The next morning Hermione is up bright and early, not willing to admit to herself why she is unable to sleep any longer. The first class of the day is Potions, unfortunately, taught by that rather unfriendly Professor Snape that she met on the train. She hopes he won't bring up the painfully embarrassing subject of the wands.
Fortunately for Herminone, Snape is much more interested in quizzing his students on random facts about the art of potion making. Even though she is behind in practice Hermione has spent the better part of the summer reading all of the Hogwarts textbooks and she finds that she knows the answer to a surprising amount of the questions. She answers three in a row which no one else seems to know the answers to but after Snape snaps at her (something about being a know-it-all and letting others answer) she goes back to her new favorite pastime: daydreaming about a certain someone special.
Hermione is staring out the window in the middle of a particularly satisfying fantasy in which Draco asks her to join him for dinner after she has dropped all of her books in the hallway and he has come to her rescue, when Snape's voice rudely jerks her back to reality.
"Ms. Granger." His eyes narrow, and she suspects he has repeated her name more than once.
Luckily for her Ron, who is sitting next to her, repeats the question in a voice that is more like a low hiss than a whisper. Hermione, her face burning red with shame, quickly mumbles the answer. Mercifully, the bell sounds just then. Hermione mutters a quick thank you to Ron and hurries out of the dungeons.
Her face is still a bit pink, perhaps more from the long walk she had than anything else, when she arrives at the North Tower for her first Divination lesson. She emerges at the top of the ladder breathing heavily and looking disheveled. She goes to step into the room and promptly trips over the top rung of the ladder, crashing quite soundly into none other than Draco Malfoy.
If Hermione's face was red before, it is a million times worse now. She looks up, mortified, to see whom she must apologize to and looks Draco square in the face. For a moment she forgets to breath, but manages to gasp out, "I-I'm sorry."
He holds her gaze steady for what seems like forever but in reality couldn't be longer than a few seconds. Then he scowls at her and, breaking the gaze, hurries to take a seat as far away from where Hermione is standing as possible. Hanging her head in shame and amid the quiet laugher of her classmates, Hermione takes a seat near the exit.
Hermione barely hears any of the lesson. In fact, she is so distracted by her earlier humiliation that she almost misses hearing the homework for next week. Some book they have to read a portion of at the library. She scribbles down the title. Only one copy, so she thinks she will start on that as quickly as possible. She doesn't want to have to face any of her Divination classmates any sooner than she has to.
When the class ends she bolts for the trapdoor as quickly as possible. She doesn't see Draco's eyes following her out.