Chapter 1
A Night With Him
Today is my seventeenth birthday. I am a sixth year with my birthday early in the school year. School only started a few weeks earlier, but a certain blond has already given me a fair bit of grief.
Over the summer my hair had lost some of its bushiness and my petit figure had filled out in certain places. And unlucky for me all the boys have noticed, except the one I was hoping would.
My name, Hermione Granger, and everything I knows about myself will change before midnight.
I turn down a hallway and stops just short of running straight into the headmaster. He had just narrowly escaped being killed last year and to everyone's surprise he decided to continue being head of the school, of course Dumbledore is almost always doing things that surprise people.
"What are you doing here, Miss Granger?" he said calmly.
"Sorry sir," I said to him, "I was just-"
Only now do I realize that I should be in class right now. He chuckles, and for a moment I have the feeling he could hear my thoughts.
"I was just going to the bathroom," I told him as I saw the door to the girl's bathroom behind him.
"Well I don't want to keep you waiting any longer than I'm sure you already have," he smiles as he walks past me.
I decide that I don't have much of a choice but to walk into the bathroom. I walk in and notice quiet whispering coming from the other end of the room. I quickly duck into one of the cubicles and close the door quickly and quietly. I quietly climb onto the toilet seat so if whoever it is walked by they won't see me listening to them.
"Nothing is going to change," this was a male voice.
"Of course it can," a female voice replied, "you just have to-"
"I just have to what, Myrtle?" he half yells, "You don't know her like I do!"
"Wait, did he just say Myrtle?" I whisper to myself.
I carefully look over the top of the cubicle and sure enough I'm standing in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. I hear footsteps from the other end of the room and duck down just before whoever it is comes around the corner.
"You must be calm," she says with a giggle.
"What is so funny?" he yells at her.
"You must stay calm," she says again, "you will never get her if you don't stay calm."
"Myrtle," he says softly, "you don't get it."
"Tell me."
"She is amazing," he says, "she is smart, caring, she is amazingly beautiful. And this year," he takes a deep breath, "I just can't believe it. I am having trouble holding these feelings back now."
I hear his footsteps moving away from where I am hiding. I chance a look over the top of the cubicle. I barely see the top of his head disappear behind a wall. His blond hair disappears and I sink down behind the cubicle wall.
"Malfoy?" I whisper, "I wonder who he is talking about?"
"This girl is making you lose your backbone," Myrtle says to break the silence Malfoy had created.
"I don't care," he says, "she is amazing. But who am I kidding, she will never love me. She is a Gryffindor. I can't do anything because I'm a Slytherin."
"You wouldn't know how to be a Slytherin if it bit you Malfoy!" Myrtle yells at him.
She appears through the door I am hiding behind. She looks at me for a moment before turning away from me.
"Oh Draco," she says playfully, "look who I found."
His footsteps echo through the whole room as he comes closer to the cubicle I had been hiding in.
"The door is locked," he says before I hear the swish of his wand.
The door flies open and I take a deep breath.
"What are you doing here Granger?"
"I should be asking you that," I say getting off the toilet I had been standing on, "this is after all the girl's bathroom."
"How much did you hear?"
"I will tell you if you tell me one thing."
"What?" he says as he steps toward me.
"Who were you talking about?"
"Why do you care?"
I look away, "I don't know."
"Just do me a favor and forget everything I said," he says as he turns away from me.
Without thinking about what I am doing I reach up and put my hand on his cheek, turning his face toward me. He looks down at me. And for the first time I notice how amazing his eyes are. While they are mostly grey, they have a slight blue color to them. I have only once been this close to him; it was in our third year when I punched him, and for some reason I am starting to feel bad about it.
"Are you ok?" he asks, bringing me back to the present.
"Yeah," I say, "I was just thinking."
"What were you thinking about?"
"I'll tell you," I tell him, "if you tell me who you were talking about."
He looks away and starts to walk towards across the room.
"Where are you going?"
"Away," he looks over his shoulder at me, "so I can forget this conversation."
"Wait, please."
"What?" he says loudly.
I step toward him slowly, taking in a deep breath preparing myself for what I am about to do. I lift up onto my toes and press my lips softly to his, my eyes closed. I pull away shortly and walk quickly past him. I pushed the door of the bathroom open.
"Wait," I was only halfway down the corridor.
"What?" I yell loudly as I turn toward him quickly.
"What was that for?"
"Well, you won't tell me who you were talking of," I tell him, "so I won't tell you why I did what I did."
"You," he says simply.
"What about me?"
"That's who I was talking about," he says, "you."