Disclaimer: Yes. Fine. You've got me. Because this short, single, brunette American is secretly a dirty blonde Brit with a million-dollar book deal and a houseful of kids. *rolls eyes* Right.
Author's Note: Oh my god! I LOVE YOU GUYS!!! Seriously, the last thing I expected was to post two (or is it three? God, no wonder I almost failed freshman Geometry . . .) days ago and suddenly have 57 reviews! For my first chapter! This is un-frickin-believable!!!!
Awwwww. It's almost enough to make this semi-crippled author (fell in the driveway and dinged up my hand, making it excruciatingly painful to type . . . thus why I'm doing so one-handed) cry!
Actually, it doesn't take all that much to make me cry. Just stick me in front of a television as the last twenty minutes of Titantic plays, and I'm a weeping mess.
Right. No longer rambling. Here! Your new chapter! Take it and be glad!
Second Author's Note: Crap. Forgot to mention this: the scene that takes place below, with Hermione in Potions, took place during in Diagon Alley two summers ago. Hermione was just old enough to pass a future seventh-year.
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The New and Improved Hermione Granger
Part Two: A Potions Quiz Faced with Trepidation
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Harry was surprised by how many of the boys of Hogwarts he had previously considered to be his friends quickly became his enemies.
Dean Thomas? Gone within five minutes. His leering face was actually tinted burgundy, due to the red crowding
Harry's (admittedly limited) vision.
And don't even mention Seamus Finnegan, the smirking arse . . .
He was actually considering which would be more effective, the Bat-Boogey or the Knee-Reversing Hex, for Justin
Finch-Fletchly when he realized how ridiculous he was being. Hexing them because they did double-takes when
Hermione walked (more stalked, in fact, like a predator or a large cat of some sort) by?
Never mind that their looks made his stomach harden and his blood boil. If he was going to co-exist with this new
Hermione - hopefully it would not be long before Hermione returned to her senses - it would mean that he would have to
get used to the attention, long overdue, that she was receiving from the opposite sex.
Harry, of course, promptly forgot this as Ernie Macmillan leered at Hermione from across the Great Hall. His fingers
had curled around his wand, and the incantation for the Knee-Reversing Hex was immediately pulled to mind, at least
until a manicured hand was laid across his bicep, and a sugary voice enquired, "Harry, can you pass the potato
salad?"
Grimacing, Harry broke his eye-contact with a suddenly pale Macmillan, and acquiesced. Subconsciously, he noted that Hermione had used to bite her nails with much frequency when she studied, leaving them stubby and polish-less. Now they were bright pink, which matched the low-cut sweater she'd been wearing that morning on the train, the one that Ron had so admired.
Vaguely, Harry recalled a bulky cable-knit sweater of the same color that Mrs. Granger had given her daughter two Christmases previously. Surely not; in Harry's hazy memory, that sweater had covered her collarbone, and any figure was inscrutable beneath its wooly girth.
"Thank you, Harry."
Her voice pulled him from foggy memories, and she smiled at him. For a split second, Harry saw the bushy-haired, un-manicured, almost-perfect Hermione Granger shining through beneath an inch-thick layer of eyeliner; then Parvati was asking her who had dyed her hair "so fantastically", and she was reverted back to the new, hardly-improved Hermione Granger, whom Harry was beginning to dislike very much.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Their first class of the year had to be, of course, Potions. If it was possible, Snape was even nastier to the NEWT level students than he was to the first years. To make matters worse, Hermione had been giggly and distracted all of the previous night; Harry worried for the Pseudo-Hermione's resilience levels.
Ron, having been unable to make it into the NEWT-level class, had abandoned them for his free period. Last the pair had seen of him, he was heading for the pitch with his broom over his shoulder, intent on practicing for the tryouts that Harry was hosting two weeks into September.
Thus, Harry was left with Hermione alone for the first time since he'd been acquainted with her new self, which he'd mentally dubbed Pseudo-Hermione.
Originally, he'd attempted to ignore her like he had on the train. Unfortunately, that morning at breakfast
she'd appeared slightly hassled, her new blonde bob in messy curls and her eyeliner smudged at the creases. Her
quickly muttered, "Pass the toast," was devoid of sugary overtones, and Harry found himself happily doing so,
relieved that all of this preposterous make-over business was done.
"Ready for Potions?" he'd asked, his voice steeped in the usual despondent tone that one associates with conversations about Potions.
Of course, once he had been drawn out, he'd realized that the curls were purposely messy, and her eyeliner had been expertly smudged with a brush that had been invented for that exact use. By then, she'd tricked him into having a conversation with her, and at that point it would seem juvenile and petty to revert back to the silent treatment.
Also, it was easier to keep track of her new admirers (stalkers) if he was close to her.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Hermione wasn't looking forward to NEWT Potions for one very simple reason, and that reason didn't include the words `Snape' or `Harry'.
No, the reason Hermione was facing Potions with dread was because she hadn't read the textbook yet.
She'd spent all of her summer hemming skirts and spelling her hair, and had spent no time at all revising her notes
from the previous years and reading her textbooks. Thus, she walked into her first class of her NEWT year completely
unprepared. She had finished scanning the textbooks for Herbology, Transfiguration, Ancient Runes, and History of Magic
the night before, but left DADA, Potions and the rest for a later date.
And this, in his typical clairvoyant fashion, was when Snape chose to strike.
He'd appraised her new look with a single, eloquently raised (and semi-greasy) eyebrow, saying nothing remotely Snape-like. This, of course, put Hermione on her guard. She was proven correct in her fears when Snape ordered them to put away their cauldrons and wands.
"Quills and parchment," he ordered silkily, surveying them from his position at the front of the classroom. "I've decided to see how many of you lucky few that made it into my NEWT class have prepared yourselves."
The twelve other students, including Harry, looked like they'd swallowed their tongues. Equally nervous, with
dread clogging her throat, Hermione put away her cauldron - it was going a touch spotty anyway; all her spare pocket
money had gone into her textbooks, magazine subscriptions, and basic supplies like quills and parchment, and frankly
she didn't have a Galleon to throw away on new potions things while her cauldron was still functioning - and took
out one of her new collection of pink-feathered quills.
Harry must've choked on his tongue at the sight of these, because Hermione heard garbled noises coming from him, seated at her left, and she swallowed a self-satisfied smirk. So far, Operation Aero (named such because Hermione had devised her plan of battle while consuming the Muggle chocolate bar) was progressing along marvelously.
Harry could barely tear his eyes away from her, and when he did it was always to glare in an alarming fashion at male
passerby. She'd had to distract him the night before at the feast to keep him from hexing Ernie Macmillan, and she
was amazed at all the progress she'd made only twenty-four hours into her little scheme.
"According to your textbook," began her be-greased professor, once everyone was holding (quite a few, quivering) their quills poised above a scrap of spare parchment, "what are the ingredients necessary to completing a cauldron of veritaserum? List them in the order of how they are added."
Hermione froze. In her mind, she could see herself in slow motion, tossing her copy of NEWT-Level Potions and How to Brew Them into her trunk haphazardly, then reaching for her new pink quills. The only ingredient rising to mind were jobberknoll feathers - so she wrote that down in the vague center of her parchment - but the rest her stuck in her brain. She'd skimmed a recipe once, in another book in another place; what was the answer?
And then her memory for faces saved her.
"Veritaserum, ei?" The slightly balding man scratched under his chin, obviously feigning ignorance. "Why'd you be wantin' to buy ingredients for a cauldron of veritaserum?"
Hermione reddened (she could hardly tell him it was for research study; Harry and Ron barely believed her, let alone this man who didn't know her as well as they did), and stumbled, "For my NEWT project. I'm studying the effects of veritaserum on-"
"NEWT Potions doesn't cover veritaserum." He eyeballed her suspiciously, as if expecting the Dark Mark to pop out of her armpits at any moment. "The Ministry reckons that if they put it in textbooks anyone can brew it. Just `bout the only thing the Ministry does right nowadays."
Eureka.
Scribbling out `jobberknoll feathers', Hermione wrote `Our textbook doesn't list a recipe for
veritaserum' and triumphantly dropped her quill, which she'd all but snapped in half while clutching it in
her terrified grip. She would read that textbook if it took her all night; she wasn't being caught out like that
again.
She rubbed her aching left wrist - held too long at an impossible angle - and turned for a moment to see how Harry was
doing. He'd scribbled something unintelligible in unusually messy handwriting, and was gazing off into space at a
spot above Hannah Abbot's left ear.
"Harry?" she whispered.
He didn't respond.
"Harry?" she repeated, a little louder, and he jerked almost out of his seat, before realizing it was
Hermione who had spoken.
"What?" he demanded harshly, and Hermione knew that there was a hurt look flittering across her left face, but was unable to halt its flight. Wincing, Harry reach forward to grip her left hand, and cupped it in both of his, brushing against the silky skin with roughened palms. He looked apologetic. "I'm sorry. What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she hissed, stung, and tugged her hand free. She couldn't even remember her reason for whispering his name, which in an of itself spoke volumes of lack of logic, and the bitter look accompanying his harsh `what' had hurt her more than she'd care to admit.
"Dammit, Her-"
"If Mr. Potter and Miss Granger are done with their tête-à-tête, I would like to collect your answers." Snape
smirked as Harry, looking flustered and faintly annoyed, returned his attention to the front of the classroom. The
professor began to move up the rows, collecting the scraps of parchment and looking hardly surprised at the answers he
was receiving.
As he reached the back table housing Harry and Hermione, he took Harry's slip first, scanned it, and smirked
triumphantly. Obviously Harry had gotten it wrong, and reeking of self-satisfaction, Snape added the slip to the small
collection in his left hand and picked up Hermione's. He read it once, then again, and with a sour frown that told
Hermione she'd put the correct answer that he hadn't been expecting, added it to his pile.
"It seems," he said, moving swiftly down the aisles like a bat on a mission, "that only one person amongst you all has done the reading. Ten points from Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff." The students noted that Slytherin was absent, but no one seemed suicidal enough to point out this fact.
That is, until Harry moodily spoke up. "Who got it right, Professor?"
Snape whirled around and looked down his hooked, greasy-slimed nose at the boy in the back. "Ten additional points from Gryffindor for impertinence." As there was a small murmur of protest, he acquiesced angrily, "And five to Gryffindor for Miss Granger's correct answer. There is no mention of a recipe for veritaserum in your textbook."
Grinning as triumphantly as she could through a thick layer of cherry lip gloss, Hermione settled back into her seat as Snape, obviously miffed, snapped, "Open your textbooks to page 213. I want a detailed summary of chapter seven on my desk by next class."
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Alright. Part two, uploaded and ready.
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