"He's gotta be the tragic figure standing in the rain, mourning the loss of his beloved. So down comes the rain, right on cue." 

Sunday, 4:14 p.m.

It was still raining. 

How long it had been raining for was something Hermione couldn't judge.  She had probably been awake when it started.  But she just couldn't remember.

She'd seen a movie once, some crazy animated thing where people were flying around a futuristic space that was just like Earth.  Maybe they had even been on Earth.  Maybe not.  And the main character had, at some point, said: "The flow is more important. . . not power.  You have to be like the water."

Hermione thought back to that quote now.  When she first heard those words they had struck has as very honest, very believable.  You have to be like the water.  You can't try to dominate everything; you just have to go along with life sometimes.

She felt like the water now, like the droplets that were pelting the sides of the school.  She felt as though she had once been a river, or something, not particularly strong but with a good sense of what she was flowing towards. 

But now, instead of that, she was just thousands of tiny beads of water.  Tumbling forth erratically . . . and eventually she would reach the end of her short lifespan by smacking hard into some sort of obstruction.  

A crack of thunder filled Hermione's ears and she sank slowly beneath the effervescent bubbles in her bathwater.

Admittedly, she'd already hit her roadblock.  Everything she had been clinging to these past few months had exploded into millions of tiny, meaningless particles this morning.

Only a few short hours ago.  The last true moments of her delusional fantasy life as a Sex-Goddess-in-training.

Sunday, 5:52 a.m.

"Excuse me!  Excuse me, what do you think you're doing?"

Hermione let her eyelids flutter slowly, painfully upwards.

"Huh?"

"I asked you what you're doing."  The angry, domineering face of an angry, domineering fifth-year prefect loomed into Hermione's line of vision.

"What are you talking about?"  She struggled to sit up, exhaling sharply while becoming aware of the pain and stiffness that apparently had overtaken her body.

"Do you know where you are?"  The prefect looked down at her reproachfully.

"Um, no," Hermione mumbled sarcastically.

"Well, just to uh, let you know, you seem to have fallen asleep in the hallway.  I suggest you go back to your room and freshen up, to say the least, before a teacher comes by and gives you detention."

"I haven't done anything wrong."  Hermione was still struggling to shake the cobwebs away.

"You were obviously out of your room all last night.  Plus, your, uh, outfit suggests that you weren't exactly taking part in something entirely wholesome.  It's a miracle that you haven't been caught, well, not until now that is-"

Hermione gasped suddenly and lunged forward, clinging to the girl's robes to keep from smacking to the ground.

"Malfoy.  Draco Malfoy."  She blinked hard in an attempt to distill the bitter pain swirling through her skull.  "I need to see him.  It's important.  Can you tell me where he is?"

The girl tried to shake free of Hermione's grasp.  "Isn't he in Slytherin?  Why don't you check there?"

"Slytherin.  Right."  Hermione scrambled to her feet and took off down the hallway.

"Sure."  The prefect stood in Hermione's wake, shaking her head.

Sunday, 6:23 a.m.

She had gotten lost.  More than a few times.

The Slytherin dormitories seemed to have disappeared.  Hermione shook her head again, forcing herself to think.  It was crazy, sure.  She wasn't even supposed to be down here.  And there was no way to get through the door to the common room, much less find where Malfoy slept.  And that prefect had been right, of course.  It really was a miracle that she hadn't been caught.

Of course, it was still early.  Anyone who got up this early had to be mad. 

But she needed to find him.  It was a desperate situation.  She couldn't remember much about the night before, but she had a feeling that he would have the answers.

"Oh, hello.  You're here for the reading?"

"What?"  Hermione spun around.  A small, pale looking girl who had to be in her first or second year stood nearby, gazing unblinkingly at Hermione.

"The reading.  You look like you could really use some answers."

"No, no.  I'm fine."  Hermione forced her eyes in the opposite direction.  Was this a dream?  What was this girl talking about?

"My room's just through here.  It will only take a second for me to get things ready."

"Oh.  Okay."  Hermione followed, suddenly very interested in what this girl had to say.

"I like your dress.  It's very unofficial."

"Thanks."  She became aware of her outfit for the first time.  The same red dress from before, or so she thought.  What had really happened?

"I'm Astrid."  The girl gestured to a seat.  "This is my room.  I apologize for the cold.  I never wanted to be in Slytherin, you know.  It really is just so frigid down here."

"You're in Slytherin?"  Hermione snapped back to reality. 

"Of course.  Just look around."

Astrid sat down and lit a bunch of candles with her wand.

"So, Melanie.  Please just tell me what you're here to find out."

Hermione tried to stifle a yawn.  "Isn't it a little early?"  The sun hadn't even risen all the way.

"You made the appointment, Melanie.  I woke up solely to accommodate you."

"Thanks."  Hermione glanced around distractedly, wondering what exactly she'd gotten herself into.  "Oh.  Who's Melanie?"

"You are."  Astrid looked confused.  "Melanie Locks, right?  You talked to me last week about a private reading?"

"I hate divination, you know.  I dropped out years ago."

"This is nothing like divination.  I truly have a gift."

"Okay."  Hermione felt so muddled at the moment, all she could do was go along with it.  "Tell me what you see."

"You have something.  Of his, I mean."

"Of whose?"  Hermione's head began to pound again.

"The boy.  The one we spoke about."

"Oh.  Sure."  Hermione unclasped the necklace from around her neck, one she'd gotten for her birthday.  "It's his.  He gave it to me."

"This isn't his."

"Yeah it is."

"It says 'To Hermione.  Love, Grandma.'  Would you like to tell me who Hermione is?"

"Oh.  She's my, um, friend.  I must have taken that by mistake, or something."

"This necklace bleeds heartache onto my hands."  Astrid closed her eyes.  "Hermione is experiencing so much pain right now."

Hermione raised her eyebrows.  This was exactly why she had quit divination in the first place. . .

"Yeah.  Sure."  She rubbed her aching temples. 

Astrid opened her eyes again.  "Tell Hermione to be wary of her choices.  She can either put out the fire with ice or burn the water." 

"That makes no sense.  You can't burn water."

Astrid sighed.  "It guess it doesn't make sense, really.  It will mean something personal to her, I assure you."

Hermione sighed.  If only she knew.  "Well, wow, I've got to go.  Thanks."

"But Melanie, we haven't talked about you yet."

"It's cool.  I'll come back."

Hermione hurried for the door, suddenly desperate to get out.  She cast a last glance back at Creepy Astrid, a slight chill running up her spine.

She sighed once the door had closed behind her, taking in the sights of the common room.

"Well, I never expected to see you here."

Hermione jumped.  The temporary distraction Astrid had offered slipped out of her mind as she remembered her purpose, her reason for coming here.

"I bet you didn't."

A blast of thunder sounded all of a sudden, and Hermione realized that it had never truly been light out.

"So, what are you doing here?"

"I need you to tell me what happened last night."  Hermione followed Malfoy, who lifted himself out of an armchair and started to walk away.  She realized how little he was wearing, just his boxers, and forced herself to be sick at the sight of him.

"Don't you remember?"

"No, I don't."  She tried to keep her voice low.  "Look, it's almost time for people to wake up.  Can't you just tell me what went on so I can leave and get back to my room?"

"I haven't been to sleep at all, and I'm really very tired.  Can't we do this later, or maybe, never?"

"After what you've done to me, don't you think that you owe me some sort of explanation?"

"Why is everything always about you?" He paused to think with mock drama.  "So you got a taste of the way things really are and it's just too much for you.  What do you want me to do about it?"

"Things aren't really the way you think they are. You live in your own little fantasy world, Malfoy, where people are your playthings and reality is just a boring and uninteresting possibility that you hope you'll never have to deal with."

"Look, Granger, I'm done with you and your psychoanalysis.  I've tried my best to get rid of you but you just keep coming back for more."

"I'm coming back for answers!" she cried, following him into his room.  "Because I know what happened with us on Saturday morning.  And I don't know much about what happened Saturday night, but I woke up today in a part of the school that I had never even seen before."

"And?"

"And I'm curious to know how I got there."

"And you think I have the answers?"

"I know you have the answers."

"I thought you didn't know anything."

Hermione blinked, wincing as her head practically contorted itself with pain. 

"I know that this has been the worst, longest weekend of my entire life.  Starting Monday I never want to have anything to do with you ever again.  So I have maybe. . . seventeen hours to rid myself of you."

"Seeing as how you have so much time, you won't mind if I sleep a while?"

Hermione ran her hands through her hair.  "I do mind, actually.  Just tell me what happened."

Her desperation seemed to affect him; he paused and turned to look at her. 

"Here."  He grabbed a bottle from his dresser and handed it to her. 

"What is it?" she sighed, exasperated.

"It's for your head."  Draco shrugged.  "It might help."

Hermione quickly uncorked it and swallowed the liquid in one gulp.

"I hope that wasn't actually poison in disguise."

"I'm not that kind of person."  Malfoy reached out for the empty bottle, which Hermione quietly dropped in his hand.  She felt relaxed all of a sudden and dropped into a chair.

"Have you ever seen the Thomas Crown Affair?" she rested her chin in her hand.

"No."  Malfoy sat on his bed.

"The old one, I mean.  There's this scene with Thomas Crown and this girl, um, Vicky, I think.  Well, they're in his room and they start kissing and everything starts swirling and all these colors form and start swirling right along with them. . . like some sort of psychedelic love scene."

"So?"

"So, I never understood the movie.  I must've been too young.  But all I know is that Thomas Crown was a thief of sorts, some bored rich guy who cheated the system for fun.  And Vicky was the only girl who could figure him out.  But of course she fell in love with him."

"And?"

"And that's all I remember about last night.  A lot of swirling, a lot of color.  And I have a strange feeling I may have finally figured you out, too.  But I can't remember."

"You didn't find out anything about me."

"So what's the problem?  Why can't you tell me?"

Malfoy leaned onto his bed, blinking as another crack of thunder sounded. 

Hermione sighed.  "I remember that when we first decided to do those lessons, we said that it wasn't going to change anything.  You would still be you; I would still be me.  We wouldn't change and we wouldn't owe each other anything."

"I don't owe you anything."

"That's not the point.  The point is that I have changed.  Weather or not I want to admit it, you changed me."  Her words had suddenly fallen to a whisper.  "I just want to know if maybe I changed you, too."

"You didn't."  Malfoy responded automatically.

"So what happened?"

"Nothing."

"Look, I came here to find you, so you could tell me the truth.  Not to make myself the victim here, but you did try to destroy me Saturday morning.  And I should be crying my eyes out in my room, hating you and wondering how one person could just be so cruel.  Like I always have before."

"So why aren't you?"

"Because it was different.  I could see it in your eyes.  You were scared." 

"It wasn't like that at all."

"Come on, Malfoy.  You didn't know what was going to happen and it scared you."

"Don't give yourself so much credit, please.  It takes a lot more than someone like you to scare me."

"I don't think that's true.  I really don't.  I also don't believe that you had that all planned out from the beginning.  I've tried to feel sad about it, I really have.  I even did for a while.  But ever since I woke up this morning, it's all just sort of disappeared.  You're terrified of yourself, and you're terrified of me.  I know that now.  You're scared that you could be happy someday.  And then how would you get what you wanted?"

"Believe it or not, some people don't want to skip off into the sunset next to their true love and live happily ever after.  Some people have to face their realities.  And what I would consider reality is definitely not what people like you consider reality.  I'm not scared of facing my life.  I'm just scared that someday I'll have to be afraid of mindless, do-gooding people such as yourself."

"No one is fearless, Malfoy."  Hermione slid out of her chair and sat on the opposite corner of the bed.  "Would it scare you if I, maybe, started to take off my dress?"

"Of course not."

Hermione lifted the material up her thighs, sliding it inch by inch until it was on the floor.

"It doesn't scare you that I'm practically naked?"

"Well, I've definitely never had a naked girl on my bed before, that's for sure."

"That's not what I meant."

"Well, then, what did you mean?"

"I just meant that if I were you, I'd be a little scared.  What if I asked you to make love to me right now?"

"I would say no."

"But why?  Is it because I'm one of the only girls in the school who doesn't idolize you?  Because I wouldn't be completely submissive to your so-called magic?  If you couldn't call all the shots, would you honestly be able to please me?"

"Let's hope we never have to find out."

Hermione slid her body until it was positioned right next to his. 

"I remember what happened last night."

"But you said-"

"I don't remember it too clearly."  She bit her lip.  "But I remember telling you that I loved you.  I remember that, definitely."

"I'm sorry you have to have such a memory," he said, sarcastically.

"I wasn't even scared to say it.  The only thing I was scared of is that you wouldn't feel the same way."

"So why would you come all the way to my room if you already had the answers?"

"Because I wanted the truth."  Hermione looked him in the eye.

"So do you love me?" he raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"I don't know.  I would hate to think that I do.  Because where would I be then?  We can't even be in the same room without trying to hurt one another."

"So why are you constantly subjecting yourself to the pain of my presence?"  Malfoy turned his eyes to meet hers.

Hermione shrugged.  "I'm hoping for the answers, I guess.  Not just about last night.  Because I know what I did and I know what we almost did.  Again.  And I know that there can only be complicated discussions and arguments to follow, things for us to say so we can temporarily remove ourselves from the situation."

"And?"

"And I don't care anymore.  I don't care if it's painful, or embarrassing.  I keep coming back to you because I'm hoping that maybe. . ." Hermione felt her throat closing up.  "I'm hoping that maybe you'll kiss me with the pretense of hurting me, and somewhere along the way you'll just forget about it."

"You want me to love you?"  His words fell clumsily into the dimly lit silence.  Hermione had never felt more nervous.  Why was she doing this?  He obviously had only the intent to hurt her, and here she was, opening herself up again and leaving plenty of space for new, deeper wounds. 

"I know that you don't love people."  Hermione felt extremely tiny next to him.  "And I know that you don't want people to love you.  But you're the only person I've ever been totally honest with.  And, to tell the truth, it's really not all bad.  I guess it's just unfortunate that it had to be you."

He shrugged, and Hermione grew tense as the silence between them expanded.

"Maybe you should go."

"Yeah."  Hermione bit her lip again.  She had been expecting it, of course.  But a tiny sliver of her mind thought that maybe he would feel the same way.  She reached out to pull her dress off the floor.

"You're not who everyone thinks you are, you know," she whispered quietly.  "If there's one thing I've learned at all, that's what it is."

"So, who am I, then?"  His tone had grown slightly fiercer.

Hermione shrugged.  "I was hoping that you'd let me find out."

"People don't just 'find out' about me.  It doesn't work that way."

"Nothing ever works any way for you, Malfoy."  Hermione reached for the doorknob.  "As soon as I could think clearly this morning, I knew this was what I had to do.  No matter what you said to me, I knew what I had to say to you."

"Stay away from me," he said, after a moment's pause.  "Just stay away from me."

"Sure."  Hermione pulled open the door.  "Of course."

She turned to leave, feeling numb and careless.  Hopefully, maybe, he would have the decency to keep this a secret.  If not, so what.  She was gone from this school in three weeks.  It didn't really seem to matter anymore.  Her last chance at something to really remember had just slipped out of reach.

Sunday, 2:29 p.m.

The walk back to her room had been a long one.  Thankfully, no one had been sitting in the Slytherin common room.  No one had stopped her in the hallway.  She really had become invisible.

Not that it mattered.  She'd had enough of love.  Three times in a row, and all it had done was break her heart over and over and over again.

A stack of unfinished homework waited for her, and Hermione lifted page after page, moving and writing methodically, unemotionally.

Ron had someone.  Harry and Ginny were together.  It was too much to think about.  Even worse was the fact that she had no one to talk about it with.  No one in the school would ever look at the situation from an unbiased viewpoint.  She had fallen for the enemy.  Someone who had made the lives of lots and lots of people miserable.  Someone who seemed to have no heart and no conscience.  Someone so thickly armored that not even a confession of love was allowed in.

And last night was so blurry in her mind, but it seemed as though he had almost wanted to be with her.  Right before things had gone black, hadn't he said something?  Something good? 

Hermione shook her head.  She couldn't remember.  And that was okay; it was really better that way.  She curled her knees up and rested her chin on them.

She wished she could talk to Ron.  Even though it would just be talking, she wanted to hear his voice again, and lose herself in his eyes.  If only he could love her again. . .

Hermione shook away the thought.  She'd grown out of that love a long time ago.  Even with the note he'd left her yesterday, she couldn't feel bitter or angry towards him.  They were friends, hopefully.  Their friendship had always been important. 

A tear started to roll down her cheek.  This whole weekend had just been too much to handle at once.  At least Malfoy had let her go easily.  She appreaciated the gesture, and just hoped it wouldn't be too long before he would do something to make her hate him again.

But it had to be soon.  Hermione knew she couldn't leave Hogwarts with this harsh feeling inside of her.  She couldn't even explain what had made her say those things, why she had treated the situation as though he were a normal boy and they were together under normal circumstances.  But nothing was normal when she was around him.

Hermione heard the rain spattering against the school; she closed her blurry eyes and wished that the sky would turn dark and angry.  She wished that it would storm, over and over again.  Forever.

*

It's still not over, really.  Maybe two more.  I really think that'll be it.  But I actually have it planned, so that's pretty cool.  And. . . I imagine I must credit the films mentioned, the T.C.A. and the Cowboy Bebop movie (always a pleasure, definitely), and The Sandman, which I believe is a comic book.  I don't remember.  The only thing that sticks in my mind is the quote.