A/N: I know, I know I'm writing too many stories at once, but I have a good excuse! This story was created mainly because my friend complained about me not writing enough Harry Potter fanfiction. Also I really just wanted to mess around with the idea of Hermione meeting Draco briefly before they were officially introduced. Basically he comes in the compartment after Hermione introduces herself, but before Harry and Ron continue their introductions. In case you didn't read the summary: this is a vignette story and each chapter will represent a specific moment in time. Sounds like fun, right?
Song for this chapter: "Miles's Story" from the Tuck Everlasting soundtrack (it's instrumental and magical, perfect for this chapter)
Chapter 1: First Encounter
It was strange because before he introduced himself Hermione knew him. Draco Malfoy. His pointed pale face and slicked back blonde hair were hard to forget. He does not register his own knowledge, even as surprise blooms across Hermione's face, just stands and deals with Harry Potter, hero of the wizarding world, and that red-haired boy. Later they would morph into Harry and Ron, her two best friends, and she won't be to remember when they were anything else. But just then they were only their appearances.
Hermione is still shocked at seeing Malfoy again…there in the same compartment, headed for the same school. For so long she has been used to seeing him in the company of a different backdrop and it is hard to picture him anywhere else. However her stomach drops a little at his feigned ignorance. This sort of thing has happened before and she has lost friends because of it. Eventually those friends pretended their way into honestly forgetting her. She does not want Malfoy to do the same. For though she may not be important enough for him to remember, she cannot forget their first meeting, as insignificant as it seems. The conversation was long and their words twisted into grand shapes of ideas the longer they spoke with one another. What is stranger is that the conversation took place in the muggle world, on a street near her house. Hermione, being herself, looked up his name on a lark as soon as she got her letter in one of her many, many books—this one on the genealogy of pure blood families. Curious, she finds that he, too, is a wizard, a member of one of the older wizarding families known for their connection to the Dark Arts.
"No," Harry Potter responds to Malfoy's offer, his words cutting into her thoughts. "I don't think I will thanks." Malfoy looks angry. He does have a temper. But underneath…Underneath the swagger and the slicked back hair Hermione knows that Malfoy possesses a glimmer of a conscience. Why else would he sit down next to a girl crying on the street? Especially considering who he is and where he's from. Even now Hermione wonders why, on the day when she was crying after a particularly rough bout of teasing, she looked up to find grey eyes staring at her and a terse "Well out with it. Who's the idiot you're crying over?" Somehow this rude question prompted her to answer that it was not one single idiot but a whole group of them who tormented her for being different. And from there it progressed until she lay nearly her whole life story at his feet and he shared bits of his own experience. Through their words their personalities melded and similarities spun through their tales, illuminating their parallel lives. From then on he would turn up around the place they had met, on the street, one block over from her house, even one time in the library. They all appeared to be by chance, as unconnected and amazing as the first. How strange to encounter him again. Even stranger to know that in real life, where people are not separated from their responsibilities and histories, he's not nice at all. For all his halfway-kind, meaningful thoughts spun into brilliant words, in the current setting, his arrogance, overshadows past fond conversations. In this world, one that seems to be more his than hers, he demands where he once requested, threatens where he once soothed, and insults where he once fell silent out of kindness. Now, seeing him in his element, she is disillusioned; he is everything she would have thought him to be. But then...in the muggle world was his persona just an act? she wonders. Even on her own turf he was never wholly the nice guy; his kindness intercepted by his own sense of smug arrogance. In Hermione's eleven-year-old world, and from what she has read the wizarding world concurs with her paradigm, any sense of wrongness makes a person wholly bad. Regardless of any nice times they may have shared Hermione is not willing to be so openly overlooked; she is rankled by his choice of Harry over her, fame over the sincere-somewhat friendship that they shared. With all the self assurance born of one who has achieved a great amount of intelligence at a fairly young age; Hermione concludes that Malfoy is a great, ugly prat and she will have nothing to do with him. The red haired boy and Harry Potter draw their wands while the two thuggish boys behind Malfoy crack their knuckles.
"Fighting is extremely childish behavior, you know," she says in the commanding know-it-all tone that is as natural to her as breathing. "Be careful, you don't want to be expelled before you even reach the school!" But there is no fighting. The boys leave in the confusion of Scabbers pouncing and clumsy, ineffective wandwork. Hermione watches Malfoy as he leaves, embarrassed—though she knows he'll never admit to it—the self satisfied smirk banished from his face. This is a blow to his pride, but with an ego as large as his, he'll recover.
"Move out of my way, Granger," he huffs as she is still standing in the doorway of the compartment. She moves wordlessly aside as he leaves with a sour temper and his self-importance in tatters around him. Harry and Ron do not ask how he knows her name.