Here's the next chapter! I don't own the characters, just the plot!

France was beautiful to put it simply. It would've been even more beautiful if my parents hadn't insisted on coming along. I could hear them arguing behind me as I made my way through the crowd of tourists in the hotel lobby to Ginny.

"Not that I don't appreciate your parents being here, Hermione," Ginny began, eyeing my parents as they bickered in the corner, "but why are they always acting like they need to keep an eye on you?"

"Their reasoning this time was that I was coming here to drink or do drugs."

"Have you even touched alcohol before?"

"Nope. Try telling them that though. According to them, I'm the trouble child in the family."

"For doing nothing?"

I shrugged. "I don't talk much to them these days. Apparently, that means I'm hiding something."

She gave me a sympathetic look before gesturing widely to the rest of the hotel lobby in front of us.

"Fear not, my darling! We are in Paris, surrounded by hot, French boys, beautiful architecture and croissants!"

"I do like croissants."

Ginny rolled her eyes and lowered her arm. "Yes, I know you have a weird obsession with bread. My point though is that it's our last day in France so let's enjoy ourselves a bit while your parents have to stay at the hotel with Ms. Vector and sort through the competition results."

The only way my parents had been allowed to come on the trip was as volunteers. So here they were, pretending to care about how I had done in a contest when I knew that the only reason they were in France was to keep an eye on me. It was suffocating. Part of me was glad that Draco had missed the trip due to an unfortunately timed fever because at least now I didn't have to worry about him meeting my mom and dad.

"Alright, let's go," I said and, ignoring the worried looks from my parents, Ginny and I joined Luna and Padma at the entrance to the hotel before making our way through the streets of Paris.

The four of us visited the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre and took several pictures at each location while Padma recited to us the history behind each building. Towards the end of the day, we decided to stop at a little French pastry shop before heading back to the hotel. It was mainly for my benefit, but I could tell the girls enjoyed it there as well. Immediately after entering the little, brown café, my nose was overwhelmed by the mingled scent of coffee, tea and fresh baked bread. The inside of the store was painted in shades of brown and pink with a door leading out to a patio decorated with white, metal furniture and small pink and white flowers. After I grabbed my pastries and the girls grabbed their cups of tea, we decided to settle into one of the tables out on the patio. It was beautiful weather to sit outside and enjoy the scenery. I pushed my sunglasses onto the top of my head and closed my eyes before leaning back in my chair, enjoying the feeling of the sunlight on my skin.

Before we had left for France, I had decided to replace my glasses with contacts. While I enjoyed not having to constantly push my glasses up the bridge of my nose, the contacts tended to hurt my eyes after awhile because I had accidentally been given the wrong prescription and didn't have enough time to get new ones before we had left America. So, I would often close my eyes when I could to prevent myself from getting a headache.

"Hermione, there's a hot, French boy staring at you," Ginny hissed excitedly.

"I'm not gonna lie. He is pretty hot," agreed Luna.

I opened one eye to look at the three girls in front of me. "As much as I appreciate the two of you trying to set me up with a boy from another country, I'm going to have to pass. Now I have a headache, so let's just ignore any French boys and focus on eating our food and drinking your tea." I closed my eyes again and took a deep, relaxing breath.

"Hermione, he's coming over here now," Padma said, grinning widely.

My eyes shot open as I turned to look at the dark-skinned, raven haired girl. "No, I don't want to socialize. I'm barely dealing with you three as it is. Make him go away."

"Ladies," came a deep voice from my right.

I spun around and almost fell out of my chair at the proximity of the tall boy next to me. He had olive colored skin, black hair and had a lean runner's build. He also had deep green eyes that were looking directly at me, despite the fact that he had addressed the whole table.

"Well, hello handsome," Ginny practically purred, while Padma elbowed her. "What?"

The boy grinned at Ginny before turning back to me.

"I'm Blaise," he said holding out his hand for me to shake.

"You're not French," was all that came out of my mouth as I shook his hand.

"What she means," Luna interceded, "is that her name is Hermione." She shot me a look that told me to pull myself together.

"Yeah, that's what I meant."

He chuckled. "No worries. You're right though, I'm not French. Mostly Italian, but I grew up in America, which is where I assume all you lovely ladies came from."

"That's right! I'm Ginny, this is Padma, and that's Luna. Would you like to join us?"

I glared at Ginny, silently telling her that if she didn't get the strange Italian boy away from me, she would pay. She simply gave me a dazzling, oblivious smile as Blaise Zabini accepted her invitation and sat down to join us, ordering himself a coffee.

"Can I get you anything?" he asked, noticing that I didn't have a drink in front of me.

"I'm good. I don't really like coffee or tea." This time Padma elbowed me. "I mean, thanks for offering." I rubbed my side and turned my glare on her.

We all continued to chat until the sun began to set and it was time to head back to the hotel. Blaise offered to walk us and he and I quickly fell behind the others as we became focused on exchanging stories. I actually really enjoyed talking to him and I no longer considered him a stranger. He had told me all about his stepfather and mother, as well as his two younger half siblings, and I told him all about my sister and parents. I felt weirdly relaxed and like I was interesting, which made it very easy to tell him about pretty much every part of my life. Once we finally reached the hotel, about fifteen minutes after Ginny, Luna and Padma probably had, I turned to him to thank him for walking me back and to say goodbye.

"You said you go to Hogwarts right?" Blaise said, before I opened my mouth.

"Right. Why?"

"I used to go there for like a month three years ago. I'm supposed to go back next semester for my fifth year."

"Really?" I said surprised. "How come you didn't mention that before?"

"I didn't know if I actually would. I just started getting used to things here. But I think I could manage it if I knew you were at Hogwarts too," he claimed, grinning and leaning closer.

For a second, I wondered if he was going to kiss me. With the soft yellow glow from the streetlamp highlighting his features and the light from the stars reflected in his eyes, it seemed like it was the perfect scenario for a first kiss. However, as he got closer, a pair of silver eyes flashed through my mind and I quickly put up my hand to stop the boy from getting any closer, feeling guilty for some reason. Blaise didn't miss a step and instead grabbed my wrist, placing a chaste kiss on the back of my palm.

"I'll see you next year, maybe?" he winked before turning away from the hotel and heading home, not waiting for my response.

I had absolutely no idea how to process what had just happened. Why didn't I just let Blaise kiss me? I entered the hotel and made my way to the room I shared with Ginny, Luna and Padma, fully intending to tell them everything that had happened outside of the hotel. However, the scene before me once I opened the door quickly put a stop to that plan.

Ginny was almost passed out drunk on the crimson couch in the common area with Luna fretting in the background and Padma doing her best to move Ginny into an upright position.

"I've literally been gone for less than thirty minutes," I said angrily, running over to Ginny and helping Padma move her into the bathroom in case she threw up. "Why is this even happening and how?"

"Padma and I went downstairs to get some more towels and when we came back upstairs she had already started drinking and we couldn't stop her for awhile and now she's drunk!" Luna cried.

All of us knew Ginny had started drinking last year and that something had really been bothering her lately, but none of us had wanted to force her to tell us. I sighed, knowing that it was time to get to the bottom of what had been wrong with her.

"Honey," I said gently, pulling her hair back from her face. She wouldn't look at me and kept her gaze set on the yellow faded tiles of the bathroom floor. "You need to tell us what's going on."

Ginny turned her tearstained face towards me. I didn't know exactly when she had started crying, but it hurt to see someone who was usually so playful in so much pain.

"You guys wouldn't understand," she whispered softly. "You can't understand what it feels like for your parents to want you to be someone you're not. I'm terrified that if they ever found out who I actually am, they would never forgive me."

I stared at her in shock. "Ginny, how many times have I called you, crying about how my parents don't even see me? And when they do, it's to criticize me for not being a carbon copy of my sister? I'm not going to say I understand exactly what you're going through, mainly because I don't even know what it is, but we all have shit that we're dealing with. So, we definitely get it. But, honey, you can't keep doing this to yourself. We need to know why you've been so unhappy."

"What if you guys look at me differently after I tell you?"

"Ginny, nothing would ever make us look at you differently. But there are only two ways you're getting out of this bathroom. You can either tell us or you can get out over my dead body," Padma said firmly.

She took a deep breath and looked at each of us before whispering: "I'm bi."

There was a brief moment of silence in the small bathroom.

SMACK.

"OW! What the fuck was that for?!" Ginny shouted, glaring up at Padma and looking more like her old self after being suddenly whacked in the arm.

"You actually thought we would care whether or not you were straight? Ginny we love you no matter what. That means we would love you if you were straight, lesbian, or whatever else! Hell, we would probably still love you even if you killed someone!"

"Please don't though," I interrupted quickly.

"My point is," Padma continued, "we love you. And if you decide to tell your parents, we are here for you. You're never going to lose your family though because we're also part of your family."

Ginny gave us all a watery smile. "You really mean that?"

"Yeah," Luna chimed in softly. "Just please don't drink so much anymore?"

Ginny nodded fervently. "I won't. Thanks you, guys, for taking care of me."

"What are friends for?" I shrugged, before helping her to her feet and getting her changed into a set of plaid pajamas from the trunk at the foot of her twin-sized bed. Padma settled into the matching bed across the room, before I returned to the duplicate room that I shared with Luna on the other side of the common area.

It had been a long night, filled with many more important things than Blaise, leading to me completely forgetting about him and our almost kiss.

After we returned from France the next morning, our lives began to settle down. Ginny was now openly bisexual at school and she even had a girlfriend named Mallory. I didn't know her well because she was a sixth year, but she seemed very nice and made Ginny happy so that's all that mattered.

On the other hand, Draco and I experienced little change in our relationship. We continued to argue and then ignored each other when he got another girlfriend, however, once they broke up, we went back to arguing. Our lives continued to be a heated competition, but we both knew we were joking with each other. When we teased and called each other names, it was understood that there was no malice behind it.

I was also spending most of my time after school nowadays at Interact Club. This club was a community service organization that my sister had initially introduced me to, but that I had really grown to enjoy being in. I was currently vice president of the club and had plans on running for president the following year, which was a goal all of my friends were supportive of. Because of that, I spent almost all of my free time at charity events or fundraisers for Interact and Draco spent his time complaining that I didn't have time for him.

"Why are you always at Interass," he whined, walking me to the club meeting on the third floor of the school.

"Interact," I corrected him automatically. "Because I enjoy the work the group does, and I feel like I'm doing something important. Plus, it's not a bad extracurricular to put on an application for college." Once we reached the door, I turned to face him. "I can't just rely on sports and my family's money to get into a good college like you."

"I do more than that."

I looked up at him and saw a little bit of hurt in his eyes. Feeling a twinge of guilt, I prepared myself to apologize. I wasn't really mad at him, I was more mad at my parents for keeping me awake last night with their arguing, resulting in me having to go after school for Cross Country practice and this club meeting instead of before school because they had been too tired to wake up early. Now, I would have to stay up late for what felt like the tenth night in a row studying for a major exam tomorrow since I would be lucky to be home by six and would probably only get the chance to study by eight. If anything, Draco had been unnaturally nice to me today. He had waited after finishing soccer practice for me to shower and change out of my running clothes so that he could walk me to the Interact classroom.

Besides none of the stuff I had said about him was completely true. He worked hard to be captain of the soccer team as a fourth year and was really involved in schoolwork and extracurriculars. Draco's pride made it so that he always made sure he earned the things he received. Half the time, he wouldn't even tell people his last name so that teachers and students wouldn't associate him with his parents and all of his accomplished siblings.

I sighed and nudged his foot with mine to bring his attention back to me.

"I know, I'm sorry. You know I didn't mean it."

Immediately, all was forgiven as he smiled brightly down at me. His eyes quickly darkened with worry though as he took a step closer to me, examining my face.

"You haven't been getting enough sleep."

"Yeah, I have," I turned away, knowing that he would be able to tell I was lying.

He grabbed my hand and gently turned me back towards him, tilting my chin up and looking at me intently. He was unbearably close, to the point where I could see the little flecks of blue in his eyes and smell his cologne. I felt like I had stopped breathing for a moment.

"No, you haven't. You look like shit."

And just like that, the spell was broken.

"Gee, thanks," I snapped, stepping away from him.

"Well the contacts really emphasize the bags under your eyes."

"Yeah, I get it."

"At least when you had glasses you could hide them a bit better."

"Uh huh."

"And you're breaking out everywhere."

"Malfoy!"

He smirked, knowing he had successfully irritated me.

"Try to get some sleep and I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, whatever," I muttered, finally heading into the classroom.

I quickly scanned the room before my eyes landed on a table where a tall, ginger boy and a slightly shorter one with black hair and glasses had already taken two seats. I immediately made my way over to them.

"Hi Harry!" I greeted, taking my seat next to him. "Ronald," I grinned at him, knowing he hated when I called him that.

"Was that Draco I saw kissing you goodbye?" Ron asked smugly, watching as my grin was immediately replaced by a glare. "I was wondering where he disappeared to after soccer."

"Don't spread rumors. And he was just waiting so he could annoy me for a bit after practice."

"If you say so," he sang mockingly before turning to the tall, blonde who gracefully sank into the seat next to him.

Lavender Brown shot me a bright grin and began talking to Ron, greeting him happily. Lavender and I had become close this year, but something about her unsettled me. I didn't like how it felt like she was constantly judging and feeling superior to me. There were some trust issues there between me and her, but I decided to just ignore them in favor of keeping the peace.

They definitely like each other. I though to myself as I watched Ron shamelessly flirt with the pretty girl in front of me.

"I don't trust her," Ginny voiced my thoughts as she dropped herself into the chair next to me, with a lot less grace in comparison to Lavender.

"Your brother seems to."

"We already know he's as dumb as a brick."

Ron and Ginny were twins, with Ron being slightly older than Ginny by a couple of minutes. Ginny loved her brother to death but would also pretend for as long as she could that they weren't siblings since he was overprotective of her. In fact, I hadn't known that the two of them were siblings until about a month after I had met Ginny and ran into him at her house.

"Well if they start dating you're going to be seeing a lot more of her."

Ginny scrunched up her face as if the idea physically repulsed her.

"Oh god, please no. Speaking of relationships though," she grinned, spinning around in her chair to devote all of her attention to me, "word is that Harry over there has a huge thing for you. Apparently, he's liked you since the beginning of the year."

I glared at her, warning her to keep her voice down before surveying the boy next to me. Harry was cute, in a boy-next-door type of way. I knew that many people liked him, but I, unfortunately, did not.

"I'm pretty sure that's just a rumor," I said, hopefully. "It doesn't matter anyway because I don't have feelings for him. He's just my good friend."

"I see. Does that have anything to do with a certain blonde, with creepy, silver eyes?"

"No. It has nothing to do with him. I'm not even positive he's my friend."

"If you say so," she said in an eerily similar manner as her brother. "If you did like Draco though, it would be the most epic love triangle. Harry would be in love with you, Cho Chang would be in love with him, and you would be in love with Draco."

"Doesn't that make a square?"

Her eyes widened. "That's even better!"

After the club meeting, I found myself alone with Harry as we walked towards the parking lots in the back of Hogwarts, where our parents would pick us up. It was nearing 6:30 because the president had been late starting the meeting. I could practically feel my body wanting to shut down on itself out of exhaustion. I was operating purely on autopilot at this point, so I almost didn't notice when Harry laid a hand on my arm and started speaking to me.

"Do you have a minute to talk before you go?"

I checked the time on my phone. "Yeah, I have a little bit, I guess. Something wrong?"

"No, nothing's wrong," if I had been more attentive, I probably would have noticed how he didn't meet my eyes and kept fidgeting with his hands.

"We've been friends for awhile now and I just think you're really great. We just get along so well and you're so funny and smart and…"

I felt my eyes beginning to close. Pay attention! Don't be rude. My eyes really hurt though and I'm so tired. Doesn't matter! Just focus on him.

"What I'm trying to tell you, is that I like you," he blurted out in a rush.

"I like you too," I said instinctively. At that point, my brain finally caught up with my mouth. "Oh, but like, not like that."

The hopeful look on his face immediately fell and I cursed myself for being so idiotic.

"Oh."

"I'm really sorry. You're really nice and sweet, but we're just so great as friends and I'm not trying to date anyone right now," I weakly smiled. How cliché. I'm basically telling him it's not you it's me. I winced internally at that realization.

"No, it's fine. I totally get it," Harry offered up a half-hearted smile.

"Friends?" Yes, because asking to be just friends definitely fixes things and doesn't make it worse.

"Of course," Harry gave me an actual grin then. "Stop beating yourself up over it. I'm a big boy and our friendship is always more important to me."

I breathed a sigh of relief and gave him a hug, apologizing once again, though he insisted I didn't have to. When we finally parted ways, I knew it would be mildly uncomfortable between us for a while, but overall, we would remain as close as we had always been.

"How was school?" my father asked as I got into the front seat of the car before pulling out his phone and making a business call, not listening to my answer.

"Good, I guess," I told no one in particular as my dad just nodded at me and continued speaking to whoever was on the opposite end of the call.

Normally, I looked forward to getting a break from studying and just school in general. However, with things the way they were at home, I really did not want to have to go back to having no escape from the screaming matches taking place between my family members. I was honestly dreading the last day of school. Unfortunately for me, because I didn't want school to end, it seemed to end that much faster.

Ring, ring, ring.

There it was. The bell dismissing us for the day and officially announcing the start of summer vacation. I walked out of the doors with my friends and waited for my dad to come and pick me up. I was so distracted by my attempts to figure out how to best spend time with my family this summer while simultaneously avoiding them that I didn't even realize Ginny had walked up to me until she had started jabbering.

"I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. I cannot do this."

After a moment spent trying to figure out what the hell she was talking about, I remembered that she had decided to tell her parents and other siblings she was bisexual because her and Mallory were getting more serious. Ron obviously knew since he went to school with us, but he had kept it to himself out of respect for Ginny. I turned to face her, grabbing her shoulders.

"Do you know who you are?" I began, shaking her a little as I spoke. "You are Ginevra Molly fucking Weasley. Do you know what that means?"

"That my parents hate me and that's why my name is Ginevra?"

"Possibly. But it also means that you are the most confident, sarcastic, amazing woman I know. You can intimidate every single person at Hogwarts easily, including the teachers, and you don't let anyone tell you who you are. You tell them. You can do this because this is who you are."

Ginny grinned at me and nodded as Ron, Harry and Draco approached the two of us.

"You ready to go Gin?" Ron asked.

She took a deep breath and hugged me tightly. "Yeah, I'm ready. You better call me over the break Hermione! Don't forget!"

"I won't."

Squeezing my hand one more time, she gave me enough space to let Ron hug me goodbye before heading down the street to where Mrs. Weasley's car was parked waiting for both of them.

"I should get going too," Harry said. "I'll see you later, man. Bye Hermione."

He gave me a sweet smile and hugged me tightly before leaving the two of us alone.

"You sure nothing happened between you two?" Draco asked, eyeing the back of Harry's head suspiciously as he walked away.

I rolled my eyes. Draco had cornered me in the hallway a couple of weeks ago and demanded I tell him every detail about mine and Harry's nonexistent relationship. Once I had reassured him that nothing was going on, he had muttered something about me being too trusting for my own good and not worrying about other people's intentions enough before stalking off.

"Yes, I told you multiple times. Not that it's any of your business."

"Yeah, yeah."

He finally broke his one-sided staring contest to face me.

"Have a good summer stupid," he said, before handing me back my yearbook.

I didn't remember ever giving him it to sign. As a matter of fact, I remembered specifically telling him not to sign it because I was pretty sure he'd draw a dick in it.

"I'll see you next year." He then walked off towards his car as well with his bag over his shoulder and hands in his pockets.

My eyes followed him for a little longer as I thought about how he hadn't asked me if he would see me next year, but had instead told me as if it was something he was completely sure about. It was a big school with countless students. There was really no guarantee we would see each other unless he wanted to. I opened the yearbook he had put into my hands and flipped through the pages until I found his signature. In large, obnoxious handwriting he had spelled out his name in all caps so that it covered Harry's signature. I rolled my eyes and smiled at his childishness, and then I realized he had called me stupid right before he left. I spun around fully intent on calling him back and yelling at him only to find that he'd already disappeared.

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