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 8- Unrequited Love?


Hermione had managed to duck Harry successfully for nearly a month and a half; she knew that her luck would not hold out forever. She resolved to end the silly little game of cat and mouse that she had been playing with him. Taking a deep breath, she pushed open the large oak doors to the Great Hall and sat next to Harry as though she had done this every morning from the beginning of the term. He leered at her and raised his left eyebrow, “Where have you been? I’ve missed you.”


She tried not to roll her eyes at him. He was attractive, but it always struck her as silly when he made an attempt to be sexy. For a split second she decided that it might just be easier to shag the ‘Green Eyed Monster,’ as she and Ginny had begun to call him, rather than have this awkward talk with him. No. With her luck he would only get more attached, that was the farthest thing from what she wanted. Besides, that wouldn’t be fair to Ron. “You know I’ve been busy, I am Head-girl.”


“Hummm…the HEAD girl, I just bet you’ve been very, VERY busy. Do I need to take a number to get some of your time?” He licked his lips, hungrily.


“Ugh, Harry!” Hermione pulled a wry face as she pushed Harry off of the bench on which the two of them were sitting. Seamus helped him to his feet. “Cheers mate. I’d never figured she’d be the type to like it rough,” said Harry with a laugh.


“Well, you never did ask…” volunteered Ron from the other side of the table. Everyone, except for Hermione, was red faced with laughter. Not that took much work for either of the Weasleys to blush furiously.


“You want to be next boy, you little puf…punk?” She glared at Ron playfully and stood up. He laughed again, as did she.


When the commotion had calmed down Ginny leaned across the table and whispered into her ear, “That was close, Hermione.” Hermione nodded, it was close. She would have to keep her temper, if not Ron would be outed, and that was not her decision to make.


“Hey Harry?”


“Yes cutie?”


“You’re my best friend. Without me no one will be able to check your homework for mistakes. I don’t think it is worth risking six years of friendship, and I hope that I’m too valuable to you to lose,” she said softly.

“I know, but I had to try. And I’m not sorry that I did. So, what do you think of Lavender Brown?”


“You are such a slut, Harry! She’s quite pretty and very nice, you should go for it.” He winked and pecked her on the cheek before putting on a more dapper expression and sauntering down the table toward Lavender and her friends. The poor girl had no idea what was coming her way.


Hermione had a markedly less successful time avoiding Draco. It was more awkward working with him now than it had been when she was positive that the loathing was mutual. Even when she was lusting after him, it had been easy to separate her work from her feelings, but after the near kiss incident it seemed that her feelings were in a horrible jumble.


Whenever she found herself alone, she would take Draco’s handkerchief out of her pocket and run her fingers over the fine embroidery. She couldn’t bring herself to return it to him, and he hadn’t asked for it. The fact that he hadn’t asked for her to return it gave Hermione the excuse she had been looking for not to give it up. It felt odd to her that her most prized physical possession really belonged to someone she’d wasted so much energy hating for years.


The most troubling event of Hermione’s life in the last two weeks was that her dreams of Draco had returned full strength. She was angry and baffled that the potion had stopped working. Why had it stopped working? She decided to find out that day in Potions.


It had taken the gifted young witch and wizard only two weeks to complete the full list of potions that Madam Pomfrey had requested six weeks earlier. This speed impressed even Snape, which was no easy task. However, instead of the conventional praise the two of them received more work from the Potions Professor. The speed with which they had accomplished this task had more to do with the need each of them felt to avoid each other, rather than being a display of academic prowess.


She arrived at the dungeon first, as usual, and she got straight to work figuring what had gone awry with her potion. She opened the book she’d purchased in Diagon Alley to the section on possible causes for why that particular potion might cease to function. It was useless. The only reason listed was that it was improperly made. That couldn’t be the case, as it had worked fine for ten weeks.


Hermione was at the end of her rope; she decided that she’d have to ask Snape for assistance. This illustrated the measure of her desperation. She stood and crossed the dungeon to his office and knocked politely and entered when he bade her to. She closed the door behind her, so that there was no possible way that Malfoy could overhear her predicament.


“Miss Granger, what can I do for you?” asked Snape in an uncharacteristically cheerful voice.


“Professor, I am sure that you can guess how important my studies are to me…”


“Yes, I believe that I have some idea.”


“Sir, I have found that I am being distracted from my work and I had made a potion to keep this distraction at bay, but it has recently ceased to work. I was wondering if you could tell me why that is?”


“Might this distraction be of a romantic nature?”


“Yes sir”


“The only reason that comes to mind is that your feelings toward said person have been strengthened somehow. What is the effect of the potion in question?”


“It is supposed to reverse infatuation, sir.”


“Perhaps you have fallen in love, Miss Granger. I suggest that you try a stronger potion, if you are so intent on manipulating your feelings. I warn you to carefully consider the potion you choose, research would be a good idea. Magic that manipulates love is never to be taken lightly. Good day, Hermione,” he smiled at her back. Oh, to be young again.


Draco was also having problems. It was truly exhausting living a double life. He pretended to like Pansy; he even began to date her in order to decrease the tension betwixt himself and Hermione. He was growing exceedingly short of patience with the simpering, pug faced girl. She stalked his every move. It began to seem that she was everywhere at once. She would wait outside of all of his classes and wait for him to leave them. (This made Hermione so jealous that she cursed her with a silence spell on one occasion, so that she wouldn’t have to hear the horrid whine that passed for Pansy’s voice.)


He decided that day that he’d had enough of her. He told her exactly how he felt about her at breakfast that morning. “Can you shut your bloody mouth for even a minute? You are without a doubt the stupidest, most annoying excuse for a person that I have ever had the great misfortune to meet. You are a repulsive, needy little tart and when you put your hands on me it makes my skin crawl. Your kisses bring me to the brink of sickness. In fact, if I lay dying and only your kiss could save me I’d leap into the Reaper’s arms and dance with the bloke!”


Pansy had the opposite response as her sister to Draco’s tormenting. She rose quietly and walked slowly from the Great Hall, completely stoic. The rest of Slytherin House was too shocked at Draco’s explosion of temper to chuckle or say anything.


Draco came to the dungeon after Hermione had set up her work for the day, but she was nowhere to be found. He shrugged; she’d have to come back sometime. He readied his workstation and started the fire beneath his cauldron. She entered the dungeon from Snape’s office and went to the bookshelf in the far corner without saying a word to him.

Shortly after she immerged from the office Snape followed her. Draco watched the two of them at the bookshelf and felt a surge of anger. She was at it again! That man was never happy; she must have done something to put him in a good mood.


‘That bitch, that little slut!’ he thought. How could he possibly catch up to a girl who was dealing in sexual favors? And if she was so inclined, where did he have to get in line to help her? No. Who did he have to kill in order to stop her from prostituting herself for favors from authority figures?


He could no longer contain his frustrations at Hermione’s actions. The kiss they had nearly shared on the first day of school had been an accident. She didn’t want him! She would never want him! He felt like by the end of the term he would be the only man in the whole school who hadn’t gotten up her skirt. He had to find a way to forget about her. He knew that there was no other woman who was…enough to make him forget her.


‘A potion!’ The answer was so very simple. He was free to make whatever he wanted in this class. He went to the shelf and selected an ancient and dusty tomb from whence he selected a likely potion and began to brew it that very day.


Snape had helped Hermione to select the best spell to counter her problem. He took the book from the top shelf and opened it to the proper page before withdrawing into his office to prepare for his class of first-years. She threw a quick glance at the beautiful blond wizard who was making an unmistakable effort to ignore her. She sighed. This really was for the best.


The only thing that still confused her about Draco’s actions this year was the ‘almost kiss’ from the first day of school. The situation seemed too weird to tell anyone about, she’d not even told Ginny. He really seemed like he was into her, then all of a sudden he was trying to pretend that she didn’t exist. Why hadn’t he asked for his handkerchief back? He had to know that she still had it. This just didn’t seem to hold with the Draco she knew.


She looked back down at the potion book that lay opened on the desk in front of her. It was not especially complex, but it would take a full week to brew it. She would have to deal with her feelings until then. The situation was sad; most girls her age are ecstatic to fall in love for the first time, and here she was trying desperately to rid herself of these tender feelings.


Snape dismissed the two of them to lunch. Again they walked toward the common room together in silence. As they neared the portrait hole Hermione took the handkerchief from her pocket and looked at it one last time. “Mal…Draco?” He spun to face her, astonished to hear her speak his name so softly.


In lieu of a verbal answer he fixed her with a stare that he hoped conveyed his frustration, not his anger.


“Here, I keep forgetting to give this back to you,” Hermione said. Draco looked crestfallen. A part of him hoped that she would keep it and think of him whenever she saw it. He took it slowly from her hand. She felt the silk slip gently over her hand for the last time.


Neither one of the two of them was eager to make eye contact with the other. This was a shame, for had one of them the courage to look at the other, they would have seen tears on the face in front of them. Draco stopped in mid-stride and turned toward the Great Hall.


Hermione didn’t feel much like eating. She somehow managed to hold back the worst of her tears until she was in her bedroom. It wasn’t fair, but nothing was fair. She did not need that memento anymore; once the potion took effect she would be just as repulsed by him as he was by her. There was nothing to be done about any of it.


He had made it more than half of the way to the Great Hall when he decided that he was in no mood for other people. He decided to seek refuge in the Restricted Section of the library. There he could be alone with his thoughts and feelings. He stared down at the fine piece of silk in his had and raised it to his nose; it carried her scent. There was no way he could hold back his tears any longer. Draco had to find a way to say good-bye to the love he had never really known.