Chapter 1: When Friends Become Enemies

Authors Notes: Hi everyone! Okay, so this is a little story that I wrote many moons ago, ok so about 5 years ago, that I'd posted before, but didn't get the reaction I had been hoping for, so I'm going to try again with this story only with a Dramione approach. I hope you like it!

Chapter 1: When Friends Become Enemies

He'd been very quiet since this morning, always walking around with a big mischievous grin, like he was planning something big, Hermione had been thinking to herself since she had met up with him that morning.

"What are you planning, Draco?" asked his busy haired, honey eyed girlfriend of just a hair over a year.

"You will just have to wait and see my vexing vixen." He said, as he looked at her, love filling his beautiful piercing silver eyes.

He had been in love with Hermione Granger for as long as he could remember, finally gaining the courage to ask her to dinner in Hogsmead after finals the year before. Their entire sixth year, they had become close friends when all the teachers of the classes they had together decided to pair them both up together. Though they were the brightest of their year and the teachers should have put them with more needy people, they managed to, in every class, wind up being partners. All the while being paired together, he was finding it harder and harder to be mean to her, trying to keep his façade in check.

At first, they protested towards the Professors; Draco continued calling her names and sneering, Hermione crossing her arms in a huff and retorting to every name that he shot at her. However, after the Professors continuously saying no and a few heated discussions in their classes, all the shadiness they had towards the other had disappeared completely, allowing them to finally find that they actually made good friends. This was almost exactly what Draco was hoping for. Through all his past experience in the dating field, he had found that relationships tended to last longer if they had formed a strong friendship first, though some did disagree.

They had decided that they didn't want to keep their friendship a secret from the rest of the school for ever. So after being friends for several months, they started walking to classes together, laughing and having a good time in each other's presence in front of the rest of the student population. At first, the students from Slytherin and Gryffindor were asked if it was some kind of ruse, but when they admitted that they didn't know what was going on and were disgusted with their behavior, the rational students started to think that it was possible that the two past enemies were now friends of sorts. Unfortunately, not everyone thought that way.

When Harry and Ron found out, Harry was worried at first, voicing said worry to Hermione, but after thinking about it, he came to the conclusion that this friendship between Hermione and Draco may be a good idea, especially if it brought house unity with the upcoming dangers with Voldemort. Perhaps, Harry hoped, showing the other houses that it is allowed to join together with other houses and bring them out of their school-induced exile. Ron, however, was beside himself with anger. He kept it bottled up for quite some time, pretending that he was happy for Hermione and acted civil towards Draco. But as everyone knows, if a soda bottle is shaken up too much, it will explode. And as it so happens that during Christmas break, he had finally blown, not being able to take their friendship a day longer when he saw Hermione carry a dozen yellow and red roses through the portrait.

That day, he turned into a human raging volcano. He'd called Hermione down to the library by way of his owl, Pig. On her way there, he ambushed her from behind and knocking her out by throwing a bust of Hangus of Woodcraft at her back. The result was her falling down one of the many staircases between Gryffindor tower and the library. When she woke, she found that her hands and legs were bound while she was lying on the floor with a throbbing headache. Looking up, she saw who her captor was as he sat in the corner on a little stool, staring at her with eyes blazing. But she couldn't believe it. She wouldn't believe it!

"Ron, did you do this?" she asked thickly, gasping in pain for she was sure that she was bruised all over, if not sporting many broken bones.

Responding in a very un-Ron-like tone and waving his arms wildly, he replied, "Gryffindors and Slytherins are not supposed to be friends, Hermione. It's like an unwritten law that everyone knows."

"I don't care. Draco and I get along; we are friends, and if you were one too, you wouldn't care whom my friends are. What is your problem Ron?" she asked, fear engulfing her as his hand swiftly balled into a fist and swung at her, hitting her square in the jaw.

"Nothings wrong with me!" he bellowed, his voice echoing off the walls. He started pacing as he continued, "Being a Prefect, I'm supposed to uphold the rules of this school. And that rule happens to be one of them in the student written book. You broke it, so I'm going to have to teach you a lesson for doing so." Turning back to her, he brought his abnormally large foot up and swinging it down, forcing it to collide with her stomach, causing her to scream and cry in pain. Being so far down in one of the many dungeons in the school, she knew not many people would be down there to hear her cries for help as Ron continued his tirade of punches and kicks in between rants, but that didn't stop her from trying.

Finally, it was as if an angel had heard her cries for help, coming to rescue her in the form of a tall dark figure in the doorway, the light behind them seemingly brighter than normal for torches. Looking around, they rushed towards her. But before she could see or hear who it was, everything became quiet and dark as her head hit the ground in a dead faint from the pain that had been inflicted.

She had woken up screaming, two weeks later, due to a nightmare that she was still being beaten by Ron. Luckily, a large pair of hands met her shoulders and gently pressed against her in hopes to get her to lie back down and relax.

"Shh! It's OK Hermione. It's OK. You're in the Hospital wing, you've been here for two weeks, and Madam Pompfrey says that you will be fine." Came the soothing voice that she knew was the voice of a friend- the voice of the man that she'd become friends with over the past several months.

"Draco!" she cried as she sat up and wrapped her arms around his neck, suddenly wishing she hadn't. Ignoring the pain, she left her body leaning up against him, arms wrapped tightly around his neck as if he would disappear if she let go, his own arms wrapped around her gingerly as if she would break from her injuries.

Breaking into racking sobs in his shoulder, she managed to say, "It was horrible! He as-asked m-me to meet him in th-the library for help, b-but when I was on my way there, s-something b-b-big and h-heavy hit m-me in the ba-back. I don't remember anything after tha-that until I woke up find m-my arms and legs b-bound and Ron looking at me w-with such hatred. I asked h-him what he was d-doing and h-he gave me this huge lecture about how G-Gryffindors and Sl-Slytherins weren't me-meant to be f-friends." Draco helped calm her by gently supporting her back with his left hand and gently stroking her hair with his right, rocking her back and forth, calming her sobbing with his soft, smooth voice. "Shh" he continuously cooed during her story. He noticed that this worked every time she had returned to their favorite classroom at their usual time in tears, whether it was problems with Ron or it was an assignment that was stressing her out, this way of comfort always worked to calm her tears.

Sobering slightly, she turned her face from his neck up to look into his grey eyes, now molten silver with emotion, and asked in quick succession, "What happened down there? Where…where is he? Who came to save me? How…"

"Hermione, please calm down," chuckled the Slytherin Prince. "I'll answer your questions, if you will just be calm." Breaking away, Hermione took a few deep breaths while leaning back carefully on her pillows, finding her back to still be a bit tender.

"Alright," she assented, looking down as if she was a little girl being scolded for having her hand in the cookie jar.

"All right then. Your first question: what happened? From what I understand and by what I heard from the Slytherin gossip in the common room, Weasley was pissed and he finally snapped about something. As to where he is, he's here," He said, quickly moving to restrain her from searching him out, "Locked up in one of the many dungeons. Your other question, who saved you," looking away, he colored for a moment, but quickly returned, "It was me. Like I said, I'd heard someone yelling very loudly, so I decided that I would go and see what all the commotion was. When I entered the corridor, not only did I hear Weasley yelling, but then I heard a second voice was crying and yelling weakly for help. Fearing for the worse, hoping that the second voice was ok, I started out at a run in the direction of the yelling, stopping not three dungeons away from my common room.

"When I opened the door quietly, I don't think I was entirely prepared for what I saw. When I entered the room, I saw Weasley take one more kick at you before you rolled onto your back, clearly having passed out. I realize that that had been what happened now, but at the time, I was too blinded by rage to think this." Looking up at her, his eyes glistening, he continued, "I…I thought you…I thought you were dead." He managed to get out. Closing his eyes, silent tears started making their way down his pink cheeks. He opened his eyes when he felt two hands cup the sides of his face thumbs wiping away his tears.

Clearing his throat, trying to regain his masculinity, he gently took her hands in his, "I was so taken up in emotion that I ran over to him and punched him in his overly large nose, causing him to land backwards, hitting his head on the ground and knocking him out cold." At this description, Hermione laughed while Draco just chuckled.

When they'd calmed some, Draco continued. "As soon as he hit the ground, I ran over to you and breathed an exceptionally large sigh of relief that I seemed to have been holding, for I could properly see you breathing, though however shallowly and in a rasping way. Once seeing that you were in fact no dead, I turned to Weasley's motionless form and put a binding charm on him so he couldn't escape before casting Locomotor Mortis on him so I could carry you here.

"When we arrived in the hospital wing, I called Madam Pompfrey over; surprised that Professor Dumbledore was following her. I told them what happened in the dungeons and she immediately took you to this bed, Dumbledore taking Weasley to a bed on the far end, as far away as possible from you, and started examining you, sending me out into the corridor saying that I could do no more for you. She left me pacing back and forth in the corridor for what seemed forever, finally coming out to tell me I could go in and see you. I drew up a chair with my wand and sat down at your side while she told me your diagnosis.

"She said that you had marks on your body that showed signs of falling down a flight of stairs. She told me that that alone had broken several ribs and the added assault on your back by a bust, which they found shattered, the separated mouth complaining about how it was very rude to throw busts around and that he felt like Humpty-Dumpy and that they should put him back together again, had also cracked a few vertebrae in your spine. Luckily enough, it hadn't severed your spinal chord. Just this happening to you had caused minor internal bleeding and she said that you should have been brought to her as soon as possible. But instead, Weasley decided to take you to a dungeon and beat you with in an inch of your life, literally. Pompfrey said that if that were to have gone on much longer, you would have died, not just pass out, from severe internal bleeding. I knew that this was serious, so I offered to stay with you, casting a spell every so often to make sure the bleeding didn't get any worse. I would have stayed with you the entire time, but both Pompfrey and Potter insisted I should get some sleep because I'd been at your side for two days straight. 'I'll watch her for a while, you go get some rest' Pot…Harry, told me," he said, a hint of blush still in his cheeks. Then he continued, voicing a thought. "You know? Harry isn't as bad as my father made him out to be."

"Leave it to your father to be shallow and give people the wrong impression about perfectly nice people with out even really knowing them." Hermione said, looking at him.

"I think that it's in their genes." He replied, both of them starting to laugh, which caused Hermione to cry out in pain, ending with her smiling weakly. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have cracked a joke." He said apologetically to his knees.

"It's all right." She reassured him, wincing as she wrapped her right arm about her waist.

After an added three weeks, she recuperated; Aurors came for Ron and took him to Wizard trial where he was charged with attempted murder. When he was asked what he would plea to, he replied that he was guilty due to insanity. From there, he was taken to St. Mungos insanity ward where he quickly became friends with Gilderoy Lockheart, their second year Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, and Mr. and Mrs. Longbottom.

Draco and Hermione continued their friendship, once she got released from the hospital wing, through the rest of the school year, and people continuously told them, "You two should get together already!" Thinking that they were insane, Hermione and Draco just brushed the thought off, but it never really disappeared entirely from either's thoughts.

Finally deciding to stop kidding himself about his feelings by saying that he didn't love Hermione after what had happened earlier in the year and due to his reactions to the event, Draco made an executive decision to ask her out after finals were finished.

When they were done, they had their daily meeting up in their empty classroom like any other day as usual, to talk and study. During today's meeting, Draco decided, was when he was going to tell her his feelings for her. However, before he could open his mouth to declare his feelings for her, it was she who opened her mouth first. "Draco? What is going on with us? It feels like our friendship has changed."

"It has," He replied as he inched ever closer to her from across the table, leaning in to capture her lips with is. As he pulled back, a smug look formed on his lips at the look of dreaminess on Hermione's glowing face as she licked her lips.

"Hermione, I need to tell you something." He said as his voice turned into a whisper and taking her hands in his, scooting closer. "I've had feelings for you for a long time now and I'm afraid that I've fallen in love with the most beautiful woman in the world. I don't mean for this to sound like a proposal, but you've been a blessing in my life and I was wondering if you would like to go out with me."

Shaking her from her dream-like state, she whispered back, "I'd love to. I've felt something for you since the beginning of the year and especially since you saved me, but I was afraid. I was scared of rejection and the thought of losing your friendship over feelings I had for you that you didn't return, well, it terrified me more than anything ever has…even Voldemort. So I said nothing." Coloring slightly, she looked up onto his face.

"That's the same way that I've been feeling all year. I was afraid of rejection. Surprisingly enough for me, I know. But I finally decided to give it a try, because even if you didn't feel the same, we could have hopefully still have been friends. But I don't…"

"I don't mean to be rude, but do shut up?" she interrupted, laughing as she pulled his face over to hers.

Back at the Gryffindor common room, Hermione told Ginny what had happened and she said, "Finally! Harry, I believe you owe me ten galleons. Thank you very much!"

Looking at Harry incredulously, Hermione said to him, "Were you betting on when Draco and I would get together?!"

"Well…yes. And we were getting kind of worried that it was never going to happen. But Gin guessed right." He said sheepishly under his bushy-haired friend's incriminating gaze as he passed Ginny the specified amount of gold. But that sheepish face was soon replaced by a surprised look as Hermione launched herself at him.

"Harry! You're such a supportive friend," she said, giving him a quick peck on the cheek. As she headed up to her dorm, Hermione grabbed a spare piece of parchment and a quill from her bag and ran up to her room to send a letter to her parents about the recent development.