"Malfoy, I'm not so sure—"
He lifted his eyes slightly to meet hers, pleading with her wordlessly. "I just want to talk, nothing else. Please."
Hermione still looked skeptical, but sighed, following him up the stairs in the darkness to the top of the Astronomy Tower. She wondered why he'd wanted to talk here of all places, here where he had attempted to kill Dumbledore only a couple years ago, here where he'd fallen from grace as their old Headmaster had fallen from the Tower.
"I've been thinking a lot lately, and I plan to tell Potter and Weasley if I get a chance," and if I can pluck up the courage to say this to them, too, he added in his head. Though he hadn't given her a break for the six years they'd been at Hogwarts together either, Draco felt that he could talk about this to Hermione easier than either of her two friends.
"Well?" she prompted, looking over at the door, but whether she was trying to leave or simply fearing them getting caught, Draco couldn't tell.
"I wanted to apologize for what happened." He took a deep breath, steeling himself to continue. "I realized too late that the side I took – that my family took – wasn't the right one."
"Glad to see you finally acknowledge that, Draco," Hermione replied, her voice cold and clipped, but he noticed she'd called him Draco, not Malfoy like she usually did. Though her tone wasn't soft, using his first name softened the sentence considerably.
"Like I said, I've been thinking about it a lot this past year. The war was hard on me too, don't act like it was just your side that suffered losses."
"I never said—"
Draco raised a hand, and Hermione fell silent. "I know. I just want to know if things can change with us. I'm not looking to become close friends," he added, a shadow of a smirk flitting across his face briefly. "But we've matured, I'm sick of the rivalry. You can pass this on to Potter and Weasley, too." Draco decided to add that as he realized he wasn't sure he'd ever want to admit this to them himself.
She nodded somewhat reluctantly, though she couldn't help but agree that this petty fighting had gone on for far too long. "You're right. Time to move on."
x
Sort of a pre-Dramione if you squint? For ffiendfyre and nataliedomers on tumblr, who each won 200-word drabbles from me, so I combined it and wrote one at about 400 words.
Also for the Fanfic Scavenger Hunt Competition (trio era) and the Represent that Character Challenge.