Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor do I intend to pretend that I do.

Well, that last chapter was a bit of a dud, but oh well. Just a fair warning, part of this chapter might not make good sense until later on when I explain it in a later chapter. So anyways, on with the story! 5 MORE REVIEWS PLEASE!

Chapter 9 - Beginnings of Confusion

Hermione spotted someone on the quidditch pitch flying swiftly and performing tricks, and then they flew down to the spectators' stands. She walked onto the field and looked up at the young man perched up in the stands of the quidditch pitch looking wistfully upwards. She recognized him immediately as Draco. 'I wonder what he's thinking about.'

"Draco!" Hermione called and waved at him. Draco stood up and flew down to her with a small smile playing about his lips.

"Hey Phoenix," Draco said with very slightly breathless quality to his voice.

Hermione took in his appearance, his hair was a little bit wind blown and tousled, he had a spark in his eyes and a smile lighting up his face from the invigoration of flying. 'He looks positively handsome,' Hermione quickly shook that thought from her mind, 'You have a boyfriend Hermione! Shame on you!'

"Phoenix?" Draco asked looking at her.

Hermione shook her head, "Sorry Draco, just thinking . . ."

"What about?"

"Hmm? Oh, nothing, it's not important."

"Okay, well, let's get started. I am going to let you use my broom for now because the school brooms are terrible," Draco said handing his broom to her.

"All right," said Hermione holding his pride and joy, the Nimbus 2001, delicately in her hands.

"Okay, so how much do you know about flying?" asked Draco.

"Well, I know that you step up to the side, hold out your hand and say 'up', and then you mount. But I'm assuming you don't really have to do that?" asked Hermione seeing the task as menial because you could just hold the broom and mount it.

"Yeah, you don't have to do that . . . that's just what they tell you to do during first year. Or you do that on very temperamental brooms, but those are just the old ones or the experimental ones."

"It figures that the teachers always make things more complicated than they have to be," Hermione sighed.

Draco gave a light chortle and said, "Okay, well first things first. You have to mount the broom."

Hermione swung one leg over the broom.

"Okay, your hands should be here . . ." Draco moved her hands, ". . . and here. That makes it a lot easier to fly."

"Right," Hermione said ignoring the warmsensation shewas feelingfrom his hands on her own.

"Now, all you have to do is will yourself to fly. Just think about yourself lifting off . . ." Hermione concentrated on lifting off and found herself a meter off the ground. "Good. Your doing really well Phoenix. Okay, now just remember that all you have to do is will yourself to fly."

Hermione thought about moving forward and felt that she moved about half a meter forward.

Hermione thought more about flying and flew forward more. Becoming more excited by the second, Hermione flew around the stadium once and landed. 'She looks like an angel,' thought Draco as he watched her flying.

"I did it! Draco, I did it!" Hermione said excitedly with a bright smile.

"Yeah, you did. Great job," said Draco absently, still thinking of the sight he beheld when she was flying around the stadium with ease and charisma.

"That was easier than I thought."

"Most people always think it will be. Flying is actually quite easy once you realize it's only your mind that you need to have to fly . . . and maybe some talent . . . but that's beside the point," he said pompously, but still a slightly sarcastic tone was evident in the statement.

Hermione chuckled lightly, "There is nothing at all modest about you is there?"

"I know . . . it's a curse. So have you thought about what position you want to play?"

"Well, I either want to be a seeker or a chaser. Probably a seeker though, I'm not entirely sure. I was thinking you could help me to decide because I don't know what I'd do best at."

Draco looked at her and thought, 'She's really small compared to all of the other seekers, which could be really helpful for Ravenclaw. She has pretty fast reactions and could probably see better than the average person. I don't know how well she can throw and catch . . . she's not very big and that's usually more helpful for a chaser because the other team usually goes for them. So I would think a seeker would best.'

"Draco?" Hermione waved her hands in front of him. 'He's so cute when he's thinking . . . gah! Hermione would you stop doing that already?' Hermione thought to herself.

"Sorry, I was thinking about it. I think you'd be best as a seeker because you're smaller than all the other seekers and you have a pretty fast reaction time . . . I'm guessing you can see better than most people too. So yeah, I'd say you should go for seeker."

Hermione suddenly realized that she should probably be heading back, "Okay thanks. Well, I really think I should get going and go do my homework. Lots of it . . . I don't want to put it off either."

"Yeah, homework. I have to get going on that book of mine, it's a lot harder than one would think," said Draco as Hermione began to walk back to the castle. He caught up to her, "Hey, I'll walk you back to your Common Room. I don't want you to possibly get caught being out late. That wouldn't be very good."

"Okay, thanks," said Hermione absently as they resumed walking never taking notice of the close proximity they walked in. 'Think about your book Hermione, you have to have the first chapter translated by the end of this week. Don't think about Ron . . . or Draco,' Hermione mentally slapped herself.

"So, how is your book?" Draco asked her.

"Uh, it's good. I haven't translated very much yet . . . just a couple pages. I still have loads more work to do on it though."

"Cool," he said as they walked on in silence.

Hermione felt uncomfortable in the silence and with the distance between them and broke it as she took a slight step to the side to avoid feeling his body heat next to hers, "So uh . . . how's your book coming along?"

He felt at a slight loss once she moved away from him, but didn't let his disappointment show as he carefully masked his face, "Oh, it's really good. I didn't get very much done either, it's a really long first chapter. But yeah, it's a good read."

"Cool," said Hermione as they walked on in silence yet again. She felt him grow suddenly cold to her, and she couldn't explain why, but she was upset that he could so easily distance himself from her. Hermione suddenly remembered that book Draco was reading earlier about philosophy. She had been so disturbed to read what she had earlier, she wanted to ask Draco about it, "Hey Draco?"

"Yeah?" he asked with interest.

'Although, that would mean telling him that I was invading his privacy.' "Never mind."

"Oh, okay," he said shrugging it off like he didn't care.

Hermione felt frustrated that he was acting so differently. . . it was even worse than the blatant hate he used to show her. She could stand that, but she couldn't take this sudden cool indifference.

As they approached the common room he said, "Well, this is where I leave you. Goodnight Phoenix."

He left very quickly before she really had the chance to say goodbye. Hermione just sighed and entered her Common Room.

He felt as though he was being kind of rude, but he couldn't deal with this. She was the Weasel's girlfriend, not his . . . Weasley's. He didn't want to do something he would regret like . . . well actually he didn't know what he would have done, but he knew that he probably would have done something if he had stayed any longer.

Draco hurried down to the Head Boy and Head Girl dorms and he ran into none other than Padma Patil.

"Hey Draco, you're out late," she observed.

"Yeah, I was busy doing something," said Draco distractedly.

Padma took in his appearance and thought with a smirk, 'Yeah, more like busy doing someone!' "So who were you with?"

"Just a friend," said Draco slightly miffed at the Head Girl's attempts to pry into his personal life.

"Oh, okay," said Padma taking the hint that he did not want to talk anymore about the current topic. "So . . . how was your summer?" she asked conversationally.

"Oh, the usual . . ." said Draco not allowing her any chance to acquire the information she was so desperate to attain.

"Uh huh, and that would be?" she asked with a small hand gesture.

"I went home, saw my family, got school supplies, went to King's Cross, now I'm here . . . what else would you do on a summer break?" he said growing all the more agitated at the girl's persistence.

"I don't know, I just thought you might have gone somewhere or met a girl or something," she said sighing and giving up her efforts to find out about the mystery that was Draco Malfoy.

Draco smirked at the common thought process in regards to him. 'Typical; every girl wants to know if I'm single so they can try and get together with me so they can get a good shag thinking I'm a sex God of sorts even though I'm still a virgin. All it takes is being flirtatious, mysterious, and attractive and everyone automatically assumes that it's because you're some fantastically randy person who's getting some at every turn. Well, two can play at that game . . .' "Why, did you want to check on my availability? It just so happens that I did meet a girl over the summer," he said thinking of Phoenix, after all he did just meet her at the end of summer, and he technically wasn't available (partially by choice, partially by force,) but she didn't need to know that.

"What . . . you - you met a girl?" asked Padma as her mouth dropped.

"Yeah, she's really special. She is really gorgeous and smart . . . probably smarter than Granger was. I like her a lot too," he said, and he wasn't lying, he really did believe those things about her, he just never specified that there was no romantic involvement; so his words couldn't be considered false. "Oh, and close your mouth, you don't want to catch any flies do you?" he said, barely containing his laughter at the girl. 'Too bad there isn't any chance for romantic involvement though. . .' He immediately sombered at that thought.

She snapped her mouth shut quickly. Padma was stunned, Draco had a reputation for not being able to commit to any girl ever, he was after all the most promiscuous boy at Hogwarts. She watched Draco as he said the password and stepped into the Common Room. "Oh . . . my . . . God!" she said to herself as she too stepped into the Head Common Room, thinking she absolutely had to tell the girls.

OooOooOooOooOooO

She heard some noise from upstairs in Draco's room and decided to investigate.

Draco dug through his school trunk hastily, throwing clothes and stuff carelessly aside in his search. 'Where is it?' he thought frantically as his hand brushed a small shiny object. 'Oh, good, I found it!' he thought as he reached in and pulled out a sharp thin piece of metal about two centimeters long and a quarter of a centimeter high, which then had a plastic grip at the top to hold it by making this unique thing about two centimeters high. He rolled up his left sleeve to reveal a long column of scars about two centimeters long each most of the way down his arm, each getting ever so slightly redder than the last having been more recent than the last.

He looked fondly at the tool in his hand and put it to his arm and pushed it down. He gasped slightly and pulled out the invasive object and watched as blood began to pool around where he had made the incision. He felt relief flood through him as he watched the blood begin flowing freely down his arm and mar his skin with it's pure crimson color. He smiled "It's beautiful. It's perfect," he said in a whisper.

"Draco what's going on?" asked a familiar yet unwelcomed voice.

He turned around sharply and scowled at the person who dared to break this perfect moment. "Shit Padma! Haven't you ever heard of knocking?" he said like a deer caught in head lights as he hid his arm behind him along with the blade he had just used.

"I'm sorry, I just heard some noise up here and I wanted to make sure that you were okay," she said with concern.

"No, nothing going on here, just looking for my pajamas, and look! There they are!" he said looking at the ground and quickly picking up the pajamas with his good hand. "Now if you would kindly leave me to sleep I'd be much appreciative," said Draco in false politeness.

"Oh okay, if you're sure," she said doubtfully. Something was telling her that not all was well as appearances would tell her.

"I'm sure, now I don't want to have to say it again, please leave!" he said urgently as he felt the blood reaching to his fingertips now, knowing that if he didn't hurry, the blood would drip onto the carpet.

"All right," she said leaving with many unanswered questions about the strange situation.

Draco gave a quiet sigh. He'd have to remember to be careful about making noise in his room when Padma was around.

He walked into the bathroom and washed the blood off, then dabbed alcohol on the cut, then went back to his room and pulled out his homework and started to do it. 'Damn it, I can't think! Why is it that I can't control my emotions? I should be able to. She's not my girlfriend, so what? I don't need a girlfriend . . . I've done without one up until now, I can still do without now . . . can't I?'