Disclaimer: I do not own anything having to do with Harry Potter, Hogwarts, or the Wizarding World. If I did, I would not be writing fan fiction online and would instead be rolling in piles of cash. J.K. Rowling is a goddess and all originality goes to her, I merely twist her storylines and turn her characters

Draco:

It had been days since he had crossed paths with Hermione. Occasionally, he'd see her climbing the stairs, or would seek her out in the Great Hall, his eyes always pulled to the Gryffindor table as they sought her out. He still saw her in the classes they shared, but nowhere near enough to feel fully sated. As much as he was loathe to admit it, he missed her.

Even before that short-lived weekend where they had grown close, they had at least exchanged cordial greetings, occasionally spat some back and forth at each other. Without her presence, he found the entire world had changed.

Before he had grown close to her, the world was distinctly black, white, and shades of grey. There were the good guys, the bad guys, and the guys who balanced on the fine, fine line between the two, just waiting to fall to one side or another.

After growing closer to Hermione, everything was vibrant Technicolor, and the world was different. He felt at ease and stimulated, happy and sad. It was like a dream, yet he felt more awake than ever.

After their fight, the world couldn't return to black and white, but it would never be full color again. Suddenly his world was dull shades of brown, sepia in the dullest sense. His glimpses of her would spark bits of color, but quickly return to brown, the very brown of her hair, or of her tanned skin. The warm honey brown of her eyes. The brown of the hot chocolate she loved to sip, or the brown of the leather bound edition of Hogwarts: A History that she so adored reading. The world was in shades of Hermione.

As he made his way to the library for more books he didn't need, he felt ashamed in himself. The past few days he had been nothing more than a shadow of himself, ghosting along behind Hermione. He visited the library every day after classes to see if she was there, and his room had around seventeen books in it he had checked out under the premise of "personal research".

Unknown to Madame Pince, however, was the fact that every one of those books had a common theme. They were all from the 5th aisle to the left, three bookshelves down. You see, if Draco stood in this area, he could peer through the shelves to where Hermione sat and did her homework everyday after classes.

She seemed so unaffected by their distance, though he supposed he shouldn't be surprised. She had other friends, he was the lonely one. Every meal she would sit at the Gryffindor table and joke with Potter and the Weasel, taking no notice of the grey-eyed stare on her back.

Given, Malfoy did have people who liked him. Blaise was cheerful as ever, and Theo was a great confidante, but they just wouldn't understand. They still believed the pureblood propaganda that he was beginning to recognize as pure nonsense.

Draco had, after much deliberation, recognized the truth in Hermione's words, and he was struggling to come to terms with the new truths. After all, facts worked in Hermione's favor, but tradition was tradition, and breaking from it would require more courage than Draco had.

Sighing, Draco made his way to the left of the library, turning down the 5th aisle, and finding his way to the third bookshelf. She wasn't there though, at least not today.

Draco immediately panicked, then resisted the urge to slap himself upside the head for being a numbskull. Hermione was a smart and capable witch. She could handle herself. Not to mention, it wasn't like she was required to be at this table. For all he knew, she was hanging out with the female Weasel, or watching Potter practice on the Quidditch Field. Or she could be making out with Weasley in an abandoned classroom. The voice in his head taunted him, and he felt himself grow angry at the mere thought of Weasley and Hermione.

Walking out of the library with two more books in tow, he headed back to the common room to sit alone in his room and wait for Hermione to come back. Not that he would say hi or leave his room or anything. He just… He liked knowing she was nearby.

As he walked through the hallway, though, he heard a scream coming from down a nearby corridor. Dropping the useless books he was carrying, Draco raced towards the scream, hoping against hope it wasn't Hermione.

Hermione:

Making her way back to the Head Common room, Hermione was in a stump. Her plan had been to make Draco make the first move. But, it seemed he was waiting for a sign from her.

She wasn't blind or deaf, and Draco was certainly not sneaky or quiet. It didn't take a genius to figure out that he'd been following her. She'd noticed him in the library more often, and she noticed that more and more books kept going missing from the shelf nearest her study table, while Malfoy's room seemed to be piling up with the dusty volumes. She'd felt his stares on her in the Great Hall, and had been rushing away from him in the hallways and in class. She could see in his eyes that he was losing faith in what he had always believed in, and that he was doubting the pureblood values he had been raised on. She figured that would have been enough to get him to make the first move, but she was wrong.

Today, she had broken habit, going to visit with Hagrid instead of her usual library study session. She figured that since it was a Friday she could do the studying she'd missed over the weekend. As she walked up the flight of stairs, she wondered where Draco was, and if he had looked for her in the library today.

As she turned the corner, she was met with the most terrifying sight she had seen since the Battle of Hogwarts, and she let out a blood-curdling scream.

Before her was the body of one of the giant spiders of the Forbidden Forest. Every one of it's legs had been torn off, and were sticking out of it's eye sockets. The body itself was bloated, and cut down the middle, where it's organs spilled out in a grey mess.

It's mouth was open in a gaping position, and on one of its mandibles was a note. Before she had the chance to read it, the sound of footsteps racing down the hallway made her stand alert, wary that the approaching stranger could be the person who committed the crime.

Rounding the corner, her wand was pointed at the very person she had been thinking about earlier. The blonde-haired Slytherin pushed her wand aside in his haste, and his hands reached up to grab her face.

"Are you alright? Who hurt you? What's wrong?" Draco spoke in a rush, looking over all of the exposed skin on her body to check for bruises or scratches. His face was filled with concern, and Hermione's heart beat a little bit louder at his close proximity.

"Why the sudden willingness to touch a mudblood, Malfoy?" Hermione's words were fiery and though she did not tear herself away from his caring touch, she wanted him to know he was going to have to work for her forgiveness. She was going to make him realize that she wasn't a prize to be won, that she was a real live person and that she had him wrapped around her pinky finger.

Draco's face fell, and with it his hands dropped to his sides, where he began to fidget with his pants seams. "Actually that's something I've been wanting to talk to you about, Hermione." He spoke with genuine care in his voice, and Hermione felt compelled to just forgive him then and there, but she remained steadfast in her decision to remain stoic towards him.

"Okay, then talk." Hermione minced no words, shooting Draco a look that (she hoped) communicated quite clearly that she was a busy woman.

"Well, I've been thinking about what you said…" Draco started, uneasy.

"I say a lot of things you'll have to be more specific." Hermione knew, of course, what he was talking about, but she wanted to hear him say it just for her sake.

"Purebloods and mudbloods. Well, you said that there's really no difference between them and, the more I reflect on it, the more I realize how right you are. I mean, magic doesn't come from just anywhere, right?" Draco looked to Hermione for confirmation that what he was saying was okay, and at her nod he continued.

"Well, you probably have wizarding blood in you somewhere. And Pureblood families make squibs, so we must have muggle blood in us somewhere, right? Maybe it's not about the blood you have, but the person you are. And, if you're a magic person, you're a magic person i guess? I don't know I'm still trying to wrap my head around it all and I'm probably wrong on a lot of it but-" Draco stopped himself when he realized he'd started blabbering, and looked at Hermione's face to see how his admission had been received.

"It's about time you dummy." Hermione smiled at Draco. The boy was a big-headed fool, but when he put that big head of his to use he could accomplish great things.

"I'm just glad we're alright again." Draco laughed, then suddenly looked at Hermione in concern again. "Wait, why were you screaming?"

Hermione's small smile turned morbid, and she gestured around the corner, showing him the huge dead Acromantula that lay in pieces in Hogwarts.

"Why… Who did this?" Draco asked hesitantly.

"Well, the Acromantula wouldn't have been able to get into Hogwarts all on it's own, and it certainly wouldn't have dismembered itself, meaning this was a murder. The fact that the body is so disfigured was probably intentional, meant to promote panic and fear. As for the who, well, I think that letter will tell us, or at least clue us in. Of course, I have my suspicions…" Hermione concluded what she had deduced thus far, unable to tear her eyes away from the massive corpse laying in front of her.

"The second Dark Lord." Draco guessed, but when Hermione nodded the two knew that that's what the spider must have died from.

"Only one way to find out." Hermione cast a spell on the parchment to reveal any curses, and when the spell turned up negative she reached out to grab the paper. A thick white goo stuck it to the spider, and she couldn't free the paper (which was, unluckily, writing side down), from the sticky substance.

"Get over here and help me, you good for nothing!" Hermione exclaimed, her hands covered in the goo.

Draco made his way over and in a little under 30 seconds was able to cut the letter free with a severing charm and a bit of brute force.

"Not fair you used magic!" Hermione complained, upset that he'd been able to do what she couldn't and that he wasn't even covered in spider slobber (or maybe it was webs? Hermione didn't really know).

"You're a witch, aren't you? Might wanna try using magic a little bit too!" Draco laughed, as he scourgified the paper clean.

Hermione walked over to Draco, and read over his shoulder. The note was simple, reading plainly:

From the Dark Lord's ashes a second will rise

And there is no prophecy about his demise

Hand over the boy with eyes of grey

Or his mother may not live to see another day

It was typed so that handwriting couldn't hint at its owner, though of course the signature at the bottom gave away some clues. It was signed with a simple copy of the Dark Mark, but instead of a skull vomiting the snake, it was an inferi. The small difference made the image all the more striking and gruesome.

Draco's hand went straight to his left arm, clutching his forearm like he could squeeze it off.

"You have nothing to be ashamed of Draco. I know the circumstance under which you were initiated. You had no choice." Hermione tried to reassure Draco, but it was futile.

"Everyone has a choice. I just decided to let my father do all of my choosing for me. Worst choice I ever made." Draco smiled weakly at his own expense, but the smile failed to reach his eyes.

Hermione reached towards the sleeve of his shirt, and slowly began to push up the cuff, revealing the original Dark Mark, without any of this Inferi nonsense. Almost unconsciously, she started to trace the path of the snake running through the skull. She heard Draco's breath catch in his throat, but he didn't stop her so she assumed she was in the clear.

She felt a shiver run through her, and drew away slowly, making eye contact with Draco to assure him she wasn't disgusted by him. She just… she couldn't handle the past, and she only wanted to focus on the present. Draco was starting to see her way of things, and that was all she needed to know.

"Shouldn't we report this to McGonagall?" Draco said, snapping her out of her wonderings.

"I suppose she would like to know…" Hermione hesitated, wanting to savor this moment alone with the boy she hadn't talked to for weeks.

"We can catch up in the common room later, Hermione. We have to tell the Headmistress." Draco reassured Hermione like a child, explaining the situation to her as one would talk to a seven-year-old. She shot him a glare, but when she find his eyes smiling she found herself grinning back at his jab.

As they started towards the Headmistress's office, Hermione found her hand brushing against Draco's, and, after only a few steps, he grabbed on and gave her small hand a squeeze. Without a word, the two fell into a comfortable pace together, never realizing they hadn't released their handhold.