Hey everyone! I wanna say thanks to all my scrumptious reviewers....yall make my day!

Sorry it took me so long to update...I don't have an excuse at all, basically I slept the whole weekend. When I wasn't eating, that is. My summer is starting off with, not a bang, but a whimper. (Oh! But I watched "Gone With the Wind"! *grumbles* I hate Ashley. He wasn't even cute. How could Scarlett be so *stupid*?!)

So, apart from pure instances of laziness, I should be updating more regularly.

And! (hint hint) reviewers really keep up the chapter-churning incentive!

Luvyas!

*****

Last Chapter: Don't feel like copying. Read it yourself.

*****

Disclaimer: No, not even now. Tylenol isn't mine either. I wish it was.

"If the radiance of a thousand suns

Were to burst at once into the sky

That would be like the splendor of the Mighty one --

I am become Death,

The shatterer of Worlds."

-Hindu Spiritual Bhagavad Gita

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------

Chapter 4

The next day, Hermione stretched out in her seat on the Hogwarts Express and inhaled deeply of the smell of smoke, sugar, and new leather that always marked their return to school.

And started coughing.

"You okay?" Ginny asked from across the compartment.

Hermione held up a finger. "Yeah, I'll be...just fine...once I stop...choking," she gasped.

Ron and Harry sent twin Evil Glares of Death her way. They weren't speaking to her. Or Ginny.

Really, Hermione thought, hand to her throat, It's not like we betrayed them. All we did was go shopping with Malfoy....Okay, so maybe we did betray them, but at least it's not like we abandoned them...oh, wait, we did that too...

Once Hermione stopped coughing, she proceeded to ignore them with great dignity. She pulled out her Head Girl badge and sat, polishing it ostentatiously.

It didn't help. Between the ache in her throat, and Harry and Ron's steady scrutiny boring a hole in her head, she felt a migraine coming on.

She popped a couple of Muggle Tylenol (never leave home without it!) and a few minutes later was dozing peacefully in her corner of the compartment.

********** ---- (means dream sequence [ yay, i love those!])

Hermione opened her eyes.

She was standing on a vast plain, the sky above her roiling black and grey. It seemed neither night or day, but the air glowed with a vague, dull light.

Hermione knew instantly that this wasn't going to be a very nice dream.

Ahead of her, looming on the horizon, a enormous metal monolith stood. It seemed to be a tower, of some sort, but no tower Hermione had ever seen could have stretched half so tall or straight. It gleamed with a light all its own, the ground rising in a peak of iron and steel.

It should have looked forlorn in this place, the only feature the flat ground offered, but it seemed that the very axis of the world sprung from its foundations.

She was so caught up in her nightmarish surroundings that she didn't notice the person standing beside her until they cursed softly. She turned.

It was Draco Malfoy.

He was gazing around also, with a kind of awe. The dull luminescence around them shaded his face, his cheekbones high above gaunt hollows, the hair that fell over his eyes made even paler in the gloom.

"Holy shit," he breathed again, reverently.

She would have spoken to him, but at that second she was distracted.

The air around her seemed to stir, then brighten with that strange light, and finally, solidified.

Standing in front of her was....nothing.

Well, a great huge man-shaped mass of nothing, obliterating even the menacing metal tower ahead. It was black, but not black; empty, but then, nothing could have filled it anyway.

The air that twisted around it seemed to scream that it was wrong. That this thing did not belong in the world, in any world.

Hermione took an unsteady step backwards, forgetting completely about Draco at her side, facing this monstrosity.

The thing- whatever it was- struck her with pure, cold fear. Fear that crept its way around her neck and stroked her spine with icy fingertips. An awful, blinding fear, a frantic denial of what was in front of her.

The man-thing advanced on her slowly, and as she stumbled back yet again, it reached out, its thin arm impossibly long as its fingers sought her skin.

Hermione snapped.

Her own piercing cry reverberated in her ears as she flung an arm up as to ward off danger....

And there was a deafening explosion.

*******

Hermione's eyes flew open on the Hogwarts Express as her ears were assaulted by an awful, shattering crash.

"Caelo Ancile!" cried Harry, and he blinked as the compartment filled with light.

Thousands of shards of glass skittered harmlessly over the solid air that suddenly surrounded the two boys and two girls.

"Good thinking, that shield spell," said Ron shakily, at length.

"Thanks."

Hermione brought her arm down from where it was flung across her face.

When did I do that?

"What happened?" she asked, and her voice sounded small to her own ears. "I was sleeping."

"Yeah," said Harry grimly. "You were. You must have been dreaming or something, because you were all twitchy."

"Like a crazy person," Ron elaborated.

Memory of her dream came rushing back to Hermione, whom it had temporarily fled. She shivered and took in her surroundings.

Harry, Ron, and Ginny looked alright, but the wall that had formerly held the great, glass windows, was....gone.

Shards of glass littered the floor.

"Well anyways," said Harry, "You kept on getting twitchier...and then you let out this great big yell."

"Screamed like a Banshee," said Ron.

"And then the windows exploded," said Ginny. She peered around. "The glass on the door too, I think."

Ah. So that explained the noise. And the glass.

"And at that same exact second you woke up, and I did the Shielding Spell," finished Harry.

Hermione looked at him gratefully. "That was really smart of you. I don't think I could have done it any better," she told him.

"Yeah," Ginny said, "You're a hero!"

Harry blushed.

"Well, it's not like we've never heard that before," drawled another voice suddenly.

The four of them turned to the doorway.

Draco Malfoy slid the ravaged door shut behind him as he strode into the compartment.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------

Draco examined the area he had just entered.

It looked like a bomb had gone off recently.

He noticed that, while the windows, door, bottles of water, and cups were all shattered, Potter's glasses were still relatively intact, a clean break down the center of the frame their only injury.

Draco doubted that this was a new occurence.

The compartment erupted into pandemonium.

Ron Weasley lept to his feet. "You bastard!" he spat. "Get out of here! And stay away from Hermione and Ginny!"

Draco lifted an eyebrow. "Protecting the women?" he inquired. "How awfully brave of you. I'm sure, however, that they'd much rather speak for themselves."

Hermione looked torn between fixing Ron with a furious glare and launching herself at Draco's throat. Ginny cast a distraught glance at Harry and remained silent.

Harry stood up slowly. "I think you should leave, Malfoy," he said in a menacing manner.

"Potter," said Draco lazily. "Sit down before you hurt yourself. I came here to talk to Hermione."

"She doesn't want to talk to you," Ron said angrily.

"How would you know?!" Draco said, losing his patience. "You haven't exactly given her the chance to speak, have you?!"

"Well I know Hermione, and I know that she would never lower herself to your level! I didn't find out what you were doing to her and Ginny yesterday, but you'd better stay away from them from now on!" Rom yelled.

"Oh?" yelled Draco back. "And how are you going to make me?"

"Like this!" Ron whipped his wand out, just as Hermione intervened.

"Enough!" she said loudly. "You! Malfoy! That line was so bad, you deserve to pay a fine for it. Harry! Leave the MI2 attitude to Tom Cruise. *Please*. Ron! He's right, you didn't ask me about anything. Now all of you shut up and listen to me."

Okay. Now Draco was utterly confused. But, hey, at least he wasn't being hexed by Weasley or The Boy Who Had An Itchy Trigger Finger.

Hermione fixed Ron and Weasley with a steady gaze. "I'm not asking you to love Malfoy. Hell, I'm not even asking you to like Malfoy. You don't have to talk to him; you don't have to look at him if you don't want to. All I'm asking is for you to trust me when I say that I have a reason for all this. And please, stay out of it. I'll tell you when I'm ready."

She turned to Draco. "I want you to try and be civil. It's not like I'm making you be best friends with them. You did promise me that you would stop being a bastard, remember?"

"I did nothing of the sort," Draco told her indignantly.

"Yes, you did. Don't even try to pretend you didn't."

"Hey," Ron said thoughtfully. "Does this have something to do with the way you made the glass explode?"

"Excuse me?" said Hermione. "*I* made the glass explode? Look, we don't have any idea what made the glass explode. I don't know why you would think it was me!"

"Well it's pretty creepy how you let out that yell just as it exploded. I think you did it in your sleep."

A thought hit Draco, and he turned to Hermione. "You were asleep just then?"

"Yeah," she said. "And I had this really weird dream...I can barely remember it...Oh! You were in it, you know."

Draco felt a chill skip down his spine gleefully.

"Okay," he said. "I definitely need to talk to you. Right now."

"Now?" Hermione said. "We can't. We'll arrive in Hogwarts in about 15 minutes, and I'm not even dressed!" She pulled something shiny out of her pocket. "And this badge is *nowhere* near shiny enough. It needs polishing."

Ron and Harry made disbelieving sounds simultaneously.

Draco felt a little faint.

"Is that a *Head Girl* badge?" he asked urgently.

"Yeah," said Hermione proudly.

"Um," Draco said. "Okay, this freaky coincidence deal needs to stop, and soon."

Hermione looked confused. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Draco pulled out his shiny new Head Boy badge and showed it to her.

Hermione stared at him.

Somewhere in the background of this tableau, another shard of glass splintered with a tinkling smash.

Yep, thought Draco. I don't know why I'm suprised. My life just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------

*****

Review please! The amount of reviews given is directly related to the speed of chapters produced. (e.g. reviews go up, chapters get written!)

*****

Update coming soon!