Hermione startled herself awake, jolting up into a sitting position as she tried to catch her breath. Her dream hadn't been much of a nightmare, but it still had frightened her enough to wake her up. She had dreamt of a future where she and Ron were unhappily wed. Fighting constantly with three young children as frightened witnesses, the things that had been said between herself and Ron were awful. The accusations coming from him concerning Draco, someone she hadn't even thought of since their final year at Hogwarts, were what had startled her the most. She never thought Ron could be so suspicious, so awful towards her.
Shutting her mind off from the dream, Hermione lied back down and tried to go back to sleep. After tossing and turning for what seemed like an eternity, she came to the realization that she wouldn't be able to return to sleep for the day. Tiptoeing through the room so she wouldn't wake any of the other Gryffindor girls she shared the Dormitory with, Hermione headed towards the Common Room.
Hermione noticed she was the only one awake as she sat down on one of the couches in front of the fireplace in the Common Room. Leaning back against the sofa and closing her eyes, the dream replayed in her mind's eye once again. She could see Ron's face contorted in anger, their children's eyes filling with tears, and she could feel her own face becoming hot with anger and frustration.
Shaking her head as she leaned forward and stood up, Hermione attempted to clear her mind of the dream once more. Without thinking about it, she found herself heading towards the Girls Dorm again. Deciding to take a shower to help clear the dream away, Hermione tiptoed to her bed, quickly changed clothes, grabbed a towel and the assorted items she'd need, and tiptoed back to the stairs.
Exiting the Gryffindor Common Room, Hermione noticed there were a lot more students awake than she had previously thought there would be so early in the morning. Nodding her head and politely saying hello to the students she passed on her way to the third floor, Hermione continued to keep her mind from returning to the dream. Reaching the unused bathroom on the third floor, she quickly undressed and stepped into the steaming hot shower.
Once out of the shower, Hermione dried herself off, put on her robes for the day, and attempted to tame her wild hair. She'd gotten some new products from her mother that she hadn't had the time to try out until now, so she was excited. Smoothing the products into her hair and styling it to the best she could, she looked into the mirror to inspect her work. Her hair was no longer frizzy, her wild curls tamed into submission. Hermione hoped against hope that it wasn't simply because it was still wet, as she quite liked the way she looked with nice, smooth curls.
Exiting the bathroom, Hermione made her way down to the Great Hall for breakfast. She passed a quite a few people in the corridors, mainly third and second years. Along her way she had to scold a group of first years for playing Exploding Snap in the hallway. Even though she wasn't a prefect (she'd turned the opportunity down this year) she did still have some authority, as everyone knew she was one of The Golden Trio.
Hermione had finally made her way to the Great Hall and sat down at the Gryffindor table. After her dream last night, she didn't feel all that hungry, so all she grabbed was a bagel and a few pieces of bacon. Hermione sat munching on a piece of bacon, lost in thought, staring ahead of her. Little did she know she happened to be staring in the direction of Draco, no one in front of her to obscure her view. Draco sat, staring back at her with an odd look on his face, completely perplexed as to why she was staring at him in the first place.
"EARTH TO HERMIONE!" Ron said, waving his hand in front of her face.
Finally snapping out of her trance, Hermione realized she had been staring at Draco, her bacon lost on the table. Looking around, she noticed the Great Hall had filled with people and her friends had joined her at the table. "Oh, I'm sorry. I guess I was thinking too much."
"When aren't you?" Ginny giggled.
"Ha. Ha" Hermione returned, picking up her bacon to resume eating.
"Hermione, can I ask you a question?"
She turned to her left and looked at Ron. "Of course."
"Well, why exactly were you staring at Draco just now?"
"In all honesty, it was completely unintentional. I had been thinking about my schoolwork and I suppose I had been staring ahead of me. It was completely circumstantial that Draco happened to be in front of me, is all."
Ron just stared at her for a few seconds. Seeming to accept her explanation, he turned to his food once more. For the remainder of breakfast, the four of them sat in silence, all contemplating the day's classes. It had been two weeks since the school year had started, but they were still getting used to their schedules. Their last period was double potions with the Slytherins again, a class which everyone but Hermione had been dreading.
"I hope I don't get paired with him again today," Harry said as he, Hermione and Ron made their way to the dungeons for their double potions class. "I mean, he does good work, but it was so awkward being his partner."
"I can't believe you even made it through the period without killing him," Ron said.
"Come on, Ron. He may have been a massive jerk while we were in school, but his mum is the reason I am alive, remember?"
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever," replied Ron, waving his hand in dismissal. "I still hate him, though."
Hermione just stayed quiet. After all, she knew things about Draco that the others didn't, and she knew she couldn't say anything about it. Saying something would mean risking her best friend and her boyfriend knowing she had spent time alone with him, and she certainly couldn't have that.
The three of them finally made it to the classroom door, but as they were early, the classroom wasn't open yet. Ron and Harry stood against the wall, talking about Quidditch while Hermione sat on the floor, her potions book open in her lap. Without warning, the light she had been using to read by had become obscured. Looking up, she found herself looking at Draco, who was standing above her, looking down on her. He didn't say anything, just stood there and stared silently.
A few seconds later the door to the Potions classroom opened and Slughorn greeted them all, inviting them inside. Putting her book back into her bag, Hermione stood, trying not to stumble as Draco stood in front of her. As she passed, she heard a whisper come from the blonde haired boy, one that made her blush. She tried her best to hide it as she walked into the classroom, at that moment thankful Ron and Harry had been too preoccupied with their conversation to notice.
By the time Hermione sat down at her usual place, Ron to her left and Harry across the way next to Ron, the blush had fully faded away, Ron never the wiser. As Slughorn explained the potion they would be working on, in groups of two again, Hermione's mind was elsewhere. She couldn't concentrate on his words as other words continued to ring through her mind.
Your hair looks nice today. It was what Draco had whispered to her as she walked passed him to enter their classroom. Your hair looks nice today. It was a totally unexpected compliment, coming from the last person she had ever expected. Your hair looks nice today. He was the only person to seemingly notice the work she had put into her hair today. Or, at least, the only person to say something about it.
"Miss Granger?"
Suddenly jerked away from her thoughts, Hermione had heard Slughorn say her name. Thankfully he hadn't caught the attention of her classmates, as he was standing beside her table, speaking softly.
"Yes, sir?"
"Did you catch that I said to begin working with your partner on the potion now?"
"I'm sorry, Professor," Hermione said, embarrassed she had been so lost in thought. "I must have been thinking too hard to have heard you."
"Well, go ahead and begin." Slughorn turned away from her desk. "Don't let it happen again," he said as he began heading back to his desk.
Hermione had been so consumed in what Draco had said to her that she hadn't even realized everyone had switched places and began their work. Turning to her left, she found herself staring at the top of a very blonde head. At the beginning of class, she expected she'd have a partner outside her own house, but she had never expected it to be Draco.
"Let's get started," Draco said, his head still down.
"Yeah, okay."
For the first twenty minutes of class, the two of them worked in silence, the slight chatter of their classmates surrounding them. To Hermione's great surprise, the two of them worked very well together. She wasn't sure why this was such a surprise to her, as Draco had always had marks very close to her own. Hermione supposed she always thought, at least for Potions, that Snape had always pushed his grades up.
There seemed to be this unspoken understanding between the two of them that Hermione admired. They didn't need to assign roles between them, nor did they have to decide who did what. Draco and herself just automatically knew what each other should work on, never having to say. They worked in perfect harmony, chopping, crushing, and adding ingredients exactly as the instructions said to.
Unable to help herself anymore, Hermione spoke up. "Um, Draco…?"
"Mmm," Draco mumbled, keeping his concentration on cutting the boomslang skin into equal portions.
"I just wanted to, um…" Hermione paused, unsure if she should continue after all.
"Just wanted to….?" Draco urged her to continue.
Hermione sighed. "Just wanted to say thank you for your complement earlier. It… It meant a lot."
Draco put his knife down and looked at Hermione, confused. "What do you mean?"
"I mean exactly what I said," Hermione replied, blushing. "It meant a lot to me."
"Figured with you dating the Weasel… Ouch!" Draco cried out, as Hermione had punched him, quite hard, on his arm. "Okay, okay, Weasley, that you'd be used to those by now."
"Well, for your information, Ron and I aren't very keen on complementing each other. We have better things to do."
Draco turned back to the boomslang skin without another word, and Hermione continued stirring their potion, three times clockwise, one time counter clockwise. Minutes passed them in silence again as Draco added more ingredients and Hermione stirred.
Hermione sighed once more. "Look, I'm sorry for getting snippy. Just, thank you for the complement."
"You're welcome."
Draco added the final ingredient, and after the final counter clockwise stir, the potion turned emerald green and a puff of blue smoke in the shape of a tree billowed out, signifying their potion was complete and absolutely perfect. Professor Slughorn came to their table to inspect their work, noting its perfection, and gave them each 20 points for their houses.
Hermione and Draco had finished their potion with two hours left of class, far ahead of everyone else. Hermione picked up her Potions book once more, and Draco sat with his arms on the table, his head buried in them.
"Hey Draco?"
"Mmm?" He replied, not lifting his head from the table.
"Since we still have a few hours of class left, why don't we do another potion, for some extra credit work?"
Draco turned his head to look at her, not lifting it from his arms. "Depends, what potion did you have in mind?"
"What about this one? If we get started now, it should be done by the end of class. Plus, with our combined skills, it should be easy enough."
Draco lifted his head to see what potion Hermione had in mind. "Potion for Dreamless Sleep, huh?"
"Yeah…" Hermione looked away embarrassed.
"Hey, don't worry," Draco said, putting his arms up in an 'I give up' manner. "I'm not about to ask any questions about it. In fact, I understand completely."
"You do?" Hermione asked, sheepishly, her head still down, facing their desk.
"Yeah, I do…" Draco said with a sigh.
Unexpectedly, Draco raised his hand and caught the attention of Professor Slughorn. Finally making his way over to their desk, Draco asked him about the two of them making the Potion for Dreamless Sleep and if it would be okay for them to take the potion with them once class was finished. For a few moments, Slughorn simply looked between the two, perplexed as to their reasoning, but understanding anyway. Professor Slughorn nodded, then walked away as someone had called for his attention.
Being given the okay to start, Hermione wrote down the list of ingredients they would need and made her way to the student store cupboard while Draco prepared a new cauldron. Harry met her at the store cupboard, pretending to need something for his potion.
"Hey, Hermione."
"Oh, hi Harry." Hermione said with a smile.
"So, you and Draco seem to be enjoying yourselves over there."
"W-what?" Hermione stammered, slightly blushing at the overt carelessness which Harry had said that. "We're just working."
"I know, I'm only joking. Ron hasn't kept his eyes off the two of you, though. Keeps mumbling about killing the 'no good Malfoy' or something." He shrugged. "I don't know, I stopped paying attention to what Ron said ages ago. Just know he might have an attitude after class."
Great, just what I needed today, Hermione thought as she nodded a reply to Harry and continued to gather potion ingredients. She supposed she was going to have to talk to Ron after class, but she wasn't in the mood for a fight, especially over something as trivial as Potions Class.
Hermione made her way back to her desk where Draco sat waiting, his head back in his arms on the desk again. He made no effort to move when she sat down, nor did he respond when she said his name. At that moment she figured he was asleep, so she decided to work on the potion on her own rather than waking him up.
Draco soon shifted in his sleep, his right arm sliding off the table and landing on Hermione's left thigh. Startled, she had completely stopped moving, both hands up in the air as she had been about to add the porcupine quills to the potion. Hermione didn't know what to do. She was nervous about waking him up, but she also didn't want to leave his hand on such an intimate place for her.
Thankfully for Hermione, a loud bang happened a few moments after Draco's hand had landed on her thigh, waking him. Apparently Professor Slughorn had knocked into a few extra cauldrons while returning to his desk, which sent them cascading to the floor. It took Draco a few seconds to come to his senses and fully wake up.
"Um, Draco?"
"Yes, Gra-… Er, Hermione?"
"Would you mind moving your hand from my thigh?" She said, no more than a whisper, afraid that if she said it any louder someone else might hear her.
Draco looked down, unaware of what she was talking about. It was then that he noticed his hand was, indeed, placed on her thigh. He jerked his hand away suddenly, as if burned by something, and began rubbing his hand with the other. Hermione just sat and looked at him, a small blush on her cheeks.
The two of them sat in silence for the remainder of class, working on their potion. Once completed, Professor Slughorn came, inspected their work, awarded them each an additional 10 points for their houses, and then spooned the potion into vials, separating it equally between the two of them.
With five minutes remaining of their double Potions period, everyone began shuffling around, packing their bags and returning to their original seats. Neither Hermione nor Draco said a word to each other as Draco got out of the desk, grabbed his book and wand, and returned to his seat at the back of the class.
When Ron returned to his seat next to Hermione, he didn't say a word to her, either. He didn't even look at her. From what Harry had told her, he was upset, but she never imagined it be to this extent.
"Well, class, off with you! Go enjoy your dinner!" Slughorn announced, with a flourish of his arms.
Author's note: Chapter 7 has arrived! So far, this is the longest chapter I've written and posted here, and I hope you guys enjoy it! It was a fun chapter to write, and it's one of my personal favorites.
As always, Review Review Review!
