Chapter 2

"This is insane." Hermione thought as she walked toward the Gryffindor tower. "Co-ed dormitories? I respect Dumbledore and everything, but I better not be stuck in the same room as that pig, Malfoy, or else I'm gonna hex EVERY, STUPID, INCH of him then I'll curse what ever is left."

Hermione had a fleeting image of Malfoy being sent home with his owl in an Altoid can and a small smile crossed her lips as this image became more and more appealing as she thought about it.

Her happy mood vanished again and she kicked angrily at the old stone floor of the castle.

"Co-ed my foot." She grumbled as she came to the portrait of the fat lady that opened to the Gryffindor common room.

"Password?" she asked and Hermione thought this was somewhat stupid. What else would she be doing here?

"Coloniem Dolines Cisque Nenquam Titalandus." Hermione rattled off in an off hand fashion. Who ever had thought of that password needed some serious mental help, because they were leaving sanity.

She was about to walk in when she heard pounding footsteps behind her and she turned around to see Harry and Ron, her ex friends running towards the portrait and laughing about something.

Taking a deep breath to steady her anger and frustration at the two boys in front of her, Hermione smiled broadly and said in a sweet voice that took all of her will power to keep from sounding angry,

"Hi Harry, Hi Ron!" Her smile faded when she watched them brush right past her like they couldn't see her and continued talking without even pausing to notice that she was there. Hermione, now angry, stomped into the common room and the portrait slammed shut behind her as the fat lady grumbled about being open for EVERYONE to go through.

Nothing could change the rage that she felt now. How could they do this to her? One hormonal rampage and they had turned against her? Had they really changed into these kinds of people? Friendship was only second rate to dating girls that don't know you anyway?

I don't know what's worse, Malfoy or THEM, Hermione thought furiously as she swept toward Harry and Ron who were sitting in two armchairs by the fire - the one that she had used to sit in was shoved into a far corner where it had been moved ever since Harry and Ron decided they didn't need her anymore.

Stomping toward Harry and Ron, she opened her book bag and took out their books, which had their essays in that she had been correcting for them. One in each hand, she hurled them at the boys and they stared at her in shock as they rubbed where the books had hit them.

"Thought you may want those - they're the last." Harry and Ron still stared at her, unspeaking, and she was surprised to see how much like Crabbe and Goyle they looked. They looked dazed and shocked.

"'Mione." Ron started, but Hermione cut him off before he could say anymore.

"Don't call me that - we're not friends anymore - or do you and Harry frequently dump your homework on your girlfriends and each other. No? I thought so. And don't give me that look - you never talk to me anymore."

"But, how are we going to get good grades on our O.W.L.s?"

"God are you really that THICK Ron?" he stared at her, obviously at a loss for words, which was a first. "Go fail the STUPID O.W.L.'S YOURSELF!"

"Bu-but who's going to do our homework for us then?" Ron asked, still not sounding bright.

"AUGH! SEE?! This is why we are no longer friends. You don't want to be around me anymore because you probably think I'm going to make your GIRLFRIENDS jealous. Well, I, for one, am glad you don't care about me anymore, because then you would try to talk me out of switching dorms. Yes, I am switching dorms. I am moving to a more SELECTIVE dorm. No boneheads allowed - sorry guys." Before they could try to make excuses for ignoring, Hermione stormed up the stairs and began throwing her stuff, haphazardly, in the trunks.

She no longer cared about order; her life was being thrown into disarray. She had lost her friends, she was moving dorms, AND she had to live with, quite possibly, with DRACO MALFOY.

Still fuming, Hermione stormed up the girls' dormitory stairs. How could they have changed so fast? She had been stupid for thinking that if she did their homework that she would somehow become their friend again and they would want to hang with her. She should have known they were using her to get better grades, not to try to save their old friendship.

She just wanted to get out of this dormitory as quickly as she could, because it held so many sad memories for her. They hadn't been sad when they had been happening, but now that it was over and she no longer wanted to include Harry and Ron in her memories, she didn't want to remember any of that stuff because it made her think about how much she had lost here at Hogwarts.

"I can't believe this." Hermione muttered as she threw the contents of a bedside table into her trunk as though she was pretending that with every item she threw into the trunk she was hitting Harry and Ron on the head, or perhaps somewhere that would leave a more lasting impression.

As she threw the last of her possessions into the trunk and slammed the lid closed, she was met by a certain red-haired girl that looked slightly unhappy. Ginny Weasley ran toward Hermione, and she smiled slightly. How could she have forgotten that Ginny would want to know why she was leaving? She had forgotten that she had friends here in the light of everything that had been weighting her mind down.

Hermione smiled at Ginny and Ginny came up to her, panting slightly as she came to a stop in front of Hermione.

"You aren't really leaving are you?" Ginny asked as she hopped from one foot to the other, a sure sign of nervousness.

"Sorry, Ginny, I have to. I am going to be studying Advanced Transfiguration and we have to move into a different dorm. I'm sure that you can come and drop in on me all the time, or I'll come back to the Gryffindor common room. Don't worry, I won't leave you all alone." Ginny smiled again.

"Alright, I'll just have to be the one that keeps an eye on my git of a brother, then, won't I." Hermione laughed quietly and hugged Ginny.

"You do that, okay?" And with that, Hermione began lugging her trunk down the hall of the Gryffindor common room and out toward the Great Hall where Professor McGonagall was waiting.

~+~

After ten minutes of hauling and painfully lugging her trunk down the stone steps, Hermione was sweating and she stopped to rest. She was beginning to regret having so many books and she now marveled at how incredibly strong the house elves must be in order to move all of her stuff.

As she sat there, resting, it dawned on her how stupid she was being. She knew magic, there was no reason for her to have to lug her trunk down the hall because she could have made it fly or feather light or something besides sweating over the stupid thing.

"Wingardium Leviosa." Hermione said and smiled with satisfaction as she saw the trunk hover above the ground - a feat that she as completely used to by now but would astound many people.

As she walked down the hall she saw that most of the people were already there, but she noted (happily) that none of the Slytherins had made it there yet, and that everyone else seemed to have barely managed to make it here before her, and if she had thought about the hover charm earlier, she would have been among the first to be waiting.

As she approached the Great Hall, she noticed that although there were many people here, she felt a familiar sinking sensation in her stomach as she saw that all of them seemed to be friends and they were laughing together - it was obvious that they had no room for anyone else to worm their way in, meaning that she might not be enjoying this as much as she thought she had last year.

"-And he was saying that muggle borns aren't good at any stuff, and I pointed out that Granger girl-" Hermione felt pleased that someone else had noticed her. "-and you know what he said? He said that Granger is really a muggle that is here pretending to be a witch and that Dumbledore is making it look like she can do magic." Hermione's pleasure of having been somewhat complimented by a stranger vanished and was replaced with anger. She knew that they had been talking to Draco Malfoy, because nobody else talked about her like that.

Fuming once again, Hermione walked forward to check the lists that were hanging on the wall to find out who she was going to be sleeping with. With a growing sense of dread, she looked at the first piece of parchment hanging and saw four of the Ravenclaws listed together.

"Not a good sign," Hermione muttered as she moved on to the second list. Her name wasn't listed on that one either. As she scanned the third list, she saw her name printed, and when she looked at who she was going to be sharing a dorm with. Three Ravenclaws. Sighing happily, Hermione waved her trunk to the dorm that she was to be in.

When she opened the door, she saw that her roommates were already in the room and were almost done unpacking their things. With a sinking feeling, Hermione also noticed that their three fourths of the room were decked out in blue and white for the Ravenclaw house, and they had left a square for her to decorate as she pleased. Her feeble red and gold would look pathetic next to their blue and white.

She sighed and began unpacking her things. I could have been worse. At least she wasn't stuck in a dorm room with three Slytherins, right? It could be absolutely miserable instead of just annoying.

Hermione finished unpacking her stuff and she could hear the Ravenclaws whispering in the far corner and this caused her temper to rise higher than it had already been and now was not a good time. She was already annoyed with everything that had been happening before, and now that they were whispering it was becoming obvious that they didn't want to have anything to do with her.

Sighing, she left the walls bare in her fourth of the room and left. She couldn't stand to be in there with them whispering like she didn't notice them, because she had made it apparent that she DID hear them, and they still hadn't stopped.

She walked down to the common room of the new dorm and collapsed onto a couch. She was waiting for Professor McGonagall to come back, because she was appointing the new portrait that was going to guard the door of the common room and ask for the password.

Please not that nutso knight that we had in third year, Hermione prayed silently as she watched a troll maul a tree and before she knew it, she had fallen asleep.

~+~

Hermione woke up to a sneering face and a harsh voice. Before she was fully awake, she knew it was Malfoy.

"Mudblood, you missed dinner. If you're hungry, you can go clean it up and eat the crumbs. It might be more than you're used to eating though, so I wouldn't go too hard on the crumbs." Hermione rubbed her eyes and stared at Malfoy.

"Go away." She said plaintively and rolled over, but she knew he wouldn't go away that easy. He existed to bother her and that was all.

"Oh, is the Mudblood a little testy?" Hermione rolled her eyes and shoved her pillow in his face and hears a satisfactory "mmmphff" from Malfoy.

"Mudblood scum." Malfoy spat at her as he threw the pillow back at her. Hermione glared at him angrily.

"You're lower than the fluffy crap in an earthworm's belly." Hermione told him and went out of the common room and back to the dormitory before he could fully register what she said.

~+~

Hermione flopped on her bed. The new portrait was WORSE than the picture of the knight, because it giggled and muttered things incoherently. It fixed its hair every half hour and screamed when a bug flitted across its canvas. Other than the fact that she generally hated it, she loved it.

Hermione, bored of looking at a blank wall, decided to color her fourth of the room gold and red, obviously for Gryffindor, but it clashed horribly with the blue and white of the Ravenclaws.

She drew the bed curtains around herself in order to hide herself from everything, yet nothing in particular. She shoved her head under her pillow. It was too much.

"I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this," she muttered incessantly to herself. She couldn't believe that she had decided to move in to this dorm. She had no friends, the Ravenclaws were talking about her right in full view, and she was in the same tower as Draco Malfoy. Things couldn't have been worse.

~+~

Stupid portrait, Hermione thought angrily as she contemplated whether she should do something to it or not.

"Just let me in." Hermione told the portrait.

"Not until you answer my question." Said the giggly portrait in mock seriousness and Hermione got the distinct impression that she was trying to mock Hermione, which annoyed her even more.

"Let. Me. In." Hermione ordered. "I have the password, so tell me I can go in and LEAVE ME ALONE."

"You have to answer my question." The portrait giggled and Hermione rolled her eyes before caving in.

"Fine." She said impatiently, expecting an extremely stupid question, but what the portrait said threw her completely off her guard.

"Don't you think that Draco character is kinda hot and stuff?" the portrait giggled incoherently.

"Do I think - MALFOY?!" Hermione suddenly burst out as she had evidently realized who the painting was talking about.

"Yeah," the portrait continued in a sing-song voice that made Hermione's temper rise even more.

"NO." Hermione said pointedly without one hint of doubt in her voice and turned to go in, but it wouldn't let her.

"Fine, what make up do you use?" the portrait continued.

"I don't use make up, now LET ME IN." she said angrily, but was once again stopped, but this time, not by the portrait.

"Granger, maybe if you used make up it would make you something that was better to look at, not that it would help much." He took an experimental sniff at the air and wrinkled his nose.

"What IS that smell?" he said as he plugged his nose.

"It's called soap. If you used it, you would know." Hermione said coolly. She kicked the portrait and it reluctantly let her in and Hermione was even more irritated when she learned that Malfoy was following her.

She was about to go into her dormitory when she whipped around and came face to face with Malfoy.

"Let me get something straight," she told him as she jabbed him in the chest.

"What would that be, pitiful Mudblood?" Malfoy hissed at her and she balled her hands into fists.

"Okay, first of all, THAT. It is getting OLD, Malfoy. Alright? It's like a nickname now and it doesn't matter to me, it just gets annoying. So, stop it." Hermione told him angrily and he grinned evilly.

"Why would I stop if it even slightly annoyed you, Know-It-All Mudblood Granger?" he asked her and she knew that she was going to lose it if she didn't leave now.

Whipping around again she walked into her dorm, stuck her head out the door, whispered,

"You suck, fat, conceited, spoiled-rotten, GIT." And with that she slammed the door and hummed to herself to block out the sound of Malfoy chuckling in the hall.

I hate him more than anything, Hermione said angrily as she kicked her trunk and then grabbed her foot in excruciating pain.

A/N: Alright, I apologize for mistakes, please review and I doubt something'll be posted tomorrow, but I'll try for the day after tomorrow.