THE SYMMETRICAL TRANSIT (DRAMOINE) BY EVERYTHURSDAY

Part 6

Day Twenty-One; 1:13pm

Malfoy went into zones. Hermione related this to her category of Malfoy Is Insane inside her head. At times he was his normal, mean self. Other times, he was half-decent. And then there were the stranger times when he was weird. Silent, pensive, and lost. It was those times when she really had to do something to make him angry for him to come out of it.

He got caught up in his thoughts, she figured. She wasn't sure on what he was thinking about, but given who he was and what he did, it was probably a lot of things she didn't even want to know about.

His face was vacant. His whole body, actually, because she couldn't even see the movement of his breath. It was like his necessary downtime to rebuild. Like a machine -- which was so very fitting, given how he acted most of the time.

He didn't like for her to pay attention to him when he got like this. He preferred for her to not say anything to him, or even look at him. If he caught her, he was angry and snappy with her for days. As if she had intruded on a personal moment, though in some respects, she did.

She didn't really get it. His need to shut down and off for hours every few days. To stare at the ceiling, or wall, or out the window. To be still and gone from the world. She didn't get it at all, but she accepted it all the same. Quirks. It's just what he did.

He was currently sitting on the floor between their two beds, his knees bent and feet planted, hands on his thighs. A map was spread out between his legs, but it was just a guise. A cover-up that didn't cover anything up at all. She saw right through him, and he probably knew it, but had to put out the effort anyway.

"Malfoy?" It was the third time she had repeated it, ignored all the times before.

It wasn't like she wanted to bother him. It wasn't even for a selfish reason, like needing human interaction -- fighting or not. But time was winding down, and they had to get to the next house. If they ran too late, and it wasn't the guy, then they would miss the train for their next stop. It didn't pull back into the station for another week.

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