The Night is Young | Hermione Granger

11. Kiss and Tell

"Are you alright, Gr- Hermione."

She's hidden herself in the very back corner of the library. Right by the restricted section, hidden by the towering bookshelves, in a rather unnecessarily difficult place to get to.

She looks up from her place on the carpet.

"Oh." Her body relaxes a bit. "Yes - er - yea, I'm fine."

I nod my head, dropping my bag down to take a seat beside her on the ground. She furrows her eyebrows.

"We can go to a table." She offers, and I assure that I'm fine here.

"Why are we hiding." I ask, taking out my things. She bites her lip and looks around nervously. My gaze flickers to her mouth before back to her eyes as she leans slightly towards me.

"Some girls have been trying to slip Harry a love potion." She whispers softly, her breath just barely touching my skin. "I don't think they like that I've been warning him, but - I mean, come on - a love potion? That's the magic equivalent of a date rape drug. And he's just got a concussion, for Merlin's sake!"

It turns out, Hufflepuff did beat Gryffindor, because McLaggen took a beater bat to his captain's skull.

"You're doing the right thing." I assure when her eyes scan our deserted corner of the library. "They should be illegal. If you really think it's a problem, tell a professor."

Her attention turns towards me, a small and relieved smile on her lips now.

"I knew you'd understand." She says, and I feel my ears burn.

"I-It's not a hard concept to understand if you're a decent person." I involuntarily stutter, but I don't think she catches it.

"No, it's really not." Her eyes look far away for a second, before snapping back to me. "Let's get to work."

I nod quickly, and take out my things.

I hand over my notes to her, and wait to get the ones I need in return, but she doesn't hand them over. Instead, she stares at her writing, with a frown on her face as she reads it (I can only assume over, and over again, because no one stares for that long reading one thing).

"Gryffindor might actually not win the cup." She bites her lip again before turning to face me. "We might be wrong."

As gently as I can, I take the parchment from her.

"We're not wrong." I assure her, and look over the work.

There's some injuries the Gryffindor team, and with their loss to Hufflepuff, I can see where she would doubt herself, but they still have one more match against Ravenclaw. If they win that, they'll win the house cup.

"Hermione, you're smart, you've done the math. Gryffindor has the best chance of winning the cup, and they're going to."

She doesn't move for a second.

"Are you just saying that?"

I shake my head.

"They're going to win." I state, looking directly into her eyes. "You're going to get your perfect grade, and celebrate your house winning the Quidditch Cup."

"That's not very Slytherin of you." She says.

Will I ever get a thank you again?

"Slytherin will help you on your way to greatness." I tell her. "Helping those we care about achieve their goals is very Slytherin."

"You care about me?" She asks, and I feel my blood freeze.

"It's my grade too." I find myself defending in an instant, and I look down at my parchment to appear nonchalant. I wouldn't let her know that I do care about her, have for many years now. "We're also ambitious and self preserving, I gain from this too."