The Troll had not been a funny prank. Whoever let it in had the worst sense of humour imaginable. But Hermione couldn't bring herself to be angry, even if she had almost been killed.
They didn't hate her. Ron and Harry, that is. They came to save her. They put their own lives at risk to help her. Her.
Hermione stared up at the drapes encompassing her bed, for once not bounding out at first light to gather arm loads of books or check over her potion notes. No, instead she simply lay there, the memory of screams echoing through her head.
("Hermione!"
"Hermione move!")
They saved her and Hermione wouldn't forget it. Even if they were rude, even if Ron called her a teachers pet or Harry shrugged her off, she wouldn't forget it.
With a toothy smile, Hermione finally pulled back the covers and got ready for the day. Perhaps she could do something for them, other than covering their backs like she did yesterday. A part of her still balked at the fact she had lied to a Professor and to Professor McGonagall no less! But that was only a part of her. Her sense of reason, loyalty and justice all seemed to be in agreement that she had made the right choice, even if she was still having some difficulty purging her favourite professor's disappointed expression from her mind.
She put forth another wave of effort to expel this image as she made her way out of her dormitory and down the drafty hallways to breakfast. Instead of worrying over her head of house, she made herself wonder what she could do to help Harry and Ron in return for last night. Perhaps she could research a way to check Ron's food and drink for pranks? Or find Harry some books on Quidditch? Or perhaps she could create a prank for Malfoy to make them both laugh (she had no doubt in her mind that the blond bully deserved it. She'd heard the things he sneered about, and to, her and her classmates.)
Her mind was still awhirl with plots and plans as she entered the great hall. So much so that it took her a moment to notice her name was being called.
"-mione! Earth to Hermione. You there?"
Startled, Hermione looked around and caught sight of Ron, next to an exhausted but happy looking Harry, waving at her from further up the table from where she was about to sit.
She blinked, surprised, but went to join them without comment.
"You looked miles away Hermione," commented Harry in an easy tone, helping himself to a ladle full of porridge.
"I think half of me is still in my bed," Hermione said, voice quiet but warm. Harry grinned in agreement with that.
"So who else's still got the smell of rotten eggs up their nose?" Ron asked.
"Who else still has the smell of rotten eggs on their wand?" Returned Harry with a grimacing laugh.
"I can help with that… if you like."
Harry and Ron raised their eyebrows at her uncharacteristically uncertain tone but Harry took out his slightly mucky looking wand anyway and passed it over, in a breathtaking show of trust. Hermione didn't hesitate to repay it.
"Mollis scourgify," she carefully enunciated, beaming as gentle little bubbles frothed over Harry's wand and melted away to reveal shiningly clean wood.
"Wow thanks, I didn't know magic could clean stuff like that," said Harry, picking up the wand and smiling at Hermione.
"What are you talking about? My mum uses that spell all the time. Usually just the second part though."
And so the conversation turned, both Harry and Hermione curious about what other spells Mrs Weasley used in day to day life and how wizard home life differed from that of muggles. Hermione listened, enraptured by what a bemused Ron thought was banal, entirely forgetting her earlier nerves in the face of two new friends.
Pranking fell on a bit of a back burner after that. Her weekends were no longer spent in the library or in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom (although she still tried to visit and practice there for at least half an hour on most Friday afternoons) but she didn't find herself missing the more solitary moments. Hermione now found her spare time taken up with chatter, games of chess, shared homework sessions and visits to Hagrid the Gameskeeper.
That's not to say Hermione didn't still do a few little pranks. Malfoy sometimes found his dinner a bit too salty after the lid of his salt shaker was mysteriously loosened, (most often whenever Ron or Harry needed a laugh) and Neville still received his croaking frog mug in the post one day, beaming at the misconstrued idea that someone in his family sent it to him. Most of the help Hermione gave her new friends wasn't so hidden now. Bluebell flames became something of a specialty of hers in the cooling weather, which Ron was particularly pleased with. Harry seemed more grateful for her help proofreading his homework, what with him having so many Quidditch training sessions hanging over him. Wood really was pushing Harry quite hard.
Maybe too hard, Hermione found herself thinking at breakfast one day, watching as an exhausted Harry almost face planted into his cereal. It was Friday, which meant double potions then another bout of quidditch practice for Harry, followed by his first match tomorrow. Hermione feared that Harry might fall asleep on his broom at this rate. Really! What was Wood thinking? She rather thought that she should do something about this, but only if-
A soft screech sounded out, distracting Hermione from watching Harry try to peal back his eyelids by drinking copious amounts of sugary pumpkin juice. One of the School owls, one with sleek tawny feathers, had landed atop one of the PuffyOwls cereal boxes, making Hermione smile. That is, before she registered her name on the letter and box clasped in its claws.
Ron, as well mannered and as of minding of his own business as usual, asked: "Wots 'at 'ermionee?" through a mouthful of cereal.
It was probably the cheep pack of kazoos Hermione asked her parents for. Or at least, she hoped it was. Ignoring Ron (other than to send a mildly disgusted look at his table manners) she opened the letter and tried to think of how to answer him.
Hermione didn't like lying. She could do it and she had done it. But it didn't sit right with her to lie to Harry and Ron, to lie to her friends. So most of the time she simply lied by omission.
"It's from my parents. They're sending me some thing I didn't think to pack. They say hi by the way."
Hermione wanted to tell Harry and Ron about her little side-hobby. She really did. But… well… Ron was still a bit resentful about the alarm clock prank (even if she had heard the others laughing about it) and while Harry seemed ambivalent about pranks, she didn't know him well enough yet to judge his reaction. They'd probably both be alright with it but the heart of the matter was that Hermione just wasn't that great at pranking yet. Wouldn't it be so much better to reveal it to them after a really big joke? It would be a long term prank of a sort. They would never suspect her and she could imagine the expressions of surprise on their faces when they found out.
Ron nodded, oblivious to Hermione's glazed daze, and glanced down the table as their classmates started to leave for their first lessons of the day.
"Ugh. Is it that time already? You think we'd get in trouble if we skipped potions just for once."
"Yes," said Hermione, snapping out of her daydream at once. Harry nodded sleepily beside her.
"You two are no fun," sighed Ron as they all stood up. "You'll both wish you'd listened to me, mark my words."
Sure enough, Ron was proven right. Although Hermione still wouldn't have skipped a lesson in a million years. Even if Ron and Harry were right about Professor Snape being up to something, she would still have gone. Mainly to distract Professor Snape while Ron stopped Harry from accidentally drowning himself in a caldron full of weed killer.
By the time they had gotten out of the freezing dungeons, Harry looked dead on his feet. Hermione and Ron exchanged a glance.
"You've still got a few hours until the others are let out for Quidditch practice, Harry. You should go have a rest."
"…Don't need it…"
Ron rolled his eyes and swung an arm over Harry's shoulder, making to lead him back to the common room.
"You guys go ahead," said Hermione when Ron sent back a questioning glance at her for not following. "I have some business to attend to. See you later."
She waved them off with a sharp smile, waiting until the oblivious Harry and the mildly bemused Ron had gotten out of eyesight before bundling up her distinctive hair into the school hat she kept in her satchel and folding over the distinctive Gryffindor trim to her cloak. Satisfied with her appearance, Hermione turned towards the exit of the Western Hall and walked out onto the school grounds. She grinned, her package of kazoos clattering quietly in her satchel as she skipped all the way down to Quidditch pitch.
"Right!" Called out Wood, clapping his hands together with a grin. "Enough stretches, lets set up a race and pump up that blood. Harry, you and Fred first."
"Alright Harry?" grinned Fred, picking up his broom and sauntering over. "Ready for me to sweep the floor with you?"
"As if," returned Harry, his lips twitching up into an almost-smile at the awful pun. He did feel better after getting a bit more sleep (not that he was telling Ron and Hermione this) but the fact still stood that his first ever quidditch match was tomorrow. It would take a lot more than a nap and a bad broom joke to get him over his nerves.
"Loser does eleven extra laps, on foot," cheered Wood, suddenly appearing next to them with a manic smile. Fred exchanged a tolerably amused look with George who was slouched against one of the Quidditch poles and calling:
"Go Harry go!"
"Sorry, old sport," sighed Fred. "But I'm not doing extra exercise if I can help it."
Wood raised his hand, his bright and feverish eyes promising a gruelling training session to come. "Three, two, one, go!"
And suddenly the pitch was filled with two high-pitched, whistling toots.
Harry looked down at his broom handle as he raced along, expression incredulous as a trilling 'breet' hooted out beneath him. It sort of sounded like the squeal of a rubber chicken but much more prolonged. Like it had been stuck in a blender on high speed.
"What the hell?" He heard Fred mutter next to him, seemingly also startled to have a similarly tone-deaf singing broomstick under him.
Harry and Fred looked at each other, still flying neck and neck. A slow grin over took Fred's face and he sped up a bit.
'BreeEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!'
Harry laughed and sped up too, his own broom making an even higher pitched noise.
Further up on the pitch, the rest of the Gryffindor Quidditch team watched as the two shot across the field. The squealing hoots coming from them changing from high pitch to low as they shot past. There was a moment of silence before laughter erupted through the team. A few more tooting squeals started to sound out as Angelina and George both took flight, laughing at the sound of their own brooms, and started racing around too.
And in no time whatsoever, the whole team was up in the air.
Alicia Spinnet and Katie Bell were slowing and speeding up high above, trying to change the tone of their booms to make a garbled, tooting version of a Wyrd Sisters song. George Weasley was conducting them from below. Fred, Angelina and Harry were racing as fast as they could around the pitch, making as much noise as they could. And Oliver Wood stood in the middle of the pitch, staring incredulously at the semi-transparent kazoo he'd just unstuck from the bottom of his broom.
When Harry came back from training that evening, arm in arm with George and Angelina, and see-through kazoo clamped between his lips, Hermione couldn't stop the grin overtaking her face.
Hermione's sense of humour was at an all time low, but, on the other hand, her anxiety was at an all time high. Watching one of her best friends doing the broom buckaroo over a hundred feet in the air seemed to do that to her. Distantly, she heard people screaming and shouting but it was muffled. As if it was coming from another room. Then Hagrid said something about Harry's broom and she shook off her tunnel vision to focus on his words.
"Can't nothing interfere with a broomstick except powerful dark magic- no kid could do that with a Nimbus two thousand."
No kid could do it but what about an adult? Professor Snape! What if Rob and Harry were right about Snape?!
Not wanting to waste even a single moment asking permission, Hermione grabbed Hagrid's binoculars and crammed her face into them.
"It's Snape! He's doing something- jinxing the the broom."
"What should we do?" Ron exclaimed, voice high with panic.
"Leave it to me." And Hermione was gone, half tripping, half running as she rushed through the stands.
Through her head, spell after spell flashed and flickered. Everything she had ever heard of or used. She could Engorgio his nose, making it so big it would block his sight, or use mobiliarbus to wrap his cloak round his head, but they could both easily be dispelled with a finite which she didn't yet know how to cast or counteract. Tarantallegra would only cause his feet to dance, not a problem for eye contact if he sat down or, again, cast finite. She could use the curse of the bogges to block his sight or immobulus to freeze but she would have to be able to cast it at a closer distance to get his whole body, which she didn't want to risk doing. Not to mention she'd never practiced those spells with a living target before. If only she knew some way of shielding Harry, or an irreversable way to obscure Snape's eye contact so he couldn't-
'Of course! ' Hermione thought to herself as she hurtled up the teacher's stand, and almost smacking herself on the head for her idiocy. It was obvious she should use a smokescreen spell! She had only practised the minor form of it before, when devising a potential large prank in Myrtle's bathroom, and it had worked fine there. But this needed much more power than that used to fill a bathroom full of smoke.
"Fumos Maxima," she whispered from behind the bleachers, bracing herself against one of the wooden support beams as a thick wave of grey smoke cannoned out of her wand, pushing her back with a bruisingly hard knock-back. There were cries of alarm and lots of angry shouts as the teachers scrambled around and tried to find the source of the smoke, but Hermione was already running back, stopping only long enough to hurriedly cast her bluebell flames on the back of Snape's cloak. Just in case.