The bell jingled above the door on Hermione and Draco's entrance to the shop. It was a small shop on the corner of Rosalind Street, its suppressed manner made it more noticeable than anything. It was hidden away between two other rather large and busy shops. The one on the right was a Butchers and the large shop on the left was a Tailors. Then there was the small, quiet, UN busy grocers in between. Draco could tell from looking around on entrance to the shop that the place was deserted and was most probably visited very rarely "Hello Mrs Green" Hermione smiled as she passed the counter.
Draco stood by the door pulling the ridicules hat over his eyes allowing the bobble on top to fall forward. "Hello Hermione darling" the old woman smiled warmly "Picking something up for mother?" she asked. Hermione nodded and placed the four Pinter of milk on the counter along with two loafs of bread and a carton of eggs. "Who's the young boy?" Mrs Green asked veiling her mouth with the back of her hand as she spoke as not to make Draco aware they were speaking of his presence.
"Just a…Friend" Hermione answered.
Wait a second. Had Hermione Granger just referred to Draco Malfoy as a …Friend?
This couldn't be possible; Draco wasn't capable of being a friend to anybody…not even his owl. Draco was cold inside and out. He hardly ever wore a cheery disposition, nice people were cheery, Draco WASN'T cheery, and how could she be friends with somebody who was hardly ever happy? "Can we go now?" Draco moaned noticing the vacant expression Hermione wore on her face. "What?" Hermione questioned snapping back into reality and returning to Draco's side "I said can we go now" he asked for a second time "Yes, I just need to drop these home and we'll go do some stuff"
As they left the store Hermione's questioning expression flickered to a smile as she watched the first few delicate flakes of snow spread themselves across the ground. "Isn't snow beautiful" she sighed looking up and re adjusting the brown paper bags in her arms "If your into that kind of stuff" he responded. Draco leant forward and freed Hermione of her second paper bag "Here, I'll help" he smiled. Draco was oblivious to how idiotically different he was acting. He just liked the warm, fuzzy feeling he got whenever he made Hermione smile. Draco stopped in his tracks, had he just thought of himself, warm and fuzzy? That defiantly wasn't right. "What's wrong?" Hermione asked as she nervously awaited an answer, had she done something wrong?
"It's nothing" he said as they charged onwards along the path to their destination once more.
Once home, Hermione and Draco dumped the bags in the kitchen and ran up to her room, on entering Draco smiled and let a laugh slip. "What?" Hermione asked for what felt like the 1000th time today "How is it, that even in winter…your room manages to look like summer" with that said Draco plonked himself down at the end of Hermione's bed. "What's this?" He interrogated picking up the two small pieces of paper left carelessly lying around on her bed "Oh, they're my Christmas lists" Hermione smiled "What are you getting your Gran?" Hermione asked taking one of the lists from Draco "I didn't know I had to get her anything…My father usually takes care of all that. He just sends them all a flu bug in the post, he almost killed my Aunty Christine once" Draco informed "Draco!" she sighed heavily "You can't not buy her anything…its Christmas." "But I don't know what she likes" "You can come into town with me on Saturday and we'll look for something nice, ok?" "Ok" he agreed. "Thanks…Hermione" he smiled forgetting the second name basis they had been on much earlier in the day.