The Mists of Memory

Chapter 7 - A Stolen Kiss

Draco wiped his forehead on his sleeve and sat on his bed. He'd spent the last hour shut in that room, cursing himself and working his arse off. He didn't know how to clean a room-he had never had to do such a thing in his whole life. Guessing he might as well get started, he had picked up some of the objects that were lying on the floor and had dusted them, piling them up in high heaps all over the room. He had also washed the floor; he knew how to do that, after all, he had often been forced to do it without magic when he had been given detention at Hogwarts.

Without magic... how could he have been that dumb? He thought about how much easier it would've been to clean the room using his wand. He could've fixed it in a few minutes, and it would've been perfect. Instead, he had been forced to clean it by hand; it wasn't a big deal, after all, it was just cleaning a room; it hurt only his pride. But...what would've happened to him if his wand hadn't worked during a fight? He had already stared death in the face, he didn't want another look, thank you very much.

Of course, Ollivander was right. Draco sighed at the realisation. You only understand how important things are to you when they're gone, he thought, longingly. He stared at London's sky through the window and noticed that the first stars had appeared between the gold and indigo shades of the sunset. Damn, he would have to pick up the pace; he didn't want to sleep on the floor, as Hermione had kindly suggested.

He was standing up to resume his work, when the door opened and Hermione came into the room, carrying a tray in her hands.

'Were you having a rest, Malfoy?' she asked. He nodded, as she glanced around, approaching the bed. 'I brought your dinner. Eat it before it gets cold.' She put the tray onto his bed and had a better look at the room. She shook her head.

Draco started to eat his dinner and watched as Hermione continued walking around the piles of stuff he had built up in various points of the room.

'What's wrong, Granger?' he asked, swallowing some food. He didn't like the way that she walked through his room as if she was judging his work... and finding it unsatisfactory.

'Nothing. Just... it's obvious that you've never tidied anything up before,' she said as she finished her inspection.

Draco choked mid-swallow as the food that he had been eating went down the wrong way, and he had to cough several times and gulp two glasses of water before he felt better. He then stared at her in amazement.

'What d'you mean?' he drawled, still coughing slightly.

'I can see what you were planning to do by building those piles of stuff, but it's not the best way of tidying up.' The young witch approached one of the piles and started to scan its contents. 'The boxes should've been placed together, and so should the papers, and the objects of different sizes. Then you should've put all the larger things which needed to be repaired by magic in another pile. The way you've done it just isn't very well organised.'

While he was eating, Hermione started to move the stuff from the piles that he had built and created new piles using her logic. After a few minutes, the room was filled with new heaps of well-organised stuff, replacing the ones that had taken him hours to form. Then, Hermione took a box and started to fill it with papers and thin stuff.

'Since you've finished eating, you may as well come here and help me, instead of staring at me like an idiot,' she snapped, glaring at him.

Draco immediately stood up and walked over to where she was sitting. It wasn't until he had knelt beside her and had begun to sort some papers into another pile that he realised that he had obeyed her orders without batting an eyelash. He stopped and angrily muttered something under his breath.