Last Chance

Chapter Two


The next morning at breakfast in the great hall, Draco barely looked up from his untouched plate as professor Snape gave out our timetables. I was left abashed. Usually he was the first to throw himself at the paper that would define the year to come. I then decided to take a lot at it herself, still quite perplexed. I however was way too caught in my reading to notice that the head of our house was standing behind me, now slightly leaning forward to my left ear.

"Don't you feel like you forgot something when you left yesterday?" he whispered so low that no one but me could hear.

Caught by surprise, my elbow hit the table, sending my knife to the ground. As Blaise who was sitting next to me finally looked up by the sound of the metal against the stone floor, professor Snape was already gone. For a second I thought about an excuse, but then remembered that Blaise wouldn't care. Indeed he simply bent over and picked up the cutlery before getting back to his egg and bacon. I was about to do the same, as I noticed Draco was already leaving the table and thus without his timetable.

Decided to set an end to this nonsense or at least to clear it up, I took the paper from Pansy's hands and followed him.

"Hey Granger! What do you think you're doing?" Pansy called after me, but I couldn't care less.

Apparently Draco and I both had newt potions next anyway. He wouldn't go far without me. By the entrance to the dungeons, I had finally caught up with him, finding him through the crowd thanks to his platinum blond locks.

"Draco are you alright? You really seem to be out of sorts lately." I asked.

The blond swiftly looked over my face and body with an unnaturally expressionless face. Usually he at least smirked a little when checking me out – not that I really missed that. I did like Draco a lot, but not that way.

"I kind of preferred you in the dress you had on yesterday." he simply commented.

I rolled my eyes, but couldn't repress a smile. At least that part of him was as irksome as usual.

"What should I say; your mother has good tastes. I'd say that I am right by assuming that she also is the one having the final word on your robes, considering how they fit." I retorted.

Draco shrugged as he held the potion class's door open for me.

"She definitely has an eye for people's body" he agreed while he detailed me one last time.

I blushed deeply this time. When he started doing that after her great moment at the Yule ball, on the day Victor Krum finally revealed me as the perfectly normal and potentially pretty girl I was, I was always quite annoyed at first. I felt as if he only considered me like a piece of meat. For a moment I even preferred the times when I doubted if he wasn't only hanging out with me to get the good grades. But after a moment I realised with a certain pride that I had never seen him do so with another girl. Not even Pansy, though that wasn't a great surprise. Pansy might have been working very hard on her body since she had noticed Draco glancing at me, but she would never be able to do anything against her childishly thin hips and her virtually flat chest. And of course there was her bulldog face illustrating only too well how bright she was. Thus being not at all.

Draco and I sighted simultaneously as Saint Potter and King Weasley entered the classroom even though the class had started ten minutes ago. Of course the new teacher was delighted to see their little celebrity. Who wasn't around this demented school? Yesterday we had already had a little chat about Slughorn. To Draco, losing professor Snape was a sure disaster. I was only disappointed once more to see that my house-mate apparently still didn't trust me enough to tell those important news. Whoever was teaching, I knew that I could manage it. After all, I still got an O at my Care of Magical Creatures owls even with that giant mistake as a teacher – pun intended.

Don't take me wrong, as a secret Muggle-born, I would never allow myself to judge people based on if they were semi-giants, centaurs or whatever. But with that joke of a teacher, it really didn't matter what he was. If it didn't make it worse.

While Weasley and Potter took a seat at the back of the classroom, I let my thoughts wander back to Draco's last comment. Of course I had blushed like an idiot. Did he suspect anything after last Christmas? If he did, my reaction surely didn't help.

Today concentrating on lessons was much harder than usual, and for once it wasn't for the customary reason. I had nearly been caught off-guard in potions when we had to identify the cauldrons. How could I possibly do otherwise with everything happening now? Last year everything about the dark lord had rather been kept under control by professor Umbridge, but after the disaster of the Department of Mysteries at the end of our fifth year, nothing was really a secret anymore. Plus Lucius had been sent to Azkaban, which had definitely been a nail in the coffin for Draco and Narcissa.

I didn't know what to think of the day He would strike for the first time. Sure one some week-ends Draco's aunt and some other Death Eaters went hunting together – an activity which mainly consisted in killing or torturing random Muggle, hybrids, Mudbloods or other people of that kind, but that wasn't that surprising once you had met them. And I sadly had that pleasure one some holidays I at spent at Malfoy manor. When she was around Narcissa, Bellatrix Lestrange stayed quite amicable, but the few times I had heard her talking with her other friends on the Easter holidays last year she was simply terrifying. As far as I could, I had always avoided her company.

I would definitely never forget the Easter dinner I spent sitting in front of her. Draco was like a brother to me. Usually he could tell when I wasn't comfortable in a situation. But that day he was way too busy talking about his promotion to the Inquisitorial Squad with his father. Instead Narcissa who was sitting next to me had been the one to put a soothing hand on my thigh as Bellatrix's eyes pierced through me behind her crazy curls. The cackle that had followed had sent chill through my bones that I wasn't ready to forget. On some night I still thought that I heard it in the castle like it had been resonating in the giant dinner room of the manor.

When the first day of school finally came to an end, I decided to run from my Arythmancy lesson to the dungeons, using every possible shortcut that I knew. With everybody being too eager to go to the Great Hall and share their first day with their friends, it was the perfect occasion to see meet my nasty professor without being seen. I couldn't tell why everybody in Slytherin liked professor Snape that much. It would probably be very different if he treated us like everybody else. For my part, I couldn't tolerate his character very much. Sure people like Potter could do with somebody telling them straight to their face that they weren't mister perfect, but others like the Longbottom kid seemed to have it hard enough without professor Snape pointing at them. Narcissa's sister still seemed to consider his parents insanity as one of her greatest achievements.

Still thinking about the devilish woman, I opened the last shortcut with more fierceness then I would have wanted. I was rooted to the spot.

"I really don't think this is sa…"

The youngest Weasley had finally turned around to see me standing above her, my face suddenly as blank as my mind. The dark skinned boy standing too close to her was definitely not who anybody would have expected to see. Ginny Weasley was supposedly dating the dark skinned Dean Thomas, her fellow Gryffindor, not the one who impersonated the good looks of the silver four; Blaise. Yet their closeness and the fear and my friend's face were unmistakable.

"Mione please don't tell Draco" Blaise pathetically pleaded.

The Weasley girl snorted.

"Stop being so ridiculous. Granger is smart enough not break you guys' little image. Anyway nobody would believe such nonsense." the redhead reasoned.

The next thing I knew, she walked past me and left the narrow staircase. My eyes stayed stuck on Blaise for a few more seconds, but then I was finally able to move and walked to him and past. A second later however he was next to me again.

"Hermione, please, promise." he begged once more.

I stopped once more. If I walked down only two more corridors, he would know where I was heading to.

"Blaise, I really don't care who you're seeing and I won't tell anybody. But I won't lie either. Draco is my best friend. If he has doubts about you and asks me if I know something, I can't protect you." I finally explained.

Somehow, he seemed quite relieved. If I was in his situation, the conditions that I offered him would definitely not satisfy me. And by Merlin's beard did I know how complicated his situation was. If our roles were inverted, I would probably find the best secret he keeps to put pressure on him.

"Thank you. But just in case you changed your mind, you do know that I am aware that you live with prof…"

His threat had quickly been muffled by the hand I put on his mouth as the Patil twin passed by. Blaise was unquestionably a Slytherin. I actually suspected him of being much brainier than he wanted to give out. After all he was taking only one newts class less than I did.

"Alright, alright. I won't say a thing, but be careful. Your friend is right somehow – she seemed quite smart herself for a Gryffindor. It could cause us our royalty status over Slytherin." I warned him.

"I didn't know that you cared about those things." he wondered.

"I don't." I rectified. "But Draco does, so I do."

"Yeah, it all makes sense now…" mocked Blaise.

I rolled my eyes with a faint smile and he finally left after I told him that I would see him at dinner later. Then I checked my watch, discovering in horror that it was six already. Professor Snape was bound to be at the dinner table already. I decided to try my luck anyway. I didn't run through half of the castle for nothing.

Five minutes later I was surprised to see that he was still in his office indeed, sitting behind his desk and stirring a cauldron with an expression of deep boredom. Nothing unusual so far. My tense muscles loosened a little bit and I knocked on the door.

"Miss Granger, I was wondering when you would finally show up." he said in his deep nasal tones.

"How come you are still brewing potions? Isn't that professor Slughorn's job now?" I asked, deciding not to react to his cynicism.

"It should be indeed. Your dear professor nevertheless felt that it was rather his duty to enjoy the dinner than to help me refurbishing the Verita Serum stocks after professor Umbridge's vendetta." he explained calmly.

Regardless how much I did loath him, I could never help admiring my professor's talent with words and potions. Even though I had to admit that professor Slughorn seemed to be a much better and fairer teacher than he was.

"So what it is it that I forgot, sir?" I claimed, adding "sir" just after I caught the look his black eyes threw at me.

After a longer hesitancy, he finally left his desk to stand right in front of me. I had never noticed how tall he actually was.

"I am not wrong in assuming that you are quite close to mister Malfoy, am I right?" he inquired.

I simply nodded. Was it just me or did the room get measurably colder?

"So I equally assume that, considering your wit, you would be the first person he would turn to if he was to undertake a difficult task."

Once again, I could only nod. Something about him tonight was even scarier than his natural gloomy aura. It was worse than seeing him drunk at home on Halloween every year.

"On another hand, I think that considering what I can see in your mind, we are both certainly worried about him this year. Therefore I most expressly request that if he shared any dangerous or quite unusual plans with you, you will directly come to me." he commanded.

It was quite obvious that he didn't give me a choice here, but still was very far from agreeing to those terms. I had way too much loyalty for Draco to betray him so easily. If professor Snape requested my help on whatever this was, it was certainly because he knew that Draco would never share anything with him. Anyway I was as far from discovering what was up with Draco than he was. My sensible side spoke for me nevertheless. After all if something important enough for professor Snape to care was up, it probably wasn't such a bad idea to be on his side.

As I finally remembered this summer, my mind finally settled. I suddenly remembered quite clearly the day where Narcissa and her sister had turned up at Spinner's End. As if he had seen them coming, my house-mate had sent to my room hidden behind secret bookshelf. But even from there I had recognized the voices, though I couldn't make out what had been said. Back then I had thought that it was only a courtesy visit, even though it had surprised me. He always hid me when someone came over – for the few times in three years this had happened. Right now I felt stupid for not sensing that something was odd.

I finally looked up to my professor and nodded a last time.


Sooo guys ! I was really excited about this chapter because I think that it really settles Hermione's view of this world much better and gives us a really good insight at how life is in her position right now. As usual, I'd be really eager to read your comments! For those who are here for the smut – yes I know some of you will be, I've been there – I will help you by telling you that there will be a warning before those chapters. Moreover I will take this opportunity to inform you that this fiction will be written so that every smut chapter can be skipped without altering your understanding of the story. See you on the next chapter ! (it shouldn't take very long this time !)