No Copyright Infringement Intended

No Copyright Infringement Intended

Chapter One

Young Rivals

Hermione Granger, a busy haired girl with large front teeth, and Draco Malfoy, a blonde haired boy with a pointed face. They lived two streets away from each other. In a park one sunny afternoon they became the best of friends in the sandbox when she shared her plastic shovel with him. They were only four, but a bond formed between them then.

Every Friday Hermione, and Draco would sit in that sandbox playing, and sharing. Even in winter when their time was limited to fifteen minutes in the cold. They didn't mind, it was fifteen minutes they wouldn't have had throwing snowballs at each other. This didn't mean that they didn't whine, and beg for an extra minute, because they did. Everyday.

Most children as they grow older fall out of love with the playground. The sandbox irritates the skin, the swings are boring, and the slide too hot from the sun's rays. However, this didn't stop the two children. Until the age of 11 they continued to meet there. They talked, and laughed, and whether or not they were sliding down on scolding metal, or simply sitting on the bench rattling off about nothing. There was nothing between the two, not even the different lives they lead.

Draco Malfoy was a wizard. Hermione Granger was a muggleborn. The wizarding world was kept secret from the muggles, but Draco knew that Hermione was only born to muggles, it didn't mean she didn't possess magic. Somewhere along the lines of muggles in her family was at least one wizard, or witch that she inherited from. When she first showed evidence of magic at five years old making a flower bloom in the dead of winter Draco couldn't have been happier. His best friend could know about him, and the world he belonged to, soon to be her world too.

"Hermione?" Draco asked hesitantly pushing his friend gently on the swing.

Hermione swung her legs out in front of her feeling the August wind blowing against her, "yes, Draco?"

"Did you get your letter?"
She grinned, her smile reaching to her eyes. "Yeah, I did! My parents were so happy. What about you, did you get yours?"

"Naturally. You have to get into Slytherin, alright?"

She inwardly groaned. "But what I heard from Dumbledore, Gryffindor sounds like the best house."

He groaned out loud. "No, we'll be rivals."

As she came down she dug her heels into the earth skidding to a stop. She turned around to Draco over her shoulder. "We'll never be rivals, Draco. We'll be best friends. Always."

"But our houses -"

"They're rivals. Not us. Never us." Hermione leaned up hugging her friend. Nothing could tear them apart.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft, and Wizardry was huge. When Dumbledore had come to her house to explain to her parents about the school he told them it was a castle. He wasn't kidding, and she couldn't wait to start exploring, first all to find where the library was. Surely it was filled with thousands of interesting books. She wanted to do well in this world. It was not a world she was born into, and she had something to prove to everyone who was.

"Slytherin," the hat called barely touching Draco's platinum hair.

Hermione closed her eyes for a second, breathing. She heard her name. She willed herself to calm. "Just relax," she told herself. She heard a red haired boy with dirt still on his nose calling her mental. She thought she heard the skinny boy calling him Ron, and him Harry.

She walked into the front of the Great Hall, a huge room with four long tables each for a different house, and a table overlooking them for the professors. She lifted herself on the chair as Professor McGonagall a stern looking witch sat an old, and rather dingy looking hat on her head. It fell over her eyes, and she heard a voice in her ear. It startled her, and she clutched the chair that she sat in tighter.

"Interesting... A large amount of bravery, and brains. Very eager... You'd do well in Ravenclaw, very well indeed, but... There is too much bravery to be ignored... Yes, Gryffindor." The hat yelled her house loudly to the rest of the school. She heard polite clapping from the Gryffindor table, and she hopped down to join them.

She was in Gryffindor, the house she wanted since Dumbledore told her about them. Hermione glanced over at the Slytherin table. Her best friend who only a few moments before was ecstatic, now looked as if he had lost his best friend. In his eyes, she suppose he did, but that wasn't going to stop her, no matter what house they were in she vowed that they would be friends.

"You're late," Draco informed snapping the book he had been reading closed.

"Thanks for letting me know, I had no idea," Hermione said sarcastically to her friend dropping her heavy book bag beside her. They sat in the most secluded table in the library. It was where they could get the most peace from other chattering students.

"Where were you?"

"Harry, and Ron needed my help with something." For the first time in their friendship Hermione didn't tell him the truth. Not the whole truth at least. She was helping her two new friends recover what they just recently found out was the Sorcerers Stone. She knew very well that Draco hated them, mostly because he felt that she was being taking away from him. She thought it was ridiculous.

"Potter, and Weasley? You're with them too much."

"They're my friends."

"And what am I?"

"You're my friend too, Draco. Honestly, you can't be jealous."

"I'm not," he yelled earning a glare from Madam Pince.

"Exactly what I said. Lets just study." She pulled out her Transfiguration book opening it to a random page to avoid the glare he was giving her. They knew each other too well, and he knew that she was up to something, and she knew it hurt him deeply that she wouldn't tell him.

"You three are up to something."

"Draco, please, let it go already!"

"Why won't you tell me? What have I possibly done to make you not trust me?"
"You hate them! You got us all into detention!" She hated that she was bringing up this old fight, but it couldn't be helped. Anything to make him see what he was doing to them. It was only for Harry, and Ron, because if he found out he would turn them in, like he had with the dragon Hagrid kept in his wooden house. He had gone so far as to spy on them, and get them all in detention. They fought about it for months finally coming to a silent agreement, an agreement that Hermione broke then.

"You didn't even like them at the beginning of term! They save you from a troll, and all of a sudden you don't leave their side."

"You can't have me all to yourself. I'm here right now, aren't I? I see you everyday, we talk, we hang out by the lake -"

"I don't like you with them."

Hermione sighed not bothering to reply. What good would it have done when he said the truth, but she couldn't get him to understand that it wasn't the same with them. They saved her from a troll, yes, she owed them a lot. They did prove to be amazing friends, but Draco's was hers first, she had a loyalty to him as well.

Draco opened his book, and shut it again. He shook his head angrily. "I can't study here. I'll study in my common room. See ya, Granger."

She watched in amazement as he walked away. It wasn't their first fight, they had many over the years, but he never walked away. She half expected him to come back in, but he didn't. What hurt more than that was the use of her surname. He called her that as much as he walked away.

Draco was right, being in rival houses made them rivals as well. It should have become a law of some sort, like gravity. It was unavoidable. That day she lost her best friend.

Draco's words echoed in her ears. "You filthy mudblood," he told her earlier that day. Now she laid in her four poster bed in the girls dormitory reliving the incident. The craziness that erupted from those three words, Ron attempting to curse him, but because of his broken wand only cursed himself instead. Draco had the gall to laugh, and she had never been so mad at him in her life she almost wished that the curse would have hit him, but Hagrid was right, it was best that way, Ron would have been in real trouble, especially with Draco's despicable father if he had cursed him.

Hermione didn't know Draco's father well. His mother was always took him to the park, and his father never knew of the friendship between them. She did know that he was a cold man, not only from what Draco had told her over the years, but since she saw him at the train station her first year. She could tell by the way he stood, spoke, that annoying cane he carried everywhere that she somehow knew was a wand. Lucius Malfoy was grooming his son to be just like him.

She didn't know what the word 'mudblood' meant until Ron told her. She almost didn't believe that Draco would have said such a thing to her, but Ron made a lot of sense about Mr. Malfoy. It made perfect sense in fact that they were dark wizards. The only question remained was how Draco ever became friends with her when she was a muggleborn. She didn't need to ask, because through a day of reflecting upon it she already knew. There were only two reasons. Draco had wanted to hurt her, or his father was trying to prove a point. She knew Draco, she cared for him, and she was willing to bet every one of her books that it was the latter.

Before she had retired to her bed for the night, she had been in the library getting away from Harry, and Ron's tense chess game. No matter how Harry improved he could never beat Ron, but that didn't stop him from trying. Normally it didn't bother her, but after all that happened that evening she wanted to be by herself.

Draco always knew where to find her. She still sat at their secluded table in the library even if he didn't join her anymore. She was just putting the last book in her book bag when he approached. He looked all around him as if scared to be seen with her. She was disgusted at him.

"Herm-"

"Don't you dare call me by my first name," she hissed.

Draco looked taken aback. "I'm sor-"
"I don't care. I don't want to hear your excuses, because there are no excuses to call me what you did."

"So, what, you're never going to forgive me?" He said this in a joking way, but his complexion paled even more so when he saw that she wasn't.

"No. You made it clear two summers ago that we could never be friends if we're in two different houses. You were right, congratulations." She stalked out of the library leaving him behind.

As she laid in her bed she cried, dampening her pillow. Summer was going to be so lonely. Right there, and then she made a vow. She wouldn't return to that park again. There was no need to without him.