Author's Note: This chapter is shorter than the previous one. They are probably going to be of varying lengths depending on the chapter and the events in them. Thank you so much to the people following this story, I hope you all enjoy this next installment.

Chapter Two

It was seven o'clock and Frances was sat in the Gryffindor Common Room on Saturday night. Her detention with Professor McGonagall was going to start in half an hour and she was just beginning to get her things together to head over to her classroom.

"Alright then," she said to some of the other Gryffindors she had been sitting with, "I better go."

"Good luck," Hermione said to her.

"You'll need it with Malfoy," Ginny added.

"I don't know," Lavender Brown chipped in, "I wouldn't mind..."

"Lavender!" cried Hermione as the three girls looked at her, "You're not really saying you fancy Malfoy?" Lavender looked coy. Hermione and Ginny rolled their eyes in disbelief.

"Would you rather go instead of me then?" Frances asked Lavender.

"Oh no! Detention on a Saturday night, I don't think so." Frances thought as much. She grabbed her back with her quills and parchment in just in case McGonagall had prepared lines for them to write.

As she made her way to the classroom, Frances wondered what sort of mood Draco Malfoy would be in. He was never in what would be described as a good mood but she was unsure how bad a mood he would be in on a Saturday evening detention.

"Just on time, Miss Edwards," Professor McGonagall noted as Frances slipped in the door. She was laying out boxes of goblets at a desk at the front of the room, incidentally the one that she and Draco shared during class.

"Late, Mr Malfoy." It was seven thirty-one. He didn't seem to care though. He nodded at Frances who unconsciously nodded back.

"As you can see, I have about one hundred goblets here. I'd like them polished, please. You will leave once they are done." This was an invitation for them to sit down and get on with the task. Frances sat down immediately but, as usual, Draco did everything in his own time. She began almost immediately, picking one of two cloths that had been laid next to the boxes. Malfoy showed less sign of movement but eventually he started on his share of the work.

"Why are there so many?" Malfoy groaned as he was rubbing vigorously at the bottom of a goblet he had just picked up.

"Because, Mr Malfoy," Professor McGonagall answered him, "I have a lot of students and not all of them are able to perform the transfiguration of a goblet into a bottle and therefore I need many spares." Draco nodded in acknowledgement of her answer.

"What am I, a muggle?" he uttered under his breath so that his teacher could not make out his words but Frances could hear perfectly.

"I'll have you know that muggles are a lot more intelligent than you Purebloods make them out to be," she snapped in reply, feeling very defensive about her roots. Malfoy grunted in reply.

"Is that so?" he asked.

"Yeah, actually, I know that you might not be able to believe it, but they are. I mean, I'd like to see you grab your whole family's collection of records and put them into a device the size of a matchbox," she said in justification of her point.

"No talking, please," Professor McGonagall said to them both before walking to the back of the classroom to find something in a cupboard.

"They can do that?" he asked, again quiet enough for only the two of them to hear.

"Yeah, they're called I-pods."

Frances was sure she saw a look of impression in his eyes for a second but he quickly covered it up with indifference.

Fifteen minutes of silence passed by. They got through fifteen cauldrons between them in that time, no communication needed whatsoever. McGonagall was on the other side of the classroom, marking homework. The clock behind her desk ticked away loudly.

"Do you ever get sick of being, good?" Draco whispered to Frances.

"What?" she asked puzzled.

"You've been working away at those goblets like crazy," he replied.

"I'm just trying to get them finished," she said, justifying her speedy work, "You know, so that we can actually get out of here."

"No, you just want to impress McGonagall," he insisted, "You've started the year in her bad books and now you're being all goody two shoes and trying to make it up to her. Please, Edwards, I know you're a Gryffindor but you're so predictable."

"Since when do you know me better than myself, Malfoy?" Frances asked in response, "You know nothing. And you can hardly talk; you suck up to Snape all the time and half the other teachers in this school."

Malfoy swore at her and directed some other cruel words and phrases at her. She just ignored them. Frances noted, however, that he looked uncomfortable as he hurled insults about her blood status at her for the next ten minutes. He was still his mean, callous self but the way he commented on her being muggle born seemed odd, as though he was going further out of his way than usual to mention it.

Another fifteen minutes passed by. At the sound of a squeaking chair, McGonagall stood up and strode towards the open doorway. Draco dragged his head up from the desk slowly and, scanning the room slowly like a hawk, he threw down the cloth he was using and bounded up from his seat.

"Cover for me will you?" he demanded of her with a smirk as he followed out the same way that McGonagall had. She looked at him in amazement.

"Where are you going?" she called as he turned the corner.

"I said; where are you going?" she shouted, louder this time. But, realising it was useless trying to receive a response from him, she threw down her own cloth in annoyance at his unpredictably mysterious behaviour.

Half an hour passed and Frances continued polishing the goblets with diligence. She knew she would never complete them all without Malfoy to help her but she decided to give it a good shot. She had always been one of Professor McGonagall's best students and she didn't want to let her down for a second time this week.

At nine o'clock, McGonagall returned to the classroom.

"Where is Mr Malfoy?" she asked Frances.

"He-he fell ill. He...erm...had to go to the hospital wing," The lies slipped off of her tongue. Professor McGonagall looked at her sceptically, undoubtedly trying to decide whether she believed her lie.

"Well, I guess this means you can go too," she uttered finally after a moment's thought. Frances grabbed her bag and made a dash for the door.

...

"You're back early Fran," Harry remarked as she scrambled through the portrait hole and sat down in the first available chair. Harry, Ron and Hermione had been sitting together around the fire; probably discussing something secret that she wasn't allowed to know, Frances thought to herself before knocking such thoughts out of her head because it was admitting that Malfoy was right.

"Yeah," she replied.

"Well, how was it? A whole hour and a half with Malfoy must have felt like a lot longer," Hermione asked.

"It was alright," Frances said, shrugging, "Yeah, tell me about it." She had decided not to tell them anything about Malfoy leaving early. If they were going to have their secrets, then she could have her own. Deep down she knew that this would only lead to a worsening relationship with her fellow Gryffindors but another part of her wanted to prove that if what Malfoy had said was true, or at least nearly true, then she could cope on her own. Also, she knew how they would react and she was scared of that. She didn't know why she had allowed him to get away with it and that was something she would have to figure out for herself.

...

Draco was lying awake in his bed. It was midnight. He couldn't sleep. He had spent all evening looking for the vanishing cabinet in the room of requirement. At first he had found it difficult to enter the room, which he thought was weird because he had believed he knew what he was looking for. Now he doubted that and not just in terms of the vanishing cabinet.

He had been set a task and Draco Malfoy was determined not to fail his family. He wanted to make his parents proud and so he had chosen to start straight away but already he was sensing that it was going to be far more difficult that he had ever anticipated. But still, he couldn't fail, he thought to himself and being stuck in detention at the weekends was not going to help matters.

Thinking about detention made his mind wander to thinking about Frances Edwards. He had never had much to do with her in previous years. She was not one of Potter's closest friends so he had not experienced the same confrontational relationship with her as he had with Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley.

"Still, she's a Mudblood," he thought to himself. "It shouldn't matter whose friend she is or what she's done, the fact she was born was enough." However, Draco didn't know how much he believed in all of this. He was still proud and felt himself to be superior, he knew that. Yet, since he'd had the Dark Mark ingrained into his arm, everything had got so much more serious. He couldn't just purely hate her for being muggle born any longer because now he was expected to torture and kill people like her. That was why during detention he had made an effort to insult her; he wanted to prove to himself that saying the word 'Mudblood' still felt the same to him. Draco didn't like her, no he still hated her for being a Gryffindor and for hanging around with people like Harry Potter but suddenly he was feeling uncomfortable with the prospect of having to be a murderer and that meant that Frances Edwards bothered him.

Author's Note: I'm not going to have access to a computer for about a week but I have already written most of chapter three so will edit it and post it as soon as possible.