Ten years prior.
They lay on the grass under the tree, stars glittering overhead.
"Huh, so that was you? From Snape's own cupboard no less," Draco said next to her, squinting his eyes slightly to make the stars waver in his sight. "Very Slytherin of you."
"That's insulting," Hermione replied, laughter lacing her voice.
He unscrewed his eyes and the stars cleared once more. "Nope, that is a very great compliment. You should be honored."
Hermione snorted. "Ok. I think you're over-estimating what being called a Slytherin means to me."
Draco shook his head, liking the tickle of grass against his neck. "No, you wouldn't think it was an honour, but everyone else would."
That comment did cause her to laugh. "Yes. Everyone else thinks it is an honour to be called something that stands for sneakiness and stabbing people in the back."
Draco smirked. "Now, now, we don't stab people in the back; a very Muggle thing to do, that is. We just hex them."
Laughter, ringing in the night.
Hermione rolled over from her back to her side, propping her head on her hand. She could barely make out Draco's face in the darkness. "Honestly though, you never did anything like that? Somehow I doubt it."
Draco was squinting his eyes again at the stars. Blurry, not blurry, blurry.
"Nope." He said. "Kept my nose clean for the most part."
Hermione smiled. "Yes, calling people names and getting into duels with Harry are very good examples of keeping your nose clean."
Not blurry. Blinking several times to clear his sight completely.
He looked over at her, a smile playing about his lips. "Well, I wasn't the one that stole potion ingredients from a professor."
"There is that," she said, something like pride in her voice.
This caused the small smile on Draco's face to grow, just slightly. "You are proud of it, stealing the potion ingredients. See. Very Slytherin."
Silence. Comfortable. The tree over their head rustling in the autumn night breeze.
"You know what drove me mad about you?" Hermione finally started, looking over the body next to her and out towards where she could just barely make out the Burrow lights.
"Besides my good looks and charming manner?"
She looked back down at Draco, rolling her eyes, "Not mad as in good, mad as in irritated."
Draco raised an eyebrow. "I'm sure the list is long and lengthy, after all, I did manage to call you names, try to hex you and your friends, everything a good Slytherin should do to annoying and bossy Gryffindors."
Hermione snorted. "Wow, was that a bit of humility coming out of your mouth?"
A smirk, playing about his mouth, eyes grey and filled with humor. "Don't get used to it."
Hermione smiled. "I won't. But seriously, you know what drove me crazy was your seemingly effortless ability in studies."
Draco laughed, an honest laugh that started in his chest. Short. Warm. "Of course that would be it, school work."
This time she smiled at herself. "I know, quite stupid really, but I never saw you study, ever, write papers, go to the library, none of that, yet you always got good marks."
He rolled from his back to his side now, propping his head up in the same exact manner as the girl in front of him, his face strangely serious. "How much did you see me though, Granger? In class, at meals, occasionally in the hallway, but you didn't go out of your way to see beyond that."
The tone was slightly accusing, slightly hurt.
Hermione shook her head, as best she could in her position at least. "Come on, and what would you have done if suddenly I was wandering around trying to figure out what you did in your spare time? Probably call me a Mudblood and have your cronies terrorize me. We were enemies Malfoy, don't you remember?"
Silence, as both of them looked on each other, studying one another's faces.
"Were enemies?" Draco finally asked, breaking the silence but not the tension that suddenly grew between them.
"Were," Hermione confirmed, firmly, without hesitation.
Draco's gaze flickered down to her lips for a brief second and Hermione's breath hitched.
He fell to his back.
She followed suit.
Tensions slowly ebbing away with the progression of the moon and stars overhead.
"What was it like?" she finally asked.
"What?" Came the one worded reply from the dark.
"The Slytherin Common Room."
At one point in their relationship, even two months prior, he would have responded suspiciously.
That night he answered truthfully. "I suppose like any other, too much noise, people doing homework, messing around."
A pause and when he continued she could hear the smirk in his voice. "We didn't sit around planning the demise of human kind or figuring out new and creative ways to hurt people, if that's what you are thinking."
Hermione shook her head against the ground. "No, I didn't think that."
A snort.
She continued, "Ok, maybe I thought that a bit, but well, the lot of you were so horrible to us that I just wondered if there was any friendship within the actual House."
A lengthy pause, so lengthy that Hermione started to get nervous, wondering if perhaps she had said too much.
Then he answered and in his voice was something she had never heard before. "Friendship to a Slytherin is different then to a Gryffindor." He said this slowly as if not wanting to let go of the words.
Hermione did not move, instinctively understanding the need to stay silent.
He continued. "There is a certain kind of loyalty within the Slytherin house, loyalty to bloodlines, titles, and that causes friendships."
"That's not friendship," Hermione said quietly, afraid her words would cause him to erupt in anger and indignation.
Instead of anger Draco responded with the same quiet tone she used. "It is, just different. One of the things you and I view differently, I guess."
"What do you mean?" Hermione asked from where she lay on her side, curious despite herself.
Draco scanned her face. "Well, I don't understand how Gryffindors can be so cruel to their own."
Hermione rose from her back, sitting up and looking over at him. "We are not cruel to our own."
Draco watched her from where he still lay, mesmerized for a moment by the curls blowing across her face and the way she was looking at him with ill concealed irritation.
He didn't sit up, continuing to lay there next to her, an eyebrow raised, barely noticeable in the dim light.
"No?" He answered.
"No!" She said, not leaving, but irritation spiking.
He knew if she were standing she'd have a fist on her hip. As it were, her chin rose several inches into the air.
"What about your first year?" He asked, quietly, almost gently.
Hermione stared at him and he saw her slowly realise what he meant, saw it in the slight slouch of her shoulders and the sudden sadness crossing her features.
"They weren't exactly nice to you," he continued.
Hermione brought her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, facing Draco next to her, propping her chin on her knees.
"I was an annoying know it all," she responded quietly, sadly.
Draco felt something strange move through his gut.
He wanted her to smile again.
He nudged her with his foot, a little hard, causing her to rock. "You still are an annoying know it all."
She regained her balance and shot him a mock glare, smile tugging at her lips. "And you should be talking, ferret."
Peace. Regained.
Until Hermione sighed and looked back over to where the lights of the Burrow shone. "I suppose we should go back, the boys are probably done with their game."
Draco didn't want to. For a moment, just a little while, he'd felt normal, not a supposed Death Eater, not a spy for the Order.
Forgetting just for a little while that soon he would be summoned again.
Normal, talking to a girl under a tree on an autumn night.
He wanted to hold onto it, as long as he could.
Even if it was a mirage and not reality.
He rolled over onto his stomach, laying his head down on his bent arms. "You can go on," he said, mumbled through the hair now covering his face.
Hermione looked down at him, lying out before her. She'd noticed earlier that he had grown taller, his shoulders broadened from when she knew him in school.
And other changes.
He wore faded Muggle jeans, torn around the knees and a threadbare blue t-shirt. His white hair glowed in the moonlight, long, falling over his face, feet bare.
He didn't look like the Slytherin Prince, the Malfoy heir.
A friend.
The title floating through her brain.
Hermione uncurled herself and resumed her position on her back, closer this time though, close enough that if she moved her arm by her side, just a slight bit, she could touch him.
A sigh of pleasure next to her, barely heard, a whisper more than anything.
She smiled and moved her arm.
They lay on the grass under the tree, stars glittering over head.