Seven Minutes | dramione

Chapter 11

They walked back to the castle without saying a word. Draco's heart was hammering as they entered the large stone building. He didn't know what was happening to him, what had compelled him to do that.

He had kissed her. Hermione Granger. He had pulled her lips to his and kissed her at New Years, as snowflakes fluttered down around them.

It had been electrifying. How had a simple kiss done that to him? Reduced his bones to jelly, and sent his heart on a marathon.

He glanced to his side briefly, where she was walking. They hadn't said anything afterwards. What did she think about it? Did it to the same thing to her as it had to him?

It couldn't have. There was no way she had felt something.

But he had.

Merlin, he was confused.

This was Hermione Granger. He had hated her until mere weeks before this, every single day before the Gryffindor/Slytherin Quidditch game. Mocking her had been his favourite pastime.

And there was the small detail of him being part of an organization that vowed to kill all of her kind.

Who could forget that?

When they got to the entrance hall, they turned and looked at each other.

"Well, er.. Happy new year, Granger," he said awkwardly. He had never been awkward in his life.

She nodded. "You too, Malfoy."

They then went their separate ways; she went up, and he went down.

When he got to the dungeons, he walked quickly into the Slytherin Common room and up into his bed.

Then, he laid there and thought.

It had to be a spur of the moment thing, he reasoned with himself. Nothing more. He was lonely, he hadn't seen Pansy in a while, and it was New Years. It didn't matter that he had felt the kiss in every part of his body. It didn't matter that Granger's face had shone with beauty as the moonlight illuminated it.

It didn't matter that he had never had better conversations than theirs.

It didn't matter that spending time with her had become his most enjoyable past time.

It didn't matter that kissing her had made him feel.

It didn't matter.

At the end of the day, he was Draco Malfoy, death eater and tasked to kill Dumbledore. She was Hermione Granger, muggleborn and best friend to Harry Potter.

There was nothing more to be said.

Draco closed his eyes, and turned on his side. He fell into a restless sleep, dreams of beauty twisting into nightmares.

When he woke up the next day, he was shaking.

He didn't see Granger for the rest of the holidays. He chose to stay in the Common room, far away from everyone else. He spent his time doing homework for the first time in months. He wanted to be numb, a machine, working solely on Transfiguration and Charms habits.

That way, he wouldn't think about a Gryffindor muggleborn, or a cabinet on the seventh floor.

A few days after New Year's, everyone else returned.

Draco was sitting on a couch in the Common room, reading through the Transfiguration textbook that she had given him. He was on chapter nine Elemental Transfiguration, when the common room door open.

Blaise bounded in, looking very chilled from the outside.

"Hey mate!" He said, spotting Draco. "How were the holidays?"