Hermione sat by the window of the Gryffindor common room debating whether to write her History of Magic essay on the conception of the Wolfsbane potion, or the long past of the famous Wizengamot. She knew that her best friends, Harry and Ron, would no doubt write their essays on what they ate for breakfast last week, but this was her sixth year of Hogwarts. She wanted it to be special, and the only way to do this was to be top of her class in every subject.
Just then, Harry and Ron stumbled in, covered in mud from Quidditch practice and blabbering excitedly about some chaser on the Australian national quidditch team who had scored over 300 points in a 30 minute game.
"Hermione!" called Ron, "are you still working on homework? I finished that before I even ate dinner!"
"Did you write that two rolls of parchment on the Drought of Living Death that Professor Slughorn assigned?" responded Hermione sassily. "I must have told you about it five times already today." Hermione watched as Ron's face slowly fell and he bid goodbye to Harry so that he could go shower and then get to work. It wasn't that she didn't respect Ron-she did- but he was so lazy and never showed any true desire to do schoolwork. If she was honest to herself, she did have a bit of a schoolgirl crush on him, but he never had incentive. She could not let her mind be influenced by that baboon. "How was practice?" she asked Harry.
"Oh, it was okay." he mumbled in response. Hermione had known Harry for over five years, and knew something was wrong if he didn't respond to her question with a lecture on how brilliant the house team was this year.
"Alright, Harry," she said putting down her quill and parchment. "What happened?"
"Well, it started off okay," Harry began, "we were all playing great and Ron was saving all of Ginny's shots, but then Malfoy turned up." Hermione groaned. If Malfoy had been there, nothing good could have resulted from it. "Hold on let me finish," said Harry in response to Hermione's groan. "So Malfoy showed up, and he was acting differently. He was still insulting us and everything, but I got the feeling that he didn't really mean a lot of the things that he was saying. Anyway after practice finished, I went down to the locker rooms and he was waiting. He said something cruel about my parents and I responded with some comment about his mother. The next thing I know the git is tearing up and running out of the building."
Hermione sat looking confused for a minute before her problem solving skills kicked in. "So he ran away after you insulted his mother?" she asked Harry carefully. The boy nodded in response.
"If you don't mind Hermione, I am going to go up and take a shower. This is weird enough as it is and I have mud in my hair."
"Okay, good night Harry." Hermione put away her quill and parchment and thought about what Harry had just told her. If something was wrong with Malfoy's mother then surely he wouldn't have liked Harry talking about her. That would also explain why his heart hadn't been behind his usually destructive insults. For now, Hermione decided, she would just concentrate on her school work, but tomorrow she would read through the Daily Prophet to see if any harm had come upon Narcissa Malfoy.