Forget About It (Dramione)

10| Usual Time, Usual Place

She didn't really want to give him the satisfaction, but there was a pull. Something told her that it was the right thing to do. She had assumed that once they'd sorted everything out and told the truth, that would've been it, but her mind was telling her there was something else left unsaid. 

At least, that was her excuse she was telling herself as she made her way to the Room of Requirement.

She did know that she shouldn't go. Maybe she'd known all along that the little letter wasn't from Ginny, who could easily find her in the common room one day rather than leaving her a cryptic note for a secret meeting. Anyway, although it had slipped her mind in the madness of everything and  she ended up forgetting, 'Ginny' wouldn't have. Hermione had seen Ginny a fair amount, and nothing had been put on the table about the note. Now she'd realised, she thought it was so silly that she didn't realise before. 

So why did she obey the note so quickly?

Hermione didn't quite know herself. Maybe she wanted another confrontation. Or maybe she was curious to see what he expected of her.

As the distance to the Room of Requirement gradually decreased, her heart sped up slightly, her breaths quickened as each turned corner was another step closer.

It probably isn't Malfoy, she thought as she turned the final corner to the part of the castle where the door appeared, and stopped. It could be anyone, just someone from a different house. Diligently she stood strong in front of it, thinking hard about the note and of whoever was waiting for her in there.

As the door slowly started coming into shape, she remembered Potions class earlier, when she'd produced the note from her pocket. Malfoy would have been watching the whole thing.

Her mind was made up. It couldn't be anyone else. The door slowly swung open and when she saw him sitting on a nearby chair, his sharp features and white hair came as no surprise.

He turned to look at her, but she was distracted by the room. It was how she'd never seen it before, cluttered with boxes of rubbish and hidden gems, piled up in huge towers that formed little paths underneath sky scrapers of unique finds. She didn't know how big it was, but from the small amount she could see it was a lot bigger than when they'd been using it for Dumbledore's Army. Closest to her lay a large number of dusty, unread books, and high up above she thought she could hear birds chirping, a spell, perhaps. The objects gathered seemed to move and breathe, tempting her, calling her name from the dark depths of the aisles. It would be so easy to get lost in here.

"Like it?" Malfoy spoke up from the slightly green patterned armchair he sat on, which looked as ancient and as abandoned as everything else in the room. In her awe, she'd almost forgotten he was sat there.

She acknowledged him properly for the first time since entering, a scowl setting itself on her face as she regarded his irritable, naturally grimacing face and cocky posture. "What's with the notes, Malfoy?" She asked, bluntly but not in as rude a tone as usual. She wouldn't like to be lost in here, with the boy she hated more than anyone (except Voldemort, and maybe Umbridge).

His thin lips twisted into a sly smile, taunting her, with every slight twitch of movement. "Just a little thing we used to do," he teased, long fingers playing with a loose string on his old, green chair. Hermione stopped herself from strangling him with it. She needed him to stop whatever game he was playing with her and leave her alone.

"We don't have 'things'," she spat, standing stock still and trying to hold her slight frame up to make herself appear taller, trying to equal his ever-increasing height. "Friends have 'things', and we are very far from friends."

He smiled, laughing a little, his head hanging lazily for a moment before his hungry, malignant eyes settled back on her own. "You got that right," he said sarcastically.

She ignored him. He was so full of himself. The great towers of objects creaked above her head, different shapes held together by a single fibre, ready to fall at any moment into a cloud of disarray and dust. She wondered why the Room of Requirement was in this state. Malfoy was staring at her cruelly, picking out her weaknesses to prey on, most likely.

"Why did you sign them as Ginny?" She asked, giving him back her attention.

He grinned again, a malevolent, teasing grin that made Hermione want to run for the hills, but not without checking behind her shoulder for the inevitable stab in the back he'd be sending her off with.

Suddenly, a wave of a memory came over her, almost like a mist that had been settling for a while, but not poignantly enough for her to notice. 

She'd been here before. In this room, with these objects, standing here, watching him in sitting in that green chair. However, she didn't know how it made her feel. Not happy but not sad either, instead just a rather intense wash of deja vu, not a particular sense or emotion. There was no concrete realisation apart from the fact that this was not new; in fact, it was familiar.

"Another thing we used to do," Malfoy was saying. "Your idea. You made me sign them as one of your little friends, just in case the Weasel or Potter came across them."

Hang on a minute. Hermione was meeting Malfoy for him to give her his homework, and that was a fact she wholeheartedly believed now. He'd done her a favour and she was repaying him. That was why he had been seen around with her.

So why the secret notes?

He'd left the latest one at her usual library point, and she wasn't surprised that he knew where that was. He must have been dropping off his assignments there for her to complete. That should be all, that should be the maximum contact they needed, that shouldn't warrant coded letters and an alternative meeting rendezvous, unless...

She was staring off into the distance, down one of the passageways created from between two large stacks of junk.

"I don't understand," she said truthfully. Her brain was hurting. None of the evidence made sense to her.

He rolled his eyes. "Well, ask away. You want answers, right?"

She nodded.

"Go ahead then." He relaxed back into the chair, playing with a silver ring on his finger.

"Why are we here?"

Malfoy slicked his white hair back onto his head, staring her down the whole time. "Because you want to be," he said.

Hermione let out a large sigh. Of course, he was being obnoxious and nasty, as usual. He knew she didn't want to be here, he'd just dragged her away from her regular life to spite her, or perhaps to get something out of her that he wanted. Probably more homework. But why couldn't he just leave it for her in the library?

"It's true," Malfoy said. "You came."

Hermione frowned. "I thought the message was from Ginny," she snapped. But she hadn't. She'd known it was him. 

"Why did we have to meet in here? What was wrong with the library?" She questioned him, putting her hands on her hips. She was not here to play games, but she did want to change the subject because there was something about those eyes, something underneath the dull grey colour that was staring right through her.

"Oh Hermione," he sighed. "I thought you were meant to be the clever one."

He paused.

"We weren't just meeting for homework, and I think you know it."

A/N: oohhhh...

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