"What part of 'now' didn't you understand Granger?" Malfoy shot her a dirty look the second he saw her.
"It's 2 o clock in the morning Malfoy. Just consider yourself lucky that I came. What do you want?"
"I already told you, I need a tutor. And since you're the only one whose intelligence is at par with mine, you're the only one who can teach me."
"What subject?" she asked warily.
"Muggle studies."
"WHAT?" she shrieked and he clamped a hand over her mouth and pulled her into the shadows.
"Don t wake up the entire castle." he hissed in her ear. His breath tickled her ear and she was acutely aware of the fact that though they weren't touching, she could feel the heat radiating from his body. She pulled his hand away from her mouth.
"Sorry. I thought you just said you needed help in muggle studies."
"I did Granger. Can we stop talking about it now?"
"Not unless you tell me why you're taking muggle studies in the first place."
"Dumbledore overheard me call someone a mudblood and decided it would be an apt punishment. I need to pass the class or he'll make me repeat a year. Just wait till my father hears about this." he spat.
"I'm not helping you. You can find someone who isn't a mudblood to help you. After all, we mudbloods are inferior to you in every way." she mocked him before turning to leave.
"I'm not going to apologize for calling you mudblood, it's what you are and one day you'll come to terms with that. But im willing to do any one thing you ask for in return for your help."
Hermione turned around.
"Ok but if you call me a mudblood again, this agreement ends. And no more late night meetings because I need my sleep."
"Yeah yeah."
"When and where do we meet?"
"In the East Wing corridor near the portrait of Renee the Ugly after classes tomorrow."
He walked away without thanking her.
The next day was hell for Hermione. It all started in the Great Hall during breakfast when she fell asleep into her bowl of porridge
"Are you alright Hermione?" Harry asked. "You look like hell. You're not getting enough sleep are you? Just ask Ron to help you with your house duties. He's a Prefect too, you don't have to do everything alone you know."
He wiped some porridge off her cheek and she smiled at him.
"Don t worry about it, I'm fine. Speaking of which, I have some work to do after classes today so I wont be in the common room."
"Work?" he raised an eyebrow, or at least, tried to.
"Just SPEW things" she lied quickly. She turned to see whether Malfoy looked as sleepy as she felt and to her irritation, she saw that he looked like he had slept well and looked normal. Harry followed her gaze.
"Ok then."he shot her a peculiar look and they made their way to classes together.
Hermione passed the day in a haze. In charms class she couldn't perform a simple polishing spell and Professor Flitwick pulled her over to the side after class to ask her if everything was alright.
"Yes of course. Just a headache I'll be back to my peak performance by tomorrow."
She forced a smile onto her face, but her head really was pounding and frankly,she was getting tired of people asking her if she was ok, even though she knew that they meant well.
To make matters worse, the next class they had was potions with the Slytherins.
She cut her finger with her knife while slicing some Zostera stems and the quick healing charm she did still oozed blood from time to time.
To make matters worse, her potion. Which was supposed to be a pale lilac colour was slowly but steadily turning into a bright bubble gum pink coloured gloopy mess.
"I have no clue what I'm doing wrong." she said, flustered as she tried to fix it before Professor Slughorn could reach her table.
"This is the perfect shade of lilac that your potion should be by now." Slughorn praised Malfoy as he passed his table. " 10 points to Slytherin."
Hermione worked even faster now, trying to fix her potion before-
" Tsk tsk Miss Granger. What do we have here? Why is your potion this colour?"
"I don't know sir." she hung her head in shame.
"How disappointing." he shook his head before spotting her bleeding finger.
"That," he said, pointing at her finger, "Is the reason that your potion is this colour. Very careless Miss Granger. Don t you know that blood is a very potent ingredient and its addition to a potion can change the properties of the potion altogether? 20 points from Gryffindor for making such a careless and dangerous mistake. I didn't expect this from you at all."
He gave her a disappointed head shake as he walked away and she hung her head in shame.
Harry patted her on the back consolingly.
"Don t worry about it Hermione, it happens to the best of us." Ron muttered to her.
"I'm just having a bad day. That's all." Hermione put on her best indifferent face. Harry and Ron knew how scared she was of failing, they had seen her reaction after a boggart had told her she had failed in the third year.
She tried to lay low for the rest of the day, barely raising her hand to answer any questions at all. By the time evening came, she was exhausted.
"I can't wait for the weekend, I'm so tired these days. I think two days of proper sleep should fix it though."
"You could take a nap now though," Ron suggested.
"I'd love to but I can't. I have work to do."
"Work? Classes just ended. What work?"
She shook her head quickly. "Just SPEW things."
"Is Hermione acting fishy to you?" Ron asked Harry as soon as she left.
"I think its the sleep deprivation that's gotten to her. Speaking of which, you should really help her with the prefect duties and drawing up timetables."
Ron shrugged. "I did offer, she was the one who asked me to stay out of it.. She says she enjoys doing it and it'll be done faster if she does it alone. She's always been stubborn that way."
They watched her bustle through the Fat Lady's portrait.
