Chapter Four: I Know You!

The two of them fell onto the hard black pavement, bumping their heads against the sidewalk with a rather large amount of force.

"OW!" They yelled in unison. Hearing each other's voices made them pause, clapping their hands over their mouths.

Draco looked at Hermione…

Hermione looked at Draco…

Silence filled the small street for quite some time. It was almost ten minutes before Draco was brave enough to break the pause.

"Are you…Lionheart?"

Hermione nodded. "I am...are you Serpent Tongue?"

"Yes…but I'm trying to break away from that name. I kind of don't like the world it reminds me of…"

Hermione gently smiled. "I understand exactly how you feel. Lionheart is sort of hard on my heart as well. So is Whisper…" She turned away, feeling the tears silently falling down her cheeks.

"Is there something wrong?"

"It's nothing…just something that happened to me yesterday…"

Draco walked over to Hermione, placing a hand upon her shoulder. "I just don't like to see girls cry…"

"The person who gave me the nickname of Whisper told me they loved me…I mean, it's nothing really that important, because I don't love him back, but…I don't really know how to tell him."

"Oh, I understand…I've had this happen to me before. It happened back at Hogwarts in my last year…I think her name was Pansy…or something like that. I don't really remember. Anyway, she asked me out in a very abrupt fashion, and I stared at her for about five minutes, then I told her no. She ran off crying…I felt really bad, but I had another girl in mind."

Hermione turned to Draco. "You dumped Pansy Parkinson? She loved some kid at Hogwarts…some blond haired boy who everyone hated…"

"You mean Draco Malfoy, right." Draco sighed, remembering all those years of people hating him. It really wasn't his fault, in fact. His father was abusing him at the time, and he needed to take out his anger from all the horrible things his father did to him on someone else.

"You know Draco? I haven't seen him since our last day at Hogwarts…"

Draco nodded. "I know him better than I know anyone else…"

"What do you mean?"

"What do you think?" Draco loved playing this game with people. Pretending he was someone else until his name was brought into the picture. It usually took people a very long time to actually figure out that he was Draco and not some strange person off the street who somehow knew Draco in some shape or form.

"Are you, like, his brother or something?"

This made him laugh. "That's the first time someone asked me if I am related to Draco! Don't you get it? I'm Draco!"

Hermione's eyes went wide. "Are you serious!"

"Dead serious!"

The two of them laughed for quite some time. For some reason or another, the both of them found this extremely funny.

Hermione was holding her stomach once her laughter had died away. "I thought it was you!"

Draco was silent for a moment, then he randomly yelled out, "I KNOW YOU!"

"What! Where did that come from!"

"You're Hermione Granger, aren't you!"

Hermione nodded. "What, is my laugh the same or something?"

"No…I just remembered sometime when I saw you laughing with your friends…Harry Potter and all them. You always held your stomach like that after you laugh for an extended period of time."

"Well, I am Hermione…just a few years older."

"Yeah, the same goes for me."

"You have to be about the same age I am. Twenty-one?"

Draco nodded, grinning. "I can't believe it's you!"

"I can't believe I was sent to KILL you!" Hermione giggled warmheartedly. "It's just crazy…we meet in the strangest of places and end up laughing over the stupidest things."

"I still can't believe you hated me at Hogwarts, but then we started to become friends during the last few weeks."

"I remember that…we sort of put aside our anger and hatred for each other and became really close friends. Then you left…you never told me what you left to do. I told you I was leaving Hogwarts to become an Auror, but you just said that you were leaving and never coming back."

Draco nodded. "I didn't want to tell you where I was going…you would have freaked out."

"I sort of thought that was what you were going to become. You wanted to please your father, no matter how much you hated him. Did he still abuse you when you left Hogwarts?"

"Yeah…I ran away from home in the end…that's when I became a Death Eater."

Hermione hugged Draco for the first time in her entire life. "I missed you so much…you were the greatest friend I ever had…"

Draco smiled. "I missed you, too. I had a girlfriend for awhile there, but I always thought about you…you were so much nicer than her."

She laughed. "What, didn't you like her?"

"I used to think so. I really thought she was going to be "the one"…you know what I mean by "the one", don't you?"

"Yeah…you thought you two were going to get married."

"Exactly. But she was an American…she was just here on vacation. Her name was Kate…Kate Westbrook."

Hermione smiled. "You miss her?"

"A little…she was so kind to me. We had some good times, and a few bad times as well…the worst day was when she left for America again…she never wrote for an entire year, whereas I wrote her all the time."

"She never wrote!"

Draco shook his head in reply. "Never. I never got one letter."

"That must have hurt."

"I sort of felt like she was just using me as someone to be with while she was in the U.K. for that two month period."

"Did you love her?"

Draco paused. "I thought I did…now I'm not so sure…"

Hermione nodded. "I thought I loved someone once…I think I still do."

"Really?"

"You wouldn't know who he was, though…and even if you did, you would laugh."

"I understand."

"You know…the Ministry might send out someone to look for me…we can't exactly be standing right out in the open talking to each other if both of us are supposed to be dead."

Draco chuckled. "Yeah…people might think we have reincarnated and we're really ghosts of the real people…or they may think you chickened out."

"Come on…let's find somewhere to go."

"Do you like coffee?"

Hermione nodded. "I love coffee…I can't go a day without at least one cup of it."

"Then I know the perfect place where we can go. Come on, it's not a long walk."

And the two friends walked off together, reminiscing on old times. To the two of them, it felt as though a day had not passed since they left each other those three long years ago.

But they knew there was so much that they had to tell each other about…there had been so many changes in their lives that they just had to tell each other about it.

Draco knew that she would somehow find out who the other girl was whom he had loved at Hogwarts…

Hermione knew that he would somehow find out why she turned down Moon…

The both of them had a small secret that they wanted to keep from each other as long as they could, but somehow, somewhere, the secret would come out.

And their true feelings about each other would finally be revealed.