Chapter 3

"Fuck," Draco muttered under his breath. "This is impossible." He threw his quill down on the table. He thought that by their second meeting, the work would become easier, but it had in fact become increasingly more difficult.

Their first meeting in the library had gone quite well surprisingly. They had divided the work evenly and went through the session with each of them breaking the silence only once. Granger was even less of a swot than usual. She wasn't pointing out his mistakes or trying to correct his work. She quietly worked on her side of the project and had only spoke to him once to ask for an additional sheet of parchment.

Draco had taken the time last Friday to try looking at her through a new lens. Since she wasn't being completely loathsome, Draco could see what Blaise had been talking about before. Her hair was much less frizzy than it had been in their previous years; now it fell around her shoulders in shiny loose curls. Her cheeks had a nice rosy grace to them with a small touch of freckles as well. Sitting this close he could also see that her brown eyes had small flecks of gold in them; like the Gryffindor she was. She got a wrinkle between her eyebrows and bit her bottom lip when she focused on her work but she also had tiny dimples in her cheeks when she smiled- which was never directed towards him.

Not that he was taking a fancy to her, just observing how the previous year fighting the Dark Lord had changed her.

Granger glanced up from her work to address Draco's anger. "Why what's the problem?"

He waved his hand over the parchment he had been working on, "This chart is just gibberish. We'll never be able to solve any of our equations with this filth."

Granger snatched up his parchment and scanned over it with proficient eyes. "Malfoy, this is all correct," She threw the parchment back to his side of the table. "You know what you're doing."

"I… what? It is?"

Granger had gone back to writing and didn't glance up when she replied, "Yes. You're a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for."

Draco had no idea how to respond. Was she… complimenting him? About his intelligence? All powerful brainy Granger was calling him smart? What was going on in the world?

"Merlin, Malfoy, just take the compliment and move on with your life."

Was that a smirk? Was Hermione Granger smirking at him? It was hard to tell since she had still not looked up form her work, but he would bet his inheritance that he had just witnessed Granger smirking at him.

Once he got over his initial shock, he picked up his quill and set back to finishing his chart.

They worked quietly again for another half hour before Granger started yawning. "I think it's time for me to head to bed." She slowly started to pack up her bag. Much slower than usual.

Draco raked his eyes over her to make sure he wasn't seeing things. Sure enough Granger had dark bags under her eyes, her hair looked a bit more unkept than usual, and her clothes appeared to be a bit askew. "Granger, are you feeling alright?"

"And why would you care?" She snapped at him.

"I don't. You just look a little worse for wear is all." He shrugged and quickly added, "I just want to make sure our project won't suffer."

"Oh of course, how could I expect you to want anything short of perfect? Well, your highness, I will make sure your grades will not suffer from my lack of sleep." She started shoving things in her bag more roughly now.

"Maybe you should go see Madam Pomfrey." Why could he not let this go? Just pack up your things and get out of here. She is none of your concern. But of course his mouth continued before his brain had time to stop him. "If you're having trouble sleeping she could give you some sleeping draughts."

Granger scowled at him as she finished twisting the lid onto her ink. "A sleeping potion?" She laughed darkly. "Do you know how many Dreamless Sleeping potions I have taken? Do you know how useless those are to me? Do you know that the nightmares still come no matter what I take?" She threw a bundle of parchment into her bag. "Nightmares of your home. Of your aunt. Of you standing by and doing nothing," The last word came out in a hiss. "And you sit here and suggest a sleeping potion; you're unbelievable."

Draco sat there in shock. Of course she was still affected by what happened in the drawing room at Malfoy Manor; he was still affected by it. He was so sure that her damn Gryffindor mentality would make her somewhat above war scars. He understood her sleeplessness. There were plenty of nights that he battled with insomnia; still reliving all the suffering he witnessed in his home, including hers. There were nights her screams kept him awake for hours.

She was staring at him, waiting for his reply. When he said nothing she stood up flinging her bag on her shoulder. "Whatever, Malfoy. You're still just a prat hating every mudblood,"— he flinched—, "you come across. You don't need to pretend you care about my wellbeing just because we're partners in this project. You're off the hook."

As she turned her back he quietly mumbled, "I don't hate you."

She whipped back so fast he had to dodge her bag from whipping him in the face.

"Excuse me?" She whisper-yelled.

Draco let out a long sigh. "I don't hate you, Granger. I don't have enough energy to hate you, or anyone."

Granger looked bewildered as she sat back in her chair. "You… you don't hate me?"

"No," He confirmed.

All of the anger left Grangers face to be replaced with absolute puzzlement. "When did this happen?"

Draco sighed again and ran his hand through his hair. He knew this would come up at some point during their interactions, but he wasn't expecting it so soon and with no anger from Granger. "I don't think I ever hated you," He held up a hand when Granger opened her mouth to comment. "Hang on. I was expected to hate you from my father. I was annoyed that you were beating me in every class and chose to torment you for those reasons. Imagine coming home on the holidays to tell your muggle hating father that a muggleborn was besting you in all of your classes. There was a lot of hate for you in my house, but none from me. Just irritation. It's not hard to believe that all of that hate thrown around didn't have some sort of effect on me, and I'm sure that's why I was such a vile little thing. I just have no need to feel that way anymore. They were all obviously wrong." He was fiddling with his quill and not meeting her gaze.

"So, how do you feel now?" Granger stammered out. She was obviously shocked by his admission.

He shrugged still not meeting her face. "Indifference."

"Huh. Okay then," She replied.

Draco glanced up to see her chewing on her bottom lip. "Don't make a thing about it and just go get some sleep."

"Alright. Well goodnight then." With that she stood up and walked out of the library.

Draco slammed his head down onto the desk.

…

Thursday morning saw Hermione sitting at breakfast mindlessly chewing on her toast.

Her evening at the library with Malfoy had been very interesting. She thought the rest of their project would be done in complete silence, so she was surprised when he had questioned her wellbeing. Sure she might have overreacted, but she was beyond tired and let her exhaustion get the best of her. She was particularly surprised when he told her how he felt about her. Of course his feelings were influenced by his family; how could they not? But that he felt completely indifferent to her was a baffling surprise. Draco Malfoy indifferent to Hermione Granger, famous muggleborn and best friend of Harry Potter.

She had no idea how to feel. Did she hate him? Probably not. She usually just felt annoyed by his antics, but was that hate? She was also impressed by his intellect. She had noticed him in the library every evening with his head deep in a pile of books. He also took a lot of advanced courses; she never expected that out of him when they were younger.

She was thinking so intently, she failed to notice that Ginny had taken the seat next to her and was deep in a conversation Hermione was not listening to. "…So I said to him, if he was going to act that way then I had no choice but to kick him off the team. Hermione? Hello?" She waved her hand in front of Hermione's face gaining her attention.

"Oh, Ginny. Good morning."

"Good morning?" Ginny scoffed. "I've been talking to you for 10 minutes about how I kicked Daniel Atkinson off of the Quidditch team and you didn't even so much as blink! What's going on? Are you having trouble sleeping again?"

"I… What? Yes. Sleep. That's it." She went back to chewing on her toast.

Ginny laughed as she grabbed the toast from Hermione's hand. "You are the worst liar I've ever met. Come on. What's going on?"

Hermione recounted her evening in the library as Ginny slowly ate her eggs.

"Well that's quite the revelation. I wonder why he decided to tell you in the first place. Probably to make your working together go a lot more smoothly." Hermione nodded along. Ginny chewed on a piece of bacon before continuing, "But what does it matter really? I mean you're indifferent to him as well. It's not like he came out and said he's in love with you or anything," —Hermione choked on her pumpkin juice—, "I mean that would just be crazy."

"Yes that would be incredibly crazy." Hermione managed to choke out while she coughed.

"Well I'm off to Potions class. Try not to be too much like yourself and spend all day pondering this. See you at lunch!"

Hermione vaguely waved her hand in Ginny's direction, "Yeah ok… sure… see you later."

…..

That evening Hermione was sitting alone in the back corner of the library writing her Transfiguration essay.

She loved this corner. She had found it halfway through her third year and visited it just about every evening since. It was in an alcove behind the Restricted Section so no younger students ever stumbled upon it and older students didn't stay in it for too long. There were two tables and a sofa that she would occasionally lounge on when she was reading an exceptionally good book. It was so quiet back here that she could get all of her work done in half the time compared to doing it in the boisterous common room.

The advantage of her corner tonight was that most of the books she needed for her essay were found in this particular corner. That's why she wasn't surprised when she saw a few students from her class pop in to grab a book every so often, but they never lingered.

She was hearing one particular person linger much longer than the others before them. They were shuffling from shelf to shelf muttering to themselves. She tried her best to ignore them and add a few more inches to her essay.

She had outstretched her hand to grab another book from in front of her when she heard the person approach and scoff in her direction. "Of fucking course. Oi, Granger, hoarding all the Transfiguration books I see."

She inwardly groaned and looked up to meet Malfoy's grey eyes. "Not that I'm trying to hoard all of the Transfiguration books. I just grabbed the ones I needed for this essay."

"Well you're not the only one that was assigned this essay," Malfoy reached out and took one of the books off the top of her little pile. "I'll just be taking this."

Hermione grumbled under her breath, "Yeah. Sure. Fine go ahead."

"Thanks," He tucked the book under his arm and moved to sit at the next table over.

So not only had Malfoy admitted to not hating her, but now he was approaching her where just about anyone could see. She glanced in his direction and bristled a bit to notice that he had made himself at home in her little corner. But this library didn't completely belong to her so she made herself comfortable and go back to work.

Every few minutes Malfoy would come back to her table, grab a book and move back to his seat. This went on for about a half hour before Hermione sighed and said, "Malfoy, Merlin's sake. Just sit here so you don't have to keep walking back over here."

Malfoy stopped on his way back to her table. "Are you sure? I didn't want to disrupt you."

Hermione snorted, "It's a little late for that. Just sit down."

Malfoy walked back to his table, grabbed his items and plopped down in the seat across from her. "It's just that you took all of the decent books on the subject."

"Well I obviously know what I'm doing then," She mumbled not looking up from the book she was skimming.

"Obviously," He mumbled under his breath as he grabbed a new book from the center of the table.

They continued to work together in silence with the occasional question about how the others essay was going. Hermione had to hand it to him, he was quite intelligent when it mattered; he was able to hold a perceptive conversation on a school subject. It was a lot more refreshing than being talked into doing most of the work on Ron and Harry's essays and then being abandoned in the library. Ron especially enjoyed mumbling and groaning when she would try to explain the subject.

Their conversation slowly turned to work in their other classes. Hermione was surprised just how many other courses Malfoy was taking; he was just two short of her workload.

"…And then I'm taking Alchemy and Study of Ancient Ruins," She stated.

"Bloody hell, Granger. When do you have any time for fun?" Malfoy finished his essay in a flourish.

"Learning is fun for me."

Malfoy snorted, "Oh come on. There must be other things you like to do, you swot."

Hermione tossed a crumbled up parchment at him. "I'll have you know that reading is very enjoyable."

Malfoy grabbed the parchment from the air, "I know that. I'm not some illiterate thug."

"Could've fooled me," Hermione mumbled.

Malfoy threw the parchment back at her, "Excuse me, but I'm not like Crabbe and Goyle were. Now those were illiterate thugs."

Hermione chuckled, "They were pretty dumb, weren't they?"

"Yes. Now tell me, what does the great and brilliant Granger do on a nice sunny day. And if you say read, I'll scream."

Hermione thought for a moment. She never really enjoyed flying. And she would always bring a book when she would watch Harry and Ron practice quidditch. So that was out. She didn't like gossiping with all the girls in her dormitory. She thought back to her life at home with her parents.

"I like to play cards," She settled on.

"Cards? Goody Two Shoes Granger likes to gamble?"

She laughed and threw the parchment at his head again. "Not gamble. But I do enjoy playing Solitaire and Gin Rummy."

"What in Merlin's name kind of games are those?" He asked catching the parchment ball again.

"Oh they're very fun. Just mindless games really." She shrugged and picked up her quill again.

"What about gambling games? Do you really not play any of those?" He smirked at her. "Doesn't surprise me."

"I know how to play them! I'll have you know that I tripled my allowance once while playing my dad in a game of Poker."

"Well, Granger, you surprise me," He glanced at his watch just as she opened her mouth to ask what he does for fun. "Fuck. I've got to meet Blaise in 5 minutes." He stuffed all of his supplies in his bag in one scoop of his hand. "See you." And with that he was gone.

Finally a much longer chapter! I see indifference blooming :) Thanks for all of the feedback! It's been really encouraging. Again, reviews are appreciated :)