Mercury's POV

"You have got to be kidding me," I mumbled to myself as Professor Snape read out the list of partners for the year. I picked up my things and wandered over to my new desk, dropping my heavy bag onto the table with a loud thud. My new potions partner rolled his eyes at me and dragged his things further onto his side of the table. Professor Snape continued to drone on for a while before finally beginning the actual lesson. We worked in silence, each one of us taking it in turn to stir our potion, only speaking to one another when it was absolutely necessary.

He tried to bark orders at me but I wasn't one of his friends, he couldn't order me around like a dog and expect me to lay down and roll over. I could see him getting more and more frustrated with me as he ordered and I disobeyed. I think he was glad when class was over, I know I was. We arranged a time during the week to work on our homework, Professor Snape loved to set homework that involved a lot of effort, this weeks was to produce a perfect vial of the potion we had worked on at the end of last year, he didn't expect any of us to even remember it and I swear he enjoyed when we failed.

He made me meet him in the dungeons on Wednesday night, it was cold down here and as I descended the steps into the Slytherin's territory I wished I had thought to grab my cloak. He was stood outside Professor Snape's classroom, having convinced the potions master to let us use his classroom to prepare our homework we were probably at an advantage over the rest of the class.

"Malfoy," I said as I approached, his pale blonde hair looked darker in the flickering light from the torches on the wall. He nodded at me, deeming me unworthy of his words. I rolled my eyes at him and followed him into the classroom. He'd already set up a cauldron for us and laid out our ingredients. We set to work straight away, getting this over as quick as possible would mean less time we had to spend together.

He put some of the ingredients in the cauldron and they began to boil. "You, keep stirring that till it turns purple." He told me as he took a knife and began to cut up some kind of bug I didn't know the name of.

"Yes, Sir." I said sarcastically and took hold of a ladle, the corner of his lips turned up slightly and I thought to myself that I may have actually almost made Draco Malfoy smile. I lazily stirred the cauldron. I wasn't all that in to making potions, I was fascinated by their abilities and affects but not actually making them.

"That turned purple about five minutes ago, Rayne" Draco said in a way that sounded like he was mocking me, "That means you can stop stirring it." I rolled my eyes and dropped the ladle.

"Now, crush those." He said pointing in the direction of a jar of what looked to be Newt's eyes. "Ten should be enough." He said, I ignored him since he was ordering me about again, I knew how to make this potion, I didn't need him to tell me what to do. "Today would be nice, Rayne." He sighed.

"You'll get them when I'm good and ready." I told him and proceeded to sit back in my chair and twirl my wand between my fingers. He narrowed his eyes at me before opening the jar and crushing the gooey looking eye balls by himself. I began to measure out the next ingredient for the potion, mostly to show him I was capable of doing things when he wasn't telling me to do them.

We worked in silence for the next half hour before we were done. Draco ladled the potion we had created into two vials, closing each with a cork stopper and labelling one with his name. I labelled the other with my own name. We each placed our finished homework on Professor Snape's desk before exiting the classroom. We didn't say goodbye, didn't even acknowledge each other as we went our separate ways, him to the Slytherin common room and me to the stairs.

Draco's POV

She was insufferable, she didn't listen to a word I said and never did as she was told. Why Professor Snape would pair me with such an annoying girl I couldn't begin to fathom. Every time I told her to do something she would ignore me and do something else instead. We'd been working together for a couple of weeks now and it wasn't getting any better, occasionally she would say something sarcastic or make a comment and it would almost make me laugh but not enough that I ever thought I would like her.

I'd been having a particularly bad day the next Wednesday we got together to work. Her comments were more frequent today and more insufferable than ever.

"Don't you want to pass this class?" I raised my voice as I spoke, "Why don't you ever just do as you're told?" I snapped at her and she frowned at me, narrowing her startlingly green eyes.

"Because you never ask nicely." She said firmly, "It doesn't hurt to say please, or thank you." She told me. I thought she was being childish. Honestly, I'd never noticed if I spoke harshly to her or not, too focussed on the work we were doing to care if I was being polite. I brought a hand up to my forehead brushing away my hair and rubbing at the headache that was slowly forming there, she was exasperating. She laughed then and that only annoyed me more.

"What is so goddamn funny?" I asked and she pointed up to my hair, I looked at my reflection in the glass of one of the cupboards in the room. My hair was stuck up at awkward angles, wiping it away from my forehead had made it look more like I'd been dragged through a hedge than the smoothed back look I'd been aiming for. I started to shout at her, I don't know why I got so angry or exactly what I had said to her, only that some point a long the way I had called her a mudblood.

"Malfoy, calm down." She told me, her voice quiet as she picked up the next ingredient for our potion and dropped it into the boiling cauldron, "See I can help, just stop shouting." She was quieter, it was like I'd knocked all the air out of her and she was deflated. She didn't speak much after that, I had a scowl on my face and probably wouldn't reply if she had spoken.

I felt guilty as we left the classroom, even more so when I noticed the tears in her eyes as she turned away from me to head for the stairs. I could have been nicer, could have been polite but I hadn't been and now she was crying.

Okay so I did a one-shot for the first time under the same name as this one, I really liked the dynamics and have decided to make it a full story so, if you would like to read the one shot feel free, leave a review for me on what you think I should do for the full length thing? Also leave a review here on what you think about this? Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it ~Rainbow Veins