Chapter Five

She leaned in closer to the mirror and turned so she could look at herself from a different angle. Hermione is not someone you would call shallow or vane and she was not someone that obsessed over how she looked. That was other girls. Not the Gryffindor-bookworm.

Lately though Hermione thought herself spotting changes in her own appearances, just these little things that were not the same that they had once been. Since returning to the castle Hermione had started to look healthier, her skin had gotten back it's healthy glow and a little more colour. And she wasn't the only one who noticed, both Ron and Harry had commented on how good she looked and she had to agree with them. She looked nothing like the frizzy haired little girl with buckteeth and feet that were just a little too big that walked into this castle eight years ago.

Her birthday was in three days and she already thought that she looked older and more mature. Her once frizzy, uncontrollable hair had turned sleek and fell into loose curls and if she wasn't mistaken she had also grown a couple of inches, her skirt was shorter and she had to tug her shirt down all the time. It was like she had grown into her own skin and was finally comfortable with herself for the first time.

With a last look in the mirror, Hermione left the bathroom and tiptoed through the bedroom so she wouldn't wake up the sleeping girls that were still sleeping. She was still an early-riser, the war had not changed that, and always woke up before the rest of the girls and everyone else for that matter. But she didn't mind. She enjoyed the moment of peace and quiet to sort through the million things that were constantly running through her head.

Like she suspected, the common room was empty so she settled down in her favourite chair by the fireplace and picked up the book she had left by the chair last night before she went to bed. She turned to the page where she had left off, but no matter how hard she tried she could not get back into it. Her mind kept drifting back to the images that were now stuck in her mind.

Last night she had had the weirdest dream. It had been like a vision, a trip into a pensive, something that Hermione hated to admit considering her history with Divination. But she could find any other logical explanation for the phenomenon.

There had been a man and a woman that were talking to her and she had smiled and laughed with them. She didn't recognise them but she still felt as if she knew them somehow, there had been a connection but she couldn't put her finger on what or where. What disturbed her the most though was not the fact that she recognised them, it was the way they looked at her like they recognised her as well. The look in their eyes had been so tender and comforting, she felt like that look meant something. It had comforted feel warm and comforted, but the minute she woke up the feeling disappeared and left her with a hallow feeling in her heart.

Lost in her own thoughts Hermione failed to notice that she was no longer alone in the common room and was startled out of her thoughts by the touch of a hand on her shoulder and the clearing of a throat. Hermione spun around in her armchair so fast she almost gave herself a whiplash.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you!" Blaise stood above her and looked down at her with that concerned look in his eyes again. "Are you okay? I have been calling your name for a few minutes now."

"Yeah, I'm fine." she mumbled and turned back around to stare into the flames. Blaise walked around her and took a seat in the chair next to her.

"What is on your mind?" Hermione could tell that he would not let her get away without giving him some kind of answer.

"I had a weird dream that's all."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Blaise sounded so genuine that Hermione couldn't help but smile at him. For the last two weeks, she had spent a significant amount of time with him and never once had her new-found opinion changed. They had been paired up in Arithmancy and she actually found that they had more in common than their brains.

But he was not the only one, she had also been paired up with Malfoy in Potions, something that also turned out to not be such a nightmare after all. She would not exactly say that they went out of their way for her, but they were kind and actually cared about her answer when they asked her how she was.

Others only asked because it was expected of them and they used to be close. Or even worse, they just wanted a reason to talk to one out of the Golden Trio and find out all the scoop about when they were on the run, some people still had no respect for horror and tragedy that their world went through. But the two wizards actually seemed to care for her answer.

"No, I'm okay."

"Then how about you join me for breakfast?" he suggested. "Draco won't be up for at least an hour and I'm starving!"

"Sure!"

They walked down the halls together until they reached the Great Hall on the first floor. It was practically empty inside considering the early hour expect for a few early risers at the Ravencalw and Slytherin tables. No one was sitting at either Gryffindor's table or Huffelpuff's, apparently, they liked their sleep.

Without really thinking about it Hermione followed Blaise over to the Slytherin table and sat down in the seat beside him. What harm could it do? No one was here anyway.

As they started to put food on their plates, they started talking and completely lost the track of time. Before they knew it, the Great Hall was buzzing and they were surrounded by students everywhere. It was first as Draco sat down opposite of them that they came out of their little bubble.

"Sleeping in the snake pit can be dangerous for a beautiful lion like yourself, Granger." both Hermione and Blaise looked around them and Hermione almost had a heart attack when she realised that she was surrounded by Slytherins that had more than once tried to heart her less than a year ago.

"Did you just call me beautiful, Malfoy?"

"So, what if I did?!" he smirked and looked her up and down suggestively. The wink he added at the end had her face burning up.

Over at the Gryffindor table Hermione spotted Harry and Ginny looking her way. They were smiling, clearly showing that her current position didn't bother them in the least. Both of them had made an effort the last couple of weeks to talk to both Blaise and Draco ever since they had started to hang out with her in the common room and library. It seemed as if they had come to the same conclusion as her, that the two wizards weren't as bad as they had always thought.

Ron on the other hand was a completely different story. When Hermione sat with them on the train to Hogwarts, he had barley blinked, but lately he had become more vocal about his opinions. What they had done during the war didn't seem to matter to him, they were still the same gits they had always been and nothing would change that.

He wouldn't look at her even after Harry elbowed him in the side. The food on his plate seemed to be the most interesting thing in the world to him.

This last year Ron had grown so much in her eyes. He had proven himself to be more matured and had started to own up to his mistakes, something that he had never done before. The childish boy that pretended to be a man had actually grown into a man. A man she was proud to have as her "brother". But lately that man had seemed to have just vanished, and it hurt.

After they finished their breakfast, Blaise and Draco stood up with her and walked along with her towards their first class of the day. Halfway there, Harry caught up with them, but Ron was nowhere in sight. They made small talk until Professor Slughorn opened the door to the classroom and they had to scatter out through the classroom to take their seats. Unfortunately, Blaise and Harry were on the other side of the room with their partners while she and Draco got stuck with two quiet and disapproving Ravenclaws.

The tension around the table was real and it did not help that Slughorn's lessons had not improved over the last year. Hermione had to struggle real hard to keep her eyes open and not fall asleep out of boredom.

"Don't fall asleep on me princess. I thought you were a diligent student?!"

"This man is worse than Binns!" Hermione groaned as she kept watching the man who was walking around at the front of the room telling one story after another.

"You'll find no argument here!"

"You're only mad because you didn't get invited to his secret little club." Draco only gave a snort as a reply and when she looked over at him, he was staring straight ahead with a pathetic pout on his face.