A/N: Hello all! I am so excited to start my next Theo x Hermione story. Although I adore writing the Daphne x Theo, I've been missing Hermione. I really hope that you like what this story holds in store - hopefully some mystery! You can follow me over on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates and answer questions.

Please let me know what you thought of chapter one and be on the lookout for chapter two in a few days.

Hermione Granger was feeling more than a little relieved when her friend, Harry Potter, waltzed into the Great Hall more than a little bit late for the Welcoming Feast. He'd disappeared sometime into their train journey back to Hogwarts for their sixth year, and Ron had somehow talked her into leaving the Hogwarts Express without him, insisting that he'd turn up eventually.

"See, I told you he was alright," Ron said between bites of mashed potato, apparently none too bothered by Harry's disheveled appearance.

"Alright?" Hermione asked, her voice going a bit shrill, the tone that always seemed to make Ron roll his eyes at her. Her brown eyes roved over Harry's form while he walked towards the Gryffindor table. "He looks awful, like he was in a scuffle. And is that..." she trailed off.

"Blood," Ginny agreed with a frown.

Before they could discuss it much longer Harry was shoving into the open spot next to Hermione. Immediately, Hermione began looking him over. "Where the hell have you been?" she hissed his way, ignoring the speech that Headmaster Dumbledore was giving. A quick wave of her wand siphoned away the bits of blood that had dribbled down his shirt.

"I nearly got a free ride back to London," Harry said with a sneer. "I went to go listen in on Malfoy, under my cloak of course, but he knew I was there anyway. Broke my nose and left me on the Express."

"You shouldn't have done that Harry," Hermione scolded. "It was...needlessly reckless. You should just, I don't know, leave him alone. Ignore him."

"Not bloody likely!" Ron groused from his spot across the table, before shoveling another bite of his dinner into his mouth. "How can you tell him to leave Malfoy alone after what we all saw this summer?"

The brunette bit her lower lip, thinking over their words. They had followed Malfoy into Knockturn Alley over the summer and seen him at Borgin and Burkes looking at a strange wooden box. None of the friends knew what it was, but Mr. Weasley had let them know it was something known as a Vanishing Cabinet. She could agree that it was suspicious, but she didn't think that they needed to go out of their way to spy on Malfoy, especially not if it meant that Harry would get hurt in the process.

"You heard what your father told us about the Vanishing Cabinet," Hermione reminded him with a whisper, hoping that none of their classmates would be eavesdropping on them. "It has to have a twin to work, and none of us saw Malfoy carrying in a huge cabinet, did we? It's not as if he could ask the school to allow him one without raising suspicions."

Harry gave her a pained looked, and Hermione knew that he agreed with her logic, even if his brain didn't want to agree. He was so certain that Malfoy was up to something, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it. "I still say he's a Death Eater."

"Harry! You can't just go running around making accusations like that," she scolded, knowing that it could get her friend in a fair bit of trouble, especially if it wasn't true. Personally, Hermione didn't think that it was likely to be true. After all, Malfoy was just a kid, still.

To Hermione's dismay, Harry was no longer paying attention to her, but was instead staring across the Great Hall towards the Slytherin table, where Malfoy sat, glaring into his soup. "Just look at him," Harry muttered with a frown. "You can tell that something has changed this year. He's more...serious. Not his usual self."

Hermione could agree that her classmate had gone through a bit of a personality transformation from what she could tell so far. Usually over the top and prone to whinging, Malfoy seemed more serious and withdrawn this year. "That doesn't mean that he's a Death Eater, Harry. His father is in Azkaban. I am sure that would put him under a lot of stress."

Harry shook his head, his eyes never leaving Malfoy. "No, he looks terrible. Look at the circles under his eyes. He's definitely a Death Eater," he insisted.

She sighed, knowing that Harry was unlikely to be convinced otherwise, no matter what she said. Still, she had to try. "I hardly see how lack of sleep means that you are a Death Eater," she said tartly.

"Easy," Ron quipped. "How could you live with yourself if you did the things the bloody Death Eaters do? How could you sleep at night?"

Hermione swallowed, realizing that he had a point, even though she doubted that the kind of person that willingly chose to become a Death Eater would be that bothered to the point of being unable to sleep at night. She turned to look at Harry, ready to continue the argument, but he was still staring at Malfoy with a singular focus that was a bit unnerving.

She let her own eyes trail over towards the Slytherin table, looking at Malfoy with little interest. She could agree that he didn't look as good as he normally did, but it certainly didn't raise her suspicion. Her eyes wandered over the students. Crabbe and Goyle were shoving their mouths full of sweets quite happily, while Parkinson looked on in disgust.

Moving further down the table, her eyes feel on the form of Nott. Her breath caught in her throat when she finally got a look at him. His shoulders were hunched and he was staring at his plate in disinterest, pushing his food around with a fork. He looked unusually pale and he had a new scar on his jaw line, the puckered pink line standing out against the whiteness of his skin. It was unusual, because most wizards would have a scar magically fixed.

She remembered then that his father was also one of the men who'd been thrown into Azkaban after the Department of Mysteries, so perhaps he hadn't known how to take care of it on his own.

Similarly to Malfoy, he looked as if he hadn't been getting any sleep, his eyes ringed by dark circles, purple and nearly the color of bruises. His face was drawn and gaunt. Nott had always been one of the tallest in their class, but he seemed to be trying to make himself seem as small as possible at the Slytherin table.

"Forget Malfoy," she said to Harry and Ron, feeling a surprising amount of concern for the boy. "Nott looks terrible."

"Who?" Ron asked, turning to look at the Slytherins but not still not recognizing the name or the face.

Hermione rolled her eyes. Of course they wouldn't know who someone was in their own class. Both of the boys could be a little bit self-centered, and Nott didn't go out of his way to make enemies or friends. Really, the only reason Hermione knew to pay attention to him was because they shared so many advanced classes together. Nott was rather smart. He was near her marks in several classes, though it pained her to admit it.

"The boy two to the left of Malfoy," Hermione said, exasperatedly. "Really, you should know who he is. We've only shared classes with him for over five years at this point."

"I think I know him," Harry said with a frown. "He was one of the only students who could see the thestrals the other year. I don't know if he looks much worse than usual. He's always been a bit...rabbity, hasn't he?"

She sucked in a breath wondering how he couldn't see that Nott looked like he was struggling. "That's not a very kind thing to say," she scolded, hating personal attacks based on looks. She still remembered how much Malfoy's cruel taunts about her teeth hurt her feelings. Besides, she thought that there was a big difference between how Nott looked typically and how he looked now. With his toffee colored hair and true blue eyes, there was certainly something arresting about his looks. She hadn't much thought about him, but she decided then that he was typically an attractive guy.

Now, though, he just looked exhausted and...something was wrong with Nott, she was sure of it.

Not wanting to get into the discussion with her friends any more, she let them change the topic of conversation to their new Potions professor, Slughorn, who Harry had met over the summer with Headmaster Dumbledore. Apparently, seeing Harry had been part of the reason why the other man had agreed to come back to teach at Hogwarts. That had certainly gotten Hermione's attention, and she wondered how Slughorn was going to fit into the puzzle. He didn't seem to be too special with gin blossoms on his face.

Try as she might, she couldn't let herself be too distracted by the light-hearted conversation that her friends were having. Her eyes kept being caught by the unassuming form of Theo Nott across the room. He looked up at her once, holding eye contact until Hermione realized that she'd been staring at him for really far too long.

Blushing, Hermione looked away, down at her plate, and she hoped that he didn't think any more about it. After all, it was just that she was feeling a bit worried about him, it wasn't as if she was interested in him. Peeking back at Nott through her lashes, she was glad to see that he was looking away from her. Hopefully she hadn't caused too much suspicion.

She was glad when it was finally time to leave the Great Hall and return to Gryffindor, hoping that it would take her attention from Nott. As she walked through the corridors, she tried to think of a reason to explain away his appearance. It was likely just that he hadn't done well with his father in prison. If she recalled, Nott's father was rather elderly, so it was likely that he was just worried about his father's health. Really, who wouldn't be?

The further away that she got, though, the more she realized that she wasn't able to let it go. Without homework assigned, she had nothing to occupy herself with when she returned to the Common Room. She grew so desperate that she finally asked Ron to play a game of chess with her, which he readily agreed to.

Disturbingly, Harry sat next to the fire all night with the Marauder's Map open, tracing the halls to try and follow Malfoy's path, intent on finding him up to some sort of nefarious plan.

Hoping to help him before he grew even more obsessed, Hermione snatched that map out of his hands, once Ron had beaten her. "Go and play a game with Ron, Harry," she instructed sternly, leaving no room for argument. "I'll let you know if Malfoy leaves the dungeons." Her eyes easily found the dot representing Malfoy, skulking around near the potions classroom.

Harry gave her a pained look before leaving to go and sit with Ron to play. Hermione watched Malfoy for a while before she grew bored with him. Unwittingly, her eyes wandered around the map until she found Nott sitting by himself in the empty (save for Madam Pince) library. She wasn't how long she sat staring at his unmoving dot, but by the time she realized that she was being just as bad as Harry with Malfoy, she stood up abruptly.

Folding the map back up, she handed it off to Harry. "I'm going to try and get some sleep," she told the two boys, before bidding them goodnight. After all, classes started the next day and it would do her no good to spend the evening up watching Nott like some kind of lovesick puppy. Not that she was in love with him or anything - she barely knew him! All the more reason to stop stalking him using a magical map, though.

When her head finally hit the pillow, she was left wondering just what it was about Nott that had caught her attention so firmly.