Well, I admit that I was rather blown away by the response to the first chapter. Thirty-four reviews in one go! *cheers*
At any rate, the horror continues. Hermione makes her grand entrance, and this fic is discovered to have a plot… sort of.
Disclaimer: Not only do I own Harry Potter, I've recently decided that in the fifth book, Harry will discover that the reason Voldemort wanted to kill him was because he (Voldemort, not Harry) was jealous of Harry's preternatural banjo-playing abilities; Ron will conveniently drop off the face of the earth so that Hermione can fall madly in love with Harry and/or Draco, although she will eventually elope with Lucius Malfoy so that he can get revenge on Narcissa for her illicit affair with Gilderoy Lockhart; Rita Skeeter will be revealed to be the Heir of Gryffindor; Snape will get a makeover, a sex change, and start insisting that everyone call him (her?) Ma Petite Framboise; Dumbledore will resign as Headmaster and buy a casino in Monte Carlo; Draco, embittered by the loss of Hermione's love, will move to Idaho and become a potato farmer; Sirius will be acquitted when Peter Pettigrew is arrested for illegally importing bratwurst to Chile; and Voldemort will give up on world domination and spend the remainder of the series training to be a pastry chef. Now, aren't you glad that I don't really own this series?
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Hermione, having exhausted her entire library (and her parents' libraries, and the town library, and every other collection of books within a hundred mile radius), was practicing her soulful pining. She wasn't entirely sure what she was pining for, to be honest, but she was absolutely sure that she was pining for something.
At least she would be if her mother would only stop tapping on the door. It was getting quite annoying. And so distracting. Honestly, couldn't a girl be angsty in peace? "Mum!" she yelled finally. "Go away! I'm being melodramatic and out of character!"
The tapping stopped. "Are you sure?" her mother yelled back. "I thought this was the scene where we have a touching heart-to-heart talk about your tangled love life." Idly, Hermione wondered why her mother was yelling, as the door wasn't really all that thick, but she quickly put that thought out of her mind. Ooh, this might turn out to be a dramatic confrontation scene! All ad-libbed, too!
"No, that's not until one of the last chapters."
There was a pause, and then the sound of shuffling paper. "Oh, right," Mum said finally. "Can you excuse me, dear? I'm running a bit behind. I was scheduled to have dropped off the face of the earth a few hours ago."
"That's all right," Hermione said magnanimously. "See you at the epilogue, then?"
"Goodbye, dear," Mum said cheerfully, and, with a crash, fell through a conveniently large plot hole.
That settled, Hermione went back to pining. "Oh, dear," she sighed. "Whatever shall I pine for? I don't know what to do." Then, for the overall convenience of the author, inspiration suddenly struck her.
Metaphorically, of course.
"That's it!" she cried, prompting Crookshanks to dive under the bed and stuff his paws in his ears. "I'll just look in Ron's conveniently-misplaced-and-mysteriously-not-returned-yet Divination textbook for a random prophecy to follow even though I believe that Divination is complete nonsense! Oh, what a brilliant idea this is!" With trembling hands (as it is a scientific fact that it is physically impossible to read a prophecy with hands that are completely stationary), she opened the book to a random page in the "Famous Prophecies" section and read:
The Prophecy of Whatnot
This terse prophecy was spoken by the famous Seer Gabubafintaminky Karlaweltonanomince. Most noted for his unusual practices of spiritual cleansing, such as garnishing meat dishes for twenty-four hours without rest, and meditating only in thirty-year-old chicken coops, Karlaweltonanomince first spoke the words of this prophecy to his son, Sabubafintaminko, who then lovingly inscribed it on a piece of sheet metal in sheep entrails. The words are as follows:
BEHOLD! It shall come to pass that in the darkest of hours, on the darkest of days, in the darkest of weeks, in the darkest of months, in the darkest of years, it shall come to pass that it will come to pass that the One Who Is Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very Brainy will come to love the Silver Dragon with a passion that knows no bounds. And LO, they will snog!
Hermione sighed, closing the book. She couldn't be the One Who Is Very, Very, Very, Very, Very… oh, never mind – could she?
Well, probably not, but for the sake of her pining practice, she could endure anything. Now, who did she know that could be described as the Silver Dragon…?
Humming happily to herself – but in a pining sort of way, of course – Hermione set to her task with a will.
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Three hours later (Crookshanks, she noticed, had finally come back out from under the bed, and was cautiously taking his paws out of his ears) she let out an enormous shriek. (Crookshanks immediately dived back under the bed.) "THAT'S IT!" she cried, overjoyed at having figured it out. "I'M SUPPOSED TO FALL MADLY IN LOVE WITH MALFOY!" She thought about it. "Ugh, Malfoy?"
Well, at least she would be good at pining by the time it was over. Sighing, too. She'd have to ask Ginny for help…
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Next chapter: We get our first introduction to CompleteBastard!Ron, while Harry, bless his little cotton socks, is utterly clueless about the whole thing. Stay tuned!