Chapter Three

"Breathe in," Hermione instructed gently from where she stood next to Ron in Potions. "Breathe out."

Ron resisted the urge to bash in Malfoy's thick head as he walked past, and instead sprinkled the powdered wormwood into his cauldron, which contained his half-finished Height Potion.

"We have to get Harry and my sister together," Ron hissed back. "We have to, Hermione. I'm not letting her end up with that slimy prick...I'm not having Ginny end up pregnant before her seventh year!"

"Oh, Ron, Ginny's a smart girl!" Hermione retorted. "She wouldn't...er..."

Her voice trailed off, and the two looked extremely embarrassed as they turned back to their potions.

In a vain attempt to change the subject, Ron asked weakly, "Is the potion supposed to be acid green like this?"

Hermione stared into his cauldron and let out a little moan of dismay. "Ron! It's supposed to be magenta!"

Ron leaned over and stared down into her cauldron. Sure enough, her potion was a bubbling dark pink.

"Perhaps we'd better use yours, then," he muttered.

"What??" Hermione asked in exasperation.

"Well, we had this planned out already! We're going to 'accidentally' spill the potion on Harry. He should grow at least a bit..."

"No!" cried Hermione indignantly. "No way are you wasting my potion, Ron Weasley! It's perfect, and can you imagine how many marks Snape would take off for that??"

"I-"

"Sharing answers, Weasley? Granger?" Professor Snape asked coldly as he walked past them. "I won't tolerate cheating in this class. Five points from Gryffindor."

"Great job, Ron," Hermione muttered angrily as soon as Snape was out of earshot.

"Herm, spill it," instructed Ron under his breath. "Harry's right there next to you! Imagine how perfect it would be! Then he'll actually be at least her height!"

"No, Ron, and that's final!" spat Hermione. "You're not ruining my potion! I-"

However, before she could protest any longer, Ron threw himself into Hermione and caused her to go flying down to the hard stone floor, him on top of her. The sizzling pink potion splashed at once all over Harry.

"Ron!" Hermione shrieked from where she lay under him. "You...you..."

"Sorry, Hermione," he said with a wicked smile. "It was an accident. I'm so clumsy sometimes."

"You're terrible," Hermione declared, pushing on his shoulders in an attempt to get him off of her.

Realizing just how close they were, he immediately stood up and grabbed her hand to help her from the floor, his ears a burning scarlet.

"Weasley! Granger!" shouted Professor Snape, black eyes sparkling in malice. "What are you doing?"

He rushed over at once.

"I won't have your vulgar flirtations disrupting my class," he spat coldly. "If you want to go roll around on the floor together, I suggest you get a hotel room."

Hermione's cheeks immediately flushed pink in embarrassment, the Slytherins' snickers dancing through the air.

"Who'd have thought you to be a slut, Granger?" Pansy Parkinson shouted through her giggles. Snape paid her no mind, even though if it had been a Gryffindor they would have had more points taken away than Crabbe and Goyle could count.

"Thirty points from Gryffindor!" Snape snapped. "For your vulgar actions."

"He fell!" Hermione spoke up defiantly, sounding not at all like herself. "It was an accident!"

"Ten more points from Gryffindor," Snape declared viciously. "For arguing with a teacher, Granger."

Hermione looked as though she were blinking back tears, and Ron awkwardly placed a hand on her arm as Snape moved on.

"Listen, Hermione, I'm really, really sorry," he apologized.

He expected her to explode at him (after all, she'd lost it at him for things much less trivial than that before), but to his surprise, she just forced a weak smile.

"It's okay."

"Er...guys??"

Hermione and Ron both turned to see Harry, who had been long forgotten, staring down at them in panic. He had to be at least seven feet tall.

"Oh!" Hermione cried, placing her hand to her mouth in dismay.

"Oi, Harry, I'm really sorry," Ron said weakly.

Harry looked as though he were refraining from getting extremely angry as he raised his hand weakly. The gesture wasn't needed to get him noticed, however; he towered over every other person in the dungeon.

"Professor Snape?" he asked weakly. "Can I go to Madam Pomfrey's?"

"Fine, go, Potter," Snape said angrily. "Five more points from Gryffindor for missing class."

Ron muttered something that he would have rather died than said in front of his mother, but Hermione seemed to be so angry at Snape that she didn't even begin to scold him. Instead, she was staring at the magenta-soaked floor in dismay.

"I would have gotten the highest marks for that," she whispered to Ron forlornly.

Ron stared down at the acid green liquid in his own cauldron.

"Well, at least we used yours and not mine," he responded. "Otherwise, Harry would have probably gone crashing through the roof."

Hermione paused for a moment before looking up and nodding in agreement.

"This had better work," she declared wistfully.

~*~

"Hey, Malfoy."

"Ron, don't!" Hermione instructed desperately. "If Snape catches you, Gryffindor will be in even more trouble-"

"What do you want, Weasley?" Malfoy called back, surrounded by a swarm of Slytherins with Pansy hanging adoringly off his arm.

Taking a deep breath, Ron made his way over to them.

"Ron, no!" Hermione pleaded, grabbing onto his arm in a vain attempt to keep him there. Ron just shook her off and kept walking, and soon her desperate words had faded.

"Can I talk to you alone?" Ron asked coldly.

An infuriating smirk contorted Malfoy's face as he waved one hand, gesturing for his friends and admirers to move along. "Sure, Weasley. What do you want?"

The hall grew quiet as it emptied, and soon Hermione was the only one left, watching anxiously for a moment. Ron jerked his head slightly towards the staircase, and she reluctantly made her way up it, her footsteps echoing in his ears.

"What do you want, Weasley?" Malfoy repeated impatiently. "I don't have all day, you know."

"I want you to stay away from my sister."

"Good for you," Malfoy said with a twisted smile. "But it's going to take a lot more than that to keep me away from her."

"What do you want with her, anyhow?" Ron asked, fighting to stay outwardly calm. "It's no secret that you hate our family."

"I think you can guess what I want with her, Weasley," Malfoy said, wriggling his eyebrows suggestively.

"You bloody bastard!" Ron exploded, lunging at him. "I'm going to kill you!"

Bursting with furious adrenaline, he slammed his fist into Malfoy's nose, which broke with a satisfying crack.

"You son of a bi-"

"What's going on here?"

Both Professors Snape and McGonagall appeared at the same moment, McGonagall descending the stairs and Snape from his dungeon. As soon as Snape's eyes fell upon Malfoy, he snapped, "One hundred points from Gryffindor, Weasley, and be grateful it's not more!"

"That's not fair!" Ron protested furiously. "You didn't hear what he said-"

"One hundred and fifty points!" Snape boomed.

"Severus," Professor McGonagall cut in calmly. "I will handle the points. You get back to work."

"But-"

"Severus," McGonagall said in a final tone, glaring at him. Muttering indistinctly under his breath, Snape turned and stormed back into his dungeon.

"Now," Professor McGonagall turned her attention to Ron and Malfoy. "What in Heaven's name is going on here?"

"Weasley went mad and attacked me!" Malfoy declared at once, holding his nose.

Instead of punishing Ron, however, McGonagall raised a skeptical eyebrow at him before turning to Ron.

"He was threatening to sexually harass my sister," Ron exclaimed.

Professor McGonagall's eyes widened incredulously. "Mr. Malfoy, is this true?"

"That's not the point!" Malfoy said defensively.

"Sexual harassment is not something to be taken lightly at Hogwarts," Professor McGonagall declared firmly. "Twenty-five points from Slytherin."

"What?!" Malfoy exploded. "But that puts us in second place behind Ravenclaw!"

"You should have thought of that before your actions," Professor McGonagall said. "Mr. Weasley, I won't take any points from Gryffindor. Just don't resolve to violence again."

And with that, she turned and continued back up the stairs.

"Oh, I'll get you for that, Weasley," threatened Malfoy angrily. "I think I'll make your sister my date for the Seventh Years' Ball, in fact."

"She won't go with you," Ron responded, sounding more confident than he felt. "She's not stupid. She'll go with Harry."

"At least Potter's got a date, then," Malfoy said dryly. "You and that mudblood Granger will probably end up going alone like the pathetic trash you are."

"Leave Hermione out of this!" Ron ordered furiously.

"Sorry," Malfoy said, sounding not the least bit apologetic. "But she's just too easy to mock...mudblood, suck-up, and madly in love with one of her best friends, on top of that!"

"What do you mean?" Ron asked suspiciously.

Malfoy laughed coldly. "You mean you haven't seen it yet, Weasley? It's so painfully obvious."

And with that, Malfoy turned and walked away from him, leaving Ron to wonder miserably just when Hermione had started fancying Harry, and why he hadn't yet noticed it.