Hermione had spent the first week of her summer crying, and her second week reflecting. Now, at the beginning of her third week of summer, she was realizing the reflecting was going to continue. Thoughts about the past year swirled through her mind- people, places, worries, tragedies, mysteries. But above all one image continued to drift to the top of the pile. Draco Malfoy. Draco Malfoy had been and probably always would be the bane of her existence, but since last year her entire view of him had changed drastically.

He had cried, for one. Harry had informed her of someone in Myrtle's bathroom crying and to her that was positively shocking. The callous, crude, tough Draco Malfoy crying? She'd always known where she stood with Malfoy. He was Malfoy, the world's most annoying prat and, as she'd mentioned before, the bane of her existence. She'd known what kind of horrible comments he would make to her in whatever situation because he was consistent in his prat-ness. She'd known that he was always going to be a prat. And now, suddenly, what with the crying and the tough decisions- she just couldn't figure him out.

It was quite possible that he wasn't as utterly disgusted by her presence as he was meant to be. It was possible that he didn't want to follow Voldemort. It was even possible that the thought of the death and destruction his father had helped caused didn't fill him with a sense of power and pride as he'd always acted, but that he actually hated the mere thought of having any part in it.

There was, of course, always the possibility that he was a Malfoy through and through, ready to kill whoever he was ordered to. Torture them. Watch them suffer. But would such a person be crying to an annoying ghost in an abandoned bathroom? Would such a person have hesitated before killing someone they'd always sneered at?

Her vision blurred suddenly. There were images of Malfoy being a prat and Malfoy being a prat and Malfoy being a prat, and then, quite suddenly, a Malfoy who just couldn't utter the words to an Unforgivable Curse.

Hermione thought and Hermione felt herself feeling a strong sense of sympathy. Sympathy to someone who she had hated and who had hated her back. What if she found him in the woods right then? Would she take him in, nurse him back to health after his family and friends had shunned him?

Yes. Yes she would, because she was Hermione Granger, lover of books and one of the most caring and soft-hearted people Hogwarts had known. Was there even a chance, if she got to know him and found he wasn't such prat after all, that she could learn to love him?

Yes, yes there was. Because Hermione Granger, being the soft-hearted person that she was, was also a hopeless romantic.

A/N: This could be continued and it might just stay like this- completely and totally up to you….you just gotta push that button. Right there, to left. A little farther….That one! So, comments, queries, complaints, opinions, thoughts, letters to the editor….All are welcome.