A Real Edge

Disclaimer: Don’t own it.

Summary: By the end of seventh year, Draco and Hermione are in love, but you know how they are, heaven forbid they actually admit it to each other. Luckily, they’ve got their sneaky Slytherin friend Blaise to push things along when they hesitate.

The Request:
Pairing of the fic you want: B/Hr or D/Hr
Rating(s) of the fic you want: R or NC-17
3 - 5 Things you want your gift to include:
1) If the main pair is D/Hr, then Blaise needs to be mentioned but not in a love triangle context (And if the main pairing is B/Hr, then Draco needs to be mentioned but not in a love triangle context.)
2) Romance
3) someone jealous of something
What you don’t want your gift to include: Unaccepting!Ron/Harry, Alive!Voldemort, Death Eater!Blaise/Draco, any parents of the main pairing, student/teacher pairings, main character deaths, suicide, femmeslash, Draco/Ginny

Enjoy:

Blaise braced himself, took a deep, cleansing breath, and entered the Slytherin common room, knowing all the while what was coming. As the stone wall slid open, sure enough, the shouting was almost loud enough to knock him over. It had certainly been loud enough to clear everyone else out of the common room, because the two students standing, with fists clenched, were the only ones there.

“Honestly, Draco! Don’t you understand what we’ve done to them over the years?” Hermione shouted, almost hysterical with frustration.

“Yes,” Draco roared, attempting to keep his anger in check, and with only slightly more success than Hermione. “Don’t you understand that we haven’t done anything wrong?”

“Nothing!” she shrieked shrilly. “Nothing wrong? How about enslaving them for centuries, taking away all of their rights, forcing them to mutilate-”

“Oh, don’t get started,” he drawled loudly.

“Tell me something Draco,” Hermione demanded, her eyes flashing with fury. “Have you ever once visited Dobby since he came to work at this school?”

“No,” Draco said disgustedly. “Why would I visit him?”

“Ha!” Hermione forced a bark of laughter. “This is what I mean. You’re afraid!”

“Excuse me, Granger?”

“You’re afraid to see what he might think of you now that he’s able to speak his mind,” Hermione said with furious triumph.

Draco stared at her in angry disbelief. “You think I haven’t visited Dobby because I’m afraid of him?” Hermione nodded vigorously. “You’re barking.”

“I’m not mad!” she proclaimed wildly. “I’m just the only person who actually sees what’s going on here!”

“You know why that is?” Draco said in a low, dangerous voice that made Blaise, from his unnoticed place in the shadows, get a little nervous. “It’s because you grew up without them,” Blaise knew sure enough that this train of thought couldn’t end sweetly. “You’ll never be able to understand the way the wizarding world works because you’re a Mudblood,” Draco spat viciously.

“STOP!” Hermione shouted. “Stop calling me that! God! You are such an idiot!” she said angrily, and drew up her clenched fists to give Draco’s chest a solid shove. “What if a Ministry official overhears you someday?”

“So?” Draco asked nastily. “It’s true, isn’t it? I mean, you are a-”

Hermione put her forefinger up to Draco’s mouth warningly. “Draco, just stop it, okay? You know I hate it when you call me that. Besides, it doesn’t matter that I’m a Mudblood. I understand as much about the wizarding world as any pureblood, including you.”

“Yet you don’t understand that house-elves elves were made for a life of servitude. It’s what they know and what they like,” he insisted heatedly.

“Are you saying people can’t change from what they know?” Hermione asked seriously.

Draco scoffed. “I would hardly call house-elves could be-”

“OKAY,” Blaise said loudly, announcing his presence. He stepped toward the middle of the room, where Draco and Hermione were standing, their homework strewn haphazardly on the table in front of them.

“Blaise!” Hermione greeted him. “I didn’t hear you come in!”

“Ya, the two of you were pretty preoccupied, weren’t you,” Blaise laughed.

“Oh, shut it,” Draco said sulkily, and sank back down into the sofa. Like Hermione, he tried to hide the slightest flush of embarrassment from Blaise.

“What took you so long?” Hermione asked, sitting down next to Draco and shuffling through her enormous pile of parchment. “I thought we were going to work on Ancient Runes for tomorrow. Draco and I just started working on Arithmancy, but then he just had to bring up this nonsense about-”

“Merlin’s beard,” Draco interrupted irritably. “What the devil made you do it, Zabini?”

“Do what?” Blaise asked.

“Give this twit the password,” he drawled, clearly trying to rile Hermione up even more. “I can’t get a thing done with her around.”

“I’ve noticed,” Blaise said, raising an eyebrow.

Draco shot him a venomous glare of warning. “I haven’t had dinner yet,” he growled. “I’ll see you two later,” and he got up, leaving his homework on the table and catching Blaise’s eye purposefully as he left.

Blaise sat down in Draco’s seat, next to Hermione. They waited for the portal of the common room to close before Hermione let out a huge sigh. “Blaise, he’s awful.”

“Ah, come off it,” Blaise said casually. “You know he’s not half bad.”

“He treats house-elves elves like they’re only worth of as much thought as a Flobberworm, and he treats me like I’m a Blast-Ended Screwt,” Hermione said miserably.

“Come on,” Blaise said reassuringly, “you know he likes you too.”

“Blaise,” Hermione said, gritting her teeth. “That’s not true. Just look at the way he talks to me. He still calls me a Mudblood, you know.”

Blaise nodded, regretting that fact, for Draco’s sake.

“Well, fine,” Hermione said, steeling herself. “I can handle it. I don’t mind if he doesn’t like me, and I can handle it if he calls me a Mudblood, but what if someone hears? Blaise, you know what they’re doing to anyone who looks suspicious, and who could be less suspicious? I mean, both his parents are in Azkaban for serving Voldemort.”

Blaise nodded his agreement to this too. Now that Voldemort was dead and gone, at the hands of famous Harry Potter, the Ministry had been rigorously punishing any and all Death Eaters. They had taken this new cause up so fanatically that they had already made a few mistakes, and thrown innocent wizards into jail. If anyone heard Draco using the word Mudblood to insult fellow students, he’d undergo a sloppy and biased investigation, and the fact that both his parents had been Death Eaters wouldn’t help matters. “I’ll talk to him,” said Blaise.

Hermione shook her head slightly and her eyelids fluttered shut. “Fine. Just, fine. I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” she said, very doubtfully. “Anyway, thank you,” Hermione said, looking up at Blaise gratefully.

“Sure,” Blaise said, and put his arm around her. This was the point at which Blaise failed to notice the soft squelching shut of the common room wall. “You know I’d do anything for you,” he smiled down at her, and it was true. They had only been friends for about five short months, but they were as close as Hermione had ever been with Harry and Ron.

She was still great friends with Harry and Ron, but after Harry had vanquished Voldemort and so many of the old lines that had divided wizards faded, Hermione, as Head Girl, had been one of the first to embrace inter-House unity. Blaise had been surprised when she asked him to a winter ball and learned later that she’d always fancied him as a classic tall, dark, and handsome type. But after they’d gotten to know each other, there was no hope of romance. They were both intelligent, and so they would study together, as they were doing now for the N.E.W.T.s, but he, quite frankly, didn’t have the energy to keep up with her.

Blaise thought of Hermione as a sort of cute, lovable puppy on a sugar high. She was always ready to trumpet elf rights or inter-House unity, a fault that got her into frequent arguments with Draco, who was always ready to argue right back. It seemed Blaise couldn’t leave them alone for five minutes without a shouting match breaking out. Blaise was just happy Hermione had set her sights on Draco because Blaise knew if Hermione had chosen him, she would have gotten him, and he would have spent the rest of his life being dragged through campaigns and piles of homework. Well, maybe not homework, after all, the last of their homework, studying for N.E.W.T.s, would be finished in two days, but Hermione would find something to replace homework.

“Of course you’d do anything for me,” Hermione said lightly. “You know, you’re looking particularly dashing today. Did you do your hair differently?” She pulled out of his arms to sort of push his hair dark hair away from his face, the way it normally was.

“I might have changed it a bit, ya, just to get some attention,” Blaise admitted laughingly, pushing his hair back into his eyes.

“Well, I’m not sure I like it,” Hermione said, putting her hands on her hips, “especially if it gets any girls’ attention.”

Draco cleared his throat from behind them. Blaise looked up, twisting his neck above the high back of the sofa. Draco looked livid. “I forgot my book,” Draco said through a tightly clenched jaw.

“What do you need a book for? I thought you were going to dinner,” Hermione asked.

Draco glared down at Blaise with the sort of dead-pan expression he usually wore when he saw Hermione with Harry and Ron. Blaise felt jealous anger wafting off of Draco as heavily as if it had been a gallon of particularly strong aftershave. Blaise was amazed Hermione didn’t notice it. She seemed completely unabashed. Draco turned his ice-grey eyes to Hermione. “I wanted to squeeze in some last-minute studying,” he said coldly. “I have my Astronomy test tonight. As a matter of fact, Blaise does too. Don’t you, Blaise,” Draco asked, his upper lip rising in a sneer. “I think you ought to come and study with me.”

“Oh, no,” Hermione sighed. “Blaise and I haven’t gotten around to Ancient Runes yet, and I really wanted him to test me,” she said with the air of someone regretting a fallen scoop of ice cream.

“Tell you what, Granger” Draco said icily, leaning forward, with his hands on the back of the sofa. “If you let me take him away, I’ll test you on Arithmancy tomorrow.”

An expression of cautious joy flashed across Hermione’s face. “Okay,” she agreed. She turned to gather together her colossal pile of homework. “I’d better go and make sure Harry and Ron are studying anyway. I’ll see you tomorrow then, Draco. After dinner?”

Draco nodded coolly. It wasn’t until Hermione had taken all of her things and turned toward the door when he let his haughty, contained expression fall away. He looked longingly at her retreating, book-bent back as she left the common room, and then struggled to mask his expression. It didn’t take very long, all he had to do was turn back to Blaise, before Draco’s wistful look was replaced by anger. “What was that?” he said, stepping around the sofa and staring at Blaise furiously.

Blaise rolled his eyes exasperatedly. “The two of you overreact to everything.”

“Excuse me,” Draco fumed, “you were-”

“Talking about you,” Blaise interjected. “She’s worried about you, you know.”

Draco stared at Blaise in amazement. “It didn’t look like you were comforting her or whatever that was supposed to be.”

“Well I was, alright?” Blaise said, a bit angrily. “Listen, if either of us had wanted to, we could have been shagging each other senseless, right here on this sofa, but neither of us do, alright?” Blaise finished, thoroughly annoyed.

Draco narrowed his eyes at Blaise for a moment. “Why’s she worried about me anyway?”

“She’s afraid you’ll get in trouble with the Ministry. You know how they’ve been lately.”

Draco looked disappointed. “Oh. Is that all.”

“Well, what did you expect? Her to be worrying about whether you’ll keep in touch after graduation?” Blaise asked lazily.

Draco set his jaw stonily.

“I’ll bet she is hoping you’ll keep in touch, even though you’ve always been an utter prat,” Blaise added, just to try and speed things up a bit. “When are you going to admit you like her anyway?” he asked, smirking.

“I don’t like her,” Draco spat out disgustedly.

“Well,” amended Blaise, “that you want her, need her, love her,” he said, his grin growing.

Draco glared at Blaise. He looked as if he were biting his tongue to keep from hitting Blaise. Then, he took a deep, shaky breath. “Tomorrow.”