Disclaimer: Nothing of the Harry Potter series is of my own invention obviously. (Rolls eyes)

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- CHAPTER ONE –

The Return of Professor Sprout's Cool Earmuffs

It was a very boring day at Hogwarts. Harry was bored. Ron was bored. Neville's Mimbulus Mimbletonia was bored. There wasn't anything to do. Hermione had already done everyone's homework for the next year and a half or so; even stunning Crookshanks for laughs had lost its sting.

"Harry?" Ron asked, scratching his gingery head and inspecting his finger.

"Yes." Harry sighed, scraping out a pattern on the table with his wand. He considered himself to be quite the artist. So far he had scraped out a couple of dancing leprechauns. He had just started on the pot of gold, but the coins were giving him a bit of trouble.

"Harry are you bored?" Ron continued, inspecting his own wand-scraping picture. It wasn't very good.

"Yes Ron, yes I am. Just like I was bored the last twelve and a half times you asked as well." Harry finished his picture with a flourish and signed his name at the bottom, just as Hermione thumped through the portrait hole, locked in a continuous verbal loop of condemnation.

"Oh Jesus Christ, her again..." Muttered Ron, stabbing savagely his crap drawing of... well we think it was meant to be a cow (it actually resembled a one armed orangutan). However, he missed and speared himself in the leg.

"GOD Harry! I can't leave you alone for TEN SECONDS before you DEFACE school property!" Hermione screeched. Harry promptly conjured up some cheese and stuck it in his ears. Several of the nearest people in the common room got the idea after a few minutes and followed his lead. When she got going she could really screech if you know what I mean. Of course you know what I mean, I just told you. Honestly.

Hermione continued to shriek away in this superfluous manner for quite some time until Professor McGonagall ran into the common room (with some of Professor Sprout's spiffy pink n' fluffy earmuffs on) and overhand bowled a turnip at her. Hermione shut up. Many people rejoiced.

After Professor McGonagall had gone Hermione rubbed the dent the turnip had made in her afro and, trying to retain some dignity, adopted a smug expression and crossed her arms. "So, Harry. I assume you're very sorry for what you've done and you're going to beg to copy my homework." She said in her know-it-all way. Harry took the cheese out of his ears and looked up from the portrait of Hermione he had been scratching into another table. It featured a beaver with large hair and a caption that read "H.G is a big-head and fancies Mouldyshorts."

"No, not really" He said.

She gasped loudly and opened and closed her mouth like a gaping fish. For once in her life she was speechless. Whilst Hermione's face turned every shade of the rainbow, Ron told Harry that he should probably stop calling Voldemort "Mouldyshorts".

"Why?" Asked Harry.

"Because he's all evil and stuff."

"So?"

"So… It's the principle of it!"

"Why?"

"Because he's THE Dark Lord! He's like the scariest guy ever!"

"So? He killed my parents. I'll call him whatever I want."

"Yeah but-"

"Ron. Don't argue with me. I'm an orphan."

"I- Oh, um, right. Sorry."

"Yeah you should be."

"EXCUSE ME????" Harry and Ron almost fell out of their chairs and Ron let out a small embarrassing squeal. Hermione's face had settled on an unflattering shade of puce and was busy yelling at Harry, using such phrases as "little bastard" and "obnoxious arsehole". The cheese went back into the ears and after a few minutes she began to round off her argument. "…And you know what? You know WHAT Harry?" She shouted "You KNOW WHAT?"

"No actually I don't."

"I. HATE. YOU." And with that she stormed out. She then stormed back in again. "And I never want to talk to you EVER AGAIN." She then stormed up the stairs to her dormitory.

There was a bit of pleasant silence.

"Thank Christ for that." Harry said letting out a breath of thoroughly relieved air.

"How long have you been waiting for her to say that?" Asked Seamus, leaning over the back of his chair.

"Dunno. Four, five years?" Harry replied.

"No, I swear it was longer than that." Random Gryffindor said, pausing his game of Wizard Texas Hold 'em.

"Yeah, I thought it was at least six." Interjected Unimportant Guy, looking up from his game of Wizard Snakes and Ladders. Several people murmered in agreement, stopping various games, ranging from Wizard Backgammon to Wizard Charades. No one really knew why there were so many Wizard variations of games, or why Ron was so good at every single one of them, but nobody really dwelled on the fact so let's move on.

Back to the story.

So, from that moment on, Hermione swore she would devote her life to annoying Harry as much as possible because she now hated him. An understandable mission really. Except for the fact that nobody really got why she actually hated him anyway. Even the people that were actually present at the time of the friendship breakdown.

She decided to start her new mission the next day, which just so happened to be the day before… A Quidditch match! And not just any Quidditch match, a Gryffindor V Slytherin one!

Hermione spent most of the day cackling evilly to herself in random shadowy corners. She even sat under the table at lunch emitting booming 'MuhahahahaHAAA's.

"What's that noise?" Asked Ron, pausing from his ice cream sandwich.

"Dunno." Said Harry, popping another cheese and pineapple on a stick into his mouth. Not the stick, you'll understand. Just the cheese and pineapple. They continued to stuff their faces for a while, ignoring the odd laughing sound coming from beneath the table. About five minutes before the bell went for the next lesson the odd noises changed from a booming laugh to quite a lot of muttering.

Harry and Ron stopped eating, looked at each other and in quite a creepy fashion, looked under the table at the same time. Hermione was sitting under there, trying to pull what looked like chewing gum out of her ferret nest of a hair-do.

"…Bloody untidy, that's what they are. Chewing gum under a table. Travesty, that's what it is. And now I'm going to be late for Ancient Runes…" She mumbled, oblivious to the fact her former best friends were staring at her blankly.

"Hermione? What are you doing under the table?" Ron asked. She squeaked, stood up, hit her head, crawled out and ran away, waving her arms wildly for no honest reason.

"Well… That was weird." Ron said as Lavender and Parvati sat down near them.

"Oh that was nothing, assuming you're talking about Hermione." Parvati said. Lavender nodded in agreement.

"Yeah. We caught her under her bed singing songs from the Lion King yesterday."

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