A/N: Hey. I might not be able to put a post on for a while cause my next chapter is not ready yet and I have finals coming up. I will try to get something on ASAP. Anyways...

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Chapter Ten: Valentine's Day

Valentines Day dawned bright and clear. It was cold out though and Jessica wouldn't get out of bed until noon because she was trying to stay warm. At one point Professor McGonagall came in looking extremely worried and asking whether Jessica was ill because Jessica was always up by nine o'clock at the latest. Jessica managed to convince her otherwise though.

When she finally got up, Harry, Ron and Hermione, along with half of the Common Room were gone. Apparently they'd gone out with the other Gryffindor boys to have a snowball fight. With the common room almost all to herself for a change Jessica found a comfortable blanket and curled up with a book by the fire. She spent almost the whole day there though at about three she went down to the kitchens for a snack since she'd missed both breakfast and lunch.

At five o'clock she went up to change into her dress robes and try to do something about her hair. Jessica never could to anything with her hair, simply because she didn't know how. Finally, after a good deal of fuss she just brushed it and left it down. She did take a bit of time to put on some black eyeliner, which brought out her blue eyes. Then she made sure the necklace rested against the front of her robes. She fingered it as she stared at her reflection in the mirror. She had decided that her necklace was lucky and she had a feeling that she would be needing a lot of luck by the time the night was over.

Jessica left Gryffindor Tower, her nervousness mounting. As she made her way down to the dungeons she could feel the incredulous stares of the Slytherins who passed her. Definitely apprehensive now, Jessica came to a stop just outside the Potions classroom. She waited for several minutes, tapping her foot and nervously pacing and she was almost about to walk off and leave when Draco came along.

"Sorry, I got hung up," he said. He looked at her and said, "You look really nice."

"Thanks, uh, you too," Jessica said. In reality Draco's high necked robes made him look like a vicar and in her opinion the look did not suit him at all. Still, she didn't have the heart to break this too him.

"Shall we?" Draco said, offering her his arm, which after a second of indecision, she took. Together they walked up out of the dungeons and to the shock of all the students in the Entrance Hall, they proceeded to the Great Hall, chatting casually.

Jessica could feel the entire hall's incredulous stares on them. She fingered her necklace as they talked, and felt herself calming down as Draco picked a table and they sat down.

"So, how are you today?" Draco asked her as they sat down. He had gotten into the habit of asking this ever since she had nearly cursed him on one of her bad days.

"Tired, but otherwise fine," Jessica said. "It's odd how the longer you sleep the tireder you feel."

"If you're having trouble sleeping, Madam Pomfrey could probably give you a sleeping potion," Draco said, concern etched into his face.

"No," Jessica said as she fiddled with the cutlery on the table. "No, I'm fine."

They kept up the basically pointless conversation for the next few minutes. Jessica nearly laughed as Pansy walked by their table, throwing her the dirtiest look possible. The next instant though, Jessica felt her heart drop.

Harry had just entered the Great Hall and unlike herself, he had come without a partner. Behind him walked Ron and Hermione, both were smiling.

Harry stepped away from the doorway, his eyes searching and they widened with shock, before hardening as he saw her sitting at the table with Draco. He had seen them in each other's company before, but never so publicly. Jessica watched, her heart sinking lower as he made some comment to Ron and Hermione and they looked. Ron's eye's narrowed and Hermione's jaw dropped. She too had know that Jessica had been around Draco but she hadn't realized how close the two of them had become.

Harry moved his gaze away from her, probably to find a table as far from them as possible. Jessica turned away too, but not before Hermione's hurt eyes met her own. She sunk back in her chair. She should never have agreed to this.

"What is it?" Draco asked, turning around to look where her eyes had been only moments before. His glance was met by hostile stares from both Ron and Hermione. They turned away only moments later to follow Harry to a table that was indeed as far as possible from them.

"Ah," Draco said in understanding as he turned back to Jessica. He glanced at her. "Do you want to leave?" he asked her. "We can leave if you want to."

For a moment Jessica seriously considered it. But then Harry and Ron would know they had gotten under her skin, and she couldn't stand the thought of that. She had to stay. Her hand found its way to her necklace and she touched it a moment feeling better about her decision.

"No," she said. "No, let's stay."

Dinner was horrible, the two of them couldn't seem to manage any decent conversation and every time she so much as glanced in their general direction she would receive hateful stares from Ron and Harry. What bothered her most of all though, was the betrayed look in Hermione's eyes every time their eyes met. Each time Jessica would look away, almost as though a sharp pain had gone through her. Each time she would take a deep breath and touch the black diamonds in her necklace.

Finally everyone had finished dinner and the tables were pushed off to the side. A small, obscure band set up on one side of the dance floor and the Professors opened the dance. Draco stood and smiled at her, holding out his hand.

"Shall we?" he asked her. Jessica merely nodded as she stood and put her hand in his. Draco led her onto the dance floor.

She might have actually enjoyed it if it hadn't been for the fact that she was getting hateful stares from many directions. As they danced Jessica met the eyes of her fellow Gryffindors, only to be given a cold stare. She realized, as the song ended and she convinced Draco to leave the dance floor, that the reason they glared at her was because they saw her as a traitor. Gryffindor and Slytherin had been rivals for nearly a thousand years and in befriending Draco she had ignored that rivalry that they all stuck to.

The two of them danced several more times. Yet every time she moved out onto the dance floor Jessica felt as though she were stepping out into the open and everyone was pointing at her in anger. It was about nine o'clock before the two of them stepped off the dance floor.

"This is ridiculous," Jessica muttered under her breath. She couldn't stand to be in this hall with all these hateful people one moment longer. It was one thing to have Harry angry at her. It was quite another to be hated by her entire house and some students not in it besides.

"What?" Draco asked her.

"I said, let's go, I can't stand this," Jessica said as she met Hermione's eyes once more.

"Are you sure?" Draco asked her, looking at her a bit strangely, as though he expected her to change her mind. She nodded

The two of them proceeded towards the doorway out of the Great Hall. It was then that she noticed Harry, Ron and Hermione were headed to the doorway as well. They met at the doorway at the same time.

Both groups stopped and for what seemed like an eternity they just looked at one another.

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Harry knew that Jessica was in Gryffindor but for all the time she spent with Draco and the Slytherins she might as well have been one of them herself. So while it didn't surprise him when he saw her sitting with Malfoy on the evening of the Valentine's Day Ball, he found that it still hurt. And that was what made him angry; he hated the fact that she still had a hold over him.

The silence between them stretched on and on. The two groups did nothing but look at one another.

"Hello Potter," Jessica said, her voice colder than winter snow. Harry's name was spoken as a swearword.

"Go away," Harry said coldly. His eyes traveled from Malfoy to Jessica and back to Malfoy again. "We didn't ask for your company and we don't want it."

"And you thought we wanted your company?" Jessica snapped. She seemed to be ignoring Ron and Hermione; her gaze was fixed on Harry. "Think again."

"Yes, we have better things to do than hang around with you, Weasel and the Mudblood, Potty," Draco added. Hermione stiffened. Ron lunged forward and Harry had to hold him back.

To everyone's surprise, Jessica turned to Malfoy and slapped him across the face, hard. Her eyes were so angry that her gaze could have melted a glacier.

"Call her that again and I will give you more than a slap across the face, Draco Malfoy," she said, pronouncing his name in the same manner that she pronounced Harry's.

Draco stared at her halfway between shock and fury. He didn't take this kind of treatment from anyone, especially not in public. He started to speak.

"Don't," Jessica ordered. To everyone's shock he closed his mouth. "Hermione Granger," Jessica said softly, her voice filled with anger that she was no longer trying to conceal, "is better with magic than anyone in your pure-blood family could ever hope to be. She is better than you." Jessica turned on her heel and strode from the room. People stepped out of her way as she headed for the doors to outside. After a moment, not meeting the eyes of anyone in the trio, Draco walked out after her.

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Jessica walked across the dark grounds, not paying attention to where she was going. She failed to notice that she was headed straight for the Forbidden Forest. It was only the sound of someone coming up behind her that kept her from heading right into it. She whirled around to see who it was.

"What do you want, Malfoy?" Jessica asked, making her voice ice cold. His name was once again a swearword as it fell from her lips.

Malfoy's eyes were almost as angry as hers. "You can't do that!" he said, his fury radiating in his voice. "You can't just make a fool of me like that! I don't take that from anyone! I won't!"

"You'll take it from me unless you want me for an enemy again, Malfoy!" Jessica snapped. "I'm sick of your airs and the way you treat anyone who's not pure-blood like dirt! I meant what I said back there! Hermione and I don't always agree but she is better than you; she always will be! Just because I have a disagreement with someone does not give you the right to call their friends dirty names! If I want Hermione called dirty names I'll do it myself! I'm not going to apologize for what I did back there because I was right!"

Draco's eyes burned angrily. He plunged his hand into his robes for his wand. Jessica had hers out and at his throat before he got his fully out.

"Give a me reason," she breathed softly. "Give me a reason and I swear I will."

Draco froze. He'd just recently taught her some particularly nasty curses, the sort that could get you into trouble with your head of house just for using them on inanimate objects.

"You want to tell Potter all about the fact that we're friends, fine," Jessica said. "But if you're going to say we're friends then you're going to listen to me! I don't need you. I had every right to slap you. So either live with it and keep my friendship or leave it and have me for an enemy again."

"All right, all right," Draco grumbled after a minute. He stuck his wand back inside his robes and Jessica drew her own away from his throat. Draco's eyes still burned angrily but Jessica could have cared less. How dare he speak that way about Hermione? Sure she was Harry's friend but that didn't mean that she deserved to be insulted every time she turned around. Hermione had been the only one out of the trio who understood. Jessica walked away angrily.

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And now, the moment you have been waiting all day for. That's right it's...

REVIEWER THANKS:

Trinka: Hehe, glad you like. I've worked very hard on it. As to Dumbledore and Minerva forgetting her, they really didn't. You'll see what I mean by the end of the ff but if you want a hint, take a closer look at that note from Dumbledore in chapter 2.
In regard to your review to the previous chapter, I really can't answer any of those, but I suppose you knew that. Glad you picked up on the necklace.