Disclaimer: JKR is just luckier than I am. That's all it boils down to. All that creativity stuff and age difference and Britishness all boils down to luck, right?

Okay, and she's brilliant, so… I guess she deserves Harry Potter…

A/N: Oh my gosh, me actually updating on time? The shock! But, here she is. More Draco and Hermione interaction and a deeper look into our Draco. Hope you enjoy it! Please tell if so!

When I came home that night, I found a note in my bedroom. She must have had one of the house elves do it after I hadn't gone to eat dinner with her once again. At first, the sight of it sparked a desire to tear it up and throw it into the fireplace and watch the flames lick up the paper and her words as they fulfilled the only purpose they would ever have and charred to ashes. However, a moment's thought on how much I had apparently screwed up today found me sighing as I flopped onto my bed and grabbed the slip of parchment.

My eyes grew heavy with guilt as they scanned the words my mother gave life in ink. Like any normal mother, she was worried about her teenage son whose actions she couldn't understand and viewed as irrational. But she seemed to want to, and seemed to care, which surprised me to no end. Maybe I was wrong, perhaps she hadn't changed when my father had.

Suddenly anger sprouted within me, anger at my father, at my mother, at my professors, at my friends, at my classmates, at the Dark Lord, at everyone, at the world. Why did they let this happen? Why did people watch as my father was stolen from me and my childhood ripped to pieces? Why did I let it happen?

More than anyone else, I hated myself. A coward and a loser had no reason to blame anyone but himself. When it boiled down to it, it was my fault, too. My fault, too.

Clawing the letter from my mother into a bunch as my fists fell into the soft mattress on my bed, I closed my eyes and let the sobs that echoed throughout my room lull me to sleep.

Once again, I left the Manor the next morning without speaking to my mother.

But today, the thought struck me harder than before. Because of last night. No matter what those words had struck inside me, I wasn't ready to talk to her yet. Coward I was, I wasn't going to do something as simple as hold a conversation with my own mother until I felt I was ready.

However, the others had plans for today. I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to, nothing to do. I supposed that it was best though. After all, how was I going to force myself to face them sporting a smile this time when I felt so black inside?

Still, I had to get out of that house. With a shadow of a sliver of a hope and a glance to the heavens, I set out across the grounds that surrounded the Manor. For no particular reason, I started running, passing through the grasses at full speed. No thought pushed me to start leaping past the scenes of grass meeting trees meeting sky, and no thought entered my mind after I got started doing so. Warm wind slapped my face, wrapping a strange embrace around my body that stung just enough to let me know I wasn't dreaming.

Land in front of me bounced up and down, never sitting still for long. Long blinks left my brain to become confused as my eyes delivered flashes of scenes and darkness one after another, over and over. My arms pumped furiously in a race with my legs to reach my unknown destination. Breaths grew labored as they fled from my mouth in a harsh repetition. Burning sensations spread among my lungs with each meter I passed. Blood that the heart I apparently still had shot through my body, heating my flesh from pale skin in.

Some unseen obstacle – probably an unnoticeable rock half the size of my palm – wandered through my path and sent me stumbling through the air until I collided with the ground, rolling down the slight incline in the chaos and rewarding numerable bumps and bruises as signs of my trip.

Still harshly pushing and pulling air into my mouth, my body came to a halt while it continued to work insanely to deliver oxygen to my greedy limbs. My eyes remained closed as I laid unmoving, the only penetration of the silence in the form of the whistling wind and my rasping transference of breaths.

For a moment that seemed to stretch into hours, I sat there, only slightly moving from the position that my fall had left me in to feel the grass with my fingertips and curl into a fetal position as my body gradually relaxed.

When I finally did open my eyes, I stared up at the blue sky with a blank mind. Thoughts slowly began to paint on it, and I rolled flat onto my back, resting my hands beneath my head and propping my knees up in the air.

I would figure this out. Perhaps it would help to talk to somebody. Maybe Mum.

Maybe later.

Maybe… maybe Granger… Mia… Hermione.

The next day was spent in a silent contemplation similar to the one the day before. But by the day after that, I couldn't stay within the grounds and stay calm. Still not willing to face my mother, I wandered into town, walking among the stores and shops, watching the people as they formed crowds down the streets and paused to tie a shoe or pick up a fallen paper or fix a little girl's hair.

In my hurry to escape from my home, I hadn't eaten breakfast at the manor that morning. By noon, my stomach mumbled ever so slightly, but when I entered the ice cream parlor, nothing on the menu seemed appeasing, even to my mumbling stomach. So, I went without and returned to studying human behavior. My feet brought me to the park, where I stayed until the sun reached the horizon.

Just when I decided that perhaps I should return home for the day, I bumped into someone unexpected.

"Malfoy," she pronounced, evidently not expecting to see me there either.

After a moment's thought, I greeted back with a slight nod, "Hermione."

To my amazement, she then smiled a smile that showed how pleasantly surprised she was. "You hungry?" she asked, beginning a conversation that she probably wanted to continue. Intelligent me gathered that much from her gesture towards town.

"Kind of," I replied truthfully.

"Want some ice cream?" she specified. Thinking about how ice cream hadn't managed to catch my stomach earlier, I merely shrugged. Maybe after a few more hours of eating nothing, my body would be hungry enough.

With a silence that flirted with awkwardness, we began walking along the streets that would bring us to the ice cream parlor the four of us favored. Mia – I mean, Hermione – chatted about what she had been doing over the past few days, occasionally questioning me about my own. I shrugged most of her inquiries off, diverging from that particular subject for the time being.

When we reached the ice cream parlor, she asked if I wanted a sundae or a cone. "Why?" I wondered out loud to her.

"I figured that we would eat inside if you felt like a sundae, but we could get a cone to go if you wanted that," she replied, almost shyly.

"Oh," I responded stupidly, brain not quite turned back on and into interaction with other people mode. "A cone is fine."

"Okay," she agreed, turning to the flavors as if she didn't have them memorized. I watched her face as she look at each one, no doubt outweighing the pros and cons of the components of each flavor. The scene brought a smile to my face for the first time since… well, since the last time something she had done had made me smile. Suddenly I realized that I should spent this time with her wisely. Maybe I should take the chance to talk to her.

After we both ordered and received our cones, I suggested that we eat them while walking around the park, so we headed back in the direction from whence we came. Once we arrived, I guided us down a path and next to tree, where I sat down. As I knew she would, M – Hermione – followed suit. For a few precious moments, we sat in a comfortable silence that I enjoyed, each of us enjoying our frozen treats.

"Can we talk?" I heard her ask again. I knew she would bring back up that conversation I had somehow killed a few days before. In fact, I was hoping she would.

"Shoot," I replied, not wanting to get her mad at me again.

"Why were you out with Eric?" she shot, getting right to her point. "I mean, he's a Muggle. You don't seem –"

Understanding what she meant, I sighed and looked away, going right back to wishing I didn't have to have this conversation and put things in words. Words were more binding than mere feelings. Nevertheless, I interrupted her words to answer what I knew was coming.

"I know." Then, I prepared myself to let free the thoughts that had been plaguing me the past couple of thought-filled days, and to Hermione Granger, no less. "Well, I met Eric years ago, before starting at Hogwarts even. My mother had let me stay and play at the park one day after she had completed her shopping. He was having a sword fight with himself with two sticks from off the ground. He invited me to play with him and I wanted to, so I did. My father never let me play with any children that weren't the sons and daughters of his friends, and I liked the idea of keeping someone as my secret friend. When I wanted to play with him, I would tell my mother that I was out practicing flying – she let me do that over the lake sometimes – or went out in the woods to fool around like little boys often do. She accepted it without a care. My father never found out somehow, I guess they never discussed it. But the summer before my – our – first year of Hogwarts, my father had me stay in more often and study. Sometimes it was basic wizardry, so that I wouldn't make him look like a fool for being stupid, he said. Sometimes it was lessons on manners and my place in society. I had already known Eric for years by then, so he somehow found a different classification than other Muggles. But with time, and more lessons from my father, I saw Eric less and less and began to think he was the same."

When I paused, Hermione gave me a questioning look. She called my name to catch my attention from where it had wandered. After a shallow sigh, I continued. "But after a while, my father grew even more commanding, more controlling over every part of my life. I hated it. And then the mess at the Ministry happened."

I watched her squirm a bit, wondering what thoughts went through her mind as the fight from a few weeks ago popped up. How did she think I felt about her and Potter and Weasley and all of them putting my father in prison? Often times at night, I would stare up at the ceiling and ask myself the same question. I didn't know how to feel. He was my father, my family, the man who raised me. But he also had been so different in the past few years, had treated me different.

"Just two weeks ago, a few days after returning from school, I met up with Eric again. See, with my father away, I felt I had two choices: I could spend my entire summer stewing over how to get revenge on my father's behalf, or I could do what I had never been given the opportunity to do when he was home – whatever I wanted. If my mother had been crying when I got home, I don't think I could have chosen what I did. But nothing was going on, no one would talk to me, so I chose option two. That day, I went to the park and ended up finding Eric. I didn't care he was a Muggle. A part of me was even happier that he was. It just showed me how I really was out of my father's grasp. You don't understand what it's like to live with him. It's –"

No word seemed to match it. Nothing I could say would properly represent what it was like to live with that man who paraded around as my father. I knew what it was like to live with my father. The father of my childhood would play with me, teach me, love me. But then… he disappeared. There wasn't a soul on the planet I missed more than that of my father.

"I suppose it would be awful, wouldn't it?" she filled in the silence by offering. I tilted my head downward slightly, imitating a nod as my mind emptied and spun with thoughts all at once.

"The worse part," I heard a soft, low voice that sounded a bit like my own confide, "is remembering when he wasn't like that. Wondering if he could have been that man all throughout my life if something had changed, if Potter hadn't been in my year, if Potter hadn't gotten everything my father wanted a son of his to accomplish, if the pressure from the other families hadn't fallen so hard onto his shoulders with the mess Potter created."

I couldn't look at her then. I had just blamed one of her best friends for the problems in my life and basically expressed my hatred for him. I definitely hadn't planned on doing so, but somehow the words came out before asking permission.

"It wasn't his fault, you know," she whispered after a moment.

"But it would be so easy if it was," I responded. As I stared out at the night sky, I heard a movement right before I felt her hand consolingly running my and down my back. Wishing the world would just melt away, I closed my eyes and leaned into her. To my surprise, it did.