Healing the Broken

Chapter 7- It Was Her Choice

It figured that Hermione would do the one thing that Ginny didn't want to her to do, and that was pulling away from Harry. Ginny was getting frustrated, though she knew Hermione was only doing it because she felt terrible for what she had done, despite Ginny's protests about not minding it as much as she seemed to be thinking.

Harry, who had also talked to Ginny and gotten them on good terms, had gotten very upset that Hermione was pulling away. She didn't want to be rude and avoid Harry only, so she simply stayed in the library and other various places until curfew, when she snuck up to her dormitories to continue her studies, thus staying away from everyone.

When she wasn't busy skating away from her friends, Hermione had decided that she did, or at least, did before, have feelings for Harry. This instantly brought up so many obstacles, and Hermione was in no rush to face any of them. She decided that maybe it would be best for her to try to start over, and if that didn't work out, then at least avoid Ron and Harry until she could push all of her feelings back into her stomach and tie it in a nice knot to work around.

Her little charade didn't last long, as many people were on the look for her, trying to get her to talk to the others. Hermione felt bad enough that this was what she had to do to get her feelings straight, but what else was she going to do? Ron, Harry, Ginny, and even some other people who weren't involved, such as Luna and Neville and George, were also trying to get her to them. Apparently it had become a big game now- Catch Hermione. Find the disappearing nerd and you earn ten points! Return her to her friends and you get twenty!

Ginny had sniffed out her trail one evening, and followed her throughout the castle, trying to corner her without Hermione noticing. But Hermione did notice, and she veered around, taking sharp corners and going wherever her feet took her as she desperately tried to think of a way out of this. If she didn't, it would mean the end of her so far successful procrastination.

She scaled the stairs to the owelry, losing Ginny only slightly, though she knew she was still being followed. But before she could reach the top, a door opened, one that she most certainly had not spotted before, and a pale hand seized her elbow, pulling her into the room.

Ready to scream for help loud enough for the polar bears down in Antarctica to hear, Hermione turned to see none other than Draco Malfoy standing there. "She knew you were headed for the owelry, and you would've been trapped up there. I figured I would help you out a bit."

Hermione relaxed and smiled softly, something that she had probably never done to Draco before. But he had never helped her either, to be frank. "Thank you. How did you know that she was following me? Or at least, that I was trying to get away from her?"

Draco snorts, leaning against the cold stone wall. "Please. Everyone knows the story about you kissing Potter, making him and Weasley break up, and that you've been avoiding everyone since." He raises an eyebrow. "I hope you don't mind me asking, since we're up here, but did you and Potter really snog?"

She nods quietly as Ginny's frustrated stomps march past our door as she goes back down, likely trying to figure out how Hermione disappeared. Draco's grin widens.

"Ha!" And then he gets serious. "So, for this past week or so, you have been avoiding your friends and sought out hiding places just because you feel guilty about snogging him?"

Hermione frowns. "It was a big deal! I'm the reason they broke up, and it's a lot of guilt resting on my shoulders, despite what Ginny keeps saying. I don't know what to... I just want to start over. Try to fancy someone else, and the only way I can do that is to cancel out my current feelings for Harry."

Draco sighs heavily, pushing his hands into his pockets. "So, you still want to be friends with them, but... you don't want to feel that way for Potter because you feel guilty about ruining he and Weasley's relationship?"

"Yes." Hermione says, relieved that someone finally understood what she was trying to do. "But it's hard to be around them without thinking about how much I fancy him. I've had to rewrite my essays because I scrawled his name all over it without realising, and I don't even sit near them anymore!" She pulled out her Potions essay over Dittany and it's uses, tossing it to him. He catches it like it was a snitch, and scans his gray eyes over it, his eyebrows raising as he sees the number of times she wrote his name on the paper.

He tosses it back to her. "Twenty-five."

She shoves it back in her bag, looking at him with a confused look. "What?"

"You wrote 'Harry Potter' on that essay twenty-five times." He smoothes his hair back from his face and gives her a sad smile. "You're in pretty deep, Granger."

"I know. That's why I'm avoiding them- it's my only option."

Draco scratches his neck, a mischievous smile on his face. "Well, there is another way..."

~~~~~

"Draco, I can't take Amortentia, I'm allergic to the powdered moonstone. That's why I was in the hospital from Ron's love potion, remember?" Hermione says, tapping the counter space next to the large brewing pot Draco had set up in the dungeons. She had followed him down, and he had snuck ingredients from Snape's old potions cupboard in to use.

"Hermione, I've done some very careful research, and with the help of Professor Slughorn, I have found a safe substitute for the moonstone, and it will give us the same effects as the normal Amortentia." Draco says, and he stirs the boiling hot solution as sweat runs down his neck. Though the dungeons were a cold and eerie place, the potions rooms were always boiling hot when they used them. Hermione wiped her forehead with her sleeve.

"Okay, I trust you."

"I need you to get me the rose thorns please, and then the potion will be finished." He says, and Hermione swivels around in her chair to grab the thorns.

"Ow." She says as two of them puncture her hand. They stay suck in her skin, like splinters, and Draco sets his spoon down on the counter immediately to come help. He plucks them out swiftly, and bright red blood blooms up from her hand and seeps into her palm, spreading rapidly. He wets a cloth and presses it onto her hand, scooping up the thorns himself and dropping them into the potion.

"You okay?" He asks, giving it a final stir before pouring the bright pink liquid into eight vials.

She nods. "Yeah, I'm fine..." She watches him cork all of them, and he pockets seven of them, leaving one out. He holds it out to her and she takes it from him, staring at it.

"Right, so Hermione, this love potion has a twenty-four hour affect, so if you don't want to take it, then don't. It's all about how much you really want to forget Potter." He rubs his neck, and when he lifts his arm up, his shirt comes up, showing a strip of pale skin. "Think carefully before you drink it, is all I'm saying. I mean, do you really want to be in love with this," he gestures at his body with distaste that she had never heard from him about himself before,"for twenty-four hours?"

She looks him over, and thinks about all the pain that she had felt, losing her parents and then Harry cheering her up, just to watch him snuggle with Ginny an hour later. And the crushing guilt that she felt when she saw thought about Ginny and Harry, broken up and single, and she felt like an evil bastard whenever she thought about him because this was all her fault. And she thought about all the trouble Draco had gone through to make her this love potion for her to take, on and off every other day so they could attempt to stop Hermione from fancying Harry.

Finally she says,"Can't be too terrible." And then downs the vial of pink love potion in a single gulp.

Her eyes flash when she looks at him, and a new emotion is filled in them- love. And Draco remembers what he had promised to do to test out the love potion as soon as she had taken it.

"Hermione Granger, will you go out with me?"

A smile curves her lips, and when Draco hears her answer, he feels terrible for being so happy because this wasn't the real Hermione, and this wasn't the real Hermione that would say she loved him. It was a potion. But his heart lightened at her response anyways. "Yes."