Chapter 10

A/N: Classes have started and they're making me read ridiculous amounts, it's depressing and leaves me less time to write. I'm only a chapter ahead in this story now, but I know where I'm going with it. I hope to get it done before I have to start writing essays and midterm exams come to eat up all my remaining spare time.

If there's any mistakes in the editing, blame it on the Kraft Dinner (Or Kraft macaroni and cheese or whatever the heck it's called in places that aren't Canada) I'm trying to cook and edit. My 'r' key had been evil lately, so if I'm missing one somewhere, that's why.

~Frosty

Draco was the first one to move, he stepped away from Hermione and whipped out his wand, just in case Weasley thought he was about to put her in a headlock or something else moronic.

At the sight of the blond's wand, Harry and Ron whipped out their wands as well; there was no telling what Malfoy could try when he felt threatened. "Hermione, get away from him!" Ron yelled at the exasperated brunette.

Hermione rolled her eyes and looked to the ceiling for patience before taking out her own wand and pointing it at her friends; maybe if she made it really obvious that he wasn't going to hurt her, then Ron would get it through his thick skull that she wasn't in any danger from Draco – except perhaps danger from practical jokes or falling to her deaths on impromptu dates.

She stepped beside Draco and pointed her wand at her friends. "Harry, he's got her under the imperious curse!" Ron yelled to his friend, once again with his voice at an inappropriately loud volume for their location and situation.

"Ron, I'm not under any curse," she sighed.

"Even I doubted that one, mate," Harry told the redhead apologetically.

"Now, I'm only going to say this once more Ronald: Draco was not hurting me," she explained slowly, pointing to Draco and then herself for emphasis.

"But Hermione, he's a death eater!" Ron exclaimed.

Hermione glared daggers at her friend; if Draco was a death eater, did he really think she'd be anywhere near him? Or that Dumbledore would let him in the school? She pointed her wand at Ron and used the spell she and Draco had been planning for their revenge at a later date – they could think up something else easily.

Harry watched in horror as Ron shrunk from his formidable height to about 10cm tall.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?" Tiny Ron yelled in some kind of tiny rage, stomping around on the ground and reaching his arms up towards the ceiling as if that would make him taller again.

"His volume suits the situation when his vocal chords are that size," Hermione observed with satisfaction. Ron's voice was quieter than their talking voices and he was yelling as loud as he could. She picked him up by the back of his robes and held him at her eye level.

"He is not now and he will never be a death eater Ronald. You need to start trusting my judgement and stop jumping to conclusions. Your temper is going to get you in real trouble one day," she scolded him.

Draco watched with admiration as she scolded the tiny, angry redhead. He glanced over at Potter to see how he was taking this whole thing, and was surprised to see him looking amused – it seemed that Hermione wasn't the only member of the trio who was getting fed up with the Weasel's outbursts.

When Hermione had finished scolding him and set him on the ground again, the temperamental Gryffindor was looking almost contrite. It wasn't going to be any fun if there was no lasting psychological trauma.

"Now he has a legitimate reason to fear spiders, their webs would actually catch him at that size," Draco mused out loud; watching with satisfaction as the tiny eyes widened with horror and he ran over to Potter's pant leg, clinging to it as if it would be some sort of protection against the absent spiders. Ah, there was the lasting psychological trauma.

Hermione and Harry were ignoring the other two's interaction at the moment. "I'm going to trust your judgement on this one," Harry said, weary of Hermione's wand. He turned to the blond, "But if you ever hurt her, you're as good as dead. Do you understand, Malfoy?"

Draco nodded seriously. "If I ever hurt her, I'll deserve it," he told scarhead honestly. Harry nodded and picked up Ron before heading off to the hospital wing.

Draco looked at Hermione with admiration. "That was brilliant," he told her with a grin. Then he turned a little more serious. "Thanks for having so much faith in me," he told her, kissing her on the cheek.

"Please. We both know you're not a death eater, you save kittens and hate it when small children cry," she told him dismissively. He really would be a horrible death eater; he just didn't have the sociopath tendencies that were a prerequisite for the position. Maybe they had death eater secretaries? Draco could probably handle evil paperwork.

"It's mostly just you I can't stand to see crying, whether you're four or not," he told her defensively; he could be evil if he wanted to. He could! The Weasley twins were probably still jumping at shadows after his father had got to them – now that was evil. He wistfully thought about what it must be like for his father to be that evil so seemingly effortlessly. All of that evil didn't seem to stop mother from terrorizing father just like she did with him though, so maybe father wasn't as evil as he liked to pretend he was.

Hermione was touched that her tears upset him that much. She wasn't going to tell him that though – he would probably get embarrassed and deny he'd ever said anything that mushy and soft. Her smile at him was interrupted by another sneezing fit, reminding Draco that they were on their way to bed so that Hermione didn't get a cold or something else equally unpleasant.

He gave her a pointed look before leading her towards the head dormitories, only retreating to his own bed once he was sure the fire was burning brightly and warmly in her room. Hermione fell asleep that night content with the way things had turned out, and all cozy tucked into her warm bed in her warm room.

Draco woke up the next morning feeling like death. All that work to keep Hermione from getting sick and he was the one who got the cold? He probably should have given himself a similar treatment to the one he had given her as a precaution. After all, he had been out in the cold as well.

As he reached for the covers to pull them over his head and block out the sunlight, he noticed something odd marring his usually flawless skin; red spots. Worried, Draco jumped out of bed and lifted up his pyjama shirt – they were there too! What in the world were there things? Had someone cursed him when he was sleeping?

"Granger!" He shouted; this better not have been her doing.

Hermione heard the panic in Draco's voice and came running, abandoning the breakfast she had been eating in their common room. She paused in the doorway when she saw him. "Why are you covered in spots?"

Draco glared. "I don't know, but they're itchy," he told her, having just realized how itchy he was - everywhere.

"It looks like chicken pox to me," Hermione told him, coming closer to examine some of the spots on his arm. Reaching a hand out, she felt his forehead. "I think you have a fever, you should go to the hospital wing," she ordered.

Ignoring her order, Draco frowned. "What kind of hex is 'chicken pox'?" he asked, feeling his nose just in case it had morphed into some kind of beak, then worriedly patting his hair to make sure it was still hair instead of feathers. Reassured that the spots seemed to be the only things visibly out of place, he looked expectantly at Hermione, waiting for her answer.

"It's not a hex of any sort; it's a muggle illness that can actually be quite dangerous if you get it when you're older. You should go to the hospital wing," she told him again, glad that she'd had it when she was young, and so was immune to it now.

Draco was hesitant to go out where people would see him in this condition, but Hermione was persistent and her voice was grating on the headache he was developing. It didn't take her and her grating voice very long at all to convince him he needed to seek medical help.

"Oh my, what do we have here?" Madam Pomfrey asked when he shuffled into the hospital wing, closely followed by an anxiously hovering Hermione.

"I think it looks like chicken pox, but I'm not positive," Hermione answered for him as he gratefully collapsed onto one of the hospital beds – the walk over had been surprisingly exhausting, but luckily, only a few people had seen him, most students were in the great hall eating breakfast at the moment.

"I think you may be right Miss. Granger," the mediwitch told Hermione as she examined Draco for herself.

Draco was confused, and the fever and headache weren't helping very much. "Does this mean I'm going to turn into a chicken?" He asked, a little bit worried because the two women were being so serious.

"No, no. Nothing like that, you're just going to be sick for a day, and then itchy for a week. This potion will reduce the time you're ill, but I can't make you completely better," Pomfrey told him regretfully as she poured a potion out into a goblet for him to drink.

Hermione watched as he drank the vile looking potion with minimal fuss and then dropped off to sleep almost immediately. "Is he going to be all right?" She asked the mediwitch worriedly.

Madam Pomfrey nodded absently. "He'll feel horrible today, but he should make a full recovery," she told the girl absently, focused on the form she was filling out.

Hermione had turned to the door to head off to her classes, reassured that Draco was going to be fine when the healer stopped her. "You've had these chicken pox before, haven't you, Miss. Granger?" She asked, probably worried that Hermione was going to fall ill as well. She explained that she'd had them as a child and then left.

Madam Pomfrey glanced up after she had left and wondered if she should have warned the girl that the potion the Malfoy boy had taken might make him more contrary than he usually was. It contained an ingredient that made the recipient think that everyone around them was their enemy. She dismissed this thought though, Miss. Granger was already gone and she had more important things to do than chase after her.

The first thing Hermione did the second her classes were finished was go to the hospital wing to check on poor Draco. "Draco, are you all right?" She asked quietly when she saw how pale he looked.

"Granger?" He seemed confused as to why Hermione was coming to visit him. "I have a muggle disease," he complained, seeming to have forgotten that he was confused about the person he was talking to.

"I know," she told him sympathetically; she really did feel bad for him, he wasn't used to muggle illnesses and waiting them out to heal. He was more used to the immediate fixes that were out there for most wizard ailments.

Draco seemed t realize who he was talking to again. "You're a muggle born," he observed aloud.

Hermione raised her eyebrows, not sure where he was going with the observation.

"This is your fault! I've caught some sort of muggle disease and now I'm dying!" He accused her dramatically. Hermione was a little hurt that he still thought about her like that; like some sort of disease carrying mudblood.

"I know you're sick and not thinking right, so I'm not going to get mad at you, just know the things you're saying are hurtful," she told him, doing her best to keep her voice steady.

"I'm thinking just fine! You're a disease carrying mudblood!" He snapped at her. Hermione fought the urge to run from the room; fever only accounted for so much, it sounded like he really meant those things.

"Never speak to me again!" She yelled at him, fighting tears as she gave into the urge to flee. If he was going to say hurtful things like that, than whatever they'd had up until that point had been a lie. The hallways were thankfully empty of people as she made her way back to her dorms where she could wallow in her sorrow in peace.

When Draco got out of the hospital wing two days later, still itchy but without a fever, he went straight to the head dorms to see why Hermione hadn't come to visit him even once while he was sick. What he didn't realize was that she had come to visit while he was delirious and now she was avoiding him.

Blaise met him outside of the head dorms; he had been waiting until his friend was better before he confronted him. "What did you say to Granger?" he demanded the second Draco was near enough that he could speak without everyone overhearing.

"I didn't say anything, I haven't even seen her since she took me to the hospital wing the other day," Draco told him, wondering what in the world was going on – it seemed like everyone had gone mental. Or maybe just Hermione.

"Well, you said something, she's been miserable looking sine you were sent to the hospital wing, and I don't think it's concern for you well being..."

Draco opened the portrait hole and let Blaise in behind him, they both watched in confusion as she glanced up at them from the couch where she was reading before getting a panicked look and fleeing into her room, locking the door behind her.

"Still think you didn't say anything?" Blaise asked him dryly.

Draco stared after Hermione in disbelief before shaking his head. "Are they ever going to make any sense?" He asked his friend.

"Gryffindors? No. That lot's mental," Blaise told him.

"I was talking about women," Draco said, exasperated that Blaise was so focused on the Gryffindor thing; it was so first year.

"They're mental too," Blaise said with a shrug.