Disclaimer: Anything you recognise I don't own
A/N By the way this isn't HBP compliant, only because it would complicate the story line up even more, and I'm trying to keep it as simple, yet as interesting as possible.
Hermione woke up with a gasp. It was the nightmare again. She never felt safe when she had it; it was too vivid, too horrific. Opening her eyes and seeing an unfamiliar ceiling did nothing to reassure her. Where was she? As she sat up and looked around the room, she saw the one person who caused all of the events of the previous week to come rushing back to her mind. All the horrible events. She groaned. All she wanted to do now was to go back to sleep: nightmares or not. At least there she wouldn't have to deal with the reality of the world. The reality of being married. The reality of being Mrs Malfoy.
It was September 1st. The day she left for Hogwarts. It was 3 weeks before her 18th birthday, and normally this day was a fantastic day, the day that she returned back to her home in the Gryffindor tower and met up with her good friends. It had been a day to look forward to for the past 6 years, but she knew that she was definitely not looking forward to catching the Hogwarts Express for the final time today. It was always known that this year would be different. After all, it was their last year in Hogwarts and the war against Voldemort was drawing near, which was bound to cause tension between anyone old enough to realise the seriousness of the situation. However, what was going to happen later on this day would change everything, and add to the tension between the students of Hogwarts. She hadn't seen her friends for two months, and normally Hermione would have said 'what could possibly happen in two months tat could change your entire life?' But in this case, she was wrong. Dreadfully wrong. Anything can happen in 2 months and the strangest thing about this summer was that everything was normal, until a week ago. In seven days she had managed to change her entire past and consequently, her future. Today was the day that she was going to have to tell her best friends that she was married to Draco Malfoy. The pure blooded, arrogant, egotistical, bouncing ferret, and the worst thing was that she had to act like she was in love with him.
Well, at least that was the plan. Both she and Malfoy had spent the past few nights arguing about their story, in which the reason for their sudden and surprising marriage would be told to every student at Hogwarts. The cover story they finally chose was a fairly simple one, and if they were any other couple, it would have only taken ten minutes to think up and agree on. But it wasn't another couple. It was them. Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy. Malfoy would argue, not for his cover story being the better and more believable one, but for a means to maintain his pride, for he saw submitting and agreeing with a mudblood truly damaging to any pride he has in himself at all. But in reality, if Hermione was being reasonable and thought about their constant arguments, and wasn't too wrapped up with her hatred towards Malfoy, she would have realised that she did exactly the same thing, letting her pride get in the way of her reason, which caused the conflict between them to evolve into a war.
Hermione started to get up from the couch in which she had slept on for the night. Actually she had slept on the lumpy and uncomfortable couch for the past 6 nights, starting the night both her and Malfoy had found out that Lucius wanted to kill his only son. They had needed a place to stay, and knowing the Malfoy Manor, with endless rooms of luxury, was out of the question Hermione had to think of a place for Malfoy to stay in, seeing as he refused to think for himself. Figuring that at least one person would be trying to find them, to see the developments of the night that they had been married, for whatever reason, Hermione knew that they had to keep a low profile, to give them time to adjust without any interference. She would have taken him to her own house but she knew her parents would flip at the idea that she got married at the age of 17. It just didn't agree with their life long morals, so she would have to give them some time before she broke the news and introduced her husband to them. Actually she probably wouldn't ever talk to them again. She was going to become a pureblood before she went to Hogwarts, and that would mean forgetting about her biological parents and their house. That made a tear escape Hermione's eye every time, she didn't want that to happen, but it already had. So the only place left for them to stay, was a hotel of some sort. A muggle hotel, if they wanted a low profile. She will never forget Draco's reaction to that.
After she had finally managed to convince Malfoy that going to a muggle hotel would not damage his reputation in anyway possible, seeing as nobody there would recognise him, including anybody who might be looking for them specifically, and that he would not die as a result of congesting too much dirty muggle air, she checked both of them in for two single rooms. However at the time, there was only one room left, so they could either take it or leave it, as the receptionist so kindly put it. Sighing, Hermione agreed and payed for the room, just to get them into a place that would allow them to sleep for the night. If only she had realised at the time by agreeing to get one room, and forcing Malfoy and her to share, she would have been left sleeping on the forgotten couch, as Malfoy got all the benefits of the lovely bed that was provided with the room. He claimed that he needed it to maintain his good posture and he wouldn't sleep anywhere else; and she refused to go within a metre of him at all times, due to the unnerving events that occurred between them, the first day they found out that they were married. So that caused Malfoy to end up sleeping on the bed and she would sleep on the couch. Every night. Of course, if she ever dared to breathe the word 'unfair' to him, he would purely smirk at her and remind her that she's the one that didn't want to be anywhere near him, not the other way round.
They had spent three days trying to find a pureblood family for Hermione. Malfoy insisted that the 'Spungen' family was one of the highest pureblooded families that existed in the wizarding world, and Hermione, as much as she loathed the fact that she would have to be called Hermione Spungen, (it took a couple of days for her to realise that she would be called Hermione Malfoy now, regardless of her maiden name) swallowed her pride after three days of solid arguing, and went on the hunt for her 'new family'. With both Hermione's and Draco's brains working together, and if asked, both teenagers would profusely deny that they were working together in any shape, size or form, they found the Spungen mansion quite easily, due to its enormous size. The Spungen family only consisted of two people, Jack Spungen and his wife, yet they were the hardest people to locate in a mansion as big as theirs. Once discovered however, their memories were easy to modify, so easy that Hermione suspected a trap, but luckily, no deception was afoot.
It was in only a matter of minutes and rather reluctantly, that Hermione Granger became Hermione Spungen, a pureblood who is the daughter of Jack Spungen, that was hidden in the muggle world for almost 18 years for her own protection and was finally tracked down and told the 'truth' about her blood and lineage. That was the story that Draco had come up with and Hermione reluctantly agreed with, and it seemed that the whole of London bought the story, due to the amount of coverage from the Daily Prophet on this particular event, to Hemione's frustration at Malfoy's successfulness.
As Hermione stood up, Malfoy started to stir, which was just as well in Hermione's opinion, because they needed to leave for the Hogwarts express in an hours time, and she did not want to wake the sleeping teenager up. He was not a morning person. She knew that they were going to have a very interesting year ahead of them, and that they were going to have to become at least civil with each other sooner or later, and give up with all the nonsense of hating each other and fighting constantly. There was no other way that they could pretend to be in love with each other if she constantly flinched each time he touched her, or he avoided her like the plague, which is what had been happening in the past few days. Hermione had to spend time with her 'new family', and Malfoy would escape whenever he possibly could, leaving them to meet up at their hotel in the evenings only, where they would fight constantly about anything and everything.
Before long, both Draco and Hermione had packed their trunks and were preparing to floo to platform nine and three quarters, and as the minutes were counting towards the time Hermione saw Ron, Harry and Ginny again, she was getting more and more nervous. The only thing that she could focus on, to try and distract her mind was the mystery of who arranged for her to get married, and why? By becoming a pureblood, would that change the plans that somebody had in store for them, or would it not affect them at all? All these questions, and many more were spinning about in her head, and she had no idea what she was doing, it was like she was on cruise control. She didn't realise that she had spent an entire morning being civil with Draco Malfoy, was actually walking alongside him in a public place and that instead of fighting, they were in a comfortable silence. She didn't realise that once they had arrived at the Hogwarts Express, she had let Malfoy take her trunk and put in on the train for her and she didn't realise that in her state of unawareness that she had thanked him for it; something that she had never said to him in the entire history of their relationship, if you can call it that. In fact the only thing that brought her out of her thoughts, was the one thing she had been dreading the whole day. It was hearing a group of familiar voices greet her with:
"Hey Hermione! How were your holidays? We want to hear all about them."
A/N: I hope you enjoyed the chapter. I sped through this part because I really just want to get them to Hogwarts so they can start getting some answers and start to interact between each other better, and this part is really boring in comparison, but please can you keep reviewing just to let me know what you think, or what I can do better. I would really appreciate it.
Here's an interesting fact for the day: the name I used for Hermione's pureblooded family was the name JK Rowling originally meant to use as Draco's last name.
I'd like to thank those who have already reviewed, it always gives me a great feeling that when people review and I tried to get another chappie up as quickly as I could, but I've been really busy lately so I've had to fit this in to all the spare time I have left. Thanks again
