After she finished her dinner Hermione gritted her teeth and went over to the Slytherin table. "Malfoy, can I talk to you for a second?" The boys around him grinned lewdly, and Hermione crossed her arms over her chest, annoyed. She knew exactly what they were thinking about, and she had no qualms about telling them exactly where she stood on thoughts like that. "When you've all put your tongues back in your mouths and wiped the drool off your chins," she snapped, "I'd like to speak to you, Malfoy. Privately."
Malfoy snickered and stood up. "Fine, Granger. Just don't take up too much of my time with whatever you have in mind."
She glared at him in fury, her cheeks reddening slightly. He smirked and walked toward the doors, snagging his bag as he went. She caught up quickly, and as soon as they were out of the hall she put a hand on his chest and slammed him against the wall.
"For future reference," she growled into his face, "I don't appreciate comments like that from anyone, and usually tell them so in a decisive and lasting manner." She put her knee up into his crotch, and his eyes widened in shocked realization. She twisted away from him, putting a little distance between them, and when she was facing him again her face was perfectly composed and gave no sign that she had been talking about anything more interesting than the weather.
"Now," she said calmly, "I wanted to talk to you about the project we have to do together. Dumbledore wants to spend as much time on this as possible as well as be discreet about it, so that means that you can't tell anybody what we're working on."
Malfoy snorted and said, "Hard as it may be to imagine, Granger, I was perfectly capable of deducing that for myself."
She glared at him for interrupting her flow of thought. "Anyway, I've given the gossip mills in the school enough to go on for now, but it might not last for long-"
"What did you tell them?" he interrupted, worried at how much she had revealed. But Hermione Granger wouldn't tell the school that they were looking for pieces of Voldemort's soul when she had just cautioned him not to...
"How stupid do you think I am?" she inquired acidly. "I told Ginny that Dumbledore asked us to work on a project together, that's all."
Malfoy breathed a silent sigh of relief. But that was dispelled with her next words. "He wants to spend as much time on this as possible, so I figure that that means he wants us to spend weekends working on this-"
"Wait," he interrupted again, and ignoring the exasperated look she gave him, "You mean spend my entire weekends with you? All the time?"
"No, you idiot," sighed Hermione. "Dumbledore's not that stupid. Just do a little research, okay? And I suppose we can figure out a schedule that gives us enough breathing space away from each other."
"I also have Head duties," he reminded her.
"Oh yeah," she said. "Well, we'll have to work around those as well." Then she muttered under her breath what sounded like a swear word. "Who's the Head Girl?"
"The Ravenclaw Patil," Malfoy said indifferently.
"Okay," Hermione said, then sighed. "It would have been so much easier if I had just said yes to Dumbledore's offer. Then we would share rooms and this would be so much easier to pull off."
"Yeah, well, you decided to decline and have fun instead of take some real responsibility," Draco said. Hermione shot a look at him, but couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not. "I don't blame you."
Just then the doors to the Great Hall opened wide and people began to pour out. "I can't believe they still treat you like that," Hermione said, glaring at two third-year girls who were staring and whispering at Malfoy, making them flush and scurry away. "I mean, you're Head Boy. Anything that happened last year was last year, and Dumbledore trusts you enough to give you that badge. That should be enough for the rest of the school, as well."
"Granger, I didn't know you cared," drawled Malfoy, as the crowd forced her closer in towards him.
"Yeah, well, don't get too used to it," she said, watching the swarms of kids pass them. "I'm not sure how long it's going to last."
A week later Ginny burst into the Gryffindor common room with wide eyes. "Hermione!" she yelled over the general din of the common room, pushing her way towards where Hermione was sitting in a corner doing homework. "Hermione, you'll never believe this! Padma Patil's no longer Head Girl!"
The common room became quiet, the people closest to her falling silent abruptly and staring at her in amazement, their neighbors slowly falling silent too. The silence spread outwards, like ripples, to the farthest corners of the room.
Hermione stood up slowly. "What did you say, Ginny?" she said, not even needing to raise her voice for Ginny to hear her, even though Ginny wasn't even halfway across the common room. "And more importantly, what does it have to do with me?"
"Padma Patil's no longer Head Girl," Ginny repeated, and the crowd stirred. "I don't know why; I was walking past Dumbledore's office when she came out looking all pale and odd, and I asked her what was wrong, and she said, 'you might as well get everyone talking about it right away. I went to Dumbledore and asked for him to give the Head Girl position to someone else. And I suppose you could tell her, because Dumbledore wants to know if Hermione will be Head Girl now, or if he should pick someone else again.' "
"What did he mean, again?" asked Seamus Finnigan sharply.
Hermione said, "He asked me to be Head Girl at the end of last year. I turned him down."
"Well, you're not going to turn him down now, are you?" Dean Thomas said from his spot by the fireplace.
Hermione smiled. "Well, if the Head Girl resigns and the first person he thinks of to take her place is the one who turned down the position before, I guess he really wants me as Head Girl." she walked toward the portrait hole, catching Ginny's arm as she went.
"Should I go to his office, Ginny?" she murmured as she exited the common room.
"Probably," Ginny said. "Want me to come?"
"Please."
It was a pretty quiet walk. They reached the stone gargoyle only to realize that neither of them knew the password. "Oh, this is great," Hermione moaned. Ginny, however, smiled and pulled the silk cord that she had found dangling down the gargoyle's back.
A moment later a voice easily recognizable as Dumbledore's emerged from the gargoyle's mouth. "Yes?"
"Professor Dumbledore? It's Hermione Granger," Hermione said, not saying anything about Ginny, because she took that from the furious hand gestures Ginny was making that Ginny didn't want to be mentioned.
"Ah, miss Granger. Please come in. The password is 'sugar quill.' "
She took a deep breath and said, "Sugar quill," to the statue, which sprang to life and moved aside. She glanced at Ginny, and then started up the moving staircase towards Dumbledore's office. When she reached the top, she took another deep breath and knocked.
"Come in, miss Granger," she heard Dumbledore say, and she pushed the door open to see him standing next to Fawkes' perch, stroking him absently. "Please, take a seat," he said, taking his own behind the desk. She sat gingerly, and waited for him to say something. "As you must know, our Head Girl has just resigned her position. The reasons for this are to remain confidential, by the wishes of Miss Patil. This means, of course, that we need a new Head Girl. I assume that that is why you are here."
She nodded. "Yes, sir. Ginny Weasley told me - well, told the common room, that Padma had resigned and that the person you wanted was me, even though I turned it down last year."
"And I also assume that your being here means that you have an answer for me?" he inquired, looking at her earnestly.
"Yes, I do," she said, and shifted slightly in her chair. "I want the position. It'll make working with Draco easier, and it - it just seems right, that's all. For me to have the position. Does that make sense?"
He smiled gently at her. "My dear, you will find that very few things in this world make complete sense when you first look at them. But yes, your answer does make sense to me. Now let's see-" he went over to the fireplace and tossed a pinch of powder into it. "Mister Malfoy, could I please speak to you for a moment?"
A minute later Malfoy appeared, spinning in the fireplace. He climbed out and brushed ash off his robes. "You wanted to see me, professor?" he glanced briefly at Hermione, and then snapped his gaze back to the headmaster.
"Yes. Miss Patil has resigned her position as Head Girl, and Miss Granger has kindly accepted it in her place. Will you please show her the Head's rooms and explain what her duties will be?"
Malfoy's gaze returned to Hermione, registering slight shock. "Ah, yes sir, I can do that. Anything else?"
"No," Dumbledore said, his eyes twinkling. "That will be all, thank you. Miss Granger, I suggest you move out of Gryffindor Tower tonight."
"Thank you, professor," Hermione said, getting up. "For giving me another chance." She flicked her eyes at Malfoy, who took it as the sign she meant and headed to the door. She smiled at the professor and followed him.
"The Head dorms are in one of the towers," Malfoy said, breaking the silence as they walked. "The password changes every two months."
"What are our duties?" Hermione asked.
"We're supposed to patrol the corridors together every other night from nine o'clock to eleven, and deduct points and hand out punishments as we see fit during the day." He glanced at her. "I hope you don't need that much sleep."
Hermione smiled thinly. "I get by fine on only a couple of hours."
"Well, that's good to know," he said, then fell silent. When they reached a portrait of the four Founders of Hogwarts, he said, "Dinas Emrys," and the portrait swung open to reveal a hole in the wall, much like the Gryffindor portrait hole. "The password is Irish," he explained as they entered. "I have no idea what it means. The Founders pick the passwords. I think they delight in picking obscure phrases from odd dialects that no one knows the meaning of."
"It means 'the city of Emrys,' " Hermione murmured.
Draco looked at her, surprised. Hermione smiled briefly, and then any thought of strange passwords flew out of her head as she entered the Head common room.
It was magnificent. The walls were an ice blue, with two deep bay windows with window seats cushioned in deep gold. There were two couches back-to-back in the center of the room, a fireplace in one wall, and large bookshelves taking up most of the other walls. A circular table was tucked away in a corner, somehow managing to be out of the way and still visible. Two staircases led up to two doors, one labeled P.P. in curling, elegant writing, the other proclaiming D.M.
As they watched, the gold letters on the Head Girl's door began to shimmer, and then rearranged themselves to say H.G.
"It's not too shabby," she said, her eyes crinkling in mirth. Malfoy shot a grin at her, then walked to one of the couches and flopped down.
"I suppose you'll want to check out your room, and then go get your stuff and tell the rest of your House the good news. We have patrol tonight, so if you have any homework due tomorrow I suggest you complete it before we head out."
Hermione gave him an amused look. "Draco Malfoy, I thought you knew me well enough to know that I never leave homework until the night before it's due."
Malfoy rolled his eyes. "Right, right, I forgot. The Bookworm must keep up her reputation, after all."
Hermione laughed. She was in too good a mood to be even a little annoyed by this. She had a wonderful new room, with a roommate that was...tolerable, and bookshelves full of books that she bet weren't in the ordinary sections of the library. She had no reason at all to complain.
She was unaware of the effect her laugh had on said roommate, an effect that he didn't want to think about. Combined with her new look, her attitude toward him, and the fact that very few people were talking to him, he desperately wanted to believe that she truly wanted to be his friend.
God, this roommate thing is going to be harder to handle than I thought, he mused to himself as she vanished into her room. He soon shook himself out of his thoughts; she may have finished all of her homework for weeks in advance, but he certainly hadn't, and he needed to get started.