Resentment

chapter 8 - reunion

The time for breakfast had already passed. It was time for the house elves to start cleaning up the Great Hall's tables. In this time period, there wasn't much activity except for Hermione and a few students who had free periods. After sleeping for the entire night, Hermione was going to do a quick review of her test as she wasn't really interested in going back to the common room. After staring at the same page for fifteen minutes, she still couldn't recall anything as what Seamus said had been playing over and over in her head.

Hermione had no one to turn to for advice, and she desperately wanted to know how Draco was doing. Through their connected minds, she had been trying to communicate with him. His response was non-existent. Even though they seemed closer since the war ended, they still seemed very far apart. Her knowledge of him was almost as complete as his knowledge of her. After all, what ground did she have to use to get to know him? There had been millions of possibilities going through her mind, he was either going to Azkaban or house arrest and for heaven's sake he might get a kiss from the dementors.

"Hermione?" a rather lyrical voice interrupted Hermione's excessive thoughts.

Hermione looked up to see Luna standing next to her. "Hey Luna," replied Hermione tiredly. "Are you alright lately? I barely see you at meal time." Luna sat down. It wasn't that Hermione didn't want to talk to her, but that she didn't know what to say. She didn't want to lie about being alright and fine nor did she want to admit she was good at all. "I'm not really sure what happened, but is there anything you want to talk about?" Luna asked softly.

With a soft chuckle, Hermione replied, "I thought you had already heard so much about me.". Hermione didn't bother explaining, because the more she said, the worse it would get. "You didn't seem like the person people described." Luna insisted. "I only believed what I saw." Luna explained.

"I'm sorry, Luna, I'm not in the mood." Hermione flipped to another page despite barely retaining anything from the page she'd stared at for so long. "I'm here for you if you ever need someone to talk to. There is something you might want to know about Malfoy, Luna said. "He will be on trial. Though I wasn't sure when it would happen, I heard this morning that he had returned from the ministry. I wasn't sure if that helps with your situation." Luna continued and looked at the scribbles that Hermione had made while talking to her. "Thanks Luna."

There was no effort put into packing Hermione's things. She had already left the Great Hall when she realized that she was heading to the Slytherin's Common Room without knowing if he was there. "Pure-blood." Hermione said the passcode and walked straight into the common room.

"Mudblood! How the fuck did you get in? Did you threaten Malfoy to tell you the passcode?" An eighth year yelled at Hermione as she walked into the common room. "Fucking mudblood. Malfoy! Come get your slut." Hermione could feel some moisture after she walked past the Slytherins. Her eyes widened as she realized what she was seeing was spit. As she attempted to walk down the stairs to find him, more and more people began gathering in the common room and some of them even pulled out their wands in a duel.

A silver-haired boy emerged from the dark end of the staircase in dim light splattering from the only window on the wall. Once he noticed her, he ran for a few steps. Despite his frowning expression, she found his face to be quite attractive and good looking. "Do you know what you're doing here?" Draco asked in a strong voice and grabbed Hermione's hand before disappearing into black smoke.

When Hermione realized it, they were in a secret hideout. "Why were you in my common room?" Draco yelled at the top of his lungs. He already had enough on his mind at the moment, he didn't need to worry about irrelevant stuff and yet Hermione decided to barge into his common room looking for him despite everything. "Hermione, I've heard about your disappearance, and Luna mentioned something about your trial. I tried to talk to you through my mind, but you weren't responding. I -" Hermione explained why she had done what she had done.