Author's Note:

Okay, not my first fanfiction, though I havent written for a while. Please read and review, constructive (i.e. not mean) criticism welcome, but preferably lovely jubbly comments please 

If anybody has any suggestions I'm open, would like to incorporate different ideas 'cause it makes a story more fun!

Ta for reading anyway, instar xxx

Disclaimer:

For entire story, I don't own JKR or any of the characters (except maybe Louise, I don't think Hermione has a sister in the books?) or the HP world or anything. So don't sue me. And I don't think I'm copying anyone's ideas, I havent read any stories where this happens, or if I'm in the process of reading one it hasn't happened yet!


.Summer of Hogwarts.

Chapter I.

She gazed out the window as the Hogwarts express advanced through the countryside, invisible to the naked Muggle eye. Sat in a compartment on her own, she wondered whether anyone else would be at Hogwarts when she got there.

The summer had been a nightmare. That would be putting it lightly. After coming home and going to America for a week (to stay with her cousins, horror of horrors), she had returned home to a silent house, eerily silent. She closed her eyes in pain as she remembered.

Dirt crunched under her feet as she walked through the hallway, and she frowned, her mother was nearly as much of a neat freak as she was, how come the house wasn't spotless? She called out to her parents, and heard a squeak come from upstairs.

Stepping cautiously up the stairs, she took her wand from her shoulder bag, hiding it in her jacket, but not so hidden she couldn't use it instantly. On the landing, she saw a limp hand on the floor in her sister's room, and ran to see Louise's lifeless body on the floor of her room.

Being a witch herself, Hermione knew how to recognise the effects of the Unforgiveable Curses, and this, she knew instantly, was the evidence of Avada Kedavra. She gave up all pretence of hiding her wand and snuck a look through the crack in the hinge of the door, before she left to tip toe to her parents' bedroom.

"Mum," she whispered, and her voice would have cracked if it had been any louder. She walked over to the body sprawled on the bed, in a familiar purple dressing gown, with the family's crazy curly hair. As she walked round the bed to see the face of her dead mother, she nearly tripped over the unmoving body of her father, crumpled on the floor, seemingly kicked towards the underside of the bed. "Oh Merlin, dad."

She started to crouch down to check – in vain – his vital signs, but was stopped by a sound in the hallway.

"Hush! The door's open, someone's here."

"Who?"

"The girl?" She didn't recognise the voices, but didn't really want to. She creapt as quietly as possible into the en suite bathroom, and tried to calm her breathing as she made an attempt at the small window. She thanked God her father kept the windows well oiled, and kept a tight hold on her wand as she wriggled through the window, falling to the ground and trying to stay conscious.

She stood up, wincing as a branch snapped under her feet. The sound of footsteps inside meant that someone had heard her and she needed to do something, trapped in the back garden as she was.

"Oh Merlin please let this work," she whispered and she closed her eyes as she prayed not to splinch, as she apparated for the first time.

The train was free from the usual, 1st of September chatter, and free from the other students excited for the first day of term. There was only one carriage this time, with her and Mad-Eye, the one who'd found her (un-splinched thank God) outside 12 Grimmauld Place, and taken her back later to get her belongings before heading back to Hogwarts.

Finally pulling into Hogsmeade station, Hermione gathered her trunk and bags, donning her robe as she carefully stored her wand on one of the inside pockets. No one knew yet who had killed her family, or why, and it was being taken as a given that it was Death Eaters. Hermione saw no reason not to believe this theory, despite her usual policy of 'innocent until proven guilty'.

She alighted from the train, thanking Moody for accompanying her, before walking through the small wizarding town to get to the front gates of Hogwarts. She felt truly safe upon entering the school grounds, despite knowing that nowhere could guarantee safety in these times. She wondered aloud what the school was like empty, during the summer. Without Professor Snape favouring Slytherin, and without the strict eyes of Professor MacGonagall.

As she entered the Great Hall she heard her footsteps echo, and for the first time in her entire time at Hogwarts felt entirely alone within the castle's welcoming walls. Footsteps stopping behind her caused her to whirl round, nearly reaching for her wand until she realised who it was.

"Professor Dumbledore," she breathed with a sigh of relief.

"Miss Granger. You will be staying in your dormitory for the next year while you are here. Naturally that will be the head girl's dormitory," he smiled, with a small twinkle in his eye, comforting her despite the aching pain in her heart. "We also have a guest in the new head boy for this year, controversial choice I know, in Mr Malfoy, but you never know, you might have more in common than you think."

"Why's Malfoy here? Shouldn't he be with his father, eating death as it were?"

"Mr Malfoy may surprise you Miss Granger. If you'd follow Dobby, he will show you to your dormitory. You may have the 'run of the castle' as it were, but please don't venture outside the grounds unaccompanied by a member of the order." She nodded, and followed the small, chattering house elf to a portrait of a majestic looking couple in the Hogwarts robes.

Since leaving home earlier in the summer, she had learnt to pay more attention to the small things, and noticed the house badges on the robes the two students were wearing, seeing the intricate hairs in the lion's mane, and the detailing on the scales of the serpent in the pair's robes.

"Password?" The girl said, staring down with a somewhat familiar, haughty expression.

"Now, now Alice. She doesn't know it yet," her partner turned to Hermione, "The password is veritas." The painting swung forwards, revealing the entrance to a luxurious common room, with sofas and bookshelves, wooden tables and study areas, more than enough for just the head boy and girl. Hermione stepped forwards, and Dobby took her things up to her bedroom – on the left hand side, up a sweeping staircase by a scarlet and golden Gryffindor emblem.

The opposite staircase had a silver and emerald Slytherin emblem, and, as Dobby disappeared and the portrait swung closed, a figure with blond hair and gray eyes wandered down the stairs, more relaxed than Hermione had ever seen him.

"Malfoy," she muttered, acknowledging rather than scathing, trying to be nice, thinking about what Professor Dumbledore had said. He couldn't be that wrong, could he?

He nodded in her direction, sitting down on a sofa and summoning a book from one of the shining mahogany desks. He seemed quieter, more reserved than Hermione remembered, certainly not as sarcastic, mean and downright nasty as he had been before.

She sat down on the other end of his sofa, and kicked off her shoes, banishing them to beside the door, where they settled neatly, one beside the other. She looked inquisitively over to see what book he was reading and he looked up at her, with a questioning expression, asking, 'what are you doing', with his eyes alone.

"I was just wondering what you were reading," she answered quietly, and he closed it so she could see the cover. It was the Malfoy family tree.

"I was looking to see where my father got his bastard ness from." Malfoy replied shortly, knowing what she was about to ask, and she seemed slightly taken aback. "I heard what happened. I'm sorry."

"Wha… huh?" She replied, confused by this sympathy from the Slytherin prince.

"You're not the only one who's lost, Hermione. My mother tried to sneak me out to her niece, so I wouldn't have to join my father. She succeeded in that at least." He sneered softly, as he thought of his father's sadistic killing whilst working for Lord Voldemort.

"You mean Tonks?"

"Yeah, she brought me here," suddenly, Malfoy seemed to realised who he was opening up to, and shut up, stalking back towards his own dormitory, up the sweeping staircase to the right of the common room.

"Malfoy… Draco. Wait." Oh God what do I say now? He turned round, his face turned in her general direction, but his eyes rested on his feet. "Don't go. There's no one else here, and to be quite honest with you I don't want to be left alone."

"Alright," she knew she'd appealed to the part in him that felt the same, and they sat down together on the sofa. There were no insults, no scathing comments, nothing. It was like something had changed in the weeks between school ending, and now. They both knew what it was. They had something in common now, more than something. They shared a hatred for the people who had killed the ones they loved, they shared a loss, and they shared a loneliness inside the usually friendly castle walls.

They didn't really talk sat there together, they didn't feel they could share things in that way. But they shared the silence between them, and understood that neither wanted to talk.