A/N: I've been partly busy and partly lazy. I sincerely hope that I pick up my lost pace. Well, cheers to that...

Here's the next chapter. :)

Chapter 13

Hermione stared at the enchanted ceiling above her, watching the billowing white clouds move across the blue stretch of the sky.

Windy today.

She had recently taken to watching the skies during rare moments of respite, it gave her the uncomplicated pleasure of being closer to the nature. It soothed her mind and took her away from the mundane circle of studies, lessons, duties and the bothersome existence of one messed up Head Boy.

Currently, though, she was just procrastinating. She needed to get herself out of bed if she wanted to get to Potions within time.

It was three weeks into the semester and she hadn't spoken a word to Malfoy since their last…disagreement.

She snorted. The silence was largely from Malfoy's part, and although it was sort of unsettling if one thought about the long stretch of the time that he had managed to avoid her, she couldn't help but feel grateful for it. It was one of those things where the less you knew about a situation, the better. She had long given up on any curiosity pertaining to the youngest Malfoy heir. He made for an interesting research object but she could hardly dredge up any interest regarding his character as a person. She did not care about his beliefs, his opinions, his habits and least of all, his whereabouts. He could be hanging from one of the Quidditch posts for all she cared, she wasn't going to waste half a thought on him.

She sighed, and reluctantly rose to go about her usual morning routine.

All finished, she opened the door to the office and then paused. She refused to believe that she had lately started taking the way down the office to get a chance to run into him, it was merely an easy shortcut.

Liar.

Studiously ignoring the inner workings of her own mind, she opened the door all the way out.

Her breath hitched involuntarily when she saw him opening his door at the same moment. He froze too for a fraction of a second, before his hand reached lazily upwards to straighten his tie and his gaze passed right over her. He made his way around the long table, his strides long and confident, and was gone before she could even blink.

Huh.

Well, that's just fine.

Feeling mildly annoyed at this, she made her way out too. She wanted him to act his place and do his job, not behave as if she were a stranger. A little respect was hardly too much to ask for.

During the past few days, he hadn't even acknowledged her presence, let alone share the duties with her. The last Prefect meeting had been a tiresome event, with him staring disinterestedly at his feet and the prefects coming over to her with their silly questions and idle disputes. He hadn't turned up for their patrols either, but she had a feeling that he had been doing his share of the patrolling by himself when she didn't know, the sneaky git.

She wondered if it was some new tactic of his, ignoring her till she went out of her mind, and then later point and laugh at her for being so foolish.

In any case, the joke was on him. She couldn't care less about his strange behaviour. He was the last thing on her mind.

She figured if she kept telling herself that long enough that it would suddenly become true.

"I want to go to Hogsmeade with you tomorrow." Pansy stated.

He gave her a sidelong glance, taking in those glossy lips and dark, glittering eyes. It was commendable, really, how she still thought she owned him. But then again, maybe she realised she actually didn't, and was taking steps to ensure that she did. He could not ignore the possessive undertones in her voice when it was all but dripping from her gaze, as if she was challenging him to refuse her. If he had paid any attention, he would've realized that she gotten quite clingy off late. He didn't know what to make of it, and he found that he really didn't care.

"Sure."

She beamed, and kissed him on the cheek with an inelegant smack.

He looked beside himself at Zabini, who hadn't spoken a word during the entire breakfast.

He was staring straight ahead, his face impassive. Draco followed his line of sight, then looked back at his friend startled.

The Weaselette was sucking face with Harry Potter, and he could make out liberal amount of tongue being involved. He was momentarily stunned that they would resort to such a display at the freakin' breakfast table, but then it dawned on him that all rules in the world lost their meaning in the face of the Boy-Who-Lived.

Blaise was picking at his food. So..did he have a thing for her now?

He nudged him with his shoulder.

"Cat got your tongue?"

He shrugged.

Draco elbowed him again.

But he didn't look up.

Well, that's about all he could do. It was an unspoken rule amongst the Slytherins that if someone wanted their privacy, you gave it to them without asking any questions. And he knew Blaise would reveal all his secrets to him sooner or later.

Involuntarily his gaze fell across the hall at the Gryffindor table. For the past few days he'd had to repeatedly remind himself that he was not going to look over at them no matter how strong the impulse. He was going to ignore the whole lot of them, and he was going to make sure they realized it. She obviously did. It was plain as a day. She was stewing over it, resenting it and he was pretty sure that in her mind it was just another game, one that she was bloody good at.

He looked at her now, and saw that she was busy reading the Prophet. Her brows were drawn together, lips pinched, brown eyes moving furiously over the text as if she was reading something completely outrageous. Her hair was its usual ghastly self, and the longer he stared at it the more he wanted to wrap both his hands around the entire bush choke her with it. His fingers practically itched to do it.

The urge nearly tripled in its intensity when he saw her surface from her newspaper with a brand new smile on her face only to wave at that tool from Ravenclaw. They had developed this dumb little ritual of meeting and chatting up between classes. They'd spot each other at any point of time during the day and they'd go absolutely apeshit-crazy and wave at each other like a pair of fools. He'd seen her do that more times than he could count in the past fifteen days. She would light up like a Christmas tree and he'd feel hard pressed to march over there and plant a good one at the back of her beaver head. It was part of the reason why he had avoided her since that day she'd kneed him. He was going to have to pull through an elaborate revenge plan that would silence her for good, and till he figured out what he had to do, he wasn't going to waste a word out of his mouth at her.

Then there was also that weird thing that his reflection had started doing off late...hissing 'crass' and 'disgusting' in his face every morning as he pulled a comb through his hair.

Anthony fucking Goldstein. That guy had had it for him since the day he'd been appointed Head Boy. He knew the little debacle in the train had been a major burn to his prim Ravenclaw sensibilities, and that was exactly why he'd been trying to push his buttons at every chance he got. Well, if he thought getting down and dirty with the mudblood was the way to get through him, then he was in for a sad fucking surprise.

He pulled Pansy closer by the waist. She gave an exaggerated squeal of delight.

"Let's put those lips to use now, shall we?"

Professor Horace Slughorn entered the Potions classroom with his usual fanfare of bellowing laughter as he thumped Seamus in back for having said something undoubtedly ass kissing. Voldemort or No Voldemort, the students of Hogwarts would always covet for a membership in the infamous Slug Club.

She bit back a laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. All the horcruxes, Voldemorts and Ministries of the world could not convince the teenagers of Hogwarts that yes, there was a life beyond their closed sphere of self-involvement and yes, there existed people in the world that were going to have to fight for their freedom somewhere down the line. The second Wizarding War was a fast approaching train wreck and maybe deep down they all were aware of it and were looking for ways to brush up on their accomplishments.

The supreme example was Harry Potter. He and Ginny Weasley had been joined together at the hip ever since that first kiss. Harry was donning his new set of rose tinted glasses nowadays and had taken to viewing everything through the same misty eyed gaze. All subtle reminders about Dumbledore bounced right off his skin.

'We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, 'Mione.' He'd say. And she could only stare at him in wonder.

Even Ginny had started being elusive and distant. The girl giggled these days, of all things!

One might wonder where Hermione Granger fit into all this. She had been steadily catching up with her reading on Horcruxes. As she had flipped page upon delicate pages saturated with dark magic, she had to come to terms with the mind blowing fact that every person on an average left two hundred and fifty horcruxes on the earth before they died. It was possible to unknowingly create a rudimentary horcrux by the killing of innocent animals, by so much as stepping on a bug. These horcruxes were not viable in any form as their creation was usually accidental, and although they're incapable granting the perpetrator immortality, they continue to exist in nature.

She imagined a miniscule, withered and lonely part of her soul lying encapsulated somewhere in a soda can..or one of those low carb crackers that she had ingested during her hiking expedition, as she unwittingly stepped over dozens of spiders and caterpillars. Muggles were immune to this glitch of nature and their souls remained intact even after killing, the products of their deeds mostly inflicted on their body and psyche. Voldemort, now, had done the unthinkable by murdering more than one innocent human and then willfully ripping his soul apart from his body by using yet unspecified rituals. Going by some of the illustrations inside the book, she didn't really want to know what these rituals included.

"A galleon for your thoughts?"

She looked up at the freckled face of Ron Weasley who was peering down at her with concern.

"You looked quite green for a minute there. Are you alright?", he asked.

"Yes, Ron I'm fine. I was just thinking about the war."

"Don't then. All we have to do is wait, Hermione. And you of all people should be focusing more on your lessons." He wiggled his eyebrows.

"How can you say that?", she wailed, "Don't you think its quite odd for the ministry to remain silent for so long? There hasn't been a single article in papers that mentioned Harry's name. They're printing all sorts of far fetched, crazy things from bakery lessons to popular frog choirs in the world but not a word of Death Eaters or Voldemort. And yesterday my parents wrote that some of the prominent leaders and ministers have started disappearing from the muggle world. This whole dissimilarity...its just foreboding, you know?"

"Well, I happen to think that You-Know-Who has left the country and once he returns all the stuff that you're complaining about not happening will start happening. So till that happens, you should start thinking about loosening up."

She bristled.

"Look-" She began but Professor Slughorn had now begun with his lesson on Blood-Replenishing Potion.

She continued in a low voice. "-I'm not waiting for stuff to start happening, but I think we should keep our heads straight. Now, don't roll those eyes at me Ronald. Two years ago we were working with the DA and practicing. What are we doing now?"

He rolled his eyes, nevertheless.

"You're way overthinking it. Maybe you should give those Horcrux books a rest, yeah?"

"I am-"

"Miss Granger and Mr. Weasley, this is an important lesson and usually a standard question asked in your N.E.W.T. exams. You might benefit from paying a bit of attention, especially you Rupert?" Slughorn admonished from his desk.

Ron made a face when his back was turned.

They spent the next twenty minutes taking notes in silence.

"I'll go get the ingredients." She said.

She walked briskly towards the door of the storage cabinet and froze as she entered, spotting that dreaded crop of pale blond hair on top of a tall, broad-shouldered frame. He appeared to be absently fingering the vials on one of the lower aisles. She decided to ignore him, but it was difficult because of their sudden proximity. The last time that they'd been this close, he had been clutching his groin and writhing on the floor in pain. She smirked at the memory.

"Something funny now, mudblood?"

Her heart almost stopped hearing his voice. Then she felt that familiar rush of indignation at the word. She decided to go with the truth.

"Actually, yes. I'd been reminiscing about that time when I kicked you in the nuts. I'd have expected that you learnt something from it, but oh well, you know what they say about a leopard and his spots. Though in your case, a ferret and his whiskers will be more apt."

His cheeks turned pink.

"Joke all you like. You wont be joking when I'm done with you."

She raised an inquisitive eyebrow. He opened his mouth to follow up with this threat but she cut him off.

"I don't bloody care, Malfoy. Its Friday and I think this would be the time to inform you about the open ground patrolling that we have to do today. You also have to meet up with the house heads of Ravenclaw and Slytherin come this Wednesday regarding the reports. I already did."

He had been staring at her face as she said this, and she could've sworn that he hadn't heard a single word.

"You cried that day, didn't you?"

She scoffed.

"Don't be absurd."

"I'm right. Your eyes were all red and your face was blotchy. Not that I really noticed, but imagine my surprise when I realized that the Gryffindor princess had been bawling her eyes out on the first day of the term! So, tell me Granger. Why were you crying?"

Almost unthinkingly, she turned to walk out but he had grabbed her wrist and drawn her in.

"C'mon Granger. It can't be that big a secret. Was it because Potter finally realized that even he could do better than being with a mudblood like you? I bet they're already screwing. So that leaves you all alone. You alone with your precious books."

She thought back to the last time that he had grabbed her and what he had gotten for it. And yet again, here they were. She did not have the advantage of her fiery temper this time, for now she was feeling a tad vulnerable. Maybe it was because of the question that he was asking, or maybe it was the dark, claustrophobic setting itself but now she wanted to turn her face away and run as fast as she could.

"Unhand me, please."

He ignored her.

"Or was it because.." he pretended to ponder over it, "..dear Merlin, bless my heart! Were you crying over me?"

She gritted her teeth and pulled from his grip. He let her go. His face looked like the cat that had swallowed the canary.

It was amazing, really. Up until now she had been so curious about the ongoings of his mind, but now she was wishing he had just followed through with his plan of ignoring her. He would always remain the same stinking ferret with the brains of a shark. Was it any wonder that he was making her uncomfortable now?

She mechanically gathered the ingredients for the class. Flobberworm entrails. Bloodflower leaves. Pollen of Lufwood. Leeches to make an extract.

She scampered out from the small room and had taken only three steps before she came to a halt. She had forgotten the Valerian roots in her haste. Mentally kicking herself, she went back to look for them, but the jar lay empty. Grudgingly, she looked at the blond menace in front of her, who hadn't seem to have moved an inch.

He was smirking. In his hand were the last bunch of the roots. What were the chances of him giving one to her?

As if he'd read her previous thoughts, he said, "I might be many things, Granger but stupid is not one of them." He took her hand and placed a single root in her palm. Then he caught her face in one hand so she had no option but to look into his cold eyes. "Making you cry is far from being the only thing that I can do. Do not test my limits. Stay away from my business, and do as you are told. As long as you follow me, I believe we'll be getting on just fine."

He pushed her away, then made a show of wiping his hands down his robes.

"Hermione, you in there?" Ron's head peeked inside from the entrance of the cabinet. As soon as his eyes landed on Malfoy, he was beside her in an instant with his wand drawn.

Malfoy chuckled and walked away.

"What did that git do to you?" Ron asked as he turned to her.

"We were just going over our duties for today."

He frowned but later appeared mollified.

Ten minutes later when she was adding chopped Valerian root into the cauldron, her eyes moved on own their accord to land at the back of his blond head.

'Like hell I will.'

Hope you liked it. Please tell me what you think! :))