A/N- Wow, thnx for all the reviews peoplez! Lolz, five reviews, that's pretty good, better than I expected anyway. So, I've decided to get them together pretty soon. But I have no idea how. And I realized that sometimes when I put in brackets or something in my story they don't turn up on the site. Eg, chapter four's title. The 'finally' was suppose to be in brackets so yeah, just to explain all the bad grammar mistakes. And also in last chapter's 'A/N', at the end, I was meant to type 'Okay, that's all I gotta say …' and nothing else after. Am I just confusing you? If I am, than forget it.

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Chapter Five; Changes

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Love is like quicksand, the deeper you fall in, the harder it is to come out …

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Hermione stood outside the Prefect's Meeting room. It had two large, oak doors with gold words on them, 'Prefects' Meeting Room'. Hermione had never been in it before so she was excited to see what it would look like.

Hermione was waiting for about 5 minutes when she mentally scolded herself for coming too early. She was too busy wrapped up in her own thoughts to hear someone approaching.

"Hermione?"

She looked up.

She saw Mandy Brocklehurst standing there, looking at Hermione.

"Oh, hey Mandy," said Hermione, putting on a smile.

"Hi, erm, I didn't know you knew my name."

Hermione just smiled. Then she quickly stopped, knowing that Mandy would probably think she was totally weird for smiling when she should be answering and now she might think Hermione was even weirder for stopping all of a sudden and taking so long to answer.

"Well, I do have a good memory!" Hermione said cheerfully.

Mandy just gave her a weird look.

Fortunately, Matt and Sabrina arrived so the huge oak doors were opened and they all walked in.

There was a round table in the middle of the room, and on every seat there was a name tag with a prefect's name on each one of them. Hermione sat on her marked seat which was between Draco and Terry Boot. Everyone arrived minutes after and soon, there was just one more person left, Draco. She admired the room as they all waited for him. There were portraits with gold frames around the room and apart from the huge oak doors, the portraits and the round table, there was nothing else in this room. Hermione felt a bit disappointed but she recovered when Malfoy slipped into his seat next to her. She looked over at him, wanting to give him a glare for being so late and wasting precious time but almost fell off her seat when he smiled at her.

"The first prefect's meeting for this year will now come to order."

Everyone seated around the table (except for Matt) turned towards Matt.

"Okay, I just want to welcome everyone that's a new prefect."

Hermione smiled along with everyone else and Matt started talking again.

"Me and Sabrina have been discussing . . ."

~~~3 hours later~~~

". . . and I call this meeting to and end."

Matt sat down and started talking to Sabrina. But Hermione was not able to move.

During the meeting, they had discussed upcoming events for the school. There was to be a Christmas Ball, a Valentine's Day Ball and a Talent Quest. Two prefects were responsible for each of those events and who did Hermione get paired up with? Draco Malfoy.

After everyone else had left, Hermione walked up to Matt and Sabrina and cleared her throat.

"Erm, excuse me?"

They both turned towards her.

"Well, I was just wondering why I always seem to end up being paired off with Malfoy? I mean, couldn't we just swap partners for once?"

Matt and Sabrina looked clearly confused.

"Well, we don't exactly make the decisions here," said Matt, "we just paired everyone off with their dorm-mates, thinking that it would be easier if they lived together."

"So in the future, everything I do with someone else is most likely going to be with Malfoy?" asked Hermione.

"Most likely yes," said Sabrina, "but Dumbledore chose the pairs himself so he should be the one you complain to."

Hermione nodded and muttered a 'thanks'. Hermione knew that Dumbledore had paired her with Draco simply because he hoped that they may become friends. She just sighed.

"Hey, Hermione."

Hermione almost screamed. She had just walked out of the room when someone had 'leaped' on her.

It was only Draco.

"Erm, yeah?" she said, unsure of what he wanted to do.

"I didn't mean to startle you or anything but since both of us are coincidentally working on the Valentine's Day ball together, maybe we should get started, say . . . today??"

Hermione was shocked. When had Draco been so eager to work? And he was working with her, a mudblood, as well!

"Well, Draco, that's fine with me, I don't have any plans, but are you prepared to work with a mudblood?" she asked him.

He looked at her with a shocked expression.

"A mudblood?? Hermione, I hope that you believe me when I say that I want to leave all our differences past us since both of us are prefects now and need to set an example out to the rest of the school."

Now Hermione looked at him with a shocked expression. Her mind was buzzing. He wanted to be nice to her???

"So, what should we do first??" he asked her impatiently.

"Well . . . I . . . erm, when I was in the library a few days ago, I saw some books about party decorating," she said nervously, wondering what he would do about a comment about the library.

"Great! We'll just go and find some more books about party decorations and stuff! You lead the way," he said enthusiastically.

Since when had he been so . . . spastic???

But she led him to the library anyway and found the book she was talking about earlier. As weird as it may seem, she enjoyed working with him that afternoon as it was pleasing to find books and have someone make a big deal over it, unlike with R&H. They had never bothered about that.

So they planned and worked until the end of the day, when the library started to close up for the night.

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Draco picked at his dinner. His head was swirling. He had just spent an entire afternoon with Hermione Granger. Alone.

After the library had closed, Hermione took all the books that they thought might be useful for the ball and put them in her room while Draco decided to go back down for dinner.

He had never intended to spend the whole afternoon with her.

No use crying over spilt milk, he thought to himself. And besides, he had enjoyed his afternoon with Hermione. At first, he was just acting, trying to get on her good side, but once they were in the library and she was where she was at her best, his whole plan had changed.

Draco groaned slightly and looked up, to see Hermione walk in at that very moment. His eyes followed her as she walked towards Potty and Weasel, who looked pre-occupied with other girls. He noticed the hurt expression on Hermione's face as she approached her friends and turned back to his plate.

After a few more minutes of unsuccessfully finishing his dinner, a voice brought him back to his senses.

"Lost your appetite?"

Draco looked up, to see Blaise Zabini smiling at him sweetly.

"Well, I'm not hungry either. Maybe you'd like it if we went to my dormitory together and . . . hung out?"

She emphasized the phrase 'hung out'. Draco felt uncomfortable, he knew he was admired by almost the whole female population of Hogwarts but none of them were like Blaise; open and straight-to-the-point.

"Well, erm, aren't you sharing a dormitory with Terry Boot?" Draco asked.

"Yeah, but he's no fun," Blaise whined, "he won't do anything with me unless it's prefect related. It's so boring to have him as a dorm-mate. But I bet you're a lot more fun."

"Well, as tempting as the offer may seem," lied Draco, "I have a whole stack of homework to do and-"

"Same here!!! We could do it together!"

"But I, er, like to work by myself, privately. And . . . it's astronomy homework, which means I have to climb 6 flights of stairs just to get to the astronomy tower at midnight," said Draco, thinking he could get away with it and hoping that Blaise didn't like exercise.

"Really??? Astronomy Tower??? I love it there!!!" squealed Blaise.

Draco slapped himself mentally for forgetting that the Astronomy Tower was where all the couples went to make out.

"Oh, no, it's OK, I'm sure I can manage by myself. Anyway, I'm quite full now, I guess I'll just go back to my dorm and . . . read," said Draco, hoping that he sounded boring to her.

"Read??? I love reading!!! Especially those 'Pleasant Dale Twins' books !!!"

Draco just stared at her in disbelief. Was there anything that this girl didn't like??? Or maybe she was just saying that to get into his pants. But ignoring that comment, Draco got up and began to leave.

"But Draco, you haven't eaten yet, or would you prefer it if I fed you?" she said playfully.

Draco quickly walked away, ignoring her screams of 'I'll wait for you tonight!', and cursed silently.

Great, another member of the Draco Malfoy fan club.

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Hermione shoved all the books she had borrowed that day onto her writing desk in her room and ran out to the Great Hall.

Her watch read 6:45pm and dinner started at 6pm. If she was gone for too long, R&H might get upset, so she sped up.

When she turned up at the Great Hall, she made her way to the Gryffindor table.

Only to find that Harry and Ron had company. Parvati was on Harry's right and Lavander was on Ron's left. They were all giggling with each other, and sometimes Lavander would touch Ron's arm or Parvati would whisper in Harry's ear. They were quite obviously flirting and Hermione felt left out. They had probably forgotten her. She didn't want to be part of the 'flirt and make out' group but the thought of R&H ditching her was painful, so she took a seat across from the foursome and piled her plate with food.

Trying to act normal, she asked them how their day was. Apparently, they were all 'good' and that was about the only thing they said to her during the whole meal. When dinner was over, she walked along with them, ignoring the giggling.

They arrived outside the portrait of the Fat Lady in the pink dress and they all turned to Hermione, expecting her to leave.

Ron coughed.

"Erm, do you want me to leave or something?" asked Hermione.

They all looked uncomfortable. Hermione just nodded, stating that she understood but before she turned and left, she felt anger rise up in her body.

"What's wrong guys?" she asked R&H, "why are you leaving me out of all your things now? Is it just because I'm a prefect?"

"Hermione," began Ron, "did you forget that you were suppose to help me with my homework?"

"No," lied Hermione, "I could help you now."

"Forget it, Hermione," said Ron, "Lavander's already helped me out. You can go back to Malfoy now."

"What?!? Back to Malfoy??? What are you talking about?" exclaimed Hermione.

"You know what we're talking about," spoke up Harry, "we went to the library today to find you and saw you and Malfoy getting it on."

"We were working together for the Valentine's Day Ball," said Hermione, forgetting that she wasn't suppose to tell anyone yet.

"Oh yeah, sure, and all those other times during this week??? You hardly spoke to us. What happened to our friendship Hermione? You ruined it. You ditched us for Malfoy."

Hermione couldn't believe what she was hearing. She had never ditched R&H unintentionally, had she?

"So, what's going to happen now?" she whispered.

"What do you think? We're through, Hermione. You ditched us for Harry's greatest enemy. And now you come back, acting normal, expecting us to be here for you when Malfoy's not? Just go, I expect he's wondering where you've been," sneered Ron.

And he turned with Lavender on his arm, and climbed into the portrait.

Harry turned to Hermione.

"Sorry but we have to do this Hermione. Ron's right; you ditched us for him in just one week. I hope you know what you're doing, Hermione."

And he left as well, with Parvati on his arm.

Hermione turned and fled, tears running down her face as she repeated over and over in her head, this is not happening, this is not happening, this is not happening, this is . . .

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A/N- Well, how did you like it??? Please review and tell me what you want to happen next because I am running low on ideas!!!