Room 127 hummed with a sleepy chatter as Hermione slid into her seat next to Harry and Ron. They greeted her with nods and yawns that triggered a dozen other yawns around them, and even Hermione had to battle a tug of weariness that had come with waking up at 5:00 AM.

"Morning," she said, stretching and rubbing the sleep from her eyes with determined vigor.

Harry and Ron mumbled incoherent replies as Hermione unzipped her backpack. She rummaged through her books and heaved out An Introduction to Chemistry, 7th Edition, setting the secondhand copy gently on her desk. Next to emerge from her backpack were her notebook and planner, and then finally, her pencil pouch.

A strangled choking sound came from her left. "What are those?" Ron blurted, sounding more scandalized than the time Hermione had suggested they try a new vegan restaurant in Diagon Alley.

"My books...?"

Ron looked positively horrified. "Books? I thought we didn't need to bring anything 'til Thursday!"

Hermione spared a glance at Ron's desk, bare except for a plastic bag of Red Vines. "We don't, but Snape teaches AP chem at a fast pace. I figured I'd get ahead while I had the chance."

"On the first day of classes?" Harry asked from her left, squinting anxiously at her pile of books. "Don't you think it's a bit early?"

"The earlier the better," Hermione reminded him. "Guys, this is an advanced class…you know that right? I mean, no offense—"

Ron snorted.

"—But you hardly scraped through regularchemistry freshman year. And it's been two years since then."

"Well, that's why we've got you," Harry said as if it were obvious. He ducked Hermione's swat with a grin.

"Honestly, Hermione," Ron said while chewing on a Red Vine. "We wouldn't be sitting in half these AP classes if it weren't for your help. I thought I was gonna fail that English final last semester for sure. But then I got a B minus and McGonagall told me I should take AP Lang. Freaking miracle."

"And like, yeah chem is hard, but you're awesome at it right?" Harry said with a hint of hope in his voice. "So you've got us covered."

Hermione shook her head impatiently. "Don't count on it. I literally won't have any time to helpyou guys with homework this year, so trust me, you don't want to fall behind."

Harry and Ron stared at her as if she'd just suggested that they take summer courses at Yale rather than do their own homework.

"Whoa, wait," Ron said with a pained expression, "You're not gonna help us?"

"I'm taking five AP classes, I'm working part-time, volunteering on weekends, and I've got to plan for S.P.E.W, so...yeah, no. I can't." Hermione tucked her hair primly behind her ears. "I shouldn't even be doing your homework for you at this point, should I?"

"Oh come on, Hermione," Harry sulked. "It's not like we wanna go to Princeton. No offense, of course," he added at Hermione's insulted expression. "It's great you want to go there, but...we could never get in no matter how hard we tried."

Hermione shook her head disapprovingly. "You shouldn't underestimate yourself. If you just tried a bit harder—"

Ron yawned obscenely. "Anyyywaayyy."

"No but seriously, Harry, you can't limit yourself to Stanford just because that's where your parents went," Hermione pressed. "I'm not saying Stanford isn't a great school, but if you just started doing some research, or maybe tour a few other places, you might find-Harry. Are you listening?"

Harry hummed a vague "mhm", suddenly too busy scrolling through Instagram to reply.

Hermione sighed. Everyone knew that Harry Potter, the soccer prodigy, Dr. Dumbledore's protégé, and son of infamous activists Lily and James Potter, had a wealth of potential. He was a natural-born leader and had founded the DA — a now nation-wide service group — in just his first year of high school. But he'd had his sights set on Stanford ever since he learned at the age of eleven that his parents had met there. James and Lily had been such prominent alumni that Stanford had practically reserved a spot for their son. While that should've encouraged Harry to work harder, he only saw it as an easy way out.

Ron groaned loudly. "Oh hell no."

He and half the students around them had turned their attention to the door, and the sounds of quiet murmurs shifted from a dull hum to an excited buzz. Hermione followed everyone's gaze.

Draco Malfoy, aka the Albino Devil, aka If-Regina-George-Were-A-Male, aka God's Greatest Mistake, had just strutted into the classroom, flanked by Theo Nott and Blaise Zabini. Hermione had almost forgotten about his existence over the summer. After going months without hearing a single mention of his name, a familiar dread began sinking through her stomach at the sight of him again.

He carried a certain air of forced coolness, like one of those Instagram-famous personas who carefully staged and edited every photo before captioning it I guess Dubai was cool and sharing it with his 200k followers. It wasn't just the Italian leather slides or the platinum hair (which, despite popular opinion, Hermione knew was unfortunately 100% natural); it was the smirk, the swagger; the insouciance.

Five years ago, Hermione might've bought into the facade like everyone else. She'd been an optimistic young girl hoping to find a friend in every person she came across when she'd first moved into this town. Malfoy had been the first to teach her that not everything in this Christmas-card village belonged in a fairy tale. The day she started school at Hogwarts was the same day she found that boys with golden hair and dazzling grey eyes could deliver an insult just as easily as flipping a page of a book. He had surprised her, but Hermione was nothing but a fast learner, and it wasn't long before she'd learned to hold her head high and brush off his words. They meant nothing to her anymore, nothing but a reminder of the disgusting prejudice that still plagued the roots of their society, and he—well, he was just a pathetically bored rich kid who had turned out to be more of a pain in the ass than an actual threat.

Draco swept a passing glance around the room and Hermione quickly averted her gaze. But it was too late — he had spotted her across the room. He slowly broke out into a grin, like a psychotic serial killer who'd just pinned his next victim.

Hermione heard Harry mutter a curse as the blond sauntered up to their desks.

"Potter, what a surprise!" Draco drawled. "And Weasley! You're both in this class? What, did you two actually grow brains over the summer?"

Harry remained seated, but his shoulders squared and he set his jaw as he looked up at Draco. "Good to see you too, Malfoy, and how was your summer?"

Draco smirked as if he'd been waiting for Harry ask. "Better than yours, I'll bet." He drummed his knuckles against Harry's desk. The signet ring he wore gleamed smugly in the light. It almost looked too large and heavy for his finger.

"Heard you landed a spot in the RIP," Ron remarked. "Must've been fun working under a deluded megalomaniac."

"First, Weasel, congrats on expanding your vocabulary. And no, the Riddle Internship Program isn't meant to be fun. Tom has a pretty low tolerance for..." Draco looked Ron up and down with one lazy sweeping glance, "Incompetence. Takes real talent to get accepted."

"Like you have any of that," Harry scowled.

"Do I detect salt, Potter?" Draco said mildly. Behind him, Blaise and Theo snickered. "I mean, I get it Potter, honestly I do. I'd be jealous too if the only attention I got from anyone this summer was from a criminal and a pack of weasels. And speaking of the criminal-"

"Oh knock it off," Hermione interrupted before Harry could lose his temper over Draco's jab at Sirius.

Draco chuckled and looked back at his friends. "What did I tell you guys? They're like some weird incestuous little family. Did you spend your summer at the Burrow too, Granger? Better than that dump you live in? I wouldn't be able to decide what's worse," his lips curled in disgust. "Camp Ginger? Or a trailer park?"

Hermione kept her glare fixed on him and ignored his comment. "We all know why you got into that stupid program, and it has nothing to do with your "talent". You only got into the RIP because you bought your way in. Riddle wanted your parents' money-not you."

Harry and Ron hooted with laughter beside her. Draco stilled, momentarily caught off-guard, but then he blinked at her slowly. "Yeah? And what exactly did you spend your summer doing?" he asked, deceptively calm. "Sweeping up trash at Hogsmeade? Cleaning tables at the Three Breadsticks? I don't think that's nearly quite as important as interning for the Majority Leader of the Senate for two months...but maybe that's just me." He lowered his voice. "Who knows? Princeton might give you a few brownie points for your hard work, out of sympathy. I hear it's not easy living off our donations these days."

Hermione huffed out an unimpressed breath. "Low blow. But at least I know the difference between working hard for what I want and letting daddy do all the work for me."

"Yeah? We'll see about your hard work by the end of this semester."

"What, like you can do better?"

His lips twitched upwards and he leaned down closer to her as if about to share a secret, close enough she could smell his expensive cologne and see the grey fractals in his eyes.

"I think you're a little confused, Granger," he spoke slowly, enunciating each word like a teacher explaining something to a child. He assessed her features, his lingering gaze making her skin itch. "I've always done better. And I always will, no matter how hard you try."

Under any other circumstances, Hermione would have laughed. Thinly veiled threats to her position as valedictorian never worried her. She was the best in her school, the "brightest girl of her age", and she knew it. But this was Draco scum-of-the-earth Malfoy, and given what she knew about his winning strategies — which usually involved intervention from Lucius — the bastard could actually have a chance. And he knew it.

Draco quickly straightened before she could reply and he checked the clock, where the minute hand was one tick away from 7:30. "Good chat, guys. Have fun getting your asses handed to you today. I heard Snape's in an awful mood." He tsked in sympathy and brushed past them.

Hermione burned her gaze into his back as he and his friends retreated to the back of the classroom. "What is his problem?" she said. "Is it just me, or was he more of a jackass than usual today?"

Harry silently elbowed her in the ribs.

"What?"

He tilted his head towards the door, and Hermione swiveled around.

Snape had just glided into the classroom. An unsettling hush fell over the class as his pitiless eyes travelled over his students. It didn't take long before his gaze landed on Harry and his lips twisted into a familiar sneer. Seconds later, the bell rang, and the door slammed shut behind him.

Ron and Harry quickly stowed their phones and snacks away and procured pencils out of nowhere as Snape stalked down the aisle. Hermione straightened her posture, plastered on her most serious expression, and tried to shake off the encounter with Draco. One monster at a time. She reminded herself that this monster had nothing against her — Snape was scary, sure, but she had done nothing wrong to warrant any trouble.

Still, she couldn't help but recoil from the coldness in their science teacher's glare as he stood in the front of the class and began passing stacks of syllabi down each row of students. Hermione tried to focus on the rustling of the paper instead of the nervous pattering of her heartbeat as she scanned the syllabus that had just landed in her hands. There will be a total of five labs with corresponding seven-page lab reports ... A 50 pt midterm will be administered on October 14 ... The final exam, worth 25% of the final grade, will be administered January 10 ... Any absences on lab days will result in a grade of 0% ... no late work will be accepted ... no grading based on curves ... no rounding of final grades ... no extra credit …

Yikes, was her first thought. But then it slowly began to dawn on her that Snape's harsh setup could be a good thing. The class would be well worth the credits, and she was willing to bet most of her peers would struggle just to score a B. The work load alone would obliterate any competition.

She glanced back at Draco before she could stop herself. As Snape cleared his throat and uttered his first words that morning — something that sounded like "welcome to hell" — Hermione zeroed in on the blond who was casually lounging in the corner next to an orange-tanned Pansy Parkinson. He hadn't bothered to put away his phone, despite Snape's zero tolerance policy for the use of electronics during class. Hermione felt her irritation rise again at the visible reminder that he could get away with murder under most teachers here. One simpering apology and a reminder of his father's generous contributions to the school were all it took for him to suddenly become an angel in everyone's eyes. It wasn't fair.

Her skin prickled when he lifted his gaze from his phone and, as if he'd sensed her staring at him all along, he met her gaze. The corners of his lips curled.

Hermione recognized a challenge when she saw one, and Draco's message was plain and clear. Watch your back, Granger.

She pursed her lips with displeasure and sat a little straighter. Lifted her chin a little higher. Fine, then. You wanna compete? Game on, Malfoy.

Someone in the guidance department,Hermione decided, had a terrible, schadenfreude-isticsense of humor, because it couldn't possibly be a coincidence that she shared every single one of her AP classes with Draco freaking Malfoy.

By the end of the school day, Hermione was furious enough to punch a hole in her locker. Not only was Ferret Boy in all of her classes-he'd also miraculously stumbled across ambition over the summer and picked it up. Hermione had been prepared to crush him in every class, but she'd underestimated him. He'd strolled into every class without a textbook, without a notebook, without even a pencil between his pale creepy fingers, but somehow he'd gotten every single pop-quiz question right. Even the mathletes were impressed when Draco had solved Vector's definite integral problem in a matter of minutes. Hermione suspected this was because his parents had hired him a private tutor to give him a leg up. Still, he wasn't supposed to care; he wasn't supposed to show off. That was her job. Hermione Granger, Academic Showoff. Besides, it wasn't like he even needed his GPA to place him in the top ten! His name alone was enough to grant him instant access to any university, no matter his class rank. What had gotten into him?

She played back the morning's events in her mind as she walked out to her car. Draco had taunted Harry and Ron as usual, throwing a hefty dose of shade while bragging about his own accomplishments. Hermione had grown used to his petty bullying over the years, and she assumed Harry and Ron had become immune to it too. But when he turned his attention to her, his mocking smiles had dropped — there had been a shift in the way he stood, an unfamiliar hardening in his features, and she wasn't sure why. He loathed Harry, that much was obvious, but he had never gone to any great lengths to target her (aside from the incident in seventh grade). So why now? Was he seriously riled up over the fact that she scored better grades than he did? Or was it something else?

Is there even any point in this "competition?" she wondered skeptically as she began the five minute drive to her new workplace. Hermione wanted a lot of things: average-sized teeth, the end to sexism and discrimination, better social skills, etc… but the wish that currently topped her list was something she'd dreamed of for as long as she could remember: acceptance into Princeton. She just needed two more years of hard work. Judging by her grades so far, she knew she had a pretty good chance of graduating as valedictorian. Malfoy could give it a shot, but Hermione doubted he'd ever be able to catch up with her no matter how hard he tried this year.

So why am I worried?

She scoffed. She wasn't supposed to worry over any of the stupid bullshit Malfoy spouted. For five years, she'd managed to proudly ignore all his taunts and threats. She'd never given into his bait. So why start now?

Feeling a bit better, she jabbed the button for the radio and lapsed into fantasies of the future. One day, this would all be worth it — Snape's criticism, the late nights studying, the hours upon hours of work... In less than two years, everyone would finally understand her. Respect her. She wouldn't have to worry about jerks like Draco and his band of followers. Maybe they'd even be begging to work for her someday. (Unlikely, but she could dream.)

Alright, so yeah. Junior year was going to be difficult. But it would also be the most rewarding, kickass year yet, and Hermione decided starting from that moment she was going to own it.