Perhaps

Chapter One : 1991

August

Hermione Jean Granger wasn't sure about anything, but the fact that she must have been the clumsiest eleven-year-old witch in Diagon Alley at that moment. At least that is how she thought the blond boy who caught her from falling face first from the stairs had looked at her. 

Hermione heard herself offer an apology, but the boy didn't say anything back as he raised a brow at her before releasing his hold on her forearm and she watched him sidestep her to go into the shop she had just been in, like nothing happened. 

Perhaps she should be grateful that he didn't say anything to her. That he didn't make fun or make her feel clumsy. Because that was not the real Hermione Granger. She had just been too excited to go find her parents to show them her new schoolbooks that she had purchased all on her own, and she had noticed all too late the heavy stack of them, piled high in her small arms, leaning slightly to the right and causing her to lose her footing. 

Hermione was, of course, grateful, that the boy had caught her, but something in the way he had looked at her, almost like he couldn't believe the audacity she had to even consider falling in front of him, that had left her feeling flustered and somewhat angry. 

September 1st

Hermione was trying to help Neville Longbottom find his toad when she had walked face first into a wall on the train. Except it wasn't a wall. She looked up and her face instantly heated when she saw that she had walked into the same boy who stopped her from falling a few days ago. 

He had his arms wrapped around her elbows this time to prevent her from falling backwards. Again. This is getting ridiculous, she thought. Once had been enough for her to decide that she did not like the way the blond boy had looked at her. It made her feel like she was indeed a very clumsy girl. 

"Do you ever watch where you're going?" The blond boy asked, an unreadable expression on his face now, his hands still on her elbows. 

"Of course, I do."  She all but huffed at him in annoyance, taking a step back so that he would let go of her.

"Right." She watched him extend his hand out to her and was hesitant to take it when he introduced himself. "I'm Draco. Draco Malfoy."

"Hermione Granger." Her voice had softened from huffed annoyance to something more polite and he smiled at her. 

"Right." The boy, Draco, said again, and there was a mere moment of awkwardness as they kept a hold of each other's hands for longer than necessary. Hermoine released his hand first. "So, Hermione Granger, do tell what you're doing walking into people on a train." She wasn't sure if it sounded like a question or a command, but she obliged anyway.

"I'm looking for a toad for a boy named Neville. He lost it, and I offered to help him look for it."

Draco didn't say anything for a moment as he seemed to be considering her answer. "A toad?" Hermione just shrugged her shoulders and a small smile crept up Draco's face. "You might want to stop by the Trolley cabin then. I bet the little rodent is eating whatever crumbs he can find there."

Hermione smiled at him. That's the best lead she'd had since having Neville tell her where he might have lost his toad. Why didn't I think about that?

"Thank you, Draco." Was the last thing she said to the boy before taking a step around him to find where the lady with the trolley was at. 

She didn't notice the way the boy watched her walk away. Neither did she know that Draco Malfoy wasn't a nice boy. Not like she had thought from their encounter. And that he himself didn't know why he had been nice to her.

May

Hermione was sitting in the library late at night, debating on writing a thank you note to Draco Malfoy. After all, it had been him who had suggested so many months ago that the answer to her question was inside the Hogwarts A History. 

The two haven't spoken since the train, and Hermione came to quickly realize that the boy was nothing short of a school bully. It had been strange to see him act cruel towards other students, especially to Ron and Harry whom she considered to be her friends now.  

She couldn't say that it didn't sting even a tiny bit that she had been wrong about him. She had thought that perhaps they would become friends. The sort that she had never had before coming here. 

Hermione was grateful to have become friends with Ron and Harry, even after Ron had been quite rude to her. But it still didn't sit right with her that she had been wrong about Draco Malfoy. 

The boy seemed to hate Harry and Ron with a passion that could rival her love for knowledge.

Hermione had read in history books that Gryffindor and Slytherin did not mix well, but she had hoped that they would keep whatever passed between them on the train. 

However, as months went by, she focused on other things and had to stop herself from starring at Draco Malfoy when he had slipped a note into her hand in the hallway. A note that had told her to check the one place she hadn't considered checking yet.

It turned out to be useful.

Sighing in defeat, she stood up, deciding on not writing him a note. It would appear strange, she was sure. And it wasn't like many months haven't passed already. 

No. Hermione Granger was not going to write to Draco Malfoy. The pronounced school bully who had somehow known what she was looking for at the time.

She left the library with a new determination, unaware that when she passed through the large double doors, a blond boy had been waiting to catch her alone. To say something.  Anything. But seeing her sitting there, all alone for hours, her face going from happy to thoughtful to sad, and doing all of that on repeat, over and over again. It left him decided that he would not speak to her.

He hasn't per say been mean to her, but he was rather ruthless with insults when it came to her two new friends. Draco hated the fact that the girl he wanted to be friends with had been sorted into a house that he was supposed to loath and had become a third wheel to the duo that pulled her into trouble at the first chance they had gotten. 

No. Draco Malfoy had made up his mind. He wasn't going to talk to Hermione Granger. The know it all that intrigued him from the first day in Diagon Alley when she had looked so innocent, unaware of who he was. Of what his last name meant in the Wizarding World that she was a part of now.

And Draco couldn't get past the fact that she was of un-pure blood. That revelation had left him feeling something that he'd never felt in all of his eleven years of life. 

Disappointed.