Dramione One Shots

Slowly Then All At Once

A.N: This is one of my favorite one shots I've written so far. It's one of the first I ever wrote actually and I've had it up on my fanfiction.net account, but I wanted to share it here too. I don't know, it's just something about it and I really enjoyed writing it. I hope you enjoy reading it just as much. let me know your thought in the comments too.

Disclaimer: This is J.K Rowlings sandbox I'm just playing in it.

There was a time when Draco Malfoy would have probably punched you in the face if you would have told him that he would one day fall in love with Hermione Granger. When he was in his sixth year at Hogwarts, he had received a task from Voldemort, a very hard task. He was to kill Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts. Draco had always thought the man to be a fool and a strange man, but he had respect for him and he knew that he was a powerful wizard. Draco was also given the task to fix the vanishing cabinet that was in the room of requirements, the counterpart being located in the shop Borgin and Burks, in Knockturn Ally, so that death eaters would be able to enter the castle undetected. It was a hard task and it was during this time that he had gotten to know Hermione.

_

"What are you doing here Granger?" Draco asked as he pinned Hermione to the wall. 

He was frustrated and angry and he was losing his mind. He was in Moaning Myrtles bathroom and he was not prepared for anyone to walk in on him, let alone having it be Hermione bloody Granger.

"I'm so sorry, I...I didn't know anyone was in here..." she stammered.

It was then that Draco noticed the tear stains on her face. She had come here looking for solitude, just as he had done. He let her go, and she started to walk out of the bathroom.

"Granger..." she turned and looked at him.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly sounding defeated before he walked past her out of the bathroom letting her have it for herself.

He didn't know why he had apologized. He had been raised to treat people like her as inferior to him; she was after all a mudblood. She had muggle parents and he was supposed to treat her like she was nothing, like dirt beneath his shoe. To be fair he had done that previously, he had been awful to her and he couldn't for the life of him understand why he had apologized, after all a Malfoy didn't apologize to anyone who was beneath him. A Malfoy barely apologized to someone of their own rank.

Draco had decided later, that it was only because he had been taken aback by the fact that she had been crying, but that was later, when he had taken time to think it over and rationalize it. In the moment though, he knew that it had been because he felt bad for her, because she looked lost and he thought she looked almost the same as he felt. Somewhere deep inside him, he knew that it was that moment that changed things. That was the moment he started to fall.
_

Draco really did fall; he fell slowly and then all at once. It had snuck up on him and one day he suddenly knew. After that first encounter he started to notice her. He found himself unconsciously searching for her when he walked into the great hall for meals. When he walked into a class he knew they shared. He looked for her in the hallways, not even realizing that he was looking for her and having no idea why.
_

"Having trouble there Granger" Draco asked smirking at Hermione as she was trying to reach a book on a tall shelf at the library.

"Oh, sod off Malfoy," she told him annoyed.

Draco had come across her when he was looking for a book that might help him with fixing the vanishing cabinet. It was proving to be a very hard task and it required some advanced magic.