Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling does. My aim in life is to get the annoying Cillit Bang advert off our screens. Arggggrhhhhhhhhh. Bang and the dirt is gone. Eekk

Author's Note

Thanks to Hannah for letting me use her first few lines of her fanfic in the middle. Hope you enjoy it and sorry for being a bad updater! Sorry, if the Hermione's poem is bad but I can't write poems.

Chapter six: Deep Poetry

"What!? " Hermione said turning around again, "No. No way! You can't make him the head boy."

"Is there a particular reason for this?" asked Professor McGonagall, "Mr Malfoy used to be in the Inquisitive squad, hence has experience with school dealings, as well as good communications with other students."

"No, but…we don't get along," Hermione pleaded, "Ask any teacher. Professor Binns in particular. Please Professor you remember when we used to be in the same transfiguration class."

"Yes, however, both of you have matured considerably in the past few years and it may even reduce the Slytherin-Gryffindor rivalry that has been going on for a long period of time. I'm sure the student body would benefit from having two responsible students such as both of you. However, before I did have my doubts and I confess that I still am rather concerned, but this is beneficial for the school." McGonagall smiled.

"Don't worry. I'm sure Hermione is just shocked with the new change. I'm sure she'll adjust well after a short period of time, Professor." Draco smiled, "After all, I don't remember her stepping out of line once. Do you?"

Although his question was aimed at Professor McGonagall, he was looking at Hermione, grinning. In an instant Hermione knew she couldn't win this. With a word he could get her in trouble and she knew Draco would love it.

"Yes, Miss Granger, is indeed, one of the best students Hogwarts has ever had." Commented the teacher, "For the rest of the day, Hermione will inform you of all the duties, show you the Heads' common room and help you move in. If that's okay with you, Miss Granger?"

"Yes, Professor." Hermione replied defeated.

"Are you sure about this?" Professor McGonagall questioned.

"Relax; we'll get on like a house on fire." Draco ensured her.

"That's what worries me," Their teacher muttered.

"How many times do I have to go over this?!" Hermione shrieked. "It's so simple, yet you choose to have an IQ of a peanut."

Herself and Draco were sitting on a sofa in the middle of the Head boy and girl's common room.

"Just go over the middle part again." Draco requested.

"Fine!" Hermione said annoyed, "Every fortnight we have a meeting with the prefects. Our next one is this Friday, and then every Saturday we each have to patrol the corridors until midnight. If a 1st year requests help in one of their subjects then we elect a prefect to help them for an hour at lunch, or we could decide to assist them depending on what subjects we specialize in-"

"I don't get that last part." Draco butted in.

"You don't specialize in anything, so you don't have to worry about that part. The students work through us, so if somebody comes to you with an idea for something, don't give them the cold shoulder." Hermione retorted, "If this is too much for you to endure, I'm sure McGonagall won't mind if you back out."

"As if." Draco responded, "It sounds like fun."

"Fun?" Hermione stood up from the sofa, "Fun?! This isn't supposed to be fun! This is a responsibility you must value with every ounce of your being. You should be completely committed to it. Fun is going to Hogsmeade to buy some sweets. Fun is hanging out with your friends. Fun is…"

"…sending people to the hospital wing?"

That forced Hermione to stop her rant. "So Hermione, we're alright now?" Draco smiled.

"Fine?" Hermione asked, now sitting at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, "How could you think it would be fine!? You didn't even try to tell me!"

"Actually, I did try, several times." Harry continued, "But I need the time for extra study sessions and I know I can't do it without giving something up. And anyway, before you did most of the duties, so at least now you've got somebody more…useful."

"Useful"?" Hermione exclaimed, "Malfoy couldn't be useful if you jammed Advanced guide to Transfiguration up his bu-"

"Look." Harry said. "What are you asking?"

"All I want is for you to come back! You don't even have to do any work! Please understand Harry, I cannot live with that boy!" Hermione pleaded.

"Just give him a chance," Harry reasoned, "I really need this Hermione, please"

Hermione was speechless. Her own friend would not help her. Instead he made an excuse for her to give Draco a chance. What was this? A conspiracy? Nevertheless, she knew she was being unfair on Harry because he had made his decision due to educational purposes. She finished off her food quietly and then made her way to the Head common room. When she reached there she said the password, "raindrops" and entered. She looked around to see if Draco was there but to her dismay he was in the centre of the room, playing chess with Crabbe who was sitting opposite him.

"Hi Hermione!" Draco beamed when he saw her. "Isn't this great having your own common room?"

"Past tense." Hermione replied. "It was great."

"Oh hi, um, Mud- er, Granger, er, Hermione, thing." Goyle faltered, slightly scared of what Hermione might do to him. He stood up, looked back at Draco and said, "I have to go now. I need to…clean my ears." Then left.

"I didn't know I had the ability to repel elephants." Hermione smiled amused.

"I think you've got the ability to repel anything," Draco laughed, then when he saw the aggravated expression on Hermione's face, added, "…which is good because if we ever get abducted by a Manticore then you'll come in useful…not that you're not useful anyway but…I'll just shut up."

"Good idea." Hermione agreed. "We need to discuss how the Christmas event is going to be held and what it is going to actually be, before Friday's meeting."

"I thought it was already agreed that it was going to be some sort of dance. Well that was what the rest of us were told at the beginning of the year." Draco commented.

"Yes," Hermione sat down opposite Draco where Crabbe had been, "But not only will that require a lot of work, but people will get distracted from their studies and end up worrying about their dates, not their education!"

"Isn't that the general idea of a dance?" Draco replied, "To cool nerves so that everybody doesn't go mental? We need to do what's best for the schoo-"

"Which will be to have a small games event in Hogsmeade." Hermione interrupted.

"No. Everybody is counting on us to throw something worth getting excited about and half the school already are looking forward to some sort of ball." Draco persisted.

"Well the sooner we inform them the less disappointed they'll be when they find out its a small winter games tournament." Hermione answered. "After all, we've only ever had one ball in our time here and who are we to change the traditional Hogwarts routine?"

"Well…they won't be happy." Draco nodded. "And our role is to make them happy."

"No it is not!" Hermione responded, "Our role is to do what's best for them, and getting stressed over what they're going to wear or who they're going to go with, is not best for them in the long run."

"Fine. Why don't we get the prefects to vote on Friday's meeting?" Draco proposed.

"That's the best idea you've had so far but they'll probably be more concerned about their education then a ball."

This gave Draco an idea. "Okay, why don't we make this interesting. If the prefects agree to a dance or ball then you'll have to be my date for it s-"

"What!? No way. I would rather remove my eyeballs and use them as a quill holder!" Hermione declared.

"…But if the prefects say they want a winter tournament," Draco continued, "I won't talk to you for the rest of the time we have here at Hogwarts unless its to do with Head duties."

"Agreed."

It was a calm winter's night, the birds were asleep, the owlery was silent and there was a mysterious shade of blue invading the skies. However, not all was at peace.

"Can't you just keep quiet?!" Hermione howled outside Draco's dormitory. The door opened and Draco's head peered through.

"I'm sorry but I need to sort a few minor things out." Draco apologized.

"What like knocking down the ceiling?" Hermione said sarcastically.

"Something like that." Draco replied and shut the door on Hermione's stunned face.

BANG BANG

That's it Hermione thought and pointed her wand at Draco's door, "Alohomora." It opened. Honestly, this boy hasn't even cast a fasten spell on his door. Anybody could get in. Hermione thought. She entered Draco's room except he wasn't in it, so she made her way into his bathroom and there in front of her very eyes was a clutter of stone, dust and bath tiles. Draco had somehow managed to destroy his whole swimming pool sized bath. "Exactly, what are you doing?" Hermione asked.

"How did you get in here?" Draco questioned from inside the bath tub but before Hermione could answer said, "Anyway, what do you know about getting wands from drains?" Hermione jumped into the wrecked bath and walked towards Draco. She looked down and saw that a wand was stuck in the drain.

"Do I want to know how that got there?" Hermione asked rhetorically.

"Umm…well I was checking this massive bath out and when I went to test one of the taps my ring fell off into the drain." Draco told Hermione who was trying not to laugh, "So, I got my wand and pointed and said wingardium leviosa and all that, but then my wand got stuck in the drain…so yeah."

"Okay…then why is the rest of the bath a mess?" Hermione asked.

"I tried taking my wand out by casting a spell that would explode the bath so-"

"Why don't you try summoning a brain?" Hermione butted in, rather annoyed at Draco's stupidity.

"Why don't you try summoning a sense of humor?" Draco snapped back, very rudely. "I mean, try summoning a book, like a really good one or-"

"I'm getting this wand out." Hermione announced. "The muggle way."

"Muggle way? That's pathetic." Draco thought out loud, "But I wouldn't be surprised, it coming from a mud-" Draco stopped when he looked at Hermione's expression: angered and somewhat dangerous. He tried to redeem himself, "Mud…mud...erm…its really good for flowers and that's why mud is good for you, because you're like a flower. All colourful and…happy."

"Just mind the thorns," Hermione threatened, and pulled on the wand. It didn't move. "It needs a little twist." She twisted the wand and this time pulled so hard that she fell backwards and landed on top of Draco. Completely taken by surprise, Draco just stayed frozen still on the floor while Hermione struggled to get up from on top of him. "Well…now we have that sorted I can final-"

"Nah, I still need to get my ring back," Draco replied in the same position.

"What!?" Hermione screeched, "You've almost just lost your priceless wand which you need for practically everything, and now you want to get yourself in a mess again and acquire your pathetic ring?"

"Well, actually its made of real gold and..and…" Draco paused.

"And what?" Hermione asked.

"And its worth a lot." Draco finished.

"Well you'll have to wear one of your other ones, because it seems to have gone into the endless plumbing system, so we can't even locate it and use a summoning charm." Hermione said.

"But it was a lucky charm." Draco complained as well as thinking, and it got Granger to literally fall back onto me. It must be lucky.

"Be quiet and go to sleep." Hermione walked out the door. "And fix your bath!"

Draco smiled. Maybe I'll leave it a day or two.

"Hi everyone!" Luna said enthusiastically. "Thanks for coming to this poetry club which will not only cast you into a different world, but help you finding yourself. Whether its within or in a tree. You'll know."

Hermione sat down miserably on a large rock near the bank of the lake. Her past week had been terrible: she had just about escaped getting low marks in her potions assessment, lost a debate against her enemy, almost been kidnapped, nearly got expelled twice, her rival had been given the role of Head Boy, she received two essays to write on Elladora's auto-biography for History of magic and now Draco and his friends had decided to join the one thing she thought would brighten up her week…poetry club.

"Okay, so it's going to work like this." Claire Jobling said, "Everyone has the next twenty minutes to write a short poem about whatever you pick out Luna's hat and then you read it to the rest of us. Here, I'll start." She shut her eyes and put her hand in the black school hat and picked out a topic, "I've picked wisdom, so that's what I'll work on for today. Now you guys can pick yours." Luna went around the rather large poetry group with her hat and everybody took turns to pick out their topic.

"Ooo I've got beauty." Blaise smiled. "This is gonna be fun! I can just look at my reflection in the lake! What have you guys got?"

"Death" Draco replied horridly.

"Temptation? That's like when you measure whether something's hot or not or something, right? What'd you get?" Said Goyle.

"I got coward!" Crabbe responded excitedly. Opposite them Hermione looked at her own word and smiled...love. Over the holidays she had taken out numerous poetry books and read most of the romantic poems. Maybe she had grown up over the holidays, maybe the war against Voldemort had changed her, but whatever it was, it had made her look at the world in all its forms. Obviously, some things didn't change, like the feelings she shared about the idiot opposite her. She looked around at everybody. They were all writing quickly and crossing bits out, very keen on reading the best piece they could write to the rest of the club. Hermione looked around at the beautiful lake and immediately knew what she would write. Twenty minutes of writing and scribbling passed and everybody was sitting on the rocks beside the lake.

"So who wants to go first?" Luna asked enthusiastically. Nobody put their arm up due to nervousness. "Okay, Hermione since this is your club, remember, you can start."

"What me?" Hermione replied nervously, then looked at everybody else's reluctant faces and went and stood in front of the whole group. "Okay. My topic is love and…well...its mostly in 10 and 11 syllables, apart from the rhyming couplet-"

"I had that for breakfast yesterday!," Crabbe exclaimed.

"Okay…well…good for you…here it is:

Love is indubitably everything,

Every colour, every scent and every touch ,

The birth of beauty with the birth of spring,

No other feeling could baffle us as much.

Love resembles a beautiful still lake,

One drop could satisfy the world's endless thirst,

It opens your heart and soul wide awake,

But in their eyes you're the one who comes first.

Like a flame from a candle just been lit,

Don't fall in love…rise in it."

Hermione looked up and the group before her clapped bewildered at such a powerful poem. She hadn't thought it was very good because she had only thought of it in the last 5 minutes when she had a sudden burst of inspiration.

"Yay go Hermione!" Draco shouted a bit too suspiciously, because when Hermione went to sit down she looked rather apprehensively in his direction.

"Ooo, can I have a go now!" Crabbe asked, then wobbled to where Hermione had stood first. "I thought the poem bit was hard at first but trust me it's really good!" Draco rolled his eyes, knowing what was coming would be worse now that Crabbe actually liked his poem. Crabbe continued, "Oki, so like, I'll start now. My topic was cowaaard:

I love to eat all kinds of meat,

And smell my kinda smelly feet,

But I really like to eat a bit of a cow,

So give me some right now.

I'd eat a cow-herd if you gave it to me

And…I like trees."

The poetry club sat there astounded. Most of them were thinking how he hadn't been taken into St. Mungo's for being dangerously dim. Confused that nobody had been blown away by his 'brilliant' poem Crabbe crudely plopped his buttocks on the grass, in front of Blaise, whose view was now blocked. The next person to read their poem was Hannah, Ron's girlfriend.

"Hi, my poem topic is opposites …" Hannah started. Draco tilted his head to look at Hermione, his victim. How was he going to win the bet? She probably hated him more then before and now he had even lost his lucky ring. He looked back up as Hannah said the last lines of her poem:
"Without despair there is no hope,

Without fear you can't be brave,

Without hate there can be no love."

Everybody clapped excitedly as Hannah went to sit down. Next up was Draco.

"Hey everyone, I got the glorious topic of death so..cool," Draco looked down at his parchment and could feel the eyes on him, weighing him down. He wrapped it up and stuck it in his robe pocket, knowing what he was going to say, as he couldn't possible say what he wrote, "Mines pretty quick, so here you go:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I'm going to die one day,

And so are you."

He grinned at the other members of the poetry club who were either annoyed that he hadn't put enough effort into his poem or terrified that the Giant Squid was going to jump out and kill them. Hermione was among those who were miffed off with Draco and was about to lecture him about respecting others when one of the 'squid phobic' students accidentally crashed their bag into Hermione's legs as they got up.

SPLASH

She struggled to move as the icy water of the lake paralysed the top half of her body. She tried swimming one way but a force was pulling her away from land. She tried swimming the other way but kept on being pushed down by an equally strong force. She didn't even have her wand in her possession because she had left it in her school bag. She could just about see Luna and Claire panicking to think of a way to get her out. In another hour she would probably be in the hospital wing, forbidden from doing her homework. Great. Suddenly, she heard a muffled sound from somewhere on her right and turned to see what it was. If it was some kind of creature living in the lake she wouldn't know what to do without her wand.

Two hands grabbed her shoulders and forced her to swim in the direction of the land. She could hardly breathe and was worn out even though they were nowhere near land. Hermione had hardly ever been particularly athletic and she felt like giving in to the force that was inviting her into the lake.

Finally, she reached land and just collapsed for a few minutes on the soft, dry, grass. All the pain she had felt had vanished and after a few more minutes she finally had her breathe back. Therefore, she sat up and looked at the others who were all around her ensuring she was well. However, as she looked past these people there was one person who was taking slime out of his shoes and he was much wetter then anybody else…Draco?

End Note

That was…predictable. But then again my whole story is predictable! There's no special features for those who read them in this chappie (which is like 0.000001 of you). I just wanted this out for Valentine's Day. Next weeks my holiday so I'll probably have a chapter up for then. Ooo and could you guys let me know if you think my story is going downhill plotwise because I would love to know. Okay thanks! Happy Valentine's Day.