What Do A Lion And A Wolf Share?

Restless

Draco was awake. Draco was still bloody awake. After tossing and turning seemingly endlessly, he growled in annoyance and cast a wordless tempus. It was 2:37AM when Draco threw off the covers and sat up in bed, restless and frustrated. Hermione Granger was depriving him sleep and not in the way he'd like a witch to be. Rather than spending the night keeping him awake in bed, she'd taken up an uninvited residency in his head. Not that he'd want the know-it-all of the century in his bed anyway.

But even after taking a Calming Draught, the witch was like an apparition; she was something in the corners of his eyes that he couldn't quite see, but still ever present. Their entire evening had been strange, which Draco knew was the reason she was loitering in her brain like an unwelcome solicitor. When Granger showed up, uninvited and early, she shocked him, ruining his third trial for his experimental potion. Her claim that Theo was entertaining company was slightly suspicious, but her presumption that she could floo over without invitation screamed up to something. Draco wondered if she was there to snoop instead, given her incessant nosiness and history of snooping at school. He locked Granger in the library, unknown to her, while he went back to clean up his wasted efforts and make notes on the lack of progress he'd made. After finishing, he returned to the library ready for her to hex him for locking her in. Instead, he found her totally engrossed in examining his bookshelves; her reputation as a swot was truly unparalleled. He stopped in the doorway and watched as the petite witch slowly moved from shelf to shelf, clearly fighting the urge to pick up the ones that interested her.

But that wasn't the part of their evening that kept replaying in his head, keeping him awake. It was the uncomfortably blatant conversation, which he started. He wasn't sure what possessed him to thank her, let alone so overtly. And in turn, her extremely personal confession about her parents unnerved him. Draco couldn't understand why the witch would share something like that with him of all people. He thought of the torment he'd gone through with his own parents, their lives hanging in the balance when Draco had been tasked to kill Dumbledore. He had been weak on all accounts, a coward. She, on the other hand, had made the tough decision to protect the people she loved no matter the cost. They could not be more different.

Or that is what he spent most of his night thinking as he stared into the darkness while sleep eluded him. As he pulled off the covers and wordlessly brightened the room, his eyes landed on the watch his father gave him sitting on the nightstand. He immediately thought of his father in Azkaban, and realized they both knew what it was like to lose a parent to the war without them dying. Perhaps she knew he struggled with that on some level and felt like he could empathize.

But the worst part of their bizarre evening was his own slip-up, which would sporadically pop into the front of his mind every so often as he reflected on the night, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it. Assuming Theo had shared everything with her was a foolish error he usually wouldn't make. Draco noted with great irritation that Hermione Granger got under his skin and reverted him back to the reactive and impulsive little boy he was when they met.

Resigned to the fact that he wouldn't be able to find sleep, he trudged back down the library and began to pull out every book he thought would help with memory charms. As he sat down and cracked open the first in the stack, he swore for a moment he could smell the vanilla in her perfume. Draco shook his head and forced himself to focus on the words on the page in front of him. Perhaps he could do something for Granger that no one could do for him: return her parents, fully mentally intact. Helping her could bridge their strange relationship from civil to friendly, and could help make amends to Theo for speaking out of turn.

Tap-tap-tap . Draco cracked a single eye before shutting it quickly, the early morning light shocking him. Trying again, he opened both eyes and found himself staring into the large eyes of an owl tapping on the window. Draco picked head up from his makeshift pillow, an open book, and immediately felt the crick in his neck. Theo's tawny brown owl waited patiently with a scroll of parchment tied around his leg. As Draco reached for it, the owl nipped him, looking for treats. "Cheeky bugger," Draco muttered, snagging a treat from the bowl by the window before opening the parchment.