Hermione Granger was sitting alone in the last compartment in the last carriage on her way home from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The end of her sixth year and it was the most uneventful one yet, well except for being partnered with her, then, enemy in every class. Draco freaking Malfoy had been the bane on her existence ever since the first time she had ridden this train. She remembered it clearly...

FLASHBACK

An almost 12-year-old Hermione was searching for the missing toad familiar for one Neville Longbottom and had followed the trail of his prints to a compartment. She had been unsuccessful in her endeavour, but had met the legendry Harry Potter in the last compartment, and his weird companion who had tried to turn his rat yellow.

Sliding the door open she was greeted by two brick walls of boys, who were glaring down at her, "Umm hi. I'm looking for a toad, he goes by the name Trevor."

Behind the brick walls came a shrill laugh and a deep command, "Move you dolts."

Once the boys had moved Hermione noticed a fat black haired girl trying desperately to get into a toned blonde boy's lap. He was pushing her away with everything he had in him before giving up, "Goyle, Crabbe, get this slut off of me."

The witch was furious at the blonde, "DRACO! I'm to be your wife once we graduate! You can't treat me this way!"

She struggled, fruitlessly, against the powers of Goyle and Crabbe, who sat her down between them on the other bench. Finally, the boy named Draco turned to see Hermione, "You are looking for what again?"

"Oh, a toad. He got away from Neville and I said I would help find him. He's pretty torn up about it and I followed the prints to this compartment. Have you seen him by chance?" Hermione was struggling to think clearly while she looked into the boy's eyes. She felt as though her soul was being opened up for all to see and she wanted none other than him to look inside every crack and crevice.

Draco Malfoy had not noticed the girl until he had gotten himself rid of that damn slut known as his intended, Pansy Parkinson. Once he looked at her though his whole world stopped and only she mattered, "She's gorgeous."

Pulling himself together, he hid his feelings he had, as was the Malfoy way, "No we haven't Miss... What is your name?"

"Hermione Granger. I'm just starting here this year and can't wait. What about you?"

"Yeah it's my first too but I've always known I would get in. I haven't heard of any purebloods by the name of Granger, are you from Britain?"

"Pureblood? No, sorry I'm muggle-borne, my parents are muggle dentists."

Draco's world crumbled around him. A mudblood, as his father put it constantly. Personally, he believed that power had nothing to do with blood purity but no one was to know that, or else his father and his friends would destroy him.

"A mudblood? Eww! Get out, I'll get germs!" Pansy squealed while brushing off her clothes.

Hermione noticed Draco hang his head and then look at her with sorrow before smirking, "Yeah get out you lowly MUDBLOOD! We don't want you near us."

With that, the boy's bodyguards got up and pushed her out, then slammed the door on her. Hermione had never heard a more hateful name than the one she was just called. Of course she had read it in many of the books she had gotten her parents to purchase for her at Diagon Alley, but she never expected to be called it by someone that made her feel the way she had just felt.

Sadly, she pushed herself up off the floor and went back to trying to find the toad, but she never forgot the look in Draco's eyes he had just before he changed.

END FLASHBACK

Hermione knew he had never true fully meant it and this past year had just made her suspicions even stronger. On her first morning back in the place she considered more like home than her parent's house, the witch had received her timetable from her Deputy Headmistress and Head of Gryffindor. On the parchment was not the normal schedule that she had gotten the previous years, this time it had just a note stating to arrive at Professor McGonagall's room at the start of first period and she would explain everything immediately.

Once again, Hermione was drawn back to the past and never noticed the door of her compartment open.

FLASHBACK

Finishing her breakfast quickly Hermione shot off a quick good bye to her best friends, the famous Harry Potter and his numb-skull side kick Ronald Weasley, and raced to her favourite professor's office. She was turning the corner and ran straight into the last person she wanted to see.

"Malfoy! What are doing here?"

"Hello Granger and not that it has anything to do with you but I was told to be here by..."

"Professor McGonagall," they said at the same time.

"Yes, Mr Malfoy and Miss Granger, I did ask you to be here. Both of you tied for the highest score rated in the Ministry of Magic since myself and Tom Riddle took our OWLs. Even then, you nearly beat us, it was thanks to a spell, which is now illegal to use, that we took a higher score. You are both ready for your NEWTs but we wish for you to both do more advanced classes, which would mean teaming up and completing your assignments together."

Hermione and Draco did what was expected and complained furiously. Minerva had prepared for this and cast `silencio` on them both, causing her to be on the receiving end of deathly glares.

"It is not up for discussion. You shall be doing all of your class work in the Room of Requirements, which we have asked the castle to be available to yourselves and your professors only. Not even your friends can enter, no matter how much they or you may want them to. Now deal with it and get to the room NOW!"

With a wave of her wand, the charm fell and the teens left the room in a rush, to be sure they were safe from attack. Their bags had disappeared once they had entered the professor's office so there was nothing weighing them down on the long walk to the seventh floor. Along the way, you could have heard an ant crawl by, until Draco forgot about one of the many hidden stairs and fell waist deep with a loud cry.

"Draco! Here, take my hand and I'll pull you up."

He eagerly took a hold and noted that the witch was stronger than she looked, considering he was out of the stair as quick as he fell in. They were breathing hard at first but then there was an awkward silence as they realised what had just happened.

"Umm thank you, I guess. Should we get going?"

Hermione sighed and was about to get up until the boy touched her hand, stopping her in her tracks, "Why did you help me just then?"

"Because you needed it and no one else was around."

"But why? I've been so horrid to both you and your friends since our first day here, hell I even called you the most disgusting thing a person could call another on our first meeting. Why would you help me when you could have just let me fall through the stair?"

Hermione turned her head so Draco couldn't see the tears trailing down her face, "You didn't mean it. I saw you before you called me that word, I saw the disgust that fell across your face when Parkinson called me it."

"You weren't meant to," the wizard whispered, almost inaudibly.

Shaking herself off, Hermione stood and called for her wand, then summoned Draco's to her, as it had fallen down the stairs. Passing it to him, she helped him up and they head back to the Room of Requirement.

END FLASHBACK

That had been the start of their friendship, and the end of all others. Her so called friends from Gryffindor, particularly Harry, Ron, and Ginny, Ron's little sister, had turned their backs on her the moment they heard she was getting friendly with the Slytherin. She had been by their side for years, faltering slightly along the way, but never dying completely. Even the previous year, when she knew everyone was in danger and it was a hoax, she went right beside Harry as he ran head on to the Department of Mysteries and lost his godfather, Sirius Black, for his idiocy.

It had ripped at her heart that they would abandon her so quickly, just because she had made a friend in Draco. That was the reason she had been sitting alone, no one wanted to be seen with her, or else have the golden boy never look at them again. She didn't mind the solitude, hell she had gone through years of it at her muggle primary school, seeing as no one wanted to be seen with the book worm. No, what hit her hardest was the betrayal of the bastards she had called friends.

"Hey Mione."

The witch jolted in surprise at the calm and caring voice that she knew so well, "Dray, how the hell did you get in here? And so quietly?"

Draco grinned slyly at his dear friend, "I told you, I travel in shadows as all vampires do."

It was a running joke with them that Draco was a vampire and was just biding his time to attack her, and then join his father by Voldemort's side. The supposed vampire had told Hermione all about how while he didn't agree with everything the Dark Lord believed, he did with certain parts. Hermione had also confessed, after she had sworn him to never tell, that she had been interested in the Dark Arts ever since Tom Riddle's basilisk petrified her in their second year. Neither had chosen a side but they did know that whichever one chose, the other would follow.

Little did they know that fate was going to make their choice for them.