Serenity Abandoned

“Serenity Abandoned”
By: MG/Shanibelle
Chapter Six –
“Hopeless Part II”


.-.-.

Draco watched Hermione scurry away from the pair of Slytherins, not at all acting like a Gryffindor. He began to ponder her behavior before the thoughts were interrupted by Snape’s voice. He turned his head to watch his Godfather pace before him.

“Like I said earlier, Draco, these are tough lessons. They will be especially rough on your mind, so I’ve temporarily given you an excuse on your Potions work. That does not mean that you can ignore it for the rest of the year, though.” Here, he fixed him with a glare, “I fully expect you to complete the work after you’ve adjusted. Now, are you ready to begin?”

Draco nodded, sighing as his Godfather started giving him instructions.

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Hermione was muttering beneath her breath, sitting on her bed Indian style with her studies before her when Draco came in, scowling, an hour later.

He groaned as he moved the outlying books near the end of her bed and lay on his stomach, breathing hard. Hermione sat, her back rigid as her eyes blinked rapidly at him.

“Malfoy?”

“Hmppphwha?” came the mumbled reply from where his mouth was pressed against her comforter.

“Might I get an answer if I ask why you’re laying on my bed instead of yours?” The only reply she received was his breathing before he took in a large breath and turned, laying on his side and propping his hand up. By the grimace on his face, it looked to be a painful exercise.

“Would you believe me if I said that I don’t want to sleep because I know I’m going to have another nightmare?”

She snorted and went back to her paper, “Right, Malfoy... and you know because you’re psychic now. Next you’ll be telling me things that are going to start happening in the next few minutes.”

She watched as his eyes became distant at her sentence and she watched him, curious with his behavior, and curious as to why she was wanting to reach out and touch him almost every time they were in the same room. The feeling returned to the pit of her stomach and she let out a deep breath, hoping to expel the feeling for good. However, it didn't help with anything. After a few more minutes of silence, she decided to bring him back to the present.

“Malfoy? Malfoy. Malfoy!” His eyes moved from glaring at her crème colored comforter to her face and his expression softened. None of it going unnoticed by her, and she found it to be quite peculiar behavior.

“‘M just tired.” She nodded, confused. He sure was acting strange today. He suddenly yawned, very audibly. Try as she might, she soon followed suit and blinked her eyes a few times, catching sight of what time it was by her watch. It was ten minutes after eleven and nearing her bedtime. No wonder she was feeling tired.

She went back to her work, intent on getting it done before falling asleep on top of it, “Will you hand me the book?” she motioned to one of the books that he had moved to lay down in its spot and picked it up, passing it to her. She paused when their fingers touched and her eyes dodged from his to their fingers. They were touching. And it was actually electric.

It was then that Hermione knew why they fought over the years. It wasn’t that he was brought up to know the Wizarding world inside out and everyone who was “someone” in it and thus a pompous prick, and she in a Muggle world and not knowing that she had the genes and thinking of a witch until her eleventh birthday, and thus a humble young woman, nay, it was the age-old thing that made anyone butt heads; sexual tension. And it was thick in the air. The dual-beating hearts were signs that both knew what had sparked between them after just a harmless touch.

Leaning forward, she took in a nervous breath before connecting her lips to Draco’s. Seconds later, she felt him now underneath her, their lips still attached. Pulling back, she saw that they were entwined in an embrace that too, was age-old. It didn't feel as if he was a separate being that was physically inside her - she could feel his different heartbeat, his feelings. Having experienced sex before, she knew that what she was feeling from him definitely wasn't "normal".

After she collapsed on top of him, breathing hard and their sweaty bodies sticking to one another, he whispered in her ear, “I love you,” before nuzzling his face in the side of her neck. “Love you, too, Draco.” She whispered back.

She squealed as he rolled them over, and he looked down at her, muttering the only words that she would never know that he would tell to one person, “Let’s get married.”

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Hermione gasped as she sat up from laying back against her headboard, the room now covered in darkness. It was just a dream… it was all a dream. Somehow, that wasn’t a relief for her. Her mind still threw clips of her dream at her; his face glowing with a smile as he proposed, the split-second before she kissed him, feeling his feelings when he told her he loved her. And her heart was beating hard against her chest, so much that it was making her breathing uneven.

After a few minutes of even breathing, she located her wand on her nightstand and muttered “Lumos”, squinting at the sudden light. Catching sight of Draco’s white-blond hair falling into his closed eyes, her mind then threw at her the sight of him on the day when he had saved her life; the look of him with his hair shining in the setting sun and crystal eyes that made this mysterious warmth spread out over her chest. Coming back to the present, it looked as though he had fallen asleep, too. And telling by the lack of light coming from the windows, they had been asleep for a while.

She caught herself staring at his form, watching as his chest rose periodically with his breathing. He had risked his life… for her’s. To protect her’s. Madame Pomfrey’s words came back to echo in her mind and for a minuscule second, as Hermione took in his relaxed, perfectly proportioned facial features, she considered that perhaps she did owe her life to him. Shaking her head at her foolish thoughts, she sighed as she manually moved her schoolwork off her bed and cast another look to Draco’s sleeping form. She wasn’t sure if she should leave him there or Wingardium him to his own bed. He looked comfortable and he wasn’t coughing blood or thrashing about, so that was a good sign.

She sighed once more as she stood there, her wand cast down at the marble floor, making it reflect up and creating a soft lighting throughout the room. While she was standing there, debating it, Draco took it upon himself to make the decision easier for her and wake up.

He woke with a start, much like she had, sitting up with a gasp. She came to the side of the bed that he was now sitting on, his breathing labored and coughs making it harder to breathe.

“I didn’t wake you, did I?” he asked after his breathing was under control and she sat on the bed beside him, still confused about her dream, her thoughts, his behavior and about the situation overall. She shook her head in response.

“No,” she sighed, “I’ve been up for a couple of minutes. I had a nightmare, too.” A very vivid, twisted nightmare.

He looked over at her after she extinguished her wand and set it next to her. He could still make out her shape and groaned as he lay back on the bed, his hands folding over his midsection and his eyes closing.

“What was yours about?”

Hermione furrowed her eyebrows and turned, looking at his shape lying on her bed, “Did you just say that you wanted to know about my dream?”

He looked down from looking at the ceiling and nodded. Realizing that she probably couldn’t see him any better than he could see her, he spoke, “Don’t make a big deal out of it, Granger.”

She noticed that he was reverting to using her last name, again. Maybe that once was just a slip-up; a mistake when he used it by the lake. “I – Well, tell me about yours first.”

He sighed, “And… why should I have to go first?”

“Because you’re the one who’s inquiring, and if you won’t tell, then that’s saying that you can dish it out, but you can’t take it.”

“Just tell me about the damned dream!” he sounded put-out and she had to smirk. He sure was hot-headed.

“You tell me yours first.” She pressed and he growled. Damn her stubbornness.

“You’re acting like a child, Hermione. We’ll be at this all morning. What time is it anyway?” She mentally congratulated him on changing the subject so well, and took up her wand once more and aimed it at her watch after she created it into a flashlight once more.

She sighed, “Fifteen ‘til two.” She replied and set the wand back on her nightstand. She sighed once more.

“Do you really think that these dreams are because of Legilimancy?” Draco asked suddenly. She turned to look at the shape of him, lying comfortably on her bed.

She thought it over, “Yes, I do. Although I don’t condemn the theory that the dreams could also just be works of your own imagination.” He hummed in response.

“Draco?” she asked a little while later, after she had curled up with one of her sides to the pillows and left more than enough room between herself and Draco.

“Hmm?” he asked, and she could hear his head turning to look at her. She kept staring at the frescoed ceiling that was bathed in darkness.

“How could you do that with the bubbles?” she asked, unable to think of anything other than the enigma that was lying next to her for the couple of minutes that they were laying next to one another.

Hermione heard him chuckle and turned to her head to see him almost shaking, “Those were just harmless tricks,” he explained after he was done laughing. “Not wandless magic. I’m definitely not that advanced.” Surprisingly, his voice wasn’t condescending; he wasn’t making fun of her for believing it to be wandless magic. And he had just admitted that he didn’t consider himself the greatest wizard of all time.

“Oh. Well, what other tricks do you know?” she asked, still watching his shape.

“Tell me, Hermione, why do you want to know?” he was now propped up on his side, much like she was so that they were staring at each other’s silhouettes.

“I’m just curious. I’ve never seen anything like it except for Dumbledore’s wandless magic. And even that, it’s scarce.” Hermione confided, her eyes darting downward to the comforter where her hand was tracing over, reveling in the feeling of the silk.

“There are only a few things I know how to do. The bubbles, sending paper flying, untying one’s shoelaces… I almost once untied Umbridge’s before she caught onto what was happening and gave me detention. Merlin, how I hated that woman. I think I still have the scar of what she made me write.” He raised his right hand to try to bounce some moonlight off of his skin, but was unsuccessful and put his hand back down, looking once more at the shape of Hermione in the darkness. He would never say it, but he liked this… veil of anonymity that the dark served.

Even if he couldn’t see her visage, he knew that he could always return to the blustery day only less than a week before and trace his eyes over her expression in the warmth lighting of the sunset with the wind tossing her curls across her porcelain skin that he longed to touch, to kiss.

He was so in tune with his thoughts, that he didn’t hear her voice until the middle of her sentence and just managed to understand what she was asking.

“…make you write?” Hermione had watched as he dove into his thoughts and figured that they were about something that involved blowing the legs off the last year’s “Headmistress” or perhaps turning her into a toad to go live with her kind… however that would be cruel to the other toads.

But she had to ask. Harry had told her about Umbridge’s detentions in confidence and Hermione remembered being slack-jawed after finding out that the woman had actually made him cut himself so much that it had made a scar that sheered “I must not tell lies”.

“I must not practice magic outside of school.” he told her and shook his head, “And I was in class when she caught me. McGonagall’s class, no less. This was, of course, before I caught on to her Inquisitorial Squad and joined that to get out of trouble.” She heard him mutter a few choice phrases that he liked to use often and she found that she was smiling lopsidedly.

The room was silent after Draco’s spiel of curses and Hermione found herself looking towards the pale glow of the crescent moon outside, peeking its face in her window. The glinting of the lake that was barely seen to the left of her bay window reminded her of the many questions she had and returned to looking at Draco’s outline.

“May… I ask you a question?” she asked and his figure moved, rolling to lie on his stomach.

“As long as it’s not asking me about yesterday’s Arithmancy homework, I’ll answer.” He replied and she found herself smiling once more. Arithmancy was definitely hard work.

Her smile fell and she let the silence stretch between them before asking, “Why did you save me?”

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