Silver and Gold // Dramione

The Owlery

6th Year, October 28th

The two weeks that followed Draco's abrupt ~dream~ in Potions class went by in a frenzy. He was able to go to classes without hearing anything. But his nights were still plagued with the whispers.

It was a regularly occurring event that the voice he couldn't recognize would wake him up. He'd be thrashing and screaming from pain. Every Time he left his warded bedroom he found Hermione in the common area.

She was always in one of three places: the curled up in the window seat and counting the stars; passed out asleep in an armchair with a book in her lap; or making tea to distract her from her own nighttime terrors. Draco had a routine that mirrored hers. Though he admitted that his routine was affected by her occurrences.

If Hermione was watching the stars we could make tea and join her in the window seat. He woulndt say anything. Just would thrust the scalding liquid in her hands, and sit opposite her on the cushions. 

He remembered how she made tea: three spoonfuls of honey, and it became his regular one as well. When they sat in the window they didn't speak to each other, just let themselves get lost in the night sky.

If Hermione was asleep on the couch he would remove the book from her lap and wrap the quilt that had remained a permanent fixture on the armchair around her. The common rooms were growing increasingly cold as the summer turned into fall. Breezes would converge in the hallways, and Draco felt the door grew intensely cold at night. After that he would usually just read in the armchair next to her: either her book that he had discarded from her lap, or one of the old textbooks on the bookcase.

And if Hermione was making tea in the kitchen she always brewed enough hot water for too many cups. He even found that the few days he stayed swallowed up in his room after he had awoken in a sweat, when he went out in the morning, the kettle had cooled water in it. 

There was always just enough for a cup of tea, and he very quickly realized that whenever Hermione made tea, she was making enough for him too, just in case.

Draco's realization that her presence was calming didn't shock him as much as it would have if you told him over the summer. Had someone told Draco Malfoy in July that being in Hermione Granger vancity would cause his brain to stop swirling in disparity, he would have punched them out without a second thought.

Instead of violently ignoring the testimony, or telling himself that the Amortentia was lying to him, he resigned himself to the facts that he couldn't dispute. She was a warm presence in the cold castle. Her scent of Honey and Soap stopped his jittering knees, and made him forget about everything else.

When she was next to him that was all he could think about. She was a nuisance in his head that he decided to accept.

Draco knew he was too weak from his nights to fight her presence, or the thoughts that she brought along with her presence. If he fought her, he wouldn't be able to fight anything else. She didn't cause pain, and everything else did. That's What he told himself.

If was going to let one thing slip past his reserve, it was going to be the one that didn't make his head throb, or the one that made his skin burn. It would be the one that created a sense of calm in his head.

And infortnely for Draco Malfoy, the one thing was the smell of Hermione Granger's hair.

So by association, he had to endure her.

Draco could feel his reserve growing weaker and weaker as the nighttime terrors continued through the two week following his outburst in potions. He was losing his ability to sleep rapidly, instead favouring reading in the dim dorm to avoid the horrors and pain that closing his eyes brought him.