’t really see what had gotten her so excited about poisonous ingredients, I knew that we were far enough away from Madam Pince to avoid being scolded, so I didn’t bother to shush her. “In fact, their poisonous nature is what makes them valuable,” she continued, her voice getting even louder. “Just look at the use of belladonna as one of the central ingredients in the Draught of Peace,” Hermione concluded, her eyes sparkling, glancing over to the stacks out of the corner of her eye.

The explosion she so obviously expected came from the stacks she was watching only moments later.

“That’s not true!” Draco announced triumphantly, bursting out from the aisle to stand next to our table. “Belladonna isn’t the poison that’s used in the Draught of Peace; *hellebore* is.”

“True,” Hermione answered, her eyes brightening still further. I saw her nibble on her lip ever so slightly, a dead giveaway to anyone who knew her gestures that she was trying to keep from grinning. “But *why*?”

Draco stopped shock still. “Why?” he asked, clearly bewildered. “What do you mean ‘why’? You use hellebore because that’s how you make the potion!”

“What does the hellebore do?” she pressed.

“It’s a purgative,” Draco answers automatically. “In the Draught of Peace, it reacts with the powdered moonstone so that once the moonstone has brought emotional balance, the hellebore can purge away the feelings of war.”

“So how does someone feel for the first five to ten seconds after drinking the Draught of Peace?” Hermione continued. I barely managed to bite back a smirk. I recognized her patterns by now well enough to know that she was questioning Draco into a hole, but he didn’t seem to have realized it yet.

“Like they’re going to throw up,” Draco replied succinctly.

“What does belladonna do?” Hermione asked next.

Draco looked thrown by the abrupt change, but responded quickly enough. “In small doses, it puts the drinker to sleep. Permanently, if they take too much.”

“So if you add two drops of belladonna after letting the moonstone simmer, then what would happen to the feelings of war in the drinker?”

“They would be…” I could tell it had finally kicked in. “… put to sleep.”

“Is there any nausea associated with belladonna in doses this small?”

“No,” Draco answered.

“How long does the hellebore work to purge the feelings of war?”

“Depends on the size of the dose and the violence of the person. It purges the violence, but it doesn’t keep it from coming back if the person is naturally violent.”

“Would belladonna produce results that were *more* reliable or *less*?” She wasn’t bothering to hide her grin now.

Draco paused for a long moment. “More,” he answered at last, grudgingly. “But have you considered…”

That’s the point where I stopped listening. They were discussing theoretical aspects of potions that were, admittedly, way over my head. But while I couldn’t participate in the conversation, I could certainly enjoy watching it. They were *beautiful* when they were debating with each other. They were both so passionate and focused and animated as they defend their points of view and built on each other’s ideas. The stray thought occurred to me that they seem to correspond to each other, almost like they fit together. I remembered Hermione’s description of what attracted her to Weasley, when she said that he was explosive, passionate, protective, temperamental and enthusiastic. She described how deeply and completely he loved, and the way that that passion made her feel alive, just being near him. I was suddenly struck with just how well that exact description applied to Draco.

Draco reached over me to grab a piece of parchment and quill to sketch out whatever it was he was describing to Hermione, jotting it down in quick bold lines, and handing it to her with an expression of triumph, flicking his hair out of his eyes to see her reaction. The look on his face had a familiarity that very nearly made me blush: it was the look he gave me when he leaned back on his heels and looked up at me, flicking his hair out of his eyes to see the look on my face after he had taken me apart with his mouth. It did funny things to me to see Draco look at Hermione with that expression, especially when Hermione’s face was flushed and her eyes were sparkling with her enthusiasm for the debate. I had to close my eyes to control my reaction as my libido took over, filling me with a sudden, overwhelming wave of lust for Draco… and Hermione.


End Section 10