Late autumn sunlight slanted lazily through Hogwart's windows, painting the stone floor in soft oranges and golds. It was oddly beautiful, Hermione mused to herself as she strolled leisurely through abandoned hallways, emptied of students this late in the afternoon. She relished the momentary peace she found in observing the sunlit floor, letting its sheer simplicity drown out for a moment the overwhelming, tumultuous complexity of her life. For about the tenth time that day she chastised herself for letting her mind constantly be dominated by gloomy, grim, and outright depressing thoughts. Then again, what else did she have? She had a best friend who was set to fight the Dark Lord, whose followers had marked her for death simply due to her blood, she had her NEWT's looming ominously next year, and finally there was Ron…
Oh Ron, she sighed to herself. She had no idea why her feelings for the useless lump lingered on after all this time. They could not be more opposite if they tried. He was a sports obsessed, short-tempered, ill-mannered, buffoon, and she was bookish, straight-laced, intelligent(She was well beyond false modesty at this point in her life), and, she liked to think, a rather thoughtful person.
This line of thought led naturally to her and Ron's most recent conflict of wills.
It had happened today, during double potions with the Slytherins. She and Harry and Ron were at a table with Draco Malfoy and Blaize Zabini. As was to be expected, no one was happy with the arrangement, but Professor Slughorn had insisted most stridently upon it, claiming that association with members of other Houses could do nothing but good. It was clear, to Hermione at least, that his real reason was merely to decrease the amount of time it took his gigantic frame to traverse between Harry and Zabini, slimy bugger that he was. At some point, about halfway through the class, Slughorn excused himself on what he claimed to be "official business," and he encouraged everybody to continue their work in an orderly fashion in his absence.
The minute Slughorn was out of the room, Zabini 'accidentally' knocked over Ron's potion with his elbow whilst Ron was chopping one of his ingredients. Instead of summoning the potion back into the pot like any rational human being, Ron leaped up and immediately began accusing Malfoy(who had his back turned and had shown neither the inclination nor the necessary amount of energy to bait Ron). Malfoy had sat back calmly and not even bothered to respond beyond a muttered "screw off Weasel." His apparent lack of interest had only further enraged Ron, and he had walked over and punched Malfoy in the face with incredible force. Malfoy had flown from his seat unto the floor, face bruised and battered, and Hermione had leapt his side, concerned despite all of Malfoy's cruelty. She healed him, using a charm she had learned for use in the coming war, and his only show of gratitude had been a faint nod of his head. What struck Hermione most about the incident had been the way Malfoy's brooding, empty expression had not changed once.
Afterwards she had given Ron a brutal scolding, accusing him of stooping to the Slytherin's level, and he had turned his still simmering anger on her, calling her a "traitor" and a "bitch" for siding with Malfoy against him. Hermione had run off weeping, and resolved to make him pay for his viciousness. She had gone to the library, her refuge through all tough times, and attempted to immerse herself in preparation for whatever was to come.
The problem was, she could not get Draco Malfoy out of her head. No matter how hard she studied, how much she read, how many times she attempted to clear her head, the image of his cold, lifeless grey eyes swam in her mind, taunting her. She had never before beheld such eyes. They held none of their old mischievous gleam(that Hermione had once perhaps been a tad attracted to), and for some reason it seriously bothered her. To the point of and past the brink of extreme distraction. Exasperated, she had left the library, a myriad of thoughts and ideas and conjectures swirling about. And that found her here, returning empty handed and muddled to the Gryffindor tower.