Disclaimer: Me = penniless fanfiction author. Harry Potter Owner = not me.
Author's Note: Right, SOO sorry it took me so long to get this out. I mean, I had it written and all . . . don't know why it would take me so long just to re-edit it and post it back up.
Eh. Yet another mystery of the universe.
Second Author's Note: Oh, right: THANK YOU ALL!!!! I mean, I don't think I've ever had this many reviews for two chapters!! It's absolutely amazing . . . I'm gob-smacked and speechless (not that you can tell from my babbling).
Anywho, thanks for all the luuuurv, and please enjoy!
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The New and Improved Hermione Granger
Part Three: Fainting in Class is Often Disapproved Of
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The moment the painful Potions class ended, Harry stuffed his things into his bag and took off out of the classroom
at something vaguely resembling a brisk jog. A few nervous second-years on their way to Double Potions jumped out of
his way as he barreled past them, hardly noticing. He had a free period while Hermione had Ancient Runes, and he was
going to join Ron out on the quidditch pitch and burn some extra energy.
"Harry!"
He heard the Pseudo-Hermione's voice echo down the dungeon hallway behind him, and he ignored it, hoping that she would go away before she realized how excruciating it was for him to look at her in her new state of ditzy-ness. Because as much as he hated this new Hermione, he didn't want her to disappear, either . . . she was an extension of the real Hermione, and however masochistic it was, he still wanted that reminder.
"Harry! Wait!"
He kept on (running) walking, taking the stairs to the upper floors three at a time, and when having reached the
first floor, swerved to the right at the last moment away from the Head Dorms in the direction of Gryffindor Tower,
hoping the increasing crowd of gossip-hungry students would dissuade her. It didn't, of course. No matter how she
was packaged, this was Hermione after all.
"Harry!" It took her four floors and fifteen corners, but she finally caught up, and latched onto his forearm to prevent him from storming off. "Harry, what's wrong with you?" She looked at him through sooty lashes, her cheeks flushed from rushing after him, mouth set in a sparkly line of determination.
"Nothing's wrong with me," he snapped, tugging experimentally on his arm. Something's wrong with you, that's what. She didn't release him, instead digging her long, pink nails into his forearm.
"Something's up, and I want you to tell me what it is." The almost perverse combination of the old Hermione's stubbornness and the Pseudo-Hermione's painted face and dagger-like nails - bloody hell, those things are going to leave marks - made Harry's stomach churn. He decided that maybe flying wasn't such a good idea; returning to his four-poster and lying there until dinner seemed a much more amiable solution.
First, however, he had to get rid of her.
"Just leave me along, Hermione." He wrenched his arm free, and darted around the corner; in a juvenile fashion, he hid behind one of the tapestries.
He heard the clatter of her shoes - heels, which didn't exactly agree with the mortar in the stone floors - as she rushed past his hiding place, and then harried clicks as she crossed by it again. If her huff of aggravation was any indication, she was abandoning the chase.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
For the four weeks immediately following the incident after Potions class, Harry and Hermione avoided each other like medieval Europeans attempted to avoid the plague. How they did so, what with having to share not only a dormitory and Head duties, but classes and mealtimes, was a tribute to both their intelligence and their knowledge of Hogwarts' numerous hidey-holes.
Hermione, however, appeared to have no intention of avoiding anyone else. She had gone to the first Hogsmeade weekend latched onto the arm of a drooling Ernie Macmillan, accompanied with a sugary giggle that was sweeter than a candy quill, and Harry had spent his trip glowering at them from across the Three Broomsticks.
Operation Aero was proceeding as planned; their current argument was a minor blip in an altogether smoothly sailing plan. After all . . . if he was ignoring her (and glaring at Ernie as if he was sporting a Dark Mark nailed to his forehead) it meant he was jealous. And if he was jealous, than he was slowly realizing how much he was in love with her. And the moment that Harry knew he was in love with her, Hermione was well aware that he would hex any body in Hogwarts that so much as looked at her funny.
She'd tested her theory with poor Ernie Macmillan, who'd looked like he'd swallowed his tongue when she'd agreed to go to Hogsmeade with him. His mates back in Hufflepuff had looked suitably impressed (which irked her to no end, not that she let it show in her face), and Harry had scowled alarmingly from the Gryffindor table.
Hopefully, at the time Harry realized his undying love for her, she could ditch the concealer, magazines, and pink quills. Normal, hormonal teenage boy Harry might have been, but once he fell in love with her, Hermione was certain that she could grow green tentacles out of her ears and he'd still love her.
Alright . . . so the make-up was a hassle, the giggling was annoying, and the drools of the Hogwarts male population were somewhat degrading, but Hermione knew that this was all for a good cause. After all, the night she'd accepted Ernie's invitation, she'd heard smashing down in the Heads common room, having been up late revising her Transfiguration notes.
She now spent the time she had previously been working with Ginny and other Gryffindor girls, chattering about make-up and hairstyles and other mind-numbing topics that Hermione would be quite happy to abandon once Harry came to his senses.
Being the brightest witch of her age meant that Hermione knew perfectly well that she could keep up her stunning grades and still lose her somewhat unflattering entitlement of "know-it-all". All that was required was her staying up until all hours of the night, revising her notes, doing her homework, and reading her textbooks without anyone to keep her company.
The bags under her eyes may have been the size of Galleons at this point, and she went through a cauldron of Pepper-Up potion a week (she canceled all her magazine subscriptions other than Witch Weekly, and this left her some pocket money for supplies), but it was a small price to pay. She could keep her grades - thus getting into Membry College, a medical school that had more prestige than a Muggle university like Oxford, having been around for a few hundred centuries longer - and get her Harry at the same time.
Never mind that she only slept an hour or two every night. Hermione Granger was a girl on a mission. She didn't need that much sleep.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The second week of October, Minerva McGonagall's NEWT Transfiguration class opened with a bang - literally.
Three minutes into class, Hermione Granger burst in, the door hitting the back wall with a resounding clang, her hair in disarray, and the contents of her school bag scooped in her cupped arms.
Minerva halted her lecture on the practices of be-spelling inanimate objects to serve as door guardians - she'd been using the gargoyle outside the Headmaster's office as an simplistic example for her less . . . well, gifted students - to survey her favorite student with a critical eye.
She didn't particularly like what she saw.
Hermione Granger was still at the top of the class, and Minerva had no doubt that she would pass her NEWTs with some of the highest scores Hogwarts had seen since Dumbledore himself, if not higher.
But this practice she had adopted, of dressing herself up as some sort of loose woman, had Minerva concerned.
Doubtlessly, Hermione thought to attract some member of the male species, and she was most certainly attracting them
like Nifflers to the Potter Gringotts vault . . . just not the one she wanted, or else this ridiculous practice would
have stopped by now.
Minerva was also well aware that her Head Girl was illegally brewing Pepper-Up potion in large doses in the abandoned prefect bathroom on the fifth floor. If she hadn't known that Hermione was too intelligent to leave evidence just lying around, she might have attempted to call her on it.
"Miss Granger," she hugged in what she hoped to be a suitably miffed tone, "I wouldn't expect for you to be coming late to my class." She shot Hermione a withering glare, with the obvious undertone that she would have thought this to be the behavior of Potter or Weasley.
Favorite student or not, high grades notwithstanding, this really had to be stopped. And since Albus was considering it to be highly amusing, it would have to be her.
"I'm sorry professor." Hermione juggled a few of her books, inkpots, and sickeningly pink quills as she walked farther into the classroom, before dumping the miscellaneous bunch onto the table she shared with Harry. Her best friend stared ahead at the podium, eyes never wavering.
Minerva stowed this away for future reference.
As she did so, Hermione continued with her explanation. "Someone" - here she shot a venomous glare at a primping Draco Malfoy - "put an irreversible Continuous Snapping Jinx on the shoulder strap of my bag. It was causing a ruckus in the halls, so I was forced to return it to my dormitory and carry my things back. I was already late, so I didn't have time to Transfigure anything into a new bag and put it away."
As if to emphasize her point, she dug a handkerchief out of the pile of supplies, and tapped it once with her wand. A new shoulder bag, pink and vaguely glittery, grew in her hand, and Hermione hurriedly threw in all of her things, not bothering to organize them. "I really am sorry, professor."
Minerva hazarded a few seconds to debate within herself. Just because she disapproved of Hermione's new look didn't mean she should give her a detention unwarranted - she'd noted when Slytherin had lost seventy points a minute before class began - and at the same time, just because Hermione was her favorite student didn't mean she should get off scotch-free, either.
"Five points from Gryffindor," she said finally, sighing with herself. "Kindly take out your materials and join us, Miss Granger."
"Of course, professor."
For the next twenty minutes Hermione dutifully took notes, and transfigured her small jade statuette of a large cat into a breadbox-sized jade tiger that chattered amicably in a loud, high-pitched voice, about life in the Amazon jungle. After three recitations of the proper way to stalk a monkey, Minerva tightened her lips, muttered a silencing spell, and (walloped) tapped it on the head with her wand.
All throughout, Hermione and Harry avoided eye contact. Minerva noted when their hands brushed once, accidentally, and how it took them a few moments to notice before jerking away hurriedly. She may have been strict, but she wasn't stupid. Minerva had just found the boy Hermione Granger was attempting to impress.
Ten minutes later, after everyone had transformed their statuettes - none managing to spell their creatures to speak,
as Hermione had - Minerva assigned their homework and directed them to begin working on it with the person they sat
next to. Hermione and Harry reluctantly collected their small wooden box and Hermione's jade statuette, being the
obvious superior, and began the abominably boring six-hour task of attaching the statuette as the guardian of the
box.
They had yet to speak a word to each other, although they appeared to be struggling with the sullen tiger, which had become uncooperative with the loss of its voice. Minerva left them to it, moving on to see what Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson were doing with their vanished hands - whatever it was, it most definitely was not the homework - when she heard an exhaled gasp.
She whirled around to see Hermione Granger toppled backwards off her chair in a dead faint. The tiger abandoned its pretense of nonchalance, and stone tail swishing merrily, padded over to the edge of the table where it could best see the unconscious girl.
"Hermione!"
Harry sounded hysterical as he leapt over the now-abandoned desk chair. Minerva swooped in slowly; she hadn't sensed any malicious spells, so in all likelihood, Hermione was just plain exhausted from her late-night endeavors in the prefects bathroom.
"Take Miss Granger to the hospital wing, Mr. Potter," advised Minerva sternly. She softened a mite at the look of blind panic on his face as he hovered, crouched, over his friend. "Madame Pomfrey will take care of her."
In what Minerva considered to be an overly-dramatic fashion, Harry scooped a limp Hermione up into his arms, her head curled against his collarbone, and charged out of the classroom.
Minerva breathed a silent sigh of relief. Now the love-sick teenagers were Poppy's problem, and Minerva could get back to her lesson plan.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Don't worry, I haven't killed Hermione off or anything. You try going with only an hour of sleep every night.
Better yet, don't. I have, and it isn't pretty. I mean, I'm pretty clumsy normally, but you get half-dead, and then no wall or bump of carpet is safe . . .
Right. What was the purpose of this?
OOOH!
Review: because if you don't, I might just decided to introduce a real plot . . . muuuhahahahaha!
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