dedication: to the Ultimate Gary Stu, James Bond ("He has gills."), to conversations about how "James Bond is a mermaid! Merman. Mer...person.", to Thor, to sashimi+sushi, to the end of the world and surviving it!
disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling.
notes: not to be too overly excited and scare you all off, but WE LOVE YOU.

Sonya flails: I'm currently on vacay out of the country, but there was this special about PotC 4, where they talked about it. Unfortunately, I turned it on in the last ten minutes. I WANNA SEEEE.
Selene wails: there was a Harry Potter marathon on TV, but I was stuck writing essays. sob. cry cry.

The moment Hermione reached the corner of Malfoy's block, she stopped to quickly pull her thoughts together. First things first: where was she? If she was close enough to Harry and Ron's flat, she would just walk - or run there. As it was, she was hungover enough without adding the twirling on the spot like a drunken house-elf and ripping through time and space with a motion not unlike that of a Muggle's clothes dryer.

Just the thought of it made her nauseous, and she resisted the urge to retch.

Walk it off, Granger, walk it off...

... Or not.

Slightly paranoid, she darted a glance over her right shoulder to see if she was being followed by that blond... conman - because he had conned her - well, not out of her virginity, but he had conned her out of her clothes and into his bed!

All against her will!

She bit her lower lip slightly as memories from the night before insisted on being shared and felt blood make its way to stain her face a nice shade of fire hydrant red.

... Against her conscious will had to count, right? After all, if she hadn't been inebriated, she would've turned him into a tea cozy if he had so much as had a thought of taking her to bed.

Yeah.

Anyway, she wasn't being followed, and if even if she was, the streets of Wizarding London were flooded as prime shopping hours commenced, making it hard to tell who was following whom.

Figured Malfoy would live in the classiest neighborhood in the city.

Gazing into the window of an antique furniture store, she saw a grandfather clock. Ten-thirty? Well, that explained everything. Women - dressed in the most ridiculous hats, to be honest - like, what was that pink... thing on that woman's head? How did she have the nerve to leave the house with that on the top of her head? - streamed out of the spas and jewelry stores for brunch at the best cafes London had to offer.

Unfortunately, all of this was far from the flat that her best mates lived in and so Hermione stiffened her shoulders and turned on the spot, picturing the dark red mahogany of the front door and the light hanging over it, the whole building surrounded by haphazardly trimmed grass.

Passing through the... nothingness that was Apparating made her just as queasy as expected. It felt like all of her was being squeezed in a small box - one that could fit her pinky finger, actually - and then twisted again. And again. And again.

Hermione didn't realize she'd closed her eyes tightly until all of the shifting had stopped but everything was still dark. Opening one eye at a time, she found herself in the right place, although it looked like this time, Harry had taken it into his own hands to maintain the lawn. The sun was still almost an hour and a half from being straight over head, and, smiling, she trotted up the steps.

She supposed she could have Apparated straight inside, but besides the lack of manners required to do so, it was just a bad lapse of judgment. The last time she'd done that - because they assured her it was alright for her to do so - she'd dropped in on Ron and Romilda Vane.

Literally.

She hadn't felt too bad about that, even if it was a bit weird, staring at your ex with another girl; after all, she and Ron had only been broken up for a month when that had happened. Even if it had been because they were just... awkward and too... sibling-y to date, it had hurt. They were too comfortable with each other in a way he and Hermione hadn't been. It had taken... years, for them to get to the stage where they'd get past first base, no matter how fast they had gone from not kissing to making out. Getting all the way around the bases in less than a month with a different girl... Well...

Hermione was a big girl, though - she could admit the truth to herself. It hurt, being replaced, especially when your pride didn't allow yourself to think that you were being replaced better than you could replace them.

But then Harry had run in at the shriek, spilling hot coffee on all of them in his haste. Probably thought Lord Voldemort had decided to crash for the night or something.

A disaster, like always.

Chuckling at the memory, she knocked on the door and waited for one of the boys - her men, technically, but... boys fit them all better, if that made any sense - to answer.

It didn't take long.

There were a few loud thumps as someone bounded in her direction before the door flew open and a cheerful Ron was standing there. "Hermione!" She held her arms out. After the... short yet terribly long events since she woke up, she needed a hug.

But then her friend paused and she gulped. "What?"

"Why are you wearing your clothes from yesterday?"

Hermione had an answer for that, but just as she opened her mouth, she heard Harry shuffle over to the door with a sleepy mumble of, "Who is that, Ron?" before poking his disheveled head out.

"Harry!"

"'Mione." He smiled at her before his green eyes zeroed in on her left hand.

"Hermione... what's with the ring?"

The... what?

Her eyes darted to the same hand he was looking at.

"How in the name of Merlin's left shoe did I not see that?"

Okay... So she didn't have an answer for that...