Meet Me In The Broom Cupboard

Chapter Twenty Nine: Eighth Year, April May June

By the time they were back at school after the Easter holidays, Hermione had entered exam mode. She spent every minute studying, or planning her revision timetable, or doing homework.

The only day she didn't do any studying was on the one year anniversary of The Battle of Hogwarts. The six of them met up with Harry and Ron in Hogsmeade and had a few drinks. They didn't say too much, none of them wanting to discuss the events of last year, but they all knew they were drinking in memory of their fallen friends.

Draco had only begun to worry about Hermione's intense studying a few weeks before their exams started, when not even a well timed joke about relaxing her in the bedroom worked to make her stop stressing.

After a few failed attempts at getting her to take a break, ending in her crying or arguing with him, he decided to let her do what she needed to do and settled on providing her with cups of tea every couple of hours.

The only thing he would force her to do was go to sleep, after three consecutive nights of finding her asleep on the living room floor with her face in a book.

On the morning of their first exam he managed to drag her down to breakfast and force a slice of toast down her.

'How is she doing?' Ginny whispered to him.

Draco simply shook his head and rolled his eyes, which made Ginny laugh quietly.

'Here I was thinking you were a mess with exams, Draco.' Pansy said as she sat down with them, glancing at Hermione with a worried look on her face.

'I'm fine.' Hermione mumbled, her head still in the book.

'At least all your exams are over this week.' Blaise moaned. 'I have to wait until next Friday for my last one.'

'That's because we were idiots and chose History of Magic.' Draco said.

Hermione finally closed the book and put it back in her bag. 'I'm ready.'

Draco smirked, holding back a laugh, and gave her hand a squeeze.

As soon as all of Hermione's exams were over on Friday, she went straight to their dorm and fell asleep for eighteen hours. Draco didn't disturb her, knowing she needed to catch up on sleep, but he felt himself relax simply knowing that she wasn't stressing out anymore.

The next Friday, after Draco got out of his History of Magic exam, he and Hermione celebrated alone before going down to dinner.

Everyone was in high spirits that evening as they knew they would no longer have to stress about exams or school. However it was bittersweet, as they realised they only had a few days left of each other's daily company, so they made the most of it and spent their days outside in the sunshine and every meal together.

Hermione was a mess inside, wondering what was going to happen with her and Draco when school finished. Not only was she questioning where her relationship was headed, she had no home to go to; though she had places to stay, she didn't have a home to call her own.

She tried to keep these thoughts at bay as they all sat on the fields the day before they were due to leave Hogwarts for the last time.

Draco, who Hermione had noticed had been acting strange the past couple of days, was trying to get Ginny's attention by wandlessly zooming flowers into her face.

'What?!' She cried as the fourth Daisy hit her nose.

'Nothing, just bored.' Draco said. Hermione couldn't see the look that he gave Ginny, but she saw Ginny's small nod.