Disclaimer: I do not own and of the Harry Potter characters or anything affiliated with them.

Author's Note: Hey well I'm trying to keep everyone in character but in this chapter Hermione is kind of well...ferocious you might say LoL She's sorta like that in the books really the girl DOES have a temper. Didn't she smack Malfoy on the face in the 3rd book? o0o well she's reeeeally angry now so let's see how far her temper goes. Enough say...to raise her voice in the library? hmmm....maybe under the circumstances haha and how about everyone's temper as they find out about their "new house"? Shouldn't I be sayin this stuff on the last chapter to keep you in suspense? o0o well...

Slythindor



Chapter 4: Quests, Quirks and Evil Smirks

"Granger! You filthy disgusting mud..." Malfoy began his rant but before he could finish, a very large textbook seemed to have just narrowly missed his head.

"Don't even SAY it Malfoy!" said Hermione very annoyed that he was going to use the word mudblood again. He caught a glint of guilt in her eyes before she stood up from her seat and started shouting at him, which was odd for her since she was in the library. She seemed to forget that though as she yelled, "You keep your malicious comments to yourself!" as she gathered her notes and a couple of books.

"Where's the fun in that?" he said as he smirked. Then, remembering what he was there to do, he approached the table. He was being cautious of course, seeing as how he really didn't want to have any more of those ridiculously gigantic books hurled at him. He noticed that she now was keeping herself busy gathering her things, and was avoiding him. Without making eye contact with him at all she picked up her things and started to walk away. She had decided earlier that instead of looking guilty as she usually did she would just act normally toward him. She thought she overdid it a little though; she really hadn't planned on throwing large books and screaming at him in the middle of the library. Maybe she was being a little TOO dramatic about it, but this way he wouldn't suspect anything.

As she was walking past him though, he grabbed her by the arm and turned her around toward him and pulled her closer.

"I know what you did to me Granger," he said slowly and threateningly, "You think you can play these games with me? You may have come to the rescue of your precious friends but what about now Granger? Who's going to defend you as I make you sorry for what you did to me?" he asked as he stared into her eyes with a look that told her he wasn't joking. Neither was she.

She jerked her arm away from him and shoved him away from her. In a split second she had her wand out and had slammed all her books onto the floor, which made quite a noise, as she did it in a very hostile manner. Plus the books weighed as much as she did.

"I'm quite capable of defending myself Malfoy and you know it!" she snapped, "Poor Malfoy was stuck in the rain boo hoo," she said as she made a crying face. "You deserved it! I might have saved you from staying in the rain the full time but I'll be happy to complete your punishment, I'm not someone to be trifled with Malfoy especially after what you did to Ron and Harry not to mention the rest of the people on the Gryffindor team. As a matter of fact after EVERYTHING you've done." Her voice was at maximum now and it was menacing. She was quite emotionally distraught by all the happenings at Gryffindor Tower recently and she had just come back from the hospital wing. From what she saw there, her attitude towards the Slytherins was at a below zero level.

"Wait a minute, what do you mean by saving me? Do you mean to tell me I would have been out there LONGER? I have to say Granger, you're quite an amateur in not completing the job. I would have at least had some respect for your boldness in doing such a thing to a Malfoy."

She just stood there wanting to hex herself now because of her slip. 'Well, I guess this is what you get for being loud and outspoken.', she mentally scolded herself. She wasn't very good at it.

"Just sod off Malfoy! Sorry I'm not as good at malicious acts as you are but seeing as how you think you're so good at it, I guess I'd better work on it then because there's nothing I enjoy more than your annoyance that a muggle-born could POSSIBLY be more intelligent than you."

She honestly did enjoy that. Every time he'd call her a mudblood she knew she at least had the satisfaction of knowing part of him was only annoyed that she was getting higher marks than him. Malfoy was now just staring at her with his dense gray eyes and a piece of his hair fell in front of them. She noticed his hair wasn't as well kempt as usual. He must have been really distracted since he was always known for keeping up his appearance. It seemed to have served him well as half the girls in the school were in love with him. Goyle made her wonder sometimes too...She, however thought he was the most vile person she had ever laid eyes on. Okay, maybe not vile in looks exactly but he revolted her in every other way possible. Right now he was livid.

"More intelligent?! You don't seem to be in the right places because now I'm going to be teaching you a LESSON!" he bellowed as he raised his wand. She raised her wand as well and as they opened their mouths to say a spell...

"Ms. Granger! Mr. Malfoy! What is the meaning of this? Having a brawl in the library are you? Out this instant both of you and 10 points from each house! That would leave your house with a negative 10 then wouldn't it Mr. Malfoy?" yelled Madam Pince as loud as she would bring herself to yell in the library.

"But I was just studying and Malfoy..." Hermione began.

"I don't want to hear it Ms. Granger. When you two come to realization that a library is no place for shouting and fighting you can come back." Madam Pince scolded sharply.

Hermione reluctantly piled up her books off the floor and with an angry and disgraced look on her face she left. She couldn't believe she had just gotten kicked out of the library. It was her SANCTUARY. As she turned the corner outside the library she saw him coming out and she gave him a look that indicated that this wasn't over. She headed to the hospital wing and told Ron and Harry what had happened in the library. She hadn't told them about the storm incident though since that didn't go so well. They all called him the usual insults and she spent of the rest of the day there.

Malfoy had decided that there was no such thing as a quiet place to think in Hogwarts since there would always be an annoying student distracting him. Maybe he should just lock himself in the bathroom.

The next morning in the Great Hall was going to be remembered for a long time. A VERY long time. People cried, people laughed, people threw things, people pleaded for mercy, people cried for their mums, but all in all in was under control....to Dumbledore anyway. They didn't know what hit them as the morning had begun normally.

Hermione beamed as she saw Harry and Ron approach the breakfast table. They had gotten out of the hospital wing that morning and aside from a couple of bandages they looked as good as new.

"Hey there 'Mione" Ron greeted her as he grinned widely. He was glad to be out of that hospital and away from that damn psychotic Madam Pompfrey. If he had to sit silently to "preserve his energy" for one more minute or have that disgusting sleeping potion poured down his throat again he'd jump off the bloody castle walls and pray to land on the sharp rocks at the bottom of the moat. Harry was in a cheerful state himself as he sat down next to her.

"Hey, I heard Dumbledore's got some big announcement for us. I overheard Madam Pompfrey and Mcgonagoll talking about it. It's sounds like good news; they were really excited when they were talking about it. Something about new arrangements for the Slytherins I hope they make them sleep in the middle of the Forbidden Forest. They'd probably have a search party every night looking for Voldemort begging him to make them his evil minions."

"Yeah it would be great just kicking them out of the castle. Maybe I can study peacefully in library for once without one of them making a threat on my life for god's sake." Hermione said.

Over at the Slytherin table Draco was watching Hermione laugh with her friends. There was something about that girl that just annoyed him. It's like she always had to be better than everyone else. Always acting so happy and perfect. Maybe what really annoyed him was that she wasn't acting. She was always happy and content with her friends. Then he realized his problem; maybe she wasn't acting perfect, maybe she really was. That was laughable; she was a mudblood after all and a Gryffindor at that. He'd kill himself if he were in her place...or would he? There were some things in here life that he found that he longed for, but deep down. Right then he felt a pang of annoyance at that thought. He kept feeling them a lot quite recently especially when he was around his father, or more accurately, around Crabbe and Goyle. But at least he could hurt them whenever they annoyed him. He was just caught in a web of things that were bothering him, the list just kept on growing and he hoped there wouldn't be anything else he'd have to add.

"Hey, I heard Dumbledore's got some big announcement for us. I overheard Madam Pince and Snape talking about it. Something about new arrangements for the Gryffindors, I hope they make them sleep in the middle of the Forbidden Forest. Voldemort would probably have a search party for them every night so he could watch them begging him for mercy," said Blaise Zabini with a chuckle. Malfoy grinned, or it was more like a quarter smile as the side of his mouth curled up only a tiny bit. Blaise looked like she was going to pass out so, never letting an opportunity like that go by he grinned all the way. She lost consciousness faster than he had estimated and fell over onto Millicent Bullstrode. Millicent unfortunately had only caught a last glimpse of his rare smile and cursed herself on deciding to stop staring at him a minute before. Blaise came back into consciousness though as Dumbledore called everyone's attention for his important announcement.

"Due to recent incidents between Gryffindor and Slytherin houses, I have decided to eliminate them. As of right now they do not exist," he said as normally as he would say 'pass the mashed potatoes'. They just stared at him. Then stared some more. He had paused and they were getting more confused by the second.

"What a bloody lunatic," mumbled Draco not believing a word and half expecting to see people burst in and carry Dumbledore to St. Mungo's.

"All your clothing and other possessions have been removed from the Tower and the Dungeon," Dumbledore continued.

The blank and confused stares continued. Fear was added now also as they stared some more with their mouths agape. He smiled, as if enjoying this a great deal then kept going.

" They have been placed in a new annex of the castle. As of right now there is a new house containing both the students formerly in Slytherin and Gryffindor. You are all members of a new house called Slythindor. I wish you all well in settling your differences as you have all now been combined into one house. Now to get to our new annex you will have to go down the south hallway, to the left, up the stairs, down the west corridor, to the right, down another fight of stairs, then next to the statue you will see a picture of a horse. That's not the picture you're looking for. Turn around then you'll see a door leading down another staircase and a picture of a knight. That isn't the picture you're looking for either. Open the door and go down that staircase, around that corridor, down another flight of steps and THEN you'll come upon the picture frame that you are looking for. That is the door leading to your brand new common room. It's quite nice, the teachers and I designed it ourselves. I think it'll suit you all perfectly. Your schedules have been adjusted as well and so all your classes will be combined also. I do hope you like your new common room and when you eat flowers swallow petal by petal and remember to rip off the stem. Thank you." He concluded as he sat back down and finished up his Sunday breakfast.

By this point they all had completely stopped blinking. Gradually they started moving again but mostly they were just pinching themselves to see if they were dreaming. Some just kept on pinching trying not to lose hope that it was all in their imagination and they wouldn't be sharing a common room with the people they hated most in the entire world. They watched as Dumbledore was finishing up his breakfast. They had lost their appetite.. .at least the Gryffindors and Slytherins anyway. The Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws just sat there wearing angelic faces and after a few seconds they just returned to their meal. Then all of a sudden as the other houses began to accept their state of consciousness, all hell broke loose. The teachers tried to maintain control as students just totally lost it. Some people just broke down and cried thinking of the torment they were going to have to live with. Others were just hurling food at the opposite table or anything else they could get their hands on. The rest just went totally ballistic while the other houses found this scene quite funny.

Soon everyone just started storming out of the Great Hall heading for their normal common rooms, still disbelieving of these consequences they had to face. But as the Gryffindors approached the tower they soon realized it had completely disappeared. The tower just wasn't there it was just a wall and the fat lady in the pink dress picture was nowhere to be seen. The Slytherins experienced a similar disappointment. As they neared their snake picture that opened up to a staircase leading down to the dungeons they realized the dungeons had totally been removed. There was just a solid wall now. Of course, the students from both houses hadn't remembered where their new common room was due to the fact that Dumbledore has a natural talent of speaking 100 words per minute. They just walked around until they both met at either side of a corridor that had another hallway leading opposite them and there was a sign saying "THIS WAY TO THE ANNEX----" pointing toward the opposite hallway. While staring daggers at each other they all walked until Colin Creevey noticed something stuck onto the wall.

"What's this thing?" he asked. It was a puzzle piece and it was about the size of his palm and had some pink and green stuff on it. When he turned it around though it said 'Find more to open the door to Slythindor.' "Looks like we have to find more of these then." He walked a few more steps and found another one sticking out from behind a picture and it said the same thing on the back. He had caught other people's attention and soon, everyone started looking for them. They seemed to be scattered all over the place and were leading them down a long intricate path. They went down and up staircases and along lengthy corridors. Soon everyone had at least one puzzle piece in their hand. Crabbe and Goyle didn't have one though until they made Colin hand over his since they had only at the last minute caught on to what everyone was looking for.

After they had finally gone down the final flight of steps they came upon a picture frame with the corner puzzle pieces already put in. As they started to try to put all the pieces in and having a hard time, a little known fact about Seamus Finnigan became apparent as he seemed to know exactly what to do.

"Ok who's got the pieces with the straight edges? Those go along the sides. We have to work our way in and if you see you have a similar piece as someone else combine them so we'll have big pieces to add at one time," he said as he started collecting the straight edged pieces from people. He was helping Gryffindors with their pieces or snatching them from Slytherins (then running).

This of course was a little plan of Dumbledore's to get them all to work together. It was kind of working...in it's own special way of course.

"Give me that piece you shaggy haired troll it goes with mine!" Pansy snapped at Harry as she grabbed one of the pieces he had.

"Well if you'd just stand right there I'd probably be able to fix my hair since I can see my reflection in your lip gloss!" he retorted as he walked away hiding the rest of his pieces in case another annoying Slytherin tried to take them.

Hermione's piece had half a woman's lips on it and after looking at everyone's piece she still couldn't find the other half. That was her only piece and she wanted to find its match so she'll have actually accomplished something. There was only one person she didn't check with but he was the last person on earth she felt like making any sort of contact with. She saw Malfoy was standing in a corner by himself lost in thought again. She reluctantly started to walk towards him. He looked up at her though and before she knew it she had turned around and walked the other way, and she could have sworn she saw him smirk at her. She scolded herself for her lack of nerve; she shouldn't back out just because of Malfoy. 'Now he probably thinks I'm afraid of him or something,' she thought. She felt anger stir inside of her at that thought so she turned around again and haughtily approached him.

"Malfoy I need your puzzle piece so hand it over," she said in her usual bossy tone.

"You mean...this?" he asked as he looked up at her then at his piece. He really had no intention of participating in the game at all but he had stepped on this piece so he picked it up. Maybe it might be useful after all...

"Yeah that's it, I have the other half" she said as she looked at it when he flashed it at her.

"Looks like I'd better give it to you then before you body bind me again. I wouldn't want to be stuck out here all night..."

"Shut up Malfoy MAYBE if I released 22 Bludgers on you it'll work better!"

"You think so huh?" he said nonchalantly while tossing the puzzle piece in the air and catching it. Her eyes followed it as it went up and down and he liked seeing that she wasn't getting what she wanted for once. She had crossed her arms and her face had a very annoyed look now, as she knew he was toying with her.

"YES I DO, now just give me the puzzle piece because the sight of you is starting to make me nauseous!"

"The sight of ME mudblood? What about the sight of YOU in front of me? Us Malfoy's don't usually make contact with too many beavers begging us for favors."

"Augh, if you aren't the most disgusting, vile, despicable person I have EVER...Accio Puzzle Piece!" she said suddenly and she started laughing hysterically as it flew into her hands. If he thought that she was some sort of toy for him to play with he had another thing coming. She figured she'd take him by surprise while she was telling him off. She laughed even more as she saw his face turn livid with anger. She walked off happily and attached his piece with hers and formed a complete mouth.

"Ok we only have 2 pieces left to put, who has them? Seems like we need the mouth here," announced Seamus pointing at the picture.

"I have them!" Hermione said placing them on the picture while making sure to give Malfoy a look.

Suddenly a great flash of light came from the picture as it came to life. The picture was the strangest thing they had ever seen, as it was a fat lady in a pink dress wrestling a green snake. The lines had disappeared and all of a sudden the lady in the pink dress started speaking to them as she was trying to pin the snake down.

"Welcome Slythindors! Did you have fun completing the puzzle? That Dumbledore's got a lot more under his sleeve in store for you, you know. Anyhoo, you probably want to see your new common room so I have a little poem here for you that explains how to get in." She body slammed the snake and cleared her throat as she began... "You don't need a password, and you won't need a key,

First you must find tranquility,

If you want to pass through, this is what you must do,

Show a sign of peace to the other house as due,

A kind word perhaps or maybe a gesture,

This is what you must do to get through the picture.

Now if you'll excuse me I have some things I need to take care of." The snake had wrapped himself around her waist by now and the students just stared at the picture looking absolutely dumbstruck.

They were still standing there after a while with everyone refusing to utter a kind word about the other house. Hermione, being the only apparent intelligent person, saw how she was not about to stand here all day and besides she didn't have to MEAN anything she said. She left Ron and Harry to their surprise, and made her way to the picture.

"Umm...most of the Slytherins manage to brush their hair every day." She said as quietly as possible. She also glanced over to Blaise, her reason for using the word 'most'. The other students realized what she just did as the door swung open and they all filed in with the Slytherins giving her dirty yet appreciative glances...if that was possible. When they walked in they thought they had gone crazy, as it was the weirdest room they had ever seen. It was a gigantic room with lots of furniture all over it but on every single item in the room there were these intertwined patterns using the colors of both houses. Some were used in a checkered pattern, some were striped, and others were polka dot. Even the carpet had crazy designs except it was a zigzag. They glanced up above the fireplace and saw both the Gryffindor and Slytherin coat of arms together but beneath them they saw a much bigger one that said Slythindor on it. They also noticed that some patches of the wall were of the same kind as in the tower and others were built with the kind of bricks in the dungeon.

"I should have figured it was going to look like a bloody madhouse as soon as I heard Dumbledore had designed it." Malfoy said with a look of disgust at the colorful room.

"He mentioned that the teachers had helped him though so I guess the dormitories won't be so bad," said Hermione as she walked upstairs to the girl's dormitory with some other girls following her. When she opened the door, to her dismay it wasn't any better, it was worse if possible. There were the same crazy colorful patterns on everything from the curtains to the bed sheets but the crazy patterns had just Slytherins colors on one bed and just Gryffindor colors on the next, which meant they actually had to sleep on the bed next to someone from the opposite house. They all groaned at the sight of this and walked back downstairs.

By the next day the common room was completely divided as the Slytherins sat on one side and the Gryffindors sat on the other, absolutely refusing to acknowledge that anyone from the other house was even in the same room but even still, arguments broke out all over the place over the smallest things. All this was before breakfast too and to their dismay they heard Dumbledore has something else planned for them that he was going announce during breakfast. As they walked out the door though they realized that they had absolutely no idea how to get to the Great Hall. They had followed the trail the puzzle pieces had left yesterday. Hermione had walked a little further down the corridor though and she saw a sign.

"Hey look, it says 'This way to the Great Hall---'" she said as she gestured at everyone to come look. It was pointing to a door and as she opened it she saw that it was some long tunnel path and as she opened the other door on the other side she was directly facing the door to the great hall.

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" she exclaimed, "We had to walk all that way yesterday and the door was right here!"

Several other similar exclamations along with many grunts and groans followed as they all miserably filed into the Great Hall. To their dismay they saw that now instead of their tables being the farthest from each other they were right along side one other now. Their mood couldn't have been any worse. Just as they were sitting down, Dumbledore started to talk again with them just glaring at him.

"Good morning, I do hope you Slythindors enjoyed your little quest yesterday", he said beaming, with the Slythindors giving him looks that indicated that they did anything but enjoy it, "I believe today's announcement will be more to your liking. There will be a Masquerade Ball. There will be details about it at lunch. Enjoy your breakfast. Remember not to let your nibbets run free. Thank you." He said all this in a ridiculously abrubt way and they were very annoyed about it. Plus they had no idea what nibbets were. They were getting excited about this masquerade ball though and they wondered just what kind of details he was talking about...





Ok wow this chapter took me FOREVER to write LoL sum1 said my chapters were really short so I wrote a long one haha thx to all who reviewed tho u ppl are so nice!!!! Lotsa motivation you guys are great! Plzzzz review if you haven't tho thxx