Draco Malfoy could not remember a time Hermione Granger hadn't been a part of his life. They'd been neighbors since before birth, though she was eight-months-seventeen-days-older, something she'd constantly reminded him of when they were young, when religion and politics and gender made no difference.
He couldn't remember when he'd started hating her.
Maybe it was because of his parents- Baptists and Catholics didn't mix, they'd said. Neither did the type of people they were and the type of people the Grangers were, but that was a discovery Draco had made on his own.
Hermione was a nice girl. She was quiet, she liked to read, she made good grades, and after the summer before junior high, the summer she'd disappeared (at least to him, whenever he inquired about it his parents shared knowing looks and sent him outside), she'd stopped being such a fucking know-it-all. Yes, Hermione Granger was perfectly nice. But she hung around with Harry Potter, the damned idiot greaser who thought he was oh-so-much-better than Draco, so how great could she really be? Sometimes he missed that real friendship, the comrade of little kids who buried pennies and hunted for them like pirate's treasure. However, he had enough on his mind these days without reflecting on a girl who'd grown up to pick the wrong scum as a buddy.
And as much as Draco liked to tell himself that, he had a secret.
He watched Hermione Granger do ballet.
The adjacent windows had been handy in the summer, they'd used to throw paper airplanes with short messages scribbled in the untidy hand of ten-year-olds back and forth. They served a purpose now, too. Not that he would do anything obscene- that was disrespectful. No, he only looked when he'd noticed she'd pulled her hair into that tight bun and wore pants and an undershirt instead of a nightgown. She was surprisingly graceful- fluid, like a river, and quick, like a bird. She always finished by bowing to an invisible crowd, and Draco always found himself smiling.
Smiles were a rare thing. His father's... business was falling apart, and things were getting worse between Malfoy Sr. and Draco's mother. Narcissa Malfoy was an English woman, Lucius a full blooded Italian, complete with temper. Narcissa claimed Draco (or, as she put it, 'her litte dragon') had inherited the trait. He knew she meant it kindly, though to him, it was the worst possible insult. Especially when she said it while nursing a black eye.
Draco supposed that he could have talked to his friends about the fear, the worry, the anger. That is, if he was in the mood to commit social suicide. Perhaps it was how he had surrounded himself with idiots in this sham of a life that caused him to think he missed the bookish, curly-haired girl. It wasn't real emotion. So he told himself.
Really, though, he had no one to care about, no one to hurt him, (no one to confide in) and he was fairly certain he liked it that way. How much sleep had he lost when his parents told him it was time to put away the pastimes of an innocent mind, to give up his lovely time with 'the Baptist girl'? How much had he screamed (secretly cried)? How many fights, how many bruises, how many... how many... how many...
No more.
Draco Malfoy was a young man of stone, something that made his father proud (to Draco's disgust) and his mother frightened (to his shame). The problem was, he didn't know how to be anything else. He was formal, proper. Words like 'goober', and 'tune', and 'dork' and 'geek' and 'swingy' had no effect on him. He didn't join in on the stupidity that his peers considered 'fun' (oh but he wanted to).
Some small part of him wanted to be good again, happy. The island was shrinking every day, sliding farther and farther into the sea of emotionless defenses set up long ago, built on a foundation of Lucius Malfoy's doings.
The lack of a person to rationally blame except oneself causes any person to become irrational in their searching. Draco had once blamed his father, but had since focused his rage on a new, much less deserving candidate (not out of loyalty but fear). For nearly two years now, the target of his rage had been Hermione Granger. This wasn't entirely voluntary, but he went along with it, though subconsciously he wished it would change.
Any chance of that happening was wiped away when he walked past the library they'd practically lived in as kids, and noticed her sitting on the swings with fucking Potter, at seven thirty, on a school night.
Hermione Granger was as good as dead to him.