Complications

The day after the morning "incident", Hermione felt...strange regarding the Head Boy. During breakfast she'd feel an urge to glance over to him, but the moment she'd look she'd get an equally strong urge to avoid him like the plague.

Avoiding him seemed simpler, so she made the decision to go with that urge. After all, the fact that she was having strange female hormonal issues was her problem, not anyone else's.

As such, she left breakfast early, claiming a need to go look something up in the library for Charms. It wouldn't do for Harry or Ron or (more likely) Ginny to realize that something was bothering her.

"Are you feeling well, Hermione? You seem a bit pale and you hardly touched your breakfast."

But as it turn out, it was Harry that noticed something.

"Oh, I'm just surprised at myself for forgetting something for class. I'd best be off then," she said, turning to leave.

"Alright, but don't be getting sick, Hermione."

Hermione nodded as she exited Great Hall, somewhat hoping that she was sick and so had an excuse for her strange conflicting feelings about her fellow Head. She did go to the library, though, to see if she could find anything to control her silly, teenaged hormones. She had a good half-hour before any of her classes began, so she'd probably be able to make some ground.

She started with a book called, Thirty-Five Simple Potions to Better Your Love-Life.

It was as good a place as any.

Draco spent breakfast deep in thought. His housemates, even Pansy, knew better than to bother him when he was so obviously thinking, and so he was undisturbed.

What he had learned earlier that morning was very significant, according to the many books concerning veela that he'd read in the last two months since he'd found out that he was one.

The agitation that had begun to wake him in the mornings was caused by her instincts beginning to forcefully demand him in her dreams. As such, it was his responsibility as a mate to, at the very least, be close to her enough that her instincts wouldn't drive them both mad.

Bonding as quickly as possible would, of course, be preferred. A smirk spread across Draco's lips.

Also, it meant that he didn't have to be so careful about concealing his feelings and controlling himself. His mate was ready and eager for more from him, at least on an instinctual level. But at the same time Draco knew that he had to tread a fine line between too much and too little for the bonding process to go as smoothly as possible.

It had only been four days since he saw his mate for the first time as a veela and he was already getting entirely impatient with the whole process. The veela instincts were simply different than they had been when he wasn't in contact with her. Before he would just sort of naggingly pine for her all the time. When he first saw her and on the train the sheer force of the pull had given him little opportunity to think about much but controlling it. Now the ultra-forceful urges had gone down and he was just... So unhappy and discontented when she wasn't around!

It was this feeling more than the pining and the difficult to control impulses that made him realize how much he needed her. Of course he had already known that he needed her, that she was necessarily his, but now he knew it. He didn't just need her to bond with him, he needed her for life.

He needed her, and he needed her now. But then, this was Hermione Granger he was talking about. Brightest witch of their generation, stubborn and opinionated, fiercely independent and, for the last six years, Draco's arch nemesis. He had the veela instincts on his side, but a wrong move could get her intensely strong will resisting her instincts.

Resistance, while futile, would also be painful on both sides. And lead to more sleepless nights. It simply wasn't the way he wanted to begin the rest of his life.

Hermione steeled herself outside the door of the Potions classroom. This would be the first class of the day where she would have to deal with Malfoy, her first time to see him after the morning's events. She was a bit apprehensive, mostly of what she herself might do. The last thing she wanted was for Malfoy to realize that she was acting weird.

She'd spent any free time she had in the library researching ways to control her strange and illogical bursts of teenage hormones. The search had lead her from these potions to rituals to those potions to charms and so on. She'd jotted down a few ideas, but hadn't come to any substantial revelations yet. Which was okay, she'd picked up several interesting facts during her quest, so it wasn't wasted time.

She found that Draco hadn't arrived at class yet, much to her relief. That meant that she could choose where they sat; up front in this case. That would mean that neither of them could do anything without Snape noticing, and probably removing points, at least from her House.

Sometimes it was a good thing to have a teacher who hated you.

But when the Head Boy did arrive, he just walked passed her to his seat and took out his quill and parchment for note-taking, not even glancing at her. It wasn't exactly abnormal; they didn't usually converse much before or during class. Even so, it reminded her of that day on the Hogwarts Express, he just stared out the window, not looking at her at all.

But then class was starting and she got back into the flow of taking notes and committing things to memory. That was something she could do. They got through making the potion du-jour in the usual way, with usual excellence. After all her concern, everything was normal.

But then at the end of class as she was packing up, Draco paused as he crossed behind her to exit the classroom. He bent down and whispered in her ear, "I'll see you in the library for homework, four o'clock."

It was the same silky voice he used in her blasted dreams. She froze, her eyes wide.

When she looked back she caught a glimpse of his retreating back.

About ten seconds later, she realized that she still hadn't moved. Agh. Not cool, Hermione. She was the last person left in the room, too.

With an angry grunt, she finished packing up her ink and quill and stormed out of the Potions classroom. She simply had to get over this whatever-it-was; it was going to start really affecting her studies soon if she didn't. Four o'clock in the library? Good, this was their first real team project and they should get a jump on it.

Yes, the project. Make an adjustment to an already-existing spell. Sounds like fun, and Draco would probably be a good partner for such a project, based on their conversation regarding potion ingredients earlier that day. Yes, that was good.

In the meantime, she headed over to the library to continue searching for solutions to her problem. She picked up a book titled Oh, Merlin! He's So Hot and I Don't Know What to Do.

Yeah, she was probably getting off on the wrong tangent...

At two minutes till four Draco strolled into the library. Hermione was there, he noticed as a strong whiff of ginger and vanilla reached his nose. He followed the scent and found his mate curled in an armchair in a lonely corner of the stacks, engrossed in a book called Is It Love or Lust? Diagnosis and Correction.

Well. He wasn't sure what he thought about that. His first reaction was to think it funny, but really, did he want her 'correcting' it, or wanting to do so? Or diagnosing it, for that matter. He would rather prefer that she find out about the situation directly from him. But then, he didn't really expect such a book to be of any help to her at all.

It was at about that time that Hermione noticed him standing there. She did an obvious double-take and a second later the book was not in her hands. He wasn't quite sure how she did it, an illusion charm, perhaps.

"Malfoy," she greeted curtly. "Are you ready to get started then?"

He nodded, "Lead the way, Hermione."

He got a burst of pride when he noticed her heart beating faster as he spoke her name. She was obviously ignoring her own reaction, though, and stood up to lead him to a table, hefting her book bag over her shoulder. He followed closely behind her, happily breathing in her scent.

"So," she started once they were seated, "have you given much thought to what sort of potion we should alter?"

"I had thought about exploring the basic mood-changing ability of the Calming Draught to see how it could be otherwise applied." It was a basic potion and it nearly definitely had a lot of untapped potential.

Hermione gave a slow blink and said, with apparent surprise, "That sounds like a great idea. Perhaps we could start off by drawing ingredients from the Invigorating Draught and observing the affects, they already have several over-lapping ingredients. We'd probably best make sure we have antidotes available before we begin brewing anything."

Ahh, scholarly bliss. The entire project would probably be, at best, solitary experimentation if he had any other partner but her.

They spent the next hour and a half in the library discussing possible ingredients and effects. Hermione seemed to have nearly as much zeal for potions as he did. By that time they were more or less done for the day, having decided to start brewing after classes the following day. Then he noticed her rolling her shoulder uncomfortably. Opportunity.

He stood, which wasn't unusual as they had both gotten up periodically to pace while they brain-stormed. He came up behind her and reached out to massage her shoulders and neck. "You're tense, Hermione," he murmured to her.

She really was, she must have been quite uncomfortable. She didn't comment and leaned into his touch. Being in physical contact with her was so good. And she seemed to enjoy it as well, he noticed. He could swear that he heard her purr at one point.

When the knots of tension were gone from her shoulders he continued rubbing her back, and she wasn't complaining. But it was getting towards dinner. He leaned down and whispered in her ear, "It's about time we went to supper, Hermione. I'll see you tomorrow."

And then he turned and left. The physical contact with her was enough to sooth the veela instincts so that it wasn't too hard to walk away.

Yes. That had gone well. Mental associations were a powerful thing, he knew. This was definitely a good mental association for his mate to have.

Hermione groaned, both in pleasure and frustration. This was partially his fault, too! These latest actions were totally unwarranted. Did he want his rival lusting after him?

It was a good thing he had stopped, at least. She knew that she hadn't been about to ask him to. His ridiculous, talented hands had felt so good... But that was a train of thought that she was trying to avoid. Bad Hermione.

Well, she wasn't hungry yet, she figured she may as well try another book or so in her search for an answer to her teenage-hormone problem. That "love or lust" book didn't seem to have anything useful.

She got up, happily stretching her loosened shoulders in spite of herself, and started scanning book spines. She randomly picked out Something Strange Is Going On and I Don't Know What: Answers and Advice for Times When You Wake Up and You're Purple (Or Something)

Well, who knew?


~*~

Wah, this one was a struggle. For some reason, both with this chapter and my earlier attempts at last chapter, trying to write a Potions class has been incredibly hard. My writing style is such that, if I make a 'wrong turn' anywhere, I have to cut out everything I wrote up to the mistake or I won't be able to get anywhere. Dear Muse is very oppinionated. He doesn't like classes, apparently.

I'm fairly happy with how this chapter turned out, though.

Okay, the promised review responses. And sorry, I don't have time to give specific responses to every review. You may as well read through other people's reponses, since I'm not going to answer the same question or observation several times.

Lupinsgal: My first reviewer on this site ever, thank you very much! I'm glad that you like it, and I will keep it coming.

Camryn: Yep, Draco with fangs. For some reason I think that fangs are quite possibly the sexiest thing ever, so I simply had to incorperate them into my veela!Draco.

Utopia: You're one of my favorite reviewers! I love your suggestions and oberservations and encouragement, you make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. *hugs* And I agree about the Hermione/Ron relationship. I'm not sure why it's cannon... And I don't really find offending JKR, her pairing is silly. Several other things about the series are also silly. It's not the greatest series in the world by any means, but it has characters that make great fanfiction.

Liz: Yeah, pacing used to be a big problem for me when I was little and first trying to write stories. Since then I've been concentrating on correcting the fault. I think I get it right most of the time... It really makes me happy that you appreciate my efforts.

Ichi.ruki: You are the first reviewer to comment on the book titles! And Draco's hot chocolate! They were some of my favorite parts about that first chapter and it made me so happy to know that other people also liked them.

Sam: I know! I've read a bunch where Hermione isn't affected by Draco at all too and, while I liked them, I knew I wanted something different. And those stories where Draco is obviously hitting on Hermione and has been for a while and when he tries to kiss her, she runs away. I'm sorry, if that sizzling hunk of man-flesh so obviously wanted me, I wouldn't be so quick to refuse him! I mean, I wouldn't necessarily think that he actually loved me after a history like Hermione and Draco's, but really, could a snog really hurt?

Eppie: Thanks for your suggestions and corrections. And you are the only person to date that has made any mention of the song! You'd almost think that no one else listened to it. *looks around suspiciously* It means a lot to me that you like it and, yes, it did take years to learn to play and arrange like that. I'm really proud of that chord change during that high bit...

Wicked: Yeah, I too wanted to fix her hair somewhat, but I didn't want to be one of those "everyone turns around and Hermione's an irresistable bomb-shell". This is my compromise, I hope you like it. And I'm also toying with the idea of having someone else pursue Hermione, haven't made up my mind on that, though.

Crittenz: Thanks for the corrections, I fixed both of them. Your second review made me squeal with happiness, I kid you not. I love you... *hugs*

Fransen: A rough, demanding Draco is my fantasy too... I plan on getting there, but it hasn't suited the fic so far...

Guard Greek: It makes me so happy to know that you think that this is a good Veela Dramione! I set out trying to write one of those good fanfiction that people like reading, and it really means a lot that I might be succeeding. *bows*

DragonFly: Forget about a smart move bringing the plot back, I was just trying to keep writing! I got lucky I guess. And I have no problem at all with you having Draco tell Snape about being a veela in a similar way. In fact, it makes me really happy that you were inspired by my fic!


To all other reviewers: Your reviews were very appreciated and I love you all! *group hug*

I'm really tired right now, but I plan on fixing mistakes in other chapters tomorrow, thanks to everyone who pointed out problems!

Hopefully I've seen the last of my writer's block and the next chapter will come well and quickly. Reviews always help! ^_^ I know I wouldn't have gotten through this chapter without them...