This is a Hermione/Draco story. It is not one of those fantastical, annoyingly perfect (and completely fictitious) accounts of an unrealistic coupling of Hogwarts students. This is about the real Hermione and the real Draco.
Pages lay scattered haphazardly on her desk. A large book was opened to a complicated diagram, and a quill was stuck in the middle of another, even larger book. A scroll was open and half a paragraph had been written under the heading "The Biddelia Charm." A puzzled expression came over Ron's face.
"This doesn't seem like Hermione, she never leaves homework unfin- Harry? What are you doing?"
Harry was struggling with the latch as he tried to open one of the common room windows. His attention was focused completely on the grounds below. At the sound of Ron's voice his expression became distracted, even a little annoyed.
"I just saw…errr…there" The window swung outward and Harry hoisted himself onto the ledge so that he could peer straight down to the base of the tower.
"What is it?" Ron left the desk and went to Harry.
"But I saw – Oh, I thought it was, never mind."
"Who? What'd you see?" Now Ron was on tiptoe, trying to catch a glimpse out the window from around Harry. Harry hopped down from the ledge and strode to the desk.
"It really doesn't make sense that Hermione would leave all this out, come on Ron, let's go check the library."
Ron closed the window and followed Harry out of the common room, wearing the same expression of confusion. Harry had been very distant lately. Now that he thought about it, so had Hermione. They both seemed so preoccupied, and Ron hadn't had a real conversation with either of them in days. He had been spending increasing amounts of time with Seamus and Dean. Hermione kept disappearing and Harry was always in a hurry in order to get to the common room and pore over thick texts until the early morning. Ron wondered how it had taken him so long to notice, but then again his on-off relationship with Lavender had kept him busy over the last few weeks. Were they all starting to drift apart?
They walked in silence to the library, both thinking hard.
Harry felt slightly guilty that he had decided to go to the library with the main purpose in mind of finding some more books and not to find Hermione. He was so behind. How would he ever finish by the end of the year? Hermione was the least of his worries. First he had to somehow shake off Ron so that he could search the shelves on his own.
"I'll go check in between the shelves, you can go to the tables, she's probably working on some other homework," Harry said to Ron, heading quickly in the direction of the bookshelves. If he could only find the right book…