Hermione did not think Madam Pomfrey was capable of making mistakes. Alas, as she hunched over one of the toilets in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, she wondered if the potions she had drunk were meant to be taken together. The first potion had certainly done its job: She slept without interruption and woke only when the charm on her watch dinged loudly. Then, she took the Gorge Potion, a potion she had taken without problem in the past, and as she trekked to the Great Hall for a hearty breakfast, she had the sudden urge to vomit—which she did.

She was quite certain two small Hufflepuffs saw the bile stain the corridor floor.

Embarrassed, she hurried towards the first place that seemed safe. There was only one lavatory where she was sure not to be bothered by the living, and that was where she had to go.

"Are your friends coming?" Myrtle inquired, hovering over her. "The tall one and—" She sighed, dreamily. "—Harry?"

"No, they don't go to Hogwarts anymore, Myrtle," Hermione irately answered before emptying the contents of her stomach once more. "They left after our sixth year."

"Left Hogwarts? Without so much as a goodbye!" Myrtle shrieked. She swept down into the next stall over and let out a terrible sob. "After all the time he spent with me! He's just as bad as the other boy!"

Hermione finished retching and wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "What other boy?"

With a howling sigh, Myrtle said, "The handsome one. The blond. Draco."

"Of course," Hermione muttered.

She flushed the toilet, but knelt over the bowl a little longer, watching her sick swirl downward. Her gurgling stomach was threatening her again and she could not afford the ridicule of throwing up in the corridor twice.

"He used to spend hours and hours with me in the boys' loo—the one in this hallway," Myrtle lamented, floating above Hermione's stall once more. "Always so sensitive—not like Harry. Harry was always up to something, but Draco, oh Draco sometimes came just to talk with me. And who better than Moaning Myrtle to understand him?" She sniffled and wiped away her nonexistent tears. "Even when those awful people were asking him to do terrible things, he would look for me in that—"

"What people?" Hermione demanded, drawing her brows together. "The Carrows?"

"I was speaking!"

"I—I'm sorry. I was just wondering."

Myrtle sunk down to her level and stared at her with transparent eyes. "Why? What makes him so interesting to you?"

"Nothing! I just—I just heard a lot of—a lot of stories—about the—erm—about the Carrows."

"Mmm, yes, they were dreadful," Myrtle bewailed. "Of course, I didn't interact with either of them often, but one of them took to flushing me down the toilet whenever she had the chance..."

"So what about Draco? How did they treat him? And—erm—the rest of the students?"

"Well, I wouldn't know much about the other students. I don't get many visitors, you know," Myrtle said, acidly. "As for Draco, they were always asking him to turn in other students. He didn't want to because he knew what would happen if he did." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Torture."

"They didn't—they didn't make him torture others, did they?"

"How am I to know? He was always crying... Always saying how much he wanted it to be over... There were a lot of names, you know. Too many to keep track of. Students he pitied..." She paused to examine Hermione for a long moment. "It's funny. Once, he even mentioned you."

Hermione did not know what to think of that.

"And what did he say?"

"He said it was his fault—something that happened to you. I told him he probably couldn't have helped it if he tried, but he's not as kind of a boy as I thought since he hasn't visited me, so maybe it was..." She drew so close to Hermione that Hermione thought she might go right through her. "Was it?"

Hermione swallowed and shook her head. "No. It wasn't his fault."

"Hmm," Myrtle hummed, narrowing her eyes. She whipped upward and put her hands on her hips. "Well, if you speak to him, tell him that he is not welcome in my lavatory until he apologizes!"

Still feeling queasy, Hermione agreed and took the opportunity to leave. Somehow, Draco Malfoy had left her with even more questions than before.


Upon starting the day's lesson in Care of Magical Creatures, Hermione was thankful for being unable to eat. Though Billy had killed a badger, an achievement that made Hagrid prouder than she had ever seen him, it was the class's job to make sure he ate enough, and a single badger was too little for an adult griffin. This meant they had to feed him several petrified gnomes.

"This seems a bit barbaric, Hagrid." Hermione grimaced as she picked up her first gnome, frozen in time with its arms mid-flail. She wanted to vomit again, but her stomach had nothing left. "I mean, they're still alive."

"Petrified, though. Won' feel a thing! And it'd be more barbaric to chuck 'em from the greenhouses and let 'em starve, wouldn' it?"

Unsure that she agreed with his sentiments, Hermione decided to wait and watch Lisa Turpin throw her gnome first. Billy seemed enthralled with the rare treat.

"But couldn't we let them off into the forest or something?"

"Mandrake juice is too valuable to be usin' on gnomes, innit?" Hagrid pointed out. "Bein' petrified in the middle o' the forest ain't gonna end any better for 'em. Now, c'mon then. Toss 'er to Billy."

Hermione shook off the use of the word "her" and tossed the helpless creature to the griffin. He happily masticated it, and this might have brought Hermione some peace if it were not for the guts dripping from his sharp, golden beak.

The next student to feed the griffin was Ginny. She did not seem bothered at all until the griffin regurgitated much of his meal and ate it all over again. It reminded Hermione of a nature documentary she had seen once as a girl. Back then, she could not stand watching the wild robin feed its young, but after watching Billy eat the same meal twice, the documentary seemed tame.

Hermione risked a step closer to Ginny and said, "Disgusting, isn't it?"

"That's an understatement."

"Slughorn's Christmas party is coming up," Hermione noted, hoping that small talk might suffice in place of an apology. After all, she had no reason to be sorry.

"It is. Are you bringing anyone?"

The judgmental tone was not lost on Hermione. Ginny was not asking if she was bringing anyone; she wanted to know if she was bringing Malfoy.

"No," she answered, hastily. "No, absolutely not. I don't even know that I'm going yet."

"You have to go. If you aren't there to hold me back, I might actually kill Dewey Blunk." Ginny smirked. "You missed it last time, but after you left I almost hexed him. I only stopped because Slughorn interrupted. Maybe next time I'll drag him to the Forbidden Forest where there aren't any teachers around."

Hermione could not help but laugh. Forgiving her friend would only come with time, but right then, she desperately needed somebody, and unlike Harry and Ronald, Ginny was there.

"Think he's good an' full now," Hagrid announced to the class. "Any volunteers to fill 'is water trough?"

Ginny, along with the rest of the students, looked from the griffin to a nearby bucket of water to the large trough. Throwing fish and gnomes to the beast was terrifying enough.

"'ermione? Ginny Weasley?"

Hermione and Ginny exchanged nervous glances. It was all too often that they were asked to take on daunting tasks because no other students wanted to.

"Yeah, alright," Hermione sighed. From afar, she shouted, "Aguamenti!"

"Oh, good thinking," Ginny said quietly, following suit.

"Well, that's one way to do it," Hagrid grunted. He seemed a bit disappointed by their method.

Once the trough was full, Billy began to drink and the class encircled him. Nobody in the class particularly liked the griffin, but even Hermione had to admit that he was an impressive creature. It was much easier to admire him when he was too distracted to seem threatening.

Not long thereafter, the bell rang.

With the awkward safety of harmless topics, Hermione walked back to the castle with Ginny. There was still an unresolved air between them, but they were speaking, and that would have to do.


Defense Against the Dark Arts was, somehow, worse than spending the morning feeding gnomes to Billy. Professor Whittlewood had decided to focus her lecture on practical magic, which was a bit out of the ordinary, as she, like Umbridge, usually favored textbook readings.

"The headmistress has been worried we may not be casting enough spells in class," Whittlewood explained, "so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to start exploring the types of spells you might see if you did, in fact, come in contact with the Dark Arts."

Hermione nearly asked why they had not been doing that in the first place, but she held her tongue.

"Today, you will all be assigned one of the four elements. Once you receive your element, you must pair up with someone of a different element. No fire with fire, no air with air, and so on and so forth. Then, I want you each to decide who will cast defending spells and who will cast offensive spells. You must use spells of your element. This should not be too difficult if you've been paying attention during the last few weeks."

The class began rumbling with confused banter. Dueling with the elements was far beyond classroom magic.

"Settle down! Settle down!" Whittlewood said, her dusty voice barely audible over the frazzled din. "I will be right here if anything is to go awry!"

Hermione was assigned earth; Ginny, water. The two paired together, though Ginny did not take too kindly to the pairing, as she was quite certain Hermione had an advantage.

"Water clearly will only help earth."

"That isn't true," Hermione pointed out. "Water is detrimental to earth all the time in nature. There are flash floods, mudslides, tsunamis—"

"Yeah, alright, I get it. Water spells, though..." She hunched over her book. "I suppose we could try—"

A blast of fire darted over Ginny's head and Hermione screamed. They had only just partnered up and people were already reciting curses she had only seen in battle.

"I thought that was Fiendfyre," Ginny said, lowly.

"Me too."

As Ginny practiced the Water-Serpent Curse—an effort that was going poorly—Hermione watched Draco Malfoy from afar. He too had been assigned the element of earth, and he was somehow beating Fay Dunbar, who had been given fire.

"That Singeing Hex didn't do much of anything," Hermione muttered.

"What Singeing Hex?" Ginny asked. "Dunbar's?"

"Erm—yeah. She tried to go after that vine Malfoy produced. I don't know how he did it, actually. That's not magic I'm familiar with..."

Ginny cocked a brow. "She looks scared stiff. Probably put out that Whittlewood forced her to pair up with Malfoy."

"Yes, probably," Hermione said, shortly. "Ahem. Anyway, did you figure out how to make the water serpent? I'd rather not have a boring duel like they are. Malfoy's not even trying."

"I'd be less likely to think you fancied Malfoy if you stopped bloody talking about him," Ginny said, though her tone was full of mirth.

"I don't fancy him!" Hermione hissed. "I've just seen him duel is all. When he's really trying, his face gets all—I don't know—scrunched."

"Scrunched," repeated Ginny.

"Yes. He's in my year, Ginny. In case you forgot, I was tortured in his house. I know how he duels."

Ginny frowned. "Right. Erm—sorry. Want to give this duel thing a try?"

Wanting anything but to discuss Malfoy any further, Hermione nodded and raised her wand.

Alas, before Ginny could try summoning the serpent, another serpent was cast—one that was far out of a seventh-year's control.

"Gulping gargoyles!" Professor Whittlewood exclaimed, quickly training her wand on the elemental beast. "A water serpent that size shouldn't even be possible!"

Everyone backed away from the creature in horror, including the seventh-year that had cast it. Only after a long struggle had Whittlewood managed to fade its form. Unfortunately, she was too late. The classroom was flooded.

Whittlewood, up to her ankles in water, looked around the room and breathed in deeply. "Well, I suppose that is what happens when we duel with elements, class. A very real possibility when you work with this type of magic..." She cleared her throat. "Charms isn't exactly in the syllabus, but maybe this is an opportunity to work on drying spells..."

Whatever else Whittlewood was muttering about, Hermione did not hear. She was far too busy watching Draco Malfoy, whose silver eyes were fixed very intently on her.