Disclaimer: If I said it was mine, would you believe me? Coz if you wouldn't, I might as well lie my head off and say it is… IT'S MINE, ALL MINE insert maniacal laughter here

Oooh, that felt good.

Hermione

Head girl.

I still can't believe it.

But the badge is there, pinned on my robes, so it must be true. I touched it again to make sure I wasn't just hallucinating.

"You're not still obsessing about that badge, are you?" Ginny asked, but she smiled as she said it.

"Maybe," I grinned back. She doesn't understand why it means so much to me, but she didn't even make prefect and seemed happy about it.

I don't understand some people.

I patted my badge once more, before zipping up my case and lugging it downstairs, Ginny following suit. The boys were already outside, putting their belongings in the Weasley's car.

"Sorry we got help up," Ginny said, rolling her eyes. "Hermione had to check that her badge hadn't randomly disappeared."

"You're getting worse than Percy," Harry teased me, gently.

That simple remark was all it took for the atmosphere to change completely.

"She could never be worse than Percy," Ginny snapped, a bitter scowl clouding her countenance, anger flashing in her eyes.

"Ginny?" Harry asked, clearly unsure how to react. "What's…"

"Just leave it, Harry," Ron interrupted. "Just…" he trailed off, either unable to phrase his thoughts or simply following his own advice.

Just then, Mrs Weasley stepped out of the front door. "Is everything alright?" she asked, sensing the tension.

"Yeah," Ron muttered, "we're fine."

Mrs Weasley looked doubtful, but there was no time to investigate or we would be late for the train. "Well," she said, her gaze travelling over the four of us," this might cheer you up – if we leave now, we may even arrive at the station early." So we all bundled into the car and set off.

The strained atmosphere continued throughout the car journey, intimidating all my pitiful attempts at conversation into silence. I couldn't blame Harry for mentioning Percy – I'm sure he was told, as I was, that Percy had apologised for his appalling behaviour and had been welcomed back into the family. I wasn't confident, however, that he had realised, as I had, that in reality, the Weasleys hardly ever saw Percy any more and most of them were still angry about his betrayal.

When we finally entered the train, I was glad for the excuse of the prefects' meeting – which I would be heading (!) – to escape. Leaving Harry and Ginny to argue it out amongst themselves made me feel slightly, mainly because it also made me feel so relieved.

The prefects' meeting went much the same as last year: patrol the corridors, help the first years, try to maintain order (to the new prefects) and well done last year, more of the same, I hope you find the rest of the school willing to co-operate and are able to work under me as head girl – I got such a buzz out of saying that – (to the old prefects).

Thankfully, the Head boy is Ernie Macmillan – I had a terrifying moment when I thought it might be Malfoy, but, luckily, the temporary insanity that made Dumbledore appoint him as prefect had not returned this year while he was deciding who would be the heads of school. On reflection, it was probably all that ministry influence and all those awful educational decrees that made Malfoy prefect, not the onset of senility in Dumbledore.

By the time we found Harry, he and Ginny had indeed argued it out. From the red, blotchy look of Ginny's face, it had not been a calm argument. However, harmony had apparently returned in the form of a heated discussion on Chaser formations in Quidditch.

"Triangle movement," Harry said, vehemently. "It's a classic and it works."

Ginny had started shaking her head as soon as Harry had begun talking. "No," she said," you need a Chaser free in-case a bludger gets one and knocks the Quaffle out."

I doubt they even noticed we were back.

"I'm going to patrol now, if you keep on talking about this," I said, interrupting Harry, who was listing the advantages of a "tight formation" – whatever that is.

Harry looked up, initially surprised to see me, but it soon passed. "Ok," he shrugged and went on to explain about superior defence and such things.

I had been planning to drag Ron along with me, but – "Harry, mate, the same effect could be achieved with reasonably accurate Beaters – what you want is a decoy Chaser, who…"

I walked out of the compartment – it looked like I was on my own. It's a strange thing about Ron – he sounds quite intelligent when talking about Quidditch, but as soon as the conversation turns to something interesting – say, the mystery of ancient runes – he just turns off.

I had been patrolling uneventfully for about twenty minutes and was about to turn back when I heard it –

"Give her back! You're hurting her! Give her back!" a young girl's voice cried.

I ran towards the source of the voice and, as I turned into the compartment, found exactly what I had been expecting: a group of Slytherins terrorising a first year.

"Leave her alone," I ordered, my hand travelling to the pocket where my wand was kept. The Slytherins – third years, I think – had stolen the girl's kitten and levitated it out of reach. The kitten, for obvious reasons, was not very comfortable with the situation and was meowing piteously.

"Get the cat down and get out of here," I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

"What you going to do about it, mudblood?" the ringleader sneered. He spat on my shoes, obviously finding it a more eloquent way of communicating that his individual approach to wit. I have to say that I agree with him on that point.

"I was going to give you a week of detentions, but, now you ask, two weeks sounds better," I replied, sweetly.

That his highly effective intimidation tactics hadn't produced the desired result seemed to anger the boy, for – "You mudblood bitch! Scum like you shouldn't even be allowed at Hogwarts!" Or, at least, that was the gist of what he actually said, which had contained slightly more profanities.

"And you shouldn't be allowed in civilisation, but, unfortunately, people will insist on tolerance," I replied.

And then his wand was out and pointed at me, soon followed by the rest of the gang's wands. "You want to watch your mouth," he hissed. At that moment, I realised two things: a) there were seven of them and one of me, and b) it probably wasn't such a great idea to rile someone who had already displayed sadistic tendencies.

Still, best not to show your fear.

"And I'm meant to be scared of a bunch of third-years?" I asked.

I don't know how they would have responded, had not Ron chosen that moment to walk in.

"Hermione! Hannah said she'd seen you come in her," Ron said brightly, seemingly unaware of the situation. Then he saw all the wands pointed at me – "Oh."

"You guys going to give up yet?" I asked them.

"What? Because two against seven is such better odds than one against seven?" the lead-boy scoffed.

"No," Ron said, brightly, "but two against seven doesn't seem so bad when there are six Hufflepuffs across the corridor, who would be very wiling to help us."

The boy didn't answer for a long time, deliberating whether loosing face by walking away was worse than loosing face by being beaten. Fortunately, he had a shred of intelligence.

"Come on, guys," he said to the rest of the group. "It would be too easy to beat them – we might as well save ourselves the boredom." And they walked out.

"Accio cat," I said, braving myself for the claws of the poor thing. I needn't have bothered – it simply used me as a springboard to get to the floor and then ran off.

The little girl still looked terrified. "Thanks," she stuttered. "That was – thanks…" she trailed off, then looked behind her in the direction the cat had run. "I should probably go find Socks," she said and, at a smile from me, ran off.

"So," Ron said, after she was out of sight, "you want some food or what?"

I looked at him, incredulous.

"The food trolley's going round," he explained. "Why else do you think I came to get you?"

I couldn't help it – I started laughing. All my mental images of Ron as a gallant rescuer, destroyed, I really couldn't do anything else but laugh.

"What?" he asked, bewildered. But that only made me laugh more.

YAY! REVIEWS! You don't know how happy that made me…well, probably you can tell that it inspired me to type up this chapter, so pretty damn happy when I should be memorising a description of my school in German.

Hogwartsquill-seraph: I didn't make Harry head boy coz I figured the whole already got enough responsibility thing would still apply. And as for Malfoy… I guess I'm working on the principle that he's 17, not 13 now and also that, now Voldemort's back, his dad will have got him a lot more involved in Death Eater stuff so he'll be braver coz he's had more experience. I dunno, I'm just writing it how I want them to be for my plot to work out, and I need Malfoy to have a bit more 'confidence' for that to work.

Headless: I plan to finish it, but it might take me a while coz I got a bit over-enthused when I was planning this and it's going to be the longest thing ever (well, aside from, maybe the Great Wall of China) so you'll just have to bear with me. Oh yeah, and when HP6 comes out, I'm going to ignore it completely for the purposes of this story.

Christi-McIntyre: Sorry about the mistakes…I don't really notice them, mainly coz I haven't read 4 and 5 as much as 1,2 and 3 coz I've only got them in hardback, so they're manky to read. I would join your C2 staff, but I'm not entirely sure what that entails or what, in fact, C2 means… Yeah, so much for my pretence at knowledge.

Tschuss! (this is me pretending that I'm doing German revision really)