A/N: Thank You Reviewers!!! You really don't know how much it means to me for you to review my story!
Chapter 7
"No, NO, NO! You're doing it all wrong!"
Hermione looked up from Arithmancy: A Detailed Look and smirked. Ron was standing over Harry and Neville with a song sheet in his hand. His arms were flailing at he reprimanded Harry for not putting enough emphasis on "boat."
"Uh, Ron? Don't you think you might be taking this whole song thing a little bit too seriously?" Harry asked with a raised eyebrow.
"No, I don't," Ron answered stubbornly. "I just want this to be perfect. We have to sound good. Do you really want the Slytherins to laugh at us?" He was silent for a moment. "Not like I'd mind really. I could use a good excuse to pound Malfoy's face in."
"Ron," Hermione said warningly.
"What?" He asked. "He deserves it!"
Hermione just rolled her eyes and went to back to her book.
* * * * *
"Hey, Hermione? Do you want to practice now?"
Hermione looked at Lavender, who had addressed her, and nodded in the affirmative. Parvati joined the other two as they made their way upstairs to their dorm room.
"Ok, girls! We have a LOT of work to do! We are going to need to prepare of costumes, decide on hair and make-up and then coordinate our shoes! Oh! This is going to be so much fun!" Lavender squealed.
"Umm, Lavender?" Hermione asked tentatively.
"Yes?"
"Are we going to, you know, actually practice the song!" Hermione said with her voice raising a decibel every word.
"Oh, yeah." She smiled sheepishly. "Guess I got carried away there. Right. I guess we do king of need to decide how we'll do the song."
"Well," Parvati spoke up, "Lavender you already said you would do the first part, correct?"
Lavender nodded.
"Well then, Hermione? Do you want to do the second part?"
"Sure."
"Alright," Parvati made a few notes on a piece of parchment. "That leaves me with the third part. We each have a copy of the lyrics so we need to memorize them."
"Good. And since I already know the words, I can start on the… umm… costumes?" Hermione asked nervously.
"Terrific!" Lavender gave Hermione a huge smile and got up to go to her dresser. She came back and handed Hermione a few clothes magazines. "Look through these and then, since you're so good at Tranfiguration, you can Transfigure some of our clothes into the costumes. Just an idea, would be to have us all in the same thing, but in a different color!"
"Great!" Parvati commented. "Now, should we test out the song? Just practice it once with the song sheets?"
The other two agreed and Hermione popped in the tape and licked her lips.
The music came on and Lavender opened her mouth and began singing, "Row, row, row, your boat…."
Hermione took her cue and the words effortlessly passed through her lips and for a split second Hermione wished she never quit singing. The trio ended the song and Lavender and Parvati stared amazedly at Hermione.
"Wow! That was great! Why didn't you say before that you could sing?" Parvati asked.
Hermione shrugged. "You two were great also!"
"No, we need your help! Can you teach us to sing?" Lavender asked.
"Please? I've always wanted singing instruction," Parvati added.
"I don't know. I'm really not that great of a singer. You only heard me sing like 2 lines." Hermione pointed out.
"Yeah, but there was something in your voice. A person can sing one note and you can tell whether they are good or not. Have you ever had lessons before?" Parvati inquired.
"Yes. I started when I was 4 but stopped at 10."
"Wow! 6 years! Can you just give us some pointers or something?" Lavender pleaded.
Hermione smiled and relented. "Sure. Ok, let's go."
* * * * *
Later that night Hermione was down in the Common Room flipping though Lavender's issue of Modern Witch. The singing instuction had gone quite well and the girls were getting exciting about showing Ms. Starr what they could do.
"Hey, Hermione. Whatcha doing?" Ron asked as she sat next to her.
"Hi, Ron. I'm justing picking out of costumes."
A look of horror came across Ron's face. "What?! We needed costumes? That teacher never said that! Did she? Please tell me I wasn't sleeping during that part!"
Hermione looked seriously at Ron before she burst out laughing.
"No, don't worry. The girls and I just want to do a little something extra."
Ron grinned in relief. "Well, I can certainly understand that. I've never seen the day when Hermione Granger hasn't given 110% on anything."
"We just want to be thorough," Hermione responded as she flipped her hair back.
"Uh huh." Ron had just realized exactly how close they were. If he leaned in just as little… STOP! No! This is Hermione! Your best friend. You are not, I repeat not, going to kiss her. Oh no. I have got to get out of here! Give any excuse. You need food! You need to practice singing! You need to go sew costumes!
"I need to go sew costumes!" Ron blurted out.
"Huh?" Hermione gave him a weird look.
"Yeah. I need to go to bed… and think about sewing costumes. We can't be outdone by you! Ok, well, good night!" Ron waved and ran upstairs.
"Night," Hermione said faintly. She shook her head and passed off that weird exchange as Ron just being Ron.
~
Ok! That's it for now! Please review! There's much more to come. We still need to do dancing and acting plus the play auditions and the actual play and who could forget getting to more of the whole R/H romance? :)