Claiming Hermione

Tuesday and Wednesday flew by a lot like Monday had. Uneventful. Hermione kept busy with school work, tried to catch any little issue with the prefects that came up before Malfoy could even find out about it, and did her best to plan the next prefects’ meeting on her own. Not only was she avoiding him for her usual reasons – because he was an evil ass – but her sense of decency figured that even an evil ass could probably use a break after his parents had been killed. Besides, she hadn’t been spending as much time with Harry and Ron this year, so she had a little extra time. She blamed it on her Head Girl duties, desire to actually study for her NEWTS, and, oh yes…their love lives, aka Ginny and Lavender, respectively. The latter of which, she could do without.

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Dumbledore had told Draco Monday morning, that if he wanted to, he could take some time and go home to Malfoy Manor. Since he was seventeen and of age, he wouldn’t need to be assigned a guardian, and Dumbledore had arranged with the Ministry and Gringotts for all the Malfoy holdings to be transferred to his name. Draco politely thanked him, and he was actually grateful, but he declined the offer to go to the Manor. He was dreading having to go there. An image of his mother in the conservatory, where liked to take her tea, flashed through his mind and made his stomach churned. That, combined with the physical evidence of the large manor that he was now responsible for, was too much. He didn’t want to go there, he didn’t want to talk about it, he just wanted to…distract himself. To make matters worse, his housemates were practically walking on eggshells around him and it annoyed him to no end. But then, at least they weren’t trying to comfort him. A vision on Crabbe putting his fat arm around his shoulders gave Draco a bad taste in his mouth. He wished he had a really long essay to write so he could throw himself into it. Maybe there would be a disaster with the prefects that he could fix.

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Thursday before lunch was Hermione and Draco’s free period when they could meet and take care of any business they needed to, which was why Hermione headed to the HCR as soon as Ancient Runes let out. She was at least an hour early, so she pulled a small wooden box out of her bag and took it over to one of the desks. Inside were 10 dried puffpinks that needed to be carefully dissected.

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Draco couldn’t remember the last person he had talked to all week - other than telling Pansy to leave him the fuck alone when she persistently tried to involve him in some inane prank she, Zabini, Crabbe and Goyle had concocted. He didn’t want to be around anyone, much less talk to them, and he’d stalked off to his room to drown himself in the bath – his sanctuary. He craved that watery stillness, staying below the surface as long as he could only to repeat the action and sink again. Everywhere he went the quietness followed him and he welcomed it, encouraged it even. Which is part of the reason that Hermione didn’t hear him enter.

Shutting the portrait with a soft click, Draco was presented with Hermione’s back topped with a large ball of puffy curls pulled up and piled on top of her head. Draco thought it looked like an animal had moved in. She was bent over the desk and clearly didn’t hear him come in, which was fine with him. He was very glad that they’d not had to talk about anything all week. And today, he didn’t have the energy to fight with her. Trying to not alert her to his presence, he stealthily made his way to the cubbies and slowly pulled out his mail. Checking that she still didn’t know he was there, he went to sit in one of the large leather chairs facing the two desks. He read through the few notes left for him. Justin Finch-Fletchly wanted to talk to him about scheduling Quidditch practices, and there were three first-years who were requesting tutoring. Two in Potions and one in Charms. He noted how very little mail he had this week – a quarter of what he’d had in the few weeks before. He scowled. He needed this damn it.

Draco looked up at the profile of Hermione working small metal tools on a pile of pink flowers of some kind. Her brow was creased and she bit half of her lower lip. The giant mop plopped on the top of her head made her slender neck look tiny. He guessed she was, after all, a very small person. 5’? Maybe 5’1”? At 6’2” himself, most girls, and plenty boys, seemed small, but in his mind, Hermione was anything but. Her over-confident, determined, know-it-all attitude added a metaphorical foot to her height. He smiled inwardly thinking that with her short height and delicate bone structure, she could probably pass for a little girl. Ah, but then, no. Somewhere in the last year, she had grown into herself. Oh, lord! He did not want to go there! Draco closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the chair. He ran though a list of homework assignments and projects, checking each one off mentally and lamenting his lack of distractions. Quidditch wouldn’t start for another 2 months, and apparently being Head Boy didn’t take much work. A soft humming started mingling with the checklists and potential projects and soon, the gentle noise was overriding the flurry of to-dos. Eyes still closed, an amused smirk formed on his face at Granger’s little song. It was a love song and an especially cheesy one at that. Draco let the feminine sounds lull him into a light nap.

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A soft snore startled Hermione and she sat up in her chair, whipping her head around. How had she missed Malfoy coming in? So much for Constant Vigilance. And he was snoring. Oh, god! Any other time, she knew this would be ripe material to shut his mouth with if needed. Too bad, but there will be other things. There always are.

She took a moment to watch him sleeping. Twice in one week, how…weird. His posture was easy and relaxed, revealing how comfortable he was in his own skin. But then, who wouldn’t be if they looked like him? Even if he was an utter prat, he was bloody beautiful! Really, no boy should be that pretty. There was almost something perverse about it. Smooth, pale perfect skin, silky white blonde hair, and dark pink, bowed lips that blatantly suggested sex, and piercing, arctic grey eyes set in long dark lashes. She would never tell a living soul, but she really liked his nose. Hermione was not one to get caught up in looks, or boys for that matter, (okay, okay, there was that crush on Lockhart, but come on, she was twelve!) but there was no denying how really gorgeous he was. In a dark, hidden part of herself, she hated him for it. Lucky for her, she rarely had to face his beauty head-on, because that hateful sneer she suspected he kept just for her, seemed permanently plastered on his face whenever he looked at her.

She turned back around and did her best to scrape her chair on the floor loud enough to wake him when she stood up. Success! Draco lifted his head and opened his eyes groggily at the scuffing sound. He stifled a small yawn and looked at her, biting the inside of his cheek.

Hermione decided the best plan was to pretend nothing had happened and get down to business. “I’ve made an outline of things we need to go over at tomorrow’s meeting. If you want, you can look it over and add or rearrange as needed.” She said without preamble handing him her notes. He took them, shifted in the chair and threw a long leg over one arm, and scanned her outline. On the whole, it looked good, but he was so desperate to fill his time that his mind searched hard for things to add.

“We should touch on Quidditch schedules since 3 of the 4 captains are prefects. We can invite Potter for that part of the meeting. And we’ve got to set up a system so these guys can handle the tutoring requests themselves. I got three, do you have any?” he queried.

Hermione was a little surprised at how eager he appeared and decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and to just go with it. “I have a bunch. And you should see the note I got from Padma and Lavender about various balls. We’ll all have broken ankles from dancing so much if they have their way.” She said as she searched for the note in her organizer.

“Well, maybe those of you who dance like hippogriffs will suffer that fate, but some of us can actually put one foot in front of the other without causing bodily harm.” He snarked.

Ahhh, there is the Draco Malfoy she knew. She narrowed her eyes at him and ignored the barb as she handed him the note.

He scanned the note and a tiny fire sparked in his grey eyes. “We have to plan the graduation one, obviously, but I think the Halloween Masque and the Yule Ball would be good too.” Hermione goggled at him. A guy wanting to plan dances? Malfoy wanting to plan dances? What?

“Er…okay. I guess. We’ll bring it up the meeting and see if we can’t get a group to set it all up.”

“No. Those idiots can barely manage to not get lost patrolling the halls, and we’ve even made them maps of their routes. I don’t want to be responsible for someone else’s ineptitude. We can set it up, or, if it’s too much for you to handle, I can deal with it myself.”

“Malfoy…”

“What’s the matter Granger? You might not be able to get a date to go with you, but at least you’ll have gotten to see all decorations before hand.”

Hermione glared at him and clenched her jaw. “Fine. I’ll let the professors know.” She bit out in a low voice through her teeth. She was not going to rise to his taunts today!

“What about the patrols?” He moved on.

Hermione’s anger swept out of her to be replaced by embarrassment. She hoped he didn’t mind that she had already completed the schedules and routes. Dropping her gaze from his, she pulled the schedule from the back pocket of her organizer and all the other notes she’d picked up this morning came out too, scattering to the floor around their feet. Draco rolled his eyes, but didn’t make any remarks, as he leaned forward to help her pick up his the dropped notes.

“I, um…I adjusted the schedule to meet these requests,” she waved at the fallen notes, “and I mapped out a couple new routes so the seventh floor corridor and the Greenhouse get better coverage.” Draco picked up the last of the change requests at his feet and scowled at the healthy stack in his hand.

“What the fuck!” he suddenly yelled and stood up shaking the stack. “These are all from this fucking week! Does everyone think I can’t handle this? Fuck!” Hermione just stared at him. “I’m not a fucking imbecile, you know. I fucking earned this position and I don’t need people walking on eggshells around me! And I sure as FUCK don’t need YOU doing my work for me! I’m not one of your dunce pity cases, Granger!”

Hermione stood up abruptly and walked to the cubbies, pulling out a folio of parchments and handing it to Draco. In an all-business manner she said flatly, “These are all the current tutoring requests, along with the profiles of about half of the potential tutors. We need to complete the profiles of everyone who signed up so that we can match people up. We need a list of all the professors’ office hours and to secure dedicated space in the library where people can meet.”

Her unaffected, efficient tone dispelled Draco’s indignation immediately and he stood there goggling at her for a moment before he quickly adopted her attitude and opened the folio. “We’ll need to recruit more tutors. Most of these are in their OWLS or NEWTS years and will probably need tutors themselves.”

“I’ll add it to the meeting notes. The prefects can help with the recruiting.” She finished.

Another hour later and they had a revised meeting outline and had four new folios started: two for the balls, one for graduation and the graduation ball, and one for the new tutoring program they were developing. Stomachs grumbling, they packed up their belongings and walked out the portrait door to go to lunch. A weird moment where they looked everywhere but at each other passed between them upon realizing they were going to the same place. They both took a couple awkward halting steps not knowing how to both proceed but not walk together. Draco looked up at the ceiling and let out a small chuckle. Hermione met his eyes with a strained, but amused expression. They walked to the Great Hall side by side in silence and when they got to the main door, Draco held it open for her.

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