The day had gone by slow for them both; the only action being in Snape's class when he docked Gryffindor 20 points because Harry actually got the potion right for once. Snape accused him of cheating. They both had a lot of homework and they both went about theirs in different ways. During lunch Hermione headed for the library to do hers while Draco just beat up a 7th year Ravenclaw and told him to do his homework. Either way both sets were finished before dinner had even been close to getting started. That day at lunch Ron had even asked if she wanted to go to Hogsmeade with him, as friends. Hermione spirits had been souring high until they came crashing down again after his last two words.

Draco had been asked repeatedly by other girls too, he denied them all, so at least both the blonde and Brunette had something in common, neither of them had dates, at least not with the person that they wanted to go with.

Draco found Hermione at the library, just as he knew he would, and took her by the arm, dragging her out of the room. She looked agitated but not as much as Draco. He looked a bit annoyed and offered to explain his current situation.

"All right Granger I need to talk to you real quick. Did you know that we had a list of names? No. I though so. Well we do, I bet you don't know how many and what they're for either huh? Ok there are a total of 73 houses and names, AND ALL OF THEIR PROBLEMS. Gosh I need your help with this head boy and girl thing. You can't dump all of the work on me ok." Draco pleaded to her.

Hermione had laughed, at how he seemed upset and looked like he had never dealt with an issue for himself before. She just nodded and told him that she was sorry and that they should probably get onto that list. Draco led her to the common room where Hermione grabbed a quill and parchment, and sat next to Draco and the list.

Hermione didn't think that the problems were very hard to sort out so she knew she would have them fixed VERY soon. She instructed him on how to do this but he wasn't paying a bit of attention. Draco watched Hermione, as if in slow motion, flip her curly brown hair behind her neck. He watched he honey-auburn eyes glisten in the light as she focussed on the problems in front of her. Draco felt like he was going to retch but realized that it wasn't that feeling. It was like something small was flying around in his stomach. He never knew that feeling and mistook it for nausea. Hermione watched as the blonde boy ran out of the room and into his dorm room then she heard the bathroom door shut.

She was confused as to why he had been acting so weird for she past couple of days but shrugged it off, knowing that she had a thing to do. Meanwhile Draco was in the bathroom waiting to be thrown into a retching fit, but when it hadn't come for 5 minutes he dismissed it as just a weird feeling. He walked back down to the common room to find that Hermione had finished with the resolutions and was ready to disperse some discipline.

Together Hermione and Draco wrote to all of the students on the list about what to do to resolve their problems and if they found something particularly bad than Draco ran to find the student and give him/her a detention. They had finished and Hermione was up and on her way to the owl tower to send the owls. She used the school owls and was on here way back to the common room but found something most disturbing.

Ron was there, stuttering, in attempt to talk to another girl, Hermione ducked behind a pillar and listened to the conversation. Soon tears began to roll freely down her cheeks as she saw the girl nod in approval and then grab him and she basically started eating his face of. Hermione stood around for a minute wishing, praying that Ron would break the contact and smack her. He didn't, on the contrary he started roaming his hands. Hermione felt something inside her shatter as she walked quietly by and back to the room where she ran up to her room and collapsed on the bed in sobs.

Meanwhile Draco was in his own room making sure that the Ravenclaw hadn't sabotaged his homework when he heard the door of the girls dorm slam shut. Draco rolled his eyes; Hermione was having another fit. Even though he was annoyed on the outside, on the inside he had been deeply concerned for her wellbeing. Hermione was not one to break down and cry, unless he had something to do with it, Draco smiled inwardly at his talent, and he had done nothing to her the entire week, in fact, he had even helped her out.

Draco shut his door behind him and made his way down his stairs only to walk up another flight soon after. Draco surfaced at the second floor and cracked the door to her room; there she was, her disheveled body rocking slightly on the bed as she assumed the position that she had been in the night of the nightmare. Her eyes were glued to something torn up on her bed that she looked to her left and saw a knife. Draco's eyes widened dramatically when he saw that the picture was of her and Ron, as for the knife, she was reaching for it. She pulled out her arm and drew the blade to it.

"HERMIONE, STOP!" Draco decided to make his presence known, far from discreet, he burst through the door, surprising Hermione long enough to take the blade from her arms. To his amazement, she hadn't even yelled at him, she just sat there, dazed. Looking at him with big eyes she opened her mouth and spoke in a calm voice.

"Do you know what it feels like to have your heart turned to ice then smashed into a wall, shattering it into a billion tiny pieces. Then having those pieces melted and molded only for it to happen again, and again, and again." Hermione kept saying the last words. Draco felt that feeling in his stomach again as he looked into her sad eyes and sat next to her just patting her back, hoping it would help. Hermione knew then that the dream wasn't a dream at all, it was reality. Draco either grew a heart or… nope, Draco grew a heart, that's the only possibility. Hermione, acting out of jealousy and pure human nature, laid her head on Draco's shoulder and looked up to him like a lost LOBSTER.

The feeling was back again and it was even worse. His stomach was doing flip-flops and his mouth began to water. He looked into her eyes and saw his reflection in the brown spheres. He wanted to deny to himself the feelings that had erupted inside of him. For some reason he had found himself wanting to kiss her. He knew it was wrong. A Slytherin was never meant to like a Gryffindor, especially a Malfoy wanting a muggleborn, but this had been Dumbledore's plan since the beginning, to get the houses to unite once again.

Hermione had her head down again in sadness and Draco found himself asking an extremely rude and bold question.

"Hermione what was that dream about the other night, you looked so… pained." Draco asked her looking into her deeply sad eyes.

Tears began to fall again but she planned to answer his question, he had been nothing but nice to her this year.

"The one that I had a little over 2 months ago?" He nodded, "well before I came my parents had been unusually not upset at my leaving them for 2 years. I was wondering why and realized that from all of my years living there, I was barely never at home with them. I started thinking about them and realized that they never really… l-l-loved m-me." Hermione managed to get out before the tears began to roll freely again. They both stood up as Draco continued to hush her and pat her on the back. For some reason unbeknown to him, Hermione moved herself in front of him and slung her arms around his back, hugging him as she cried softly.

Had it not been for his instinct he would have froze, not knowing what to do, pushing her away would be a horrid thing to do so he wrapped his own arms around her waist and lay his head on top of hers. The entire time they stood there together and Draco realized, for the first time, that he had other types of feelings and actions other than cruelty. Even though they had nighttime patrolling, Draco contacted Dumbledore telling him that Hermione was diffidently not feeling up to par so he released them of their duties. That night Hermione lay sleeping in his bed while Draco sat in a chair near by watching over the sleeping beauty.

This year was not going as expected, for either of them