"Five Candles Hermione Granger Lit"

Disclaimer: DO NOT OWN!

I.

Even though night had fallen and the sky outside was pitch black, Hermione couldn't sleep. Instead, she sat atop her bed, amongst her soundly asleep friends. Her hands smoothed over the cover of the leather bounded book lying on her lap while her fingers traced the words that were carved in silver.

She shouldn't feel so intrigued by him. She shouldn't…but she was. She couldn't understand why and she had ceased to try. She had thought so much over it that her head pounded like a herd of hippogriffs had trampled over it.

Right now, she didn't want to think about 'whys'. Right now, she didn't want to think that it was only three days ago that she had slapped him right across the face — the first sign of physical violence she had shown in a long time. Right now, she was just a curious girl in possession of his diary.

She shouldn't open it. She shouldn't, but by Merlin she wanted to.

It was against everything that her parents had thought her. It was underhanded, it was sneaky and it was downrightly humiliating for her to want to know more about him. She chastised herself for acting like a stalker.

No, she wasn't in love with him. That would be illogical and terribly unrealistic of her. No, she knew better. She was just interested to know how his mind worked, how he could be so cruel with ease. She just wanted to satisfy her growing curiosity. That was all.

She decided to go ahead with it. She needed light, but she couldn't use magic. Somebody —Lavender, Parvati or Merlin forbid, Professor McGonagall— was bound to find out.

She opened the drawers of her bedside table and fumbled through it softly. No torchlight, only a candle. But it would do.

She lit it and held it in front of the diary. Once again, her fingertips traced the already familiar words carved onto the cover of the book.

Amat victoria curam.

Victory favors those who take pains.

She didn't know how healthy it was for him to hold such a motto close to heart, but she wanted to. Hopefully, there'd be an answer in this book she held in her hands. She licked her lips nervously.

She flipped a page.

Property of Draco Malfoy was written in neat cursive at the bottom of the page.

Her fists clenched together before she blew out the candle.

She snapped her eyes shut tightly and stuffed the diary under her pillows.

She couldn't do it.

--

II.

Her footsteps echoed through the hallways. Just another fifteen more minutes and she'd be able to go back to her common room. Patrolling had been a hassle at first, but turned out to be one of the most relaxing times for Hermione. It made space in her day for introspection, speculation, and random pondering. She hoped that Harry wasn't waiting up for her. There were questions that she didn't want to answer.

She didn't know how or when he'd found it. To be honest, she had forgotten she still had it. She had long since gotten the diary —and most importantly, him— out of her system. It had, after all, been three long years since she'd impulsively sneaked his diary out. Many other things had occupied her thoughts since then.

She could probably tell everything to Harry and he would probably believe her. But she didn't want to. To talk about him would be inviting him back into her thoughts, into her mind. And she didn't want that. Not after how she had made herself force him out of her mind.

She sighed.

There was one last classroom to check.

She slowly opened the door. It was dark and had many desks, just like every other classroom she had checked. But she heard a small shuffle.

"Who is it?" her voice rang throughout the classroom. She gripped her wand in hand lest someone tried to attack her. One couldn't stay friends with Harry Potter for so long and not pick up on some defense instincts.

For a moment or two, there was only silence. Then…

"Relax, Granger. It's just me." He stood up to face her from the opposite side of the room.

"Malfoy, what are you doing here?" Why him? Why him? She tried to ignore her slowly accelerating heartbeat. Not him, not today, not now.

"Nothing illegal, I can assure you." He smirked though it was clear that he hadn't put much effort in being malicious, as usual.

"I'm not sure if I can trust you," she replied, though she lowered her wand, clearly not thinking of him as a threat.

"You can't."

His eyes bore into hers and she was speechless. She had a feeling that he wasn't only speaking of that. There was something different about him, something that she couldn't put her finger on. He was paler than usual, yes, and he did look haggard, but that just wasn't it. There was something in his eyes: a glint of hopelessness, of desperation, of fear.

"Malfoy," she started, her voice coming out in a soft murmur, "What happened to you?"

He didn't reply and she thought that he didn't hear her, until he snorted and twisted his lips up into a sneer. "Nothing you can worry your big, bushy head over, Granger." He sat down again and for the first time that night, Hermione realized that he was trying to read in the dark. "Now take off house points and run along. Leave me alone."

She contemplated doing as he asked her to, but then thought the better of it. Instead, she conjured a single candle and lit it for him before levitating it onto his table.

If he was shocked, he didn't show it. He simply said a quiet, "Thank you."

She didn't reply and chose to close the door behind her, leaving him to his privacy.

As she walked back to the Gryffindor Common Room, she let herself think, for the first time in years, that maybe her interest in him hadn't really faded.

--

III.

Everyone was shooting spells at each other. She could feel the magic in the air. She could hear shouts and screams. She could feel the desperation. This was it. This was the end.

She could feel the blood oozing out of her forearm. It was coming from a huge gash from an earlier duel with Dolohov. She let out a frustrated grunt, angry that she let him injure her so much. She needed to heal herself first before she could continue fighting. She had to continue fighting. She ducked spells as she continued to run. The Room of Requirement was too far away. At the rate of her blood loss, she wasn't sure if she could make it that far.

And so she just charged into the nearest room possible, crumbling onto the floor as she did and locked it with spells, warding it as best as she could wandlessly.

"Granger!" She turned. It was him. She tried to stand up but couldn't. "Stay still, Granger, I'm not going to attack you. What happened to you?"

"Dolohov," she gritted out. Her breaths came out in small pants.

"Where is your wand?" His face was masked with concern and she couldn't help the tears that were welling up her eyes.

"He…he broke it." She had meant for it to sound forceful, to show her hatred at him, but it came out in a pitiful whimper.

He stepped closer, crouching down in front of her, and tore the remains of her sleeve off, inspecting her wound. "It's Dark Magic. I know how it works. I can try to heal it." And he did. In that moment, as the pain slowly ebbed away from her arm and was replaced with a soft tingle of numbness, she was thankful that he was there. With her.

It didn't matter that he was on the Dark side, while she fought for the Light side. It didn't matter that he was a Slytherin and her, a Gryffindor. It didn't matter that he was Draco Malfoy and she was Hermione Granger.

"Thank you."

He didn't reply but rather sat down, back-to-back against her.

"Why aren't you fighting out there, Malfoy?" she asked softly.

He didn't answer her question and posed another, instead. "Are you scared, Granger?"

"Dreadfully," was her honest reply.

"Then why are you fighting?" he asked.

She smiled, even though he couldn't see. "I have to. I'm Hermione Granger."

"I have to, too. But I'm not."

"You're not Hermione Granger. It's different… You can't possibly understand," she sighed.

She had thought of the exact same question before, the one that Malfoy had asked. She had slept on the question for nights and had always come up with different answers, each bearing a symbol of its own. She had also wondered. What would it be like to just live a normal life? A life that wasn't lined with fights and war and magic. Would it have been more peaceful?

Would it have been easier, in retrospect, if she weren't Hermione Granger, Harry Potter's best friend? It would, most definitely. But she was. And there was nothing she could do to change it.

"And you're not Draco Malfoy. You can't understand why I'm not fighting."

They made quite a bizarre sight, sitting back to back against each other in a dark classroom, talking philosophy to each other while a war was raging outside the door.

She laughed.

"What's so funny?" he asked. She could hear a tint of annoyance in his voice, as though he thought that she was laughing at him.

"You're Draco Malfoy and I'm Hermione Granger. And here we are, ditching the war."

Her laughter was infectious and he let out a chuckle.

"Thank you, Hermione Granger," his voice was soft but unwavering, "for making the war not so sad."

She felt her heartbeat accelerate. But her eyes drooped a little. "I have to go back out there."

He nodded and stood up. "I know. You're Hermione Granger." He offered his hand to her.

She took it, trying (but failing) to ignore the electricity that ran up her arm, and he pulled her up. "You'll need a wand. Take mine." He put it in her hand. She couldn't refuse him. She needed to fight.

"Thank you, Draco Malfoy," her breath hitched as she took his Hawthorn wand, "for saving my life." She looked at the wand in her hand. This whole situation seemed so surreal. He had willingly given up his wand to her. Draco Malfoy.

"You can't continue sitting here in the dark," she said, conjuring a candle and lighting it for him, also nonverbally casting a protego totalum on him. It was the least she could do. "Good luck."

He nodded.

She started walking away.

But then he grabbed her hand and told her softly, "Stay alive, Granger."

She squeezed his hand in acknowledgement. She gave him a slight nod and slipped her hand out of his before leaving.

--

IV.

There was something about today that was different in a very significant way. She just couldn't figure out what.

Until she saw him and everything clicked.

When Hermione Granger walked into the bar that day, she hadn't expected to see Draco Malfoy. In fact, she'd never expected to see him ever again. After the war, he had disappeared. Some people thought that he was dead, but she knew better. She had owled his wand to him a few weeks after the war and had received a brief thank you note. She wasn't exactly sure where he went, but rumours had it that he went to Venice. For what, she didn't know, but she could do without knowing.

She walked up to him, remembering what day it was. It would seem that his birthday wasn't as happy as she wished it would be for him. Determined to help, she conjured a cake with a single candle on it.

She lit it nonverbally. It would seem that she was getting better at it.

"Happy birthday, Malfoy."

To his credit, he didn't even bat an eyelash, much less show signs of surprise. "Granger."

She held the cake out to him, the single lit candle atop it still burning. "Make a wish and blow it out."

He laughed cynically. "I don't believe in wishing upon candles, Granger." His face held a blank façade.

She cocked her head to one side. "Why not?"

"Because…" he paused, as if trying to phrase his sentence properly, "Because five years ago, there was a girl who always lit candles up for me. Every time she lit a candle for me, I'd make the same wish over and over again. It never even came close to coming true and I never saw the need to believe in that silly ritual again."

Hermione blinked. "What wish did you make?" her voice was soft, inaudible, even, but he managed to catch it.

He kept his eyes locked onto hers and in that moment, a thousand emotions passed between them. The silence was beginning to scare her. After a moment, he looked away. "It doesn't matter anymore."

She stared at the candle that she had lighted on the cake.

Could it be…?

He hadn't said it out loud, but from the way he was looking at her, from his tightening —almost painful— grip on his wineglass, she could guess. It sounded illogical, terribly unrealistic. But the hope in her heart flared.

"It could matter."

He didn't say anything.

So she set his cake onto the table and left her name card next to it. "Happy birthday again, Malfoy. Whenever you're ready to start believing in wishing upon candles, you know where to find me."

And she left the bar with a heavy heart.

--

V.

She sat on the window ledge and traced nonsensical patterns on the windowpanes. It was raining heavily outside. She sighed when she realized that she had been unconsciously writing out his initials. Rubbing it off quickly, she reasoned to herself that it had been stupid of her to start blabbering out about wishing upon candles. And she was now tracing his initials… What was she? A hormonally imbalanced teenager?

She replayed the scenario in her head many times. Each time, she replaced the 'make a wish' line with something else. Each time her imagination played out, she wondered if it could have ended on a happier note than it had that night.

By Merlin, she hated him. She hated the fact that he was able to invade her mind, even after years of absence. She hated the fact that one line from him could turn her life into rumbles. She had tried to convince herself that she didn't feel anything for him, that it had just been a stupid insignificant schoolgirl's crush ages ago, and that she could do much better than him.

But it hadn't worked! It had already been two weeks since that fateful night when she had met him and not a night had passed where she hadn't seen his face in her dreams. It was aggravating, to say the least.

Knock knock.

Her eyebrows furrowed in curiosity but her mind was glad for the short reprieve that she would get from thinking about that blasted man. She hoped it was Ginny. She needed someone to talk to.

She stood up and opened the door. A heavy breeze blew onto her face, and her eyelids fluttered shut as she shivered slightly. As she opened her eyes, she gasped in surprise. "Malfoy!"

"Granger," he started. His voice was on the shaky side, but still held its steady control. He cleared his throat and said, "I need you to do me a favour."

She raised an eyebrow but stepped away from the door to let him in. He was soaked from head to toe. He raked a hand through his blond hair that was plastered to his face as he walked in. "What happened to you, Malfoy?" she asked in slight amusement.

"I wasn't too sure where you lived," he admitted with a sheepish smile, "I had the address, but the roads have changed quite a bit since the last time I was back in England."

"Couldn't you have conjured an umbrella?" she asked smilingly.

"That's the problem. I've never been quite good at conjuring inanimate objects up. That's why I need your help."

"Oh?" She handed him a fluffy white towel and he wrapped it around himself.

"I need you to conjure a candle for me."

Her breath hitched. His grey eyes held her caramel ones in a firm gaze.

"I'm ready to make my wish."

She did as he said. The slight shake in her hand was more than obvious. He reached up to still to her hands, clutching it tightly between his hands. "Why the sudden change?" she whispered softly.

"Because five years ago, I wasn't good enough for the girl who lit up my life with her candles. Five years later, I'm a changed man. I can make her happy now, if she'd let me."

With a smile, she nonverbally lit the candle in her hand.

With a grin of his own, he blew it out.

As he inched closer to her, her breaths came out shakily. She quietly asked, "What did you wish for?"

His lips hovered over hers. "This." And he closed the distance with a soft kiss.