A/n: I'm so sorry, but my life has become very tangled in the last few months. I had thought of giving this story for someone to handle, but I suddenly thought of a whole new plot for this story. To all reviewers, do you think I have made the right decision of how I kept the story and kept writing? Please read and review!!
-=-=-=-=- Thanks to all my reviewers! -=-=-=-=-
~*~*~ Chapter 4: ~*~*~
She ran outside, eyes wet with tears that were ready to flow, but she would not allow them to. I have to be strong. She told herself. With a charm, she cleaned her face and tidied her hair to how it was before. As the train movement slowed to a stop, she walked out of the train, anxious about everyone else's reaction to the 'new her'.
Walking into the Great Hall, the sound of Hogwarts buzzed in Hermione's ears. She smiled to herself, hoping it would give her some encouragement and courage. Close to half of Hogwarts stopped talking to stare at her, wide eyed. Eventually, more and more of the school stared at her too. She noticed that Ron and Harry, each sitting next to a few flirting girls, were staring at her in disbelief. Even after a long time, Hermione would still remember the looks on Harry's face when he saw her.
Firstly, his face had shown shock, disbelief, more shock, anger, even more shock, and finally, just a dumb stare. A sixth year kept trying to engage his goggle eyed friend back into conversation, only to receive a sharp nudge in the side by a girl sitting next to him.
"What was that for?" he asked. But when he saw everyone look at Hermione, he quickly stared too.
Hermione, who had expected a reaction, but she had not been ready for this. She couldn't think of anything to do to respond to all this staring, so she froze and stared right back. To her amazement, the Slytherins were staring too, even Draco.
When Draco looked up, he saw Granger, from the laughing stock of the Slytherins to… well, pretty.
So what if she's changed? Draco thought. Wait, why do I care? In her world, I am nothing. She hates me, and she's done enough to show it. I hate her. She is nothing. I hate her she is nothing. I hate her! She is nothing! I hate her!! She is nothing!! I HATE HER!!
He started chanting this over and over in his head to make himself believe it. He finally gave up, so Draco stared at his soup again, too depressed to look at anything else.
Dumbledore, sensing all this tension and awkwardness, broke it up with a tap on his glass.
"Ahem," he coughed. Everyone looked in his direction. "If Miss Granger would please sit down, I have something very important to tell you all. But before that, the sorting will begin and after that, please, the feast will begin!"
Hermione walked quickly to the seat Ginny was waving from, face red with embarrassment. The sorting began. The first years walked onto the stage one by one, being sorted like Hermione herself remembered six years ago. She was only barely aware of the whispering around her, evidently about her. Wow, never had THIS much attention before. But Hermione had her mind on other things. Like how depressed Drac-Malfoy looked when they bumped into each other on the train. Did I nearly call Malfoy, Draco? The train incident- it's over, Hermione, so FORGET IT! And since when did I care about his feelings?
"You do too." The irritating voice in Hermione's head began chirping.
Excuse me? Hermione was getting annoyed.
"I said, you do care about his feelings and you can't forget it." The second voice said as-a-matter-a-factly.
"And how would you know?" The first voice said.
"Here we go again…" Hermione thought aloud, rolling her eyes.
Ginny stopped telling her friends her story on how cute she thought her new owl, Honey, looked with Pigwidgeon. "Here we go again what Herm?" Ginny asked curiously, at the same time looking at her as if Hermione was going mad.
Hermione instantly snapped out of her thoughts and faced Ginny. "What did you say Gin?" she asked quite dazedly.
"I asked you what you meant when you said 'here we go again'? I only told them this story once… I think" Ginny added thoughtfully.
"Oh no, I just was talking about… about… um…" Hermione looked down at her plate, lost for ideas. "That we're having peas again. I mean, we had them at the End of Year feast last year too."
"We did?" Ginny tried to remember what they had last year, but she couldn't remember. But she took Hermione's word for it, she was always the one with a good memory. "But Hermione, I thought you liked peas. You said they were really good for you."
"Um… well… everyone gets bored of something sometime in their life don't they?" Hermione said as surely as she could.
"I guess so…" Ginny gave Hermione a shrug before turning back to her friends to start telling her story again.
Hermione breathed out. But before she could return to her thoughts, a crystal-clear ding silenced the whole hall and the food (that she had only taken one bite out of) disappeared to show a very clean and sparkling gold plate.
Dumbledore stood up and said. "I would like to announce that this year's Head girl is Miss Hermione Granger from Gryffindor, and I am sure you now why I made this decision." His eyes twinkled as he smiled towards Hermione, whose face had grown red, a habit she adopted from Ron and Ginny. The whole hall clapped and three quarters of the school clapped and cheered for her, one quarter obviously not pleased.
The clapping stopped. "Miss Granger, would you please come up." Hermione walked up to where the teachers sat and Dumbledore cleared his throat once more. "I would now like to announce, our head boy for this year is…"
The entire school held its breath and if a pin dropped, you would hear it in the silence that had now fallen on the school.
Suddenly, an owl swooped into the great hall. Everybody looked at it. it dropped a parchment in front of Dumbledore. He opened it and read it. A look of sadness on his face replaced his happy expression.
"I have great sadness in informing everyone that our Head Boy for this year, Blaise Zambini, has disappeared on his way to school. The ministry will be working on this case. As for the placement of Head Boy…." He hesitated, looking around at the staff. Their blank faces stared back at him, no emotion, no expression.
~*~*~*~
Draco's face grew white. His blood turned cold. He knew it. Father. He did this. He knew that once someone in the dark league disappeared, he was as good as dead. His mind grew blank.
Dumbledore went on with the same tone, "On a happier note, our new head boy for this year, is Draco Malfoy." Despite his words, it seemed as though the emotion 'happy' did not exist.
Hermione was shocked. Him?? How could this be?
Draco however, was still deep in his thoughts and he was behind walls, shielding him from everything around him.
"Mr Malfoy? Would you please come up? ... Mr Malfoy?" Dumbledore repeated.
Crabbe and Goyle pushed him and he snapped out of his thoughts to find everyone looking at him.
"Mr Malfoy, please come this way." Dumbledore said.
Reluctant and oblivious with all that as going on, he went up to where Hermione was, still deep in his own thoughts. They both were pondering, but each over something different. The feast ended and the Great Hall was starting to empty.
Ginny came up to Hermione and whispered, "Come to the Gryffindor rooms right after you get the chance ok? So you don't have to face that." She rolled her eyes at Draco and left to join her friends. Draco however, did not seem to notice, never mind tease her. This was the thing that caught Hermione's attention. She knew that Draco and Blaise were friends, so maybe he did have a heart after all.
"Follow me," Professor McGonagall told them. They followed her silently to a portrait of a meadow with a girl and a boy. "Your password will be 'ever lasting', good night, I'll see you in the morning. I think you're aware of the sort of behaviour we'll expect of Head Boy and Head Girl," she glared at them sternly from the rim of her glasses, and left.
"Everlasting," Hermione said to the portrait. The pair in the portrait smiled at them and opened. Inside, Hermione tried to fight off her urge to gasp and seem naïve in front of Draco, but failed to do so.
"Wow." She said, looking around. It was as if she was a princess in a fairy tale. She noticed from the corner of her eye that Draco however took no notice and just sat in front of the fire, gazing at it.
Odd… Very very odd, she thought, but went into her room, only to find her amazement grow bigger than it had been when she had stepped into the common room. It seemed too...it seemed like a fantasy. A mirror, taller than herself was placed on the wall. She gazed at it, and she jumped a few centimetres in the air. Her reflection… her reflection… had moved! In fact, it was talking to her!
"Hi Hermione, how are you? I'm the mirror, obviously, but I am also the secret pathway to the Gryffindor common rooms." Her reflection kept saying, but Hermione found it hard to digest. When she snapped out of her awe and found that her mouth was open, she quickly closed it, remembered Ginny's words and said, "Thank you very much. Could I go into the Gryffindor Common rooms now please?" she said.
"Sure thing." The mirror swung back to reveal a slide. She slid down and found herself in the warmth of the Gryffindor Common room. She found her way to the stairway to the girl's rooms, but was stopped when she heard her name.
"Er, Hermione… we need to talk." A voice said.
~*~*~*~
so, how is it? is my writing technique any worse than before? :P aw wells. Thanks to Melody and Van Chan for beta reading my story, I wrote the first half like last year, and the second half yesterday…. So thanks to everybody to bothered to check back on this story! Please please please review, for without them, continuing writing has no meaning… if you get what I mean! :) please review though, because I seriously dunno if I should continue. So please review so that I still know there are readers out there! THANK YOU ALL SOOOO MUCH!!!
fr: Mysticrystal!