Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The very first line was taken from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, and modified a bit.
Summary: A sixth year H/Hr/D fic which will feature Diary entries, the giant squid, Confused!Hermione, WetShirt!Draco, Sleepless!Harry and the Oh-so-clichéd dream.
Author's Note: I forgot in what house Sally-Anne Perks belongs, and I can't refer to my books because they're at my cousins. Please feel free to correct me. I also apologize if the plot will be moving a tad slowly in the first chapters… I've no idea what will happen, really, I just go along as I type. All I know is that the pairing will be either D/Hr or H/Hr, and I'm running a poll on which pairing the fic will end up as. Tell me what you want in a review! Also, Flames aren't unwelcome, but not very warmly received either.
Note Added October 28, 2001: There is a debate as to whether 35° is too hot or two cold. Just to let you know, I'm talking Celsius here, and as we had that temperature just yesterday, I do think it's pretty warm.
Indulge!
A Way With Words
Chapter 1: Reverie
It is said that the commonest, dullest, most threadbare topic might be rendered interesting by the skill of the speaker.
Which means, the girl thought sullenly, that the most interesting topic might also be rendered common, dull and threadbare by the skill, or lack thereof, of another.
Hermione Granger yawned discreetly. A classmate and (being unusually neutral regarding the House prejudice) a Slytherin, Sally-Anne Perks, raised one of her finely plucked eyebrows at Hermione and smirked good-naturedly. Hermione grinned in acknowledgement at her and made an effort to pay attention to a lecture that she could only describe as 'bloody boring', despite her usual interest in the subject.
They were sitting in the sixth-year Gryffindor-Slytherin Arithmancy class, which wasn't nearly half as bad as Potions, even with the Snakes in the classroom. However, Professor Vector, the Arithmancy witch, had been taken ill and an exceptionally boring substitute teacher took her place in the front of the class, making Hermione ask herself whether Potions would be more bearable—and that was saying something.
Not even Professor Binns is this dreary.
As Professor McFarland read out loud from Advanced Arithmancy, Year 6, Hermione doodled on a page in her fabric-covered journal. Usually she would be listening with rapt attention to their teacher and jotting down notes, but considering the sweltering heat (unusual as it was in this time of year) and the lacklustre lecture, Hermione reasoned that perhaps she could just read Chapters 5-8 (the sections Professor McFarland was reading from) in the common room later on. Not, of course, that she hadn't read those already.
Her quill scratched across the bound parchment pages. Hermione wasn't really paying attention to what she was drawing – the heat was making her very drowsy. A pleasant wind from one of the (thankfully) open windows caused her to blink, and she realized with a sort of start what her distracted hand had written across the paper in her tiny cursive:
Harry Potter.
Hurriedly Hermione scratched the name out.
Harry Potter.
With the corner of her eye she searched the room for anyone who could be looking at her. Thankfully, everyone either had his sleepy head on his desk (like Blaise Zabini, who was snoozing soundly and drooling on the table) or was passing notes with a classmate when the professor's back was turned (to be expected of Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil, her roommates, of course). When she decided that no one was looking in her direction and that everyone was much preoccupied with their own activities (Unbelievable!, she thought with disgust and yet a definite hint of admiration, Someone is actually exchanging saliva in the middle of class!) to notice what she was doing, she let her eyes take on a glazed expression and began to mull over some things, oblivious to the classroom and leaving the rest of Earth behind her to enter another world.
Immediately his face swam into her mind's eye, as it did every time she closed her real ones. Green eyes, black hair, glasses… Perhaps those weren't the makings of a total 'dreamboat', as Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown had called some Ravenclaw boy, but he was easy on the eyes, in no small part because he didn't think himself to be so. He was never vain, self-conscious sometimes, but never vain. He was a friend, a very good one, but sometimes she ventured to wonder if he was more… she took into careful consideration the look on his face when she had shown up at the portrait hole door carrying a stack of toast just as he was about to come down to a breakfast in which all of the Great Hall's occupants' eyes would doubtless be on him… or when she had shown up at the ball last year (his mouth had briefly formed an 'O' of surprise before his date, Padma Patil—who was just one more of the countless girls on the list of witches Harry had dated since fourth year—lifted his jaw with a sharp-nailed finger, purposefully scratching his chin in annoyance)… or every time she had kissed him on the cheek before going home each year to Hertfordshire, her Muggle home… Smiling and inattentive, she placed her finger to her lips in memory of the feel of forbidden skin she knew she would never get to touch in any more intimate ways.
A drawling voice that she supposed would never cease to bring a frown of annoyance to her face broke into her reverie and wrenched her sharply back to attention. 'Daydreaming about Potter again, Granger?'
Hermione started, jumped, gasped, blushed, and was still. Fortunately Professor McFarland was busy writing down an array of messy little symbols on the board to notice her antics. She, surprised at his sudden statement but now uncertain that her… infatuation was as clandestine as she had thought it to be, tried to regain a tad of her dignity and glared at Draco Malfoy.
'Says who, you little ferret? Now shut up. I'm trying to listen to the Professor.' A lie, but why should she have to explain her actions to him?
Malfoy, situated behind Sally-Anne (who was now snoring peacefully), whose seat in turn was to her right, was sitting with his arms folded across his chest as if all the world could burn in bloody hell and he wouldn't care, leaning forward to sneak a peek at her notebook. His lips curled in the malicious, trademark Malfoy smirk as he glimpsed what she had absently scribbled. Hermione reddened and quickly shut the journal and put it in her leather satchel.
He acted as though he hadn't heard her ferret comment. Hermione mused that he still must be trying to put it behind him—tough luck, you git! Harry and Ron will never let you!
'So it is Potter, is it?' he snickered, oblivious to her thoughts and the fact that she was snickering at him inside her head, and his voice full of mock surprise and undisguised wickedness. He leaned back in his seat, arms still folded, one silver eyebrow raised (How can he do that? I only can raise two at a time!). As Hermione glared daggers at him, she noticed that, despite the baking heat, he wasn't sweating at all, while she was aware that the back of her shirt, underneath her robes, was already slightly damp. The cynic in her, that bit of Slytherin everyone possessed and hid (except, she thought, for the Slytherins themselves, who showcased it in a shamelessly proud fashion) thought, He's probably not even human—what normal person won't sweat in this heat?
Gryffindor-Hermione was more than shocked at her own tastelessness, and chose to ignore what he said and turn her attention to the ever dull and dreary professor.
She stared determinedly at the Professor's hat, which was set at an uncertain angle on the wizard's auburn hair and looked about to fall any moment (although, to her amazement, it never did, despite its precarious wobbling). All the while she could still feel Ferret Boy's gaze on her back.
The bell signalling the end of class and the start of morning break rang mercifully 10 minutes later, and Hermione felt it couldn't have been more welcome; knowing that her greatest academic rival (he topped Potions and was on the top five of his every class) was aware of her every movement had restricted her and made her uncomfortable—she hated him for knowing exactly how to disconcert her. She gathered her quill, inkbottle and her messily written 'notes' (she had taken to making an outline of chapter 6 in the tension) and hurriedly stashed each in her school bag and fled from her class.
Draco Malfoy was left alone, still staring at the place where her swish of brown hair had last been seen.
***
Draco Malfoy's Journal
Journal,
In Arithmancy with the Gryffindors (and an excruciatingly boring substitute teacher – Professor was taken ill), I saw Ms Perfect herself daydreaming. Imagine—ever-alert Hermione Granger, who had once surreptitiously kicked me in the shins when I yawned in the same class and was sitting beside her, falling into some reverie in the middle of Arithmancy! It was obvious she wasn't paying attention because she had this goofy little smile plastered on her face. I peered over her shoulder and saw, to my utter disgust, a name spelled out in her typical handwriting: Harry BLOODY Potter. (Well, she didn't exactly write the 'bloody' bit, but that's beside the point.) I felt like throwing up—I understood what everyone saw in Potter, but it is just bloody sickening when someone as smart as Granger falls for that spectacled mouse—and did what every Malfoy would do: milk it for all it was worth and taunt her. (Father, are you proud?) She acted all 'I was not and you had best shut up and pay attention'. Too bad the substitute didn't notice.
It's strange, though; I never thought her the sort to think about boys, if you can call that little runt a boy. But at least it's a semblance of normalcy; sometimes I think she's not human, what with her perfect grades and perfect face and perfect hair and… Wait, what the hell?
I must go, Crabbe and Goyle are back from the hospital wing and are asking me if I saved them anything from lunch, which they missed. Honestly, being bloody sixth years, you'd think Goyle would know now how dangerous Bundimun ooze is.
D.M.
***
Harry and Ron met up with Hermione in the Gryffindor common room a few minutes after Divination. Harry was muttering incoherently to himself and Ron was grunting insults at Professor Trelawney, who had spotted them making up last-minute predictions outside her classroom some weeks ago, thus knowing that they did not deserve the top grades they got in her class (Lavender and Parvati must've had a field day). Hermione could make out a few words of the inarticulate grumbling, like 'Old hag' and 'predictions my ass'. She sighed and prepared herself for giving another lecture about how they should take Arithmancy and give up Divination.
'So,' said she as casually as she could, taking off her reading glasses and setting it and her book down. 'What's up?'
The boys looked at her for a few seconds and went on with their mumbling ('the fates have informed her… Yeah, right..' 'Dumbledore knows she's a ---- and he had best fire the -------, ------- bat for everybody's good..')
This went on for a few minutes. Hermione sighed, blocking from her hearing various phrases she knew were full of four-letter words she'd be better of not hearing. It was, she mused, like something husbands—including her father and Mr Weasley—learned after years of living with their spouses (in this case, it was her friends). You had to be able to listen to them; ready to answer when asked to repeat the last line said spouse/friend said in full, while pursuing another train of thought.
In this case it was along the lines of how she even got along with these two.
Oh, it wasn't as though they annoyed her (except when Ron intended to, of course—Harry never did anymore, now being more reserved and quiet—understandable, if one knew how he had to wake up every morning with the knowledge of a feared, cunning, murdering Dark wizard very much revived and on his trail), and it wasn't as though she didn't love them. She adored and loved and needed both of them, and they were the reason she woke up every day… but that didn't really keep her from wishing that they were somehow more alike.
But that was it, wasn't it? The three of them were so different from each other that each complemented the others' personalities. It was useless, all this wishing—and besides, she knew she loved them just the way they were and, truth be told, wouldn't have them change for the world. They weren't boys after her own heart, but they were Harry James Potter and Ronald Arthur Weasley, and they had her heart anyway.
Most especially Harry.
'…Isn't she, Hermione?'
Hermione's bushy head bobbed up sharply, and she nodded to give the pretence that she had been paying attention (Her two-things-at-a-time function was a bit off today, it seemed), although her eyes gave away her confusion.
'Yes, er… sure?' she said, blushing and smiling apologetically.
It was Ron who'd asked the question, and he shook his head at Harry, who smirked (in a friendly way) and asked her who had been the subject of her reverie.
Hermione, engulfed by a sense of deja vu, and colouring at the recollection at exactly who the subject of her daydream had been earlier, checked her watch and not-so-smoothly changed the topic.
'We have Charms in five minutes,' she said quickly. 'I'll meet you there later—I left my Standard Book of Spells in the library.' Ah. The second lie of the day—she was perfectly aware of said book tucked into her satchel in between Advanced Arithmancy and a pocket version of No More Sleekeazy's! (100 enhancing enchantments for unmanageable hair). Absently she pulled her rucksack closer to her and covered it with her arm.
'All right.' A frowning Harry and a nodding, rather confused-looking Ron got up and headed to the boys' tower.
'Well, at least they're predictable.' Hermione, choosing not to mind the expressions on their faces, stood up and collected her things, and went the opposite way to her own dormitory.
***
Hermione Granger's Diary
A+'s Achieved in term:
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A-'s Achieved in term:
| (Potions, you understand)
B+'s Achieved in term
Dear Diary, (That sounded really juvenile, but I honestly couldn't think of anything better..)
It seems like everyone wants to bore me to death. Maybe it's just the heat wave. I really should have researched cooling charms, it stupid the way I skipped it in the book Ginny got for me…
In Arithmancy, Madam Vector didn't show because she's in the hospital wing. No doubt why she got sick… Anyway, it was very dull in there. I felt too dreary to take any notes, except that outline of chapter 6, which I only finished halfway. Well, I guess I should be grateful – two of those horrible Slytherins went to the infirmary too, so I only had to deal with three. Malfoy was being a stupid prat as usual, mumbling about how I was daydreaming about Harry. I was, but that doesn't really give him a right to taunt me, does it?
Afterwards, in morning break, I met up with Ron and Harry in Gryffindor tower. They just came from another session of Divination, so they were in an ill mood as usual. Really, they should just sign up for Arithmancy. The boys kept garbling to themselves for about four minutes while I tried to squeeze in bits of advice between the insults directed at that horrible Professor. I really want them to join Arithmancy (though I don't think they'd want to if they knew we have that with Slytherins – I haven't really told them lest they have one more reason to not want to take it), but they can't change classes now, we're in sixth year already. Harry will just have to suffer. Ron, too.
In Charms, I was hoping Professor Flitwick would teach us Cooling Charms – I checked the temperature again and it was 35 degrees Celsius. But Professor Flitwick gave us all short written exams about last week's essay, which I of course finished immediately. I had about half an hour to spare after that.
I have to take a shower now; it really would feel very good to get a cold shower in before lunch.
Hermione G.
PS—we had a quiz in Advanced Muggle Studies today and the Professor held me back after class and told me that she'd glanced over my paper ('It does give me such pleasure to do so!'). That's another A+ to add to the list.
Notice how often Draco says 'Bloody'. :) Tell me what you think with a review or an e-mail, and I implore you to be nice about it.