Puzzle Pieces

Section 6:

I could say that I didn’t give Granger a second thought in those weeks that we went without talking to each other, but it wouldn’t be true. To be honest, the brunette witch was on my mind rather more than I would have liked. Part of the reason, of course, was Draco. Draco was not, alas, the type to forgive and forget, especially when it came to Gryffindors, and as November slipped by, he came up with more and more elaborate punishments for Potter and Weasley for their behavior on the Quidditch pitch. Granger, by association, was brought up as well, as Draco cursed her knowledge of spells and, more importantly, counter spells that would prevent Potter and Weasley from getting what they deserved.

I learned to change the subject whenever her name came up and to *prevent* the subject from coming up whenever I could. (A carefully selected poison slipped into the pumpkin juice of an obnoxious third year taught him that when I said that no one in the common room was to mention Hermione Granger in Draco’s hearing or there would be unpleasant consequences, that was *exactly* what I meant. The poison was fairly mild; it didn’t kill him, it just made him *want* to die for a couple of days until the effects wore off.) I was a Slytherin, yes, and I certainly wasn’t above using people to my benefit, but I wasn’t *completely* without a conscience. Hermione Granger had done me a good turn, and asked for nothing in return. Vilifying her friends was simple enough; they were right bastards, the both of them, when they chose to be, and I had no trouble saying so; but I couldn’t, in good conscience, vilify her. I wouldn’t defend her, but I wouldn’t insult her, either. She deserved that much.

Instead, I tried to convince Draco that the best revenge would be to stampede all over the remaining Quidditch season. The first game was over, but the season was not, and Slytherin still had the chance to perform quite respectably, if the team was firmly taken in hand. Hunter, wise lad that he was, dropped out of Hogwarts altogether. The rumor mill had it that he told his parents he would feed himself to a Hungarian Horntail before going back to that school. At least a Hungarian Horntail wouldn’t hold any *personal* grudge against him and would simply kill him for food or pleasure instead of revenge. This meant that Draco had a new keeper to break in, and a second chance to prove just what kind of captain he could be.

One thing was for certain: Gerald Butler, the fifth year who took over the keeper position, would not suffer the same fate as Hunter. No boy susceptible to attacks of nerves would have taken the position in the first place, with Draco in charge and on the warpath. I took to going to the practices, just to keep Draco reined in. It was good for his image to be perceived as slightly unstable with the tendency to hex now and ask questions later when it came to the Quidditch team, but sometimes he took the role a bit too far. Keeping an eye on him was practically a full-time job, especially if you factored in the time I spent watching him in a far more intimate manner: watching his tongue tracing my skin, watching his eyes roll back in pleasure as he buggered me senseless, watching him harden at the sight of me waiting for him in the shower… etc. Yes, I spent a great deal of my time watching Draco Malfoy, and I wouldn’t have given up a minute of it.

Between Draco and class, it was very easy to keep myself distanced from Granger. I may have spent more time than I should’ve looking her way, and I might have seen, in my careful surveillance, that she spent a fair amount of time looking my way as well, but I certainly didn’t do anything about it. When I finally did speak to her again, it was the first week of December, and it would have been much longer than that, if I had had any sort of choice. But then Professor Vector taught us (or rather, *tried* to teach us) magicontorqueo approximation. Viewed objectively, it was a fascinating concept since it allowed one to find the mathematical impact of spells on one another. When calculated accurately, the equation would gauge the magical force of a spell, telling exactly how much damage it could cause, along with how much force was required to counter it. Objectively yes, it was brilliant. Practically, however, it was a damn nuisance. I hit an intellectual brick wall. No matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn’t grasp the concept.

In my defense, it wasn’t an easy concept to grasp. Vector hadn’t even taught it to previous years. But there had, lately, been pressure on the test makers to raise the standards of the Arithmancy N.E.W.T.s, and Vector assured us that magicontorqueo approximation was bound to show up. In class and out, I struggled with my books, trying over and over again to cement the concept in my mind. It didn’t work. The ‘Poor’ that I received on the test was proof that Professor Vector was kind and charitable. I honestly deserved the score ‘Dreadful,’ if not ‘Troll.’ There was a small consolation in the knowledge that my test paper still had the second highest score (everyone else, with one notable exception, was as lost on the concept as I was) but the sop to my ego did nothing to make the situation any better. For the first time in my Hogwarts career, I started to get really worried.

The only non-negotiable standard Gringotts insisted upon for candidates in their International Magical Commerce program was an Outstanding score on the Arithmancy N.E.W.T. The goblins were surprisingly open-minded when it came to personal history of applicants, as long as the end result was in line with protecting their investments. Practically speaking, the goblins didn’t care if you had a reputation as a mass murderer who cannibalized his victims as long as your accounts were always in order and your Arithmancy skills were beyond reproach. If I wanted placement in the IMC program, doing badly in Arithmancy simply wasn’t an option.

Unfortunately, the problem of magicontorqueo approximation did not go away. Vector insisted we would all need to master it before the class could move on. Naturally, getting all of us to master it proved to be more difficult than expected. Vector was an excellent teacher, but no matter how many times we went over the concept, there was something about it that I simply couldn’t grasp. Neither could (almost) anyone else. Vector finally ran out of patience. Magicontorqueo approximation was important, but it wasn’t the *only* important concept we needed to learn, and we were already running behind schedule. We were told that there would be one more test on the concept, and if we hadn’t grasped it by then, we would have to learn it on our own time.

During dinner that night, I got owls from the other two Slytherins in the class along with three Ravenclaws offering me a variety of extravagant bribes in exchange for tutoring. There was nothing terribly surprising about that (though some of the bribes that were offered were… interesting, to say the least. It looked like the rumors that Lisa Turpin only spread her sought-after thighs for academic pursuits was accurate after all). I did have the second highest score not only on the test, but in the class as a whole, and I had been known to give tutoring assistance in the past, if the price was right. Slytherins, naturally, felt most comfortable coming to me for assistance, while Ravenclaws sought me as the lesser of two evils. They didn’t like turning to a Slytherin for assistance, but it was better than admitting a Gryffindor was smarter than them.

Yes, Granger was the one with the highest score, in the class and on the test. In spite of her reputation as a know-it-all, she wasn’t one to go around parading her scores, but when Vector wrote the grade distribution from the test up on the board as always, there were four who scored a T, five who scored a D, one who scored a P and one who scored an O. It wasn’t hard to figure out who the O was, even if Vector hadn’t made it glaringly obvious by giving Granger a study period while the rest of us tried to hammer magicontorqueo approximation into our heads. While the rest of us moaned and groaned over how bloody *buggered* we were on the whole concept, she sat in the corner, calming working on her N.E.W.T. revisions.

Circe knew, I was tempting time and time again to simply take the bicorn by the horns and ask her for help… but I always decided against it. Part of it was pride: I hated to admit that there was an Arithmancy concept that I couldn’t figure out on my own. Everyone knew that Granger wanted to go into mediwizardry and that Arithmancy was just a hobby for her. There was simply no *sense* in her being better at it than me. Another part of it, admittedly, was Draco. Though I was still aggravated by the way he had overreacted the last time I had a tutoring session with Granger, I hated the thought of the two of us getting into a fight like that again.

But the largest part of my reluctance; the part I was barely able to admit even to myself; was fear. Though our sole tutoring session had been brief, Granger had been able to really make me think, and not just about Transfiguration. The night after my tutoring session with her, I had a nightmare about the destruction of the orphanage that she had described. The images were… unpleasant, not to mention damnably persistent. That was the first night that I had that nightmare, but it wasn’t the last. And when I pictured the children running from the orphanage only to be consumed by flames as they stood in the street, the children I pictured were always the same: a girl with bushy brown hair, and a platinum blond boy.

I had decided years before that staying out of war business was the wisest move I could make. Voldemort’s ambitions didn’t concern me; they were none of my business, so why should I care? I had little to lose whichever way the tide turned, and little preference for one leader over another. Yes, it was said that Voldemort was somewhat violent, but the man was unquestionably brilliant while Fudge was unquestionably a fool. Was one really better than another? Probably not. Without anything to gain or lose, I was perfectly content to sit on the sidelines and let others battle it out without my assistance. Granger, to my dismay, made me question my complaisance. That was the real reason that I avoided speaking with her again. I didn’t need someone shaking up the way that I looked at the world.

Alas, I was finally forced to admit that there was nothing for it but to ask her for help. There was no way on earth I was going to be able to learn the concept without assistance, and it was blatantly clear that Granger was the only one who could assist me. I had not forgotten how easily she was able to walk me through the rabbit’s foot flowering spell. No one had ever had such success in tutoring me in Transfiguration before. I could only hope that she’d do half as well in Arithmancy.

I shan’t go into details; the recollection of the tantrum Draco threw when I told him I would need to approach Granger for help is *not* a memory I like to revisit; but suffice it to say, he wasn’t pleased. We ended up cutting class and holing up in an empty classroom so that he would have all the time he needed to rant and rave, and I would have all the time I needed to talk him down. It took a while, but I finally managed to get him convinced. Like it or not, this was a subject he simply *couldn’t* tutor me in. Smart though he was, he had never taken Arithmancy. I made it clear that Vector’s tutoring wouldn’t do any good since if I hadn’t learned it the first fifty times the old bat tried to teach it to the class as a whole, it wasn’t likely that another tutoring session with her would make any difference. Granger was literally the only option. Reluctantly, Draco gave in, though he did insist that we choose to meet in some public place, instead of in an empty classroom where she’d only have to cast a silencing spell and she could do Merlin only knows what to me with no one any the wiser.

I knew he wanted a public place so that he could spy on us without being conspicuous in his presence, but at that point, I was so relieved that he had given in that I wasn’t going to argue the point. I even let him help me compose the note to her asking for her help which we brought up to the Owlery together. Granger received the note during lunch and penned a response immediately, agreeing to meet me in the library that evening. Surprise, surprise, when I was ready to leave to meet her in the library, Draco suddenly remembered a book he needed to get for himself, and walked there with me. Leaving him behind in the stacks where he’d have a nice view for spying, I approached the table where I had spotted Granger’s unmistakable hair.

“Granger,” I stated, announcing my presence.

“Zabini,” she replied, smiling up at me. “Right on time. Go ahead and pull up a chair so we can get started.” I obeyed, seating myself next to her, and pulling out my Arithmancy notes from the past few weeks.

“Alright,” she said, “where do you start to have problems?”

“Well,” I answered, “I’m alright until we have to draw the diagram.”

She looked at me in surprise. “That’s the first step.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is.”

She laughed. “Well then, I suppose I have my work cut out for me.”

“I understand how to work the formulas,” I explained. “It’s fairly basic once you have it all charted out. The diagram is what trips me up every time. I know how to solve it once I have all the information, but I’m still stuck on actually *getting* the information.”

She nodded her understanding. “I thought that might be your problem,” she stated. “It’s where I had trouble with it at first, too.” She dug through the scrolls in front of her until she found what she was looking for, which she then placed in front of me. “Let’s start with this,” she suggested.

Looking down, I saw her notes on hypergeometric binumination, a concept we had learned a few months back. “Wrong notes, Granger,” I corrected her, thinking she had just grabbed the wrong scroll. “These don’t have anything to do with magicontorqueo approximation.”

“They don’t?” she asked innocently. “Are you sure?”

I snorted. “Quite sure. Hypergeometric binumination is a concept I actually understand.”

“Good!” she replied, beaming at me. “Explain it to me.”

I opened my mouth to argue with her about wasting time on a concept that we weren’t there to study, but she smiled at me so cheerfully and expectantly that I decided to humor her. “Hypergeometric binumination finds the probability of an event occurring, given certain criteria.”

“What kind of event?” she pressed.

“Any event. As long as you know the criteria, you can find the probability for any event.”

“Really? Prove it,” she countered. Pulling out a spare piece of parchment, she scribbled down some variables before shoving it in front of me. “Show me.” The problem she had written out was actually fairly simple, and it only took a minute for me to solve the equation and hand it back to her.

“Excellent!” she said, scanning over my work. “Now what if I wanted to know the probability over a *range* of criteria, instead of just the one?” She added a quick note onto the parchment, showing which range she wanted me to find. Obediently, I solved the problem for the range.

“And if I asked you to make a diagram of the results?” she questioned. I complied. “What if I wanted the diagram to show this?” she asked, drawing a new graph and labeling the axes. I thought about it for a minute; it was a twist that we hadn’t gone over in class, but with the information that I already had, it was fairly easy for me to solve. I filled in the graph and looked up at her triumphantly.

“Very good!” she praised. “And if you were to analyze the diagram for these factors, what would you find?” She scribbled something underneath the diagram I had drawn, and handed the parchment back to me. My jaw dropped.

“That’s… it’s… I don’t understand. How?” I stammered.

“It’s magicontorqueo approximation,” she answered. “And you certainly do understand. You just solved for it, didn’t you? Look at how the pieces come together.” She tugged on the parchment so that it lay in between us. Going through what we had done step by step, she showed how understanding the way that the factors interrelated made it possible to line them up properly. It made sense. My mind hadn’t twisted around it completely yet, but what she said all pieced together. Hecate help me, it made a *lot* of sense.

“But then…” I questioned.

She grinned at me. “Try this,” she said, pulling out the parchment with the test questions from our previous test. Mentally going through the steps she had shown me, I sketched out the diagram as best I could understand it, and worked my way through the problem. When I was done, I held my breath and passed the parchment over to her. She responded by pulling out her test answer scroll and lining it up next to the parchment. Barring the differences in handwriting, they matched, point by point.

We worked through the rest of the test problems together. Some where harder than others, and even after I understood the concept, there were still some of the finer points that were capable of tripping me up, but Granger was infinitely patient, never giving me the answer, but always questioning me through it bit by bit until it finally made sense to me. By the time an hour had passed, I had worked my way through the entire test scroll successfully, and simply couldn’t stop grinning.

Couldn’t stop, that is, until I looked up into the stacks. Draco was there with a scowl on his face so fierce, I wondered it if would leave wrinkles. I bit back a sigh of annoyance as my smile quickly faded. I had forgotten he was there. To be honest, I had been a bit hopeful that he *wouldn’t* be there any longer. I knew he’d want to check on us at the beginning and make sure that Granger didn’t try anything, but I had hoped that once he saw that we were alright, he’d leave. Apparently, I was wrong.

Once he realized he had caught my eye, he started gesturing to his watch. I knew what he was trying to say: he wanted me to tell Granger that we had spent enough time studying, and that it was time for me to leave. I shook my head. I wasn’t finished yet. Yes, we had gone over the concept and I had understood it, but there were still one or two of the variations that were giving me a bit of trouble, and I wanted to go over them again. Granger was busily writing practice problems to drill me on them, which fortunately kept her from noticing the interaction between Draco and me. Shaking my head at Draco again, I deliberately turned my attention to Granger who was putting the final touches on her practice problems.

Twenty minutes later, I had finished the problems, and felt that I had a strong enough grasp on the variations to be able to handle the studying on my own from that point. Yet again, my glow of triumph faded when I glanced back into the stacks and saw Draco there again. He pointed more urgently to his watch this time, mouthing the words ‘Time to go, *now*.’ The words didn’t have to be spoken aloud for me to hear the anger behind them. He wanted me the hell away from Granger *instantly*, and he wouldn’t accept any more delays.

I tried to hold on to my temper; honestly, I did; but it was too hard. I loved Draco and that gave him a great many rights over me, but he did *not* have the right to tell me how I was allowed to spend my time. I was doing nothing wrong, and I was in no danger. I was, in fact, having one of the most productive study sessions of my life and I wasn’t going to end it just because Draco felt like being even more over protective than usual.

“Well, I guess that wraps it up,” Granger announced from beside me. “I think you’ve got a strong grasp on the subject now.” Turning my attention over to her, I noticed her packing away her Arithmancy scrolls and pulling out a stack of small, flat squares of paper instead.

“What are those?” I blurted out, curious in spite of myself.

“My Ancient Runes flashcards,” she answered. “Muggle thing,” she explained when she saw the confused look on my face. “Lots of muggle students use them to practice vocabulary words. They sell these small cards blank in stores. I had my parents send them to me. I write the rune on one side and the meaning on the other and go through them over and over until I’m certain I know which rune goes with which meaning. I know I’m ready for the test tomorrow, but it can’t hurt to drill them a bit more.”

Sneaking a brief glance over, I saw that Draco was still in the stacks with the same hard scowl on his face. It would have been easy enough for me to simply pack up my bags and join him. Granger had made it clear that we didn’t need to go over any more Arithmancy, and there was really no reason for me to stay anymore. But I suddenly became determined to teach Draco a lesson, to show him that he had no right to say how much time I could spend with someone other than him.

“Could I try it, too?” I asked Granger, gesturing to the cards. “I need to get in some more studying, as well.”

She looked surprised, but handed over half the stack of cards willingly enough. I turned my focus on to them, flipping through the tidy bundle in Granger’s neat handwriting, drilling myself on the familiar symbols. Perhaps the muggles had the right idea on this concept. Figuring out the runes for myself and then being able to double check it as simply as turning over the card was helping to cement the symbols in my mind.

In the new silence between Granger and myself, broken only by the sound of cards being shuffled, it was easy for me to hear Draco’s grunt of annoyance as he realized I wasn’t going to be joining him, followed shortly thereafter by the sound of him stomping out of the library.

I dare say he expected me to come after him. I usually did, after all. I usually dropped everything that I was doing and every personal preference I might have had to chase after him. I usually altered my schedule and shifted my priorities and gave in to him on every point where he bothered to make a stand, letting him determine my life, because he cared about everything so very much, and I didn’t really care about much of anything, except for him. Yes, that was what I usually would have done. But this time I didn’t. I was tired of Draco treating me like an infant who needed his permission to walk down the hallway unescorted. I was sick of allowing his overt paranoia regarding Gryffindors and his over-protectiveness of me to allow him to choose for me who I spent my time with.

“Is everything alright?”

Granger’s voice broke me out of my thoughts and I looked over at her with a sheepish smile. “Everything’s fine. Sorry, I just got a bit lost in my thoughts.”

“Are you tired?” she asked sympathetically. “I tend to forget that most people like breaks when they study. I promise I won’t be offended if you want to leave.”

She was giving me a very easy out. All I had to say was that I *was* tired, and ready to stop for the evening, and she wouldn’t think twice about me leaving. But I *wasn’t* tired and I *didn’t* want to leave. I wanted to stay.

“I’m fine,” I protested. “I want to keep going over the slashcards.”

“Flashcards,” she corrected gently, smiling at me. I smiled back, and then we bent over our flashcards again.

We continued until Madam Pince kicked us out of the library. I barely made it back to the dungeons before curfew. I found Draco asleep, or at the very least *pretending* to be. I considered trying to wake him. Our roommates slept like rocks, and no one would notice if I slipped into Draco’s bed for a few minutes for a kiss-and-cuddle make up session, especially with the automatic silencing spell Draco had charmed into the curtains to activate whenever he shut them. I decided against it. I was tired, Draco was angry, and neither of us appeared to be in the mood to deal with the other. A good night’s sleep was, I was convinced, the best course of action to take. Draco and I could have it out in the morning. Climbing into bed and shutting my own curtains (charmed for silence as well; Vince snored damn near loud enough to wake the dead) I quickly fell asleep.


End Section 6