Chapter 7- She's fallen in love
A/N: sorry about how long it took to update, HP 5 came out after all! Unfortunately I'm not going to fix the fic so that it fits in with book 5; it would just make the story all the more confusing. Sorry if I've mixed up the tenses in which I wrote this chapter, I'm sick and a bit mixed up in the head at the moment. So read!
Hermione awoke with a satisfied smile on her face, in her dream she was some sort of witch in England or somewhere like that, and she went to a witch's school. She shook her head at the banality of it and smiled, that was one weird dream. She swung her feet onto the floor and suddenly realised something; no one had ever thought to check on Xander after Spike and his goons had been talking about him.
She got ready as fast as she could, all the while berating herself for not having thought of Xander before. Hermione raced down to the common room to greet a rather unworried red head, "Willow, have you seen Xander since last night?"
Ron looked at her, not having a clue what she was going on about. He remembered after going through the conversation again in his head, he replied slowly, "No, why are you asking?"
Hermione replied quickly, "Because no one's seen him since last night."
Ron's eyes widened immediately after he remembered what Malfoy had said to them last night about Harry. He said to Hermione, "We have to go find him."
Hermione was ready with her protest in true Buffy style, "We should wait for Buffy, and we can't do it ourselves."
Ron rolled his eyes, "We don't have time to wait for her and we can't find her; I have no idea where she is."
Hermione took a deep breath, "Then let's go ourselves. Now."
Ron nodded in agreement, grabbed his cloak and followed Hermione outside the common room in search of Harry.
Meanwhile.
Harry woke up with the birds singing and the sun shining weakly into his eyes, he turned over in his bed to get his glasses of the bed side table. But his glasses weren't there, he opened his eyes in annoyance and found that he could see perfectly, then he realised that he was actually wearing them. Then he realised that he was, in fact, not in his bed. He was actually lying on the ground on the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest. His clothes were damp with mildew and his neck was rather stiff and he had no idea how he actually got there.
Harry got up off the ground and had a look around him. Thankfully, to his left he could see Hagrid's hut, which meant he wasn't too far from the castle. He set off towards Hagrid's hut, wondering how he got himself to the edge of the Forbidden Forest without even realising it. All Harry could remember after dinner last night was walking down the hallway to the Gryffindor common room, he recalled that he had turned down the offer of going to the library to 'research' with Hermione. He shook his head as if to clear it and decided to go and see Hagrid and maybe sort himself out before he went back to the castle.
Meanwhile, within the castle, Hermione and Ron were running around like chooks with their heads cut off, trying to find Harry as quickly as possible. Hermione stopped running shortly after checking out all of the transfiguration classrooms. She looked at Ron and said, "There's a better way of doing this."
Ron replied doubtfully, "And that may be?"
Hermione rolled her eyes and heaved a great big sigh, "We go ask Spike what he did with Xander, or, if you're up to it, you do a locator spell to find him."
Ron panicked at the idea of trying to do magic that really couldn't be done and began to talk nonsense, "But, it couldn't work, the parallels between the. uhhh. the dimensions are destroyed and the magic is silenced because of a cosmically-"
Hermione cut him off, "I get the idea, we'll go question Spike, come on, we haven't got that much time left to find him."
So off they went, well it was more like just Hermione, running down staircases and along corridors, trying to find the Slytherin common room as quickly as possible. Ron was dreading having to go down to the dungeons, even more so since Hermione was not exactly in the same reality that the rest of them were and the confrontation with Malfoy was going to be a nasty one; it would become obvious that Hermione had become somewhat batty. As the sped along one of the corridors that looked out onto the Hogwart's grounds Ron thought he saw someone walking along the edge of the Forbidden Forest, someone who looked awlfully like Harry.
Ron, desperate for any form of delay or miracle to save him from going down to the dungeons grabbed Hermione's arm, roughly dragging her over to the window. She looked at him accusingly and yelled indignantly at him, "Hey! What do you think you're doing?"
Ron didn't reply but pointed out the window, making sure that she saw the figure that was most likely to be Harry walk towards Hagrid's hut. Ron saw Hermione's eyes widen and she said to him, "It's Xander! He's okay! Let's go see him."
Hermione immediately turned sprinted down the corridor, this time with Ron right at her heels.
Harry reached the door of Hagrid's hut just as two students, one with orange hair and the other with long brown hair burst out of the doors of the castle yelling at him. He turned and smiled at them, he knew that Ron and Hermione were going to be worried, he didn't think that they'd find him so quickly though.
Eventually they reached the hut and Harry greeted his two, very puffed best friends, "So, how are you two going?"
Hermione was the first to be able to reply, "We're fine. But what happened to you Xander? We were so worried."
Harry had a hard time trying not to groan as he remembered that Hermione was still stuck in the Buffyverse. Ron turned to him and rolled his eyes and began his line of questioning, "So, what did you get up to last night?"
Harry looked at his two friends, both of whom were probably expecting some high octane tale where he defied death by fighting some evil wizard or something. He answered the best way he knew how, "I have no bloody idea."
Ron and Hermione both stood there, a bit dumbfounded by his inarticulate answer. Hermione asked him, "Are you sure that you don't know?"
Harry nodded, "Yes, I'm sure."
Hermione continued questioning him, "You don't remember anything at all?"
"No."
Hermione then took charge of the situation, "We should go see Giles and try to piece together what happened, I bet it has something to do with Spike, and he did say something about you last night. After we drop you off, Willow and I will go and find Buffy, she can probably hit the streets, try and find out from someone if anything involving you happened last night. Is everyone okay with the plan?"
Harry and Ron looked at each other in a panic, there was no way they could go and see Snape. Harry took charge of the situation, "Look, I don't think it would be best to go and see Giles about this."
Hermione looked at him as if he were mad, "Why not?"
Harry fumbled for an answer, "Remember the other day, when he snubbed you off? I think he might still have something against us."
"He would like to hear if one of us had a run in with Spike, as you most likely have. Giles is a watcher, it's his job to help stop the spread of evil, and he has to put his personal feelings aside to do his job, it doesn't matter if he likes us or not," With that Hermione turned around and started to walk across the school grounds towards the castle, she looked back at them and asked, "Are you guys coming or not?"
Ron and Harry slowly began to follow her, dreading what was coming every step of the way.
For what seemed like the hundredth time, Hermione turned around and beckoned for Xander and Willow to hurry up. They seemed really reluctant to see Giles for some reason. Sure, the last time they had seen him he was quite off hand with them, but he was still getting over the death of Jenny Calendar, who had died at the hands of Angelus. Hermione wouldn't be surprised if he was bitter for the rest of his life about that, but he had to listen to them now, it was his duty to.
Hermione turned around and looked at Xander and Willow, who were still lagging behind, talking to each other. Maybe something happened that I don't know about, thought Hermione, or maybe they're still unsure around Giles after the death of Jenny. Either way, they were going to see Giles and tell him what had happened, or the lack of actually knowing what had happened.
She reached the door to Giles' house and held her head high and knocked on it and waited for an answer. Normally, she wouldn't knock, but she wanted to seem respectful. Giles opened the door with a frown on his face and asked rudely, "What do you want?"
Hermione opened her mouth but Xander stepped in front of her and began talking to Giles. She frowned and stepped to the side of Xander and listened to what he was saying to him, "Sir," Hermione raised her eyebrows at the title that Giles had suddenly earned, "something weird happened. I ended up on the edge of the forest and I don't know how I got there. We were wondering if you could help us figure out what happened." At the end of the sentence Xander's voice had become unusually squeaky and high.
Giles looked at them peculiarly and said to them, "So you want me to tell you what you did last night?"
Xander and Willow nodded and Hermione stepped forward to correct Giles who was being unnecessarily rude to them. But again before she could say anything Xander clapped his hand over her mouth. She looked at Xander murderously, who didn't even notice the look of death that was directed at him.
Giles said to Xander, "Harris, I can already tell you what happened last night. Obviously you were sneaking around the forest, got knocked out by something, maybe you even stupidly fell asleep and woke up in the morning disorientated. Then, to save face, you needed to find something to blame your stupidity on and found that asking me would be the best way to get out of it. Well, you're wrong. You probably ended up near the forest of your own account and forgot what you were doing." With that Giles slammed the door closed.
Hermione turned to Xander and immediately began to lay into him, "What were you doing? You didn't let me talk at all! Not only that but I was going to defend you as well! So, what's the explanation?"
Xander looked at her evenly and answered, "I didn't want you to get Giles even more upset than he already is."
"Just because someone he knew and cared about died doesn't mean that he has a license to do whatever he wants. He was treating you like crap, and you were taking it! There is no justification for that, if anything, he needs a stern talking to, to bring him to his senses." Hermione calmly walked away from them, already knowing that she needed time to calm down and sort things out.
Harry and Ron, being boys, turned their attention to something that they considered more important straight away. That happened to be Ron's new found crush on fellow Gryffindor Lavender. This crush happened in light of Hermione's descent into insanity; you could say that Ron didn't want a raving psycho for a girlfriend.
Harry was, of course, putting on the accursed peer pressure, "Why don't you ask her out? Everyone can tell that she at least likes you as a friend."
Ron was, of course, doing the teen lacking self esteem thing, "How can you be sure?"
"Well, remember that time she magically emptied the contents of Colin Creevey's trunk through the entire school and then cursed his clothes so that they'd swear at him every time he tried to put them on?" Ron nodded and Harry continued, "She did it because he took a picture of her eating. Lavender obviously tells people what she thinks of them, and has she said anything bad to you this year?"
Ron shook his head and quietly said, "No, she hasn't."
"Well then what's stopping you from asking her out?"
Harry looked at Ron as they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady and raised his eyebrows at him; Ron looked back and said courageously to him, "I'll do it."
Mean while, Hermione was in the library.
Hermione POV
I walked into the library and immediately made my way to the back of it, trying to remain as invisible as possible. The replacement librarian, a stiff backed woman, sniffed at me as I was making my way to the back of the library, which reminded me of Giles, who would never do such a thing. I sat down, took my books out of my bag and pretended to do some work, just so I could be left alone by the librarian.
Giles has been acting so weird lately, I could understand that he was terribly upset over Jenny's death, but that was in no way our fault. Everyone has gone all freaky lately, even the vampires. Spike had been staring at me, which in no way was a bad thing, but Angel and Drusilla seemed to be following him and acting more like yes men than evil psycho vampires.
I looked around the library, already bored with my thoughts, which would eventually loop around on each other. It was my misfortune to see the one person that I didn't want to see tonight, or in fact, every other night. Cordelia had just entered the library, and she saw me, alone and walked over to me.
She flicked her long brown hair over her shoulder and began the volley of insults, "So, what are you doing here without your super hero friends?"
I shot back at her, "What are you doing here without your entourage of sheep?"
Cordelia gave me a look that was supposed to shoot me down, but it didn't work as she opened her mouth again, "What do you want?"
I frowned at her incredulously and said to her, "That made no sense whatsoever. You're the one who approached me."
She cocked her head to the side and said, "Oh, yeah. Well, go get some new clothes, yours suck," she then walked away.
I just shook my head and looked back down at my books, only Cordelia could say such a thing and still have friends who could converse with her. Cordelia was another example of everything going freaky, normally she actually had some form of intelligence, and today she was really just air headed. Who knew what was going on?
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Spike sitting in the library, covered by shadows. He's an evil vampire, yet I feel an attraction to him, a strange unfightable magnetic attraction that cannot be broken. Lately in show downs, all I can look at is him, he plagues my thoughts.
And he's walking towards me right now.
Draco walked over to Hermione with a purpose; he wanted to find out what was going on. Everyone had been acting weird around her lately, she hadn't been answering questions in class, she had been doing the minimum amount of work possible and some other guy had been hanging around her. And when you want to find something out, you go straight to the source.
Draco reached the table where she was sitting and sat down across from her. He said to her, "So my little mudblood, what have you been up to lately?"
Hermione's hands were shaking as she answered quietly, "Uhh.not much."
Draco frowned at her and sat forward in his seat, "You've never been afraid of me before, what has changed now?"
"I pretended I wasn't afraid of you," after Hermione said that she looked down at her hands, not daring to meet his eyes.
Draco sat back in his seat, pondering what she just said. Hermione was afraid of him, well she was now, but she wasn't afraid of him before, and he knew that that was no act. He looked at the shaking girl across from him and realised something, he didn't want her to be afraid of him. Yes, he would still tease her, Hermione was the only person he teased, and he wanted her to acknowledge that. Was there a difference between what he said to Hermione and what he said to her friends? Well, yeah, he insulted Potty and Weasel but he teased Hermione.
His thoughts were broken by Hermione speaking to him, "So, what do you want from me?"
Draco considered his answer carefully, but never got to open his mouth as Crabbe and Goyle, Draco's personal lumps of concrete arrived. Crabbe said to him, "There you are, you've got to come and see what we did to some second year kid."
Draco nodded at them and said, "Okay, okay." He cast a quick look at Hermione, who was now looking even more scared now that Crabbe and Goyle had arrived. Draco decided to ease her apparent fear and said to her quickly before he walked away, "You don't have to worry about them, they won't hurt you, and I'll make sure of it."
Hermione watched him go, dumbstruck that Spike would assure her safety, against of all people, the psychotic Drusilla and Angelus, one of the most violent vampires of all time. Needless to say, she was now positively in love with the guy she thought was Spike.
A/N: please review and a thanks in advance for those who do and thanks for those who have reviewed already, it makes writing this so much more fun.
A/N: sorry about how long it took to update, HP 5 came out after all! Unfortunately I'm not going to fix the fic so that it fits in with book 5; it would just make the story all the more confusing. Sorry if I've mixed up the tenses in which I wrote this chapter, I'm sick and a bit mixed up in the head at the moment. So read!
Hermione awoke with a satisfied smile on her face, in her dream she was some sort of witch in England or somewhere like that, and she went to a witch's school. She shook her head at the banality of it and smiled, that was one weird dream. She swung her feet onto the floor and suddenly realised something; no one had ever thought to check on Xander after Spike and his goons had been talking about him.
She got ready as fast as she could, all the while berating herself for not having thought of Xander before. Hermione raced down to the common room to greet a rather unworried red head, "Willow, have you seen Xander since last night?"
Ron looked at her, not having a clue what she was going on about. He remembered after going through the conversation again in his head, he replied slowly, "No, why are you asking?"
Hermione replied quickly, "Because no one's seen him since last night."
Ron's eyes widened immediately after he remembered what Malfoy had said to them last night about Harry. He said to Hermione, "We have to go find him."
Hermione was ready with her protest in true Buffy style, "We should wait for Buffy, and we can't do it ourselves."
Ron rolled his eyes, "We don't have time to wait for her and we can't find her; I have no idea where she is."
Hermione took a deep breath, "Then let's go ourselves. Now."
Ron nodded in agreement, grabbed his cloak and followed Hermione outside the common room in search of Harry.
Meanwhile.
Harry woke up with the birds singing and the sun shining weakly into his eyes, he turned over in his bed to get his glasses of the bed side table. But his glasses weren't there, he opened his eyes in annoyance and found that he could see perfectly, then he realised that he was actually wearing them. Then he realised that he was, in fact, not in his bed. He was actually lying on the ground on the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest. His clothes were damp with mildew and his neck was rather stiff and he had no idea how he actually got there.
Harry got up off the ground and had a look around him. Thankfully, to his left he could see Hagrid's hut, which meant he wasn't too far from the castle. He set off towards Hagrid's hut, wondering how he got himself to the edge of the Forbidden Forest without even realising it. All Harry could remember after dinner last night was walking down the hallway to the Gryffindor common room, he recalled that he had turned down the offer of going to the library to 'research' with Hermione. He shook his head as if to clear it and decided to go and see Hagrid and maybe sort himself out before he went back to the castle.
Meanwhile, within the castle, Hermione and Ron were running around like chooks with their heads cut off, trying to find Harry as quickly as possible. Hermione stopped running shortly after checking out all of the transfiguration classrooms. She looked at Ron and said, "There's a better way of doing this."
Ron replied doubtfully, "And that may be?"
Hermione rolled her eyes and heaved a great big sigh, "We go ask Spike what he did with Xander, or, if you're up to it, you do a locator spell to find him."
Ron panicked at the idea of trying to do magic that really couldn't be done and began to talk nonsense, "But, it couldn't work, the parallels between the. uhhh. the dimensions are destroyed and the magic is silenced because of a cosmically-"
Hermione cut him off, "I get the idea, we'll go question Spike, come on, we haven't got that much time left to find him."
So off they went, well it was more like just Hermione, running down staircases and along corridors, trying to find the Slytherin common room as quickly as possible. Ron was dreading having to go down to the dungeons, even more so since Hermione was not exactly in the same reality that the rest of them were and the confrontation with Malfoy was going to be a nasty one; it would become obvious that Hermione had become somewhat batty. As the sped along one of the corridors that looked out onto the Hogwart's grounds Ron thought he saw someone walking along the edge of the Forbidden Forest, someone who looked awlfully like Harry.
Ron, desperate for any form of delay or miracle to save him from going down to the dungeons grabbed Hermione's arm, roughly dragging her over to the window. She looked at him accusingly and yelled indignantly at him, "Hey! What do you think you're doing?"
Ron didn't reply but pointed out the window, making sure that she saw the figure that was most likely to be Harry walk towards Hagrid's hut. Ron saw Hermione's eyes widen and she said to him, "It's Xander! He's okay! Let's go see him."
Hermione immediately turned sprinted down the corridor, this time with Ron right at her heels.
Harry reached the door of Hagrid's hut just as two students, one with orange hair and the other with long brown hair burst out of the doors of the castle yelling at him. He turned and smiled at them, he knew that Ron and Hermione were going to be worried, he didn't think that they'd find him so quickly though.
Eventually they reached the hut and Harry greeted his two, very puffed best friends, "So, how are you two going?"
Hermione was the first to be able to reply, "We're fine. But what happened to you Xander? We were so worried."
Harry had a hard time trying not to groan as he remembered that Hermione was still stuck in the Buffyverse. Ron turned to him and rolled his eyes and began his line of questioning, "So, what did you get up to last night?"
Harry looked at his two friends, both of whom were probably expecting some high octane tale where he defied death by fighting some evil wizard or something. He answered the best way he knew how, "I have no bloody idea."
Ron and Hermione both stood there, a bit dumbfounded by his inarticulate answer. Hermione asked him, "Are you sure that you don't know?"
Harry nodded, "Yes, I'm sure."
Hermione continued questioning him, "You don't remember anything at all?"
"No."
Hermione then took charge of the situation, "We should go see Giles and try to piece together what happened, I bet it has something to do with Spike, and he did say something about you last night. After we drop you off, Willow and I will go and find Buffy, she can probably hit the streets, try and find out from someone if anything involving you happened last night. Is everyone okay with the plan?"
Harry and Ron looked at each other in a panic, there was no way they could go and see Snape. Harry took charge of the situation, "Look, I don't think it would be best to go and see Giles about this."
Hermione looked at him as if he were mad, "Why not?"
Harry fumbled for an answer, "Remember the other day, when he snubbed you off? I think he might still have something against us."
"He would like to hear if one of us had a run in with Spike, as you most likely have. Giles is a watcher, it's his job to help stop the spread of evil, and he has to put his personal feelings aside to do his job, it doesn't matter if he likes us or not," With that Hermione turned around and started to walk across the school grounds towards the castle, she looked back at them and asked, "Are you guys coming or not?"
Ron and Harry slowly began to follow her, dreading what was coming every step of the way.
For what seemed like the hundredth time, Hermione turned around and beckoned for Xander and Willow to hurry up. They seemed really reluctant to see Giles for some reason. Sure, the last time they had seen him he was quite off hand with them, but he was still getting over the death of Jenny Calendar, who had died at the hands of Angelus. Hermione wouldn't be surprised if he was bitter for the rest of his life about that, but he had to listen to them now, it was his duty to.
Hermione turned around and looked at Xander and Willow, who were still lagging behind, talking to each other. Maybe something happened that I don't know about, thought Hermione, or maybe they're still unsure around Giles after the death of Jenny. Either way, they were going to see Giles and tell him what had happened, or the lack of actually knowing what had happened.
She reached the door to Giles' house and held her head high and knocked on it and waited for an answer. Normally, she wouldn't knock, but she wanted to seem respectful. Giles opened the door with a frown on his face and asked rudely, "What do you want?"
Hermione opened her mouth but Xander stepped in front of her and began talking to Giles. She frowned and stepped to the side of Xander and listened to what he was saying to him, "Sir," Hermione raised her eyebrows at the title that Giles had suddenly earned, "something weird happened. I ended up on the edge of the forest and I don't know how I got there. We were wondering if you could help us figure out what happened." At the end of the sentence Xander's voice had become unusually squeaky and high.
Giles looked at them peculiarly and said to them, "So you want me to tell you what you did last night?"
Xander and Willow nodded and Hermione stepped forward to correct Giles who was being unnecessarily rude to them. But again before she could say anything Xander clapped his hand over her mouth. She looked at Xander murderously, who didn't even notice the look of death that was directed at him.
Giles said to Xander, "Harris, I can already tell you what happened last night. Obviously you were sneaking around the forest, got knocked out by something, maybe you even stupidly fell asleep and woke up in the morning disorientated. Then, to save face, you needed to find something to blame your stupidity on and found that asking me would be the best way to get out of it. Well, you're wrong. You probably ended up near the forest of your own account and forgot what you were doing." With that Giles slammed the door closed.
Hermione turned to Xander and immediately began to lay into him, "What were you doing? You didn't let me talk at all! Not only that but I was going to defend you as well! So, what's the explanation?"
Xander looked at her evenly and answered, "I didn't want you to get Giles even more upset than he already is."
"Just because someone he knew and cared about died doesn't mean that he has a license to do whatever he wants. He was treating you like crap, and you were taking it! There is no justification for that, if anything, he needs a stern talking to, to bring him to his senses." Hermione calmly walked away from them, already knowing that she needed time to calm down and sort things out.
Harry and Ron, being boys, turned their attention to something that they considered more important straight away. That happened to be Ron's new found crush on fellow Gryffindor Lavender. This crush happened in light of Hermione's descent into insanity; you could say that Ron didn't want a raving psycho for a girlfriend.
Harry was, of course, putting on the accursed peer pressure, "Why don't you ask her out? Everyone can tell that she at least likes you as a friend."
Ron was, of course, doing the teen lacking self esteem thing, "How can you be sure?"
"Well, remember that time she magically emptied the contents of Colin Creevey's trunk through the entire school and then cursed his clothes so that they'd swear at him every time he tried to put them on?" Ron nodded and Harry continued, "She did it because he took a picture of her eating. Lavender obviously tells people what she thinks of them, and has she said anything bad to you this year?"
Ron shook his head and quietly said, "No, she hasn't."
"Well then what's stopping you from asking her out?"
Harry looked at Ron as they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady and raised his eyebrows at him; Ron looked back and said courageously to him, "I'll do it."
Mean while, Hermione was in the library.
Hermione POV
I walked into the library and immediately made my way to the back of it, trying to remain as invisible as possible. The replacement librarian, a stiff backed woman, sniffed at me as I was making my way to the back of the library, which reminded me of Giles, who would never do such a thing. I sat down, took my books out of my bag and pretended to do some work, just so I could be left alone by the librarian.
Giles has been acting so weird lately, I could understand that he was terribly upset over Jenny's death, but that was in no way our fault. Everyone has gone all freaky lately, even the vampires. Spike had been staring at me, which in no way was a bad thing, but Angel and Drusilla seemed to be following him and acting more like yes men than evil psycho vampires.
I looked around the library, already bored with my thoughts, which would eventually loop around on each other. It was my misfortune to see the one person that I didn't want to see tonight, or in fact, every other night. Cordelia had just entered the library, and she saw me, alone and walked over to me.
She flicked her long brown hair over her shoulder and began the volley of insults, "So, what are you doing here without your super hero friends?"
I shot back at her, "What are you doing here without your entourage of sheep?"
Cordelia gave me a look that was supposed to shoot me down, but it didn't work as she opened her mouth again, "What do you want?"
I frowned at her incredulously and said to her, "That made no sense whatsoever. You're the one who approached me."
She cocked her head to the side and said, "Oh, yeah. Well, go get some new clothes, yours suck," she then walked away.
I just shook my head and looked back down at my books, only Cordelia could say such a thing and still have friends who could converse with her. Cordelia was another example of everything going freaky, normally she actually had some form of intelligence, and today she was really just air headed. Who knew what was going on?
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Spike sitting in the library, covered by shadows. He's an evil vampire, yet I feel an attraction to him, a strange unfightable magnetic attraction that cannot be broken. Lately in show downs, all I can look at is him, he plagues my thoughts.
And he's walking towards me right now.
Draco walked over to Hermione with a purpose; he wanted to find out what was going on. Everyone had been acting weird around her lately, she hadn't been answering questions in class, she had been doing the minimum amount of work possible and some other guy had been hanging around her. And when you want to find something out, you go straight to the source.
Draco reached the table where she was sitting and sat down across from her. He said to her, "So my little mudblood, what have you been up to lately?"
Hermione's hands were shaking as she answered quietly, "Uhh.not much."
Draco frowned at her and sat forward in his seat, "You've never been afraid of me before, what has changed now?"
"I pretended I wasn't afraid of you," after Hermione said that she looked down at her hands, not daring to meet his eyes.
Draco sat back in his seat, pondering what she just said. Hermione was afraid of him, well she was now, but she wasn't afraid of him before, and he knew that that was no act. He looked at the shaking girl across from him and realised something, he didn't want her to be afraid of him. Yes, he would still tease her, Hermione was the only person he teased, and he wanted her to acknowledge that. Was there a difference between what he said to Hermione and what he said to her friends? Well, yeah, he insulted Potty and Weasel but he teased Hermione.
His thoughts were broken by Hermione speaking to him, "So, what do you want from me?"
Draco considered his answer carefully, but never got to open his mouth as Crabbe and Goyle, Draco's personal lumps of concrete arrived. Crabbe said to him, "There you are, you've got to come and see what we did to some second year kid."
Draco nodded at them and said, "Okay, okay." He cast a quick look at Hermione, who was now looking even more scared now that Crabbe and Goyle had arrived. Draco decided to ease her apparent fear and said to her quickly before he walked away, "You don't have to worry about them, they won't hurt you, and I'll make sure of it."
Hermione watched him go, dumbstruck that Spike would assure her safety, against of all people, the psychotic Drusilla and Angelus, one of the most violent vampires of all time. Needless to say, she was now positively in love with the guy she thought was Spike.
A/N: please review and a thanks in advance for those who do and thanks for those who have reviewed already, it makes writing this so much more fun.