Hey guys. I'm so sorry for the wait. I guess that things have been a little hectic lately, I'm applying to Uni this year and so that took up a lot of time this month. I'm so stressed and scared, but i am not giving up on this at all!

I also got a really hateful review and i guess that made me lose the will to write for a little bit, but i am going to persevere because other people seem to be enjoying it.

I've written a bit extra today to make up for my absence and i hope that you guys like it enough to leave a little review. The real drama starts arriving in a few chapters, hopefully you can wait that long :)

Draco and Hermione get a little closer in this chapter.

"Um, no?" Sirius looks to me like he is making a definitely false claim and I am the first to call him out on it.

I step forwards, making the turn and trying to shuffle my thoughts out of yesterday and into the new universe that I have to call my present time. Maybe everything is changing and all previous events will be forgotten. Maybe Draco Malfoy will forget that I eyed up his self proclaimed 'best assets' – and boy does he not stop reminding people. Somehow, I doubt that Sirius' new attire will cause a domino effect that will encase the whole world until we can all start fresh, though one can only hope. "You did! Didn't you?" I laugh, "You went into muggle London and picked the most preppy looking attire that you could find! I bet you have a wardrobe full of the same clothes in different colours." I laugh, I know I shouldn't be having a good old chuckle over his modification of his attitude to prove that he is father material, but I have had such a blooming awful day that I have no control of my hysterics.

"Maybe." He scratches the back of his head, ruffling through the newly cropped tresses in a way that is not dissimilar to the way that Harry does, and gives us all a sheepish expression.

The Weasleys have all migrated from the kitchen and into the foyer and, judging by their faces that have yet to witness this. "Sirius, what is this for?" Harry speaks up, ruffling his own black locks in the mirror image of Sirius and then dragging his hand down quickly when he realises this himself. "Why have you gone totally... not you, on us?"

I look at Sirius, his eyes flick to me. They flitter back and forth between us all and house a terrified expression. He's not ready to tell anyone, do something! I mentally scream at myself for not remembering faster that I was the only one to know, and jump to his rescue quickly. "I took the piss out of him for looking so dated all the time," I shrug, as the Weasley eyes swivel with shocking precision from Sirius to me, continuing with my fabricated excuse quickly, "I was angry and tired and I guess that he took my insults to heart," I laugh, "And this seems to be his way of fixing it." Sirius relaxes instinctively when he realises that all the attention has fallen from him and he is safe for a little while longer.

"You were only joking?" Sirius locks eyes with me, a small glimmer of thanks radiates from him, but no one else seems to notice, "I thought you were being serious, I spent all this bloody money for nothing?!"

"You look good man," Ron pipes up from his area of the Weasly barrier of spectators, and Harry, Sirius and I manage the drop the attention of the group just like that. Conversation falls and I manage to sneak away into the garden, Sirius following almost instinctively.

"How's it going?" I ask as I reach the area of the garden where the bike is normally parked. Again, this happens to be another little thing that has me thinking that something is definitely not right. "You bought a car?"

"Yeah, she's a muggle born." He tells me as I admire the dark exterior of the jeep sitting on the patch of grass that is normally taken up by another machine, "She told me she's going to do a lot of things the muggle way, so I'm showing I'm on board with it all."

"Sirius," I speak slowly, climbing into the front seat and examining the white leather chairs, "I know that this is super important to you, but I want you to remember that you have to be honest with yourself throughout all of this. Don't change too much; I still want to be able to recognise you when this is all over."

"I'll always be the same Sirius," He wraps an arm around me, leaning against the car with his feet still on the floor he still manages to stand taller than me when I am sitting on one of the raised seats of the new car. "I'm just growing up a bit."

I nod, "I guess I just always liked the juvenility that you brought with you, even though I never really told you that and I always seemed to end up getting majorly exasperated with you."

He screams a laugh to the night, his hands gesturing wide, "Hermione Granger, I will always be a little stupid, I don't think that it can just disappear overnight."

I laugh with him, kicking my feet into the underside of the chair and feeling like a little girl in need of comforting. For once I don't feel like an in control adult, I feel like a naive, innocent child who has no idea what this man is going through. "I just don't want you to forget us all, you are going to be making a new family and your presence here is so commonplace that not seeing you sitting by with fire with a glass of whisky will just make everything different. Wrong."

"I'll always be here, Hermoine. For you, for Harry, for Ron and Ginny. Everyone. I won't ever abandon my family." He looks to the starts, and we sit in silence as I let his words hover in the air between us. We are a family, an odd one, but one that relies on all the pieces to make sure that we are functioning properly. Nothing would be the same otherwise.

I nod, looking to the ground, "I'm being stupid, sorry."

"I'd feel the same if I saw one of you lot changing so fast." I jump out of the Rover, shutting the door quietly as we turn to walk back to the house, "Enough about me, how are you?"

"Shit," I don't volunteer anything else so he slows his ace until we both fall to a halt – actually, I try to continue my slow progression to the Burrow, but a firm grip on my arm tugging me backwards has me stopping beside him instead.

He nods for me to continue, and then when I don't he decides to convince me to instead, his chosen words are, "Speak to me," and when I still forgo explaining my crappy life to him in favour of silence, he continues, "You helped me so much, and have kept my secret, so why can't you let me help you too?"

"Because my issues are embarrassing, yours are important?"

"Come on, they can't be that bad!"

"I spent the day in a limbo between fantasizing about the youngest Malfoy and starting at his crotch," I spit out, shoving my hands though my hair and waiting for the blush to form on my cheeks. "How can it get much worse than that?"

Sirius looks unaffected, even though my face is blushing like a tomato in the sun, and asks "Did he notice?" I groan, nodding and falling to the ground in humiliation, to say that I am mortified is an understatement

"I'd say you should just forget it," Sirius shrugs, sitting down next to me and playing with one of the laces on his trainers, "If he's a man who has a pretty girl staring at that area of his body and isn't happy about it, then he's not interested in girls." Sirius touches my knee lightly and I look up at him. "I doubt he'd be fretting about it if he got caught staring at you, so just drop it and if he doesn't bring it up then everything is all well and good."

"And what if he does bring it up?"

"Then you have to think of something witty to say in response." Sirius tells me like I should know this, "I always thought you were so good in these situations."

I laugh, rolling my head back and feeling good to let all the stress of the day roll away from me. "Why would you think that?" I ask, tilting my head back down and looking at him instead.

"I had always assumed that you'd been with loads of guys, you never bring them around so I didn't think any of them were serious, but I guess I had always thought that guys would be queuing to get with you." I shake my head.

"You couldn't be more wrong. The last guy I was with was Ron and that was four years ago."

"Really?" He looks puzzled. "That can't be right! What about that guy, the one who's always around at your flat?"

"Kevin? We're just friends."

"You need to get out there more, Hermione. If I weren't grounded, metaphorically speaking obviously, I'd take you to find someone, but as I am being my 'holier than thou' counterpart you'll have to get Ginny to take you out. Find a club, get a guy, sleep with him just for the sake of it. Pretend you are me for a night. Have fun. And, Hermione, seriously just forget about Malfoy. He's a piece of work and just not worth it at all." He walks back inside, leaving me freezing my butt off on the grass outside.

The rest of the night passes quickly and I find myself stewing over what Sirius said when I get home and am sitting in my living room alone. "Piece of work." Keeps popping up. Everyone seems to have their own judgement over him. I guess he hasn't really offered any evidence to suggest that he is a nice guy, but I guess he just seems to strike me as misunderstood. And I guess I have always been a sucker for people who I think need someone to listen to them, someone to talk to them, to be their friend.

"Are you really that much of an arse?" I find myself asking to the open air in front of myself, not expecting a reply.

But I happen to get one anyway, "Talking to yourself again, Granger?" I jump, I pretty sure it has to be a comical sight and the laughter radiating across the green face of Draco Malfoy – AKA; idiot – sitting in my fireplace confirms this assumption.

"God Malfoy, you freaked me out!" I gasp, sucking air into my lungs and trying to slow my heart rate down so that it's not beating at a rate that could be classed as 'medically dangerous'.

"Can I speak to you for a second, Granger?" He asks, and I have the urge to ask him – rather rudely – why he couldn't have used an owl instead of making me almost wet myself, but I don't.

I nod instead, looking at the clock and seeing that it is nearing eleven. "Sure, come over if you want."

I seems to be analysing what he is wearing through the flames, as his eyes cast downwards, "I'm in my pyjamas." I shrug.

"So am I, you have called insanely late, some people would even call it rude!" I tell him and his hand appears in the flickering flames, he brushes my insult aside and I speak again, "As long as you are not naked, I couldn't care less what you are wearing." I tell him, realising too late that this leaves some pretty wide room for dodgy comments.

He smirks, an expression that the flames happen to make look even more sinister as the light hits him in a certain way. "I think that you would like to see me naked very much, Granger." He says, I flush but thankfully he leaves it at that and I find him clambering through the grate instead.

"What do you need, Malfoy?" I ask as he makes himself at home on the end of my sofa. He flicks a set of files at me and I grab onto them.

He looks at the TV and finds the remote, clicking a button and flicking through the channels as I turn pages determinedly – there are about one hundred pages in the spiral bound file. "These are some things that I need you to read through immediately, I got them last week, but I only remembered today and I need them for tomorrow." He says, not taking his eyes from the Comedy Roadshow that is playing on ITV. He laughs and I stand there watching – I am not admiring, I am observing. Whatever helps you sleep at night, Hermione. I find my inner voice berating me for my open 'observing' and I whip my eyes off his slouching form instantly.

"Granger, could you make a start?" Malfoy looks at me, in the process of laughing at a joke and he flashes me the nicest smile that I have ever seen on his face.

I groan, moving to sit next to him of the couch and tucking my feet under my body. I pull a blanket over myself and tuck myself into it, the files fall onto my lap and open on page one. "I don't see how this is appropriate." I tell him, cocking my head to the side and watching him throw his head back, a throaty sound rumbling deep in his throat as he laughs, "You made the cock up, so you should fix it."

"Granger, this is your job." He tells me and I concede. Watching him enjoy himself while watching a muggle program on a muggle telly appeases me.

"I wouldn't have thought you would even know what a TV was Malfoy." I tell him, smiling and flicking through the first few pages.

"Yeah, I did actually listen in Muggle Studies, you know." He smiles, as he pulls his feet up to rest on the couch next to my knees. "I was pretty good at flipping it off and taking notes at the same time." He smiles, in the last ten minutes I have seen Malfoy the most relaxed than I have ever seen him in my life.

This feels odd though. I feel like I have gotten off pretty lightly for the whole 'admiring' him thing and it still feels like he should be poking some sort of fun at me and making humour at my expense. Instead he sits quietly on my sofa with small eruptions of laughter every so often.

At about half one in the morning, I finally finish reading through the text. I have signalled the changes that I think ought to be made with a black brio and a yellow highlighter and I turn towards Malfoy as I close the file with a snap. There is a button that needs to be secured with a elastic so I flip them together and then I look up, ready to hand it over when I find that his eyes are shut, his head lolled back against the sofa cushions in what has to be an uncomfortable manor and his breathing even and thick.

Slipping the file onto the coffee table, I stand from my position on the sofa. After pulling the blanket I had be using over his sleeping form, I lift his head up and slip a pillow underneath it to support his neck.

Leaving him where he is, I flip off the TV with the click of a button and make my way into my bedroom quietly, my bare feet padding against the carpet and a strange chill sweeping over me due to the loss of the comforting embrace of the blanket that I surrendered to Malfoy.

Once in my bedroom, I slip under my covers. The lack of heat has me shivering and huddling into myself until I find a little bit of comfort. Warmth starts spreading quickly and soon I am cocooned within the web of sleep.

I am woken by Draco Malfoy, a nice sight for the morning. But I'm not a good early riser so being woken by a hopping Malfoy in search of the bathroom is not my ideal wake up call. I shove my thoughts quickly away from the dirty turn they take as I decide just how I would like to be woken up by Draco Malfoy, and I shove my head under my pillow once he has fled down the hall in search of the facilities.

"What are you doing?" I ask as I feel the covers being yanked back a few minutes later, and then a body falls in beside me.

I can feel him shrug as the mattress moves beneath us, "The sofa was uncomfortable." He says, turning towards me and stretching a hand across to my side.

I groan as he pulls one of my pillows out from under my head where I had them double stacked and ask, "So my bed was the next best thing?"

"Yeah, now shush Granger. I'm trying to sleep." He mumbles, I can tell he's seconds away from slumber but I drag my pillow away from him again.

"Go home to your bed!" I hiss, trying to find my comfortable position once more, but I'm still arranging when I find his face way too close to mine when there is the possibility that I have morning breath –though it is not yet morning!

He sighs, pushing his hand past my head and pulling the cushion back towards himself, "I'm already here, and Granger, selfishness is not a nice look on you, sharing is more your thing." His breathing flattens and I find myself thinking myself to sleep in the darkness of the room. Having a male presence in my bed is something new, the way the mattress dips under his weight is different and the sound of his breathing is comforting.

I find myself drifting into dreams with the lullaby of him. And also the startling possibility that what I had passed off as a passing fantasy to myself and Pansy, may not be so quickly passing as I had thought.

So what did you think? I hope you enjoyed it :)