Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love

Chapter 14: Get Thee to a Nunnery

Back at the hotel, Granger observed Draco as he attempted to Transfigure his bed into something sturdier than the present offering. Transfiguration became exponentially more difficult at scale, however, and all he managed to do was make it squattish and off-kilter.

"A very fair attempt," said Granger, patting him on the head. (He was too surprised to be indignant.)

"I'm waiting for you to take pity on me," panted Draco.

Granger nodded with a kind of exaggerated benevolence. She spent ten minutes wrangling the collapsing frame into a comfortable bed, explaining what she was doing as she went, and what Principles and Laws Draco hadn't quite been applying correctly, for a Transfiguration this large.

"Why didn't you stay in Transfiguration?" asked Draco to interrupt the lecture. "Why Healing?"

Granger looked up from where she was transforming the worn coverlet into a plush blanket. "Transfiguration's practical applications peak at the Mastery level – Doctoral studies veer into the abstruse and theoretical. Healing was a branch of magic that offered more scope to help people in the real world. And Healing harmonised more readily with my studies in Muggle medicine, of course."

The sad-sack, greying pillows were transformed into puffy white ones. Granger gave Draco a quick glance. "Did you complete further studies, after Hogwarts?"

The question was posed with a self-conscious kind of curiosity. Draco thought that this might've been the first time that she had asked him something personal.

"A Bachelor's in Alchemy and a Mastery in Duelling," answered Draco.

"Oh! Well done. I always told Harry and Ron that they ought to consider something like Duelling. But, well–" Here, in the face of Draco's cynically raised brow, Granger finished, weakly, "–They never loved academia."

"Those two knobheads don't even have their NEWTs. They wouldn't have survived a day," said Draco, vexed that she dared consider them of his calibre.

"They aren't knobheads," said Granger, a fist on a hip.

"The entirety of the programme's foundational year was theory and philosophy of martial magicks. When's the last time Pot and Wheeze even read a book?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?" asked Granger.

"No. Answer me."

"Damn it." Granger lapsed into silence as she thought, a finger on her lip. At length, having recollected no recent memory, she said, "Just because they haven't mentioned reading a book to me, doesn't mean they haven't read one."

Draco dismissed this with a scoff.

"Do Quidditch magazines count?" asked Granger in subdued desperation.

"No."

"Years," conceded Granger with an unwilling sigh.

"You would've done better than that pair of plonkers," said Draco. "Except for the practicals. Too much shrieking, insufficient cursing. Maître Toussaint would've eaten you alive."

"You did it in France?"

"Université de Paris."

"Mm. Mind you, my French masters almost ate me alive. Their paedagogical methods consisted principally of browbeating. I did a concentration at the Sorbonne. I cried every day."

"Better than bleeding every day," said Draco, with a heroic kind of nonchalance. (It was, in his defence, barely an exaggeration.)

Granger bit her lip. "I'll stop whinging then, shall I?"