Draco Malfoy woke with a start, his startled yelp echoing between his muffling curtains. He knew one other thing, one thing that he hadn't thought of yesterday.
Potter had taken the matter to Granger, the more levelheaded of his friends. If he'd just wanted to bitch and complain about Draco Malfoy, he could simply have taken it to Ron Weasley. But he didn't!
And that was significant. It meant that, no matter how frustrated and confused Harry Potter looked, he was ... trying for understanding.
Hope was a fey and slippery thing, and Draco Malfoy told himself to not cling to it too tightly, lest it flutter away and settle around someone else for the day. Still, he felt its warmth, and strode through the halls with a will.
He still hadn't decided exactly what he was doing with his House, and he had the feeling that if he didn't decide soon, that he'd lose all choice altogether. You swum or you sunk, after all.
Hermione Granger had decided that she didn't like this new Draco Malfoy terribly much at all. Oh, the old one was ridiculously annoyng - almost ot the point of parody... Still, , this one kept distracting her with unpredictability. She wasn't the type who needed everything to fit exactly - but this was far outside anything approaching standard Malfoy Parameters.
Hermione was eating alone at lunch, which was practically like eating at home, the same stillness that let her sink into the book she was reading. As she did so, she wrapped a stray lock of hair around her finger. I miss him, I miss him so much.
[a/n: Set up chapter. But, seriously, did you notice that Draco forgot that?' Leave a review, it'll get me back writing this one more.