5.

Hermione:

Why do I insist

on going into the wolf's mouth?

"A Slytherin, Hermione? Seriously?" Harry started.

"And not just any Slytherin! It's Parkinson!" Ron complained.

Hermione frowned, not looking directly at them, while she was thinking. She didn't know what to say to them. She repeated those same words to herself ever since she returned to Hogwarts. Why was she doing all this for Parkinson? At first she knew it was her curiosity. She was sure Harry would have been curious about Malfoy in a similar situation… in fact, he had been. Faced with Malfoy's strange attitude during the Triwizard Tournament, even though he was very busy being one of the participants, he managed to have time to spy on that haughty blond who acted suspiciously in that fourth year. Although he never got any proof of what the Slytherin had his hands in, to this day he still claimed that he was a Death Eater.

How to forget the previous year! It was complete madness. The tournament brought good things, like her first kiss with Viktor Krum, but also terrible things: it took with it the death of a Hogwarts student from Hufflepuff house, Cedric Diggory, and worse, it made her best friend, Harry, witness and be the central figure of the return to life and then fall of Voldemort. Fourth year was painful and hopeful in equal measure. Now, in fifth year, it seemed that they would finally have a really normal year: one without trying to save their own lives and the wizarding world.

"It's all Luna's fault!" She screeched.

Her two best friends were looking at her as if a third eye had popped out in the middle of her forehead.

"Luna?" They asked her at the same time.

"She's not as nice as she seems. When you least expect it, she says chilling things to you. She sure hates me for what I said to and she's just trying to confuse me."

"What?" Harry asked as he adjusted his glasses, as if that would help him hear and understand her words better.

"This is all the fault of the Wrackspurts…"

Her friends looked at her in horror. They had both heard Luna name that creature, and they already knew they didn't exist, confirmed by Hermione's own mouth. But there she was, blaming something on nonexistent creatures...

"By Merlin! Harry! Hermione freaked out!"

Ron's screams brought her out of her thoughts. She looked at him strangely and a little annoyed, as if he had been the one who started saying strange things or if he had gotten into her mind to mess up her ideas.

"You were talking about nonsense, Hermione! Not about hippogriffs, not dragons! Wrackspurts!"

"I don't…" She stopped. Harry was looking at her as strangely as Ron. Had she said her thoughts out loud? "Sorry guys. I'm good. I spoke without thinking."

The second she said it she regretted saying that phrase, the poor boys in front of her looked almost ready to faint. In such a short time they heard her say such strange things... First, Wrackspurts, to finish with "I spoke without thinking."

"What's going on? Why did you say in astronomy class that you would pair up with Parkinson?" Harry scratched his head as he thought what else to say. He was calm, he did not seem to understand what was happening and that is why he could not get angry. Ron was different from Harry in that sense, if he didn't understand something, he would explode in rage. "It's not the problem that she's a Slytherin. Well, you want something with whatever Slytherin it is. "He didn't even finish the sentence, he just managed to put on a weird face of clear disgust since it was not easy to unite Hermione and a Slytherin in a joint activity. He focused on what was important. "But we're talking about Parkinson. That girl is not good."

"Has she threatened you these days?" Ron asked then. He was already pretending to go for Parkinson to give her what she deserved.

"Guys, no," Hermione stopped them. She sighed wearily and pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to compose herself. "A lot happened at the beginning of this year…"

"What happened?" Said Harry. He was looking at her with genuine interest.

"You can count on us for anything," Ron added, looking at her with palpable concern.

Hermione smiled shocked. Her friends would not be perfect, sometimes they were impulsive, almost always they left their tasks to the last minute, but as they were, she loved them and felt lucky to have them; especially in moments like this, where they showed their loyalty and concern for her.

"Sorry for not telling you everything before. It's just… there was no way I could explain this to them without dragging me to the infirmary."

She could tell that the mystery was already making her two friends lose their patience so she took a deep breath and confessed, even to her own surprise:

"I want to give Parkinson a chance. I know the Slytherins have complicated our existence more than once, they irritate me just as much as you guys… But Parkinson… I need to know, guys. There is something that does not fit."

Ron was looking at her like she sucked, the poor boy didn't understand anything. Harry still had many doubts:

"You need to know? Is that why you went to sit with Parkinson's in History of Magic? And the reason why when Professor Tofty asked you who you wanted to pair with, instead of saying with me, Ron, Neville, or any other Gryffindor, you said you would do it with Parkinson?"

Hermione tensed a bit at the thought of that, that while Parkinson slept in astronomy class, she asked to be her partner. She was relieved that the girl didn't find out what she did, though she was afraid of her reaction when someone tells her, or she admits it herself, that she ignored her request to be left alone and used work as an excuse to get closer to her.

"The Astronomy thing was an impulse. The second I asked for Parkinson as a partner, I felt like I had done something stupid."

"Did you just think it was stupid? It was!" Ron chimed in.

Harry glared at him a bit, he rolled his eyes and mumbled a short apology.

"You're really right Ron. It's stupid."

"Then why are you doing this? Just because they bother her? Did you feel sorry for her?"

Harry had asked a very good question. Hermione wondered if her answer was up to par...

"It all started on the Hogwarts Express. Remember I was a little late to the Great Hall the first day?" Both boys nodded. "Something strange happened to me there, you see…"

. . .

The fearsome professor, Severus Snape, paced the potions room like a shadow. His black clothes merged with the gloom of the room. His footsteps made no noise and thanks to this Neville was scared every so often to find him out of nowhere a few meters from him. Hermione released her breath heavily as she noticed that with the little jump her friend had made thanks to the fright, a little more leech juice than needed fell into the shrinking solution he was preparing. Adding more than necessary caused the potion to turn orange instead of bright acid green, which is how it is supposed to be according to the instructions in the book.

"Neville," she whispered when she saw the professor walk away. Luckily, he hadn't noticed her partner's mistake. "Be careful. You just made your potion turn poisonous."

He paled and pulled his hands away from the liquid in fear. He looked at Hermione half sorry and half grateful, and immediately began to think about how he could redo his work before class was over.

Hermione looked at her cauldron. She had done everything correctly but was still wondering if her potion had the right glow. She followed the instructions to the letter, but although her's did shine more than Harry's for example, something told her that it was not quite right. She used to tell her friends that she would like to be able to practice her potions more. She always studied the procedure before each class, she even researched other books in the library if she had the time, but even with all that extra work she rarely managed to make her potion perfectly.

"Hermione," Ron called her under his breath. "How did you make sure your potion is not a mud green color?"

"Ron! The fire is too high, you're burning it!" She hissed under her breath.

The redhead made a face of panic that quickly turned to resignation and continued with his attempt at the potion.

In one corner of the room, was Pansy Parkinson. Hermione sneakily turned her body, pretending to see Harry's cauldron, so she could get a better look at it. She wondered how her potion was working for her. Her partner for the astronomy work, who in theory she would see in a short time in the library, did not seem to be very focused on that class. Of course, in those days she had already learned that she never did: she slept or looked at some corner of the room.

His eyes were wandering over her cauldron right now, but almost gone. It was mesmerizing, too calm a look, alluring even from a distance. It was as if she was looking at things in her cauldron that no one else saw. Most likely, she was just attributing more mystery and faith to Parkinson than she should have, she was just one more student, with her good things and her bad things. What truth did she expect to find in her? Did she really expect her to look up and say...? What? What did she want her to tell her? She only saw her cry. That alone was enough for her to now feel involved with Parkinson!

Hermione then remembered her chatting with Harry and Ron in the common room. She was grateful that her two best friends were already calmer after hearing her explanation about her actions with Parkinson. Even positively Harry suggested that Parkinson may have betrayed Malfoy the year before, that she caused him trouble with Voldemort and that is why all the Slytherins hated her now. Hermione had to remind her that not all Slytherins were Death Eaters, but as she had done so many times before, she didn't pay much attention to him. His idea of Malfoy as a Death Eater was unshakable. Ron on the other hand, insisted that Parkinson had always bothered her blamelessly, so she owed her nothing. But in the end, they both understood her feelings a little better when she told them what had happened with Luna, and they felt empathy for Parkinson when they learned of the event in the castle courtyard, where she found her crying (even Ron felt bad for her in at that point in the story, it made him uncomfortable for others to cry).

Right now, those eyes that she had found so troubled that night were calm. Those eyes that had managed to convince her that she deserved a chance, that dispelled any doubts she had about Luna's words, and that Parkinson was not just a silly girl who had nothing more to offer... Those eyes, now they were cold . She was afraid that she was making a mistake. Afraid she was being silly and blindly trusting a snake just because she had seen it being harmless. She was paying attention to what she thought she saw in her eyes, without looking down at her fangs.

How could that Slytherin be the same one she found in the courtyard that night?

"Time is up," Snape said, pulling Parkinson out of her reverie and meeting Hermione's gaze, who was also awakened from her own. The surprise of both was clear.

Hermione, rigid, preferred to see and listen to the teacher in the class. There was a certain ghoulish joy in Snape's voice, as he could see from his position various potions that weren't even close to being green.

"Take a sample and put it on my desk. Don't forget to clean your things. If I see a single dirty table, I will fail everyone, even the almost perfect jobs... And yes, you heard well. Almost. I'll break your illusions of a perfect grade right now, as none of you managed to do the job... perfectly…"

Little by little the students were leaving the room as they delivered the flasks with their potions. When Hermione handed in hers, she looked for Parkinson in the classroom, but she was gone. A little discouraged, she headed for the library. The first thing she did was find some books for astronomy work. It was not difficult for her to find them on the shelves that she had reviewed so many times in the last four years, touring that room so dear to her. While hugging the books to her chest, she walked around looking for a table. To her surprise and relief she saw Pansy Parkinson sitting at one of them, at the back, the one closest to the wall. She walked towards her, dodging the rest of the seats.

"Parkinson," she greeted her.

The witch sat with her elbows on the table, reading a gossip magazine. She shook her head in response to her greeting. Hermione propped up the books as she sat opposite her and pulled out some extra scrolls that she had brought to Potions class. Meanwhile the other, without taking her attention away from all the things Hermione had brought, closed her magazine and pushed it away to a corner of the table.

"Why all those books?"

"They will be useful to us. Staying only with the material that they give you as a base in class does not allow you to expand on the topics. So we will have a more complete job."

"Great! Sounds like a lot of work," Parkinson complained with faux cheer as she took a pen from among her things.

She seemed willing to work, to Hermione's continued surprise. When she tried to study with her friends things were more complicated, they would joke around and waste precious minutes of work.

"Could you stop looking at me? I'm trying to pay attention to the task, which you should also do, "Parkinson paraphrased, putting her typical sly smile at the end, referring to the History of Magic class they had shared a long time ago.

Hermione opened one of the books she had brought, ignoring her, although surely the other noticed how she moved her eyebrows with some disbelief at the detail: Parkinson remembered her words perfectly, she had a good memory.

The minutes passed in an awkward silence. Each one worked without asking or commenting anything to the other. Hermione was paying a little more attention than she ought to Parkinson as she was distracted from raising her head and meeting her eyes. Her green eyes for less than a second made her think she was facing Harry. And although yes, they were both pale, with green eyes and black hair, they had nothing more in common than that. The girl's presence was cold. She acted oblivious to everything, especially her. Her best friend was very different from Parkinson.

She saw her cross out every few words with a certain rudeness, it was obvious that at the time of writing Parkinson was quite wrong, or did not easily decide on which word to use. Her writing was sharp, instead of curving her letters, she seemed to give them a kind of stingers. And at times, the words made them more like a horizontal line, asking her hand to write more words than she had time. Hermione doubted she could read her handwriting, it was so squashed. Another thing she noticed is that she never took her index finger off the book she was working with. With a smooth movement, almost without touching the page, she dragged it with the flow of the words, with great speed. Her friends told her that she seemed to want to destroy the book when she was concentrating too much on reading, because her brow furrowed and her gaze was a powerful clash against words. A battle to fully understand it. Instead, Parkinson looked at the book as if it were a landscape; fast, in the blink of an eye.

"Hey, Granger…"

She answered her call with a weak, lost nod. It had scared her that she would speak to her suddenly as she watched her.

"I wanted to ask you..." Parkinson shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She looked at her sideways.

"Do you have a question?" She started to ask.

The Slytherin smiled at her in a subtle way, felt her say with that gesture: "Typical. Typical of Granger, always talking about homework."

"I want to apologize to you."

If Hermione had had her quill in her fingers, it would have fallen out of shock. Luckily at that time she was working with a book resting on the table. Why was she apologizing to her?

"You're irritating me a bit," the other continued.

Why did she apologize and then tell her that she irritated her? What the hell was Pansy Parkinson saying? Her face must have been quite expressive, as the Slytherin clicked her tongue in frustration and straightened in her chair, as if by sitting better, her words would be clearer:

"I mean, you irritate me. That's why I spoke badly to you after Astronomy. Sorry about that… I wasn't trying to be mean, I just got mad."

Hermione was silent for a few seconds, pondering her words. She looked at her book, out of the habit of finding there what she wanted to understand. Finally, she said:

"Have you ever apologized? Because you do it badly."

Pansy's jaw clenched. One of her eyebrows shot up, inquiring. Hermione gave a nervous laugh, she'd said that trying to be funny, to copy her acid humor. But the other now scrutinized every part of her face, and wasn't laughing at all. When it was her eyes' turn to be analyzed, she felt too uncomfortable.

"I do it badly..." she said after a long time, picking up the conversation again. "Does that mean you don't accept my apology?"

"I don't know why you apologized."

"Of course you know, I told you: because of how I spoke to you."

"You mean when you told me not to go near you again, too?"

"No... But also. Sorry about that. You're mad at me now, right?"

"But what... Where did you get that I'm angry?"

Parkinson's pale cheeks turned color. Almost imperceptible, a pink that most would have ignored, but Hermione did not usually miss the details, she noticed it and could deduce with that single clue that the heart behind the Slytherin tie was pumping more strongly than a few seconds ago. It was obvious that she was flushed, perhaps from embarrassment, or perhaps anger. The only thing that made it clear was that her being cold and with few emotions was a mere facade.

"You…" She almost growled. "You looked at me weird in class. Also, while reading you seemed so irritated…"

Hermione was quite surprised at her words! First, because Parkinson had misunderstood the situation, and second, because the other was not ignoring her as she thought. Parkinson was not on the wrong track that she had been bothered by the attitude she had every time she tried to approach her, it was as if she focused on being curt. It was annoying because she never sought her out to treat her badly (as the Slytherin did), so even if she didn't want to talk to her, what need did she have to treat her badly? And she really felt bad when Parkinson called her bossy and nosy...

"You don't have to try to talk to me out of pity."

From that phrase she said with a mixture of rejection and pity, Hermione managed to understand her better. With a little imagination, since she didn't know her well, she could make the picture that Parkinson was someone distant from others in terms of emotions, and it was very obvious that she did not go around crying in the arms of Gryffindor students that she bothered when bored.

"I don't need your help."

Hermione had to restrain herself from smiling, because how many times has she read characters like this in her novels! Parkinson could surely say that same phrase with a huge passion behind it. "I have it under control," she would say. She had tried to push Hermione away because she felt humiliated. That may have been the cause of her lack of sympathy in History of Magic class and later in the hallway after Astronomy class.

"But… what said to you was not right."

And now she was admitting her mistake! She wondered if the Slytherin was swallowing her pride. She recognized that, she was proud too. She knew what burned and annoyed having to put pride aside.

"Well... a lot of things I told you weren't right," Parkinson muttered.

She saw her swallow hard and clench her hand, which had been on the table the entire conversation, in the shape of a fist. She looked up to focus on her, her face was as inexpressive as ever, but that green in her eyes was powerful. That way of looking at her reminded her a lot of the look that had convinced her to give it a try. Only now it conveyed sorrow, sadness; Hermione would risk saying resignation as well.

"Sorry about everything, Granger."

Her voice sounded so sorry that she felt the need to tell her that it was okay, not to worry, that it was not so terrible that she said "bossy."

"It wasn't right that I was mean to you all these years." Parkinson brought her hands together, played with the ring on one of her fingers. She was no longer looking at her. "I feel like, I don't know... Trash? When I think that instead of taking points from my house for breaking the curfew, you went to comfort me… it makes me feel like that, rubbish. Because I don't know if I would have done the same as you, because the truth is, if it had been the other way around, I would have made fun of you the next day for having found you like that. I would have taken advantage of your weakness. I tried to make you feel bad for years and then you… come and do that. And then you show up again in history classes and try to get along with me! You were so nice... for no reason. And I go and call you bossy and meddlesome as soon as I have the chance. "She sighed heavily, closed her eyes as if her head hurt. Again, the brown eyes met those same troubled greens of that night that she had already remembered so many times. Only now she saw them in broad daylight. It was as if the sun hit her eyes and forced them to tell the truth; as if her sudden truth, and why not, purification, was due to the light, which instead of green and silver, turned them green and gold. "I feel guilty. All these last few days I had this horrible feeling… I don't feel better apologizing to you, but if I don't it's even worse."

"I'm not mad at you Parkinson. Not anymore. You did bad things, but you can be better."

Hermione smiled at her. It might not be Parkinson herself. Her past is what it is, her mistakes are still there. But…

"I accept your apology."

Pansy blinked in some surprise, it seemed like she didn't expect it to be that easy.

"But you know? I'll be mad at you if we don't get a good grade in astronomy."

And there she managed to make the Slytherin laugh. Without saying anything else, she grabbed her pen and went to work. Hermione smiled and followed suit. Now the silence during work was that of a pleasant atmosphere.

Thanks to the 2 reviews. :D