Chapter 11
The next morning Hermione has woken up in the hospital wing confused but healthy. Madam Pomfrey has explained what had happened to her and scolded her for not going to the hospital wing when she needed to. She had been discharged and Fred had collected her and taken her to breakfast.
The week following her release from the hospital wing, Fred has been annoyingly protective. He walked her to every class, waited outside bathrooms for her, if she went outside he would conjure hats, scarfs and gloves and put them onto her. At first, she had found it sweet but after a week of him treating her like she was a china doll, she had had enough.
"FREDRICK GIDEON WEASLEY I AM CAPABLE OF SERVING MY OWN DINNER." She screamed in frustration when he started putting food onto her plate and chopping her sausages into bite-sized pieces.
"I know you are but you shouldn't have to I can do it for you." He said quietly but his voice travelled around the Great Hall which had fallen silent when Hermione had shouted at him.
"I am going to say this once and only once Fred stop mollycoddling me, I had the flu, I fainted and I hit my head. That was a week ago. Madam Pomfrey healed me the same day. I'm not sick, I'm not broken. I am fine. At first, I thought it was sweet that you would walk me to every class and hold open doors, that you'd give me your cloak when I was watching Quidditch practice but now you are suffocating me, Fred. I can't do anything because you are there doing it for me. You serve me my dinner and cut it into tiny pieces, you conjure hats, scarfs and gloves for me and force me to wear them when I'm cutting through the court yard on my way to charms class. I can't even go to the toilet without you hovering outside the bathroom. Anything where there is a slight risk and you are there either doing it for me of forbidding me from doing it. I want my Fred back who likes to prank and joke. You haven't done a single prank in the past week, George is miserable and you haven't noticed. Now leave me alone, go cause mischief with your twin and don't bother coming near me until you are back to your normal self." she spoke quieter than before but still her voice carried.
"I'm sorry Princess I didn't mean to suffocate you but you terrified me. You looked dead when you fainted. You were so pale and there was so much blood. I don't know what I would do without you. You are my best friend." He said quietly his eyes filled with unshed tears.
"Oh Fred I'm not going anywhere. I'm sorry I scared you, your my best friend, the first friend I have ever made." Hermione said her eyes filled with tears as well. She jumped forward and wrapped her arms tightly around his waste burrowing her head into the crook of his neck. He wrapped his arms tightly around her and burrowed his face into her soft bushy hair. Both of them let their tears fall and the occupants of the great hall looked away uneasily feeling uncomfortable observing such a private moment between the two friends.
After their emotional breakdown in the Great Hall Fred began pranking again and went back to treating Hermione as he had before she had been injured.
The month of October had been very busy.
At the beginning of October, Harry had been made Seeker for the Gryffindor Quidditch team and Hermione had taken him to the trophy room to show him that his dad had been a chaser on the Gryffindor Quidditch team when he had been at school.
In the middle of October Malfoy had challenged Harry to a duel. Hermione had tried to stop them from going and in the process her, Harry, Ron and Neville had been locked out of the common room. It turned out that Malfoy had set them up and Filch and his cat Mrs Norris had almost caught them. They had ran down corridors until they got to a locked door and Hermione had used her wand to unlock it.
It turned out the door was locked for a reason and they were in the 3rd-floor forbidden corridor. The four of them had almost been eaten alive by a gigantic three-headed dog that Hermione had noticed was stood on a trapped door.
Ron had been insufferable towards her for the remainder of October. On Halloween they had been paired together in Charms. The class where practising the levitation charm; wingardium leviosa. Ron was waving his wand wildly instead of doing the swish and flick movement Professor Flitwick had shown thrm. Hermione couldn't take it anymore.
"Wingardium LeviosAA!" Ron said expressed.
"Stop! Stop! Stop! You're going to take someone's eye out! Besides, you're saying it wrong. Its LeviOsa, not LevioSA." Hermione said stopping his erratic wand movements with her hand.
"You do it then if you're so clever. Go on, go on." Ron said rudely to Hermione,
"Wingardium Leviosa," Hermione said doing the swish and flick motions perfectly. Her feather levitated high into the air and Hermione smiled proudly when Professor Flitwick gave her 5 house points for being the first one in the class to successfully do the charm.
Hermione stayed behind after class to ask Professor Flitwick a question. She noticed that Ron had forgotten his charms book so Hermione picked it up and headed off to find him.
She found him in the court yard. He was stood with his back towards her with Harry, Seamus and Dean. As she approached she heard what he was saying and her eyes filled with tears.
"Honestly she's a nightmare did you hear her? It s LeviOsa, not LevioSA." He put on a high pitched imitation of her and Dean and Seamus laughed.
"No wonder she has no friends. I think Fred and George pity her. The bushy haired know it all first-year who has no friends in her own year. They are probably going to tell her their whole friendship is a prank any day now. There's no way they are really her friend. Who'd want to be friend with someone like that." Ron said laughing but the others didn't laugh, they were looking at her stood behind Ron tears streaming down her face.
Ron turned towards her to see what his friends were looking at. She saw a flash of guilt in his eyes but she ignored it. She marched up to hi, shoved his charms book into his hand and stormed passed him slamming him with his shoulder as she went past. She ran to the nearest bathroom, locked herself in a stall and cried her heart out.
Realistically she knew that what Ron had said wasn't true, Fred and George were her friends, they weren't pretending but deep down she worried that she wasn't good enough for the twins. She stayed in the stall for what felt like hours. Lavender and Parvati had come in and checked on her but she had told them to go to the Halloween feast.
She wiped her eyes and left the toilet stall, she was in the process of wiping cool water on her blotchy face when the bathroom door opened. She looked into the mirror above the sink and let out a terrified scream. Stood in the the bathroom blocking her exit was a 12 foot Mountain Troll. It swung its club towards her and she dived out of the way but not far enough. The sink she had been stood at had taken the brunt of the swing and was now on top of her leg preventing her from moving. She was certain she was going to die.
The troll went to take another swing at her but was distracted by someone shouting "OI PEA BRAIN" It was Ron. He and Harry had come to save her. Harry jumped on its back and Ron used Wingardium Leviosa to knock the troll out with its own club.
When the professors had arrived she had taken the blame for the incident and Ron had apologised to her for what he had said about her. She had quickly forgiven him and the three of them had become the best of friends. It was nice to have more friends in her own year but Fred remained her number one best friend.
In November Hagrid had got a pet dragon off of a stranger and Harry, Ron and Hermione had hatched a plan to sneak it out of the castle. Friends of Ron's brother Charlie had collected it from the Astronomy tower and taken it to Charlie in Romania.
Malfoy had got himself and them detention which they had served in the forbidden forest with Harry. Harry had been rescued by a Centaur from a hooded figure that had been drinking unicorn blood. The Centaur; Firenze had told Harry that it was Lord Voldemort.
They had decided that Voldemort was after whatever the three-headed dog was guarding but whatever it was would have to wait until after Christmas which was two weeks away.
Hermione would be spending the Christmas holidays with Fred and his family. Her parents had a dental conference in France and she didn't want to be left in a ski lodge for the majority of the holiday alone. Fred's parents were going to go to Romania and visit Charlie for the holidays but he had decided to visit home instead so that the whole family could be together. Harry would also be going to the Weasleys for Christmas.
