Venom and Velvet

Dreamless Sleep

11. Dreamless Sleep

Hermione and Draco had every class together that day, and were even joined by Luna, Ginny, Neville, Hannah Abbott, and a few other familiar faces in Charms first hour. Of course, Draco and Hermione stayed for second hour as well, as they were both in the advanced program. There were only four other people in the advanced section with them. Hermione could think of few others who would've been there but hadn't returned to Hogwarts for seventh year or chose not to repeat seventh year after the disaster that was last year, as Draco had.

Professor Flitwick did not waste any time in assigning his advanced students a heap of homework. Thus, the school year begun in full swing. Both Hermione and Draco found themselves spending every waking hour working on school. For Draco, this was a welcomed distraction from the hours he spent tossing and turning at night, his eyes and ears bombarded by the horrors he had experienced. Hermione, however, had taken up finding out who Draco really was beneath his stony façade as a bit of a project. To her dismay, however, this wasn't a project she was doing very well on.

September had flown by and they were approaching their first Hogsmeade weekend. Though she tried to get him to take the mask off, even employing her cat as bait, Draco, though perfectly cordial, had not let it slip a single centimeter. Fortunately, she had a plan. She was going to ask him to spend the day with her in Hogsmeade.

They were in the library when she brought it up.

"Draco?" Hermione whispered.

"Yeah," he replied, not looking up from where his quill was dashing across a bit of parchment.

"Would you like to go to Hogsmeade with me this weekend?"

Draco jumped up, knocking his ink bottle all over his essay.

"Shit!"

Madam Pince glared daggers at Draco, causing him to sit back down sheepishly. He pulled out his wand, muttered "Tergeo" and watched as the spilled ink swirled back into its bottle. Then, unable to delay it any longer, looked to Hermione.

"Granger..."

"Well?"

"Granger, did you just ask me on a date?" He tried to keep the nervous energy he felt buzzing through his body out of his voice.

"Oh, Merlin. I suppose it did sound like that, didn't it?" She said, her eyes widening and color flooding her cheeks.

"Yeah, it did," he replied feeling the warmth creep up his own neck despite every effort to keep from blushing back.

"I just meant... well, Ginny is going to be meeting Harry, and Neville asked out Hannah, and Luna was going to spend the day interviewing Hagrid about blast-ended skrewts, so I just thought we could just... just hang out!" Hermione was bright pink now. The sight was incredibly amusing to Draco, so much so that he found himself laughing. Before Madam Pince could throw him out, he gathered his books up and stood to leave.

"It's a date, Granger."

Back in their dorm, Ginny managed to coax this story out of an unusually quiet Hermione.

"This is great," she was rolling with laughter. "Just wait 'til I tell Harry!"

"Oh, please no, Ginny! It'll give him a heart attack! If he thought I was going on a date with Draco Malfoy he'd-"

"You mean if he knew you were going on a date with Draco Malfoy, because you totally are," Ginny smiled at her friend teasingly.

"Well I'm not, but even if I were, Harry would freak out!"

"I doubt it," said Ginny. "He's okay that we've adopted poor little Draco into our friend group."

"He knows about that?"

"Well, yeah. I'm not going to keep from my boyfriend that I'm suddenly buddy-buddy with his arch-nemesis of six years. I explained to him that he's basically a completely different person now that he's not being forced by his parents anymore. I think Harry deserves more than you give him credit for."

Hermione stopped to think about this, she'd been so worried about finding a way to convince Harry that Draco really was a changed man, even if he refused to admit it himself. Then, she breathed a sigh of relief.

"I'm so glad I don't have to tell him," she said.

"Hey, now, you're gonna have to tell him yourself about your new boyfriend," Ginny laughed, throwing a pillow from her four-poster so that it hit Hermione. They both started to laugh.

When they had calmed down, Ginny turned over and fell asleep instantly. She had that in common with Ron, he always could sleep whenever he wanted. Hermione opened the bottom drawer of her bedside table to pull out a bottle of Potion for Dreamless Sleep, which she drank every night.

To her dismay, her hand came out empty. She was out. She contemplated going down to Professor Slughorn's office to ask if he had any on hand, but it was already past curfew.

It's fine. It's one night, I can sleep with out the potion for one night. She told herself resolvedly. It took her some time, but eventually Hermione did drift off to sleep. It was not dreamless.

Hermione woke up in her bedroom at her parents' house. The morning sun streamed in through the window. She sat up, stretching. She got out of bed and walked downstairs for a glass of water. Her parents were in the kitchen talking. When her mother saw her, she smiled and pulled her in for a hug.

"Did you sleep well, darling?" She asked.

"Yes, mum."

Suddenly, the room dimmed. The sun had moved behind clouds. It started to pour, rain streaking the window above the kitchen sink.

A scream resonated in Hermione's ears.

"There's a stranger in the house!" Her mother screamed. Hermione whipped around to identify the intruder, holding up her wand, ready to defend her parents. There was no one there. She turned around again, confused. Her mother was pointing at her, still screaming. Her father was waving his arms at her, yelling.

"Get out! Get out of this house or I'll call the police!"

She looked back at her mother. Then the note of the scream became her own. She was laying on the floor of Malfoy Manor, Bellatrix Lestrange carving something into her arm. She could hear Harry and Ron at the bottom of the stairs, yelling for them to let her go, but it was no use. The pain was unbearable. Then, a familiar jerking sensation as she disapparated. She watched the dagger fly through the air towards them. She watched her wand form a wreath of flowers at the grave of Dobby, then the grave of the Potters'. Behind her, someone laughed, a bright, jubilant laugh. She turned around to see Fred and started to run to him, but just before she could reach him he crumpled.

"Don't be afraid, Hermione," Professor Lupin said, putting his hand on her shoulder, before she could reply, however, the hand started to blacken. She jerked away, now looking into the sparkling blue eyes of Albus Dumbledore. Standing all around him were familiar faces: Tonks, Colin Creevey, Lavender Brown, and Sirius. Then, from behind the group walked up all her friends. Harry, Ron, and Ginny joined the lineup, followed by the rest of the Weasley family, Luna, Neville, Victor Krum, Draco, Dean and Seamus, the Patil twins. One by one they came, and one by one they faded away until she was alone in the graveyard again, but now each of their names was on a headstone. Her body began to shake with sobs. In the air all around her, she heard their voices. The voices of all the people she had loved and lost, the voice of her mother screaming at the stranger, herself.

Hermione sat bolt upright in her four-poster bed, gasping for air and covered in sweat. She brought her knees up to her chest and kept her eyes wide open, and that's how she stayed until morning.