A/N Hello! My first HPDM….actually that's a lie. I used to love this pairing in my first innocent months of fanfiction. I'm revisiting after watching something that inspired me. It's the first chapter so be easy on me. This if for my friends who are mad Draco/Hermione lovers…haha…hi Hannah and Carol…

Chapter 1: The stage is set

"Okay, what is it?" Draco finally snapped as he felt a pair of dark purple eyes alight on him for the thirteenth time in five minutes. Zabini was so surprised to have been caught when Draco had not glanced up from the potions book he was reading, that he almost fell off his chair. Draco smirked and calmly turned a page. At least the annoying tapping that Blaise had going on with his foot had stopped. Draco was trying to read a book and having Zabini in a fidgety mood next to you was not to say the least, making such a simple task very difficult. Blaise gave a nervous chuckle as he recovered from the initial surprise and slid back into the plush armchair embroidered with emerald green silk.

"What's with the suspicious tone?" he managed, smoothing back a dark strand of hair. Draco rolled his eyes when he realised he had been reading the same sentence again. If only he was allowed to cast silencio.

"Well, it's you isn't it?"

Zabini tactfully ignored this remark, "I was just thinking…"

Draco pulled a face of mock surprise to which Blaise frowned.

"You know…" he began to say but abruptly changed his mind under Draco's intense silver stare and swung his gaze outside the library and onto Hogwart's sapling green fields. He decided that he would approach it a different way, "err…what do you think of Hermione Granger?" He stumbled. Draco followed Blaise's line of sight and saw Harry Potter showing Granger how to stay on his new broomstick. She slid off the end whilst waving her arms pathetically in the air. Draco raised a skeptical eyebrow whilst Blaise grimaced and cursed Salazar internally; Draco hated girls who couldn't fly properly. Okay, so looking out the window had been a bad idea.

Draco, scrutinizing his friend, narrowed his eyes slightly although he was supposed to be watching Granger. He noted carefully Blaise's odd behaviour. Even as he glanced at his friend, he saw that his cheeks were turning an interesting shade of red and the way he had not so artfully changed the subject to talk about Granger lingered on his mind also. Draco could have almost laughed at Blaise's struggling attempts to tell him something but Draco Malfoy was so skilled in suppressing his emotions that he managed thinly "She's…a mountain troll." Zabini flinched at his best friend's harsh assessment on the girl and wrenched his gaze away from the embarrassing scene out on the fields.

"You know, she's not that bad." He tried, if sounding a little forced, knowing very well that his mission was doomed. From the icy stare and the blistering cold tone, it would have less painful for him to have just dropped it, but he was desperate. They were best friend, weren't they?

"Well," Draco leant back on his own chair, lifting his feet up onto the table that was littered with his potions essays. "She could be pretty…ish, if she tries." He remembered being pleasantly surprised with her during the Yule ball and other formal occasions. "And I guess she has brains…but when was that ever an attraction?" Draco feigned an exaggerated yawn. He saw Zabini shift in discomfort and was thoroughly amused, it seemed almost so obvious now. The boy who prided himself on never being tied down seemed to have developed some feelings for the mudblood. He smirked, "But on the other hand, she has bushy hair, she is annoying, she hides behind ghastly clothes and she's too emotional." Draco had done it purposely of course, subtly alluding to Hermione's present state in her love life. She had been madly in love with the weasel and many had called them the 'perfect couple', but Ronald's pleasure in catching the eye of any girl he could had led to a rowdy, public break-up where she had thrown a hot poker at him. Draco knew Ron was currently with a nice demure Hufflepuff girl whilst no sane wizard approached Hermione Granger after the poker incident. There were rumours that they both still loved each other intensely and Draco knew as a fact that she still was not over the weasel as he had often seen her crying in the library, clutching at a small, what Draco guessed as a travel-size, newly-acquired pensieve, sentimentally lost in her memories with him. Draco certainly wished his friend the best of luck to woo her. He knew an impossible job if he saw one.

Zabini recognized that he had lost in trying to make Hermione appeal to his best friend and sunk into his chair as Draco nonchalantly picked up his potions book again. Zabini brooded for a few minutes where he gave Draco some peace before he finally made up his made to take the risk. He wanted her desperately. "You have to help me!" he unexpectedly shouted, leaning forwards from his chair to jerk the heavy potions book out of Draco's hands. "You have to go out with her so that I can be with Ginny!" Draco was so stunned; he just stared at his friend as if he had lost his mind. "You…what?" His best friend, having feelings for an unattainable mudblood was acceptable, at least he could have some entertainment but Zabini being wrapped around the little finger of that red-headed Weasley? Draco's eyes dropped several degrees in temperature. Zabini exhaled and backed out of Draco's personal space. "I like Ginny…alright?" Blaise said irritably if slightly defensively. Draco groaned, "She's fucking Potter's ex!"

Zabini threw up his hands in defeat, "I know, I KNOW…" There was brief silence as Draco looked out at the fields once more, this time however, his attention on the youngest Weasley. She was very attractive; he admitted slowly and with a bad taste in his mouth but he was certain Blaise could not like a girl like that. She was too demanding for a poor muggle-lover. Draco thought through it logically. "Do you like her or do you just want to…?" Zabini just shrugged abruptly, still very defensive. He was staring out the window, unwilling to meet his eyes but Draco heaved a sigh of relief. The shrug showed that there was, at least hope. He tried not to read too much into how his best friend was unresponsive even when Draco had mentioned sex. Blaise tended to talk a lot about that particular subject, especially with girls who were victims in the equation. This unusual behaviour did disturb Draco but he was going to disregard that for now. Now moving on to what Blaise had just blurted. "And why do I need to go out with that mountain troll so that you could be with the weasel's sister?"

"Don't call her that," Zabini muttered, his eyes suddenly downcast. Draco lifted his hands in feigned terror of him but Blaise continued without interruption, "I uh, asked her," he gave a one shoulder shrug, "…and she said she would go out with me if Granger started dating. I know, really weird huh?" He pouted, a twinkle of hurt in his amethyst eyes.

Draco could have almost been touched by the vulnerability in his friend. Almost. "Have you completely lost your mind to not see that she said that to completely get rid of you? Wake up Zabini! Granger has sworn a life of chastity. She only has eyes for the weasel; no guy would ever touch her after she almost branded him with a poker for just so much as looking at another girl, as inexperienced as he is. She will never go out with anyone and everyone knows that. That was just her polite way of telling you to fuck off. Of course, being the idiot you were, you didn't catch on to that, did you?"

As Draco calculated, the hurt was now very evident in Blaise's eyes. "It doesn't matter." The Italian boy said quietly, "I'll get her one way or the other." Draco had been admittedly, a little frightened with his friend's very odd behaviour. Blaise never talked too much about a girl and he had an ego to match his bank balance. He also hated blood traitors almost as much as Draco did. All the principles that made Blaise Zabini crumbling away because of a certain redhead was definitely a little frightening although thankfully, his ego seemed to have returned. "So either you help me or I do it another way." The vulnerable glint had turned hard and defiant. Draco just sighed and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Just out of curiosity, what made you come to me for help?" To any other innocent onlooker, it would have been obvious since they were best friends but in the Slytherin house, that was not the case.

"Potter suggested it," Blaise admitted grudgingly, "he overheard the whole thing."

"You mean, he was fine with it?" Draco asked suspiciously, "He wanted to help you and he roped me into this?" Draco's mind furiously started to deduce Potter's motives but he saw Blaise was getting impatient for his answer. "You want me to take out Granger for a while so that you could hold Weasley to her promise, is that it?" he asked as if talking to a small child.

Zabini nodded.

"Then what's in it for me?"

Luckily, Blaise knew exactly what had his friend interested. "I'll pay you, any price you name."

Draco smirked in response, his gaze predatory. "Taking her out on a date, I like to do it extravagantly, so thirty galleons. Then twenty for flowers, ten for sending her letters and fifty for smiling at her."

"Merlin's pants, fifty for smiling at her?" Blaise's eyes widened. Draco sneered, "Take it or leave it. I'll have an invoice ready for you each week, you know, for extra things. Just in case I decide to get her something nice."

"You mean, waste my money." Blaise said frankly.

"Exactly," Draco sneered, "Be grateful I'm not charging you for the effort that I put in to ask her out." Draco paused, "You realise I would need to keep it low-key or my parents would find out…oh, that reminds me you probably would not want me somehow telling your mother that you're hopelessly in love with a blood-traitor."

As expected, Blaise froze in horror, "You're not going to…" Draco waved a hand impatiently, "Of course not, my dear friend. Just a little incentive for you to pay me promptly, continuously and for the amount that I would be putting down on parchment." He extended a hand, "Do we have a deal?"

Blaise took it, his own lips curving into a sneer, "As always."

A/N: Come on – just press that REVIEW now….and let me know!!

noeru K