By the time she got to transfiguration, she was furious. How could she have been so stupid? Why couldn't she control her damn face? She was smarter than that! She slammed her books down on the desk next to Ron's.
"Well, hello to you too, sunshine," Ron said jovially. Hermione gave him her best glare, and he hurriedly decided that he should really get on with transfiguring his teapot.
There, she thought with satisfaction. I can still scare the shit out of Ron, at least.
She went and collected a teapot, and settled down to the task of turning it into a guinea pig. Despite the pleasure she felt at turning Ron into a nervous wreck, her mood was still fairly black. Every time she pointed her wand at the teapot, it whistled in alarm and hopped away. She huffed in frustration and pulled it towards her for the fifth time. At least the others in the class weren't faring much better. Harry had only succeeded so far as to give his teapot a rather fetching pair of whiskers, while Ron had somehow broken the spout off his teapot and was trying to repair it before Professor McGonagall noticed.
Hermione took pride in the fact that she was a strong willed, independent witch. She scornfully watched as others in her year giggled and blushed when an overly entitled wizard managed to muster up a vaguely clever remark. She was not stupid enough to be impressed by some toothy guy with artfully swept hair. But one unexpected encounter with Malfoy, and he left her a quivering mess. She silently vowed that next time, he wouldn't catch her so off guard. Then she reminded herself that there wouldn't be a next time, because she was supposed to be avoiding him.
She sighed and pointed her wand at her teapot again.
In the end, she was in too much of a flap to have much success with the transfiguration task, but luckily, Neville managed to set fire to Lavender's hair (and a number of other things) so they spent the remainder of the lesson putting out fires and trying to catch several panicked half-guinea-pig, half-teapot-creatures which were remarkably quick considering most of them had less than the full complement of legs.
Not only did this cover up for her (unprecedented!) failure with the teapot, it served as an excellent distraction from the blonde git.
Some time later, Hermione, Harry and Ron were making their way to Potions. Ron was complaining noisily about an injury he had sustained in the melee.
"Bloody hell, look how deep it is! You wouldn't think a spout could even cause this much damage!" He exclaimed, outraged, waving his injured arm at them. Inwardly, Hermione rolled her eyes. If it hurt that much, how come he was still able to wave it around so energetically?
"Just imagine if I got Teapot Rot!" Ron peered closely at his arm, inspecting it for infection. He sniffed the scratch suspiciously, then thrust it under Harry's nose. "Does that smell like Earl Grey to you mate?"
While Harry reassured Ron that his arm did not, in fact, smell like any type of tea, Hermione strode ahead of them into the draughty dungeon. Usually her friends amused her, but today she was feeling impatient and restless. She started setting up her cauldron, relaxing into the task. Finally, something that required no thought, something she could just lose herself in. She was partway through, laying Blithering Beans out side by side when Snape swept in and barked at them to stop.
"As you know, we have had more than our share of animosity in this class," Snape drawled, his usual sneer in place. "Recent events," his eyes lingered on Seamus Finnegan and Goyle, who had started throwing toad eyeballs at each other during the last class, "have shown that we need to work on working together. Without," he snapped as several students in the class groaned, "behaving like imbeciles." At this point he turned to glare at Ron and Harry.
"As such, I have decided to place each of you in a designated pair in which you will conduct all lab work for the next month. Each pair will contain one Gryffindor and one Slytherin. And I will be expecting you to work extremely well together if you want anything above a failing grade."
Suddenly, Hermione had a really bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Snape paced around the dungeon, handing out pairings, his oily hair swaying slightly with his movement. "Miss Brown, you can join Mr Blaise. Mr Crabbe, I think you and Mr Potter can flail hopelessly together." Snape smirked at Harry as Crabbe cracked his knuckles and made his way over to Harry's bench.
"Mr Weasley, you shouldn't be able to do much damage to Mr Goyle's abysmal test scores." Goyle stiffened in outrage, and Ron looked as though all his nightmares had come true at once.
Snape's eyes caught on Malfoy. "On the other hand, Mr Malfoy, I think you need some motivation to work harder in this class – how about… yes. Miss Granger, please go and join Mr Malfoy at his bench." Hermione stared at him in horror. "Sometime this year, Miss Granger," Snape said, his voice dripping with disdain.
She gathered up her ingredients and knives and walked over to Malfoy, feeling like a prisoner heading to her execution. This can't be happening.
Malfoy was standing there with his arms crossed, shirtsleeves rolled up, tie loosened, looking unfairly attractive. With no warning, Hermione suddenly had a vision of him sweeping all the ingredients off the bench onto the floor, gripping her by the hips and swinging her up on the cold surface, leaning her back, kissing her neck…
Oh shit. With a monumental effort, she brought herself back from the edge. As she looked up, she noticed a slow smile spreading across Malfoy's face.
This is very, very bad.