I have decided this is going to be the fic where I aim to get over 200 reviews. I was so close on "When it all goes wrong" with 190! Ahh! So yeah, get reviewing people!

The mirror is always a cruel thing, Hermione considered as she stared at her reflection. It was never truly going to show you what you so wanted to see.

"It's no wonder boys don't even notice." She muttered. She straightened out the front of her shirt. It wasn't that she was bad looking, she thought, she just wasn't so good looking so as to attract attention.

Distantly she could hear someone calling her name. Giving up on the mirror, she left the room.

Ron and Harry were stood in the common room beneath her, and gave exaggerated waves of joy upon seeing her as she descended the narrow stairway. "Finally." Ron breathed. "We've been calling a good five minutes."

"A whole five minutes of your lives wasted on me? Oh, Ronald, I am sorry." Hermione muttered sarcastically. "Why are you waiting for me anyway?"

Harry shifted uncomfortably, his eyes fixed on his feet. Ron however, looked stern. "We just heard Malfoy in the great hall talking with those followers of his."

"And?" Hermione interjected. "He has a right to talk, does he not?"

"It wasn't so much that he was talking, Hermione." Harry pointed out. "It was the words coming out of his sour and shriveled mouth that were bothering us."

"Slimy little git." Ron exclaimed.

Hermione sighed. "Well are you going to tell me what he said, or am I just here for you to vent all your frustration onto?"

Ron rounded on her. "He was talking about you, Hermione." Hermione's heart skipped a beat. "Going on about how you'd told him you were going to give him a chance and whatever other rubbish you fed him."

Hermione was confused. "What's wrong with that?" She directed her question at Harry, feeling that any response she got from Ron would probably be incomprehensible.

"He was laughing about it." Harry explained calmly.

Hermione felt her heart sink. How idiotic she had been. Everything had told her she had been wrong to put faith in Malfoy, but still something had told her it was ok. What had it been, to make her go against everything she knew like that? Plain stupidity? A curse of some sort? Or something else?

She sighed heavily, and all the energy sleep should have given her faded away. She felt heavy, and relief rushed through her as she collapsed into an armchair. Thank goodness it was Saturday. Lessons required energy, energy Hermione wasn't sure she could muster right now.

"So…" She began, as Harry and Ron settled themselves beside her. "He just laughed at the fact I'd given him a chance?" She confirmed.

Ron sniffed. "I told you it was a daft thing to do."

"Yes, thank you, Ron." Harry murmured, delivering a swift blow to his friend's ribs.

As Ron doubled over in exaggerated agony, Hermione turned her attention to Harry. "Do you think it was a daft thing to do?"

She noticed that he took a great deal of time to consider his answer. "I think…" He paused, and she knew he was not about to give her a straight answer. "I thought you'd see something in him that maybe wasn't there."

"It was there." She said, a little huffily. "He was trying. I'm sure of it. It's because he was with his friends…"

"Don't try and justify -"

"I'm not trying to justify anything, Ron." Hermione snapped. "I'm just telling you what I think, and what I think is that the Draco we know is just a face put on for his friends, his reputation, and the Draco I've been catching glimpses of this year is the real thing." She got her feet and stormed out of the common room.

Hermione didn't really have anywhere to go. Hadgrid's was always an option, but somehow she didn't feel like talking to anyone who would be overly sympathetic. She knew exactly who she did was want to speak to, but finding them would be difficult.

As head girl she did have the authority go into any common room she liked, but working up the nerve to do so was an altogether different matter.

Slytherin common room was in the dungeons, that much was common knowledge, but never before had Hermione needed to know any more, after the unfortunate incident with the polyjuice potion in her second year. She descended steep stone step after steep stone step down towards the dungeons. She passed by Snape's potions classrooms, and continued on passed towering suits of Armour, which peered down at her menacingly.

The light was changing, she realized as she neared what she guessed was a dead end. Obviously no sunlight shone down here, but the candlelight, which had been a cheerful dancing yellow when she has first come down, had dissolved into a diluted pale green web of light.

What now? She thought. Even if she'd wanted to, she couldn't go inside the common room. A muggleborn inside the Slytherin's lair, like a lamb in the lion's den. Plain foolish.

She sank down onto the damp flagstone floor, and pulled her knees up under her chin. Perhaps they had been right. That thought did not sit well with Hermione, she was used to Harry eventually being proved right, but not Ron.

Her head fell forward onto her knees. It was only ten o clock, and already she felt complete exhaustion overpower her.

She heard a bang above her head, and looked up just in time to see the wall in front of her closing over. Before the now blank black stonewall stood Malfoy, peering at her curiously. He seemed to be having some sort of internal argument, debating, as she'd so often suspected before, whether or not to be nice to her.

There was twinge of pleasure that Hermione felt as he crouched down to her level that she though was perhaps slightly unnecessary, but still…

"Why were you laughing at me at breakfast?" She asked timidly, unsure if she really wanted to know the answer.

It seemed to take him an age to reply, and Hermione couldn't quite bring herself to look at him.

She could hear him shuffling awkwardly, and his breathing heavy as he opened and closed his mouth, struggling intently with some reason behind his actions.

"You know, it doesn't matter." She cut in, before the silence became unbearable. "I think I know anyway." His eyes fell upon her, crystal clear and brimming with concern. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? He didn't know.

He watched her finally draw her eyes up to meet his. The light they held were enough to tell him he'd survived this episode.

She smiled weakly, and with a momentary unawareness of whom it was she was dealing with, she held out her hands, inviting him to help her up. He greeted this with enthusiasm, and gallantly pulled her to her feet, allowing her to fall into him. She blushed as she stepped back, and pushed her hair behind her ear distractedly.

"Why are you down here, Hermione?" Draco asked pointedly. Why was she down here? She didn't really know. Because she wanted answers? Because she had no one else? Because he was the only other person relevant in her present dilemma? Or all of the above? She wasn't sure. Of course, there was no way she was about to admit any of this to him.

She shrugged noncommittally. There really wasn't an excuse. Luckily he grinned. "It doesn't matter." He said, saving her. "I've been unable to answer your question, and you've been unable to answer mine. We'll call it even." He looked over his shoulder to the wall through which he had appeared only minutes before. "Perhaps we should move. I'm not sure your being here would be well appreciated with the others in there."

He tentatively pushed her lightly on the shoulder, encouraging her to turn. A shiver ran through her at his touch.

She willingly turned, and together they walked back up to the great hall in silence.

Hermione found herself pausing outside the door. "We can't go in here either really, can we?"

Malfoy shook his head and she sighed. She was desperate to speak with him, but it seemed impossible. Why she wanted to speak to him so badly, she didn't really know.

"The grounds?" She asked. She saw him tense. "What's wrong?"

"I can't do this." He muttered, just loud enough for her to hear.

"Do what?" He voice was almost as quiet.

Draco's lips barely moved as he replied. "I can't pretend this ok." He looked his lashes at her. Her expression was impossible to read. "It's not." He said, just for something to fill the silence.

"I don't understand what you're trying to say." Hermione murmured in confusion.

"I can't be friends with you." He snapped, before even considering holding his tongue.

She stood in stunned silence as he shifted his feet uncomfortably. This bloody bet. He thought. It was strange though. Before, saying something that hurtful to Granger would have been instinctively followed by a sneer or a smirk, but there was nothing.

Hermione cleared her throat. "Fine, well, if that's how you feel." She turned away, and began to head off.

She seemed to take an age to walk only a few steps. It was just long enough for something in Draco's mind to click into place.

"Hermione, wait."

Let's get this ball rolling! I have exams after xmas, so am going to be fitting in as much writing as I can before the holidays!

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