A/N: I do not own any recognizable characters, etc. It is all JK Rowling. Enjoy!

-O-O-O-O-

The cool breeze from the library door opening barely registered on Hermione as she ran her hand through her unruly hair and glared down at the parchment before her. It was her new free – set during her old Potions block – and she had decided to work on her Arithmancy assignment. Ron and Harry had been happy for her that Slughorn thought she was such a good student, but she knew they would miss the hints she often gave them in class. But that didn't change the fact that in the last hour she had barely made a dent in her charts.

"Is that the Arithmancy thing?" Hermione glanced up, startled. Blaise Zabini stood on the other side of the table, carrying his school bag. "Mind if I join?" She nodded and pushed some books to the side so that he would have room to work.

"Did something happen in Potions?" It was only halfway through the period, after all.

"Not really. Pansy and I just finished early. We were working on pretty simple healing potions."

"Oh, okay." The two sat in silence and struggled through their charts. Hermione thought about this odd friendliness between the two of them. It had started on the third Arithmany class of the year, when the two of them had both been early.

She had been reading a book, and he was absentmindedly playing with his quill as he sat in front of her. Suddenly, he turned around. Hermione was momentarily distracted by his deep, dark eyes before she realized he had said something.

"Sorry, what was that?"

"I was just saying it was odd that in seven years of school together we've never been formally introduced." He stuck out his hand. "Blaise Zabini." She took it.

"Hermione Granger. A pleasure, I'm sure." He chuckled and nodded towards her heavy stack of books.

"I hope for your sake there's a weightlessness charm on those books." She gaped at him, and glanced between his face and the books several times before dropping her head to the table.

"Seven years. Seven years I've been hauling them around, and you come up with a solution not even a minute after meeting me." He had smirked and chuckled, watching as she beat her head against the desk.

"Well, then, that's enough of that, Hermione. No doubt you would have learned one day when the Healers diagnosed you with scallyoopus or some such sort."

Since then, the two had been friendly. They often studied in the library together and discussed the finer points of literature and history. Ron and Harry had accepted him enough that he sometimes sat with them in the common room to do work, but it didn't happen often. They still hadn't gotten any further with their Quidditch plan, though Blaise was all for it, and it had only been a week since Harry thought of it.

After nearly an hour of work, Blaise sat up and stretched. With her nod of permission, he compared their two charts.

"Good, we got the same thing. So, hopefully, we're not far off."

"At least we'll be wrong together," she offered. He grinned and checked his watch. "Time for lunch?"

"Yeah. I should probably find Draco in whatever corner he's wedged himself in and drag him down to eat." He finished rolling his parchment and started putting books in his bag.

"What's the deal with the two of you?" she blurted out, unable to stop herself. "I mean, no offense, but he's kind of an arrogant, prejudiced jerk."

"Et tu, Brute?" he said, softly and almost sadly.

"I'm sorry Blaise – it's just so hard… so hard to get over some of the things I saw them do. And it's hard to get over the fact that he's been nothing but an arse to me ever since we met. So it somewhat confuses me how someone as nice as you could spend so much time with… him."

"No, I understand Hermione. No harm done – I realize he hasn't exactly treated you decently over the years. And he can be… difficult to deal with if you haven't been well versed in his… unusual character. Hmm, where did it begin?"

He paused to consider. "He was the first person to be nice to me when I got here. So you learn to deal with people's quirks after seven, eight years. Yeah, he has a lot of faults, but who doesn't?" He paused again, but this was more of a hesitation than anything. "He was always there in the worst times of my life – not always making them better, but making them not as bad. It's my… duty, you could say, to help him through the worst part of his." Being Blaise, he tried to lighten the mood. "We Slytherins don't like being in debt, despite how many times Draco reassures me I owe him nothing."

"Huh. I never thought about it like that."

"Well, now you have. So I'll just toddle off to track down my faulty friend. I'll probably see you at lunch, Hermione."

"See you, Blaise." Hermione sat at the desk a little while longer, digesting what he had told her. She realized that despite how she had urged Ron and Harry to accept the Slytherins, she hadn't changed many of her own opinions. Sighing in confusion, she gathered her things. She had to eat before her first special potions class with Malfoy himself.

-O-O-O-O-

The potions classroom seemed odd without the benches full of students. Maybe it was also the lack of fumes wafting their way from wall to wall. Hermione awkwardly crossed her legs and bent down to retrieve her Potions book from her bag. The other occupant of the room ignored her, absorbed in his own thoughts, it seemed. Or else he was trying quite hard to bore a whole through the wall solely on the strength of his gaze. Malfoy had already been there when she had arrived, and she couldn't help but doubt Blaise's success at making him eat.

Slughorn burst through the door just as Hermione was beginning to line up her quills, smallest to longest. He saw the two of them sitting on opposite sides of the room, and his kindly face fell.

"Well, this won't do. This won't do at all! How are the two of you supposed to work together if you're acting like the other is about to hex you?"

Hermione heard Malfoy mutter something that sounded distinctly like, "I don't know that she won't." She frowned, and stalked across the room to plop herself next to him. He looked at her in surprise and she smiled sweetly at Professor Slughorn.

"I'm sorry, Professor. I was just thinking about what we were going to learn today and got distracted." She definitely heard the snort that came from her left.

"It's alright, Miss Granger. Now that that's settled, how about we start, eh? I thought we could begin with a little competition, just so you know what the other is made of. I'm assigning you both a Wiggenweld Potion, which I'm sure you know is the antidote to the Draught of Living Death. Winner receives fifty points and a favor from the loser." Slughorn grinned – a little too wickedly, in Hermione's opinion – and sent them on their way.

Hermione sprang up and, grabbing her textbook, ran to the ingredient cupboard. She returned to find her competitor still reading over the ingredients and instructions. When he finally returned from the closet, Hermione had already begun browning her luffwump spleens. Seeing that the next ingredient was powdered crows beak, she grinned. One of the notes in Malfoy's book had said that one could replace crow beak with dried squid ink for better results. Glancing slyly at her old enemy, Hermione saw he was still slicing spleens. She quickly added a scoop of black powder to her cauldron.

An hour later, Hermione was staring at her cauldron in dismay. It wasn't that her potion was a disaster – it was fine. But that was the problem – it was merely fine. She glanced over at her classmate, who was dropping the last of his gillyweed extract into his cauldron. While her potion bubbled, his was leaping about with such energy that the liquid was just barely contained by the rim of his cauldron. Where her potion was a perfectly agreeable shade of blue, his was such a startling shade of cerulean it almost hurt to look at.

Slughorn, who had been grading papers while they worked, sensed the lack of activity and looked up.

"Well, let's see how these turned out, shall we?" He came over to inspect both cauldrons. "Very well done, both of you. However, I believe that Mr. Malfoy's potion is a tad more complete than Miss Granger's. Fifty points to Slytherin." Malfoy took the award with a nod of thanks. Slughorn waved his wand, and both potions bottled themselves and flew to his desk. The two students packed up and were just about to leave when Slughorn stopped them.

"What about your favor, Mr. Malfoy?" Draco scowled, and Hermione shrunk a little. She was sure he couldn't help it, but he looked almost exactly like his father when he was like that.

"Perhaps later, Professor. I can't think of anything at the moment." He left the classroom and Hermione followed.

The two of them both had Charms, and it would be strange to not walk together since they had the same destination. The silence stretched between them, and Hermione could swear she heard Malfoy let out a sigh of relief when they reached the classroom. Just before she walked to her seat, the blond cleared his throat.

"Sometimes there are things that don't need changing," he muttered, with a slight smirk, and walked away to his seat. Hermione stared after him, stunned. The only thing she could think of him referring to was her potion, but she was quite sure he hadn't been watching when she had added that squid ink. Frustrated, she blew a stray hair out of her face. Was he patronizing her? Blaise was right, she thought as she sank onto on of the classroom chairs. Not everyone was equipped to handle that mysterious, arrogant blond prat.