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artwork done by Lazy_Dragon_Art

Hermione thought that perhaps she didn’t quite like Christmastime anymore.

It was just after the holiday break of her third year and once again Ron and Harry weren’t speaking to her. The fact that it seemed to be so easy for them to ignore her hurt more than she wanted to admit. She had told McGonagall about Harry’s firebolt because she was worried for her friend’s safety. She was absolutely sure Sirius Black had sent him the broom and the last thing she wanted was for Harry to get injured or – even worse – die because she had said nothing.

The boys never seemed to understand how difficult school was for Hermione. They tended to miss the taunts and jeers from other students – including members of their own house – about how she was a “goody two shoes”, her “abominable” hair, and her blood status. For Harry and Ron, Hermione was only important in times of need: mainly homework and note taking.

As classes started again, she resolved to no longer help them no matter if they came crawling back. She tried to distract herself with her homework and preparation for the eventual exams. It was now that she wasn’t completely focused on helping Harry and Ron – and trying to get them to focus during classes – that she noticed something strange.

A few days after the Christmas holidays ended and classes began, Draco Malfoy stumbled into transfiguration over ten minutes late, mumbling a stilted apology to Professor McGonagall. Hermione couldn’t help but notice his disheveled appearance – it was a huge contrast to his usually perfect hair and clothes.

Not that Hermione should notice those things. Not that she made a habit of noticing Draco Malfoy and how he usually looked. He was a bully, a blood purist, a downright mean-spirited person.

As she had watched Malfoy settle into class beside Theodore Nott, the latter looking him over with more concern than she felt was appropriate for the situation, a little voice in the back of her mind reminded her that wasn’t quite true.

It was the same voice that spoke to her late at night, right on the twilight between awake and dreaming. It whispered reminders of all the times Malfoy had not acted in the ways she thought he should.

The time in first year when an older student had knocked her shoulder, sending her belongings flying wide throughout the corridor. Without a word Malfoy had collected her quills, and even repaired her favorite, before he placed them in her hand. She had been so stunned she hadn’t even said thank you.

Then there was the time last year when she’d been in the hospital wing after the disastrous Polyjuice incident. Madam Pomphrey wasn’t allowing visitors, but Malfoy had left her a stack of notes so she wouldn’t be behind on her homework.

But, of course, those were exceptions and of course it didn’t make Hermione more infatuated with who Ron had deemed “the enemy” since day one. Malfoy was a bully, Malfoy only cared about himself. Malfoy definitely wasn’t worth being concerned about, even if it became a normal thing to see him running into a class late or sporting what looked like a badly done concealment charm.

Perhaps he and Pansy Parkinson had finally made it official and he was covering up love bites.

A few weeks after term began Hermione was heartbroken to realize that she had made no progress towards either forgetting about Harry and Ron, nor repairing their friendship. The longer McGonagall went without giving Harry back his broom and the more miserable Harry looked coming back from quidditch practice each night, the more doubt and regret squirmed in Hermione’s stomach.

They were her only friends… She had to swallow her pride and try to make amends.

At the end of History of Magic after it had been a solid month of not speaking, she approached them while they queued to leave the room, clutching her books so tightly to her chest her knuckles turned white.

“Uh… Harry? Ron?” Her voice sounded almost like a croak.

They both studiously ignored her. She cleared her throat and tried again.

“I… I just wanted to say –”

Ron’s booming voice cut her off.

“Do you hear something, Harry?”

Harry blinked back at Ron before giving a sneer that rivaled the one she’d see so often on the face of Draco Malfoy.

“Nothing of consequence,” he answered smoothly.

Tears burned in her eyes. She blinked furiously trying to fight the traitorous tears, but a few slipped through as she pushed past the throng of students.

Hermione ran to the one place in the castle she felt safe: the library.

She tried to hold back until she found her favorite spot, a small table pushed all the way in the back near the out-of-date runes texts that you couldn’t find unless you knew to look for it. She’d found this place last year while trying to research the Chamber of Secrets and in that time it had become her safe haven.

A sob broke free from her throat as she turned the corner, but it turned into a gasp when she saw a white blonde head pressed into the table.

Malfoy was at her table. Godric this day just kept getting worse and worse.

At the sound of her sob, Malfoy looked up. His face was bloodied, nose off center, and there was a small purplish bruise forming around his left cheekbone.

“Granger…” he started in a voice she’d never heard before.

“M – Malfoy,” she hiccupped. Tears spilled over her cheeks before she could stop them, her skin now flushed in? embarrassment that her bully was a witness to her pain. “What… what happened?”

He looked slightly dazed – the way George had looked last year when he’d been hit in the head by a stray bludger. From the way he didn’t immediately sneer at her, she was sure Malfoy must have a concussion.

“Huh?” He touched his face. There was a steady drip of blood onto the tabletop. “Oh.”

Hermione sniffed, wiping hastily at her tears and stepped towards him. Pulling out her wand she dropped into the chair next to him.

“If you hold still, I can heal your nose and the cut on your head,” she said shakily.

She wasn’t quite sure why she was offering. Well – she was sure but she didn’t particularly like to acknowledge the crush she’d been harboring for Draco Malfoy since first year – it was also just the pitiful way he looked holed up in the back of the library. He’d been injured and he wasn’t running off to anyone that would listen to say that his father would hear about this.

Grey eyes blinked at her. Malfoy didn’t respond, but he did sit up a little straighter.

Hermione hesitated, her hands hovering over him. She knew better than to touch him – it was a sure way to get him spouting off his typical rhetoric of blood purity. Though she realized that this year at least she hadn’t heard much of it from him.

After a moment she decided to place her hand on the table beside him. Twisting her wand, she whispered episkey while pointing it at his nose.

Malfoy winced as bone snapped into place, but said nothing as she pointed her wand now at the cut over his eyebrow. After muttering the same spell, she lowered it and looked away from him.

“Why are you crying, Granger?” Malfoy asked softly. His voice sounded almost... friendly.

She sniffled, realizing her tears had never stopped falling.

“Why are you bloodied, Malfoy?” she bit back.

Before she could move to wipe her face, she felt the slide of silken fabric across her cheeks and stiffened.

“A couple of Gryffindor fifth years think it’s fun to beat up younger Slytherins.” Malfoy’s voice was calm, unbothered, as he gently wiped her face.

Hermione blanched. That couldn’t possibly be true. She hadn’t heard of Gryffindors beating up Slytherins. She thought back to the last few weeks, to the times she’d seen him coming in late to classes and the badly spelled concealment charms.

Could he be telling the truth?

He sighed in a way that made him seem older. It made her chest wince to hear it.

“Why don’t you go to the headmaster then?” Hermione realized her voice sounded harsher than she meant it and she bit the inside of her cheek.

Malfoy sat back, folding the silver handkerchief a few times before wiping his own face with it. She blanched. He must have a concussion if he used the same material he wiped her dirty tears with on his own face.

“Haven’t you noticed, Granger? Slytherins are evil. Regardless of our actual merit we are all dark wizards and therefore anything that happens to us, we had coming. The staff doesn’t give a shit about us.” Malfoy didn’t sound angry, however, he just sounded exhausted.

“Then why play into it? Why bully me and Neville and Hagrid?”

Malfoy looked off to a spot over her right shoulder for a long moment. He seemed to really be thinking about what she was asking. His eyes were still a little unfocused, but without the blood on his face he looked significantly more himself – even with the bruise blossoming on his cheek.

“It’s easier… I think,” he answered, looking back at her. “To lash out than to feel… this.”

He waved an aristocratic hand towards himself. Hermione thought she knew what he meant – at least intellectually.

It was easier to hurt others than deal with your own pain.

A whole world opened up to her at that moment. A side of Hogwarts she had never thought of before. It was true that many of her tormentors were Slytherins, but there were also Gryffindors and even Ravenclaws that made snide comments to her. She knew what it was like to walk around with a target on her back, but she’d always had comfort in knowing that she could go to McGonagall if things got really bad.

But she did know what it felt like to feel completely and utterly alone.

“It was Ron and Harry,” she said after a moment, extending the olive branch. When Malfoy looked confused, she continued. “They aren’t speaking to me right now after I told McGonagall about Harry’s new firebolt.”

The story spilled out of her. All her frustration and pain of being ignored. How she’d had the best of intentions when it came to her friends but how they always ended up mad at her anyway.

She was tired, so tired of always being the third wheel. Of being the one who was only good for copying essays and marking answers.

Malfoy watched her the entire time she spoke. There was a tightness around his mouth that she didn’t understand. If she let herself, she would have thought that he seemed angry on her behalf.

Finally, after a few more tears, she quieted. Her hands had been twisting and untwisting the end of her cardigan until it started to fray. A pale hand covered hers, the silver Malfoy crest of his signet ring glinting in the torchlight on his index finger.

“You are a lion , Granger, you do not weep for sheep.” Malfoy’s voice was stronger than it had been before.

Her eyes grew wide at his words. When he leaned forward as if to drive home the point, she nodded once.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” The words slipped from her mouth before she could stop them.

Pressing his long fingers to his eyelids, Malfoy sighed again in that way that made her heart ache.

“I’m tired.” At first, she thought this was his way of dismissing her without an answer, but then he dropped his hands and looked at her. “I’m tired of pretending to hate you because I’m supposed to. You’re bloody brilliant , Granger, but that’s even not the most important thing about you. You’re kind, brave, and passionate.” Malfoy’s eyes flared silver for a moment.

He blinked a few times.

“I can’t believe I just said all that,” he muttered, pressing a hand to his forehead.

She bit the inside of her cheek. Her face was flushed and her heart was beating so fast she wasn’t quite sure if she wanted to cry again or vomit. A small voice in the back of her mind – that sounded way too much like Ron – reminded her that he had a concussion. He probably wasn’t thinking straight. The next time she saw him she was sure he’d be back to his usual, swaggering self.

“It’s okay, Malfoy. You’re injured – I won’t hold it against you,” she said quickly.

He shook his head.

“It’s like all I want to do is tell you my deepest, darkest, secrets.”

Her breath caught.

“I think you have a concussion; you need to see the matron.” Hermione couldn’t stop her hand as it reached out to cover his where it rested on the table. The metal of his ring felt cool against her palm.

Malfoy looked at their hands. A soft smile tugged one corner of his lips as he flipped his palm up to grab hers.

“I think you’re right,” he said softly.

“She’ll get you all fixed up and you can go back to hating me like normal,” Hermione said with as much humor as she could muster.

Malfoy’s face darkened and he shook his head, squeezing her hand a little tighter.

“No… Like I said, Granger, I’m done with that now.”

He didn’t give her time to respond as he released her hand, shoved his chair back from the table, and gracefully exited the library.

How long she sat there replaying the whole exchange after, Hermione didn’t know. But what she did was that something inside of her had irrevocably changed.

Her eyes were wide open, now.