Quarrels & Loves

Up & Coming

Summary: It's Draco's sixth year at Hogwarts and he's already plenty busy with the Dark Lord's ridiculous requests. He doesn't need to hear there's a new bully roaming the halls and that he's chosen Hermione as his main target, but the least Draco can do is help her after a very long day.

Draco was tired. He'd spent the past four weeks staying up late to work on the Dark Lord's project and with exams coming up, he'd spent what remained of his free time studying. Out loud, he could never say he hated the work the Dark Lord gave him, but he definitely loathed how stressful it was. Hogwarts was well protected so hiding not only his Dark Mark but his work for the Dark Lord from all the teachers were getting to him. So yeah, Draco was tired and dragging his feet as he walked from the Shrieking Shack back to the Slytherin common room.

He was passing the lake, grumbling to himself, when he heard something swim past. He glanced at the lake, finding nothing except a small area of bubbles and disturbed water. The giant squid had been getting restless recently, so often when Draco walked past, he would hear it come up to the surface for a brief moment.

When the sound happened again, Draco looked over with a frown. The squid never came up more than once, but when he looked towards the sound, it wasn't the squid breaking the surface. It was a person.

The darkness made it difficult to see, but when Draco squinted and cast a Lumos charm with his wand, he immediately recognised the person as Hermione Granger. He blinked, staring at her in shock for a moment. Surely the girl knew how to swim; that was a common muggle thing to do, so why wasn't she doing it now.

Hermione struggled to keep her head above the water for a few more seconds while Draco watched, waiting for her to just swim to shore. However, a second later, her head slipped under the water and she didn't come back up.

"Granger," Draco snapped, walking closer to the lake until his shoes got wet. "Granger, come on. You know how to swim."

No response except for her fingers coming up and breaking the surface. Quickly looking around, Draco slipped off his shoes and dropped his wand. He tossed his cloak away from the water before none too elegantly trotting into the water. Darkness surrounded him and the moon was behind the clouds, making it difficult to see. With a groan, he summoned his wand and used it as a light source to find where Hermione had last popped up. He took a deep breath before ducking under the water and forcing his eyes open.

The water stung, but he quickly forgot it when his wand light showed Hermione drifting slowly down. Her eyes were closed and she was limp, sending a jolt of panic through Draco before he hastily swam towards her. He wrapped his arm around her chest and hurried toward the surface. Just before he got to the top, something tugged Hermione out of his grasp and he struggled to keep ahold of her. He looked down when it tugged again and saw a long tether wrapped around one of her ankles.

He was quickly running out of breath, but he gasped out a spell to cut the tether holding her down and choked on water. Once Hermione was free from whatever had been keeping her down, Draco pulled her up to the surface and gasped for air. He made sure her head was above the water as he swam both of them to shore, glancing at her often to make sure she was alright.

As soon as Draco could stand on the bottom of the lake, he rearranged Hermione so he could carry her out of the lake rather than drag her. If anyone else was around, he wouldn't have hesitated to tug her up the bank by one arm, but no one else was nearby and he was allowed to show just he worried he was that she wasn't actually breathing.

Draco didn't even bother taking her that far out of the water. When he reached an area where there was enough dry area to lay her on, he dropped to his knees and set Hermione down. His knees sank into the mud a bit, but Draco was more focused on summoning the water from her lungs. The stream of water that came out of her mouth was concerning, but then she gasped for air and Draco felt his panic slowly subside.