Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter though I told my little cousins otherwise. :D

Author's Notes: I would like to thank marilynGR for making all of the pretty petals of this fic (winkwink) and dreamersrequien and Tearlit for catching all my weird wordings. This couldn't have been possible without them!

Mistaken

Perhaps he had made a mistake, Harry Potter thought as he glanced at the pale face of his best friend, who was sitting across from him. It was breakfast and she was absentmindedly playing with her food. There was an unmistakable feel of sadness about her, enveloping her like a bad aura. She was trying to hide it, and was doing a great job of it; he had to give her credit for that. However, Harry could see it in the way she would stare blankly into space for more than a healthy amount of time and the subtle way that her shoulders slumped.

"Hermione?" Neville, who was sitting a couple of seats down from them, said. "Can I see your transfiguration notes? I spilled some juice on mine and I can't read some of the points I wrote."

"Sure," she said while digging her bag for her notes. Her voice was pleasant but there was something just not right about it.

"Thanks," Neville said, reaching out for them and smiling at her.

"No problem," she said, attempting to smile back.

'See, she's fine,' a part of him tried to convince himself, but to no avail. In reality, he couldn't help but notice that the smile didn't quite reach her eyes. He looked around at Ron who was rather focused at eating and quite oblivious to what was happening to Hermione.

"Hermione?" said Ron with a mouthful of food. "Why aren't you eating?"

At least he had noticed that, Harry thought. He saw Hermione's eyes widen a little.

"Oh," she said, looking down at her plate, "well I'm not really hungry…"

"Really?" said Ron. "Give it here then. Don't want the house elves to think that you don't like their cooking."

Leave it to Ron to throw an irrelevant comment and be totally tactless in the process.

Harry was preparing himself for some fireworks but she didn't even retort to that like she would normally. She just passed her plate to Ron, who attacked it as soon as it was placed in front of him.

"I don't need to calm down! I'm calm!" a voice echoed loudly from across the Hall.

Harry glanced at the Slytherin table where the outburst came from. It was the core of the problem, Malfoy, and it looked like he was shouting at one of his friends.

He stood up abruptly and left.

"I wonder what's bugging him," Ron said, watching Malfoy leave.

Harry looked at Hermione, who was also watching Malfoy, but with a sad expression of longing in her eyes.

"Yes, I wonder," Hermione whispered under her breath.

Harry closed his eyes and ran his hand through his hair.

Actually, maybe he had really made a mistake.

---

Maybe, maybe…

What a suffocating word.

Maybe Harry Potter was wrong. Maybe Draco Malfoy actually liked his best friend and maybe he was just paranoid. No, that couldn't be. Malfoy would always be, first and foremost, a Malfoy in heritage, a born exploiter. He only liked Slytherins and purebloods, and Hermione –sweet, know-it-all Hermione- was definitely neither of those things, Harry thought silently as he was walking alone in a deserted corridor.

To his unfortunate surprise, he saw two tall boys, what looked to be Blaise Zabini and Malfoy, were heading his way. Panicking, he reacted swiftly with reflexes born from years of avoiding his cousin and hid in a nearby empty classroom just in the nick of time. He must have been on the bad side of luck today, though, because to Harry's utter horror it turned out that they were headed in that very classroom.

Fortunately enough for him though, the two Slytherins were deeply absorbed in a very animated conversation and didn't notice him slip under the teacher's desk.

"Why don't you tell me what's really on your mind Draco?" Zabini said silkily.

There was a spider under the table with Harry. Thankfully, Harry didn't have the same fear of spiders as Ron did as the result of spending his childhood living in the Dursley's cupboard. So he simply ignored the hairy, eight-legged bug that would make his best friend shriek like a banshee and instead, focused on listening to the conversation at hand.

"She broke up with me," the blond young man said grudgingly. Harry was surprised to distinguish a clear shade of hurt in his voice.

"Who? Granger?"

So Zabini knew, Harry thought.

Well, that was interesting.

It seemed like Malfoy gave a silent affirmation because Zabini said in a playful manner, "It's alright mate, I'm sure there are other girls out there who are dying to date you."

Malfoy however didn't feel like joking around, because his reply was anything but humorous, "Damn it, Blaise, I really liked her. She wasn't like the rest, 'Oh, Draaaaco this' and 'Draco that'… She was different, she was special," he exclaimed, and his normally controlled voice made a falsetto noise.

"Well, Little Ms. Special dumped you, so get over it. I heard Greengrass is single again. Maybe what you need is a little distraction."

Malfoy apparently gave Zabini a look that meant he didn't want a 'little distraction', but to wring someone's neck, because Zabini quickly added, "… Or not. Sorry mate, just trying to cheer you up."

Silence from Malfoy so Zabini continued, "…and clearly it's not working. What did she say to you anyway?"

Malfoy took a deep breath. "She said that everything was a horrible mistake and that she didn't know what she was thinking. She said that it was over between us," he said with a voice empty of any emotion. "I let her leave. I-I was such a damn fool. Me, and my stupid Malfoy pride."

"Mr. Malfoy, Mr. Zabini twenty points from Slytherin for being out of class. Mr. Malfoy as Head Boy I expected better from you." Like a whip, Professor McGonagall's stern voice was added in the conversation, startling all three of them.

"I'm sorry Professor," Malfoy said quickly. "It won't happen again."

Harry heard footsteps leaving the classroom. He stayed under the desk with the spider as his sole company for a few more seconds.

He needed time.

He needed to think.

He needed, for once in his life, to admit he had made a mistake.

---

There was one problem though.

He was proud, only as a Gryffindor could be. He didn't like to admit to mistakes that he made. He just didn't. So he took the easy way out and chose to ignore what he had overheard. He ignored his best friend's melancholic mood and said to himself that they would get over it in a few days.

Once again, Harry Potter was wrong. How he hated himself for that, and for being too weak to gather up the courage necessary to make his friend smile again. "They will get over it," he told himself over and over again.

To Harry's dismay, nothing got better and they didn't get over it. It just got worse. Hermione, even though she still got top marks in class, had stopped raising her hand and talking to anyone without being spoken to first. Malfoy never really smirked anymore. Though they would ignore each other when they'd meet, Harry would see the two give each other longing glances when the other wasn't looking. It was obvious, clearer than the sun. Even Ron picked up on it.

"He's watching us again," Ron said one day during lunch, munching his potatoes noisily, "I think he might fancy you, Harry."

Harry grunted in reply. Things were getting out of hand, and Hermione had just ducked her head to hide the suspicious shimmer in her eyes and became very interested in the silverware.

On the fifth day of all of this moping Harry had finally had enough. Denial wasn't an opinion anymore. He was wrong. So? He would take the consequences. They couldn't be as bad as what was happening now. Malfoy was in danger of losing his title of Head Boy as he just about snapped at almost everyone and had called Pansy Parkinson a cow in front of her face. She was screaming for over half an hour, and it was rumored that they vandalized the Slytherin common room. While that wasn't such a bad thing, seeing his best friend go through another day of misery was enough to make him want to do something about all this.

He had just taken a few deep, calming breaths and left the Great Hall to find Hermione, who had stopped going to the Great Hall completely, when he, to his astonishment, was approached by Blaise Zabini.

"Potter," he said curtly. "We need to talk."

Seeing as this was probably the first time in history that Zabini had ever said two words to Harry, he was very amazed that Zabini had came up to him. Nevertheless, Harry masked his surprise and curiosity under the nonchalant nod he gave the other boy.

"Okay, here is the thing," Zabini said, one they have set off. "I want you to fix the mess that you have made."

"What are you on about?" Harry said knowing full well what it was.

"Don't play coy with me, Potter; I know you know about them," Zabini said, pursing his lips.

Harry said skeptically, "How do you even know I can fix it?"

"Well it's pretty obvious what you did," Zabini said simply. Harry raised an eyebrow to this and Zabini continued, "You convinced Granger into breaking it off with him."

Sensing that he was on the money, Zabini ranted on, "Honestly, you're the only other person who seems to mope almost as pathetically as Granger and Draco."

Harry was now going to comment on the last bit but Zabini wasn't finished. "Also because I made Draco do the same thing when I found out about them," Zabini said sounding somewhat sympathetic.

"I made him break up with her," he said. Harry blinked up at him, speechless.

"You might remember it," Zabini now said grinning. "It was during that time in Halloween, and Granger was screaming at Weasley for something."

Yes, Harry did remember that time. It was during the annual Halloween Dinner and Ron was teasing Hermione about the house elves and how much time they had to cut out the pumpkins and whether or not she thought it would be a good idea to start S.O.P., Support the Oversized Pumpkins. Needless to say, Hermione wasn't very impressed.

"Blimey!" Harry exclaimed, borrowing the Weasley's word. "They've been together for that long?" That had happened during Halloween and it was now mid-May.

Zabini nodded, "Yes, they have. After a few days I realized that I made a mistake and convinced Draco to apologize to her."

Harry was still taking all of this new information in when Zabini continued, "And now if you don't mind I want you to fix what you have done. If they keep this up, it's going to get ugly. Malfoy hasn't slept for days."

"And Hermione hasn't eaten properly since," Harry muttered.

"Granger is a good friend. She will do anything for you, even if it means having to sacrifice her happiness." Zabini said bitterly. "But what you did, is costing the happiness of my friend. Since I am a good friend as well, I am telling you, assuming that you are a good friend, you might want to suck up your goddamned Gryffindor pride and fix it, Potter."

---

So, yes, Harry Potter had made a mistake. Everyone does from time to time. At least he was going to fix it, and that's what counts.

He found her at her usual table in the Library.

"Hermione," he said, gathering all the Gryffindor courage he had in him. "I need to talk to you."

"Just hang on, Harry, let me finish this paragraph," she said, writing furiously and not bothering to look up.

After a couple of minutes Hermione breathed out, and looked up from her work. Harry noticed that her eyes were bloodshot, a sign that she probably wasn't sleeping much either. She said, "Okay Harry, what is it that you wanted to tell me?"

"I need to talk to you…" Harry took a deep breath, "About Malfoy." He said in a hushed tone.

She dropped the book she was currently leafing through. Sighing heavily, she reached down to pick it up.

"It's alright, Harry," she said from under the table. "I already broke it off with him," she softly added, resurfacing from under the wooden furniture.

"I know and that's what I want to talk to you about."

She busied herself with moving the books spiraled around her. It seemed to Harry that she was biting the inside of her cheek, and he felt a sudden pang of guilt. He braced himself, and told her what he had been planning for the entire morning.

"You two belong together. I'm sorry, Hermione. I'm sorry that I made you break it off with him. I was wrong, Hermione. I made a mistake," he said loudly, his eyes, conveniently, were avoiding hers.

A few moments passed when nothing happened. Then, two arms were wrapped around his neck, and they suddenly were laughing loudly, breaking the library's silence and not giving a damn.

It was good to be able to fix everything.

---

The next day, Hermione was absolutely glowing.

She ate a full breakfast (to Ron's dismay) and was talking to everyone, cheerfully.

He glanced at the other end of the Hall to see whether or not Malfoy was doing better and, in fact, he was. He was smirking stupidly at everyone. Typical. So very typical, he thought, as his lips formed a smirk too. Everything was right. Everything was as it should be.

Harry was so happy he just might have joined the Society of Over-sized Pumpkins.

The End

Author's Notes: Review or I'll...I'll make you join the Society of Over-sized Pumpkins (SOP)!