A/N: I'm tired, headachey, and all-out drained at the moment (it's been an… odd day) on top of which I've been trying to log on to portkey for the past three hours, so forgive me if I come off as a little crabby. Big thanks to my reviewers. (Sorry I didn't get a chance to reply to all of them, but see sentence above re: odd day.) I knew the last chapter would raise some eyebrows, so I really appreciate everyone who's giving my Draco a chance. And for those of you who had trouble accepting the idea of Hermione and Draco as friends, I hope this chapter clears up some of your questions! I'm warning you now: the chapter is almost entirely flashback to how Hermione and Draco became friends to explain the progress of their relationship. If Draco and Hermione as friends really bugs you or if you don't like reading parts that don't include Harry then you can skip this without missing too many threads of the plot. I would, however, really love it if everyone at least gave it a try!
Section 6:
Hermione thought of Draco's words as she lay in her bed that night, waiting to fall asleep. [Maybe it *is* time that I started dreaming of something else,] she admitted to herself. [Dreaming of a life that I could have with Harry is getting me exactly nothing but a broken heart.] Hermione couldn't help but smile as she remembered all of the times that Draco had lectured her on that exact point. With all her other close friends wrapped up in relationships of their own, Draco had truly become her confidant over the past year and she couldn't imagine anyone being a better or more supportive friend. As much as it amazed her that they were friends in the first place, she could no longer imagine her life without him. She was glad that she didn't have to. Their friendship had become one of the most important ones in her life, in spite of its somewhat unconventional beginning.
Draco had seemed oddly subdued when he returned for sixth year. He was no friendlier than he had been before, but he no longer insulted the Gryffindors to their faces, and was no longer seen sniggering about them behind their backs. When he saw Harry or Ron or Hermione anywhere near him, he simply turned and walked the other way. Hermione had been wary at first, afraid that this was the calm before the storm, but when several months of school passed without incident, she finally started to relax. She was no longer worried that Draco was involved in some conspiracy to catch her or her friends with their guards down, but she still didn't understand his behavior. And Hermione hated it when she came across something she didn't understand.
Long after she had stopped watching Draco with suspicion, she continued to watch him with curiosity. And that was how she came to notice something highly peculiar. Draco's behavior towards Gryffindors wasn't the only thing that had changed.
He was ignoring the Slytherins, as well. For Draco to ignore Gryffindors was unsettling. For Draco to ignore *Slytherins* was cataclysmic. Before sixth year, in all the years that Hermione had known him, she could count on one hand the number of times she had seen him when he wasn't surrounded by a crowd of underlings. At a minimum, it was Crabbe and Goyle, but at most, he had been known to have the entire Slytherin house flanked around him. He had always been a leader amongst his housemates, and had enjoyed his status and the authority it gave him over others. For him to isolate himself from his adoring public was about as likely as Snape actually wearing Neville's grandmother's dress, the way Neville had pictured it on his boggart in third year.
But there was no arguing with the evidence. Draco spent a minimum of time in meals, usually just grabbing something off the tables to take with him somewhere else, and when he did sit down to eat, he sat by himself. He no longer surrounded himself with his lackeys in the hallways or during classes. Most of the time, he was seen on his own. And he had started spending more time in the library. Lots more time. It was in the library, in fact, that he and Hermione finally had The Talk.
Snape, with his usual malicious glee, had assigned the Potions class to write a foot of parchment on a particularly rare infusion used in many higher-level potions. Of course, there was only one book written that gave any detailed information on the infusion, and the library only had one copy. Hermione had gone straight to the library after class, skipping dinner. She knew that once her fellow students realized that there was only one copy, it would be nearly impossible to get a hold of the book, and she wanted to complete the assignment before the rush began. She was nearly through jotting down the notes she would need when she heard someone clear their throat to get her attention and looked up into Draco Malfoy's stormy gray eyes.
"Yes?" she asked, warily. She wasn't going to be rude without provocation, but just because he hadn't been particularly provoking to her so far that year didn't mean that she trusted him.
"Do you think you'll be needing that book for much longer?" he asked, politely.
"Not much longer," she answered. "Probably fifteen minutes or so."
"Do you mind if I wait?" he questioned, gesturing to the chair across from her.
She shrugged. "Go ahead." She returned her eyes to her book and her notes but snuck glances over to him every few seconds, watching as he dug around in his bag and pulled out the Arithmancy homework.
She tried to concentrate on her Potions notes. She tried very hard. But it was just so much more interesting to sneak glances over at Draco and try to figure out what he was up to. Of course, being the compulsive student that she was, she couldn't help but glance at his Arithmancy problem set. Even upside down, it was easy for her to see what he was working on, and when she saw the mistake he was making, it was such second nature for her to coach her friends through their homework assignments that she spoke before she could catch herself.
"It's not balancing because you forgot to insert the infinity sign in the third step," she blurted out.
Draco looked up with a surprised expression on his face, but he quickly masked it. "You're right," he replied, coolly, returning his focus to the problem. "Thanks."
It was the 'thanks' that finally broke Hermione's resolve. It was all well and good to resolve to let sleeping dragons lie, but she just couldn't ignore this when she knew that the old Malfoy would have hexed *himself* before thanking her for anything. In a sudden burst of temper, she threw down her quill.
"Will you tell me *what* is going on here?" she demanded in her bossiest tone.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he replied, his voice surprisingly polite.
"*This*!" she replied, gesturing between the two of them. His expression remained blank. Hermione let out a sigh of frustration. "Why are you here?"
"I needed that book to write my Potions assignment," he answered. "It's the only book that gives a detai-"
"A detailed analysis of the infusion for our assignment. Yes, I know," Hermione cut him off. "But that doesn't explain why you're here."
"Where else would I be?"
"The Slytherin common room, where I heard Professor Snape say that there are three copies of this book."
To Hermione's surprise, a flash of pain crossed Draco's face. It disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, but it was there long enough for her to notice it.
"I'm not welcome in the Slytherin common room at the moment," Draco replied. His voice was as polite as it had been since he'd entered the library, but Hermione could hear that it was considerably more strained.
Now it was Hermione's turn to look confused. "I-I don't… not welcome? But… but why? And since when?"
Draco's response was to push up the left sleeve of his robe and unbutton the cuff on his shirt. He rolled the shirt up to the elbow and laid his arm flat on the table, with the forearm facing up. The white skin was completely unmarked.
"That's why," he answered quietly. "When I went home this summer, I was supposed to get the Dark Mark put there. I refused. The majority of my housemates have taken exception to my decision."
Hermione reached out a tentative hand in spite of herself and ran a gentle finger over Draco's arm. If there was a concealment spell on his skin, she should be able to feel the traces of it. But there was no spell.
"Why?" she asked again.
"Because my father has gone mad," he answered calmly. Hermione's eyes widened. Whatever answer she had been expecting, it hadn't been this. "It's been taken care of, of course. He's been placed in a quiet, exclusive, exceedingly private sanitarium where the records are very carefully sealed. As far as anyone in England knows, he's hiding out somewhere in France."
"I-I'm sorry about your father-" Hermione began, but Draco cut her off.
"No, you're not." Her face flushed at being so easily caught in a lie. Draco was right; she wasn't particularly sorry. Lucius Malfoy had done a rather appalling number of horrendous things in his life and the thought of him safely locked up where he couldn't hurt anyone anymore brought her no small measure of comfort. "There's no need for you to be," Draco continued briskly as he rolled down his shirtsleeve and re-buttoned the cuff. "I'm not particularly sorry about it, myself."
"How did it happen?" Hermione asked carefully.
"His beloved Dark Mark," Draco spat out. "Think about it, Granger. The Dark Lord has, at all times, so many enchantments and spells to keep himself immortal and keep himself safe that the sheer power needed to keep them active should take every ounce of energy that he has and then some more on top of that. Haven't you wondered how he manages to do it?"
No, actually, she hadn't wondered. But she was starting to wonder now. Draco was right; the spells that Voldemort had purportedly cast on himself were powerful defenses against assault, but they required large amounts of power, in exchange, to function properly. Even *half* of them would be more than the average wizard would be able to maintain at a time. Of course, Voldemort was far more than average, but he was still mostly *human*. Even he had his limits.
"The Dark Mark holds many purposes," Draco explained. "First and foremost, it ties all of his follows to the Dark Lord. He can use it to sense them, to summon them, and, if necessary, to control them. It allows him access into their thoughts and their dreams, when he chooses. But the link goes two ways. The Dark Lord is capable of using the link not only to enter the minds of his followers, but also to extract elements from them into himself."
"Are you saying that he extracts their power?"
"Precisely."
"But why would they let him do that?"
"Because they don't know it's happening," Draco answered.
"But how do *you* know?" Hermione asked.
"Because my grandfather was the very first person to take the Dark Mark." Draco replied. "In 1949, Octavius Malfoy became the first Death Eater." Draco looked over at Hermione as if he expected her to make some kind of comment, but for once the girl had been shocked into silence. With a mirthless grin, Draco continued.
"They had been in Slytherin together," Draco explained, "and the Dark Lord had been very careful to cultivate Grandfather's friendship and support. Those years immediately after his graduation when the student known as Tom Riddle disappeared? He was staying with my grandfather for rather sizeable chunks of them. As far as I can tell, he would travel for months at a time, gathering whatever information he could find on dark arts and unknown enchantments to find ways to strengthen himself, and then he'd come back to Malfoy manor and tinker in his laboratory until he had mastered whatever new technique he had discovered. The Dark Mark was an idea he picked up from a hag in Siberia. My grandfather was his test subject. How much do you know about the anatomy of magic in the human body, Granger?"
Hermione, startled by the sudden question, didn't know how to answer.
"Where is the ability to perform magic located?" he asked, clarifying.
"In the brain," she replied. She had researched the idea thoroughly when she discovered that she was a witch. The idea that magic was stored in the blood was rubbish, dating back to the middle ages when doctors thought *everything* from health to temper to sanity was found in the blood. The truth was far more practical. The average, muggle human uses an amazingly small percentage of the brain. Muggle scientists have spent years trying to discover what the rest of the brain was for, since it wasn't put to use. The magical community did not have such questions. They knew what those supposedly unused portions of the brain were for: they were the source of magical activity.
"Exactly," Draco concurred. "So in the early 1950s, the Dark Lord started experimenting with his ability to access my grandfather's brain through the Dark Mark. When he realized that he could use it to plant thoughts in my grandfather's head, he decided to see if he could *pull* magic through the link as easily as he could push it. When he first started siphoning magic from my grandfather, I imagine he was doing it mostly to see if he could. When he discovered that it was possible, he realized the opportunities that lay in front of him to collect quantities of power within himself that he never would have been able to achieve on his own. It wasn't until years later that he realized some of the consequences of this power drainage."
"Insanity?" Hermione guessed.
Draco gave her a tight smile. "Five points to Gryffindor. You figured that out very quickly."
"Well, it does make sense," Hermione replied. "Pulling power directly from someone's brain is bound to do damage, over time. Insanity is the most logical result."
"And look at the examples," Draco continued. "The Death Eaters that you've come across have all been downright pathological, haven't they? My father, my Aunt Bellatrix, Karkaroff, and Barty Crouch, Jr. Barking mad, all of them. Pettigrew is a bit less unbalanced than the others, but that's because he had a stretch of nearly thirteen years when the Dark Lord wasn't pulling power from him because he assumed the man was dead. And I believe the only reason that Snape has escaped with his sanity intact is because he's too accomplished at Occlumency for his brain to be violated without him being aware of it."
"But how do you know all this?" Hermione couldn't stop herself from asking.
"From my grandfather," Draco answered. "Since my grandfather was the first to take the Dark Mark, he was the first to lose his mind. For most of my childhood, he was locked up in a side wing of the manor with padded walls, and was seen only by house elves. When I was seven, I jumped on a house elf right as he was magicking himself into my grandfather's room, and I was taken with him. After that, I used to visit him all the time."
An almost nostalgic smile crossed Draco's face as he remembered his grandfather. "He was mad, of course. Utterly and completely mad, but still fascinating. Octavius Malfoy was not a stupid man, he was just too power hungry for his own good. He thought that Tom Riddle would be his ticket to influence and control, and so he allowed himself to be used. By the time he figured out what his 'good friend' had done; and he *did* figure it out eventually; the damage was irreversible. But he wasn't a violent madman, and he told fascinating stories. I was left on my own a good deal of the time growing up, so I ended up spending a lot of time with him. I know now, of course, that all the stories he told me were fairly accurate accounts of actual exploits of himself and the Dark Lord, but at the time, I thought they were all fairy tales. He told me what the Dark Lord had done and how he had been driven mad, but he was extremely emotional on that point, and his story never made any sense. I didn't put the pieces together until the same thing started to happen to my father."
"What then?" Hermione asked, leaning forward. In spite of himself, Draco smiled at her eagerness. Her eyes were wide with interest and she didn't even notice that she shifting closer and closer to a boy she wouldn't have touched with a broomstick an hour before.
"Then I realized it was nonsense," Draco answered. "The whole lot of it. Voldemort, Death Eaters, the Dark Mark… they're the delusions of a madman leading lots of other madmen. He promises his followers fortune and power and influence and all he's going to deliver to them is ranting, raving lunacy in a room with padded walls, quite possibly guarded by Dementors. Why on earth would I want that for myself? I may be very many unpleasant things, Granger, but not even you have ever called me a fool."
"So you've joined the Light side?" Hermione asked, eagerly.
"Granger, I'm on no one's side but my own," he replied, coolly. "I want Voldemort defeated because he's a menace to society, but I'm staying the hell out of it. My only interest is to restore the Malfoy name and fortune. Just because we're living in an age of heroes and villains doesn't mean that I'm either one. I'll stand on the sidelines and watch it all play out, and on the bloody morning after, when the battlefield has cleared, the wizarding world will need people who get by with their wits to rebuild it, and that's where I'll come in."
Hermione started to open her mouth to reply, but shut it again moments later. She wanted to argue with him, wanted to convince him that he should join the Light side and fight for truth and goodness and virtue and… and puppies, and house-elves, and she could just *picture* him laughing at her so hard that he'd fall out of his chair if she even suggested it. He wasn't going to be a good guy; it was as simple as that. But he didn't seem to want to be a bad guy either.
"And the rest of the Slytherins?" she couldn't help but ask.
"The rest of the Slytherins are either fools following a lost cause, or pragmatists like me who are staying out of it. They won't stick their necks out for me, and I wouldn't expect them to. I wouldn't stick my neck out for them, either. When the battle is over, they'll be behind me. I don't need them till then." Hermione sat back as she processed all of this information. A few moments later, she gasped and abruptly pulled her chair away, blushing furiously.
"Took you that long to realize you were sitting close to me?" Draco asked, obviously amused. Hermione's deeper blush confirmed his suspicions. "You can sit as close as you like, you know," he said, surprisingly gently. "I won't hurt you."
"Why not?" she asked.
"Because you'll be a useful ally to have, Hermione Granger, and I never hurt people who could prove useful to me later on."
"You don't have any trouble admitting that a mudblood could be a useful ally?"
"Granger, the one ultimate lesson that I learned from my father was that everything he taught me was wrong. I don't give a damn if your parents are wizards, muggles, or chimpanzees; you're the most powerful witch in the school, you're guaranteed to be Head Girl next year, and you've got a good enough head on your shoulders to realize the value of coming to a cease-fire with me."
Hermione gave him a long, contemplating look. Whatever she saw, she obviously approved of, because she extended her hand. "Ally?" she asked.
Draco clasped her hand in his and shook it firmly. "Ally," he answered. He was rewarded with a dazzling smile.
"I'm done with this now," she said, handing over the Potions book he'd been waiting for.
"Great," he replied, accepting it. "Once I finish taking my notes down, want to go over the Arithmancy problem set? We can double check each other's work." Hermione didn't answer right away. After all, dinner would be over soon, and all of her friends would be heading back to the common room. She had planned to join them, knowing she'd be done with her potions notes by then. Yes, she had planned to sit with her friends and work on her arithmancy while Ginny cuddled with Neville and Ron challenged Harry to chess and Harry refused so he could sneak upstairs and neck with his girlfriend… Hermione's smile returned as she focused on Draco, and accepted.
And thus a friendship was born, a friendship that blossomed quietly over the months that followed. They didn't spend much time together outside of the library and never really sought each other out, but barely a week went by when they didn't find themselves at the same table tucked in the corner, studying together. Draco would joke that there were conveniences to the silent treatment his house was giving him: it meant that no one bothered him or sought him out. Hermione would smile and try to tell herself that she, too, was pleased that none of the people in her life seemed to notice that she no longer studied alone.
Their friendship wasn't something they really acknowledged or even talked about, with each other or with anyone else. (Hermione hadn't dared tell Harry and Ron anything more than that Draco was being polite now and for mercy's sake to just accept it and not provoke him because she didn't want them getting into trouble for starting fights.) It didn't have any strings attached. He didn't worry that she only pretended to like him because of the size of his daddy's vault, and she didn't worry that he only liked her because she helped him with homework. They enjoyed each other's company and respected each other's intelligence and began to genuinely care about each other outside of the boxes they'd been placed in through years of prejudice and habit.
When they were named Head Boy and Head Girl, it gave them an excuse to 'go public' with their friendship and spend time together, visibly getting along, while they were in the public eye. They got a few stares at first when other students saw them actually talking *without* their wands drawn, but newer gossip soon made them less noteworthy. Harry and Ron, predictably, never grew fully accustomed to it but, thinking she was just making the best of a bad situation so she wouldn't jeopardize her position as Head Girl, chose not to make a fuss but to simply take a watch-and-wait stance. They'd *watch* the ferret closely whenever they saw him *near* their Hermione, and they'd *wait* for her to tell them that he'd dropped the polite act and reverted to gittiness, meaning she'd finally allow them to beat him up. Sadly, that hadn't happened yet (though they continued to hope).
Meanwhile, Hermione just changed the subject whenever either of them brought Draco up, and took a very private satisfaction in having found such a friend just when she needed one. She'd need Draco more than ever in the months to come. She'd need his help, his support, and his unstoppable ability to make her laugh as she slowly and painstakingly deleted herself from Harry Potter's life.