DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter, nor am I affiliated in any way with J.K. Rowling.

"…Which is why the legend of the Fountain of Youth is largely inaccurate," Snape concluded in a droning voice that Hermione could've sworn hadn't changed pitch at all in the last hour.

Hating these rare yet mind-numbingly boring theory lessons, she had given up on taking notes long ago and had instead settled for worrying about what she was supposed to do about the two Malfoys and Zella.

"Well, yeah, I could've told you that," Ron muttered lowly, causing Harry and Hermione to splutter slightly as they tried not to laugh.

They quickly looked innocently away as Snape gave them a dark look. Hermione tried to conceal her smile, grateful that she had friends like Harry and Ron to remind her that life wasn't always doom and gloom.

"To make sure you've all been listening, your homework is to write one thousand words on exactly why the legend of the Fountain of Youth is inaccurate. For next lesson."

The groans from the class grew louder at this last sentence. Their next lesson was just three days away.

They were dismissed a few moments later, with most of the class still grumbling. Draco, still irritated from the previous night with Trayton, pushed past everyone else impatiently. When he became level with Potter, Weasley and Hermione (Granger, keep calling her Granger!) he slowed down to let them pass.

"Finally learnt some manners, have we, Malfoy?" Weasley taunted at him.

"I was being charitable and letting you get a head start on your essay," Draco answered back, his eyes narrowing. "You'll need all the help you can get if your memory is half as bad as your Potions ability."

Alright, so it wasn't the best comeback he'd ever thought of but he found himself distracted by Hermione (Granger, dammit!) and her refusal to look at him.

"Ron, leave it, let's just go," Hermio - Granger - murmured, resting her hand on Ron's arm and glancing up at him.

Was there something going on with the two of them? No, Draco would've known. Still, he'd always figured Granger for a girl with a hero fetish, making Potter the obvious choice and himself the exact opposite of what she wanted. Not that it mattered. At all.

"Better do as your girlfriend says, Weasley, wouldn't want you playing with the big boys and getting hurt," Draco found himself snapping.

Hermione shot him a dark look, tinged with surprise and confusion.

"Ron, Harry, let's go," she said tensely, never taking her eyes off Draco's. "Leave the big boys to their children's games."

The students that had watched the scene unfold quickly flicked their gazes to Draco to see what he would respond with. When he said nothing more than "Trayton sends his best" they were left disappointed and more than a little puzzled.

"I hate Malfoy. I really do. He's the type of person who deserves to be hit repeatedly in the face with a brick."

"What did he mean 'Trayton sends his best'?" Harry asked Hermione, cutting into Ron's tirade of abuse as they made their way to the Gryffindor tower.

"Maybe he's reminding me that, as much as we can't stand each other, we still have a responsibility to our ancestors," Hermione suggested with a sigh. "As if I would just abandon Zella."

"And Trayton," Harry prompted, giving her a sidelong glance.

"Eh," Hermione replied, unconcerned.

"You don't like Trayton anymore?" Harry asked, surprised.

"Took you long enough," Ron grumbled.

"I like the Trayton in Zella's memories," Hermione explained, ignoring Ron. "But the Trayton now is so different."

"Not trying to defend him but the poor bloke lost everything," Ron reminded her, showing his rare insightfulness. "And now that he knows you won't give him the necklace, he's bound to be a bit mad."

"It isn't quite as simple as that," Hermione said, biting her lip. "The necklace…it won't come off."

"What?" Ron asked sharply, coming to a stop. "What do you mean it won't come off?"

Hermione remembered that those were almost her exact words when Malfoy had first told her about the necklace being stuck. Hopefully she hadn't sounded as stupid when she'd asked it.

"I mean that it's stuck around my neck," Hermione explained, trying her best to be patient, "and won't come off. So Trayton's angry at me for that, as if I actually want to go around wearing it for the rest of my life." She tugged at the jewellery contemptuously.

"Things with you and Malfoy seemed tense as well," Harry pointed out.

"The way it should be," Ron interjected with an approving nod.

"What I mean is, I thought you were trying to be civil?" Harry rephrased.

"Apparently no one told him that," Hermione answered with a shrug, although the same thing had been bothering her slightly. "Or maybe he doesn't want to degrade himself by being nice to the likes of me in public."

"How can he possibly degrade himself any further?" Harry asked darkly as they reached the entrance to the common room. "Ravenwing," he added to the merry woman whose large frame took up most of the portrait.

"Indeed," the Fat Lady said with a tipsy smile and swung open to allow them access.

"Enough about Malfoy," Ron decided, striding forward to claim his favourite chair. "We should start on our essays for Snape. By which I mean Hermione tells us what to write and we write it."

"That's what you always mean," Hermione answered shrewdly as she and Harry took their own seats.

"It's because we love you," Ron assured.

"That doesn't even make sense."

"Neither does this essay, so get talking lady!"

Ron's smile told Hermione that he was kidding, but she gave an over-exaggerated sigh and began to speak anyway.

"The legend of the Fountain of Youth is largely inaccurate because…"

Having no lessons in the afternoon, the next day was one of peace and tranquillity for Hermione.

That was, until, Draco Malfoy approached her in the library.

"How is it you always know where I am?" Hermione sighed when he stopped beside her.

"Because you're always in the same place," he answered, glancing pointedly at the table next to him.

"I'm a creature of habit, don't use it against me."

"Only if you help me with the Potions essay," he said, and sat down opposite her.

"Like Snape will care if you don't do it," Hermione scowled. "You could write an essay on how unicorns will one day rule us all and still get the highest grade in the class."

"He would care, and don't mock our unicorn overlords."

Hermione laughed. She couldn't help it. Draco Malfoy was, to her continued complete and utter surprise, a funny person. She found that, the more she spoke to him, her reasons for being angry with him faded.

"But I'm still not helping you," she said when she had recovered. "I'm already helping Harry and Ron and if there are four essays that read the exact same way then it'll look more than a little suspicious."

Malfoy sighed and shook his head.

"What?" Hermione asked, confused.

"You've just given me something to blackmail you with," he told her. "Now I can say that if you don't give me help with the essay, I'll tell Snape you let Potter and Weasley copy you." Hermione opened her mouth but he cut her off. "You know that I would. You should never tell anyone anything that could later be used against you."

"Anything can be used against you," Hermione frowned. "You just need to learn who can be trusted not to."

"So do you trust me?"

The question was unexpected but Hermione supposed that the topic had been leading there anyway. She didn't know what to say for a moment, so just looked at him. He stared back coolly, one pale eyebrow raised challengingly.

"It…it isn't that simple-"

"Yes it is. It's a yes or no answer."

"But there are different factors-"

"No," he interrupted heatedly. "No factors, no thoughts, nothing." He leant forward and looked at her. "Do you trust me?"

As much as she tried to hold his gaze, Hermione looked away.

"Well," Malfoy said and Hermione caught the disappointment in his voice. "That's it then."

He got up to leave.

"I trust you with some things," Hermione told him, unable to watch him just walk off. "Like the Zella/Trayton situation. I trust you with that. That's a start, right?"

He nodded slowly and sat back down.

"I don't trust you at all, just do you know," he told her mock-seriously, a small smile playing on his lips. "Trust is a fragile thing, kind of like a flower. If the apocalypse arrived and killed off everyone except us, I'd trust the remains of their charred and mangled bodies before even I considered you."

"That was somewhere between poetic and deeply disturbing."

"I'm a Slytherin, I work with what I have."

They smiled at each other briefly before turning to rummage around in their bags, feeling awkward.

"So," Hermione said with a clear of her throat. "The Fountain of Youth is-"

"I know what to write in the essay, don't worry about it," Malfoy cut her off with a smile.

"No, no," Hermione insisted with a smile of her own, "I chose to trust you with secrets about my cheating friends and I'll just have to live with the consequences."

"If I can be trusted with such deep, dark secrets then it's the least I can do not to tell anyone," Malfoy shrugged. "Besides, it'd be kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. Snape has fun picking out exactly where Potter's gone wrong. Sometimes it's so obscure it's unbelievable. Telling him that his victim did something wrong would take all the fun out of it for him."

"Why people hate you is beyond me," Hermione murmured sarcastically over the scratching of her quill.

"Jealously," Malfoy answered simply.

"Because it couldn't be anything else?"

"Exactly," Malfoy nodded. "See, you're beginning to understand the way I think."

"A benefit of being a casual acquaintance I assume?" Hermione asked wryly without looking up.

"One of many. Although I'm yet to understand you."

"I'm not too complex," Hermione disagreed, finally setting down her quill and looking up.

"You are," Malfoy argued. "I can't tell where I stand with you."

"When I frown it means I'm sad. When I smile it means I'm happy. See, not complex at all."

"What about when you do that thing with your eyebrow?" Malfoy challenged, raising his own eyebrows.

"I do a thing with my eyebrow?" Hermione asked, puzzled.

"You do," Malfoy confirmed. "You also chew on your lip sometimes which, I've got to tell you, is really annoying."

Hermione deliberately began to nibble her bottom lip, barely able to conceal a grin, and turned back to her essay.

"Mature," Malfoy muttered. "Really mature, Hermione."

Hermione paused in her writing and looked up. Malfoy obviously didn't realize he had said anything out of the ordinary until he glanced at her to see her staring at him.

"What?" he asked, unconcerned.

"You called me by my first name."

"Yeah. So?"

"Nothing," Hermione shrugged. "It just sounds…weird."

"I can go back to insulting your bloodline if you want," he suggested with an amused smirk.

"Fine, I'll start calling you Ferret," Hermione retaliated, crossing her arms in a satisfied way.

"Have you ever actually called me that?" Malfoy (or should she be calling him Draco now?) asked with a frown.

"Not to your face," Hermione smiled sweetly. "I'm a girl, I do all my fighting behind people's backs."

"That sounds suspiciously Slytherin," Malfoy/Draco commented (seriously, did he expect her to call him by his first name now or…?).

"Oh what, like Gryffindors have to kind and virtuous all the time?" Hermione scoffed. "Come on, Draco."

There, she tried it. She called her one-time enemy by his first name and the world hadn't imploded. Although unlike her, Draco didn't comment on it.

"I could say the same about Slytherins," he argued, serious now. "We're not all the epitome of evil."

"Let me guess, you have hidden depths?" Hermione asked, smiling. When Draco said nothing, she frowned. "You can't leave it like that, now I want to know!"

"Forget it," Draco muttered irritably, going back to his essay and leaving Hermione confused.

"I didn't mean to insult you," she said carefully, completely bewildered as to if this was what she had actually done.

"You didn't." But he didn't look up or talk anymore after that.

And I thought I was temperamental, she thought with a sigh.

"What are you sighing for?" Draco asked her, still annoyed for reasons she didn't know.

"I wasn't sighing, I was breathing," she lied. "What's up with you all of a sudden?"

"I'm not used to talking to people like that, especially not you," he said by way of explanation. He appeared focused on his essay but his grip on his quill was too tight to be casual.

"Talking like what?" Hermione asked, beginning to feel frustrated. "We were just chatting."

"Exactly."

Hermione glared at his head, willing him to look up and answer her properly. When he didn't, she narrowed her eyes and gathered up her belongings in her arms.

"Granger, where are you going?" he asked, sounding like his old, exasperated self.

"I'm not wasting my free afternoon trying to decipher you," she told him with a scowl. "It's pointless and I won't get anywhere and if I don't leave now then I may say something that I regret."

"Like what?" he challenged, finally setting his quill down and watching her with amused eyes.

"Like telling you what I really think of you," she threatened.

He shrugged. "Go ahead."

"What?"

"Go for it, tell me what you think of me," he repeated, a wave of his hand serving as an invitation.

"Well, I…" Hermione began, flustered now that she had to think of something on the spot. "You're arrogant."

"Yes," he agreed as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "What else?"

"Yeah, but you're really arrogant and I think it deserves to be mentioned more than once. You think you're better than people because of your blood status when in fact you're not, you're unnecessarily harsh," Hermione was on a roll now, "you have this 'holier than thou' attitude whenever you get around people, you smirk way too much and," she finished triumphantly, "you have odd hair."

Draco, apparently unable to stop himself, grinned.

"I happen to like my hair," he told her.

"I didn't say that I don't like it, I just said that it's unnaturally coloured."

"Anything else?" he prompted.

Hermione paused, certain that there was more. There should be more. A few weeks ago she would've been able to think of thousands of things she didn't like about him.

"Can't think of anything, can you?" he asked smugly.

"Give me time," she warned.

"So are you going to sit back down or do you just want to stand there all day?" Draco asked, turning back to his essay.

"Will you answer my question?" Hermione asked in turn.

Draco's light mood vanished almost instantly and Hermione nodded to herself. If he didn't want to talk about it, fair enough. She set her things back down on the table.

"You don't have to," she assured him quietly. "But you can if you want. After all," she added with a shaky laugh, "we're on first-name terms now."

As if that matters. Merlin, I'm an idiot.

Draco was silent for a long time. Then,

"It would be easier if you kept your misconceptions about me," he said slowly. "I don't like talking about my thoughts or my feelings or any…hidden depths, as you put it. I was brought up to recognise that telling people these things can only get you hurt."

Hermione nodded thoughtfully. It made sense, in a way, although (and not for the first time since she had met him all those years ago) she found herself wondering what kind of environment Draco had grown up in.

"I'm not going to force you to tell me or anything," Hermione started, before she cut was cut off by a derisive laugh.

"As if you could," Draco smirked.

"I could," Hermione assured him confidently. "A few well-placed curses and you'd be begging me to listen to all your secrets."

"I'll take you up on that challenge one day," Draco said with a smile that unnerved her. "Until then, let's try and keep it civil, shall we?"

"I think we can do better than that," Hermione said with a cautious smile.

It was her offering of friendship. Not a casual acquaintanceship but real friendship and all that entailed.

"Alright," Draco said with a nod and his own ill-concealed smile. "But I won't have to go around solving mysteries with you, Potter and Weasley do I?"

"Only if it requires bringing along a sarcastic and unhelpful Slytherin," Hermione answered back quickly.

"I can be helpful," Draco protested.

"When there's something in it for you."

"Well, yeah, obviously."

They continued like this until well after both of their essays were completed and the sun had begun to set outside the library windows.

"I should get back to the common room," Hermione said apologetically. "Drop off my things and then go down to dinner with Harry and Ron. They tend to get cranky if they're not fed."

"I can imagine," Draco answered wryly. "I'm due a talk with Trayton anyway. He likes turning up unannounced but I think I'm starting to spot his haunting patterns."

Hermione laughed before stopping and gasping.

"I can't believe I didn't tell you!" she said loudly, before checking her tone and quieting down a little. "Zella's really angry at me. I thought I'd told her about Trayton's ghost but it turns out I hadn't."

"How could you not tell her something like that?" Draco asked incredulously.

"I don't know, I was distracted!" Hermione sighed. "But we were talking about you and of course that led on to Trayton and-"

"Why?"

"Well, because he's your ancestor."

"No," Draco said with a shake of his head and a confused expression. "I mean, why were you talking about me?"

Hermione held his gaze and there was something about his eyes that made her want to tell him the truth. But then she faltered and looked away.

"We were talking about daft hair and you came up," she improvised poorly.

"Uh huh," Draco replied, entirely unconvinced. "And the real reason was?"

"That is the real reason," Hermione insisted.

Draco sighed. "This is me you're talking to, Hermione. I know when people are lying." A sudden malicious grin appeared on his lips. "You know, I'm not going to force you to tell me, or anything but," he leant in and Hermione found she couldn't look away, "a few well-placed curses and you'd be begging me to listen to the real reason."

There was something about his voice, his eyes, his proximity that made think that the curses wouldn't be necessary, she'd tell him anything. Did he know he was doing it? Making the words sound somewhat sensual? He was just repeating her earlier words, she knew that, and yet…

Snap out of it, she told herself sternly but her eyes didn't leave his until he laughed and leant back, clearly unaware of the effect he had just had on her.

"I have to go to dinner now," she said with a smile, standing up and beginning to walk away. She turned back with a smile fixed into place. "Forgot my stuff," she added with a laugh, gathering up her things hastily. Kill me, just kill me. "I'll see you later."

"Bye," a bemused Draco replied, watching her go with a smile.

Once she was out of sight, he sighed heavily and allowed his head to fall on the table with an audible thump. What was he doing? Spending literally hours talking to someone who he was supposed to look down on, to hate. He should only have been with her for the eventual knowledge on the Sons of Slytherin, he knew that. So why was he laughing at her jokes, enjoying their arguments and thinking about her when she wasn't around?

"Draco?"

Trayton's worried voice distracted him from his own troubles, and he raised his head sharply.

"What is it?" he asked so quickly that it almost came out as a snap. "Is it about the necklace?"

Trayton's eyes were wide and filled with a mix of horror and sorrow as they stared down at the ground. His shoulders were slumped and, all in all, he looked terrible, even by ghost standards.

"Th…there's something that I need to tell you…" he whispered brokenly and Draco's heart, which had been momentarily filled with warmth and hope, sank.

A/N:

Hello everyone, sorry about the cliff-hanger. For those of you who read my previous story 'Sanctuary', you'll remember how much I enjoy cliff-hangers (:

Hope that you all enjoyed, thank you so much for your reviews. You may be relieved to know that this plot is actually going somewhere :P I was lying in bed at 2.30am this morning, thinking 'screw this, I'm taking the day off Sixth Form' when I figured that I could advance the plot sooner rather than later.

Hope you all have a great week! (:

- Momo