AN: I do not own Harry Potter
The defence against the dark arts homework had been tricky enough, but the potions project was impossible. The worst part of it was that Harry had to work with Blaise. They had arranged to meet in the library at lunch to start on it but, surprise surprise the Slytherin git hadn't bothered to show up.
Harry was sure that Snape had known this would happen, after all, all the other people in his class were teamed with others from their own house. Oh, apart from Jenni and Malfoy. Unfortunately, their project seemed to be going rather well, and so was Ron and Hermione's, even though it was purely due to that fact that Hermione had done all of the work. She complained about Ron's laziness constantly but at least it meant they wouldn't fail.
After glancing at his watch for about the millionth time, Harry gave up and decided to grab some books, then find Ron and Hermione and go to lunch. He yawned, earning himself a glare from madam Pince and headed towards the potions section of the library. There were too many books, he decided, as he stood in front of the section labelled "advanced potion making and theory", which consisted of fully twenty shelves, each of which was about six foot long and crammed to bursting with books. There was nothing for it, he would have to ask madam Pince.
He was just walking back through the Herbology section towards the library entrance, when he saw Jenni, sitting behind a large pile of books at a table near to window. The sunlight streamed through the glass and illuminated her face and hair so that she looked like an angel. Harry realised that he was staring at her and looked away, but before he could walk off she had looked up from the book she was reading and stared straight at him. Damn. He would have to go over and talk to her now, otherwise she would think he had been creepily staring at her, or that he was ignoring her or something. However if he did talk to her she was bound to tell him to go away. He shook his head. Girls...so complicated.
"Hello Jenni, working on your potions project?"
"Yes." She went back to reading her book and Harry hovered awkwardly for a moment, trying to work out if it would be rude to leave now. Jenni looked up at him and frowned slightly, as though he was in the way, then said
"I suppose you want to sit down."
"Umm... is that all right with you?"
Jenni gave a snort of annoyance that made it only too clear that it was not 'all right' at all and then pulled out the chair across from her. Warily, Harry sat down and tried to read the title of Jenni's book.
Hermione was also in the library and she too was attempting to read the title of a book. This was made somewhat difficult by Ron, who was siting next to her and trying to levitate Berty Botts every flavour beans into the hair of passing first years without them noticing.
Hermione sniffed. "You do realise that if madam Pince catches you with food in the library you will be blacklisted?"
"Say what?"
"You won't be allowed to take books out of the library any more." Hermione clarified.
Ron shrugged. "So what? It's not like I borrow books from here anyway."
Hermione seemed incredibly frustrated. "But what about your OWLs? What if, one day you're in desperate danger and you need to do some research and you come in here to borrow a book on counter-jinxes to fatal spells and you can't. Then what'll you be? Nothing but a...a...a...cobweb."
"Oh wow. Scary." Ron rolled his eyes, then narrowed them in confusion and said "cobweb?"
"The webs of dust you get in corners of houses that aren't cleaned properly"
"Yeah I know what a cobweb is, but what do you mean I'll be a cobweb?"
"Professor Alexander Albinion, the famous French philosopher said that the world could be broken down into different types of people that corresponded to different items of stationary on a shelf that represents life."
"How is a cobweb a piece of stationary?"
"It's not. In Albinion's model the cobweb is the lowest form of life that clings to the crumbling edifice of civilization but can never return to its former glory. It is doomed to remain hanging there forever, until it is swept away along with scrunched up pieces of paper and old coffee cups."
"Sounds like a total nutter..."
Hermione nodded sagely "Many said so. Especially after the incident with the turnips."
"Oh yeah? What happened?"
"Well, it was summer and-"
She stopped because Ron had turned horribly pale and was staring at something behind her. She turned around very slowly to see madam Pince standing over them, brandishing a box of bookmarks like a mace.
"Mr. Weasley..." She whispered, and Ron had never heard a whisper that sounded so threatening. Hermione shifted one of the books so that it covered the packet of sweets.
"Talking in the library is strictly forbidden. You will leave now. Miss. Granger, I am deeply disappointed in you but will reserve punishment in light of the books that you helped me to catalogue last week."
They both held their breath as Ron stood up and grabbed his bag. He started to move towards the door but madam Pince called him back. "Not before you've returned those books to the correct shelves"
Ron glared and picked up the topmost book. Hermione tried to signal to him to be careful but it was too late. The packet of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans burst open and showered the desk and surrounding floor with a veritable rainbow of sweets. Madam Pince's glare seemed to have increased to such an extent that it could have burned a hole all the way through Ron's head.
"Food?" She hissed "in the LIBRARY?" Hermione winced and covered her face with her hands. "Detention! And if you so much as set foot in this library again, you will be very sorry indeed." Ron gulped and shuffled slowly out of the door. It was only once he had reached the end of the corridor that he began to run towards the dormitories. God, forget professor McGonagall madam Pince was bloody terrifying."
"So I see Malfoy's not helping much with your project."
Jenni glared at him.
"You're not allowed to talk in the library."
Harry felt vaguely smug at her blatant avoidance of his question and settled back in his chair, wondering what he was going to do about his project.
After about five minutes silent contemplation, tempered with the occasional smug grin, Harry saw Blaise enter the library and look around. Excellent! Harry thought. He must have got the time wrong or got held up in lunch or something. With luck we should have sorted out most of the groundwork in about half an hour.
His feeling of goodwill swiftly evaporated when Malfoy also entered, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle. They began to walk towards the table where Jenni and Harry were sitting and when she noticed them Jenni looked up and smiled politely.
"Working on the project, Jen?" Malfoy asked in his smarmiest, most annoying voice. Harry willed Jenni to tell him off for talking in the library, but he wasn't hopeful.
"I've nearly finished the conclusion. Have you done your half?"
Draco smirked even more and pulled a long roll of parchment out of his bag. "Here you go."
He passed it to Jenni, who slotted it next to the rest of the paper on the table. Harry mentally pulled a face. Draco then turned to Blasie.
"How's your project going?"
Blaise gave Harry a very cold glare and then said, "I have been waiting for some time for Potter to finish the introduction and give it to me so that I can complete the rest."
What? They had never agreed anything of the kind. What a jerk. Harry glared back at him but didn't say anything as he knew it wouldn't help. Malfoy moved to sit down next to Jenni and Harry felt as though he was being suffocated with the Slytherin's smugness. Harry stood up .
"I'll be going then."
"Try and get some work done, would you?" Blaise drawled after him, but Harry ignored him. Arguing with Slytherins he decided, simply wasn't worth the effort.
When Hermione caught up with Ron in the common room about ten minutes later, he was all set to apologize to her about madam Pince yelling at them, but before e could get a word in edgewise she had pointed her wand at him and shouted "petrificus totalus!"
The common room was silent. Well, marginally quieter anyway, as everyone turned to look at Hermione.
"YOU UNMITIGATED B------" She yelled, her hair fluffing up around her face so that she looked like a lion. "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU'VE DONE?"
Ron tried to shake his head, but he couldn't move, so settled for a look of abject terror. While Hermione regained sufficient breath to yell at him again he mentally ran through likely options. Perhaps madam Pince had given her a detention? It was possible... but then why would she be so annoyed, She loved helping in the library? In that case maybe it was something else. Perhaps she had been trying to find a book and madamPince had refused to help her because she was so annoyed. That seemed unnecessarily petty and Ron doubted it.
In fact, he could think of nothing in the world that could possibly account for the look of pure malice on Hermione's face. I mean, she looked like she had been banned from the library or something. Oh god. Mental rewind. Banned from the library. Banned from the library. He was so dead.
"Thanks to you, I am not allowed to set foot within the library or borrow library books for a week."
Most of the common room had by this time turned back to what they were doing, and Ron was left to bear the full brunt of Hermione's anger alone. The small, niggling matter that it was entirely his fault that Hermione had been banned from the library was pushed out of his mind at the sight of her brandishing her wand in his face and screaming.
"A WEEK! Do you have any idea how much time I spend in the library? Do you have even the faintest idea how I manage to maintain perfect grades in almost every subject? Now what am I going to do? Any bright ideas?"
Ron remained silent.
"And what's more,"
Oh god there was more? He had thought that this was bad enough...
"You owe me a bag of liquorice wands!"
Harry hated Malfoy as he had never done before. Why oh why did that guy have to be such an insufferably smug git? And what's more, why did Jenni, who had tried to strangle him the first time they met, suddenly become friends with him? What he needed now was a nice, relaxing quidditch practise session to calm his frayed nerves. Luckily, Wood had scheduled one for that very evening at seven, so at least Harry had that to look forward to. He stopped outside the portrait hole to say the password, 'Arcadia' and then stepped through into the common room.
He was looking for Ron and Hermione and to his great surprise he found them almost instantly, as Ron was lying stricken on the ground with Hermione screaming at him. A few people looked at him as he came in and, somewhat embarrassed by his friend's behaviour, he pointed his wand at Ron, muttered the counter-jinx and then gently grabbed the back of Hermione's robes to stop her from punching Ron.
"What the hell is going on?" Harry asked Hermione, who was glaring daggers at Ron.
"He was being childish as usual and spilled a load of sweets in the library. Naturally madam Pince was furious. And, even though it was entirely his fault, she's banned me from the library for a week!"
Harry turned to Ron or confirmation, but he just looked perplexed. "What do you mean I owe you a bag of liquorice wands?"
Hermione had calmed down somewhat and said, "For the potion that we found in that prank letter. It turns out that I was right, it wasn't water."
It took Harry a moment to work out what she was talking about. When he had remembered he said. "What was it then?"
Hermione settled herself in an armchair and said "It was a mood de-stabiliser. Quite a simple potion, it basically has the opposite effect of a cheering charm. Instead of making the person who takes it happy, it makes them irritable and angry. Purely short term of course, the effects last for up to two hours if the potion's really strong, otherwise it can just last for a few seconds."
Harry frowned. "Are you sure Hermione?" Hermione glared at him and he quickly amended his sentence "I mean, I'm sure that if you say it's that it must be, but why would anyone want to send me that?"
Hermione shrugged. "A stupid prank. Send you a prank letter and just to make sure that you don't ignore it, make you irritable for a few hours so that you brood over it? I don't know. Seems like a lot of trouble for nothing."
Ron had been keeping very quiet, probably in the hope that Hermione wouldn't notice him, but now he spoke.
"Maybe someone thought it was water."
Hermione gave him a look that could have roasted a chicken, complete with potatoes and carrots.
"Not everyone in the world is a stupid as you, Ron. You don't just find potions lying around. What do you think happened? Someone brewed up a cauldron, left it bubbling in the corridor and someone walked past and thought. 'Look! A cauldron of water?'"
Harry nodded. "Hermione has a point."
Ron shook his head. "Nah, that's not what I meant. Look, I grew up with Fred and George, and in our house if you leave bottles of suspicious smoking liquids around the house, they get chucked out. Fred and George used to store any stuff they made in muggle water bottles that they got from dad. Once when I was seven I nearly drank an entire litre of sleeping draught that the twins had been planning to give to Percy. Mum went completely mental."
Hermione frowned as though hesitant to listen to anything that Ron had to say. "I suppose someone might have thought that it was water..."
Ron looked immensely cheered by Hermione's apparent consideration of his theory. It seemed as though she had started to forgive him for the whole library thing. Either that or she had been sufficiently distracted by this as to have forgotten. Probably best not to mention anything about it either way, just to be on the safe side.
Harry leaned back in his arm chair and yawned. "Well, I'd better get going, we've got divination next and all my stuff is in the entrance hall."
Ron nodded. "Right. I'll catch you up."
Harry left and Ron was just about to get to his feet when Hermione spoke.
"I'll expect that packet of liquorice wands by Friday then."
Ron gritted his teeth and turned to go.
"Oh, and Ron?"
"Yes?"
"Don't get the red ones, they taste funny."
And with a smug grin befitting of one who has exacted a small but highly justified revenge, Hermione put her feet up on the table and began to read.
:) : Thank you for reveiwing. I think you have a good point, I'll try to avoid repeating any ooc type dialogue.
Rauni: Thank you! I'm on holiday atm so I should be able to focus on some writing.
AlexTheFork: Do you mean TT_TT ?? It's 2 capital T's then an underscore. I'll do my best to update more!
Thank You For Reading! Please Reveiw!