This is something I had partly finished for the longest time. I finally got around to completely finishing it.
If I owned Harry Potter (I wish), believe me, I would not be writing fanfiction about it.
A typical spring day at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry: sunny and bright, with different, poisonous flowers blooming before the terrified first years' eyes. But no one cares about the first years, so forget about them.
A fourth year named Harry Potter was sitting with his two best friends beside the lake. Because of him in the Triwizard Tournament, he got to skip the final exams that Ron and Hermione were studying so hard for.
"No, Ronald," sighed Hermione. "The Goblin Convention of 1453 had nothing to do with werewolves!"
Ron frowned and leaned closer to his paper. "Are you sure? I swear there was something about werewolves…"
"That's because that's the word I used during our hangman game," Harry explained. He fiddled around with a piece of grass. "Think it was that class, at least."
Ron grinned. "Could be." Then he winced as Hermione smacked him with his paper.
"You're doing this all wrong, Ronald!" She cried, exasperated. "And you don't even bother listening to me!"
"We all know I'm gonna fail always, so what's the point of trying?" He asked irritably.
"So you can get into the fifth year!" Hermione snapped. "Now listen: the Goblin Convention of 1453 was about…." She stopped upon realizing Harry and Ron were starting a hangman game. "This is why you're going to fail!" Whipping out her wand, she burned the paper to ashes.
"Hey!" Harry complained, rubbing the new burn on his hand.
"Just because you don't have to take the exams doesn't mean you should distract us!" Hermione informed him.
"Ron started it…" Harry began to defend himself, but Hermione just swept her books and notes together and strolled back to the castle. "What's with her?"
"Dunno." Ron began throwing the ashes into the air like a three-year-old. "Nerves?"
Harry snorted. "Why does she have to be nervous? She knows everything. I'm the one facing the third task in a few weeks!"
Ron made the ashes into a pile and squashed it with his hand. "Don't tell Hermione that," he advised. "She'll yell at you." Picking up his paper, he then asked, "So, what exactly was the Goblin Convention of 1453?"
-
Transfiguration class was its usual difficult self. Promptly when the bell rang, Professor McGonagall said, "Today, we will be learning the most challenging spell you will have ever attempted. However, it will be a good start for next year when you learn harder spells."
She told Dean Thomas to pass one cockroach to each student. Neville promptly squashed his.
"Wonder what we're doing with the cockroaches," Ron muttered to Harry, who shrugged. Hermione made shushing noises and nodded towards the front of the class.
"Now, you shall be turning the cockroaches into bats," McGonagall said. "The transfiguration of an insect into a mammal is, as you might have guessed, extremely challenging for even experienced wizards. Tap the cockroach seven times, twirl your wand in a complete circle counterclockwise, and say the incantation. Novoduco bestia."
Once the wand finished the circle, there was a large brown bat where the small brown cockroach had been.
"What's the point of this?" Harry hissed.
"If you have an invasion of cockroaches, you can change them into bats!" Ron said brightly, but still quietly. "Then you'll have an invasion of bats instead!"
"It's to teach us the basic insect-to-animal transfiguration," Hermione snapped. "And the word is infestation."
"Oh. Right."
"Now," McGonagall said, glaring at the trio. "You all try."
There was a flurry of wands and sparks as everyone attempted to turn their stubbornly cockroachy-cockroach into a bat. The most exciting incident involved bubbles, fire, and lightning, until all that was left of the cockroach was its exoskeleton.
"Counterclockwise, Mr. Potter," McGonagall sighed, giving the blackened boy another insect.
"Counterclockwise," Harry repeated, wiping soot and ashes off his face. "Right."
For once in anyone's living memory, Hermione was having just as much trouble as the next person.
"Novoduco bestia!" She cried, twirling her wand. The cockroach turned into a pile of ashes before their eyes.
"Seven twirls, Ms. Granger," McGonagall instructed. "Not six, seven."
"Does anyone else get the feeling McGonagall's seen all this before?" Ron mumbled to Harry, who nodded.
Rolling up his sleeves, Ron tapped his cockroach and twirled his wand. "Novoduco bestia!" He shouted.
To everyone astonishment, especially Ron's, the cockroach wiggled and turned slowly, but surely, into a bat. A fat, ugly bat, to be sure, but a bat nevertheless.
"How did you do that?" Lavender squealed.
"How did you do that?" Hermione asked at the exact same time.
"Very good, Mr. Weasley," McGonagall said after checking the bat, as if it might have been a hoax. "Ten points to Gryffindor."
"How did you do that?" Harry asked in disbelief.
"What?" Ron said in mock offence. "You think I can't make a spell work once in a while? Thanks a lot."
"But…how did you do it before Hermione did?"
"Dunno." Ron turned to ask Hermione, as if she would know, but discovered she had sneakily moved to the opposite side of the class. She was glaring at him, but realizing the two boys were looking at her, quickly started a conversation with Neville.
Ron frowned. "What's wrong her with, do you reckon?"
Harry shook his head. "I've decided not to try and understand girls anymore; it just gives me a headache."
Dean Thomas leaned back, and said wisely, "When all else fails, apologize."
"For what?" Ron snapped.
Dean shrugged. "Anything. Make something up. Maybe you smell bad." He sniffed the air, and added, "You do smell bad, Ron. When was the last time you took a shower?"
Ron's face went redder than his hair, and that was saying something. "Mind your own business!"
-
That night in the dormitory was incredibly awkward for everyone except Harry, who was so used to his two best friends' fights, he began to just ignore them. Hermione was still fuming about something Ron couldn't possibly begin to imagine.
"Do I have to apologize for being better for once?" He hissed to Harry, who wisely didn't answer.
Hermione, while fuming, didn't speak a word to anyone. Instead, she immersed herself in her beloved books, and didn't resurface for hours.
-
It was late at night when Hermione snuck into the boy's dormitory. She headed straight towards her objective, pausing only when Neville snorted something about cats and tomatoes. Kneeling down, she unlocked Harry's trunk and quickly sifted through the mess to find the silvery-gray cloak Harry had inherited from his father. She tucked the cloak under her arm, relocked the trunk, and sprinted, silently, back out the door.
-
Any corridors in any castle had a tendency to be dark at night, but at Hogwarts, where thousands of portraits were snoring and every sound made one think of Filch, it was doubly scary. But Hermione Granger had a purpose, and she would accomplish that purpose no matter how many times she had to take a detour to dodge Peeves.
And finally, there she was. Outside the transfiguration room. Perhaps most nighttime wanderers would avoid this room like the plague, but in this instances, there was no helping it. Hermione Granger needed cockroaches, and she knew exactly where to find them here. And she would stay there all night until she mastered that blasted spell.
The security on the jar wasn't tight: apparently, Professor McGonagall wasn't afraid of students stealing cockroaches. Hermione dipped her hand in and brought one out slowly.
Tap went the wand seven times, one counterclockwise circle, and the words, "Novoduco bestia!"
The cockroach rapidly hardened into a marble statue.
Hermione grimaced and tried again.
"Novoduco bestia!"
This time, the cockroach flew across the room, on account of the tiny leathery wings that had sprouted from its back.
"Novoduco bestia!"
The cockroach grew fangs and tried to bite another cockroach.
"Novoduco bestia!"
The cockroach's legs longer and longer until it was at least a foot tall. Hermione quickly grabbed a book and squashed that one.
"Novoduco bestia!!"
The cockroach exploded into a thousand tiny little butterflies.
"Novoduco bestia!!"
The cockroach turned a hideous shade of blue with large green stripes.
"Novoduco bestia!!!!!!!!"
Fireworks shot out of Hermione's wand and hit the cockroaches, turning into tiny fireballs, which zoomed around the classroom, hitting desks and chairs, setting them on fire. Hermione let out a shriek, and dove under a not-yet-flaming desk. She grabbled for the invisibility cloak and barely managed to pull it on before Snape strolled into the classroom.
"What the…?"
At that precious moment, a particularly large cockroach-flame went pelting towards the Potions Master, hitting him squarely on top of his head.
Now grease, as you should know, is a fairly flammable substance. And it didn't take long for Snape's hair to transform from a slime ball to a fireball. Snape ran out the room, using language that would not be appropriate for one to write here, or anywhere else, for that matter. Hermione would have been quite shocked and rather impressive if she hadn't been so terrified.
She had no choice, now. She had to abandon her practicing and the burning room before she got caught and put in detention.
So what if Ron could turn cockroaches into bats while she could not? Who cared about turning cockroaches into bats anyhow?
She was Hermione Granger, the brightest witch of her age. And she could afford to let Ron beat her this one time.
After all, it wouldn't happen again.
You'd think by the end of this, I'd be good at spelling "cockroaches" but no, a "t" kept popping up in there.