"The end is uncertain and I've never been so afraid." –Owl City

"You know what I really don't get?" asked Ron, dragging a bag of fertilizer over to our Herbology station. "Is all the secrecy that's going on." I stopped putting on my dragon-hide gloves and stared at him, wide-eyed.

"What do you mean?" I asked cautiously, carefully analysing his expression. He shrugged and sighed dramatically.

"Aw, common, I know who likes who here."

Oh my fucking god he knows. My eyes were the size of dinner plates which didn't help me not giving away my secret. I wanted to say something offhandedly and divert him from the truth but all I managed was;

"Huh, wha-?"

Ron grinned. "Common, I've seen the way she looks at him." My brow furrowed and my mouth fell open. Does he... refer to me in 2nd person now or something? When I didn't answer Ron laughed and became strangely excited about something that was waybeyond me.

"Ginny is obviously still in love with Harry!" he exclaimed, making sure that Harry was busy with his Béosol tree and didn't hear. "You can't tell me you haven't noticed!" I closed my eyes in relief and started breathing again.

"No, I noticed," I finally managed to say. "I just wasn't... sure who you were... yeah."

He raised an eyebrow. "Who did you think I was talking about?"

"Nothing, nothing," I said dismissively, waving my glove-clad hand. I picked up my clipping shears and started pruning my Béosol tree without meeting Ron's eye.

"Have you two switched leaves yet?" asked Professor Sprout coming up behind Ron.

I nodded, taking the last of Ron's leaves as I did so. I mixed the leaves in with the fertilizer and dumped it into the pot with my tree. The tree instantly grew new leaves of dark blue this time.

"Excellent," said Sprout, prodding the base of my plant. "And you both have female plants, yes?" I nodded. Ron giggled but luckily Sprout didn't notice. "Okay, go find someone who has a male plant and continue with the germination."

I picked up my tree and shuffled around the greenhouse, asking around for a person with a male plant who didn't already have a partner. I spotted Harry walking around too and I walked up to him eagerly.

"Male?" I asked him once I'd reached him. He raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, Hermione, I am a male. Well spotted," he said seriously but with a mischievous glint in his eyes. I glared at him and he grinned back. "No, sorry, I got a female too." I let out a frustrated sound and stalked by him. I was walking through a group of Slytherins looking for a Gryffindor (there's no way in hell I'm asking Slytherin) when someone came up behind me.

"Please tell me you have a female," said Draco sidling up beside me, cradling his plant in his arms. I looked at him sideways and smiled.

"Finally."

I pushed through the crowd of people who were still looking for a partner and claimed a table in the corner. I sat down at the small, two-person table while Draco went to go get us some fertilizer.

"You know what I really don't get?" said Draco sitting down in front of me with a big bag of dirt. I let out a small laugh at his déjà-vu words but stifled it quickly with my hand. Draco shot me a look but continued anyways. "It's the fact that we do all the work on the plants in Herbology and we don't even get to keep them!" I reached over and grabbed the bag of dirt, trying to ignore the fact that our legs were touching underneath the small table.

"What are you saying?" I asked jokingly, starting to take off the second layer of leaves. "That the evil Slytherin Prince has all along wanted to be a herbologist?" He smiled arrogantly, obviously liking the Slytherin Prince part.

"No," said Draco, switching his leaves with mine. "I just wouldn't mind throwing a fire pod at the next person who calls me a twat!"

I caught Harry's eye from across the room and he smiled at me. His gaze shifted over to Draco and his smiled faltered. He looked back at me and mouthed;

"Twat."

I grinned and turned back to Draco.

"So did you hear Mason picked a theme for the first dance?" I said to Draco conversationally, picking up my plant knife. I had heard Hannah Abbott tell Justin Finch-Fletchley about it a breakfast.

"Yes, I did hear," said Draco quietly, concentrating hard on gently placing his leaves inside the stem of my tree that I'd just cut open. "But I think a masquerade ball is a bit overdone."

"Maybe," I said with a nonchalant shrug. "But wearing a mask can help you do things you never would if people knew it was you. Now hold the stem closed so I can sew it up."

He obeyed and held the stem closed with both hands. I took out my wand and started the stitching spell but it wouldn't work; the sides of the stem were too far apart.

"Hold it tighter," I muttered, concentrating hard on the spell. He tightened his grip but it still wasn't enough. I added my hand over top of his and finally it started to sew closed.

"Hmm, you have soft hands," he joked, smiling up at me beneath his fringe. I ignored him.

When we were done and both plants were put away (we only had to germinate one of them), we sat back at our table.

"So what do we do now?" I asked, looking around the room at the other groups. Draco flashed me a crooked grin.

"Do you want to hold my hand again?"

"Shut up."

"Steven Moore is glaring at you," mumbled Harry as we sat down at the Gryffindor table for lunch. I stiffened, realizing that I still hadn't told Harry about what had happened the day before yesterday. I cast a quick look over my shoulder at the Slytherin table and my gaze was met with a cold, black stare.

"Well that's weird," I said quietly, turning back to my soup.

"Yeah," said Harry airily, still looking his shoulder at the Slytherins. "He kind of looks like a monkey when he's angry."

"Shut up and stop looking!" I hissed, shoving him in the arm to get him to look forward. "I have something to tell you." Harry finally looked round curiously and shut up long enough for me to tell him what had happened. He didn't say anything throughout the time it took me to tell him and his expression was unreadable. When I finished he abruptly stood up and his blank façade faltered, a look of anger and hate taking over.

"I'm going to kill him," he said flatly, starting to walk away between the tables, fists clenched. I lunged forward, grabbing the back of his shirt, and threw him back into his seat.

"Oi! I was going to go defend you, you lunatic!" he yelled, trying to stand up. I tightened my grip on his shirt and held him down.

"Harry!" I yelled in his face, getting his attention. "He's a 200 pound mammoth and you're a scrawny little white boy! Ain't going to happen!"

"Don't forget the glasses, the unruly hair and the knobbly knees!" said Ron in a sing-song voice, sitting down on the bench next to me. I grinned at Harry in triumph and he hit me over the head with a piece of bread. "So why are we talking about Harry's wispy and frailness?" Ron mocked, earning him a couple smacks on the head with the bread.

"Hey, you know what they say," said Harry, trying to defend his self-esteem. "Wispy and frail, never fail!" I rolled my eyes and Ron facepalmed.

"So why are we talking about this again?" Ron asked, looking back and forth between Harry and me. Harry instantly perked up, sensing a chance for his frailness to be forgotten.

"I was going to go beat up Steven Moore because he pushed Hermione down the stairs," he stated. Ron spewed put the large amount of pumpkin juice he had had in his mouth all over Seamus.

"WHAT?" he bellowed, ignoring the inquiring stares of everyone in the area (and Seamus flipping him off). He looked over his shoulder at Steven and stood up determinedly. "Oh, I am going to kill him." I lunged forward for the second time and grabbed the back of his shirt.

"Oh, no you won't!" I said through gritted teeth, using both hands to keep Ron in place and pinning down Harry to the bench with my legs as Ron's newfound determination had given him a second wind. Ron glared down at me.

"Why not, I'm not wispy and frail?" he said angrily, dodging another bread smack from Harry.

"Yes, but you're a ginge and don't have a soul so that's no better!" I cried. He squinted at me angrily before finally giving up and turning back to his lunch.

"So who was it who came and helped you?" Ron asked relatively calmly, putting chicken on all of our plates. "I didn't catch that last bit when we were so rudely interrupted!"

"And who's fault was that?" I said with a fake laugh, trying to distract him so that I didn't have to answer the question. It didn't work.

"So who was it?" Before I could even open my mouth to answer, Harry swooped in with an evil smile.

"It was Prince Charming." Ron laughed but I gapped at Harry in horror, very thankful for the moment that Ron didn't know who it was (especially after his one-on-one with Draco last night).

"Wispy and frail, never fail?" Harry whispered quietly to me so that Ron couldn't hear. "More like sexy and cunning, for the win!"

"That doesn't even rhyme!" I hissed back, making sure that Ron was still laughing and still oblivious. When he had finally calmed down, he turned and faced me directly.

"No, seriously, who was it!" he asked as excited as a child is on Christmas. I grimaced still really not wanting to answer.

"I have to get to charms," I said quickly, standing up and stepping over the bench. I shot Harry a very pointed look, praying that he wouldn't tell Ron, and started walking away. But knowing Harry who's as gossipy as a couple of old women, I knew he could never keep it from Ron even if he wanted to. I quickened my pace, hoping to get out of the hall before the fireworks began. I was ten steps from the door when an outraged "MALFOY!" erupted from behind me. Abandoning all pride, I full on sprinted out into the hall and ran up the stairs, Ron's voice still ringing in my ears.

I reached Flitwick's class with ten minutes before lunch even ended. I leant up against the wall beside the class and slid down to the floor, facing a once empty classroom which is now used as an Ancient Runes class to compensate for a higher amount of students taking the lesson. I took out my charms book and started practicing for today's lesson on freezing charms. By the time the bell had rung and people were arriving for class, I had already mastered the spell and Flitwick still hadn't shown.

I stayed sitting on the ground while the rest of the class hovered by the door to the classroom. Ron and Harry walked by a few minutes later. Ron very pointedly ignored me and Harry just laughed, obviously enjoying the situation. The Ancient Runes class from across the hall was also milling around, their teacher MIA as well. I noticed that there was a certain blonde Slytherin in their midst.

At ten past one, nearly a half hour since class should have started, neither Flitwick nor Bathsheda had shown up. By now most of the class had taken a leaf out of my book and were sitting on the ground, back against the wall. Draco sat on the floor against the opposite wall in front of me.

"Any idea why we don't have teachers?" he asked, slumping lower against the wall and stretching out his legs.

"Yeah, it's cause you're here," I said with a serious yet amused face. He stared at me for a moment before slowly and deliberately raising a hand and flipping me off. I stuck my tongue out at him.

And then something very, very weird happened.

We just... sort of... started talking.

About nothing in particular really. We talked about lessons and the weather (that was a weird one) and even what it's like knowing the boy who lived (he disagreed with everything I said and I kicked him every time he insulted Harry). We even talked about past relationships which was something I never in a million would have expected. By the time and hour had rolled by, I was lying on my front on the floor in front of him telling him the story of me and Josh Adams.

"So what did you do?" laughed Draco, smiling widely.

"I did the only thing I could do," I said with a shrug. "I said 'fuck you', kneed him in the balls and ran away!"

Draco laughed and said in all truth; "Good thing too; he's a dick." Draco moved his rucksack to the left so he could lean on it and a small, white letter fell out of the top and slid on the ground in my direction. Draco didn't notice.

"You dropped this," I said picking it up and holding it up for him. I didn't mean to read the front but I saw it anyways; it was from his parents and it was unopened.

"Oh, thanks," said Draco flatly, all air of humour gone. He took the envelope from me and not bothering to read it, he ripped it in half.

"Not on good terms with your parents?" I asked quietly, hoping I wasn't crossing a line. Draco scoffed.

"That's the understatement of the year," he said, ripping the letter into quarters. Before I could even ask if he wanted to talk about it, he just started ranting. "I'm just so done with them!" he said through gritted teeth, tearing the letter into tiny pieces. "They never let me do anything I wanted!"

"A short leash," I said softly.

"Exactly!" he said setting down the tiny squares of paper onto the ground and setting them alight with a jab of his wand. "I mean, I once liked girl in first year and when I told my dad about her, he yelled at me and said I was never to even talk to her!"

"Why not?" I asked quietly, watching the fragments of the letter curl up in a small flame.

"'She isn't good enough for a Malfoy' were his exact words," said Draco, imitating his father's voice. It was so uncanny that for a moment I thought I was having an in depth discussion with Lucius. "Nothing I ever did before was good enough for him."

"And now?"

Draco lifted his head and looked directly at me. "I'm giving up on him," he said earnestly. "And he knows that. I haven't been able to do what I wanted, when I wanted, my entire life until now when I finally realized that I'm not living my life; I'm living the life he wants for me and the one he forced on me."

"And how did he take that," I asked, pushing myself off the ground and sitting up directly in front of him.

"I don't really know yet," he said, finally cracking a smile. "I just ripped up his letter didn't I!" I laughed in relief and leaned backwards on my arms. I surveyed his face carefully, finally seeing a (hopefully) permanent lightness in his eyes that's never been there before.

"So did this help a bit?" I said, biting my lip and waiting for his verdict. "Telling someone, I mean?"

"It's weird," he said. "I usually smack people who try to make me open up."

I smiled. "So what about the girl you liked way back when," I teased enjoying his somewhat mortified expression. "You going to go for it?" He gave me a small smile.

"Working on it."

I was heading to dinner, happily chatting to Harry about the failed double charms lesson, when I saw Steven Moore leaning up against the wall at the end of the hall. I stiffened as we got closer, waiting for him to resume his glaring once he saw me. I was ten steps from him when he looked over and met my gaze. I braced myself for the death stare but it never came. Instead the corners of his mouth pulled up into a wicked grin when he saw I was looking. In all truth, I definitely preferred the glare. I walked by him, gripping my wand in my pocket just in case, but he didn't do anything. He just kept on smiling.

I sat down at the Gryffindor table for dinner, my good mood slowly slipping away. Against my will I glanced over at the Slytherin table but Moore wasn't there. I looked down the table for Draco but he was missing too.

I tried to ignore it and eat my dinner but my head was too full and my food tasted like cardboard. I was so out of it that I didn't notice that Harry had spent the last 5 minutes talking to me about how he was secretly a moose.

"I started talking about herbology," laughed Harry after I'd finally snapped out of it. "But you were so zonked that you didn't notice that I'd switched to talking about how I'm secretly a moose!" I gave him a weak smile but didn't answer. Harry's brow furrowed and he gently touched my arm. "Hey, are you okay?"

"I don't know," I said quietly. I picked up my bag and left the hall as fast as I could. I don't know why Moore looked at me like that, I thought to myself as I sprinted up the main staircase, but if anyone were to kill someone at Hogwarts because of a petty grudge it would be him.

I ran up to Gryffindor tower, pausing only to yell the password at the Fat Lady, and booked it up to my dormitory. By the time I had closed the door and flung myself onto my bed, I realized just how stupid I was being. Just because Steven Moore had sent me a creepy smile that belonged in an insane asylum, doesn't mean he's going to kill me... and yet I'm here, holed up in my dormitory... and they call me a Gryffindor...

At ten to seven I packed up my transfiguration stuff and headed off to the library for tutoring, keeping to the hidden staircases and shortcuts. I got there just after eight and for the first time, I was there earlier than Draco. I sat down at our table and spread out my transfiguration stuff, using my wand to highlight the pages we were doing tonight. I propped up my legs on another chair and waited.

And waited.

And he never came. At quarter to nine I finally gave up and started packing up my stuff, blushing slightly; for anyone else I probably would have left after 15 minutes. I slung my rucksack over my shoulder and walked dejectedly from the library. I slowly dragged myself up the stairs, avoiding the main staircase again, and stepped out onto the dark, west end of the 7th floor corridor. My pace slowed as I realized that all the lamps on the walls were extinguished which isn't normal. I walked cautiously around the corner at the end of the hall and almost tripped over something that was lying in the middle of the floor. I gasped.

I now know why Draco couldn't come to tutoring. It was because he was too busy lying on the floor of the 7th floor corridor, bleeding out.

A/N WHOA! Big chapter! Next one is going to be ridiculous ;) I really want to hear what you guys think of the sotyr so far so keep reviewing your thoughts! Thank! Love, Kate P.S Did anyone get my Big Bang Theory reference!