"That's why I only come at night. I'm not allowed to come any other time. If he found out he would be so angry with me. But I have to. Hermione, after Christmas, after I saw what he was doing to my mother I knew I could not be like him. I hated him. I never wanted to see him again. I needed to get away from him. He was hurting her and I never want to be anything like him. I don't want to hurt the people I love. No matter what I do at school, no matter what evil things I have done to you and your friends in the past, I still had a heart; believe it or not, I still had someone I loved back at home. But my heart broke when I found out what my father was doing to her. My mother, she was surrounded by evil. She had an evil family, she married a man who turned out to be evil, but she's not evil Hermione."

Hermione did something she never thought she would do. She took his hand in hers and held it. He was hurt and she felt sorry for him. And for some reason, she knew it wasn't a joke. She knew that he actually meant it.

"Hermione, you know the story, the story of Persephone and Hades?"

Hermione knew but she also knew that Draco needed to explain it himself. He needed to tell her what he had been feeling the past eight months. She gave his hand a light squeeze and shook her head.

He looked at her and smiled as if he knew what she was doing.

"Kore was a girl, a girl who was pure innocence. She was all good, no evil bone in her body. She was innocence herself but one day something happened. Kore just so happened to be the daughter of Zeus, Hades brother, and Demeter. Hades, the God of the underworld had come. He saw her and realized that she was everything he was not. He wanted her. He had to have her. She was beauty beyond his imagination and also because even though he was the God of the underworld, she had taken his hand. No one had ever taken his hand before. Everyone had always feared him. Everyone hated him because they were afraid that he was to bring death along with him but not her. She did not know. She was so innocent that she took his hand and for the second time in Hades life did he feel love. No one but his mother had touched him before."

Draco took a glance at Hermione and continued.

"When she got older he had a plan. He went to kidnap her and take her to his kingdom. When he had taken her with him she refused him, and so she made an agreement with him. And she lost. He had her. She was his forever."

He now put his other hand on the both of her hands, which was lightly holding his own.

"Hermione, I don't want to force you into anything. Not like what Hades had done to Kore. But the beginning, he was evil, pure evil and he fell in love, with innocence. And that's what I see you as. Hermione, you are my innocence and well, I was brought up to be evil right? So I must be evil."

Hermione tried to protest this but he didn't let her.

"Hermione, I want to change. I want a chance to make things better again. I want a chance to make things right. If I could, I would go back and change everything I have done. If I knew my father was like that I would never have looked up to him. What he has done to my mother is unspeakable."

Draco looked away from Hermione again. She knew that this was hard for him to reminisce on. He was not the type of person to talk about his feelings. Well, maybe he had before but not to someone that he did not really know.

"But this isn't right. This is, not what I expected at all. I mean you hate my friends, you hate me! Have you forgotten that I am a mudblood? Both my parents, in the other room, are muggles."

Draco looked away from her. "Hermione, haven't you heard a word I've said? I want to change Hermione. I no longer look up to my father. He was the one who was against the mud-you know and I want to be different from him. And like Persephone was Hades, you are my light. You're the only one I can see helping me change."

"If you want to change so bad, I think you can do it yourself. Malfoy, your strong, I know you are. You can if you really believe." She wasn't angry, for some reason, the fact that this was so strange didn't make her angry. Normally something so simple would have annoyed her a great deal but she felt a great patience overwhelm her.

"Because I'm not strong enough."

"Yes you are. You can be if you believe in it." Hermione was starting to sound like she was pleading rather than merely trying to convince him.

"No. Hermione, I'm not. And I had hoped that you would understand that. Hermione, I need you. I need you to keep me believing." He stood up from the bed and took his hands away from her grasp.

"You can. You can if you believe. Just believe, you have the will already. You will be nothing like your father. And one day, one day you'll find someone who will love you and maybe you'll love her just as much as your mother once loved your father."

"No Hermione, Believing isn't enough, you need more than that. You need something, someone, to help. You need someone to believe with you, to believe for you. That's what I need Hermione. I need you to believe with me."

"You don't need me. You need yourself." She was beginning to get the old feelings of once again being annoyed again. Why is he being so stubborn? You can if you believe in yourself. Why can't he understand that?

Draco walked away from her. She didn't believe him. He couldn't blame her. He had been so nasty to her. If only she knew-. How in the world could he show her?

He let out a breath of air he had taken in and ruffled his hair a bit. That was when Hermione noticed.

"Your hair!" she exclaimed.

He looked at her as if he wasn't sure she had just spoken to him. He had unconsciously stopped ruffling his hair and froze. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Yeah Hermione. I have hair just like you"

"That's not what I meant. I meant that for once it's not slicked back. You don't look as much like your father as you used to."

He had to blush at this. If it was a year ago he would have gotten mad if anyone had said this to him but things were different now. This was more than a compliment.

"Yeah, well I didn't like all that work anyway."

She couldn't help herself. By the dim lamp in her room that was radiating the light into her room his hair looked so soft. She slowly reached out to touch it. She had never ever seen hair look so soft before. Especially after it had been drenched in grease for so many years.

"Uh, Hermione." He looked around the room with a bit of an uncomfortable expression on his face but he couldn't help but give a little smirk at what was going on. "What are you doing?"

"It looks so soft. It feels so soft too."

"Hermione, you're scaring me." He stepped away from her. This was certainly the weirdest behaviour he had ever seen especially when it came down to Hermione.

Then she realized just how strange it really was. She blushed and took her hand back from his hair. She stepped back and looked on the ground. What in the world am I doing?

"I'm sorry."

He couldn't help but give a small laugh, "Its okay Hermione. I always knew you were a bit different from everyone else."

She looked up at him, she was offended but when she looked up at him he was laughing at her. He didn't mean it. He was just joking. Then she realized that it really was pretty funny. That was a very weird thing for her to do and she gave a small laugh as well. Then she stopped immediately. What was she doing? She was having a good time, with a Malfoy; with Draco Malfoy. He was making her happy. A feeling she thought she could never have again after what happened with her friends the first week back.

She blushed and looked away.

He took a step toward her but she jerked her head up immediately.

"Uh, I think you should leave. It's late and I'm tired." She hadn't looked up at him. She couldn't look at him. And before she could give him a chance to reply she said, "Good Night." And she turned away from him.

Her back towards him. He was so confused. She had been so happy a moment ago. She was smiling but he couldn't do anything. He was not going to force her. He told her that. He was not going to force his company upon her if she didn't want him around.

He turned to leave, but he couldn't help but turned around again to see her back turned towards him still. "Good Night Hermione."

She turned around to apologize but he was gone. He had left before she could tell him that she was sorry and that she really wanted to explain herself.