Disclaimer: No, it hasn't changed since last time, I do not own anything.

It is un-betad so please excuse errors.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed, hopefully the oddness of the last chapter will be explained in this one!


Despite the fact that she didn't trust the snake Hermione listened to the conversations going on around her but found nothing out of the ordinary and began to sit behind them when they were all talking in the common room, not to spy technically.

"I still think something is going on. He's been looking at her over the past few weeks."

"I know but when I asked her about him she didn't react any special way." Ginny answered her brother.

"When did you ask her?" Harry asked his girlfriend.

It was silent for a moment and Hermione thought that they had found out she was settled in the chair in the corner near their table.

"I don't know, about a week ago. We were at the library and almost as soon as I left he went in."

"Did he sit with her?" Ron asked almost immediately after Ginny answered the question.

"I don't know. I couldn't go back in without her getting suspicious."

Hermione's mind raced as she recalled the day the red head spoke of and wanted to slap herself for not up on it. Ginny must have said his name wrong on purpose.

"I still don't think we should be doing this." It was Neville who said just when Hermione had given up hope that anyone was on her side. "It's wrong; we should just ask her if she's interested in him."

Her mouth dropped open as he finished his statement and she was tempted to turn around and give them each a tongue lashing when Harry spoke up.

"I don't even know why we're doing this. Hermione couldn't be interested in a Slytherin; it would be…un-Hermione like."

"I know but you have to admit she has been acting weird around him lately and he's always following her around." Ron said.

"Yeah, Harry. He looks like a lost pup following behind her." Ginny confirmed her bothers observations quickly.

Hermione pressed herself back into to the chair she sat in to stop herself from jumping up and rounding on the 'Gryffindor Four'. 'A lost pup, honestly' she thought with an eye roll.

"Should we tell her to look out, just in case?" Ginny asked into silence.

"Of course we should. What if he corners her one day and we're not there?" Ron said as soon as the words left Ginny's mouth.

"We could just be imagining things. Why should we get her back up about something if we might be wrong?" Harry reasoned while he earned points with Hermione for thinking rationally. Of course as he finished his thought the points were canceled out. "She would just freak out anyway; you know how she can get."

She didn't feel any better when the other three occupants of the table agreed. She wanted to leave and go to the library, pretend she'd never listened in on them, but knew she couldn't because then they would know she had been there the whole time.

"I think I'm going to go up now, Lavender just Witch Weekly from her mum and there's an article I've wanted to read." Ginny excused herself.

Hermione listened as the boys called goodbye and waited for them to leave as well. She didn't have to wait long.

"I got the new Chuddley Cannon's magazine in today." Ron announced after the three talked quietly for a few minutes.

"I thought you would have given up on them when they lost to the Ashwinders." Harry teased.

"It wasn't a fair game." Ron defended his favorite team quickly.

"The Ashwinders hadn't won a game for three years before they played the Cannon's." Neville reminded the red head.

"Shove off." Ron answered sulkily as Hermione heard their chairs slide across the rug under the table as they stood up. She breathed a sigh of relief when she heard Ron's voice fade up the steps that led to the boys' dormitory.

She stood up and made her way towards the door.

"Hey, Hermione." Dean called from across the room when she was at the door.

"Hello, Dean." She called back with a nod and a small wave before she turned and walked out of the common room.

No wonder Ginny had been acting weird at the library last week, she thought Hermione fancied Blaise. The frazzled head girl thought of the conversation that Ginny had brought up and felt like a dolt, how could she not picked up on it. The younger girl must have gotten his name wrong on purpose. And when Hermione had seemed uninterested she looked disappointed. 'Very curious indeed', Hermione thought.

"I was wondering when you were going to get here." An accented voice said lazily as she settled into a chair at what she considered her table in the library.

"Are you stalking me?" she asked to the boy that now sat beside her.

"Now, now, don't get your back up."

"Shove off." She said as she gave him a hard stare. She couldn't believe he had caught onto something she hadn't.

"That wasn't very nice." He said with a wink.

She felt her cheeks heat and quickly stood up, almost knocking the chair over in her haste, and walked to the shelves to find something to read.

"So have you found anything out?"

Hermione jumped at the sound of his voice right by her ear and turned around to see his smirking face. She sighed and knew he had been right. What was worse was he knew that she knew.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." He said although he looked anything but sorry.

"Do you have to be so close?" she asked before she moved to the right to try to walk past him only to be brought up short when he moved to his right to block her.

"I don't think I am too close to you, though I could be if you'd like." He said as he wriggled his eyebrows at her.

"Honestly." She muttered before she turned around and walked away from him.

"Don't be like that. I would like to know what you've found out. You wouldn't be so jumpy if you hadn't found anything." He reasoned as he followed her down the isle.

She turned to the left when she got to the end of the isle and went to the table she had vacated not even five minutes before.

"So?" he tried to coax with a charming smile.

"What do you want to know?" she asked when he slid a book in front of her, a peace offer.

"Your innocence isn't believable."

"Is this going somewhere?"

"You know perfectly well where this is going now tell me what you've found out." Blaise said in a tone she'd never heard him use before, almost as if he were annoyed.

"sorry." She apologized before she slid the book closer to her and opened it up to read the title page. "They think that you are interested in me." She said when he shrugged off her apology.

"That's all you've found out?" he asked as if he'd already heard the news years ago.

"They want to know if I am interested in you. That's why Ginny was acting so weird last week when she met me at the library. That's why she acted funny in my room too" Hermione said quietly with surprise.

"Are you interested in me?" He asked as he leaned forward to hear her better.

"Of course not." She denied with a snort of laughter which earned a glare from Madam Pince and a sigh from Blaise.

"So they think that I am interested in you." He said with a smirk as he waited for Hermione's nod before he continued. "And they also think that you are interested in me."

"That seems to be the gist, yes." Hermione nodded with a heavy sigh.

"Well I can understand why you would be interested in me but I don't see how I fit into their scheme." Blaise said after he thought for a few minutes.

"Ron thinks that you want to get back at Gryffindor and that is the only possible way you could get them back."

"What did the idiot do to me?"

"He is not an idiot." Hermione snapped as she leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Alright, I will leave it be. Now about the Weasley girl being in your room…" he began with a raised eyebrow.

"She came to visit me to visit me in my dorm room and acted strangely." Hermione explained without hesitation as she tried to think of any other time the girl had acted weirdly.

"So she was in your room?" he asked as if he hadn't heard her the first time.

"I just said so." She answered with a look that left the 'duh' unsaid before she went back to her thoughts.

"Was she ever in there alone?"

"What?" she asked as she shook her head slightly to clear it.

"Was she ever alone in your room?" he asked slowly and as loudly as he could without a stern look from Madam Pince.

"Yes, I had to meet Theodore that day so I just told her to let herself out." She explained warily.

"Do you keep a diary or journal?" he asked from out of the blue.

"What on earth does me keeping a diary have to do with this?" Hermione asked now truly confused as to where the conversation was going.

"Do you?"

"It is none of your business."

"Did you find anything out of place when you went back to your dorm room?" Blaise continued the odd questions.

"I don't think so, she was still there but only because she'd propped the door open." She knew she had no reason to tell him this but she was now curious to see what connections he saw that she didn't.

"Does she usually do that?" he asked as he leaned back in his chair and threw and arm over the back of it.

"No."

"Did she go through your drawers at all?"

"How on earth could I know that?"

"You didn't notice anything out of place when you went to get your diary?" he asked.

"No, I…I do not have a diary and even if I did it would be none of your concern." She said through clenched teeth.

"So nothing was out of place?"

Hermione opened her mouth to answer 'no' but stopped herself. Ginny had gone through her drawers. Ginny had even said that she had gone through her drawers, that was how she found Quidditch through the Ages.

"She did, didn't she?" The smug voice of the Slytherin across the table said at her silence.

"She said she was looking for…she never said what she was looking for." Hermione answered in shock. Could Ginny have looked through her drawers to find her diary?

"I was right?"

"There's no need to gloat."

"They think that we are dating." He stated with a smile.

"That is ridiculous." She scoffed even as she came to the same conclusion.

"No it's not. I've been thinking about it since last week. It makes perfect sense once you think about it, they are going through your things, spying on you and they are talking about you behind your back."

He had a point, not that she knew where he wanted to go with it. She looked at him as he thought whatever idea he had mapped out in his mind. He was good looking, if you liked the pretty boy kind of look.

"What do you plan to do?" she asked after a lengthy silence.

"As I said before, I have a plan that I would need your help with." He answered cryptically.

"If you want my help I need to know what you plan to do."

"If I tell you, you'll have to help me. You couldn't laugh it off." He said after he studied her for a few seconds.

"That doesn't sound promising."

"It would be harder on me than it would be on you."

"What would be harder on you?" she asked as she tried to guess his plan.

"Do you agree to help me?" he asked with a serious look.

Hermione bit her lip as she thought about his question. She was very curious to know what he had planed but if it was so serious that he wouldn't tell her unless she agreed to it set her on edge. Slowly, her eyes closed, she nodded her head in agreement. When he was silent she opened her eyes to look at him to find his eyes were trained on her face.

"I've agreed."

"I saw that." He replied steadily.

"Are you going to tell me what, exactly, I have agreed to?" she asked impatiently.

"I don't know if I should tell you just yet."

"Well then I don't want to go along with your plan anymore." She reasoned.

"I don't accept that."

"Ha, that's funny; I don't remember asking for your acceptance."

"I told you that once you agreed you couldn't back out."

"No, you said I couldn't back out if you told me, which you haven't." Hermione corrected the smug boy across from her.

She watched as his face took on a thoughtful expression and began to get a bit nervous when a smile graced his face.

"We are going to become a couple."

"What?" she squeaked, whatever thoughts that were in her head before his statement now gone.

He looked around the library to make sure there was no one around them and gave her a warning look before he continued.

"We have to go somewhere more private to talk about this." He informed her before he stood up and walked around the table to help her up.

"What are you doing?" she asked as she tried to pull her arm out of his grip while she still sat.

"Just stand up and follow me." He said quietly.

"Why should…." She hissed.

"There are two pairs of shoes by the shelf nearest us. I don't think that shoes have started walking on their own and it is a well known fact that Potter has an invisibility cloak. We've already discussed that you have a gift for reading between the lines." He whispered to her as he leaned closer to her.

"Where?" Hermione turned her head quickly only to have her chin caught between Blaise's fingers and her head forcibly turned back towards him.

"You might as well wave if you look over there now."

Hermione resisted the urge to pull her face out of his hand and looked out of the corner of her eye to where Blaise had nodded. For her effort she saw a mass of brown curls that had been thrown over her shoulder when she had jerked her head. She cringed a bit when Blaise smoothed her hair away from her face and smiled down at her as he brushed his fingers against her cheek.

"What are you doing?" she asked entranced by his eyes.

"Giving them what they want."

She blinked at his answer and stood up quickly which caused him to take a quick step back.

"Come on." She said crossly and grabbed his hand to pull him out of the library.

"Yes, let's go somewhere more private." He said louder than he would have had they been alone.

She heard a gasp and the rustle of material before there was silence. A look at Blaise confirmed he too had heard the noise as well. The doors weren't fully closed behind them when Hermione heard Ron's voice almost yell 'did you see the way he pushed the hair out of her face?'

"I think we have their attention now." Blaise said with confidence in his voice

"We had their attention before this." She reminded him slowly as he led the way to the Head's common room.

"Yes, that is true." He confirmed with a nod of his head. "But this time the ball is in our pitch." He finished with a smirk.

"court." She sighed when they were in front of the tapestry.

"What?" he asked before he said the password.

"It is 'the ball is in your court', not pitch."


He he, so how was it? Leave a review and let me know!