A/N: I know I'm going to sound a little pathetic here but I'm closing in on 2,000 hits on this story, and that makes me really happy, but it would be nice if more people would review, especially those who like the story enough to have it on story alert. One little review is all I'm asking please :)

Enjoy!

Chapter Four

16th October, 1998. Tuesday.

Hermione stared at the empty plate in front of her.

The Great Hall was bustling and alive with the usual activity and meaningless chatter that always accompanied the Hogwarts evening meal, but Hermione managed to hear none of it. She'd been staring, in turn, at everything on the table around her for at least five whole minutes, including the spotless white porcelain plate in front of her. It was at times like this that it was a good thing she had no close friends at Hogwarts and sat alone at the end of the Gryffindor table; if she had people around her, she was sure they'd be throwing strange, concerned looks in her direction.

There was a painful knot in her stomach. Hermione had resolved to attend dinner again, and she was sticking to her word. She really was; it was just that the house elves working in the kitchen – she thought with a pang – had chosen that day of all days to serve food that she absolutely refused to eat.

Everything was unacceptable. Her eyes made their way, once again, around the enormous dishes spread across the table and scrutinising their contents before concluding that particular dish simply would not do, and moving onto the next. So far she had ruled out the bowl containing the chips that had been fried in goose fat, the plate of sliced beef that had at least an inch of fat on every slice, and the enormous chicken pie which had fat droplets of gravy oozing through the pastry.

But truth be told, she was very hungry, and the smells were floating up through her nostrils and driving her brain crazy. Suddenly she didn't know which of the aforementioned dishes she wanted to eat the most. Glancing around at them all again, she was torn between utter disgust and unrivalled want.

She glanced up suddenly, feeling eyes on her. And there he was, staring at her again. He was sitting alone at the end of the Slytherin table, which would normally have been a disconcerting sight. But not since everything that had happened during the War. She didn't know whether it would be more awkward to look away, having so obviously caught him, or stare back.

She opted to look away, but she could still feel his piercing gaze on her.

Choosing food was a welcome distraction. It was difficult, which kept her mind off Draco Malfoy. Hermione was relieved when she spotted a small bowl of vegetables hidden beneath two flagons of pumpkin juice, and pulled it towards her. She served herself a spoonful of carrot, neatly placed in a corner of the plate, followed by two small pieces of broccoli in another corner, and a small helping of mashed potato in a third corner. She opted to leave the last corner empty, as there wasn't much else on offer that she found acceptable.

It took Hermione twenty minutes to eat everything on her plate, by which time a lot of the students had filed out of the Great Hall. Even Draco had left, although Hermione wasn't sure why that surprised her. She looked at her watch and suddenly felt guilty for neglecting her work to have such a small dinner; it wasn't exactly her fault, it was just that the food on the table hadn't been much to her liking. She decided to go to the library to ease her guilt.

When she sat down at her favourite desk and pulled out a half-finished Transfiguration essay, she felt instantly better.

"God, Granger, do you live in here?"

Hermione sighed. It had taken him seven words and about ten seconds to annoy her; she was sure that was some sort of record, even though it was Draco Malfoy and he was an unmitigated pain. She chose not to respond, and was left in peace and quiet for all of five minutes before he spoke again.

"What made you go to dinner tonight?"

She frowned, still looking at her work. Why on earth did he care whether she was at dinner or not?

"Why, are you planning on irritating me at dinner too?" she snapped back. "Why don't you just leave me alone?"

"Touchy, Granger," he said, and Hermione could hear the smirk in his voice even with her back to him. "Nothing wrong with a little friendly conversation."

Hermione turned in her chair so she could face him, glowering. "And why are you being friendly to me all of a sudden? If you can call annoying the living daylights out of me friendly."

His smirk only grew wider. He shrugged nonchalantly. "Who else am I going to talk to?"

He said it as if he didn't care, but Hermione saw his casual expression falter ever so slightly, and heard the underlying bitterness in what he'd said. She sighed, realising that they were pretty much both in the same situation; neither of them had real friends at Hogwarts anymore, and suddenly his pestering her made complete sense. It was the only social interaction he was capable of, at least as far as Hermione was concerned.

"You really must be desperate, if you're talking to me," Hermione said, a trace of humour playing about her lips.

"Maybe I just want your help with homework," he challenged, grinning. Hermione sighed, glaring at him half-heartedly. She highly doubted he needed her help with anything. That being said, she found herself wondering why she rose from her seat to help him anyway.

Astoria flicked her auburn hair in Draco's face as she sat down next to him in the Slytherin common room later that night, stretching languidly across the part of the black leather sofa that he was not occupying. He continued to read over the Charms essay Hermione had helped him with, trying to make sense of the sections she had corrected. Astoria prodded his leg with her toe.

"Can I help?" Draco grunted reluctantly.

"Not really," Astoria shrugged. "Have you heard anything about your father recently?"

"I had a letter from my mother at the weekend," Draco replied quietly. "We'll probably get his verdict just before Christmas. What a way to start the holidays."

Astoria sighed and rested her head in her hand. "You know I'm there if you need to talk or –"

"I don't need to," Draco cut her off sharply. She recoiled slightly, taken off guard by the harshness of his tone. "And if I did, why would I come to you?"

Astoria smiled. "Oh of course, how stupid of me." Draco waited, his ears alert.

"Been spending a lot of time with Granger recently, haven't you?" Astoria commented, a sly smile spreading across her features. "I'm sure you'd go and talk to her if you had any problems, I just didn't think she was your type."

"She's not," Draco retorted, clearly needled. "She was helping me with homework, not any personal problems I might be having."

Astoria nodded slowly, obviously unconvinced. "Yes, maybe that was the case tonight. But what about all the other times you've sat in the library, watching her?"

Draco turned to face Astoria, who threw him a cat-like grin. He really didn't know what to say in response to that, and she knew it. "It's definitely not like you, Draco. Are you feeling okay?"

He gave her a cold stare, ignoring her mocking smirk, and looked back to his essay, his mind whirling. He didn't even know how to explain to himself why he'd started watching her, never mind how to explain it to someone else. He wished Astoria would leave him alone, instead of following him everywhere, as she was so obviously doing, what with her appearing in the Hogsmeade café and now this.

"You know," she mused, looking around the mostly empty common room, "she seems different this year, somehow. I can't put my finger on it."

Draco turned and frowned at her. "What do you mean?"

Astoria shrugged, not looking at him even though he was intrigued by what she was saying. She replied, as if she didn't care, "She doesn't smile anymore."

Hermione found herself, once again, in front of the mirror on her bedside cabinet. In the dim light of the room, she examined her stomach, noting distastefully how eating dinner had made it swell slightly, even though it was nothing more than a plate of vegetables. She ran her hands over her pale skin, frowning unhappily at the thought that she looked thinner the day before, even if only a little.

Looking around the dormitory, she saw the sleeping form of Victoria in the only other bed in the room, seeing as they'd been assigned a private two-bedded room as the only two eighth-year Gryffindor girls. Hermione bit her lip, debating what to do. She felt obligated to do something, although she didn't know what.

Making up her mind, she picked up her wand from beside her mirror. She pointed it at Victoria and whispered a hushed, "Muffliato." Then she climbed down on to the floor beside her bed and started doing crunches until there was sweat pooling in her belly button and beading on her forehead. She ignored it. Then she moved onto doing squats, because she knew her legs could do with some exercise as well, even though it was her stomach that caused the impromptu exercise in the first place.

She lost count of how many she'd done after just a few minutes but some small voice in the back of her mind told her to keep going; she wasn't allowed to stop yet, no matter how much her muscles burned and screamed in protest. It was one in the morning by the time she decided she could stop, and she completed a thorough examination of her body in the little mirror.

Her thighs were too wide, she decided. She would have to do something about those, definitely. As for her stomach, the exercise hadn't yet had an impact on its shape, not that she'd expected it to. But this time, she noticed the tip of a bone jutting from beneath her skin; the bottom rib of her ribcage. She raised her eyebrows; she'd never experienced that sort of thing before. She grasped it in her hand, feeling a strange sense of power as she did so, although she had no idea why. Twisting around, she saw the same effect on the other side of her body; the same jutting little bone. She wondered what it would look like if more of them appeared, her morbidly curious side dangerously close to the surface of her mind at this time of the morning. She let go of her rib and tumbled into bed, already half-asleep.

The small voice in the back of her head whispered nasty things into her brain, and she was too tired to hear anything else. Vile names swirled inside her head until she managed to fall asleep.

A/N: I realise that in the film Astoria doesn't have auburn hair, but I took liberty with this as the book doesn't actually have a full description of her, as far as I'm aware. Personally, I imagine Astoria to look like Emma Stone, hence the auburn hair.

Please review? Even if only for constructive criticism :)

WD,
xo.