"Shrinking Potion." Snape said, a serious expression on his face. "Not the simple youthening shrinking potion you dumberheads attempted to make in your second year, this potion will actually shrink the subject down to a minute size."
The students in the room looked at each other excitedly. Hermione stared resolutely at the empty chalkboard ahead, trying to ignore Malfoy as much as she could, for he was looking at her in a way she didn't at all like.
"You will brew this potion with utmost care." Snape said, ignoring the students' looks at one another. "If you spill the potion on yourself you will shrink instantaneously, and in the chaos following the sudden disappearance from one in our midst you will likely be stepped on."
The students started murmuring to each other. "Now," Snape said, forcefully tapping the board with his wand, filling it with words and instantly quieting the students. "You will follow the directions on the board carefully. If you mess up it is likely you will create a potion that will cause severe, very painful, and potentially fatal burns on your sides."
With any other teacher this might be seen as a joke, but the sixth year N.E.W.T. students knew Snape was not opposed to assigning potions to the class that were potentially dangerous.
Hermione turned to Draco Malfoy, who was sitting next to her. Hermione never seased to feel disgusted to work with the slimeball, and Malfoy was usually just as disgusted to work with Hermione, although this time Malfoy had an odd grin on his face that creeped Hermione out.
At the beginning of the year, Snape had put all the students into Slytherin-Gryffindor pairs, much to the dismay of the students. Harry and Ron had been much appalled when they had been paired with Crabbe and Goyle respectively, and Neville looked really scared at the prospect of working with Pansy Parkinson. But nowhere in the room was the animosity greater than between Hermione and Draco.
Draco still called Hermione a mudblood scum and he taunted her every day. It was only through a sheer force of will that Hermione had restrained from retaliating. However, in a way Draco seemed to enjoy working with Hermione, presumably because he knew he'd get perfect marks the whole year without trying due to Hermione's brains and perfectionism. But Hermione sensed that there was something more to it…
Today Hermione grumpily took out her cauldron and supplies and placed them on the table with a clunk. Malfoy looked at her smugly as he watched her start to create the potion.
"Well," Said Hermione, "Start slicing these hides! I want to finish this by the end of class!" Malfoy turned slowly towards the desk and started cutting the hides with deliberate slowness. Hermione paused in her measuring of dragon blood and said, "Well hurry up! We don't have all day!" Malfoy started cutting the hides just a little bit faster.
"I wonder, Granger," Malfoy said in his drawling voice as they worked. "If you are splashed with the potion do your clothes shrink with you?"
Hermione didn't say anything. She didn't really want to know. Snape had said nothing about testing the potion at the end of the class, but she wanted to make her potion perfect just in case he sprung a test on them. The thought of shrinking out of her clothes made her skin crawl.
Malfoy must have noticed because he said, "Don't like that idea do you Granger? You don't like the thought of shrinking out of the robes you're just barely filling in?" He looked down at Hermione's chest and Hermione scowled at him "Then again," He continued, "A mudblood like you could never really fill out wizard's robes."
Hermione felt the blood pump in her body. It took all her will not to hex Malfoy into a million pieces right there. Malfoy had been making snide comments about her body ever she came back from summer much larger than she had left. He had been making comments about her heritage since she showed up at Hogwarts.
She managed to ignore him as they continued making the potion. Malfoy didn't say anything; he was probably thinking of another insult to hurl at his partner. But Hermione kept working, trying not to think about what it would feel like to be shrunk out of her clothes…
With a full half-hour to go in the class, Hermione became the first person in the class to finish the potion, even though she received only minimal help from Draco. This caused a flicker of pride came amidst her disgust. She stood up to tell Professor Snape that the potion was complete.
Hermione was thinking of the Outstanding grade that she was about to receive and therefore didn't notice Malfoy raise his wand. A smirk filled his face as he prepared to cast the spell that would melt the pot of shrinking solution, sitting mere inches from Hermione.
Standing in front of them, Neville caught Malfoy out of the corner of his eye. "Hermione! Watch out!" He said in a panicked whisper.
"Ah!" Hermione jumped and turned towards Neville. Unaware of where her hand was, she struck the cauldron and knocked it over, a sizeable portion of the potion over Malfoy, who was leaning closely to it.
Hermione looked down at what she had done. The potion she had so carefully prepared was now seeping all over the desk and…a small bundle of abandoned robes sitting in a messy heap on the floor.