Hello my wonderful readers, I'm back! I know it's been a long time, but I have been swamped with activities, and my laptop has not been working. So, I am writing this chapter from my new iPhone 4s. To the guest reviewer, I hope your iPad is working now. I am sorry for the mistakes, but I do not use a beta and I have been having to type from my phone quite a bit lately, because of the aforementioned computer troubles, and my phone's AutoCorrect is demonic. I try to catch most of it, but a lot of it can slip past me. I will try to be more careful now.
She sat and waited for what felt like eternity before he regained consciousness. She kept her vigil, sitting rigid by his side. No one could convince her to leave, despite Ginny's, Harry's, Ron's, and Madame Pomfry's cajoling.
Instead she waited, with no entertainment other than listening to the sound of his steady breathing. Slowly, his complexion reverted from pale and chalky, to its usual warm, tan.
Needless to say, when he finally opened his eyes, she was beyond relieved. Before he could even say anything, she pulled him into bone crushing hug. She inhaled deeply, and noticed that he still smelled like the musky lake.
"That vas cold, effen for me." He joked weakly.
As soon as she was sure he was safe, she smacked him on the arm. "How dare you scare me like that!" She growled. "Honestly, Viktor, you need to do something about them. This is getting ridiculous. What if someone else hadn't been there?"
"But you vere there. "
"What if I hadn't been there?" She asked harshly.
"If you veren't there, then I vouldn't haff been trying to skate." He tried to lighten the mood , with no such luck,
"Maybe not skate, but they could have accidentally pushed you off of the ramp leading up to the ship, while stalking you, which would have been worse." She countered angrily.
"They vouldn't haff done that." he replied dismissively.
"How do you know?" She demanded. "You don't." She answered her own question before he could say anything. She jumped up and stalked out of the room. If she was there any longer, she would either scream, cry, or do both.
"Hermione! Vait, I-" his words were cut off by the echo if the door slamming.
Almost immediately, she bumped into Madame Pomfry, who had come to investigate all of the sudden noise.
"If anyone comes to visit him, if he doesn't know them by name, don't let them in, and be sure to keep him at least until tomorrow noon. I don't want that idiot going off by himself while he's still weak and getting himself hurt." She grumbled to the nurse. Just because she was mad, didn't mean she had stopped caring.
After ensuring that Viktor wouldn't be mobbed by hordes of fans, she left the hospital wing. There was one place that she headed; the place where she went whenever she was in doubt: the library.
"Stupid idiot." She muttered to herself. "I can't believe he doesn't blame those mindless gits for this." If he wasn't going to do anything about their attack, she was. And she was going to get them right where it hurt: in the vanity.
Honestly, most girls were vain, even if it was only a little bit. From what she had seen, Viktor's fans were about as narcissistic as Narcissus himself.
She snorted to herself at the thought of the legend of Narcissus. He had been extremely handsome in the Greek myth, and turned down all women. The goddess, Nemesis, had felt it was unfair, so with the help of Aphrodite, bewitched him to fall in love with his own reflection. He was so entranced, that he stared at himself until he nearly died, and would have, if the goddess Persephone hadn't taken pity on him and transformed him into a daffodil, or otherwise known as a Narcissus.
She chuckled again. Some of those fan gits could die from staring at themselves for too long.
She finally arrived at the library, she went straight for the 'curses' section. She ladened her arms full of books. The one that sounded the most promising was, "In a Girl-Eat-Girl World: A Full Guide to Cosmetic Curses".
With her new horde of books that she had it checked out, she made her way back to the tower.
She stormed in through the portrait hole, and was vaguely shocked to see Ron snogging a girl she faintly recognized as Lucy O'Connor, The older sister of the infamous, Georgie O'Connor. Part of her wondered what he was doing with a Hufflepuff in the common room, but the other, stronger side of her was too focused on revenge to care.
Secluding herself in the dormitory, she began to plot. First, she made a list of the individuals she remembered. Then, she categorize them according to how much they had to put Viktor in danger. The three main categories were, the 'ones that fell before getting on the ice,' 'those who made it out onto the ice but not close to Viktor', and 'those who attacked him.'
With a mischievous chuckle, she realized that most of them were from Beauxbatons. There were roughly 35 individuals, and the ones that weren't from Beauxbatons, were Hufflepuffs, with a few, young Gryffindors. This was going to be fun.
Over the next few days, she implemented her plot. As she saw girls who were on her 'list', she extracted revenge. Those who had done the least amount of harm were cursed with unruly, frizzy hair, much like hers. The ones who had put him in moderate danger were cursed with greasy, fizzy hair and oily skin peppered with blackheads. The poor, unfortunate girls who had been close to them when he had fallen through were cursed with the frizziest, greasiest, hair imaginable, and thick clusters of pimples, red dry patches and oily black heads covered their faces.
She knew she was being exceptionally harsh, but the fact that Viktor wouldn't be able to leave the hospital wing for another week did nothing to calm her wrath. Shortly after he was admitted, Viktor caught a case of the flu that potions seemed to have no effect on, and at random times, his temperature would just randomly drop or spike sky high.
So, as petty as it seemed, extracting revenge helped put to ease the whirlwind of angry thoughts in her mind and slightly soothed the guilt of taking him out skating on the first place.
The best part was that none of it could be traced back to her. The spells were slow acting, so the effects would show up gradually, making it seem as though it was their own bodies' faults.
Despite the pleasure sure had derived from the fan gits' suffering, it did little to put to rest her worrying over Viktor. Whenever she wasn't busy, she would stop in and visit him.
So far she had brought him several magazines and books from the library, so he wouldn't be bored out of his mind while she wasn't there, but he spent most of his time sleeping off his sickness.
In the mean time, she had noticed Ron's sudden and unexpected relationship with Lucy. After what had happened with her younger sister, Georgia O'Connor, she would have assumed that he would want to stay away from the whole family.
From his behavior, that was apparently not the case. It seemed that whenever she saw them, they were snogging without reservation. The girl was only a third year, and she personally found the relationship a bit strange.
The sight of it repulsed her sometimes. Not because she was jealous, but more like 'oh-my-god-that's-my-family kind of disgusting. She imagined it would be a lot like walking in on your parents making out. Ugh, the very thought made her shudder.
It felt like if they weren't kissing when she enterrd a room, they soon would be. It was a wonder that they hadn't gotten in trouble with one of the professors for PDA. She eould have paid good money to watch Professor Snape chew them out, but if this new relationship kept Ron from pestering her, so be it.
All that could be done was ignore it, which was exactly what she did. On the other hand, her best friend seemed to be on the verge of having a relationship. From what she had gathered, Ginny was growing rather attached Dean.
She couldn't be happier for her friend. She was sure that it had to be hard on Ginny to give up on Harry, but it was most likely better for her friend than just desperately waiting for Harry to make a move. Who knew? Maybe seeing Ginny with some one else would motivate him to go for her. As clearly demonstrated by Ron, no boy wants something until another boy already has it.
Ginny's budding relationship was a great sourced of amusement for her. Her and Dean's interactions were so hilariously awkward. She remembered a particularly funny conversation they had at breakfast the other day.
"Hey Dean."
"Heyyyyy Ginny, what're you doing ?"
"Eating breakfast."
"Cool! Do you do this most mornings?"
"Well, yeah."
"Awesome, me too! We should sit together."
It was enough to crack anyone who heard up. For her, it was enough to help the days crawl by a bit faster.
Today was the last day. Viktor would finally be able to leave the hospital tomorrow. She was currently sitting outside, skipping stones on the recently unfrozen lake. It seemed that their first snow day would also be their last. The snow had mostly melted, leaving behind giant puddles of slush. The ground was spongey and the brown remains of what little plant life that had started growing pre-storm was visible.
With a small note of satisfaction, she noticed the leaves on her favorite tree were beginning to unfurl. She was even more satisfied to see the products of her plan through out the school.
It all seemed totally unexpected, and without reason, although the affected Beauxbatons girls swore it was because of 'all of zees 'orrible 'ogwarts food."
Taking a break from skipping stones, she pulled several notes from her pocket. All of which were letters from her parents. She sighed and read back through them for what felt like the thousandth time.
She had told her parents about the 'Ice Incident' as she had dubbed it. Her mother sounded sick with worry, while her father seemed more passive. He wasn't glad that Viktor had gotten hurt per say, but he defiantly wasn't pulling his hair out with worry either.
She had also told them about the Weselys' new relationships, or more specifically, she told her mother. Her father couldn't care less about her friends' relationships; only hers.
Her mother insisted that she was jealous in some way after she described Ron and Lucy 's unexpected and sickeningly mushy relationship, (although she felt her mother couldn't be farther from the truth) and her mum cooed and laughed when she talked about Ginny 's new relationship.
Sighing, she finally got up from her spot on the bank and headed toward the hospital wing. She'd check up on and visit Viktor one more time before she retired to the Gryffindor Tower for the night. He'd be excited to hear about the progress if the thaw, but maybe not as excited about the reappearance of the wasps.
When she reached his room, she was slightly surprised to see he was sleeping already.
Absentmindedly, she checked his temperature and pulse, and found them to both be normal. He just must have been tired. The whole ordeal had to have been rather taxing on his immune system .
She noted that the scratch along his jaw where the ice had cut him was almost entirely healed, with almost nothing but a faint, pink puckered line remaining.
She knelt beside him and put her head against his chest for a moment and just listened to the sound of his quiet snores and the steady thrum of his heart beating in his chest.
"Hermione? Hermione?" He muttered. She stiffened for a moment, thinking he had awoken. She soon relaxed, realizing he was only talking in his sleep. She couldn't help but smile to herself; he must be dreaming of her.
With a deep sigh, she stood back up. She lovingly looked at his sleeping face. All of the usual lines were smoothed out, and his mouth was curled in a small smile, making him actually look seventeen for once, instead of at least twenty.
She softly kissed his forehead before leaving. There was no need to wake him from his peaceful slumber; there would be plenty of time to talk to him tomorrow after he had been released.
Yay! I'm finally done! That was a bit longer than usual, and I think it moved quite a bit of the plot along. Just a reminder, there will most likely be only five more chapters if this story. Like I said earlier, I had to write this entire chapter from my phone, so I've tried to make sure the AutoCorrect mistakes aren't too bad. As always, be sure to tell me what you think in the reviews! I know we can make it to 200 reviews before the story is over! Reviews inspire me (and secretly boost my ego.) you see that button down there? You know you want to, go ahead.