AN: Written for Aldira's Heroes' Hunt Competition. My prompt was this: "To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence"-Mark Twain. I do not own Harry Potter or anything by Mark Twain.

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As she glared at him from across corridor, he and his legion of followers picking on a First Year Gryffindor, Hermione couldn't help but think that he embodied a certain quote from one of her favorite Muggle authors, Mark Twain: "To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence."

He most certainly seemed to have both.

Hermione strode across the hall, chin up, staring daggers at the group. Hermione and he were both Prefects and he should have respected his duties, not abuse them. As she neared the group, he looked up at her and smirked. "Malfoy," she barked, "What are you doing? Leave her alone!"

Draco glanced at his cronies. "Look, here comes the Mudblood to the rescue." Crabbe and Goyle chuckled, glaring at her.

"You're supposed to a Prefect, not a child, so why don't you act like how you're supposed to?" she fired back. She mumbled to the First Year to go, leaving her all alone with the Slytherin trio. "We're paired up for tonight's patrol, so meet at the Viaduct Entrance at 9pm. Don't be late."

Hermione turned on her heel, wondering how she was ever going to get through her patrol tonight.

...

Hermione headed down to the Viaduct Entrance fifteen minutes early, expecting to get there with five minutes to spare and by herself. So, she was surprised when she thought she heard someone crying behind the staircase when she got there. Hermione cautiously rounded the corner to see who it was, when she stopped in her tracks. A wand was pointed directly in her face, held by none other than Draco Malfoy.

As she stared at him in shock, she realized that he had been the one crying, tear tracks staining his rosy cheeks. "Merlin, Granger! Don't you know not to sneak up on people?"

"I'm sorry; I didn't think I find you...are you okay?"

He lowered his wand and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm fine. Family things...too complex for you to understand."

"I have a family too, you know. And I've been in way more complex situations than family, so try me."

Draco sighed. "My...my father thinks I'm not doing my absolute best in my studies. He thinks I'm slacking, but I'm not! He's threatening to suspend my Quidditch practices."

Hermione thought that that didn't seem exactly seem like a complex crisis, but she let it go. He was hiding something. And he was. Draco was tasked with murdering Dumbledore, but there was no way in hell that he would ever tell anyone about it, especially not Hermione. The stress of it all was just weighing on him.

"If you tell anyone about this, I swear Granger, you will regret ever being born," he warned, wiping any remnants of his crying away with his sleeve. "Can we just get going? I want to get out of here as soon as possible."

"Yeah, we can start."

As they began to start their patrol, Hermione glanced over at Draco, his eyes focused straight ahead. There was something behind his eyes that seemed so troubling, and in that moment, Hermione realized that her worst enemy wasn't as ignorant or confident as he made himself to be.

...