A/N I was reluctant to mention in the prologue that this is my first published story on this website for the simple reason that, over my many years of reading fanfiction I am at my most sceptical when the author announces that they haven't done this before. As always, I am pedantic about grammar, spelling and OOC characters on everybody else's fanfiction so please be pedantic on mine.

Onwards and upwards…

The train ride was always bad. She tried to get there early to get a compartment. It was better to see people move on when they saw it was Hermione in there than to see them tell her to move on when she tried to join them in their compartment.

It gave her more reading time, anyway. That was a plus, wasn't it?

She was early again, luckily. She managed to get one at the back of the train, near the bathrooms. That way, she didn't have to walk past people and watch them hold their nose, or snort, or whisper to their friends (depending on how old they were) whenever she walked past. That was why she was early to class too.

She thought back to last year, where she didn't need to be so cautious all the time. For the most part, the Golden Duo had provided some semblance of a barrier from the students, and when the had decided to traipse around the countryside looking for things that didn't actually end the war they had taken her with them.

The time spent with the two of them on the 'Horcrux Hunt' - mostly putting up wards and hiding in the tent once they inevitably started arguing - had been frustrating for Hermione because of its lack of usefulness, but at least it gave her an Gryffindorian excuse to leave the castle.

She pulled out her battered copy of Pride and Prejudice but didn't get very far before she heard the door slide open. Hermione waited for the inevitable sigh of disgust when whomever it was realised that they didn't want to sit in this compartment. To her surprise, it never came.

She dragged her eyes up from her book to see a stormy-eyed, thin-lipped Draco Malfoy glaring at her as if she was a dead cockroach on the floor. This was a more realistic comparison than Hermione believed (given that it was the best she could come up with on short notice; she liked to insult people back in her head) because that was the precise expression he had had just that morning when a dead - but amazingly still squirming –cockroach oozed itself all over his best shirt. However, Hermione didn't know this.

Apparently he had asked her a question because he was looking at her as though he was thoroughly exasperated with her. This didn't bother Hermione as much as it used to – not as much, but still bothersome – because she got this look rather a lot.

But he was still looking at her with one perfectly manicured and irritated eyebrow raised, and she felt compelled to ask him to repeat what he had said, and hopefully be able to ignore the sour look he would predictably have. She did so, and he did so, and then he repeated himself: "I asked you, you self-absorbed, insufferable mudblood, if you could come to the Prefects meeting because apparently some idiot made you Head Girl."

Hermione looked at him in confusion. "But why are you telling me this?"

"You mean you didn't know? The same idiot made me Head Boy!" He laughed. "Our very own teacher's pet, mudblood know-it-all actually doesn't know something? That's priceless!"

Hermione got up silently and left behind the doubled-up Malfoy to go to the other end of the train for the meeting.

"Wait-wait up Granger!" he shouted amid snorts of laughter. "You actually didn't know I was Head Boy? You're funnier than I thought you'd be. Tell me something else about your pathetic existence so I can laugh about that too!"

Hermione kept walking, wrapping her arms tightly around Pride and Prejudice, which for some reason she hadn't put down.

His laughter slowly dying down, Malfoy pushed past her – still managing not to touch her, a feat that he had managed to perfect - grumbling about her going too slow.

Upon seeing her questioning look at him going the same way as her, he smirked.

"Yes, Granger. I've been made Head Boy. Didn't you know? Wait a second-" he paused, his face lighting up as if he had just realised the cure for cancer – though in all honesty he probably wouldn't be excited about that after all, cancer was purely a muggle thing considering healers had found a cure years ago – "I've thought of a game! It's called: 'What else doesn't the know-it-all know?' Rather a lot, it turns out," he said mockingly, finally continuing his way down the train and into the larger compartment used for the prefects before they made their rounds.

To Hermione's surprise, Professor McGonagall was there. She also happened to be one of the two people in the entire castle who truly liked Hermione Granger, the other one being Luna Lovegood, who, being socially unacceptable as well, got along well with Hermione the few times they saw each other. However, taking into account that, for whatever reason, Hermione had been sorted into Gryffindor (since when was she brave? Something that, clearly, she and the rest of Hogwarts all wondered), that Luna was in sixth year, not seventh, and that she was also frequently taken out of school for Nargle Hunts and other such strange things, the amount of times that they actually saw each other were unsurprisingly infrequent.

At the start of her first year, her lack of friends was concerning to Hermione, but she'd grown kind of (not really) used to it. At the very least, she dealt with it in a different way – before, she had tried to push herself onto people (Gryffindor after all, right, plus what her mother always said: 'Just go join them, sweetie, they won't tell you to go away… you just need to show them how much fun you are!) but that was fighting a losing battle, so she just tried to ignore it now.

That was really what got her so into books. Of course she'd always had an interest in them and she'd liked learning, but it wasn't all she did. She'd had some semblance of a social life! Of course, she wasn't exactly popular Before Hogwarts either, but she'd had a little circle of friends, and they'd had play dates and sleepovers and Barbies and other such girly things.

But when they realised that she was going to some snobby rich kids selective boarding school, they'd kind of lost contact, and books became a sort of refuge. Her favourite charm was now the undetectable extension charm so she could fit her ever-growing library in a small bag.

But back to the matter at hand - the strange appearance of a Professor – and Professor McGonagall, no less – on the Hogwarts Express.

"Mr Malfoy; Miss Granger. How nice of you to join me," she said, motioning for the to sit down in the wooden chairs that had also appeared out of nowhere. The lady herself was already seated in a distinctly more comfortable looking chair. However comfortable it may have been, she still managed to look sternly austere.

"You already know that you are Head Boy and Girl. What you may not know is why. The two of you being Heads is what I would venture to call an experiment. You might say that this will be a trial period. Albus has assured me that the two of you can treat each other like mature, responsible adults-" and here she looked more than a little dubious, "-to assist the school in getting past its prejudice against people of different financial or blood status." Here she looked grimly at Malfoy. "I am less confident, but I am hoping that the two of you can prove me wrong,." She smiled almost imperceptibly at Hermione, who knew that that kind of stern, slight twitch of the mouth was as close to visible encouragement as McGonagall would ever get.

"The prefects will be here soon and I expect the two of you to behave like the mature and trustworthy adults that Albus thinks – and I hope – that you can be. You are children that must be watched over and I expect you to behave accordingly. I've left you a list of the basic things you'll need to know and cover in this meeting. I trust that you can figure out the rest."

With that, Hermione's last hope of having a civilised discussion walked out the door and disappeared down the train.

Throughout the Professor's speech Malfoy's face had slowly became more and more alarmed as he finally realised what being Head Boy – with Hermione as Head Girl – would actually entail. As soon as she left he slumped down into the chair with his head in his hands. From the depths of his misery – and to Hermione's surprise - he managed to form a sentence.

"You stay away from me, I'll stay away from you," he growled.

Hermione nodded cautiously. Anything was likely to make him angry at her at this point, and as much as she loved their little one-sided arguments, she wasn't in the mood right now to be verbally bashed up. Apparently (so far), Malfoy had enough 'decency' to refrain from actually hitting her, but it was only a matter of time.

The old muggle saying, Hermione mused, that 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me' was something that someone who had clearly never had any feelings had thought up. Whoever decided this little piece of wisdom was clearly either not incredibly intelligent, or else just really popular with absolutely everyone.

Malfoy was now groaning loudly enough that she felt she should acknowledge it, but she squished that feeling down abruptly; it would only end in tears. Besides, he would probably tell her eventually.

He was reading the list that Professor McGonagall had left for them and had apparently gotten to a part he particularly despised; with all the others he had just scoffed or groaned quietly. This one he was deigning to let the poor little mudblood hear his despair. Hermione felt honoured.

It turned out that Malfoy had never realised that the Heads shared a common room. Hermione, for one, had never quite understood that part – what if the two didn't get along? Especially since the two heads were usually from different houses, in the interest of fairness. Especially if one was a Slytherin.

The other would either be:

1. A Gryffindor, in which case the two would argue constantly and it would probably end in:

a) Injury

b) Expulsion

c) Death (not an exaggeration, it had happened once before, in 1942)

2. A Hufflepuff, in which case the Slytherin would torment the poor person until either:

d) The Hufflepuff got depression/anxiety

e) The Hufflepuff committed suicide from their previous and now worsened case of depression/anxiety (not an exaggeration either, it had happened in 1965).

f) The Slytherin got expelled for

I. Causing the student to commit suicide

II. Torturing the student until he/she got depression/anxiety

g) The Slytherin was murdered by avenging Hufflepuffs because of (I) and (II) or by the original Hufflepuff because he/she was a serial killer (not an exaggeration, it had happened before, in 1913)

3. A Ravenclaw, in which case the two would have educated, rational and reasonable arguments until:

h) The Ravenclaw had Gryffindor tendencies and injury, expulsion or death occurred.

i) The Ravenclaw had Hufflepuff tendencies and one of (d) (e) (f) or (g) happened, as long as you replaced the word 'Hufflepuff' with 'Ravenclaw'

j) The Ravenclaw had Slytherin tendencies and the Slytherin ended up completely outsmarted and any one of (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) or (g) happened – or something completely different

4. The only way that any sense of harmony might occur would be in the unlikely even that the two of them:

k) Were friends (near to impossible)

l) Weren't from Slytherin (surprisingly unlikely)

Therefore, Hermione's Conclusion:

They wouldn't be:

i) Alive

ii) Sane

iii) Still at the school

iv) Friends

by the end of the year

Hermione had thought a lot about this and it seemed to her a whole lot of unnecessary cruelty.

But perhaps she was just being cynical.