A.N. Hi everyone! This is my first real attempt at a Harry Potter fanfic. Someone already pointed out in a review that my pronouns get mixed up (Thank you thank you thank you). I started the story in first person and then went back and changed it to third person once I had already reached the fifth chapter. So if you notice some bumps let me know and I will happily fix them! Let me know what you think!

Whoooooo Whoooooo. The train whistle to signal the final hour of the journey. Hermione sat alone in the Heads' compartment still waiting to meet the Head Boy to her Head Girl. She had had no luck in the first few hours of the trip and it was doubtful the last hour would yield better results; he had even skipped the meeting with prefects. The muggle-born tucked loose waves behind her ears, closed her omni-present book, and stood to begin her duties.

The summer following the final battle was grueling. She had been unable to locate her parents, whom she had obliviated the prior summer. She made the educated guess that her mother had roped her father into trying out their outdoorsmen skills, an experience the older Granger had always dreamt about. They were almost certainly somewhere in the Australian wilderness living off the grid. Hermione had managed to track them to the southern portion of the country where she left behind tracker charms to notify her if they ever returned. After a month and a half searching for her parents, she returned to England to assist in rebuilding Hogwarts, her home away from home. Every time she stepped around the rubble, Hermione was struck that she no longer had a home, much less a second one, with her parents still missing. The construction effort, even with magic, was slow going. The project received a boost when an anonymous donor contributed the funds to pay fifty highly skilled magical constructors. By the time soon-to-be first years received their letters of acceptance, Hogwarts had been entirely rebuilt to its former glory.

Once the task at Hogwarts was complete, Hermione was left to sift through the pile of mail building up on the kitchen table in the small flat she was leasing for the summer months. The envelopes held varying offers: requests for interviews or photoshoots and marriage proposals to job offers and threats. All but the job offers were quick to be thrown into the small fireplace in the corner. The job offers were quick to follow, though, as each letter mentioned the requirements for the job, but then included some form of personalized note to implore her to apply despite her short comings, that her "real world experience" would certainly make up for any deficits. Hermione, being the forever proud Gryffindor girl wonder, would not be underqualified for any position and would not accept special treatment for doing good. Anyone in the position I had fallen into during my teen years would have done the same as I had. When she had finally threw all the mail in the fire to burn into oblivion, she used those flames to contact Professor-now-Headmistress McGonagall via floo.

It only took twenty minutes to convince McGonagall to allow select students to return to finish their schooling or, in some cases, repeat their final year due to deficiencies under the Death Eaters' rule. Only a week later, she received the letter formally inviting her to enroll as an eighth-year student to complete her education. The eighth year curriculum would be almost the exact same as that for year seven, but would allow for more autonomy. Hermione implored Harry and Ron to join her in finishing up their education, but both refused. Ron insisted his experiences from the past year would be enough for him to pursue an auror career; the thought of mediocrity made Hermione bristle. Harry, on the other hand, accepted an offer to play for the Chudley Cannons, which sent Ron into a passive-aggressive funk that only deepened when Hermione refused to shun the dark-haired boy.

Despite differences in plans for the next year, Ron and Hermione had pledged to continue dating despite the distance. The wizarding world absolutely adored the war hero coupling and had been vigorously following the love story since they had emerged from the Battle of Hogwarts hand in hand, stealing quick kisses. It was this interest that created the requests for magazine interviews and photoshoots. Hermione threw any offers into the fire, Ron was all too eager to drag his unwilling girlfriend from reporter to reporter. Aside from different expectations of privacy, it was easy being in a relationship with Ron, after all, they had been best friends nearly half of their lives. The only major hiccup in the coupling had come between the Battle of Hogwarts and Hermione taking a muggle plane, in hopes of following her parents' steps to a T, to Australia.

Hermione, having no other place to go, had stayed at the Burrow, in Ginny's room, until her flight. In the interim, she worked to find a small flat for one in muggle London, close to where she had grown up and mere seconds away from the Burrow by any magical means. Ron could not understand why Hermione couldn't just move in with him at the Burrow permanently. Hermione could not understand what good could come of moving in with a new boyfriend and his family. The argument had dissipated, but never resolved and Ron refused to visit her new flat once she found one.

Ron began his auror training around the same time she had succeeded in convincing McGonagall to allow eighth years, so Hermione was spared a large brunt of his disappointment in her accommodations. Only a few weeks later, Hermione received the letter that she would be the Head Girl for the upcoming school year. McGonagall stated that the staff and the Governors felt she deserved the title despite not technically being a seventh year. They felt confident she would do the best job and that seventh-year students would understand her selection. Hermione had been filled with joy when the Head Girl badge had clattered out of the envelope and into her palm. She had thought she had missed her chance.

I could not let them down. She straightened her tie and strode out the sliding door. Ever since the Ford Angelina debacle, the Heads and Prefects had required students enter the rear entrance of the caboose so that they could take attendance. This meant first years, who were held up by doting parents and had no friends or siblings to hold them seats, were often relegated the very first carriage. This made Hermione's job of assuring the truly new first years were ready to disembark all the easier. She went through the carriage and poked her bushy-haired head into each compartment to remind the new students to change into their new robes and to look for her on the platform, but to leave their trunks on the train so they could be magically transported to the foot of their new beds. She had had her short speech rehearsed ever since the Head Girl had instructed her to do the same all those years ago.

She slid open the door to the final compartment in the carriage and began that rehearsed reminder, but stopped dead in her tracks when she registered the compartment's occupant. His head lolled back over the top of the seat and his feet, clad with impeccable dragonhide dress shoes, rested on the opposite seat, while a thick book, a potions book, rested in his lap. With eyes closed and breathing steady Draco Malfoy let out soft snores. Hermione allowed her eyes to rake over him in a way she had been forbidden from the moment the two meant. He had always been pale, his porcelain skin, grey eyes and white-blond hair did little to provide him any coloring, but in recent years Malfoy took pale to a new level; his skin had turned grey instead of porcelain, his eyes had dullened, and his hair grew greasy and perpetually disarrayed. The Malfoy that slept in front of her now looked to have more life in him. His hair was once again perfectly coiffed, but in a way that looked without effort, and his skin had a pinkish rather than grey undertone. He was dressed in his school pants and shirt with his tie loose around his neck and robes and jumper folded neatly beside him.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer."

Hermione jumped when his icy grey eyes appeared from behind their lids. "I – ah, sorry. I was just reminding the first years that we were about to arrive and to leave their trunks on the train and to change into their robes and that I would meet them and – I'm Head Girl."

The corner of his lip tugged upward, "I should've known, who else would be Head Girl?"

"I – why are you here?" His eye brow arched, "I mean here as in the first-year carriage not here as in going to school. You have every right to go back to school to finish your education, that's what I'm doing after all, but you already did your seventh year, but I suppose you were distracted, I – I'm babbling again, aren't I?" She had developed a bad habit of babbling early on in her Hogwarts career, a symptom of having too much knowledge stuffed into her brain. Ron and Harry had usually served as a release valve, a place for her to share as much as she wished since neither was listening. Now, she had neither boy and was prone to bursts such as the one Malfoy had been forced to witness.

Malfoy closed his book, tucking a folded up piece of parchment to save his place, and set it aside. Flicking out his jumper, he pulled it over his head without disturbing a single hair on his perfectly messy hair, "Just a bit. To answer your questions, I'm returning to school due to insufficiencies in my seventh year and I'm sitting here, among the first years, in hopes that I would be left alone. Leave it to you, Granger, war heroine know-it-all, to thwart my evil plot."

She blinked. He had complimented her as a war heroine, but taken it back with his know-it-all comment. "Oh. Sorry. I – I'll leave you be then. Just, remember to leave your trunk on the train and I see you're already in your school cloths. And you'll follow the majority of the students to the thestrals to ride up to the castle." Hermione hoped the boy perceived her exit as a graceful turn on her heel and her striding away, letting the door close behind her. But she had an aching feeling he saw her heel catch in the carpet and that her pace was a bit too quick to be a stride.