Chapter 3

A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed, etc! You guys are the best. I know the first few chapters have been mostly Draco. I promise Hermione will be back soon.

~Frosty

"Granger, have you done something with my broom?" Draco demanded, searching under his bed. He had told her a while ago that she was going to stay here with her friends while he went to his quidditch practice – she hadn't taken the news well.

His question was met with silence – suspicious silence. He pulled his head out from under his bed and went in search of the troublesome little Gryffindor. Draco frowned when he found her bedroom and their common room empty as well. Where in the world could one small child who didn't like to leave the room without supervision get to?

He started to get a little but worried when he noticed that one of the common room windows was open a crack. Draco raced over to the open window and stuck his head out, sincerely hoping that he wasn't going to find what he was looking for.

He was disappointed. Floating several metres away and up, was Granger, clinging in terror to his missing broom. "What the hell are you doing out there?" he roared at the terrified child, not helping the situation at all.

"Draco, help!" She wailed, not opening her eyes or loosening her death grip on the broom. He covered his eyes while he tried to think; this Gryffindor was going to be the death of him. He took a breath before jumping out the window and shifting to his animagus form – a Florida burrowing owl. He flew up to the broom and landed behind the frightened girl, changing back into himself and using his quick reflexes to steady them both. She immediately let go of the broom and somehow managed to turn around and cling to him.

Draco carefully manoeuvred the broom through the window and back to the safety of the common room. "You can open your eyes now, you're safe," he tried to reassure her, but she seemed to be inconsolable at the moment and would only continue to cling to him, even after he got off the broom and was standing up.

Draco held on to her so she didn't have to cling to him like that. He looked down at her in horror when he heard sniffling – clinging he could tolerate, barely, but clinging and crying was too much. He was a Slytherin for Merlin's sake; he didn't do emotions.

Potter and Weasley chose that minute to come in. Draco wasn't sure if he should be thankful someone was here to take the crying female from him or mortified that these two particular people were here to witness him being almost nice. Even in his mind Draco sneered the word nice.

He pulled the crying Gryffindor off of him, thrust her into Potters arms and practically ran out the door. He had been awfully close to comforting someone else; showing compassion gave him goose bumps.

When Draco came back from quidditch practice, he found a subdued Granger, a worried, hovering Potter, and a weasel sitting oblivious to the other two as he ate his way through a plate of cookies.

"Ron! Those cookies were for Hermione!" Potter was telling Weasley as Draco came into the room. Seriously, he was supposed to save them all and he nagged like they were a married couple.

Granger perked right up when she noticed he was back. She jumped up and ran at him, presumably to hug him. "Stop!" he ordered her before she could get close enough. "I'm covered in mud and I'm all sweaty, you don't want to hug me."

She pouted at him, apparently all recovered from the shock that had been keeping her from being her normal bubbly four year old self. "You could take a bath! I want to come too, I really like baths!" She exclaimed excitedly.

Everyone else in the room just stared at her for a second, Harry and Ron in horror and Draco in amusement.

After a second or so of silence, Draco broke out in hysterical laughter, unable to keep it in any longer. "I really hope you remember saying that when you're normal again," he told her as he closed the door to the washroom with her on the outside of it. Just picturing the face she would make when she remembered saying that was going to keep him in a good mood for a long time; she would be completely mortified.

By the time Draco was finished in the shower and dressed in his pyjamas, Hermione was falling asleep where she was sitting on the couch between Harry and Ron. "Draco..." she started when she saw him.

"No," he responded automatically; he knew that tone, she was about to ask him something she didn't think he'd let her do, but was determined to try asking anyway, confident that she would eventually get her way.

"You don't even know what I was going to ask," she whined.

"At least hear her out, Malfoy," Potter told him - ever the peacekeeper that one.

"Fine, ask."

"Can I sleep with you tonight?" Weasley inhaled a cookie and started to choke. Draco snickered at the faces both boys were making.

"No," he told her again. "Now go to bed. Your own bed," he had to add when he saw she was headed towards his room. He turned to the remaining people in the room. "Out," he told them as he pointed to the door. They glared at him, but curfew was rapidly approaching and they really should be leaving soon anyway, so they left quietly.

Draco went to bed and fell asleep almost the second his head hit the pillow – it had been an extremely exhausting quidditch practice.

He had been asleep for maybe five minutes before he was woken by a knock on his door. "You haven't been in bed long enough to hit a REM faze Granger, there's no way you've had a bad dream," he practically growled; he hated it when people woke him up.

"But Draco..." said a small voice.

He sighed, letting her sleep with him was the option that would get her to shut up the quickest, which meant that he would be asleep sooner. He went with that option. "Fine," he muttered as he moved over and she happily climbed in beside him – she had her pillow and everything.

Draco woke up feeling better rested than he had in a long time. He felt a weight on his chest that had to be Granger... She was probably doing something evil, maybe she'd decided his green hair needed pink streaks.

"Hermione, I swear to Merlin, if you're putting makeup on me again, I'm going to drop you out a window," he threatened. As he woke up more, he realized that the thing on his chest was much too light to be Granger sitting there.

Draco opened his eyes to figure out what was going on. They widened in horror as he took in the scene before him; a full sized Granger was snuggled right up against him with her head resting on his chest. At some point in the night, he had slung an arm over her as well. It was horrifying... Yet oddly comfortable.

He tried to wiggle out from under her without waking her up – that was some awkwardness he would much rather avoid. He had no such luck. After a few seconds of fruitless wiggling, he was still stuck and she was starting to stir. This wasn't going to be pleasant, he could feel it.

She slowly blinked her eyes open and looked at him sleepily. "Morning Draco," she mumbled before snuggling back against him, she seemed content to doze.

Draco was scared. Very, very scared. She was going to kill him for this and never believe it was her own doing that led her into his bed. But then why had she actually seemed pleased to see him? Maybe this was some sort of new mind game she had come up with, he'd seen her in action at the Weasley hovel, and she wasn't above messing with people's heads. She seemed so pleasant when she wasn't really awake, why couldn't she be like that all the time? He gave up trying to figure out the labyrinth that was her mind and just went back to sleep – it was so warm and comfy with her there.

When he next woke up, it was because someone was staring at him, he could feel it. He opened his eyes and saw Granger sitting on the edge of the bed with a look of horror on her face. When she saw he was awake, she looked at him seriously "we will never speak of this again," she told him as she held out her hand to shake.

"Fine with me, Granger," he told her as he shook it. She got up and walked out of his room and into her own.

They didn't speak about anything, much less what Draco had come to refer to as 'the incident'. It had been over a week since either of them had spoken one word to each other and it was driving Draco insane; he was used to bickering with her or insulting her or bothering her. She was always there and she always bickered or insulted or bothered right back. He kind of missed that. A lot really, if he was going to be honest – but he was a Slytherin, so he wasn't.

They went on ignoring each other for over a week before something strange happened that cause Hermione to break their mutual silence.

"Umm, Malfoy?" she asked wearily one night as he came through the portrait hole. She was slightly disturbed by his evil chuckling and huge, smug smirk. "What have you done now?"

"You'll see," he told her ominously, coming over to join her on the couch. "Just know that it will take them years to recover from the psychological trauma."

Hermione was confused; he had been ignoring her as much as she had been ignoring him, so why was he now sitting with her? Maybe he didn't notice how close he was sitting?

"Granger, can you remember what happened while you were little?" He asked suddenly. Hermione blushed; she vividly remembered everything that had happened during her time as a child – including asking to take a bath with him and insisting on sleeping in his bed instead of her own. It was strange really, remembering being four years old like it was a week ago because it was a week ago. She nodded when he was starting to look impatient with her lack of an answer.

He nodded back as if she had confirmed his suspicions. "Something been bothering me: why did you take my broom flying? I thought you hated heights."

Hermione wrinkled her nose as she thought about it. "I remember the thought processes that led up to it, but they don't make any sense to me anymore. I was mad that you were taking your broom with you but not me, then I thought if I knew how to ride a broom, I could come with you."

"That makes perfect sense," he told her sarcastically.

"I told you, I know it doesn't really make any sense."

"So who're you inflicting the psychological trauma on," she asked him, getting over the shock of him talking to her again and back to the content of the first thing he had said.

"Potter and Weasley of course, they intended that spell you were hit with for me. I can't just let them get away with things like that."

Hermione raised her eyebrows, but didn't say anything; she had missed two whole days of classes thanks to them, they deserved anything Malfoy could dish out... Probably... As long as it didn't cause any physical harm.

"Ron! Ron help!" Ron woke from a dead sleep and looked around frantically while scrambling for his wand.

"Harry? What's wrong?" He asked the darkness hysterically while he cast a lumos.

When he finally managed to light it, he regretted it instantly; standing right in front of him was one of the largest spiders he had ever seen outside of the forbidden forest. It had too many eyes and large fangs, huge, hairy legs and... Harry's voice. He promptly passed out.

Harry rolled his many eyes and pulled a blanket over himself – maybe if Ron couldn't see him he'd be able to function like a normal person. Well, as close as Ron ever got anyway.

Ron woke up again a few minutes later and immediately lit his wand and looked around the room in a panic. "Harry! I had the most horrible dream," he told his friend's empty bed across the room.

"I know Ron; I've been having a similar one," Harry sympathised from the floor. Ron took one look at one of the long, spidery legs peeking out from under the blanket before he started hyperventilating and ran from the room.

Harry tore off the blanket and followed him, yelling. "Ron, wait! You just need to cast the counter curse."

Hermione was a bit worried about what evil plot Malfoy had been so smug about before bed; it was enough to keep her awake past her normal bedtime, which was lucky because just as she was getting ready to retire for the night, there was a knock at the door.

She stood up to go and answer it, but an excited Malfoy dashed out of his room and got to it first. Hermione looked at him in confusion; she had assumed he was sleeping, not lying in wait for whatever evil was on the other side of the door.

The second the portrait was opened, a frantic Ron burst into the room and hid behind Hermione. He wasn't very coherent, but she managed to gather something about spiders. She sat Ron down in front of the fire and tried to get some sense out of him. She glanced up at Malfoy standing beside the door, wondering why he hadn't closed it yet.

She looked back to Ron when he made a squeaking sound and threw himself behind the couch. "Ron, it's me, Harry," Harry's voice said from somewhere, but Hermione couldn't see where it was coming from.

"Down here, Hermione."

Hermione obediently looked down and saw something very disturbing. It was a spider the size of a dog with a lightning bolt scar and Harry's glasses. She looked from the smirking Malfoy to the spider Harry to the trembling Ron, still on the floor behind the couch, trying to hide himself behind a throw pillow. Psychological trauma indeed.