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Chapter two: Misunderstood.
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Breakfast hadn't even begun, yet I sat at the long Gryffindor table, finishing my essay about the herbs. I couldn't finish it yesterday, because for some reason Cho had completely knocked away my concentration. Luckily, I woke up early this morning, I couldn't sleep anymore, so I decided to go and finish the essay before the students came marching in for breakfast.
Scribbling down a few last comments, I gave it a quick spell-check and mentally nodded at it. I rolled up the parchment and put everything back into my bag, and exchanged it for the Daily Prophet. I quickly took a glance at my watch: still fifteen minutes left before some students would enter the hall.
"Hermione?"
I looked up from the paper, meeting the sleepy grey eyes of Ron. I smiled at him and put the paper down.
"Good morning, Ron. You're up early."
"Couldn't sleep. What about you?"
I shrugged, "Couldn't sleep either."
Ron nodded understandingly and proceeded to lay himself down on the table, his head resting on his arms. His messy hair messed up even more as he dug his face into the soft depths of his robe. A small smile tugged at the corner of my lips. Silly Ron.
I straightened out the newspaper and resumed reading. I kept an eye out for frontpage-news about the Dark Lord or anything other conspicious that could be associated with Voldemort and his followers. Luckily, nothing looked suspicious enough to require further investigation, so I could read my usual columns. Reaching the horoscope, I couldn't resist it, though I don't, and never have believed a word of what horoscopes say.
Sagittarius:
The moon travels in the house of relationship and invites you to spend a respective ammount of time on love. Are there any things that need answering? You will see, when Venus shall be in the fifth house, you will be strongly attracted to a person from outside your usual friends and family: do not let this chance slip away.
I snorted rather loudly, who the hell would believe this crap? Gosh, they must be complete idiots. Folding the Daily Prophet and putting it in my bag, Harry arrived.
"Hey, Hermione, you know that essay for Herbology? Could I perhaps, er, copy some of it?"
"Well, good morning to you too, Harry." I calmly replied, glaring daggers at the black-clad boy. I sighed: sometimes I felt like Harry and Ron used me just for easy homework-copying. True, I know that they didn't: I valued our friendship just as much as they did, and we've been through hell together, but weeks after weeks would pass with them asking for homework and essays and tutorings without saying a friendly word.
"Yeah, fine." I said, giving him the parchment with the just-finished essay. He seemed quite suprised but took the essay and mumbled a thank you, sitting down on the wooden bench.
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After breakfast, I had a double hour of Potions with Harry and Ron, so I reluctantly left Ginny and Luna, who had a free hour before their first class and went to the dungeons with the redhead and Harry.
Making my way to the dungeons, I heard somebody call my name, and the soft voice seemed somewhat familiar. Me, Ron and Harry turned around to confirm the person. Cho stood before me, smiling widely. Her golden eyes shot from me to Harry once, but remained on me. I raised an eyebrow: what does she want from me really?
"Hermione, I just wanted to say that the book really helped me, so, thanks." she said, and before I knew it she had thrown her arms around my neck and embraced me: I noticed that she was a little taller than me. Blinking a few times, I hestitantly put my arms around her back, but the hug ended as quick as it began.
"Er, no problem?" I said, and vaguely stared at the girl.
"Yeah. Um, we," I pointed my thumb at Harry and Ron, "have to go, so. Bye." I stated, and turned back around, leaving Cho behind. Ron and Harry quickly followed me, probably full of questions, while I didn't even know why exactly she did that. What was really up with that girl? Before, Cho wouldn't even bother to look at me, and now she's suddenly all over me.
Oh! Of course! She wants to get access to Harry by using me! Everybody knows she likes Harry, why didn't I figure before. Harry is just too oblivious to see that, so she is planning to be friends with me to get closer with him. I shook my head lightly and opened the door to the dungeons. It was cold down in the dungeons and the rooms were dim-lit. The walls were damp and glistened in the weak light that the torches on the walls provided. I shivered a little, and when my eyes got used to the dark, I walked on.
"Hermione, what was that all about?" Ron asked.
"I have no idea."
"Well, of course you do." he replied, and I could hear the confusion in his voice, making me grin a little.
"No, honestly, I don't."
"But, she... why.." he couldn't finish his incomprehensible question, because I opened the door to Potions class, where a damp smell hung thick in the air. Somehow, a blue-ish fog or some sort of thin smoke hung just below the ceiling, and I don't think I even want to know why.
"Well well..." a slick, low voice, belonging to no one else than Severus Snape greeted me, "Weasly, Granger and Potter." he said, almost spitting out the words as he spoke.
Turning toward the direction on the voice, Snape looked down at me, a disgusted and contemptuous look in his near-black eyes. I looked him in the eyes for a couple of seconds and then proceeded to my place, Harry and Ron in pursuit.
As I sat myself down on my usual place, I calmly put down my stuff next to the small cauldron that stood on the desk, feeling the piercing gaze of Snape on me, but I didn't look at him. After putting my books and wand down, I tried to look at him as lethal as possible, expressing the whole-hearted hatred I felt for the man, not blinking or looking away.
He looked away after a while "I will assume that everyone is present, so we will continue where we left last time, page 287 of you books."
The whole class quickly leafed through the book to the required page as Snape manoeuvered through the tables, checking the books.
After a short explanation by Snape, and after he had put down the ingredients on the chalkboard, the class began brewing the assigned Somnium Liquidus: liquid dream.
I knew that this was a difficult assignment: I've read about liquid dream, and it is very unstable while being made, and once normally brewed, it has to be used the same day to gain even a little bit of effect. If the liquid dream is brewed to strong, one can sleep for nearly a day as a side-effect, and if the potion isn't made by following the recipe precisely, one could end up having a really bad dream.
After doing the basics (adding the water, heating it up to the correct temperature and putting in the main ingredient for the colour of the potion, which was the extract of the bark of a birch, which gave it a lovely white teint), I needed to add the stuff which gave the liquid dream the power to influence one's dream positively or negatively.
The recipe said that to create a Somnium Luquidus which held the quality to more or less create a "positive or "up" dream" you needed to add ladybugshells, wings of a butterfly, dried cactus neeldes, extract of the roots of a black willow, a few different herbs, kingfisher tailfeathers, an ounce of beetlejuice and a lot of other things. Biting my bottom lip, I read the instructions. It required a lot of boiling, stirring, waiting and precise temperatures.
I started with crushing the ladybugshells with a mortar en pestle, grinding them securely to a red couloured powder. Shoveling the powder into the cauldron, the white fluid changed to a pinkish colour.
According to the recipe, I stirred it clockwise for a minute and a half before adding the wings of a butterfly. Cleaning the mortar and pestle, I also grinded the wings to fine powder, this time it had a shiny, purple colour. After adding it to the pink liquid in the cauldron, the colour barely changed. Stirring it clockwise for another minute and a half again, the to-be-potion needed to boil for about 10 minutes before adding the next ingredient.
While the luiqid dream simmered in the cauldron, the fire on a constant 89 degrees Celsius, I started on chopping up the dried cactus needles into little pieces, which was quite the job: the needles had a hard exterior, and it was hard to slice them.
"Psssssst! Hermione!" Ron's voice from my right side whispered.
"What?" I hissed back, turning to the redhead next to me, meeting his ever so sad and somewhat desperate eyes.
"How come your potion is pink and mine not?"
I rolled my eyes at him, whispered a quick explanation and went back to work. Ron, however, didn't seemed satisfied with that and kept calling me, until Snape passed by and whacked him on his head with The Daily Prophet. I bit my bottom lip, held in my giggles and turned back to my desk, pretending to read instructions for good measure until the black-robed teacher was out of earshot.
Ron slumped down in his chair, barely even sitting on it now, looking somewhat defeated with that pout of him on his lips.
Letting out a chuckle, I proceeded to chop up the cactus needles.
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"Tomorrow we will discuss the effect the liquid dreams had on you.." Snape exclaimed after class, letting his eyes rest upon Ron, who had screwed up majorly brewing the Somnium Luquidus. He had added the wrong cactus needles, and his potion turned out to be darkblue, while most of the students had a pinkish colour to it.
And Snape wanted that all of us would use the potion this night, to compare the various results tomorrow and so that he could ridicule students with failing results.
Snape rattled on some more and dismissed class.
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At lunch, Cho appeared again, flopping herself down on the long bench next to me. As I was just going to start on my sandwich, she caught me in mid-bite. I put down the sandwich and turned to her.
"Hey." the raven-haired girl said, her amber eyes focussed on me, a shimmer in them which I could not define.
"Hi.." I replied, questioningly raising an eyebrow. Cho really had been around me these days, and I started to find it annoying. I didn't care wether she wanted to be with Harry or not, but if she is just too much of a chicken to go talk to him herself, though I don't even know if I am assuming this right, she doesn't have a reason to need to use me instead.
"I was wondering if you wanted to go to Hogsmeade with me tomorrow." Cho bluntly stated after a period of fidgeting with the hem of her skirt. She looked up, that deep gaze on mine again.
I frowned at the girl in front of me, and I opened my mouth to say something, but closed it again. Biting my bottom lip, I deepened my frown and sighed. What the hell is this all about?
"Look, Cho," I said as I looked up at her, "if you want Harry to come you can just ask him yourself you know. He won't bite you."
Cho seemed genuinely surprised, her eyebrows furrowing deeply. I didn't know wether she was acting or not, since more than half of the school knew that Cho liked Harry. Still, the question was why she was trying to get to him via me: she is confident enough to ask him herself, and she is a smart, and not to forget, very handsome (yes, even I'll admit that she has... nice assets) girl. And, having a past with Cedric, I thought I could assume that Cho had figured just how she should get to a boy, but seemingly she doesn't.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Oh don't pretend you don't get me, Cho." I retorted harshly, standing up, leaving the raven-haired girl sitting surprisedly. Cho quickly stood up too, a confused glimmer in her eyes.
"You know, I am just not the person to use for this kind of things." I said, seemingly confusing the Ravenclaw even more.
"Honestly, I really don't know what you're talking about." the reply followed quickly.
I rolled my eyes at her, "I am talking about Harry. If you want to get more in touch with him, fine, but don't use me as your medium." I said and started to walk away from Cho.
A strong but soft hand grabbed me by the wrist and stopped me in my tracks. Turning around fiercely, I pierced my gaze into hers, but she didn't look away. Her eyes had that glimmer from before again, and somehow that triggered something in my mind, and for some reason I wanted to find out just what that little glint meant.
"Hermione, you've misunderstood. Listen, I have to go now, but please, let me explain, okay?" she said, a desperate undertone in her voice. Out of the blue, I felt a little sorry for acting like this toward her. I opened my mouth to apologize, but she interrupted me.
"Just.. just meet me at the Three Broomsticks tomorrow, around three, okay?"
The amber-eyed girl let go of my wrist and looked at me a couple of seconds before hastily walking off.
I watched her walk away and I shook my head lightly. I still didn't know wether to believe her or not, but I really don't get her at all.
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A/n: yay, chapter two is up! I had fun writing this because I got the change to describe Potion, which I think is the coolest class ever, except for Snape.. So yeah, I'm pretty happy with that n.n And um, next up will be the ''triggering'' event of this fic when Cho and Hermione go to Hogsmeade ^^
For this fic, in the beginning with the horoscope and all: I actually googled horoscope and used wikipedia, but I chose Sagittarius for Hermione because in various descriptions I saw words such as intelligent, hard-working, intellect, ambition and so on, so I thought that it would fit her well.
Anyhow, I have upcoming exams, so I won't be able to write much in a week, but I'll try my best, so, bear with me..
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter neither do I own Hermione Granger or Cho Chang. They all belong to the brilliant mind of J.K Rowling.
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