Draco roamed the Hogwarts Express looking for Blaise - he was his only friend that decided to return to Hogwarts for their last, optional year. He passed many compartments but he was nowhere to be seen. Even now, with his newfound Veela sight (which was the only thing useful to him at the moment) and it was failing him miserably. As soon as Draco had stepped onto Platform 9 3/4, he completely ignored the sounds filling his ears. All he could hear was unintelligent, annoying and useless gossipy babble from the different years. His smell was also completely useless to him as it, according to a very helpful book his mother gave him about Veela's, was mainly used to smell out his mate. Of course, it was still heightened so he could smell everything at least 20x's better than he previously could and that came both as a curse and as a dream. He soon found out the hard way that not everyone smelled as pleasant as he had thought earlier, but, then again, the book clearly stated that there would only be one person who wouldn't smell as horrible as everyone else did - even on a hot, sweaty day.

He didn't actually know whether he was just being abnormally optimistic or his instincts were influencing him, but he could almost just feel that his mate was on this train somewhere.

Unintentionally, she was hiding from him.

From his Veela.

From their potentially unjust destiny together - if she chooses him, that is.

He could tell that his parents weren't too happy about what he found out from the Seer. After a long mental debate about whether he should just keep it a secret from them or just go out right and say it, he decided to make sure that the less that they knew the better. However, that concept was not to last as his mother brought the matter up first thing at dinner that night. He thought about lying, but he knew better than think that he could get away with such a lie with his parents. Draco practically blurted all the facts out in one big breath, staring pointedly at the wall behind his mother so he couldn't see their ashamed faces. Once his confession was over his Father sat for a few minutes in silence trying to form a response, but when he was unable to come up with any sort of answer, he quickly left the room. His Mother, on the other hand, sat there watching him for a reaction of some sort. When Draco didn't have one, she forced a smile onto her face and tried to look at least mildly happy for him. However, when that didn't work, she began to gush about how it was 'oh so romantic' because it's some sort of forbidden love and that it wasn't his fault that whoever it was had been chosen but it doesn't matter because they'll try their best to accept her. On top of all those well-worded lies, she also said not to worry about Lucius because he was just shocked but will come around to the fact soon - Draco believed that no more than he believed that Hippogriffs were harmless.

XXXXXXXX

I was just reaching the end of the third carriage when suddenly my lungs felt like they were constricting and I couldn't take in as much air as I needed to stay conscious. My breaths were getting shorter and shorter until I was sure that I wasn't actually taking in any oxygen. The top of my head felt like it was on fire and it was as if my brain was turning to ash as I soon found it more and more difficult to form coherent thoughts. It started to feel as if drums were beating loudly in my ears and multicoloured spots were starting to cloud my vision until all I could see were colours. My sight was just about to go black when all of a sudden:

"Draco!" Blaise called, snapping his fingers and waving his hand in front of my face while holding me up with his tight grip. His sudden appearance made me take a sudden intake of air out of shock, which seemed to snap me out of whatever condition I was in. I closed my eyes, shook my head and let out a shuddering breath before I looked back up to Blaise. "Draco, mate, are you okay?" He asked, concerned. I seemed to go back to normal in an unnaturally quick amount of time. One minute I was on the verge of blacking out, the next second I was prepared to continue doing whatever I needed to.

"Yeah, yeah...I'm-I'm fine," I breathed, probably looking confused. Blaise observed me for a second before turning his searching gaze to look around the corridor. I looked around too, trying to see what he was looking for but nothing was out of the ordinary. There was hardly anyone out of their compartments. He nodded absent-mindedly and gently pulled my arm towards his empty carriage.

"What happened?" He asked as we sat down, but something told me that he already knew the answer.

"I have no idea. It just sort of...happened. With no warning," I confessed. "I have a feeling that you know more than me, though."

"You really might want to read a bit more of that book your mother gave you," He suggested knowingly.

"And you have?" I asked incredulously

"Well, being the friend of a Veela-"

"Half Veela," I corrected him, sending a pointed look in his direction.

"Whatever," He said airily, waving the comment away. "I thought that I should know stuff in case you need my help, which you very clearly did a couple of minutes ago. See how much of a good friend I am?"

"So, what? You're some kind of Veela specialist now?" I asked smirking.

"Well, yeah," I scoffed at this.

"Are you ever going to tell me what the bloody hell just happened or are you just going to wait for it to happen again or something?"

Blaise sighed. "It's not going to happen again."

"Good, because if it did, I think I wouldn't be so lucky."

"Draco," At his tone of voice my heart dropped a little bit. It was the kind of voice he'd use when he knew I wasn't going to like something or think that things were going to continue to get worse. "Next time you'll most likely lose control of your logical side. You almost just passed out back there because, for the very first time since coming into your inheritance, you smelt her. When you smell her again, your Veela side is going to take over and Merlin knows what it will do to her - all we can do is hope that both sides of you have a good amount of common sense."

"Smell her again? I didn't even smell her the first time! Isn't there anything that we can do to stop it? At least temporarily?"

"Clearly, you did. Maybe you weren't paying attention to anything. And, unfortunately for you, there is nothing that we can do. We have to, as they say, let nature take its course."

"I wasn't exactly looking for her," I muttered underneath my breath, but being the only two in the otherwise silent compartment, he heard me.

"Well maybe you should. I mean, how many days do you even still have left?"

"283," I sighed, smiling bitterly. That seemed to end our conversation. I was still curious as to how much more he knew about Veelas than I did, but I didn't interrogate him about anything. Instead, I chose to stare out the window in my newfound melancholy, feeling the gaping hole in my heart grow after knowing that she's on the train, but not knowing where. A part of me just wanted to know where she was, but another, the more pessimistic side, didn't want to know out of fear that Fate hadn't finished being so cruel to me.

XXXXXXXXX

"Are you sure you're okay Harry? You look positively green," I asked my best friend. He just nodded tensely, seeming to try to keep himself from retching or gagging from the small gesture. Ginny sat next to him, rubbing his back soothingly. We sat in silence for most of the journey but Harry didn't seem to be getting any better - more like it seemed like he was losing the battle to keep his lunch down. Well, really, it was his fault that he and Ron had a sweet eating contest. Surprisingly, Ron was the first to cave in, rushing off to go be sick a whole hour into the competition leaving Harry the winner.

Suddenly a hard thud seemed to rattle our compartment's door. It sounded as if someone had been slammed into our door, which wouldn't surprise me much as the First Years looked like they could easily get themselves into a fight with the older years with one look. Either way, we didn't pay much notice to it - that was, until, we heard the familiar voice of Blaise Zabini. Him returning as an Eighth Year wasn't so bad in itself - it was what name he was shouting:

Draco Malfoy.

I groaned loudly. "I can't believe he's coming back! It's just the icing on the cake - first Crookshanks is dying, then Harry seemed to lose all common sense over the summer and wolfed down so many sweets that it's making him green, now we find out that Draco bloody Malfoy is on the train on the way back to Hogwarts! This year just can't get any worse!" I ranted to Ginny, Harry still maintaining the horrible shade of green.

"Don't make a mountain out of a molehill 'Mione, maybe he won't even bother us," Ginny tried to reassure me, not entirely sounding so sure herself - more like hopeful.

"I have a feeling that we won't be so lucky. I mean, he's bothered us every other year here - why stop now?" I reasoned.

"Well, we can always hope, can't we? Maybe it won't even be that bad - if he's grown anymore in the looks department at least we'll have a nice view," Ginny said teasingly, wiggling her eyebrows. Suddenly, as if Ginny unconsciously tipped the scale between Harry being able to keep the contents if his stomach down and letting it see the daylight once again, Harry vomited all over Ginny's robes. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened in a silent scream. Once she got over her initial shock, Ginny jumped up from her seat beside Harry as he continued to empty his stomach. Quickly whipping her wand out from her pocket, being careful to avoid any of the sick, she muttered 'scourgify' and her robes were clean once again. Satisfied that they were clean, she gave a half smile but put her sleeve to her nose and sniffed it. Pulling it away with a repulsed expression, she started to get teary eyed. "They're ruined! They absolutely stink!" Finally finishing puking, Harry looked up with the decency to look both sheepish and shocked.

"I'm so sorry Gin - I didn't mean to." Harry rasped.

"It's not your fault," She forced out her mouth but seemed to mutter something under breath along the lines of, 'Well not entirely.' "I'll just lose points until mum gets me a new one," She added bitterly. I felt truly sorry for my friend and I didn't want their relationship to be ruined over Harry's momentary stupidity. I had a spare set of robes anyway - lucky Ginny was in Gryffindor too.

"No, no need Ginny. Lucky you were sorted into Gryffindor, because I have a spare set of robes you can have," I told her.

"'Mione are you-" I cut her off before she could complete her question - I knew what she was going to ask anyway.

"Yes, I'm sure Ginny. You can keep them too - I have no use for two robes and I'm not letting you go get another one when you can just take mine. I'm sure it'll fit perfectly too."

"Thank you so much!" Ginny squealed as she rushed over to give me a hug. I pulled away from her quickly, though, as I realized that she definitely wasn't over exaggerating when she said her robes stunk.

"Oh Merlin, you do reek! Get into my robes quickly before it seeps into your other clothes," I exclaimed as I pulled my trunk down from the shelf and opened it, hurriedly searching through and shoving the clean robes into Ginny's hands, playfully shoving her out the compartment. "And don't come back until you smell better!" I called after her teasingly. Closing the compartment door again, I 'scourgified' the seat that was covered in Harry's vomit, and despite the cold air, opened a window to get rid of the smell.

It should've only taken Ginny about two minutes to come back to the compartment, but when she didn't Harry and I started to get worried...