Roman Holiday

Chapter Twenty-Four

“’Assume,’” Hermione’s father was fond of saying, “makes an ass of you and me.”

How right he was.

She’d been in Severus Snape’s class for more than five years. She’d had him over for dinner. They’d shared an ill-fated Discipline Moment, a clandestine cup of tea, and a brief, violent, decisive match of tonsil hockey.

And she didn’t know the first thing about him, really, except that his hand against her face had been surprisingly warm, and that she hadn’t wanted him to take it away.

Oh, yes, and one more thing.

He was much more dangerous when he wasn’t trying to be.

It was seven o’ clock - she’d have to hurry if she wanted breakfast. The sun was up, the air was warm, the birds were singing. (So, from the sound of it, was Hagrid; a trick of the air currents around the castle carried sound from the gamekeeper’s hut up to Hermione’s window on most clear days. She’d once had to endure half an hour of Professor Sprout’s scolding and Hagrid’s apologies when Fang had dug up a row of shrivelfigs.)

Hermione yawned, pulled herself out of bed by sheer force of will, and groped for her bathrobe. Long day ahead, and she’d had a hard time getting to sleep last night.

If every encounter she had with Severus Snape was going to end in four hours of brain-numbing sleeplessness, she might ask him to change Thursday night for Friday. At least then she could sleep late the next morning.

**

Thursday evening, however, passed mostly without event. For the first hour, she shredded valerian roots for a Dreamless Sleep potion; anyone who ended up in the hospital wing got a healthy dose of it, regardless of their initial malady, so reserves tended to run low quickly. The second hour was spent with her translation and some books from Snape’s private library; one, a comprehensive reference of magical substances, and the other, the wizarding version of a Latin dictionary. When she closed the books at eight o’ clock, he looked up from the papers he was grading.

“Did you find everything you needed?”

She nodded. “The translation’s complete, I think. Thank you,” - she indicated the books in front of her - “these were very helpful.”

Snape dismissed her thanks with a quick sideways jerk of his head. “Leave it on my desk, and I’ll look over it this weekend.”

He picked up the parchment she handed him and frowned over it for a minute. “Most of these things I have, or can order through the school. But before you can proceed with the potion itself, you’ll need to make a distillation of the lemon balm, the stronger the better. Ask Professor Sprout to give you as much as she can spare. It should be picked fresh Tuesday afternoon.”

“I’ll do that.” She gathered up her books and paused at the door. “Good night.”

He had already turned his attention back to his grading, but at that, his head jerked up again. “Hm? Oh. Yes. Good night.”

Very proper, she thought while walking up to Gryffindor Tower. Very civilized. And also very wary - they’d cut wide circles around each other while brewing the Dreamless Sleep, as if avoiding an invisible magnetic field.

That was probably a good metaphor for the whole situation, she reflected. If either one of them got too close, they’d be jerked together with a clang, probably at the lips. Like those kissing teddy bears her mum had sent her for Valentine’s Day last year.

She groaned a little at that memory. She hadn’t opened a package from home in public since.

One thing, though. He hadn’t called her ‘Miss Granger’ once all night.

Come to think of it, she’d avoided the word ‘Professor’ herself.

“Cattails,” she said to the Fat Lady, and slipped hastily through the common room, up to her dormitory. Once inside, she warded the door.

Draco Malfoy was a complication she didn’t need tonight.

**

Draco’s discovery of the Fils du Couteau prophecy, and the subsequent argument in Hermione’s room, had brought their fledgling affair to a screeching halt. Hermione didn’t take this personally; he seemed distant from everyone, not just her, and a few days ago at dinner she’d seen him shake Pansy’s hand off his arm with an ugly look on his face and a few terse words that Hermione couldn’t hear, but that had made Pansy go pale and run out of the Great Hall. From what Hermione had overheard from the other Slytherin girls before Care of Magical Creatures the next morning, Pansy had spent most of the night in tears.

Draco himself looked paler than usual, if that was possible, and a bit careless about his personal appearance, though no one seemed to notice this but Hermione. He was withdrawn during class to the point of catatonia; given to staring glassily into space, and reacting with what verged on hostility when interrupted from his reverie, whether by teacher or student. Crabbe and Goyle he avoided altogether, and they seemed lost without him, purposeless and oddly diminished.

Hermione was still taking what time she could spare from her classes, and the tedious process of distilling and re-distilling the lemon balm, to research on his behalf. Sometimes they’d meet by chance in the library, looking for the same book; on those occasions he was subdued, but civil. Mostly he seemed surprised that she was still working on it, and at least as bothered by that fact as he was grateful.

The situation had Hermione disturbed, too. She didn’t like that look of self-loathing he got when he thought himself to be unobserved, or the mannerisms he’d picked up. This particular afternoon, she’d been sitting at the other end of a study table from him, surreptitiously watching as he read. He’d been using a fountain pen to take notes, rather than a quill, and was flicking it against his wrist.

A nervous, subconscious gesture, yes - but rhythmic, and prolonged, and not what she’d call gentle. She saw a pink stripe bloom on his wrist where the pen was hitting it, watched the pink deepen to red, and finally couldn’t take it any more.

“Draco,” she hissed. “Stop it.”

He looked up, startled. “What?”

“Stop it,” she repeated, and gestured to the pen in his hand. He followed her gaze to the ugly red mark on his arm, then shrugged.

“Oh. Sorry.”

Time for a little tough love, Hermione decided, and scooted a little closer to him. “You know,” she said, “this has nothing to do with you. Not really.”

He snorted but didn’t look at her. “What are you talking about? It has everything to do with me. It’s been hard-wired into my bones. It’s all I am.”

“Not true,” she persisted. “If it was all you were, you’d be embracing the idea - not trying to fight it. You’d be falling all over yourself to make it happen, and you wouldn’t be caught dead at the same library table with me, trying to make it go away.”

She grabbed his hand to make him look up. “Whatever’s wrong with you may be in your blood, but it’s not in your brain. So will you stop with the self-hatred, please? It’s not helping your cause.”

“It’s not exactly as if I can help it,” he said, slamming the book shut with his free hand and glowering at her. “You know as well as I do that there’s nothing in this library that’s of any value, where this prophecy’s concerned. We’ve been reading the same information over and over again for two weeks. Lots of ‘this-is-how-to-recognize-it-when-it-happens’. Not much on what exactly is going to happen, beyond the fact that it’s bad. And not a word about how to stop it.”

Halfway through his rant, he’d downgraded from outright belligerence; now he just sounded, and looked, bone-weary. “You never think about your blood,” he said softly. “It’s just there, running through you. But you can’t feel it, and you don’t notice it - at least, I never did.”

He shook his head, looking away again. “But now,” he said. “Now, it’s all I can think about. Every time my heart beats, this malevolent, evil stuff is moving through me. This killing substance, that’s keeping me alive. And I just …” His jaw clenched, and he gripped Hermione’s fingers so hard that she winced.

“I just sit around and think,” he said, “about how easy it would be, to open a vein and let it all come out.”

**

Silence.

Wow, Hermione thought, horrified. That’s heavy.

Nothing to make him feel any better, either. Can’t fix it.

Only -

Maybe - just maybe …

The thought popped, fully-formed, into her mind, as if it had Apparated there.

“Draco,” she said aloud. He didn’t look up.

“Yeah.”

“’The Wizard’s Guide to Dark Prophecies’,” she said, and started flipping frantically through her notes. “What was that quote again? ‘Blood pure as snow’?”

He nodded. “I think so. Why?”

“Have you really never had a Muggle-born ancestor? Ever?”

The urgent tone of her voice roused him. “No,” he said. “No - never. My father keeps geneaology records, extensive ones. I’ve seen them. Pure wizarding blood, back to the great-great-great-greats.” He laughed derisively. “Fat lot of good it did us.”

“Draco,” she said again, impatiently. “Stay with me here. If the prophecy is only valid when the Fils du Couteau is a pureblood, what would happen if you weren’t?”

“Well, it probably wouldn’t work,” he said, frowning. “But - I am, Hermione. I can’t change that about myself.”

“No,” she said, and looked oddly triumphant. “But I can.”

He stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

Hermione glanced around the Restricted Section. Deserted. “This,” she said, and dug out of her bag the little Swiss army knife she carried with her to sharpen her quills. “You want to open a vein?” she asked, her voice shaking slightly. “Let’s do it. Both of us.”

Draco watched, wide-eyed, as she flicked out the blade of the knife, as she held it to the inside of her arm. “Hermione -“

Don’t, he wanted to say. For God’s sake, don’t.

But he couldn’t.

She pressed, and a thin trickle of crimson began to snake toward her wrist. “Now you,” she said, and handed him the knife with a trembling hand.

“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” he said, but he took the knife. “Are you sure? Are you sure you want some of … me … inside you?”

“Just do it, Malfoy,” she said, gritting her teeth, and gave him a shaky smile when he complied. “See? It’s as red as mine.”

For a second, their exchanged glance was full of the old conspiriatorial connection; darker now, maybe, but just as exhilarated.

“On three,” Draco said quietly. “One … two ….”

They pressed the cuts together.

**

Nothing happened.

No bang. No curl of black smoke. No reaction, as the two substances melded.

Just the two of them, sitting blood-smeared and apprehensive at the library table.

Hermione muttered a Healing Charm finally - she’d sliced a bit more deeply than she’d meant to -let the sleeve of her robe fall over her arm, and sat back in her chair.

He looked a bit shocked. Best to be matter-of-fact about this, she thought, and pasted on a brisk smile.

“There,” she said. “Now, we still have to worry about keeping you out of harm’s way. But I think the world’s safe.”

Draco nodded. He had no words.

“Dinnertime,” she said, talking more quickly than usual. “And I have some work to do for Snape tonight. I’ll see you later?”

“Later,” he said. “Thanks for the help.”

Long after she was gone, he sat staring toward where she’d disappeared beyond the surrounding shelves. Blood was still welling slowly from his cut, but he didn’t notice.

It had never happened before, so he wasn’t entirely sure.

But unless he was gravely mistaken, he was in love.

**

TBC