March 24

We quickly rushed over the common eating hall, and then Malfoy took a left by the Hufflepuff tables and opened some panel. "Come in" he whispered with a smile as I walked into pitch darkness. Honestly, with that voice he could make me walk off a mountain and still feel good about it. I rushed in. "Where are we?" "A place I found a couple of years ago when I was running away from you," he replied slowly, as if were painful to say. "Why?" was all I could muster, my heart dropping. "You and Ron always seemed so happy, but I realized that I would love it to be me and you," he whispered, so soft that I felt as though I were dreaming. I noticed his pale face gleaming in the little light splitting in from an above window. It looked worried, and his eyes were rapidly darting everywhere in a mad frenzy. It suddenly hit me that although he was seemingly perfectly calm, he was having a crisis on the inside. "Are you okay?" I whispered, touching his hand. "I just do not know how to handle being around you because you always seem to hate me," he managed as tears glistened in his eyes. "That's only because of Ron," I managed. "I never meant to hurt your feelings, in fact I..." Suddenly Snape burst into the door, "The next time you have to profess your love to each other, do it softly!" he exclaimed, seething with anger. "10 points off of Gryfindor for skipping class, and 10 points off Slytherin for fraternizing with someone of Gryfindor! Get to class, both of you!" Malfoy took my hand as we hurriedly exited his secret dominion. He caught my glance once, and finally truly smiled.

March 25

Afterwards I could not contain my excitement about Malfoy throughout the day. In every class we would simply look over half the room and smile, with nobody noticing. I feel like I have finally found a person that truly likes me. I do not know how to explain this to Ron, so I try my best to start disconnecting. At lunch I realized that this blessing was spiraling into a curse. "Hey Herimione!" exclaimed Ron as we sat down to eat. "Hey," I mustered with as much enthusiasm as I could provide.
"What's up"
"Nothin much"
"Hey I have a question"
"Yeah what?'
"How come you spend so much time with that Malfoy kid; we all hate him, remember?"
At this point I was nearly fuming, as not only was Ron depriving me of valuable Malfoy time, but he also displayed such an annoying audacity as to say anything negative about Malfoy."You do not know anything about him," I whispered as I got up and went to Malfoy's secret corridor. It was empty, as I expected, so I sat down and started pondering my day. As I got closer and closer to the end, I became more and more sad. A wave of fatigue washed over me, as I drifted to sleep. I dreamt in monochrome.

March 29

It's been a while since the day when Malfoy told me how he felt about me. Every day I have been thinking about him and how I can not bear hurting Ron. My life has gone from the cheerful paradise of butter beer with Ron and lighthearted love professions to Malfoy to a abyss of misleading clues and impossibly difficult decisions. I no longer feel any sentiment towards my schoolwork, and I am lapsingout of reality. Whenever I see Ron or Malfoy an overwhelming rush of guilt invades my senses all over again. My self respect has hit a rock bottom, and I feel unmotivated. I am falling; everything in which I believed has revealed itself to be a beautiful fallacy repeating itself each day. What am I talking about? I have a whole life ahead of me! My mother would always tell me to steer away from relationships during this time, and I can finally see why. When I look at the future I realize that I can do anything as long as I work hard in this period of my life. I feel motivated now; I will keep Malfoy and Ron's influence in my life at bay by considering them nothing more than very close friends.

My resolve to keep Malfoy and Ron as close friends lasted for less than a class period. That day, Malfoy came to me and apologized for having ignored me. "Herimione, are you mad with me?" he whispered to me during potions, his voice saturated with pain. Whether the pain was from what he was saying or the fact that we were in potions class I do not know, although I prefer to believe he was choking up because of what he was saying. "No, don't be ridiculous!" I replied quickly, "I am just confused on why you have been avoiding me lately." "Avoiding you?!" he whispered, a smile playing onto his perfect lips, "I've just been playing hard to get." I instinctively rolled my eyes before joining into the laughter. "I never thought about it that way," I mused. Then it was all gone, all the pain I had suffered for those past weeks simply vaporized into the air. We went down to the woods to talk after class, skipping lunch. Malfoy, obviously accustomed to this, immediately found a private and isolated section of the woods where nobody could disturb us. We talked for much longer than I had planned, hours went on before we realized that we had missed eight classes. All the missed homework was worth it, starting from that day, Malfoy has started sitting at our lunch table and he and ROn are becoming friends. Ah, life is perfect right now.