14. When Baby Birds Are Pushed, They Fly

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Never will.

Note: I hope you like this one. And if you've been debating on when would be the perfect time to leave a review, this is it. I really want to hear what you think about this chapter. It's a turning point.

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Chapter 14 – When Baby Birds Are Pushed, They Fly

"Ginny?"

"Yes, Hermione?"

Hermione looked at her friend. "What is essence of myrtleweed used for?"

Ginny scrunched her nose and frowned. "Myrtleweed? You mean that stuff you delivered to the mean man a week or so ago?"

"Yes."

"I have no idea."

"Do you have your potions books I could see?"

"Sure," said Ginny. "They're on that shelf behind you ."

They were sitting in Ginny's room, knitting scarves for the members of the Order. It had been nine days since Hermione had failed to deliver the vial on time; twelve since she'd left the Edge; and it only occurred to her today that she didn't know what potion Malfoy had been brewing or what it was for. She also knew nothing about myrtleweed, having never used it in school. Hermione flipped through all of Ginny's books, but it wasn't even mentioned once, let alone used in a potion. She frowned as she closed the last book.

"Nothing," she muttered, frustrated. Her thoughts jumped to the book she had tucked under her bed at the Edge,the book of Potions ingredients Malfoy had lent her. She glanced at her watch; half past two. They wouldn't be there, as it was midafternoon and they would be training; she stood.

"I'm going to find out," she said.

"About the weed? Why?"

"I'm curious," Hermione said. She didn't bother to grab her bag; she wouldn't be long.

"How are you going to find out? You're not going to go see him to ask, are you?"

"No, of course not. Where do I always go when I'm stumped?" she asked with a smile, gathering a scarf and her coat.

Ginny grinned and rolled her eyes. "The library."

"To books; yes. I'll be back in a bit."

ooo

As Hermione suspected, the house was empty. Still, unable to keep herself from doing it, she tiptoed through the drawing room and up the stairs. The house felt colder than she remembered, but maybe it was just her imagination. Maybe it was how she felt about the house after everything that had happened there recently. She quietly shut the door to her room and pulled out the book, which was right where she left it, and opened it to the index.

Essence of myrtlewood; page 423.

Hermione hesitated. If she looked up the ingredient here, she risked running into Malfoy. But it was his book; what if he'd know it was no longer in the house? She juggled the options in her mind, of either leaving with the book, or staying, and finally decided to risk taking the book back to the Burrow. She crept downstairs and through the house, adrenaline pumping, and was about to turn the doorknob, when she heard her name.

"Granger."

Hermione's hand froze with the knob half-turned, her eyes widened, her heart started thumping, and she dropped the book. She bent to pick it up, but he said, "Leave it."

Draco didn't look at Hermione as he stepped past her and opened the door. "Follow me," he commanded in a voice that promised consequences if she didn't.

She watched as Draco stepped off the porch and started walking west, his robes billowing out behind him, toward the woods on the edge of the property. His figure got smaller and she stared, unsure of what to do. As she tried to calm herself, Hermione puzzled over his actions. He hadn't sounded angry, or mean, just stern when he spoke to her. What on earth could he possibly want with her now?

But he never looked back, never looked to make sure she was behind him.

Eventually, this fact, coupled with a growing curiosity that finally overtook her fear, bested her and she took off running after him. When she caught up to him, he said nothing and did nothing to acknowledge her presence; he kept walking, with no expression on his face.

The way he walked, with absolute purpose, reminded her of someone who was about to do something they didn't want to do, but had no choice in the matter. His path and mind were set ahead of him, and he didn't waver, or hesitate, or second-guess himself. She thought about what he'd said about choice during their fight. Perhaps, if she'd looked closer, paid more attention, as Harry had during sixth year, she would have recognized the look on his face at that moment.

After ten minutes of walking in silence, Hermione's mind stopped thinking and started racing. "I'm walking toward a creepy patch of woods with Draco Malfoy, Death Eater, ruthless killer," she thought, starting to panic a bit. "Not smart, Hermione," She scolded. Images of movies she'd seen flashed through her mind, of things that happened in forsaken forests, and she looked at the stony man next to her.

"Yes?" he drawled, without moving his gaze from directly in front of him.

"Where are we going?" she asked, trying not to sound scared.

"The woods."

"I guessed that. Why?" she asked, "Are you going to kill me?"

Draco stopped dead in his tracks, whipping his head around to stare at her.

"Kill you?" he asked, an amazed expression on his face. "Why would I – if I wanted to kill you, I'd have done so." He turned around, again expressionless, and resumed his path. "No need to bring you out here."

"I know," she said, her fear abating slightly. Of course he wasn't going to kill her, he'd had ample opportunity in the last two months. She felt almost silly for thinking it, but her fear spiked again once she saw the edge of the trees getting much closer. Then suddenly, they were surrounded by trees, but Draco just kept walking deeper into the thick trees.

"Uhm, Malfoy? We're here, in the woods, in case you hadn't noticed," she said. She kept jumping between fear and annoyance at such a pace that they had merged into one emotion.

"I am aware."

"Then why are we still walking?" Hermione stopped and crossed her arms.

Draco stopped, shoulders slumping and turned to face her. "Because I haven't decided what to say yet."

Hermione stared at him.

He took a deep breath, set his jaw and his posture, and started. "Okay. Fine. Here goes. This isn't working."

Hermione blinked. "What's not working?"

"This," he said, pointing to himself, then her. "Us."

She tilted her head to one side, gazing intently at him. "Oh no, Malfoy, are you breaking up with me?" she said, dripping sarcasm from her lips. "Are you going to tell me it's not me, it's you? That we're just too different to make things work?"

"Shut it, Granger," he said through gritted teeth with a terrible glare. "We're supposed to be working together and all we ever seem to do is fight. It's counterproductive and it's not going to help in this effort."

Panic spread through Hermione. "Don't you dare!" she cried.

He frowned. "Don't what?"

"I will NOT let you wipe my memory!"

Draco stared at her hard for a second, then comprehension dawned and he dismissed her statement with a wave. "I'm not going to Obliviate you; relax. I'm just saying – we tried to be civil, but look where that got us. We go from being somewhat decent, then screaming at each other. What happened two weeks ago was… not good. It led to you leaving the house and Harry and I rely on your ability to be seen in society. We can't go purchase potion ingredients whenever we need to; which is why I asked you to bring the myrtleweed."

"But I was late," she said, realizing just how much her absence might have affected him and Harry.

"Yes. Though that is neither here nor there at this point."

She sighed. "Look, I get it, okay? You and I - we're oil and water. Fine. I am perfectly capable of working at home. I don't know why you wanted me here in the first place."

"What? No, wait, I'm not asking you to leave." He let out a frustrated sigh. "I'm trying to tell you that we – " he took a deep breath before saying " – need – you here. Without you, this doesn't work."

"Then what do you want?" she demanded, unwilling to think about what he meant.

"Can't you – can't we – try again to be civil?"

Hermione regarded him with curiosity. Did he really drag her out here, a mile from the house, to say that?

"I don't know."

"Why not? It was your idea in the first place, if you remember."

"It's just…" she started, but she bit her lip, not sure what she could say next. She still hadn't fully formed a conclusion about him yet.

"Whatever it is, just tell me."

"It's you, actually." What she meant was that she couldn't understand him, that she couldn't come to terms with him. She still battled to reconcile the discrepancies in his behavior.

Hermione watched Draco closely. Something flashed over his eyes briefly at what she said, something a lot like pain, but then his eyes darted to look over her shoulder. He was staring intently and she thought he had spotted something behind her. Hermione turned around to look, but saw nothing. When she turned back around to face Malfoy again, he was striding past her. He walked perhaps ten feet, then bent down to look at something on the ground. Hermione, already impatient, rolled her eyes and followed, reluctantly.

When she approached Draco and the mysterious object, he was frowning, concentrating hard on what he saw. On the ground, just in front of Draco, was a bird. It was green, with yellow patches on its wings, and its head was cocked oddly to one side, and one wing was stuck in an extended position. The other wing flapped uselessly as the bird tried to get away from Draco.

"Broken neck," he said, frowning, trying to calm the bird.

Hermione gasped and put a hand to her mouth.

"Wing too, looks like."

Tears sprung into her eyes. "Oh, that's awful. Just – kill it. End its misery."

Draco's head whipped around to look at her and when their eyes met, Hermione felt a lurch in her stomach. His eyes were burning with something she didn't understand. Draco said nothing, only turned back to the bird. He reached down and grasped the bird with one hand, holding it still but not hurting it, either. He pulled out his wand with the other hand and waved it over the bird a few times, muttering indistinctly. Hermione watched as the bird starting flapping both wings, again trying to get away, and then calmed under Draco's voice.

He continued speaking quietly, and Hermione saw the bird's head start moving. It chirped, and slowly Draco removed his hand to free the bird. He stood; the bird flew to land on his arm, completely healed. Hermione saw him smile at the bird, and again she felt a lurch, only this time it was her heart. It was a real smile, one of those rare ones that no one gets to see. She wasn't sure he even remembered that she was there, and she felt like she was intruding on something deeply personal. He muttered something; the bird chirped again and flew away. Draco watched it until it was out of sight.

He sighed heavily and turned to face Hermione slowly, as if it took every ounce of strength he had to force himself to look at her. Then slowly, he brought his gaze to meet hers; his eyes were still on fire.

"Granger – " he started.

"Okay, Draco. I'll make this work."

He stared at her, then simply nodded and started walking back toward the house; Hermione followed.

As they walked next to each other in silence, Hermione's mind was spinning. When Draco healed the bird and set it free, several things happened in her all at once. The huge wall she'd built, from which only a single brick had been pried loose earlier, came crashing down, and it was a mighty fall. Not one brick remained touching another. He had looked so… human.

Then wave upon wave of emotion struck her, scrambling to reach just a little higher along the beach, eroding the sand as each returned. The biggest wave, the strongest, was the one that screamed to her the obvious – that she had absolutely no idea who this man was. After their fight, Hermione had come to the realization that he was not the boy she knew years ago, but she still thought she knew a little bit about the man he'd become. In that moment of pure innocence, she knew she was wrong, so wrong.

How could someone who fit his profile – pureblood, Death Eater, cruel, evil, arrogant, spoiled (the list could go on for some time) – care enough to do what he'd just done? The answer, which flashed in Hermione's face, was, he couldn't. So one side of the equation was false, and since she'd just witnessed him healing the bird, something about the profile side was wrong. He would always be a pureblood and he was a Death Eater. Those were undisputed. She would have argued until she couldn't speak to prove he was cruel, but cruel people don't heal wounded animals. They twist the knife and watch the life fade from the wounded. Evil? She didn't know. Arrogant? Still, a little, but that was harmless, comparatively. Spoiled? Undoubtedly, though his humble home and furnishings made her question that as well. Hermione continued down a list of all the adjectives she could find that she had always associated with Draco. Each one was either still true but relatively harmless, not true at all (based on evidence she'd gathered since the end of July), or she couldn't decide because she knew so little about him.

Another wave was the one that had haunted her over the last twelve days – that she was a little prejudiced too. She had formed a picture of Draco Malfoy and refused to deter from it, even though, if she would admit it to herself, she had started to notice things about him that gave her pause. But until their fight, she quickly quashed such thoughts, since they didn't fit with her Draco Malfoy picture.

She decided to wipe the slate as clean as she could. After all, the man killed her parents. But Hermione didn't hate him anymore; she hadn't since the previous Christmas. Because he'd been right, when he told her that hate ate away at people; she knew it to be true firsthand. That cold, winter day had changed everything, and she'd decided then that she wouldn't allow Draco Malfoy to control her life, which she had allowed him to do however unaware he'd been.

A clean slate. Tabula Rasa. Every thing he did would leave a fresh impression. She wasn't so naïve as to think they would never fight, or argue, or glare, or slip back into old feelings. But her entire outlook was different. She would try to approach him without the baggage she had carried with her for so long.

Hermione wanted a clean slate with him too; it only seemed fair. Though Draco had not apologized, she was able to recognize his actions for what they were: his best attempt at an apology. And she appreciated the effort all the same. She, however, was quite able to say those two simple, impossible words, and had plenty of experience at using them.

"Malfoy?" she said, breaking the silence about halfway to the house.

"Hmm?"

"I'm sorry."

"About what?"

"Mentioning things that I agreed not to mention. It won't happen again."

Draco had not kept his mind idle during the silent trek either. Though he didn't completely understand just exactly what had happened in the woods, he knew that something had changed between them. The silence, the distance, was almost comfortable now, whereas before, even on the walk to the woods, it had always been oppressive. It had been as if there was a giant elephant in the room, staring at them, watching them, eyes darting back and forth between them. He felt no elephant now.

He thought of the bird. It was purely coincidental that he had noticed it struggling to move, frightened at being unable to do something it had always been able to do – fly. As he'd knelt before the bird, something in his heart was stirred and he even forgot that Hermione was standing just behind him. He had been that bird once; he had been nearly broken beyond repair when someone unexpected had reached out to heal him. They were on his mind when Hermione interrupted with her call to relieve the bird of its suffering. Again, he thought of himself as he turned back to look at the bird, and he was thankful that there was someone who hadn't given up on him, who hadn't thought him a lost cause. He didn't want to think about where he would be if that night had never happened.

And then she'd called him Draco. He wasn't sure what to think about that. It sounded so strange coming from her, and he wondered if she'd ever spoken his name aloud before. Probably, as he was responsible for her parents' death, and it had been her job to hunt him down. She didn't stutter, or hesitate; she said it with confidence and a quiet strength. There was conviction in her voice when she said his name. 'Draco;' not 'Malfoy'. 'I'll make it work.' In the almost two weeks since their blow-up, Draco had realized that he thought she was the more frequent disturber of the tentative peace between them; was she admitting fault on her part with her simple statement?

He was by no means at ease with Hermione; he was never really at ease with anyone, except Harry now, which he found odd. But he didn't feel unsettled with her as he always had. Perhaps it was what he'd done to her that kept him from relaxing, kept him expecting her to lash out irrationally and rip his heart to shreds. She hadn't done that, though, and perhaps now he could believe she never would. Of course, there were all the secrets he still kept from her, which he vowed to himself to reveal to her some day. When that day came, he believed the unsettled feelings would return, and he believed she would indeed lash out at him. However that day was still in the distant future, so he refused to let the thought of it ruin the light feeling running through him.

"So," he started, unsure of himself, of how to actually talk to her. "Were you stealing my book?"

Hermione laughed, a pure, heartfelt sound, that only served to further lighten his mood and he cracked a small, guarded smile.

"No, I was just borrowing it. I fully intended to return it."

They were nearing the house, and unconsciously, they both slowed, as though they were worried that by entering the house, they would break the peace they had found in the wide-open fields and the forest, and that everything would fall apart. Inevitably, however slowly they walked, they still reached the house.

Draco stopped on the porch. "Where were you taking it?" he asked.

"The Burrow. I wanted to look up something." She didn't ask about the myrtleweed, or the potion he'd been brewing. It still felt like at any moment, their fragile, new bond would shatter.

"So you'll be going, then?"

Hermione nodded. "Ginny is expecting me soon. I'm already later than I said I'd be." He nodded, looking at the floorboards underneath his feet. "And I promised her I'd go to Diagon Alley with her tomorrow."

Draco's head shot up, worry creasing his brow. "Alone? Just you two?"

"No, Ron will come, and Charlie. Molly never lets us go anywhere alone."

He exhaled, relieved. "Good."

"And, well, then I'll need to return your book."

"Okay," he said slowly.

"I suppose I'll be coming back soon."

"Okay," he repeated, and he couldn't help but let another half-smile escape. Quickly, before she might notice or it turn into a full-blown smile, he opened the front door and stepped in to get the book from where it had fallen when she dropped it. Then he came back outside. "Here."

"Thanks." Despite the awkward silence, neither of them felt awkward. "Uhm, later," she said, not wanting to say goodbye, or see you, or anything familiar. They weren't there yet, not close really, but they were going that way.

"Yeah," He said, then turned and went into the house, closing the door behind him.

Hermione sighed and stared at the door for a few seconds. Now that she was alone, she let out the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding and had to grasp the porch rail to steady herself.

If she had tried to guess what might have happened when she went after that book, she never in a million years would have pictured what actually took place. It felt good; and she felt a lightness in her that had never been there before. Almost as if, were she to try and walk, she'd fly instead.

ooo

A/N: Thank you, as always! Remember, I want to hear your thoughts! I tried to make chapter 13 (Bird's Nest) "Reviewer Appreciation Chapter" and respond to each person's review. For those who left anonymous reviews, THANK YOU! Each and every one of you make me happy to write. :)