:: Chapter Twenty: Christmas Cookies::

About an hour later and with one kitchen filled with cookie dough, Hermione finally put the dough in the oven. She scrounged around for her wand, slipping slightly on the raw eggs coating the floor. She found it and, trying to hold onto it, muttered a few words and instantly the mess on the floor and the mess coating Draco and herself disappeared.

"I thought you wanted to do this the muggle way?" He smirked.

"I said I wanted to make the cookies a muggle way, not clean up your mess."

"My mess?"

"You're the one who threw the glob of cookie dough at me."

"You didn't have to retaliate."

"Oh please." She groaned. "You would not have just left it there."

"I find it so odd that you're the one person that I felt threatened by, the one person aside from Potter, I ever despised, is the one person that knows me better than anyone else. And I love you for that." Hermione blushed and smiled slightly.

"You were threatened by me?" She raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"You were the smartest person in our graduating class, why do you think I was threatened. I was taught that Malfoys are number one, well I was always number two."

"There's nothing wrong with being number two."

"For you maybe."

"How do we always get on the distressing topics?" Hermione sighed heavily. "It's over, the reign of terror that your father provoked it gone." She shrugged it off but Draco's eyes fell down to the pattern of the countertop. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid I might have overstepped my boundaries again."

"No," He shook his head softly and raised his eyes up again. "It's just that no matter how evil my father was the fact of the matter still remains that he was my father, without him I wouldn't have been born."

"And for that I'm thankful, but that's the only reason why I would be. He not only tried to kill you on numerous times but he tried to kill me as well."

"But he couldn't, because somewhere is that black heart of his he cared for me."

"One good deed cannot save a person from their chosen life."

"Maybe he didn't choose that life, maybe it chose him. Just like it chose me."

"But you escaped, you're not like him."

"No, I'm not. But that doesn't erase the fact that I was a ruthless murderer. I killed people who did not deserve to die. And yet I ran away, I showed them that I was weak. That in its self is a death sentence. The thing I left out when I told you they were after me is that they're not after me to force me to become the Dark Lord, they're after me to kill me, so someone who won't betray them can take over for them."

"It's an endless race."

"It's a race I can't win. Once again I'll be second best, but the consequence this time is death." Hermione opened her mouth to say something but no comforting words would come, no words of condolences. She closed her eyes briefly and opened them again. Tears brimmed her eyes and she took a deep breath to steady herself.

"I honestly don't know what to say."

"I don't expect you to say anything."

"I want to comfort you, I want to promise you that everything will be alright but I can't promise anything." She fought off the ever-fighting tears forcing their way through the barrier that Hermione was building. "I can't even promise that I'll be there for you, I can't promise that I'll be with you. I can't promise anything and it scares me that everything that I want to trust in I can't, because I can't even promise myself anything." Defiant tears rolled down her cheeks and she wiped at them viciously, cursing them under her breath.

"I don't expect you to promise me anything or to promise yourself anything. I expect you to trust me and if you can't do that then we'll just have to work on that. I'm not giving up without a fight. That reign of terror you talked about has only just begun."

Hermione let out a breath she wasn't aware she was holding. "I hate this. I hate feeling so vulnerable, and I have to admit that I haven't felt this vulnerable since that day at the Manor. Something bad is going to happen, I can feel it."

"I thought you didn't believe in Divination." He smirked; it had become a well-known fact that Hermione Granger had walked out in the middle of one of Professor Sybill Trelawny's lesson claiming she was nothing but a fraud that disliked intelligent people.

"It's not Divination, it's instinct. It's a natural feeling that humans feel when they know something is going to arise based on the facts that they know. Divination is knowing what's going to happen." A buzzer went of startling Hermione and Draco. "It's just the cookies." She shook her head softly taking a deep calming breath. She took the cookies out of the oven and set them on the counter to cool. Draco extended his hand out to take one and Hermione swatted his hand away.

"That was rude." He scoffed.

"Those are hot, now you wouldn't want to burn your poor delicate hands would you?"

"Oh shut up." He walked over to the couch and laid himself across the length of it. "So now what? Any more Muggle traditions you feel you need to perform?"

"No." Hermione said putting the cooking utensils back into their original places. "Um. Draco, why'd you give up magic?" She asked staring at her wand, which was lying on the counter where she had left it.

"I lost my wand and I never really wanted to go back and find it, or replace it. I wanted to start over and it was just easier to pretend that I was normal."

"Being a wizard is not abnormal." Hermione shook her head. "It probably more normal than being a Muggle, except for that whole Dark Lord thing."

"Honestly, I was afraid that I would turn into my father. Although, I do miss it sometimes and I miss Hogwarts. But if you ever tell Potter or Weasley that. I, well, you'll regret it." She came over and made him sit up on the couch, she sat next to him, leaning her elbow on the back of the couch and resting her head on her balled fist.

"Apparently giving up magic has forced the snappy comments out of your system."

"I've never had any snappy comments."

"Oh sorry, arrogant comments."

"Are you calling me arrogant Miss Granger?"

"Yes, sir." She said sternly

"Ten points from Gryffindor." He said in the most Snape-like voice he could muster up. Hermione smiled but quickly tried to vanish it by biting the inside of her bottom lip.

"Yes sir." She snapped.

"I don't like that tone Miss Granger, detention, with me." He snarled.

" I thought you said this was going to be punishment." She drawled.

"You're more Slytherin that you thought, are you sure you were meant to be with all those brave Gryffindors?"

"Are you calling me a coward?"

"Not at all, I'm just saying that you're more cunning and sly than you're letting on to."

"Hmm. we all have secrets."

"If only you knew." The clock in the living room chimed softly and Hermione turned to look at it. "How can it possibly be eleven already?"

"Time flies when your having fun." He smirked.

"You think this is all your doing? Please, Mister-"Yes-I-Know-How-To-Make- Cookies", you can't even keep the batter in the bowl, cleaning up after messy boys is not my idea of fun."

"I thought it would be, you live with Potter after all." Hermione gaped at him.

"Ten years later and the rivalry still is ongoing." She got up to check on the cookies. They were cool to the touch.

"They're cool now. Now, you may have one." She took a spatula and moved them all onto a Christmas themed plate.

"Thank you," He said snitching as many cookies as he could in his hand. Hermione muttered something that sounded an awful lot like 'Bloody ferret' before sitting down next to him on the couch once more.