Chapter Three

A/N: Sorry for the major delay! I had a total writers block, I'm so sorry! And school started again, plus there's a really cute teacher that I can't stop thinking about blame the hormones for that one.

Chapter Three

After several weeks of no one showing up at the meetings, Snape was sitting behind his desk with a book, not really expecting anyone to come. But he was proven wrong when there was a knock on his door and he called the person to enter. Draco Malfoy entered and closed the door behind him.

"Mister Malfoy? What are you doing here?" Snape asked.

"This is the meeting for the…well, is it?" the boy asked uncomfortably.

"It is." Snape sat aside his book and Draco took a seat in front of his desk. Little did he know, Draco wasn't the only one to come to the meeting.

Somewhere else in the dungeons Hermione Granger made her way to Snape's office. She had finally gathered her courage to go to one of the meetings. Mind you, it did take a lot of time and thinking, but she finally decided to go. As she rounded a corner, she collided with someone else. When she looked up to apologize, she faced none other than Pansy Parkinson.

"I'm sorry-" she stopped when she saw who she had bumped into.

"Watch where-" Pansy to stopped talking when she saw Hermione. Both girls blushed, both had been caught going to the meetings, but they had yet to face that fact.

"Granger." Pansy stood a bit straighter. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing, Parkinson." Hermione retorted.

"I..." she trailed of. "Why should I tell you, Granger?" she asked defensively.

"We both know where we're going, might as well give in." Hermione shrugged, but the other Slytherin wasn't so quick to give in.

"I was going to my common room, couldn't say the same of you." Pansy started walking again.

"The Slytherin common room is that way." Hermione pointed at the opposite direction to where Pansy was going and raised an eyebrow.

Pansy sighed. "Fine, come on then Granger, we're late as it is." She walked away and Hermione smiled before following at a safe distance.

The short walk to Snape's office was done in silence. When they arrived they saw that Draco was already present and Pansy was surprised, to say the least.

"Draco?" she said, looking at the blonde round-eyed. Draco shrugged and smiled meekly.

"Well," Hermione said. "this is a surprise." Pansy nodded. The two girls grabbed some chairs and sat down next to Draco. After a moment of silence, there was yet another knock on the door.

"Fantastic, more surprises." Snape said sarcastically. Draco grinned. The door opened and there stood, to everyone's surprise, Harry Potter.

"Harry?" Hermione exclaimed. The boy closed the door behind him and sat down with a blush.

"Don't say anything." He said, still uncomfortable. Snape was still shocked to see two of his most precious Slytherin's and two of his most annoying Gryffindor's sitting in front if him.

--

Averting her eyes from the teacher, Hermione looked outside and recounted the fast few days. They had been filled with confusion and questions, but they opened a whole new part of her. During the two meeting she had attended, she found out things about the other two Slytherin's and about her best friend she had no idea about.

"So…" for once, Snape actually looked uncomfortable, but he was quick to hide it. "Who wants to start?" The younger ones looked at each other and blushed. Snape rolled his eyes.

"Potter, you start."

"What? Why me?" Harry protested.

"I don't know, just do it." Snape said.

"F-fine. I'll start."

After Harry had briefly, and vaguely, told a few stories of how he knew he was gay and wasn't sure what to do, everyone was a little more at ease. But it didn't stop Hermione from stumbling over her words. Draco didn't once look anyone in the eyes, and Pansy kept fumbling with the hem of her shirt while glancing up a few times.

The second time they talked, everything went smoothly and every surprisingly opened up quickly.

"I never wanted to join the Death Eaters." Draco Malfoy said miserably. It was the second meeting. The only ones in the room were Snape, him, Pansy, Hermione and Harry. For some reason he knew it was safe to tell the Gryffindors everything had always wanted to shout out every time they called him a death eater, or a future one. "My dad had been pushing me for years, but I always found an excuse not to join. That's why I never went home during Christmas holidays: he would've had me initiated."

Hermione's attention should have been directed towards her Charms teacher, but she was so lost in her thoughts she just let Harry take notes, for once.

"I had the same problem." Pansy was a quiet one; she hardly ever spoke in the meetings. "My parents wanted me to be the first female Death Eater in the family, my mother wasn't one. I think that if the War had come a day later I would have been initiated." Her voice quavered. "Part of me is glad they're gone." She looked down as she was ashamed of herself. Her parents had been killed by aurors and she was staying with her aunt, who had lost her husband a few months before the War started. "I wondered so ages if that made me a bad person."

"Of course not." Harry spoke up. "I don't know them personally, but I have heard some things about them, I don't think they were good role models."

"No… but they were my parents."

"On paper, they were. But only you decide if they meant something to you." She shot a hopeful look at Harry. "I promise."

The smile she gave him then was the start of something, something that would mean something to a lot of people.