A/N: Hey everyone! I tried to type this as fast I could I really like the way this is coming along, as I hope you do.

I just hate it when they fight, but I love it when they make up…never have met such a dysfunctional couple as them…

Well anyway, on with the story!

***

'These fellows only grow to be but three feet tall!' Zeke exclaimed as he squatted to get a good look at the Peeling Poises.

'Only?' I scoffed but sat on the floor beside her to quench my thirst. The more distance I put between Draco and me, I supplemented with spending time with him. It was a winning situation, seeing as I held no romantic feelings for him, and neither did he hold any for me.

'My grandfather has a garden full of Mocking Mums and Laughing Lilies; I should take you there some time.' I looked across the purple flower at him and scrunched my face. Zeke was a kind boy; he held many heart-softening qualities that most girls dreamed that their closest guys had. But…his sense was too touching- he talked about things that held great significance to him and those like him, but were completely meaningless to me.

'Not to be rude, Zeke, but I don't have much interest for flowers…my green thumb has never really fit…'

He looked at me oddly. 'You have a green thumb, Hermione?' he leaned in closely and whispered as if in fear that someone would hear.

'No, Zeke.' I laughed half-heartedly. 'I don't really have a green thumb…it's an expression…"a green thumb" meaning a thing for flowers and plant life.'

'Oh.' He nodded and went back to studying the Peeling Posey. I knew he didn't really understand, but pretended just to stop all fruitless further explaining. I sighed and fiddled with the slightly ripped handle of my bag. I had just left my double dosage of Potions when Zeke came to me and invited me for a walk through the trees and stubbles of rare flowers. Though I thought it was sweet, I had still wanted to have a talk with Draco. Only after a serious talk with myself had I realized that offending Draco that far was uncalled for, and awfully unlike me to do.

So why had I done it? Because I was tired of being walked on. I was tired of letting Draco be angry and lash out. I wanted to play the bad guy and feel it run through my veins. I wanted to perversely feel what an argument that I had wholly started felt like. The fire in his eyes…that fire sent a new feeling to me. The burning sensation between my legs was almost more than I could handle.

But what I felt afterwards…did every guy feel like that when he royally screwed up? Every time?

'Hermione? Hermione! You all right?' Zeke waved his hand in front of me, and I only then noticed that his hands were too soft. They held no calluses; a sign of a pampered boy. At least Malfoy's hands held some scarring from the war.

'Yes, Zeke?'

'I asked if you knew them.' He sent me a peculiar look, but gestured towards a forming crowd before I had the chance to ask who he was talking about.

A flock of schoolboys seemed to mew around an inner group of rowdy boys. As my duty and responsibilities of being Head girl, I left my lovely date with the flowers and walked up to the commotion. No one seemed to notice me- or pay attention, as I guessed. They all cooed and shouted to the boys within them, helping the rage of whoever was in the interfolds. Splendid, Merlin. Just splendid.

The last thing I wanted to do was play referee to immature boys- who no doubt were in their younger years. Who honestly fought in bodily combat when they had perfectly capable wands? Of course, I was never one to promote wand duels, but were these boys so dense as to sink as low as something that showed one's finest weakness? Lack of self-control.

'Get off him!' Our Head boy shouted down to the closest wrestling boy to him. But his command went unheard as they kept at it below him.

'Separate them, Blaise!' I called over to him and tried to smuggle myself through the ever-growing crowd. In no time, there would be a Professor- or worse, Mr. Filch there to clean up the mess.

'It's his fight, Granger.' He called back angrily.

'What are you talking about, Blaise?' I screamed over the shouts of the ecstatic boys around me- smothering me. He was Head boy; head of the boys. He needed to stop the immediately before serious damage was done- if it hadn't gotten to that pinnacle already.

'Get him! Hit him, Malfoy!' I heard a boy beside me call out. A few close bumbling idiots followed in as a chorus. I snapped my head towards the sound of the voice.

'Did you just say Malfoy?' I brought out my wand and pointed it at him.

He stuttered and looked among his friends for an answer. 'I…uh, well…surely you know who's in there?'

My eyes narrowed into slits. 'No, I surely don't! I wouldn't be wasting my time asking a bumbling fool if I didn't already know…now, I'm going to ask you one more time. As your powered Head Girl, who can dock a hundred points form your House if I saw it fit, did you say Malfoy?'

The idiot was only capable of nodding his head. I spun on my heel and rushed through the throng of people, not caring if my hair snagged a dozen times as I traveled through clammy, excited boys. Finally reaching the dead center, I saw one head of platinum hair bobbing up and down with every plummet of his fists onto the boy squirming and shouting beneath him.

'Draco!' His name came out more as a shrill against the wind. Immediately, the boys around me stole away from their animalistic roars like horrid cavemen centuries before us. I tightened the robes around me and thrust through the last set of now-awe-struck boys.

'That's Head Girl…she'll have our backside…oh, Malfoy's in for it with McGonagall Junior on his tail…' I heard the whispers all around me, but I could only focus on the monster I saw my boyfriend become.

'Draco! Draco, stop! You're hurting him!' I ran to try and remove him from the helpless boy below him, but a set of steady hands held onto to my shoulders with no mercy. My feet never left the spot the Head Boy held them in. 'Blaise…please let go of me! Look at what Draco's doing!' I pleaded whilst twisting and squirming my arms against him.

'Draco knows what he's doing…leave him, Granger. If you distract him now, he will not be forgiving.'

I moved away from Blaise when he visibly loosened his grip but took one last look at him. 'I'll take my chances.'

Draco's POV

The only thing I could focus on was his ginger head and the way his bones seemed to crush under the strikes I served. How dare him. How dare such filth taint her name…such under-garb dare even speak her name…?

I heard my name being called out, but the voice seemed so far away. It felt like a ghost's whisper among the other vices echoing in my mind. The voices spoke of glory; they spoke of pride. That's what pride brought me to; crushing the sixth year boy beneath me. My mind focused in and out. My brain flickered from one thought to the next at this moment, never lingering at one place any longer than necessary.

I was no longer aware of rational thought. I was incapable of doing anything other than beating him to a pulp. But, Merlin, I wanted to do so many more things. I wanted to Crucio him…I wanted to make him kneel before me and apologize for what he said. I wanted him to know where his place was with me…and her. I was fully aware that using physical means would solve nothing of the sort; but it would scare him. As Hermione put it, they were either servants or enemies. He was going to be both by the time I was finished with him.

It all had started when the sodding idiot began boasting to his friends about her…about Hermione. He sad such- such disrespectful things about her. I wasn't going to stroll away and allow a lowly creep walk around and say things that weren't true. Assuming that they aren't true…a teasing voice whispered and allowed the thought to echo and flitter through my mind.

And it did nothing but enrage me more; I was at a ground-breaking new angry. No, I was far past angry. Very, very far past angry.

My boiling blood rushed through my veins, to my head, then down to my feet, and back again with a lightening speed. It made me dizzy just imagining what the licks of fire in my skin looked like.

'Draco! Draco, stop! You're hurting him!' I heard the voice scream- her voice scream. My hands dropped for a second…she saw this? My angel saw me…doing this?

No matter how angry, or upset I was with her, I could not imagine upsetting her. She was my sole reason for living now; she was the fruit of everything I cherished these days. I could hear her voice…the sweet melodic tune she sang with just speaking – or rather complaining to me. And I could feel her reaching towards my soul; I imagined her fingers massaging the rough edges of my heart and delving herself deeper than ever necessary. I heard her voice; the tone she used when she was scared but wouldn't dare show it…saying I was acting like a monster. Saying I looked like a monster. Saying that I had become a monster; saying that I had become just like my father. Whether she knew it or not, I was becoming this monster for her.

My unsettling thoughts led me to let go of the crying little boy beneath me. He had seen enough of my wrath for now. If later, when he found his manhood and wanted to even our score, the brat knew exactly who I was. I doubted that would happen anytime soon, if ever. Once fear and the seed of doubt sewed themselves in your mind, there was no dissuading yourself. Mentally and physically.

As soon as I stood, fists clenched, the lad scampered away from me and far past the crowd holding his pretty boy face all the way like a bloody Nancy-girl. How pathetic.

My angel…I smirked, remembering that I heard her voice call out to me like a sweet summer night filled with a million Jasmines and a bottle of aged Firewhiskey. So I turned and scanned the crowd until I saw her. She looked straight at me- straight through me with her pensive golden eyes. They weren't narrowed or cutely squinted as usual. They were merely focused; there was just that look of concentration there- she was searching for an answer. On my face, across my body, in my eyes. And when she found none, her hazel eyes full of unattended tears rolled back.

Familiarizing myself with the signs, I ran to her side and caught her before she hit her pretty little head against the ground.

***

Hermione's POV

'Ugh…' I groaned as I sat up and felt waves of pain hit me like an oncoming freight train boarding all to hell.

'Nice to see you awake.' Draco called from the seat he took against his window.

I grunted as I looked around and noticed that nothing close to me was familiar. The bedposts were finer…the blankets were softer, and green. I looked down, and surely, they were green. The darkest hue of emerald I had ever seen. I took off the wet cloth from my forehead and rubbed it to comfort some calmness and bring back a clear mind.

Oh no…oh, Merlin, no…please don't let this be what I believe it to be…

I looked up to him and questioned my presence with a glare. 'Stop that, Hermione. Your face is going to stay that way if you keep it like that for too long.' Amusement danced in his grey eyes as he inched closer and sat at the foot of the bed. The mattress was very large; considering it housed a big man, it needed to be. But I was a mere five' something. Its prowess to make me feel engulfed worked miraculously as it swallowed me up in its comfort and warmth. Considering the cold outside…

'I'll take my chances.' I bit out, but gasped as I remembered myself saying the exact line not much earlier. At the scene caused by…caused by…

I looked at him and kept my well opted eyes trained on him. 'How could you, Draco?' my smallest voice then graced me, making me sound like a delicate flower ready to be squashed by a mad First Year.

'You don't know what he said, Hermione. Do not judge when you do not know the whole-'

'This isn't a game, Draco!' I yelled, getting back some fire into my veins. Arguing with Draco always brought out this…lioness within me. 'This isn't a game where I get to judge you and make the rules! You could have hurt that boy, worse then you must have already! You could have even killed him.' I stood from the bed and began pacing. My feet had to move; they had to keep going. I could have exploded right there in his room into a million little pieces if I didn't keep my body parts moving.

'Don't doubt my capabilities, Hermione. I am very much in control of my emotions and I do know my own strength.' His casual posture against the window seal brought fury into my veins and made my heart race faster and faster.

I gave a low, menacing laugh. 'Oh, yes of course! Because you most certainly proved that out there!' I pointed to the window where the scene that had happened not much longer before had gone down.

'Don't mock me for what I do, Hermione. I do have my reasoning for what I do, but it is none of your business on how I conduct my affairs.' He hadn't yelled, nor raised his voice. But the way he took his slow, menacing steps towards me truly frightened me.

But as he drew as near as possible without my nose touching his chest bone, I lifted my head and hid behind my stubbornness to not be drawn under the bus-of-his-persona as it swirled past me.

'Then mine shouldn't be yours either! Yet we still have brawls about when, who, where! Maybe you feel endangered? Perhaps your pride has suffered way too long being around a mudblood's presence! Is your pureblooded coat suffocating you? Is what your father shoved down your throat promising to come up any minute? Is that it, Draco? Is that-?'

'Silence! Enough!' he screamed down at me, causing my bold tyrant to end quickly. His chest was heaving up and down and his eyes took that fearful crazed gloss to them. Draco Malfoy was capable of murder at these moments. 'I refuse to linger on your words and allow you to wallow in what has happened in your past experiences. Shall we choose today to grow up?' he replied spitefully.

'Me…grow up? Oh, Draco Malfoy, that's rich! Coming from a boy who hoards enough jealousy to make himself miserable for the next hundred years, I find it just a little hard to believe.' I now was up against his chest, trying to get into his head with my words.

'Oh, and you're any better? You get one less mark than you wanted, and you throw fit! You don't have your complete way with me, and you have a fit! I say something you don't like and you throw a bloody fit! And yet, its always me. Its always me, Hermione.' He forcefully grabbed my shoulders and shook them, trying to transfer his words into waves of pain that could be then transformed into messages to me. To back away. To leave him.

It was a shame that the pain waves never turned into anything more than anger for me.

'Draco, stop. You're hurting me!' I cried with indigence. Indigence…is that what filled me these days? Need…the need to take Draco away from everyone and declare him my lover for everyday of my life. The indigence to listen and obey every time he spoke and commanded. At least with the new pain, I could distract myself with it. I groaned loudly, right into his sensitive ear canals. 'Ugh…you bloody hypocrite!' Calling him names helped ease the hurt I felt when he handled me roughly- so unlike the Draco I grew to know. And love.

'You want a fight? Well, you've got a fight, Hermione.' He released my aching shoulders but started picking up valuable, fragile things and began to throw them against the walls. The concrete surrounding us silently hummed as more glass shrouded above it and shattered into a million pieces.

'Stop throwing things! You're acting like a child!' I yelled from behind my tears that bunched up in front of my eyes. The wall covering the water from leaking out of me would not break as Draco's decorative belongings did around me. If I ever thought that he wasn't an angry, temperamental person, I was absolutely wrong.

'This isn't solving anything!' I tried to reason with him, but he merely turned his back and looked for more things to break. I grabbed his shoulder and spun him towards me, not caring if he had an item trigger-happy in his hand. The more out of control he became, the more physical he became. I was never one for the very aggressive type, but if I was being truthful with myself (and I was completely), it perversely turned me on…seeing Draco all riled up and ready to conquer all those got in his way. 'Breaking your things won't solve a thing, Draco.' I laid a hand on his cheek, and his eyes instantly fluttered close.

'What made you so angry, Hermione? What makes you mad enough to brood my emotions?' he pulled me closer laid a large hand over my much smaller one. The irregular breathing and dramatic flaring of his nostrils warned me to tread lightly with him, which was what I knew best to do.

'Draco, I called your name… I called out to you so many times, and you didn't stop. You kept going and going…' I closed my eyes and allowed my emotions to overtake me and all sense. I then, and only at that moment, allowed myself to cry in his arms.

'I promise that you won't ever have to see that again, Hermione. You'll never have to see me at my…worst ever again.'

'I don't want to. Whatever he said, no matter how horrible or mean it was, gives you no right to behave like that, Draco. I can't lose you…you know the Ministry is breathing down your neck as it is. One wrong move, Draco…' I pulled at the collar of shirt, just to marvel at the spread of pale skin that was hidden beneath it. '…I can't lose you. I love you, Draco Malfoy.'

His eyes shot open and his mouth parted; this was how it was when I told him I loved him for the first time. This was the first time I had ever told another man other than Harry and the Weasleys "I love you." And it was very scary. Never in a million years would I refer to another person as I referred to him in my innermost thoughts.

I loved him. I loved him. There wasn't anything else to it…was there?

Blinding all thoughts of the complications I just made, and the awkwardness that would come after he completely processed my words, I closed my eyes. For the second time in my life, I breathed out instead of sighing in.

***

A/N: How did you all like that??? Hope you loved it.

Warning for the next chapter…rated M for a reason.

Please review for any criticism, or if you think this is going too fast. I'm not so sure if the speed is too much for some of you. I appreciate the feedback, any questions you have I will definitely be sure to answer