A/N: I hope you're enjoying reading this story! I've really been enjoying writing it! I just wanted to put in a warning that there is graphic references to self-harm within this chapter, please look after yourself while reading this chapter - and if you want to chat about anything, send me a PM!

"I'm not sure what I'm going to talk to them about…" Hermione wrung her hands together, concern etched across her features. For the past three days, Hermione had spent all of her free time worrying about the prefect meeting scheduled for Saturday night; now, on Saturday afternoon, she was close to hysterical panic.

"Isn't that kind of the point of the meeting?" Ginny asked, sounding slightly exasperated with Hermione's worry. "Brainstorming session? Telling everyone else what you're meant to be doing and getting their ideas on how to do it?"

"Yeah.. I guess…" Hermione conceded, her fingers running nervously over a list of topics that she had written down in a notebook that it would be good to cover during the course of the meeting.

"You'll be fine Hermione." Neville said encouragingly, smiling at her as he scribbled down notes for a herbology essay he was writing.

"Yeah… " She murmured; but what was worrying her wasn't so much the actual meeting, but the challenge of what they had to achieve. Uniting the four school houses seemed like a daunting challenge, especially in the current climate… The slytherin students were still very much distinct from the rest of the school population, combatting this would mean changing the mindset of not just the slytherins, but the hufflepuffs, the ravenclaws and the gryffindors also – and feelings and prejudices were deeply inset – and still close to the surface after the war. How was she supposed to come up with ideas to bring everyone together, when even Draco was so distant and withdrawn from the rest of the students? It felt impossible… and she hoped that the prefect meeting might change that, however she wasn't convinced.

At ten to six, Hermione made her way along to the charms class to get ready for the meeting – only to find Ernie and Padma already standing outside the door.

"We thought you might need some help setting up…" Padma said, grinning at her.

"We weren't sure whether you'd get any other help." Ernie explained, as Hermione opened the door to the classroom, and waved her want to illuminate the lights. Hermione knew that Ernie meant Draco, she couldn't really blame him; but she felt bad disregarding him before they had really done anything as a team.

"Thanks guys," Hermione said as they followed her into the class. "I haven't really thought about setting up the room… Although it would be good if everyone could see each other…" The three of them went about, moving the chairs into a kind of circle so that everyone would be facing inwards.

By five to six, nineteen out of the twenty-eight prefects who were part of the team had arrived and filtered into the room in small groups. Hermione took out the list that she had written of things to go over and placed it on the table in front of her; this prefect team was the biggest it had ever been, because of the return of those in her year to Hogwarts.

Just as Hermione was about to start, Draco Malfoy entered the room; and as the seat at the table next to Hermione was the only one left in the circle, he sat down looking uncomfortable. If she hadn't been so preoccupied with what she was about to do, she would have spoken to him; but as the rest of the prefects had fallen silent as he entered she thought it would be best just to make a start, rather than draw more attention to him.

"Um… hello everyone." She began, her heart beating rather fast in her chest with all the faces in the circle, apart from Draco, focussed upon her; there was a small chorus of 'hi's'. "I thought it would be a good idea to have a meeting and talk about what we've got to do this year…" She continued, looking down at the list in her nervousness, "Draco and I had a meeting with Professor McGonagall last week and she would like us to come up with a few ideas, or events that we could do to bring together the school. I didn't think it was a good idea for just us two," She indicated to Draco and herself, "to come up with ideas, so that's why I called this meeting – so you could all give your opinions and ideas about what we could do to achieve it."

"What do you mean by events to 'bring the school together'?" One of the fifth year hufflepuff prefects asked, her eyes narrowed as though confused.

"Well…" Hermione took a breath, she had wanted to avoid this topic, but it seemed that it would be the only way to make it clear what they were trying to do. "All of us in this room understand what happened earlier on this year," She replied quickly, she spotted a little bit of uncomfortable movement, particularly from the Slytherin prefects, yet Draco beside her was perfectly still. "Before and during the War, there has always been a very distinct split in the Hogwarts students. For years now, the Slytherin students have been separated from the other three houses; everyone has been part of doing it and it will take everyone cooperating together to break down the prejudices that have built up… it won't happen instantaneously, but hopefully we will start something which will change the way Hogwarts students live together." She finished, and there was a small silence before Ernie said:

"Here here!" He was nodding in an approving manner, "Well said – I think that's really important." A few of the other prefect murmured in agreement with him.

"Yes, it is rather… that's why I think we should all be involved in coming up with ideas." Hermione repeated; for a few long seconds there was complete silence, then Hermione looked down at her list and suggested: "I thought it might be good if we had different levels of events… like maybe a few larger events, and then a couple more small ones. I thought we could brainstorm ideas, write them all down and decide what are the best ones."

"How about a Christmas ball?" The seventh year Ravenclaw prefect, Elayna, suggested.

"Yeah, like the Yule Ball!" Padma agreed with her, "And everyone would have to bring a partner, it might help the different houses mix." Hermione jotted down the idea quickly.

"And we could have a summer ball too, after exams." One of the boys agreed.

"But if we just do parties it gets kind of boring…" The Slytherin sixth year Astoria Greengrass drawled rather slowly. "We should try to do something smaller first… like a buddy system, or a book club."

"But there's already study clubs in the school." Ernie pointed out; Hermione was attempting to write down everything and listen at the same time.

"Yeah, but they don't really promote inter-house relations at the moment, do they?" Astoria responded.

"Draco, do you think you could write everything down, just so I can listen too?" Hermione muttered lowly to Draco, who was sitting with his arms folded over his chest, staring at the table top. He did not say anything in response, but nodded his head in curt answer; accepting the quill that Hermione had been using to scribe.

"It doesn't matter if we already have something similar in the school already, if we do we could always use it as a starting point." Hermione said reassuringly.

"Could we not organise some kind of team building sort of thing?" A dark haired hufflepuff proffered.

"Wouldn't that reinforce the house boundaries?"

"Not if we put everyone into groups that were a mixture of houses…"

An hour and a half later, the discussions seemed to be drawing to a close; Draco had filled one side of the parchment with suggestions like: Christmas ball, school concerts, book clubs, school choir, art clubs, school plays, and buddy schemes; and he had turned the parchment over to get more space… However the suggestions were beginning to dry up, and the group fell into longer and longer silences, until Hermione felt it was best to stop.

"I think we should leave it there… thanks very much guys, that's a good number of suggestions; if you think of any more let Draco or I know, we'll have to take them to McGonagall and see what she thinks we will be able to do…" Hermione rounded up. "When we know what we're going to be able to do, I'll let you all know so that if you want to be involved in planning something you'll get the chance to…"

As the rest of the prefect team left, Hermione turned to Draco:

"Are you free tomorrow?" Hermione asked directly, Draco blinked.

"I…" He cleared his throat, not having used his voice for hours it was rather croaky. "Yes."

"I think it would be good if the two of us went through the list and weeded out the best suggestions." She said, noting again that he did not look up while she was talking.

"Alright." He agreed.

"Would tomorrow afternoon be alright? After lunch?"

"Yeah, okay."

"Great, I'll meet you outside the great hall." She bundled up the parchment that she had brought and walked, besides Draco, out of the classroom. At the end of the corridor, she turned to climb the stairs up towards the Gryffindor common room: "Well, see you tomorrow."

"Bye."

Back in the common room Hermione scanned over the list of ideas that Draco had written, there were some good ideas in it… some that might help with their task. But Hermione wasn't really thinking about the list, or the ideas, or what they had to do next; she was thinking about Draco… The dull eyes that stared out from a face so pale that it could have been a skull; there was a lifelessness about him, about the presence he had in a room. If there was one thing that Hermione was absolutely certain about, it was that the Draco Malfoy that had returned to Hogwarts was not the one that had been before. He was different, he had changed… and it was almost scary. Draco before had been boastful, confident, assured of who he was; and now he seemed lacking in everything… Maybe that was why Professor McGonagall had asked her to look out for him, because she recognised the change… Hermione didn't know much about these things, but she knew better than to dismiss the way he felt… which probably, and possibly justifiably, was depressed.

Draco spent the next three hours trying to wind down after the prefect meeting; through the duration of it his heart had been hammering at ten times its normal speed. Fair enough there hadn't been any direct, or even indirect, comments about him, his family or what he used to be, but the anticipation of such a comment had him on edge. The aftermath was almost worse. Having to take in that nothing had been said was difficult; perhaps if someone had said something it would justify why he was feeling so restless now. In an odd kind of way, if people were actively singling him out, it would be easier to deal with; but the whispering and old perceptions were difficult to combat if they weren't out in the open… And people didn't openly air the issue; to Draco, it seemed like everyone was talking in secret, everyone was judging, everyone was whispering about the Death Eater.

"Death Eater": those two words had a worse effect on Draco than anything else ever could. He felt compressed, like someone was standing on his chest, bearing down upon his skull, forcing unbearable pressure on him. The weight descended on him whenever he thought of those words; and only one thing could add to that feeling, the Dark Mark. Branded into his flesh, he couldn't undress without seeing the reminder of what he was. The skull was just as pitch black as it had been on that day when the Dark Lord had grasped his wrist with those long, cold fingers; he could still picture the gleam that had been in his eyes as he imprinted his insignia into Draco's pale forearm. The pain had been unlike anything Draco had ever felt in his life; he had wanted to scream out in protest, to pull away his arm, to cry; but none of those had been an option… With the absence of his father, Draco was the man of the Malfoy family, and weakness was not acceptable. No doubt if he had shown distress then Voldemort would have enjoyed it even more. So he had clenched his jaw and kept silent; at the time he had been led to believe that this mark was an honour. That this mark would forever single him out as one of the devout – a chosen follower. Before it had never really fulfilled that purpose, he had still been dismissed as Lucius' son, or as a silly little school kid not worthy of the prestige. Now it singled him out, as an idiot and a fool – and he was determined to get rid of it. He was glad that the Hogwarts uniform meant that they had to wear long sleeved robes, as it could hide everything that he had done.

Draco was sat on his bed in his dormitory, his curtains drawn shut concealing him; it was now the early hours of the morning, and all he could hear was the muffled sounds of the rest of the boys in the room, they were all asleep. Draco was the only one still awake. He rolled up the sleeve of his left arm, his insides twisting at the sight of the ugly mark; it had been a while since he had tried to do anything about it, but the last marks around it had faded. From the top drawer of his bedside cabinet he took out a small drawstring bag, inside it he kept a razor that he had acquired. His fingers no longer trembled as he picked up the blade; with the index finger of his right hand he outlined the area that he wanted gone. He hoped that maybe, if he cut deep enough, he could remove the patch of skin with the dark mark branded on it. A section of scarred skin was worth it if he could remove the mark… Blood sprang to the surface almost the instant he placed the blade to his flesh, but that did not concern him; he scraped almost carelessly at the skin around the mark. He didn't feel pain; the sharp tinge of the metal against flesh produced no pain despite the blood that began to drip down the side of his arm. He cleaned the edge of the blade on a tissue, noting a tiny amount of black that accompanied the otherwise white skin. It wasn't going to go this time, he would have to work at this over a prolonged period, but he had expected that – he could only hope that it would disappear entirely. He didn't make a sound as he tried to pare away at the tattoo, not a gasp of pain or intake of breath. On the contrary, while he was working, it was like the constant weight that was on him had lifted temporarily. His mind was clear, he had only had one glass of firewhisky tonight, and his head and hand was as steady as it was when he was stone cold sober.

The morning was a different story altogether. Draco was aware of the painful throbbing in his left arm before he was even fully conscious, and the pain seemed to intensify as he stirred, sending twinges up past his elbow and down towards his fingers. The watch that lay on his bedside cabinet, and refused to wear anymore, told him that it was quarter past twelve, that should mean that his dormitory would be empty. That was a good thing too, as when he got out of bed he realised that he hadn't stemmed the blood flow as well as he had thought. The lower half of his sleeve was crisp with dried blood, and his bed sheets looked as though someone had been murdered in them.

Locked in one of the shower cubicles in the bathroom, he attempted to peel away the cloth of his sleeve, which had somehow stuck to the wounds in his arm. The hot water of the shower stung at the cuts on his forearm, reopening some of the scabs which began to bleed again; he could still see the dark mark, clearly it hadn't been deep enough to take it away. He bound his arm with a towel while he got dried and dressed, making sure that the blood had stopped oozing from it when he uncovered it.

He didn't go to lunch in the Great Hall, but lingered outside in the entrance hall for Hermione to appear. He felt strange as, unlike the prefect meeting, he hadn't been dreading this. Hermione had been the only student in the whole school who had said more than two words to him since he had been back at Hogwarts. It was a bit ironic that the only person to speak to him now had been one of the people he used to scorn and tease. But that was probably because she was Head Girl, and he was Head Boy, so they had to communicate.

"Draco? Draco…" Draco had zoned out, standing about two feet from the door to the Great Hall and didn't notice that Hermione was talking to him until she was standing right in front of him.

"Oh… sorry." He replied when he realised.

"The first floor classrooms are normally open; I thought we could go into one of them so we're not disturbed by loads of people making noise." She suggested.

"Okay." Draco agreed, he could feel his heart speeding up as he walked alongside Hermione to the first corridor. The first classroom was full of a group of second years playing gobstones, the second contained about nine girls who appeared to be painting each other's nails, the third was empty.

"Here we go…" Hermione said, opening the door. She sat down at one of the tables at the front of the room, and Draco sat facing her at the other side of the table. "I was having a think about this last night, cause we did get a lot of ideas at the meeting." Draco nodded; Hermione paused as though she was waiting for a reply, but started talking again when Draco remained silent. "I was thinking that it would be good to do a couple of the big ideas as like whole school events, so there's something that everyone can get involved with, then setting up some of the smaller clubs as well. Do you think that would be a good idea?"

"Yeah." Draco muttered; he carefully leant his left arm on the table top, the throbbing had started pulsing through his arm again and it was taking most of his concentration to focus on what she was saying to him.

"So I've got two sheets of parchment and I thought we could divide the ideas up into ones that would work as big events and whittle them down from there." He nodded again to show he understood; he didn't know why she was even bothering… Hermione could do this with her hands tied behind her back if she wanted to, she didn't need him to organise these events. "Right," Hermione started, after writing 'Big events' at the top of one sheet and 'Small events' at the top of the other. "The Christmas and summer balls, I think they should be in the big events list, cause they would involve the whole school." Draco just nodded again and Hermione noted them at the top of the list. "Then, school concert… Well if that was going to happen there would need to be some musical clubs, what have we got?" She ran her finger down the list that Draco had written the day before. "School choir, that would be really good if we could get someone to head it up… I'm not musical really, my parents sent me to piano lessons when I was really little but the teacher said I wasn't co-ordinated enough." It was like Hermione had realised that Draco wasn't going to reply to him, so she was filling what would otherwise be silence with rambling. "Maybe Professor McGonagall will be able to suggest someone… Yeah, someone suggested other musical ensembles too…" She had paused again, but Draco knew he was here just for show – she could have done all of this in her common room alone. "If we put drama club into the clubs and activities, then school play on the big events – again we'd have to as McGonagall if she knows someone who could help…"

Hermione slowly moved down the list, separating the ideas onto the two pieces of parchment, talking aloud – although with the amount that Draco was actually responding, she might as well have done it on her own. Most of the categorisations Draco simply made a noise of assent to whatever Hermione said, he vaguely was aware that he wasn't being any help whatso3ever…

After half an hour, Hermione was nearly finished going through the list; Draco heard her sigh heavily as once again she asked a question of Draco and he just nodded shortly in reply.

"I actually do want your input Draco…" Hermione said very abruptly. "You're not just here for show." She sounded exasperated, Draco could feel her gaze upon him and it made him feel uncomfortable. For a few seconds he bit his tongue, then he said what he really thought:

"You don't need me here though." He burst out suddenly. "You could organise all of this without me. I don't even know why I was picked to be Head Boy! I can think of a dozen other people who would be so much better!" Draco had risen to his feet, wishing to leave, wanting to be away from this confrontation – and the truth. "You don't need me here." He stated; he made a movement to leave, but Hermione's hand suddenly darted out and caught his left wrist. He could have gasped as a shot of pain ran up through his arm which, unbeknownst to Hermione, was littered with deep cuts.

"You're here because you were chosen, and you were chosen because you're the right person for this post." Hermione asserted firmly; she was looking directly into Draco's face, he avoided her eyes. "I don't want to do this on my own, I need help to do this right…" Hermione admitted; for a few seconds there was a silence while the two of them just stood there, then Hermione came to the realisation that she was still gripping onto Draco's wrist. She looked down briefly, and her eyes widened in shock; the inside of Draco's sleeve was soaked with blood spots, fresh and crimson. "Draco… You're bleeding." She brought his arm up to look at the outside of his sleeve; the connection that had been between them a second before, with each of them beginning to understand the other, was instantly broken. Draco wrenched his arm out of Hermione's grip, looking horrified.

"I have to go." He muttered quickly, and before Hermione could say anything else he had turned on his heels and sped out of the classroom.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading this so far, I'd love to know what you think/feel about this chapter or the whole story so far!
(Also, I'm really sorry for not updating sooner, I'm at a conference so I've not had internet- hopefully I'll be able to update again soon!)