It needed a bit of a rewrite…tweaking, if you will. I'm fanfic obsessed at the moment.

-HG-

"Somebody shoot me!" I begged to no one in particular, as I very thankfully escaped a train compartment on the Hogwarts Express, under the premise of a trip to the restroom.

Harry, Ron, and me…sitting in a space that couldn't be more than five feet by five feet. Well, in fact it was probably bigger than that, but honestly, do I look like some sort of carpenter? I really had no idea of the size. Not that it mattered…come on, can you say "sexual tension"? I certainly can. Sexual tension. Oh, bloody good.

It was like being rendered immobile and placed beneath a steadily dripping faucet…I believe that sort of thing is called "Chinese Water Torture"? There was really no water in the compartment, though, so perhaps the experience should be called something more along the lines of "Chinese Visual Rape Torture". I was completely and utterly unprepared for the sudden…er…preoccupation that my two closest friends had developed over the summer months. Ron, who was never very tactful or subtle to begin with, had picked up the unnerving habit of staring at me out of the corner of his eye when he seemed to think I wasn't aware of him doing so. It wasn't so much that I wanted to thoroughly and entirely discourage him from thinking I was attractive (that would have been a nice change, really, considering it took the wart an interminably long while to realize that I was even female)…it was more the fact that it seemed he had only just begun to personally manufacture testosterone, and therefore was very amateurish at preventing himself from gaping like a dying fish.

And Harry…I truly hope I was just imagining the slight protuberance of his eyes when I first walked into the kitchen at the Burrow that morning. However, Harry was dealing with "becoming a man" with much greater restraint than Ronald. I only caught that one look, and then he seemed to get over his surprise.

It wasn't as though I had changed much over the summer. Really, I didn't. I gained the slightest bit of weight, mostly concentrated in the pectoral region, but I didn't look all that different. My hair was as bushy as ever, and unless I had truly missed something, I still wasn't any Muggleborn Bombshell. I was seventeen, for cripes' sake. Shouldn't they have been expecting me to look seventeen?

Then again, my choice of wardrobe for the day wasn't the most well thought out I've ever donned. I wore a rather unremarkable green tank top and a pair of knee-length jeans that, in my humble opinion, did between little and nothing in the way of flattering my too-thin legs. However, showing even the slightest amount of skin was never the wisest choice when you were planning on spending upwards of five minutes inside of a closet-sized space with two very hormonal teenage males. It seemed that at this point, our friendships were not quite enough to prevent Harry and Ron from seeing me through "Hermione is a girl, and girls look different under their robes" goggles.

Thus, I had felt it exceedingly necessary to take a little break from the incredible discomfort that was so smothering inside of the compartment. The air in the hallway felt oddly cool on my face, and it was with a pang of irritation that I realized that I must have been blushing. Dammit. I strode down the corridor to the lavatory and peered into the mirror. My face had taken on the precise shade of Mrs. Weasley's homemade raspberry jam. How charming.

"Granger? Looking at herself in the mirror? Is that what the world's coming to?" I would have recognized that voice anywhere. It was the same snide, drawling voice that had introduced me to the wonderful world of Playground Insults of the Wizarding Variety. "What, are you expecting to look at yourself and suddenly not be an ugly Mudblood?"

Of all the rotten luck…Did it have to be Draco Malfoy that I ran into in the otherwise empty corridor?

Taking a deep, fortifying breath, I spun on my heel and turned to face him. Same old, same old. His blond hair was slicked back, per usual, although a slight bit longer than the previous year. His eyes were as cold and unyielding as ever, and the smirk…well, the smirk still held the same malevolence as it had for the past six years. It was rather unfortunate, really, that he was such a slime of a human being; if his face hadn't been poisoned by his Death Eater father's influence and the enormity of his wealth, he might have been handsome. But alas, coming of age in the wizarding world did not seem to have brought about any change in Malfoy's spoiled, sneering persona.

"Malfoy, go find someone else to bother," I replied dismissively, making a very bored shooing motion with my hand. I wasn't too interested in verbally sparring with him today. I would've much rather been using my time to figure out how I was going to survive an entire year of my best friends' inability to escape the throes of their own hormones.

"Are you too busy being filthy to want to talk to me, then?" Malfoy answered with as much innocence as one so fully putrid could muster. He quirked a white-blond eyebrow at me, but the frozen eye beneath it betrayed his charade.

Really, what a positively stinging insult that was. If I was bothered every time a Slytherin directed the word "filthy" at me, I would've gone round the bend long ago.

"You miss my point. I simply want very strongly to remove myself from your presence," I said truthfully. With a sarcastic smile, I began to walk very casually past him.

In retrospect, probably a mistake.

He seized my wrist with a surprisingly strong grip, effectively halting my walk to freedom. "Where do you think you're going, Mudblood?" His voice was so annoyingly amused, as though my trying to end our encounter was a simply ridiculous notion, that for a split second an image of myself giving him a swift kick in the family jewels occupied my entire field of vision.

"Oh, please, Malfoy," I spat, attempting to tug my arm out of his grasp. Although this maneuver was not successful, I continued to speak as though I was completely in control of the situation. "I am going back to my compartment." I tugged at his grip a second time, this attempt equally ineffective. "Good-bye, Malfoy!"

I really should learn to quit while I'm ahead. My act did nothing to slacken his hold on me, and he was now looking highly amused about something. I felt a flush crawl hotly across every inch of my skin when I realized that his eyes were no longer fixed anywhere near my face. They were, in fact, riveted to the newest bane (or, perhaps, banes) of my existence.

"You bloody pervert!" I shrieked, finally wrenching my arm free. He drew his eyes lazily back to my face, and his smirk was suddenly so leering that horror scuttled sharply through my veins. His ogling made me feel roughly as vulnerable as if I'd actually not been wearing any clothing, as opposed to perfectly respectable Muggle attire.

It was no good. I was going to have to kill him. I drew my arm back and slapped him full across the face. Oh, it felt good. I hadn't done that since third year. Stupid git should've remembered that I do, in fact, have the capacity to become violent as it suited me. And it bloody well suited me. He looked quite shocked for the moment, so I took the opportunity to make my exit. I gave him a sweet, satisfied little smile and made to leave.

"See you at school," I said breezily, waltzing past him without a single iota of remorse; a fact I'm reasonably sure he picked up on, because as I slid open the door to my compartment wearing a self-satisfied little smile, he yelled, quite rudely, actually, "FUCK YOU, GRANGER!" at my retreating back.

I shut the door very quickly behind me, hoping that Harry and Ron would simply think that Malfoy was excoriating some unfortunate sap that happened to share my last name. Goodness knows I didn't relish the idea of an interrogation.

As it turns out, I was really in no danger of being questioned. Malfoy's passionate scream apparently paled in comparison to the importance of my reappearance in the room, in all of my summer-clothed glory. "Long bathroom break, eh?" Ron commented dimly, thoroughly proving my theory.

I warily took a seat next to Harry, fervently hoping that I was imagining the appreciative look he sent my way. No, no, no. Not Harry. Harry, no! Snap out of it! It was shaping up to quite the miserable afternoon. I couldn't even bear to imagine the horrible year that awaited me if my best friends were going to continue this rash of sheer male idiocy.

Quite suddenly, I heard the most blessed voice on this green earth. Despite its wheezy, Filch-esque quality, the announcement that we were about ten minutes from Hogsmeade Station was one of the most beautiful sounds I'd ever heard in life. I would soon be free!

"You hear that? We should change into our robes," I suggested immediately, conveniently forgetting to think before speaking. Oops. Tally one up for Hermione. Ron and Harry gaped at me, then at each other, and, by their expressions, an innocent bystander would be led to believe that I had actually suggested we engage in a session of ménage-a-trois. Goood going, Granger.

"You—you don't mean…you're going to change in here?" Ron croaked, his eyes growing so large that I couldn't help but think of Dobby the house elf.

I laughed nervously. "Ron, don't I always?" He didn't reply; instead, he gulped audibly and continued to stare at me through eyes the size of Galleons.

"Merlin, you both can turn around while I put my robes on, can't you?"

Harry, who hadn't done anything out of the ordinary up until that point, opened his mouth as though he was going to protest. However, I quelled him with a pointed glare. "Don't be thick. Turn around, both of you."

Surprisingly, they obeyed. Once I was finished, I kindly turned while they changed, so as to spare them the last shred of the modesty that was surely already damaged beyond repair at the prospect of dressing in front of bossy old Hermione. For cripes' sake.

We all finished pretty sharpish, no one being really all that comfortable with the situation. The back of Ron's neck was violently red, and the same shade splashed the tips of his ears and the highest spot on each of his cheeks. Harry didn't look any the worse for wear.

"Hogsmeade Station," wheezed the Voice of Heaven from the speaker above our heads. Thank you. Thank you!

I couldn't get out of that stuffy hell of a compartment fast enough. I was so excited at the prospect of wide, open, hormonally neutral spaces that my fingers fumbled in their attempt to undo the door latch. In the space of the few seconds it took to finally quit being an idiot and slide open the door, it seemed Ron had placed himself in rather close proximity to my very uncomfortable self. As soon as the door opened, I vaulted into the hallway with the fervor of a Muggle film actor fleeing the threat of a large explosion behind him. In comparing the two situations, I suppose that would have made Ron the dangerous bomb, planted in the airport vending machine by a cunning terrorist group.

Unfortunately, it seemed I had rather gracelessly bowled over another person in my daring escape.

"Get the hell off of me, Granger! Are you out of your Mudblood mind!" my very favorite person in all the world fumed from beneath me. Why did my hapless victim have to be the ferret, out of all of the people in the entire bloody train? Why?

I scrambled to get off of him with amazing speed. I was not eager to prolong the unnecessary contact, thank you very much. Malfoy immediately got to his feet, glaring down at me so coldly that, for a split second, I experienced a wild fear of being turned into a Prefect Popsicle.

"Hermione!" Ron exclaimed as he and Harry stepped into the hallway, noting that I was not, as they may have assumed, standing.

Harry was the first to piece the situation together. I was sprawled out on the floor, no doubt looking very undignified, and Draco Malfoy was standing over me wearing a less-than-friendly expression.

"Problem, Malfoy?" he growled, and even from my disadvantaged position on the ground, I could see his fists clench at his sides. Ron quietly came around and helped me to my feet, sending Malfoy a Very Nasty Look.

"Not at all, Potter. Granger here happens to have just thrown herself at me," Malfoy replied, his sneer inverting to an even more unpleasant smirk. Oh, right, Malfoy. How observant.

I strode forward, fully intent on setting the record straight. I got right up in that abnormally pale face of his, and sucked in the sort of deep breath one needs before letting loose a barrage of ego-damaging words. It was because of this unconscious action that I got a very heady whiff of a cool, musky cologne that, I was forced to admit, was rather delicious, as far as alcohol-based spritzes go. I took another little sniff. Yes. Definitely a very good scent. Which is why I felt such a crazed horror when I realized that the Eau de Shaggerific was emanating from the blond Slytherin smirking boldly before me.

Kill me.

I shook off the cologne-induced haze and leveled Malfoy with a glare that surely blazed with the fires of all nine levels of hell. I mean, the nerve of him! First suggesting that I bulldozed him on purpose, and then having the arrogance to strut around smelling like…oh, I honestly had no grounds for comparison. It was an experience all of its own.

"Keep your fat mouth shut, Malfoy," I hissed, now doubly irritated because his stupid cologne had given me pause. His face was very close, so that I could see the cold glitter of his eyes. He was going to grab me again, I was sure of it.

There was really nothing else to do except knee him in the groin.

Malfoy gasped very loudly and doubled over. Although I was slightly disappointed that his reaction hadn't been more girlish, I couldn't deny that it was a very fulfilling sort of abuse that I had just administered. For the moment, I was entirely cleansed of anger, and was at peace with the world.

"Oooh, sorry…that didn't hurt, did it?" I simpered. I can be absolutely abominable at times, and this was certainly a splendid opportunity to do my worst.

"You'd better get the fuck away from me, Granger," Malfoy panted as he stood, meeting my eyes with an icy shock. Get away from him? Funny, I felt a sudden strong urge to do exactly that.

"Come on, you two!" I said with a powerful air of false cheer, grabbing both Harry and Ron by the sleeve and tugging them off the train with me. What an excellent start to the year!

Isn't it June yet?