Afraid to Love You (A Dramione Story)

Chapter 3

A/N Here's a nice long chapter as a thanks to one of my kind readers ;) You know who you are! Enjoy!

Hermione walked back into the library and heard him follow. They sat down at a table and took out their books and supplies.

Draco cleared his throat. "So, um. How do you want to do this?"

Hermione pulled glanced over the parchment with their assignment. "Well, we have to brew four potions and do an extensive writeup on each of them. One of them takes twenty-eight days to brew so I suggest we start that one first."

Draco nodded in agreement. "We can meet in the potions classroom tomorrow after dinner and get started on that one.

Hermione stared at him. She wasn't used to people having opinions when it came to doing assignments. She loved Harry and Ron but they typically followed her lead when it came to schoolwork.

"Did I say something wrong?" Draco asked after a moment.

"Oh. No," Hermione replied, flushing when she realized he had noticed her staring. "That sounds fine. We can meet three times a week to work on the project. Twice in the potions room and once here in the library to work on the writeups?"

"That sounds good to me," Draco answered with a small smile.

Hermione was shocked. She didn't know he knew how to smile. She had only ever seen him sneer or smirk.

"Hermione?"

She shook her head. "Sorry. Did you say something?"

"Yeah, I was asking what you wanted to get done tonight," he said with a smirk.

Hermione relaxed a bit. The smirk was familiar. "I guess we should outline what ingredients we'll need for each potion and that should be enough for today. I'll take the first two and you take the other two."

Draco nodded and reached for his potions book and a blank sheet of parchment. Neither of them spoke as they worked doggedly for the next hour.

When Hermione was done she looked up and was surprised to see Draco watching her. "Did you need some help?" she asked as politely as she could manage.

He shook his head. "No, I was waiting for you to finish."

Her eyebrows shot up. "You're already finished?"

He smirked at her again. "Don't look so surprised Granger. I'm not stupid."

Hermione flushed again and started to put her things away again. "Sorry," she muttered.

Draco packed his bag as well and stood up. "Tomorrow after dinner then?"

Hermione nodded and he smiled at her again before leaving.

********************

"It was so odd Ginny! It was like he was a completely different person!" Hermione said, as she climbed into her four poster where Ginny was already laying down.

Hermione had enlarged the bed slightly so it would be comfortable for the two of them. She figured if her own nightmares weren't going anywhere, neither were Ginny's.

Ginny propped herself up on her elbow and studied Hermione. "I mean we're all different people," she said quietly. "The war affected all of us. Maybe he's not such a prick anymore."

"I don't know," Hermione replied skeptically. "I still don't trust him."

"You don't have to trust him. You just have to get through this project with him."