Chapter 28: Visit to Durmstrang
Hermione heard a knock on her door. ‘Viktor is a half an hour early!’ she thought, a little perturbed; She wasn’t ready yet. She opened the door to find Draco Malfoy standing in her hallway. They were on their last university visit together: the Wizarding University of Durmstrang. Both had agreed earlier in the day that the place seemed dark and depressing compared to London and Paris. As a university affiliated with Dark Magic, WUD was clearly suffering after the war.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to talk to you before your date with Viktor.”
“It’s not a date.”
“Oh, no? Look at yourself, all dressed up, and look, you’ve even done something to smooth out your hair.”
“I want to look nice for an old and dear friend.”
“All right, tell me this. Does he kiss you when he first sees you?”
“Well, maybe, yes, but on the cheek.”
“And he’s never kissed you on the mouth?”
Hermione rolled her eyes. “He was the first boy to ever kiss me, back at the Yule Ball in fourth year. Does that count?”
“And what was that kiss like?”
“I think you are fishing for a kiss here, Mr. Malfoy.”
Draco leaned in and gave Hermione a mild peck on the mouth. “Was it like that?” he asked. “Or was it more like this?” He leaned in and kissed her longer this time. Before she knew what she was doing, Hermione was kissing him back, wrapping her arms around his neck. Eventually, she broke the kiss and headed back to her small sleeping quarters to finish getting ready. Draco sat on one of the sofas in the common room.
They were in the WUD dorms, which were organized as suites, with four small bedrooms off one larger common room, all sharing one bathroom. Draco was on the floor beneath her, as Durmstrang was more conservative than Paris and London and kept the genders separated by floors. Her suite was empty except for herself, due to low matriculation rates at post-war WUD.
“Look, you are acting exactly like Ron. He was always extremely jealous of my friendship with Viktor.” She paused. “Are you? Are you actually jealous?”
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
“But how can that be? We are just friends, albeit you kiss me an awful lot for just being friends, but you told me in Paris that’s because you don’t know how to behave around your first real female friend.” Hermione hoped that Draco didn’t consider her a friend with benefits. She didn’t want that, did she?
“About that…” Draco began. He seemed to ponder something, fiddling about where he sat on the sofa in the common room. “I want to talk to you about that…”
“Mind if I continue to get ready while you talk?” Hermione asked from the bedroom door. “Viktor will be here soon.”
“Sure, fine. But let’s analyze relationships for a moment. You always like to think logically and thoroughly about a topic.”
“Is that an insult or a compliment?” Hermione asked as she walked back into her bedroom.
“A compliment, of course.” Draco smirked. He spoke loudly so his voice would carry into her bedroom. “All right, what’s the difference between Harry and Ron? You say both are your best friends, yet Ron was your boyfriend and Harry was not.”
“Well, I was sexually attracted to Ron, but I’m not attracted in that way to Harry,” Hermione spoke through the bedroom door as she brushed her hair.
“All right, so we have two dimensions to relationships: depth of friendship and strength of sexual attraction.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“And my relationship with Millicent was high sexual attraction, but low friendship. When she wanted to be my girlfriend, what she really meant was she wanted to get to know me better, talk to me about my thoughts and feelings, friendship stuff.”
“And you said no to that.”
“Yes, I didn’t want to let her get inside my head like that.” Draco continued, “So we’ve covered the basic categories.”
“Well, there’s the low friendship, low sexual attraction category,” Hermione pointed out.
“Yes, and every other bloke is in that box, but that’s not the point here.”
“What is the point here?” Hermione asked as she walked from her bedroom to the bathroom.
“When I tell you that you are my first close female friend and I am obviously attracted to you physically, where does that put me?”
“In the boyfriend category?” Hermione asked.
“Well, we don’t have to give it that label, but yeah.”
“So what exactly are you saying here?” Hermione spoke loudly, her words garbled. She walked out of the bedroom with an electric toothbrush in her mouth, which made quite a bit of noise.
“What the hell is that?” Draco asked loudly to be heard over the noise.
“It’s an electric toothbrush,” Hermione answered.
“An eclectic toothbrush?” Draco asked.
“Electric,” Hermione corrected. “But there’s no electricity here, so I make it run with magic.”
“Why do you need that? There are teeth-cleansing spells, you know.”
“I told you my parents are dentists. Some habits die hard.” She turned off the toothbrush and walked back into the common room. “So, you were saying?”
“I was saying that this is a roundabout way of telling you that I fancy you, Hermione Granger, and I’m jealous that you are going on a date with Viktor Krum tonight.”
Hermione smiled broadly. She was surprised at how happy Draco’s admission made her feel.
“Oh, Draco,” she said as she walked over and hugged him. After a few moments, she stepped away and said cheekily, “But I do have one type of relationship that does not fit your matrix: friends with benefits.” She looked at him smugly.
“Hmm…” Draco pretended to think on that. “Well, I guess I’d say either the sex isn’t very good or the friendship isn’t very good.”
“I think you are missing something important in your framework,” Hermione said. “The difference between being in love and friends with benefits is that extra emotional spark, the one that starts as infatuation and later grows into love. You’ve missed the emotion,” Hermione said sadly, thinking of how fitting that was for Draco.
“Fine, you can write up a foot long essay on the third dimension of relationships tomorrow.” Draco smiled, then kissed Hermione again. He paused and said, “Mmm. I like this toothbrush thing. You taste great.” And he leaned in to kiss her again.
“So, why didn’t you tell me this before, in Paris? Did you just figure this out or did you lie before?”
“I don’t consider it lying. You had a boyfriend then, and out of respect for that I made up the first female friend thing. Plus, there’s probably some truth to it.”
“But I bought it, hook, line, and sinker,” Hermione marveled.
“Well, I’m a good liar, you know.”
“Yes, but I actually think your lie was out of character. The Draco I knew for six years would have done every evil thing he could think of to sabotage my relationship with Ron.”
“Well, that Draco fell apart in the sixth year you knew him and suffered terribly in the war. I hope that I’m a better person now.” Draco smiled wickedly as he went on. “Besides I figured the relationship would fall apart soon enough, once he started telling you not to attend university and when he started up his relationship again with Lavender Brown.”
“A relationship that clearly falls in the wrong category,” Hermione laughed.
At that moment there was a knock at the door. Hermione looked around in a bit of a panic. “Go hide in my room. I really don’t want to have to explain to Viktor Krum why Draco Malfoy is in my suite.”
Draco rolled his eyes, but proceeded to her room without protest.
“Hermy-own-ninny! It’s me, Viktor!” she heard Viktor yell through the door.
“Hermy-own-ninny?” mouthed Draco silently, laughing.
“Shut up and hide,” Hermione whispered, gesturing him back into her room, a big smile gracing her face.
Victor took Hermione to a very nice restaurant that specialized in Scandinavian food. Hermione was telling Viktor about everything that had happened to her since they last saw each other at Bill and Fleur’s wedding, when Draco burst in upon them.
“Draco! What are you doing here? This is unbelievable!” Hermione was outraged.
“I’m sorry, Hermione, it’s not what you think. We have to leave, immediately. I’ve already sent your things back to Hogwarts. McGonagall sent us an emergency Portkey.”
“What is it, Draco? What’s wrong?”
“My father’s escaped from Azkaban.”
Author's Chapter Notes:
Hermione and Draco visit WUD and Hermione reconnects with Viktor Krum.