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Chapter 5

Hermione ran her pale fingers through her curled brown hair, scrutinizing her appearance in the mirror. She never did believe, or think, that she was beautiful - but she tried to at least look respectable on a daily basis.

It was half ten on September 1st, and she was ready.

In approximately one minute and seventeen seconds, Ron would enter the room and tell her it was time to leave for King's Cross.

In five minutes and fifty three seconds, she would be sitting across from him in the front of their new car, driving away from the Burrow with every breath, and closer to Hogwarts with every heartbeat.

In exactly thirty minutes, she would be sitting on a faded red train seat, across from a different man. A tall, narrow faced man with blond hair swept across his forehead.

In one hour and two minutes, she would be far too excited about her return to Hogwarts to remember how Ron's face had practically shattered when she whispered goodbye in his ear, and delicately brushed her pale pink lips over his. Or how his eyes had followed her every step she took until she vanished - not to be held in his arms again for a whole week - into the scarlet train.

He knew she would be okay. She was, after all, Hermione Granger. There was no doubt that she wouldn't be okay. But a part of Ron ached, and he really hoped, he really tried to believe, that she would miss him as much as he already missed her. He was missing her before she had even left.

She fixed her hair and smiled, brown eyes gleaming with anticipation. She hid her fears; she hid the proof of the many sleepless nights she'd been having, proof that hung under her eyes, under a light layer of foundation.

She was ready when Ron entered the room, when he told her she looked beautiful and she didn't believe him. When he told her it was time to go, she wondered why he sounded like he knew something she did not.

Draco ran a hand roughly through his wavy blond hair, tousling it up a bit so it was less flat against his pale skin, and more of a blond wavy mess. It wasn't his usual style - on a normal school day he had always styled it sleek and flat, with an abundance of greasy hair gel. But he just didn't like that look anymore. Recently he had taken to just letting his hair go its own way.

He wondered why he was so happy to be going back to Hogwarts, never had he been this happy about it before. Maybe it was the fact that his father would not be able to set foot in the castle, or find him. Maybe it was the fact he could truly start to prove to everyone that he was different now. Or maybe, but this was the least possible option, it was the fact he would be seeing Hermione on a day to day basis again. He wasn't sure. He checked the time on his silver wrist watch – 10.42 – and decided he better get a move on if he was going to make the train.

The wind danced into her hair through the rolled down truck window, tossing it about and doing pretty things with it. Ron was grimacing beside her, his hands tight on the steering wheel. She reached a hand over and placed it on his knee.

"Ron?"

"What?"

"I love you, you know that right?"
"I love you too."
The music from the muggle radio station blared through the car, and Ron rolled his window down too, as they drove fast.

Hermione loved the song playing; it was one of her favourites. A good omen, some might say. But she didn't sing along as she usually did, she was too nervous. Ron quietly wished that she would sing. He loved when she sang, and he was going to miss hearing her voice for the next week.

Draco walked down the busy street, avoiding eye contact with the muggles he encountered. He was almost at King's Cross now, a fact he was thankful for, because he trunk was heavy and his heals were sore. He wondered when Hermione would arrive. He knew Ron was going to drive her in; they weren't apparating because they had recently bought a car together, and Ron wanted to try it out. He wondered what kind of car it was, he hadn't thought to ask Hermione.

Ron pulled into King's Cross at 10.53, Hermione chuckled behind her hair as he parked the car crookedly, and she helped as he hauled her trunk from the back.

"Merlin Hermione, if you're coming home this weekend why the bloody hell is you're trunk so heavy?"

She smiled at him, a crooked smile that began at the corners of her lips and made her face glow. It was her smile, the smile he had subconsciously memorized, the smile he adored, the smile that made him fall in love so unconditionally with her.

"I need reading material Ron. I only brought a few extra books, that's all." She told him as they made their way into the station. He smiled back, rolling his eyes. Knowing Hermione she would go through the multitude if books in her trunk by Friday, as well as re-reading half of Hogwarts library.

Harry and Ginny were apparating to platform 9 and ¾ to meet them.

Hands joined, they ran through the familiar old brick wall and emerged onto the platform. Hermione's face broke into a huge, uncontrollable smile as memories flooded back to her. She looked at Ron and her joyful moment faltered as she took in his face, which looked absolutely terrified.

When he saw her looking at him, he tried to feign the same kind of emotion he saw on her face, but it was too late. She had noticed the pain that etched itself upon her boyfriend's facial features for that brief moment and there was no hiding it now. But Ron knew she would never guess why he was so scared, and he would never tell her.

He wasn't even one hundred percent sure of the reason himself.

"Harry!" He heard her first - heard her happy, melodic voice cutting through the crowd of noise. He heard her above the rumble and chiming wave of voices that was washing into the train through the open window. He hauled his luggage up onto the rack in an empty train compartment. When his trunk was secure, he seated himself next to the open window and tried to pretend to himself that he wasn't in actual danger of bursting if he looked out and wasn't able to find the owner of the voice - Hermione.

He didn't burst. He did however; find himself short of breath as his anxiously searching grey eyes found her.

She was dressed in a blue knee length dress, with a dark blue cardigan, and her hair was falling down her back in soft curls. Her eyes were closed as her arms enveloped the man he had hated - throughout his whole school life - in a hug, the man he loathed for six years solid. The man he now thoroughly disliked for a whole other reason. Let her go.

Harry's arms closed around her waist as he hugged his best friend back.

"I've missed you too 'Mione." He laughed, pulling away from her to see a beaming smile on her face. It had only been two weeks since she had last seen Harry and Ginny but it felt like a lifetime.

"How's it going mate?" Ron asked Harry as Hermione moved on to hug Ginny with just as much vigour.

"Good, we've been good. Merlin Ron I'm going to miss her like crazy. Both of them."

"It's only a week, after all." Ron reminded Harry, and himself.

"Yeah. A week. I wouldn't mind going back with them though."

Ron didn't answer him. He would give anything to be travelling back with his best friends to Hogwarts today, anything but the interview he had in the Ministry of Magic next Wednesday morning. The interview he would be going to with Harry, the first step towards becoming an Auror.

Two minutes and fifty nine seconds later and he was hugging his best friend, his girlfriend -his everything- goodbye. Her small arms enclosed him in a vanilla scented hug and held him tightly.

"I love you Ron. See you soon." Her voice drifted past his ear like a ghost, a sentence whispered and caught by his ear, for him alone to hear. She pulled back and looked up into his sea blue eyes. "I love you too Hermione." He whispered.

And when her pale pink lips pressed gently to his, right then, when Hermione kissed her boyfriend and hoped she put enough into the kiss for him to realise she would miss him – that's when Draco Malfoy's anxious eyes tore away from the beautifully tragic farewell scene that belonged in an Austen novel. That's when his eyes ripped away from Hermione's tall figure that stood in her boyfriend's embrace on platform 9 and ¾. He looked away because what Hermione was doing was private; it wasn't his to invade upon. That was what he wanted to believe.

He longed and hoped with himself to believe that that was the reason he looked away, and not the fact that he couldn't look at Hermione kissing Ron because it felt like a pack of werewolves had started ripping out his intestines with their sharp blooded teeth. He had no reason to feel like that, and he fucking despised himself for feeling it.

Ron watched her walk away with Ginny by her side, fiery red hair in a long plait down her back. Harry stood beside him, his green eyes smiling with absolute adoration for Ginny, and Ron was thankful for the fact his sister had someone like Harry.

"Fancy driving back with me Harry?" he asked, his voice quiet.

"Okay." Harry replied. Then the two men walked out of Kings Cross, across the parking lot, and into Ron's car.

"Let's nottry flying this one mate." Harry grinned. Ron laughed.

"That was one of our best moments that was, flying Dad's car."

"We had no bloody idea then that we'd end up here, did we?" Harry looked out the window.

"I had no idea back then if I'd make it until my sixteenth birthday." Ron laughed.

"So you've already surpassed your hopes and dreams then Ronald?" Harry raised an eyebrow

Ron started the car, grinning at his best friend. He had surpassed his hopes and dreams the first time Hermione ever told him she loved him.

He wondered if she would try finding his compartment, or if she would just want to sit with her old friends. He had seen Neville on the platform, and Seamus.

He kept on wondering where Hermione would sit right up until she arrived outside his door, alone, and slid it open.

"Draco! I've been looking around for you! Can I come in?"
"If you want to." He grumbled, looking away from her intensely brown eyes.

She walked in and sat down beside him, her hair fanning out around her shoulders. He didn't look at her for a minute, and when he did, she asked him was he okay.

"I'm fine, Hermione. It's good to see you."

She sighed in relief, having wondered if maybe he would be back to hating her now they were back to Hogwarts, back to their old life. She had thought, for a moment, that Draco was back to being Malfoy, and that she was back to being Granger.

"It's good to see you too." She told him. And it was, she didn't know if she would have been okay with going back to being just Granger, and she knew she couldn't deal with him being Malfoy again, she would miss Draco far too much.

He didn't want to look at her, because he had realised when he looked at her on the platform that looking at her, that seeing her, being near her even, it physically hurt him in the most beautifully addicting way possible. He didn't know how to explain it other than that. #

She had become his best friend and she had become his savour. She dragged him back up when he had started to slip under and she made him hold his head high, she had started research to help his mother and she had fixed his broken book.

But now he looked at her and it hurt, it pained, it made him want to lie down on a cold hard pavement and maybe just forget that he was anything, that he was anywhere. He

Looked at her and his heart ached because her heart was not his and her boyfriend had been kissing her moments ago. It hurt because she wasn't his, and she never would be.

It hurt because he had no fucking idea why the fuck he felt this way about her when he had all but wanted to commit her murder for seven years. It wasn't natural and it wasn't clean and it wasn't allowed and it was not love. It defiantly was not love.

He looked over at her, and a near apocalyptic pain began to take prisoner his whole being.

Sunlight spilled through the dried, rain-speckled glass of the train window, splashing her face with freckles and illuminating the delicate strands of gold that wove through her hair. Her eyes held him captive and he smiled through the pain, because somehow or another, her eyes made all the hurting stop.

When he smiled at her the sun came out, and she smiled back. Ginny had offered to come with Hermione to meet Draco, but Hermione could tell that she wanted to sit with Seamus, Neville and Parvati. She could tell that Ginny didn't give a toss about Draco because she didn't know him, the real, new him.

She beamed as she realised Ginny would get the chance to get to know the blond, messy haired boy sitting across from her over the next few weeks.

"I missed you." she told him, lightly. Examining his face, his hair, his eyes - she wondered why his grey eyes were widening.

She told him she missed him, and it was then that his eyes weren't his eyes anymore, it was then that he saw through the eyes of the freezing, shaking man that was standing in the pouring rain. It was then that he saw through raindrops hanging on his eyelashes as he started running, running away from the girl in the grey trench coat as her footsteps crashed though rain filled puddles to reach him. And when she whirled him around, when her hands grabbed his forearms and she kissed him, in the middle of a thunder storm, with more passion than he had ever known - that's when he remembered.

Remebered what?

Then Hermione was infront of him again, and his eyes were his own, and he was thoroughly confused, as probably are you, the reader.

This was the first time Draco Malfoy had ever seen anything that wasn't in the present tense, and it was also the only time he would see anything of the sort until he remembered again.

What the bloody hell? He thought to himself.

Hermione moved over and kneeled infront of him.

"Draco? What – are you okay?"
"I just… remembered something. I am … I am okay…. Now. Sorry. I-I don't know what happened. Yeah-no, I'm fine. I've m-missed you too."

His feeble attempt at convincing Hermione he was okay seemed, on the surface, to work.

She moved back to her previous position on the seat across from him as the train continued rolling through the brightly coloured fields and smoothly carved landscape of mountains.

They continued talking the whole way to Hogwarts, about nothing and everything. Draco didn't, however, forget about his – vision? It was still vivid and striking in his mind, more so than any memory he had ever had or could remember.

It was as vivid as if it was happening to him right now, not in the past.

He wanted to ask Hermione about it, but it was far to embarrassing to admit he had no idea what had happened to him, and far to unbelievable of a thing for him to want to share it with her – she would think he was even more crazy and deluded than she already thought he was.

But he didn't stop thinking about what he had decided to call 'The Vision', but try as he might, he couldn't see the face of the girl in the gray coat.

Hermione wondered what had happened when Draco zoned out, because he seemed pretty shaken afterwards. She wanted to know but she didn't ask him.

She knew that for six years all he saw her as was a nosy know-it-all and she didn't want to pry. If he wanted to talk about it then he would, and she wouldn't pressure him.

If she was honest with herself she had craved his company for the last few weeks of his absence, and she was more than happy just to spend this time talking about nothing and enjoying the ride back to the castle she loved so much.

Draco talked with her, and he made her forget how much she missed her two best friends on the journey she hated taking without them.

Draco laughed. He laughed with Hermione a lot, and it still surprised him every time it happened. He wasn't used to laughing with friends and he wasn't used to feeling this happy with someone. Hermione made him forget that he had gone through six years of schooling without laughing once at something that was funny, or without anyone laughing with him.

She loved his laugh; she loved how he bent his head down when he laughed quietly, his blond hair falling infront of his eyes.

His eyes that would, in a few months, be blackened in a fist fight that would make her cry.

She loved how his lips pulled upwards in a honest, happy smile, and made his cheeks dimple. Cheeks that would be covered in tear stains and bruises in a couple of months as he cried himself quietly to sleep, alone.

She found herself admiring his big hands as he intertwined his pale fingers and listened to her talking.

His hands, hands that would be cut open and bleed at the knuckles as he would fall to the ground, gasping for air.

Hermione didn't know now that any of this was inevitably going to happen, or who would be involved, or when it would happen. Neither did Draco.

And neither one of them would have believed it was going to happen if they were told about it, because neither one of them anticipated what was to come in the next few months of their lives.

A/N:

I am sorry I have not updated this story in so long. Everything was just really busy there for a while and 'There was no time!" – to quote one of my best friends.

Thank you so much to Carlie13, LUNA GURLZ, TheAppleMaster and SeptemberOwl853 for your reviews - they mean alot. Thanks also to all the people who followed and favourited.

I'm finished school for the summer now, so I can promise much more regular updates. This chapter was where the story really gets started. 'The Vision' is important – that's all I'm going to say.

Hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, the next one will be up soon. Please give me some feedback and comment because it really motivates me and I'd love to hear you're opinion (:

Thank you so much for reading! It means a lot.