Draco woke up to the sound of Crabbe and Goyle coming up the dormitory stairs. He jumped out of bed, Fuck, Draco thought,howlongdidIsleep? Draco pulled on a pair of underwear and the pair of pants that he had so haphazardly thrown on his chair.
Just as he was buttoning up his shirt from earlier, the two boys entered the seventh year dorm. Crabbe just stared at Draco with a half-confused-half-gas look on his face. Goyle was the one who spoke, "Where were you? You slept through Potions?"
Draco rubbed his eyes and yawned, "Yeah, I was wiped, man. Snape won't care; it'll be fine. What did I miss?"
Crabbe spoke up, "More Granger."
Just the mention of her name, even in the negative context, made Draco jump. He sputtered out, "Oh, oh, Hermione Granger? She's...she's in that class then? Okay, yeah...cool." He finished lamely.
Neither one of the boys picked up on his discomfort. Goyle said, "Yeah, Snape kept going on about this love potion, and the way to brew it, and Granger argued with him about this fundamental wizard theorist or something...I don't really remember."
Draco hung onto his every word, flinching again when Granger - well, Hermione, he supposed - was mentioned. He wanted more; he needed more. "Whatever," was the only logical response he could form. "Let's go down to the Great Hall, I'm starved."
It was the mid-afternoon break between classes, so the Great Hall was relatively full. The three boys walked over to their usual spots at the Slytherin table where the other seventh years were already seated.
After they sat down, Draco spun his head around quickly to look at the Gryffindor table, and let out a small sigh of relief when he saw that she was not there. He turned around and faintly wondered to himself why he felt himself so simultaneously afraid of and attracted to Hermione.
Pansy Parkinson sat right in front of him. "Something the matter, Drake?" She said tilting her head to the side and looking him up and down. "You seem tense. I mean, more than usual."
Draco waved her away, "Nothing, nothing, I'm fine. Just didn't get a ton of sleep last night."
She shrugged, "Shame."
The rest of the seventh year Slytherins chatted and joked about how they were going to haze the first years. Technically speaking, they were not allowed to do anything remotely close to hazing, but, in Slytherin terms, hazing was just a word people used for rooting out the weakest links - a necessary evil.
Draco responded the way he was supposed to and laughed at all the right times, but all he could think about was her. He must have pulled a muscle turning around so much to make sure she was not sitting at the Gryffindor table. He spotted Weasley, Potter, and Longbottom in their usual spots, but no bushy haired (and, Merlin, curvy) Grangers in sight. WhythehelldoIcaresomuch? Draco thought to himself.
Suddenly, he was being shoved on the shoulder - it was Blaise. "I said, what do you think, Draco?"
Draco blinked rapidly a few times before asking hazily, "Sorry, what did you say?"
Blaise rolled his eyes, "I said, what do you think about making the first years clean our showers after the first quidditch match without magic?"
"Well, Blaise," Draco managed to mumble condescendingly, which made Pansy giggle. "If memory serves correctly, wasn't that done to us in our first year?"
The Slytherins all turn to watch Blaise squirm. "Um...well, but," He sputtered, "I just thought, that, you know, it was kind of a classic in their day, so, you know, it would still be doable for us."
Draco just shrugged noncommittally, "It was a silly idea in their time and it would be even stupider in ours. Very lame, very unoriginal. I believe we can do better than that."
The rest of the table quickly picked up the conversation with better ideas. Draco continued to repeatedly glance over his shoulder - still no Granger. He glanced up at Pansy just as he turned back around, who was eyeing him suspiciously. She opened her mouth as if she was going to ask him something, but quickly shut it in favor of listening to Goyle loudly shout his idea to the entire Great Hall.
Eventually, someone mentioned that it was almost time for Defense Against the Dark Arts (or, as the Slytherins liked to call it, "The Dark Arts"), and they all stood up to go to the third floor.
Draco, Goyle, and Pansy took their seats in the back, and ranked the first years by family until class started. A few pages of doodles and an hour and a half later and the first day of classes was finally over. But Draco could not shake that looming thought in his mind. His brain was filled with the image of the girl he was never supposed to like. But, those soft curls, the ski-slope nose, that perfect skin, and her eyes - how could he ever have liked anyone else?