DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter. JKR does!

Summary: It's the seventh year, and Draco has a rather unexpected conversation with Hermione. It changes his entire perspective about everything he had learned till now.

...xxx...

Draco Malfoy wasn't exactly enjoying the last day before Christmas vacations started. He'd just gotten a letter from his good-for-nothing father that he had to bring Pansy Parkinson along with him to Malfoy Manor. Draco huffed in irritation. Like he wanted to spend anymore time with that soul-sucking slug! Draco didn't have five minutes of peace when she was around, and now he was supposed to take her to his bloody house?

And then there the other thing that he was dreading... Lord Voldy Moldy himself was coming for a Death-Eater-get-together party, and perhaps to stay there for the remainder of the holidays. Guess even the Dark Lord needed break from all that murdering. Draco didn't fancy having to share a bathroom with He-who-shall-drive-Draco-Malfoy-insane. And he had to sleep in the room next to Lord No-nose-Mort himself, and listen to him cruciate the pillows at night. How was any of this fair?

In his preoccupation, Draco hadn't concentrated on where he was going. He found himself standing in front of the library. The ruddy library! He was about to turn around when his eyes fell on-

Oh, Miss Bookworm is here as well? A slow smirk formed on his face. Annoying the hell out of Hermione Granger was a favorite hobby of his... it would lift his mood drastically to see her annoyed. And how could he miss such a perfect opportunity, when she was all alone, no Scar Head and Weasel Bee to protect their little princess...

Grinning mischievously, he sauntered into the library, giving Madam Pince one of his most charming smiles. Granger was sitting at the back, her head bent down, and writing furiously on a piece of parchment, the candlelight falling on her face. Draco had to admit, her hair had become so much more nicer than the monster she used to carry around during their younger years. And she looked kind of pretty too..

Draco reached her table, and sat down opposite her, smirking. She didn't look up. His smirk broadened.

"Well well, if it isn't our bushy haired Miss. Know-it-all." He drawled, leaning back. She looked up, and Draco expecting a witty comeback was surprised when she just ignored him and continued with her work.

That didn't suit well for Draco. He was already irritated, and ignoring an irritated Draco Malfoy was probably the WORST. IDEA. EVER. It was a bruise to his ego. A small one, but a bruise, nonetheless.

"So, Granger, where are Potty and Weasel?" he asked. She didn't even react to that. Draco's smirk dipped a little. He noticed her eyes looked a little red in the yellowish light of the candle. Had she been crying? Draco shrugged it off. Not like it really mattered.

"Did you and Weasley break up?" he asked shrewdly and laughed when her shoulders stiffened slightly, but she continued her work with increased vigor.

"Funny you even care about that lousy idiot." he grinned maliciously. "How I had dreamed and dreamed about this day!" He sighed happily, enjoying watching her shift uncomfortably.

"Maybe even he realized how much mud your blood carries, eh?" He asked her slyly. Granger set down her quill and looked up at him. Finally, he thought.

She took out her wand, and Draco for a moment was afraid that she was going to hex him. He really was. Wasn't that punch she threw at him during their third year, enough for a lifetime? Why hex him into oblivion?

But he needn't have worried. She pointed her wand at her wrist and muttered something. Her skin tore, and a deep gash appeared at her pulse point, oozing blood, which dripped down her hand and onto the table, blotching the parchment in crimson.

Draco's eyes widened in horror. Had she gone insane?! "What the fuck, Granger!" he hissed, staring at her, like she'd sprouted another head. She probably had...

Draco was itching to to do something about her hand. He couldn't stand all that blood dripping down like thick, scarlet liquid... He looked up at Granger, she was smiling. Smiling. Perhaps she had finally lost it.

"What's the matter Malfoy?" she asked, still smiling. "Surprised that my blood looks a lot like yours? Without any mud in it?" With another wave of her wand, the wound healed, and the blood cleared up but there was still a scar on her wrist. A reminder...

She collected her books and her bag and her parchment (still red), and stood up. She sneered at him like she never had before, and walked out of the library. Draco sat there, dumbstruck. What in the name of Merlin's most saggy Y fronts had happened just now? He stared at where she had sat just a few moments ago, his mouth slightly open. His heart was beating a little faster than it normally would. Her words resonated around his skull, refusing to be forgotten. The sight of her blood burned at the back of hit mind.

Surprised that my blood looks a lot like yours?

Without any mud in it?

"Shit." he cursed under his breath. He had just been smacked in the face and he hadn't even realized. He, Draco Malfoy, had been outsmarted by the mere likes of Hermione Granger. His father was going to kill him. At least, if his father found out. But, nobody had witnessed what had happened, apart from the two of them, so no chance of that...

But still! He was put down by a mudblood! A pathetic, know-it-all, bushy haired, mud-

Surprised that my blood looks a lot like yours?

Draco groaned, and put his face in his hands. This had been a bad idea...A very bad one. Instead of finding some peace and tranquility and satisfaction...he looked as though he was petrified, and he was pissed off and even more irritated than before. Her words were like poison, slowly invading his senses, and mingling with his blood and diffusing into his cells... They were a virus, that slowly, but surely, started changing everything he had been bought up with, mutating his principles, and changing the very rules his father had drilled into his mind.

That was when he realized, as much as he hated to admit it, that no, he hadn't been surprised by seeing her blood looking a lot like his. Like everybody's. He'd just been slapped awake. He'd probably always known, somewhere in the depths of his mind, that this entire "Pure blood" mania was bullshit. But he had just chosen to ignore it. How very Slytherin...

Now, however he saw Granger in a different light. His vision seemed to have broadened. It no longer mattered whether she had muggle parents...she was just a clever witch. The cleverest witch of their age. And with that he did something he had never done before. He admitted that she was better, far better than him, not only in academics, but as a human too.

She saw everyone equally. Even house-elves and centaurs and Werewolves...Why didn't I think like that?

She never cared about blood; just knew that it was red and that it flowed in every magical and non-magical being. Why hadn't I realized that?

Draco stood up from his seat and left the library. The corridors were dark and silent, the moonlight falling in beams from the high windows. It was past curfew, he knew, and he would get in trouble if he was caught, but he didn't care anymore.

He stopped and glanced out of one of the windows. The grounds looked dark and silent, and the lake shimmered silver. He was deep in thought, thinking about all the things his father had taught him. All the wrong things, probably. He didn't hear the soft footsteps approaching him, the swish of a cloak, the soft murmur of 'Lumos.'

"Draco." He nearly jumped out of his skin. He turned. It was Snape, his hair hanging in curtains around his shallow face. "What are you doing out of bed, this late?"

Draco didn't answer. How could he explain? His head was burning, and he had thousands of questions he wanted to ask...so many things he wanted to clear from his mind, but what to ask first? What my father has taught me all these years, is it right? Is that how I'm supposed to live? Like I'm superior to everyone else? Why must we fight on the Dark side? Why must I be chosen to do things I don't want to do?

Snape sighed. "You do realize, had it been any other teacher, you would have been in detention by now? Go back to your dormitory; you were lucky it was me."

Draco stood, his tongue tied. Then he voiced what had been nagging him the most; had been eating him from the inside. "Does it make a difference, being Muggle-born?"

Snape gazed at his student for the longest time ever, and Draco was worried that his teacher thought he had gone insane. Until-

"No." He said, quietly, and there was an emotion in his eyes, that Draco had never seen. A spark of heat, somewhere in the depths, unlike the usual cold, dead, black eyes he had always seen. "It doesn't make any difference."

...xxx...

Just something that popped in my mind! I felt like I should involve Snape in this too, because Lilly had asked him, many years ago, hadn't she? Whether it makes any difference being Muggle-born?

Hope you liked it!

For Dramione,

La icepopsickle xD