Disclaimer:

FF staff member (wand at throat): Speak now or forever hold your silence!

DameElektra: I swear I don't own the characters here that anyone can recognize...but you cannot take the plot away from me! Mwahahahahaha...

A/N: So...this is my first fanfic. Feel free to criticize but please...I beg you...REVIEW!!

Flames and Icicles

Chapter 1: A Trampled Apology

Hermione Granger descended from the train, and drew in a sharp breath. For a long time since the war, she had not smelt air as fresh as such—the putrid smell of rotting corpses and the gross smell of blood trailed the air she inhaled for the longest time she had known. The war had taken lives and returned none, but now that Voldemort was gone, both the Wizarding and Muggle world could take a whiff of relief. But evil never rests, she thought. But being Hermione Granger, she would always tend to worry too much. For the moment she let her worries go, and she advanced towards her best friends, Harry and Ron.

"Harry!" she yelled.

The two boys turned around for a while, leaving their chocolate frogs.

"It's so good to see—Harry and Ronald! When will you people grow up! Nineteen year olds fighting over chocolate frogs...ungh..."

"It is the best time of our lives, ain't it Hermy?"

"A new nickname?" Hermione quirked her eyebrows.

"Uhh...yeahhhh..."

Hermione noticed her two best friends more closely. Both had developed well over the year. Harry towered to a six feet, with toned abs and biceps due to regular workout. He claimed he had a six-pack, and Ginny had even put forth the proposition for him to show it, but then of course Ron intervened and protested at "giving his baby sister ideas". Ginny had huffed and scowled, and Hermione had just roared in laughter, at the same time claiming that it was Ron's excuse to support Harry's lie. Harry had quirked a quizzical brow, suggesting if Ron was jealous. And Ron went redder than his hair.

Ron's hair, in stark contrast to Harry's rough-looking raven one, was a smooth flaming red now. He towered an inch taller than Harry, and his body had developed into a very muscular one. Hermione sighed. She was pretty sure that Ron had a crush on her, and she thought she was on her way of 

forming one on him too, but it hurt to know that she would never be as good a girlfriend as all the other beautiful girls brooding over them.

Or so she thought...

Despite her unappreciative eyes at the mirror, Hermione Granger had turned into a pretty good-looking woman too. Maybe she didn't look like someone directly off the runway, but if someone noticed well, her beauty would shine through. Although she was a short height of only five feet, which at times threw her into depression, it only enhanced the petite look of her figure. She had soft curves and her once frizzy hair now lay in soft curls on her shoulder. Her auburn hair and hazel eyes went perfectly with her creamy white skin, now a little pink from the frosty wind blowing against it.

The purpose why they were here again was that Hogwarts had opened up a program in which witches and wizards could complete their post-graduation education. This was a lot more convenient, considering how they did not have to run after different institutions in different parts of the world now.

Hermione was a little disappointed though, at how the Head Girl was chosen from the Seventh Year only. Or else she really did have a shot at it...

"Daydreaming about Weaselbee, Mudblood?"

She would recognize that voice anywhere in the world. Draco Malfoy.

"Sod off, Ferret."

"Tired of me already, are you Granger?" Draco sneered, his five feet nine inches stature looking down at her—both in the physical sense and the figure-of-speech sense.

Hermione rolled her eyes at him.

"You're such a Mudblood." Draco said, in a pathetic attempt to break the weird silence between them.

Hermione snorted. "I really do appreciate your sympathies, as well as return them with full fervour."

"How so?" Draco raised an eyebrow quizzically, an egotistical look glazing his steel grey eyes which clearly said: "I'm a rich Pureblood. How the hell can you sympathize me??"

"Well as you say, Mudbloods are an oddity to the Wizarding Society right?"

"We finally agree." Draco smirked, thinking she was finally giving up.

"Well at least I'm not an oddity to the whole natural system of sexuality, asexual idiot." Hermione's lips quirked up in a victorious smirk.

"Wha—"

"Aw poor Malfoy. I don't need an explanation nor a description of your intimacy with your Quidditch broomstick. No wonder you lose the Quidditch Cup every year. You're just too turned on to play properly aren't you?" She danced her eyebrows.



"You—you—" Draco was horrified. At a loss of words, all he could do was stare at her with big round eyes like a kid who has just been told about the birds and the bees by a friend and was running off to tell mommy what a bad, bad kid the friend was.

Hermione roared in laughter. Good job, 'Mione! She patted herself mentally on the back.

DMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMHGDMH

Hermione fell with a loud thump in her new bed. This was going to be a long year, she thought.

Suddenly, there was loud knocking on the door. Thinking it was Harry, she opened the door.

"Hey Harry I've been—oh it's you." Hermione's face fell in disappointment.

"Disappointed I'm not the Boy Who Bloody Lived, Granger?" Draco said, reading her expression accurately.

"What do you want, Death Eater?"

That blew him off. "I'm not a Death Eater."

"Oh yeah? Of course you are. Just like Daddy." Hermione stated, folding her arms over her chest.

Draco was fuming. His porcelain face went red as he walked up to Hermione, causing her to take a step back. "I'm anything but Lucius Malfoy you bitch! Seems like our know-it-all doesn't know something after all! Well FYI, I fought on the light side in the war and that definitely makes me anything but Lucius Malfoy. I came here only to apologize because I called you a Mudblood earlier, and I know I didn't mean it. The war changed me and my ethics and my beliefs—but what would you know you insufferable bitch? You were too busy licking Pothead and weasel's ass to notice!" With that, Draco rushed off outside her room, his robe noisily flying up behind him and following him.

For the first time in her life, Hermione Granger was dumbstruck.

A/N: You wanna curse your lifelong object of hatred? Spit it on his/her face! You wanna 'fess up your crush? Say it on his/her face! You like/hate this story? Say it in a reviewwwww!!