Year Seven:Blindsided

Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters or places they belong to the wonderful J. K. Rowling: It is her world I just play in it.


Chapter 18-The Accusation


Hermione had somehow managed to keep herself from being hauled off to the Hospital Wing, later she was not able to recall exactly how she accomplished this. She passed through the large oaken doors of the Great Hall and sat in the first available place at the Gryffindor table. Within moments her friends had joined her, she looked up at them with a wan smile.


She knew things from her visions; things that she felt that she had no business knowing. She saw bright sets of concerned eyes turned upon her where she sat. She knew, not just that some of these people-her friends-were going to fall to the macabre tortures of the Death Eaters in the Great War, but also how they would pass. There could be no rest for souls so tormented in life. She fought with all her might not to allow so much as a single tear to escape from her carefully controlled façade and trickle down her cheek.


Word of Hermione’s “clumsiness” made the rounds of the sparse student population that remained at the school for the Holiday. The skeleton crew manning the Slytherin table was no exception to this trend. Pansy was more malicious than Draco had ever seen her, “Maybe her hair was so frizzy that she couldn’t see straight. Honestly, can’t she go to a salon or something? Wait, maybe Muggles don’t wash their hair.”


“Oy Pansy!” he called in a falsely cheerful voice.


“Yes, Drakie?”


He shivered; her voice was just as nettling as it had ever been. Still he had to lure her into feeling secure if this deception was going to work. “I wonder why it is that you waste your valuable time taunting a disgusting mudblood who is so obviously beneath you. As a Pureblood you should be trying to find a nice guy to marry and continue the bloodline.”


‘Not that any man, wizard or Muggle would have you, vile a creature as you are,’ Draco thought before springing the verbal trap of embarrassment that she’d been gullible enough to walk right into.


“Tell us is there anyone in particular who you’ve got your eye on?” He knew that she’d blunder into the thick of it now.


“Of course there is, I thought you would know Drakie.” She smiled a little too desperately. “It’s you isn’t it. My father is going to talk to your father.”


Draco went white with fear for less than an instant, but recovered enough to make a comeback that it would still be fair to call a quip. “I suppose that is the way of dog breeding. They don’t much care for who they fuck do they? And God knows that they aren’t capable of finding a mate on their own. I certainly don’t have that problem, now do I? So, I’m afraid that you’ll have to find some other man to ensnare via trickery. You could never be a Malfoy, you are a disgusting, common bitch.”

Pansy was shaking with anger. ‘Trick me will he?’ she thought, ‘Then things will just have to get ugly.’


She stood up and said in a tone of light irony, “Well, I thought for sure that after you soiled yourself by fucking that ghastly excuse for a Head-girl that you’d leap into bed with anything that came your way.” Her voice was not very loud, but it didn’t really have to be, as the Hall was nearly empty and acoustically suited to spreading such bits of gossip effortlessly.


The vast majority of the occupants of the Hall were struck dumb by this accusation. It was in Draco’s favor that fortune had blessed him with an equally sharp wit and tongue. “I don’t know where it is that you get your information, darling, but once again you are wrong. I wouldn’t touch either of you with a ten-meter stick. As for the beast that is Granger, a filthy mudblood she may be, at least she isn’t trying desperately to be something that she can never be: the social equal of a true Pureblood family.”


This scathing scolding touched a raw nerve in Pansy. She knew all to well that Draco could be cruel, but this far surpassed her expectations. She had, but one retort that was potent enough to quell his unjustified rage. “I know what happened in your room last night, Drakie. And I should, I was there,” she stated baldly, her voice a vicious whisper.


Draco only looked sideways at her. ‘I was in Hermione’s room last night, not mine. What on earth is she on about?’ Even with the accuracy of this statement he couldn’t allow that pug-faced tart to have the last word, especially when he knew that there was no such thing as a secret within the walls of Hogwarts Castle.


“I do believe that you’ve finally lost it. I wasn’t in my room last night,” he spat back at her contemptuously. There was no point in saying where he had been. It took a couple of seconds before the meaning of what Draco had said sunk into Pansy’s thick skull. The cold smirk melted off of her face like an iceberg in the Sahara. She swallowed and made a strangled gulping noise, the hair on her spindly arms stood on end.


She did not really want to think about what this meant. She shot an alarmed glance at the staff table where Severus Snape sat grimacing and seemingly laying in wait for something, as a vulture circling a starving hiker. ‘Uggh. I-I didn’t sleep with Draco. That means I fucked Snape?’ She was initially horrified by this realization, what good could come from screwing a teacher in the guise of another student? ‘Wait, this could be so much worse; I don’t have to tell Snape. I can’t think of one good reason to tell him, not as long as he continues to think that he is getting what he wants. Maybe I can find a way to have them both and if I could ruin Miss Perfect at the same time, so much the better.’


Pansy put on her best guileless smile, the only way to throw Draco off the scent was to act a great deal dumber than she was. As matter of habit Pansy often pretended to be less aware than she really was, as people were much more likely to let pertinent information slip around someone who, by their standards, couldn’t possibly understand. This made her the perfect agent for gathering intelligence of a sensitive nature; Draco would have noted that had he not been so distracted by the scent of his beloved as it flittered into his nasal passages.


From the front of the Great Hall Severus took a silent appraisal of the exchange of words between the two young members of his house, ‘Then again, they aren’t all that young anymore,’ he thought to himself. He did not appear to be at all displeased with the behavior of his accomplice, Pansy. To Snape’s mind it would be a bit suspicious if she suddenly stopped associating with Draco completely. This was all following the plan he’d constructed with only minimal poking and prodding on his behalf. It would not be long before the beauteous Hermione would be his.


Hermione took her time strolling back to the Head’s suite after a Christmas dinner that left her more tired than she’d thought a meal capable of rendering her. Her head swam for some inexplicable reason, so she ran her right hand against the wall to brace herself incase another vision caused her to lose consciousness and fall to the floor once more.


She glanced at the back of her left hand and shivered again. During the second vision she’d known how she’d gotten or rather was going to get the cut that would ultimately lead to the scar she’d seen on her hand during that horrible prophetic episode. Now she understood that these were glimpses of the future, a future she could not change. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end.


She did not want this…gift? She did not want to see the first guy she’d ever kissed, ever loved die at the hands of a Death Eater so cowardly that he or she wouldn’t even remove the mask they wore before giving the death stroke to poor Ron. Tears sprung from her chocolate eyes. She wished that she’d not live long enough to see Neville come into his full powers as a wizard on the eve of the Final Battle. That did not bode well in her gut, Neville should never be on the battlefield, no good could come of that combination.


There had to be some way to stop all of these things from coming true. She had to do something and quickly.


She suddenly found that her feet were carrying her at incogitable speed to the top of the Astronomy Tower, which would be conveniently deserted at this time on a Holiday. Hermione sprinted up the stairs to the observation deck on the exterior of the tower. Oblivious to the world around her, she scaled the wall that held the telescopes in place. She felt the chill night wind whipping her robes like a gigantic sail; the sleeves slapped and swatted her face. The tears that had been flowing from her eyes were now frozen in place on her cheeks. With a strangled cry she stepped into the embrace of darkness and wind.


Draco had done his best not to look at Hermione all through dinner; he could not afford another slipup after Pansy’s accusation. With so few people remaining at Hogwarts for the Christmas Holiday, his actions could not be masked by the sheer numbers of the other students as they could be during the rest of the year. This could well prove disastrous for him. Draco would have to be exceptionally careful for the next two days, until the cloak of the masses could once again be used to shield his movements from his father’s spies.


His stomach gave an angry grumble and he excused himself early from the feast and headed for the library, that was the place to seek solitude during a holiday from schoolwork, the only other person who might be seen there would be Hermione and her company he was not at all averse to. He found his favorite seat and sat down to do some serious thinking about his life and how he’d have to change to accommodate having Hermione as a permanent fixture in it.


His father posed the single greatest hurdle that the two of them must overcome in order to be together. He would have to choose between the two of them, his blood or his heart. Draco was astounded by how difficult this decision was for him.


On one hand, Hermione had shown him how wonderful the world could be, how wonderful he could be. She’d shown him an unconditional love that he knew most people had received only from their families.


On the other hand, it was difficult and frightening to abandon everything one knew for the promise of something that was not a guarantee. He was guaranteed the family fortune and a life of luxury if he obeyed his father. It was the most difficult quandary that Draco would ever face; should he choose luxury or love?


Happiness was so new a sensation to Draco that he was unsure whether or not it was worth taking a chance on. He continued to weight the options before him, he realized that his decision should be based on the behavior of the two factions he was considering throwing his loyalty toward.


The entirety of his life Draco’s father had never once displayed anything that he could be forced to call love, or even tough love. When Draco had succeeded in his life his father had considered it to be a formality with the rationalization that he was a Malfoy and that nothing less than perfection was acceptable. He’d never received praise when he’d done well.


That might have been acceptable if his father had treated the occasions when his performance was sub par with the same cold distain, as the case was when he’d failed in father’s estimation Lucius was livid. Lucius would not hesitate to belittle and berate him via the use of both physical and verbal punishments. Needless to say this caused Draco to have no reason to succeed. If he failed to live up to his father’s standards of acceptable behavior it was only because it was a way to passively anger ‘that man’. His family gave him no reason to fulfill his potential. Even his mother had grown cold and dispassionate where her only child was concerned.


Draco tried to fight the anger and sadness that threatened to envelop him, he felt totally lost to his despair. He didn’t know what was happening, but suddenly he was pulled from this contemplation of his fate by a pair of deeply chocolate eyes. Hermione. He did not have to be what his father wanted, and he wouldn’t. Her behavior toward him couldn’t have been more different from the behavior of his parents.


In spite of years of the deplorable way in which he’d treated her, during the first six years that they were students at Hogwarts, she’d never come close to displaying the sort of behavior that his own blood had. No matter what was said in the past she’d now take his actions at face value.


She was not the type to let a grudge form an opinion that was never to be broken. She was not the type to think that people were static or that the world was black and white. How lucky was he to be loved by someone who understood the complexities of life and could see the many varied shades of gray that made life so interesting? He could not fathom an answer.


It was, however, quite clear to him the decision he must make, the heart could not and would not be denied. The ancient Grandfather clock in the library chimed eleven times in succession and thought he knew that the Christmas Feast had not yet ended, he decided to seek his bedroom, at least then he could begin to puzzle out what it was that Pansy was babbling about at supper.


When Draco found his room amiss something sent a chill up his spine. Who had made Pansy think that she’d slept with him? Was it the same person that had made such a mess of his room? A thinking person would have made some attempt to clean up the mess that they’d made if they’d known that this was the only day that House Elves insisted on having off.


He had thought it odd that Hermione had insisted that they spend the night in her room after she’d asked him earlier that day where he wanted to have their romantic encounter. But he thought, ‘It is a woman’s prerogative to change her mind.’ This was too much to consider by himself and he decided that at midnight, when the feast ended, he’d seek out Hermione so that he could have a real conversation with her about all of the issues in his life that needed an objective opinion.


The fire he’d built up upon his arrival to the common room of the Head-boy and girl’s suite had since waned to a mere bunch of smoldering coal. He left it to burn out, it was not needed as Hermione and he kept warm at night in their own way. He left the common room and made his way to the Great Hall cautiously.


After the rest of the attendants of the Feast had left for the night Hermione immerged looking tired and a bit too worn for Draco’s liking. She walked right past him in a trancelike state without even seeing him. He followed her. All of a sudden she began to sob, but did not respond to his multiple attempts to sooth her. She abruptly broke into a run, which did not abate until the two of them had reached the top of the Astronomy Tower. Here she slowed, but still did not respond to his pleas to listen to her.


Draco stood horrified as he watched his love deftly scaled the wall that held the telescopes; she looked around still not hearing a word that he said. Her robes slapped and taunted her, demanding that she do something. He watched as she took a step into the abyss that was the night sky.