Title: Sabotage
Gift For: The community
Pairing Draco/Hermione
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,797
Summary: After a nasty break up between Draco and Hermione, they realise life is even more complicated now than it was before
Authors Notes: Written for dramione_duet 2009. Thank you to my beta pollyandra.

Draco had been holding his tongue for days now. When he'd seen Hermione with Harry and Ron on the lawn the other day, messing about, it had killed him. "I saw you with them, you know."

"Of course you did. They're my best friends." Hermione was sick and tired of this argument. Despite their understanding of why they had to keep their relationship a secret, Draco seemed to think he owned her; he was so possessive.

"What you were doing was inappropriate." Draco sighed and stared at the younger years playing by the lake.

"What? How? I've always been the same with them - they're like brothers to me. I couldn't even fathom the notion of fancying them if I tried. It's sickening." Hermione wasn't lying; she was so close to them that the thought of anything more than friendship turned her stomach.

"That's not the point. I don't like you hanging around just with other guys." He could feel anger rush through him as he pictured the scene over and over in his mind. "It's not how pureblood women should behave."

Hermione sighed as she felt her blood boil. "You're forgetting that I'm no pureblood, Malfoy."

Draco turned his head abruptly, staring straight into her eyes. "Malfoy? Since when do you call me that?"

"You're the one who still insists on all that blood crap. That was the one condition I set when we got together, and you swore you wouldn't bring it up."

Draco's ill temper slowly subsided. "I can't help it. It's how I was brought up - it's ingrained in me."

Hermione tapped his head with her fingers sharply. "Then get it out of there. We can't have a relationship if you're always going to see me as some Mudblood whore you're dating."

"I don't see you like that! I just -" Draco desperately tried to find the right words. "I don't know, I can't phrase it..."

"You'd better hurry up and figure it out, because I've had enough of this - constantly on at me for being with Harry and Ron." Hermione stared off into the distance, thinking of far away times when everything between her and Draco was simple: they hated each other, and that was that.

"But --!"

Draco's attempt at argument brought her back to reality. "No. No 'but's' anymore, Draco. They're my best friends - how do you think it'd look if, all of a sudden, I stopped hanging around with them?"

A shimmer of an idea flickered through Draco's mind, and his fingers touched lightly on hers. "So you would, if it didn't look odd?"

Hermione was confused now; what was he on about? "Would what?"

"Stop hanging around with them, as long as it didn't look odd?"

Hermione was horrified that he thought she'd even consider that, and quickly pushed his fingers off of hers. "No! I'm not giving them up for anyone. If you don't like it, we may as well just break up."

"I don't want to break up. I just don't want you going around acting like some sort of tramp."

"See, that, right there. That's why I don't think we should be together anymore. You change so quickly - from being nice and hoping everything will be fine, to being nasty when you don't get your own way."

"Oh, shut up, Mudblood."

Hermione jumped off the wall and started heading towards the lake before turning around to say one last thing. "Someone else might not be able to tell you 'no' Malfoy, but I can. We're over."

*

Six months passed between that moment and their current situation - back to how it was when they were younger - hating each other. This time it wasn't so simple, though, because of their history.

Hermione hated having classes with Draco; he was so bitter and tense around her that it drove her mad. He was nastier than he ever had been and took to humiliating her as much as possible every Potions class.

Often, he ruined her potions with random additions, causing her to lose favour with Slughorn. Of course, Hermione was furious, but she wasn't going to stoop as low as he had.

Potions was her first class that morning, and she was dreading it - today was the day she had been assigned to work with him on the Oculus potion.

"Ready, Granger?" taunted Malfoy as she walked into the empty Potions classroom.

In all honesty, she hadn't expected anyone else to be there. She had just wanted to get in early to start brewing the potion so she didn't have to spend as much time in Malfoy's company.

"I hope this one doesn't go wayward like all your others. You used to be such a good student. What happened?"

Hermione ignored him as she took her spellbooks out of her bag and walked over the store cupboard, gathering the ingredients they'd need.

Draco was leaning on their desk, his fist lazily holding up his head. "You can't ignore me forever, Granger. We have to work together today."

"I am aware of that," said Hermione through gritted teeth, almost dropping the bottles in her arms. "Can't you just give me a hand?"

Draco smirked. "So now you need my help. What a turnaround."

"Oh forget it." Hermione snapped as she placed them on the desk, being careful not to drop a single one.

"Morning you early-risers." Horace Slughorn wandered into class, a spellbook under his arm.

"Morning, Professor." Hermione said kindly, while Draco just nodded at him curtly.

"There's a bit of a change of plan this morning, I'm afraid."

Hermione looked up from her books. "Oh?"

"You'll each be making separate potions, but you will prepare the ingredients for the each other." Upon seeing their horrified faces, Slughorn carried on. "It's all about teamwork. It should teach you to get along better."

"But Professor -" Hermione started to protest, but he put his hand up to silence her.

"I've had enough of the bickering between the two of you. If you both fail, you'll lose fifty points each for your house."

Hermione gasped, as that was a lot of points, and she didn't think her fellow Gryffindors would forgive her if she lost them that many. "Yes, Professor. We'll try our best."

"Will we?" Draco muttered, out of Slughorn's earshot and in answer to which, he received a nasty glare from Hermione.

The rest of the class filed in shortly after, dividing themselves into pairs and starting the task. Draco and Hermione, however, did not have the luxury of a helpful partner.

"Don't forget your earmuffs!" Slughorn called over the noise of the students talking, at which point both Draco and Hermione donned the earmuffs quickly - neither of them fancied being knocked out by the mandrakes' screams.

Trying to play the game, Hermione prepared Draco's wormwood perfectly, until she saw him sabotaging hers by cutting off the end roughly. Grabbing the nearest knife, Hermione cut the wormwood right down the middle, opening it up to release a pungent smell. Then she threw it into Draco's cauldron.

Although Draco had started it first, he was fuming. After tossing Hermione's less-than-perfect wormwood into her cauldron, he grabbed the mandrake plant next to him. He pulled it roughly out of its pot, grabbing his knife and chopping off the roots on top of its head.

Not caring what happened to it now, he dumped it into the bucket at the side of his desk and started making patterns in the leaves.

Hermione was pondering the best way to get her mandrake out, when she noticed what Draco was doing. "Malfoy!"

Draco let out a snigger as he cut an S into one of the leaves. Chucking it into her cauldron made it go blue.

Upon seeing this, Hermione quickly checked her spellbook, hoping that blue was the right colour. Alas, it was not - the potion was supposed to be red. "Fine," she spat, grabbing the mandrake firmly and ripping it out, carefully disposing of the end of it once she had cut off the leaves. "Two can play at that game."

Draco looked oddly at her. "What are you going to do?"

Hermione raised her eyebrows as she tore the leaves to shreds with her fingers, enjoying the feeling she got when she plopped them into his cauldron. His potion, too, went blue.

"Granger!" Draco groaned, not wanting to get Slughorn's attention.

"Well you started it! It's your fault if we lose points. Shall we start again?"

Draco was seething at the colour of his potion and how it had gone disastrously wrong. "Nope. I don't care if I lose points, as long as I get one over on you."

"Urgh!" Hermione let out an irritated moan. "I hate you, Malfoy."

Draco looked up from dealing with his unicorn hair. "Believe me, Mudblood, the feeling is reciprocated."

Both Draco and Hermione attacked the fine unicorn hair with their knives, tearing them to shreds and rendering them useless. When they added the mutilated unicorn hair into each other's cauldrons, they felt simultaneously satisfied and irritated.

"Now to add the crystallised water," Hermione muttered to herself. "At least we can't ruin this one."

At the same time, they both grabbed the little tubs and threw them in, but neither was expecting the outcome.

The potions let off loud banging noises and puffs of blue smoke which went straight into the air.

"What the -?" started Draco. He was pulled backwards quickly by Hermione who realised what was going to happen next.

The potions bubbled over the cauldrons and onto the desks, eating away at the spellbooks and making little dents in the tables.

Seeing part of his classroom going up in tatters, Slughorn ran across the room and stared blankly at them and then the potions. "What did you do? Did you deliberately sabotage each other's potions?"

Neither of the two said anything as they looked away from him, embarrassed.

"I have never seen this before," a horrified Slughorn said as he took out his wand and transfigured the potions into harmless water. He seemed relieved as the water just ran down the table, trickling onto the floor, instead of eroding it as it had before. "Right." He turned his attention to the two of them. "Fifty points from Gryffindor and Slytherin!"

Draco and Hermione gulped and avoided the glares of their classmates as Slughorn shooed them away, not wanting them to cause any more damage.

"Great, thanks Malfoy," Hermione mumbled as they left the room together.

"You ain't seen nothing yet," Draco said through gritted teeth as they turned to go in opposite directions.

'Fantastic,' Hermione thought to herself as she made her way to Gryffindor Tower for a nice, relaxing break.