FANTASY. WRITTEN BY GIRL-WHO-IS-OBSESSED-WITH-RON.
Disclaimer: Characters and places (Hogwarts) are not mine. Please do not sue.
Chapter Four: The First Detention.
"No."
Draco read the letter again in disbelief. How could his father do this to him?
"No . . ." He mumbled again. He had just left his Astronomy class, when an owl had swooped through the window and landed on his shoulder. He had recognised the black-feathered owl almost immediately.
"What's the matter, Dwakie-poo?"
Draco winced slightly as he heard the voice of Pansy Parkinson, possibly the most annoying girl in the history of Hogwarts. He calmly carried on walking as quickly as he could and replied, "None of your business, Parkinson."
"Of course it's my business, Drakie! If it's your business, then it's mine!"
Draco rolled his eyes and cursed under his breath. He continued to walk to his Herbology lesson, ignoring Pansy's complaints as she failed to catch up with him. He finally stopped in front of Greenhouse Number Eight and he waited for the rest of Slytherin and Ravenclaw to appear so the lesson could start. Unfortunately for him, he could not wait in peace. Pansy decided to take this chance to speak. She snatched the letter from Draco's hand.
"So is this what you've been sulking about?" She began to read the letter out loud.
'Lucky no one's here yet . . .' Draco thought.
"'Dear Son,
I will not bail you out this time. The old crackpot must have a reason for punishing you in this strange manner. You shall bear your punishment like any Malfoy would. I shall be seeing you soon,
Yours,
Lucius.
P.s. By the way Draco, do not tell anyone that we wrote to one another. Do not ask why (If Miss Parkinson is reading this, hello and good day).'
Is that all?" Pansy shrugged and handed the letter back to Draco. She took a seat next to him and began to coo at his hair.
Hermione wandered slowly to the library at four thirty. Her lessons had ended for the day and she was going to have her first taste of this punishment Dumbledore had sentenced her to. She grumbled, just as her stomach did. She was hungry, and who could blame her? She hadn't had supper yet (as Dumbledore had told Draco and her to go to the library straight after their lessons), and her lunch had digested already.
She wondered if Draco was the same. She entered the library and sat at the nearest table. The library was empty, as all the students were in the Great Hall, eating. The thought of food (again), made her automatically drool.
"Sheesh Granger, I know you think I'm hot but you don't need to drool like that."
Hermione quickly wiped her mouth. She could feel herself blush furiously as he smirked and sat down opposite her. There was silence until a grumbling broke it. Hermione frowned. This time, it wasn't her. She looked at Draco and saw (to her amusement) that he was blushing. It was obvious that hearing a Malfoy's stomach grumble was not something that happened everyday.
She smirked and was about to say a snide remark when two house-elves suddenly appeared in front of them. They were pushing one big trolley, which looked as though it contained food. Before Hermione could say S.P.E.W. the house-elves had set the table, laid a napkin on her lap and placed the food in front of her before disappearing with a 'pop'. Hermione looked down at her plate. It was full of roast potatoes and chicken, with some broccoli. She needed no persuasion to launch at her food.
It was five o'clock when she finished eating. As soon as she did, the plates and goblets disappeared automatically. She wiped her mouth with her napkin and sat back in her chair, quite content - until she remembered why she was in the library in the first place, and who was staring at her from across the table.
"Ah! Miss Granger! Mr Malfoy!"
Draco and Hermione both turned towards the voice. It was Madam Pince, the librarian.
"Well, I hope you enjoyed your dinner. You shall be eating it like this on the nights of your detentions from now on. Do you understand?"
They both nodded.
"Good. Your first session will be set here. Professor Dumbledore wanted you to get, let's just say, accustomed, to the idea of this first, as both of you seemed determined to not go through with this. Your task in the library is to sort the books into alphabetical order - in the restricted section only. You must do this without your wands. When you are done, you must research Hogwarts' four founders for me. I would like your research back before nine. Professor Binns and I shall grade your work and you two shall produce one single paper to hand in. If you don't want to fail, I suggest you work together! And, might I add that this counts fortwenty percentof your N.E.W.T.S. Now get to work!"
Madam Pince gave them a nod, before swiftly turning and heading towards her desk to check some files.
"Come on then, Malfoy. We'd better get started if we're ever going to finish."
Draco grunted in reply. They set to work, and soon, they had almost finished sorting the restricted section of the library into alphabetical order. Hermione looked through one of the windows in the library. The sky was getting dark. She looked at Draco, who was sitting at a table with a book over his face.
The sorting would have been much easier if they had not been bickering all the time. It was mostly Draco who started the arguments, with stupid little things like, "Mudblood, I can't touch that book! You've already touched it! I might catch something!" or, "Mudblood, you can carry on! My precious feet are too tired for muggle slavery!"
But, luckily, Hermione resisted the temptation to hit him and carried on with what she was meant to be doing while he continued to moan. Finally, it was time to start the research and Hermione could only hope that Draco would help instead of sitting back and relaxing.
"Malfoy, I think this book might be useful. Have you found anything?" Hermione put the book (titled: Hogwarts: How it all begun) on the table and peered around a bookshelf to see whether he had found anything - only to find that he wasn't there.
"Malfoy?"
"Malfoy?" She called again, looking around another bookshelf.
'Where on earth is he? He knows that I can't complete this assignment without him!' She thought angrily, as she continued to search for him. She was beginning to get worried. She looked all around her but still, she couldn't see him.
"Looking for me?"
Turning swiftly around, Hermione came face to face with Draco Malfoy, casually leaning against a bookshelf. She glared angrily at him.
"Where the hell do you think you've been? We hardly have any time left to do this and you just go slouching off?"
"Well, for your information, Granger, I was not slouching off. I was merely going to another section of this library to find information - and look what I've found." He pointed to the table next to him. It was piled with books and parchment with a quill and an inkpot. Hermione was speechless. She didn't think that he would take this seriously; after all, he hadn't exactly taken the sorting that seriously.
"Hooray! Granger's realised I have a brain!" He rolled his eyes and sat on a chair. "Just because I didn't do any work earlier doesn't mean I won't do any now. This – and all the other tasks they assign us - does count fortwenty percentof our grade after all, and I won't let my grades fall just because of something as pathetic as you."
He cleared a small space opposite him and started to write on the parchment while Hermione went back to her original table, got her stuff (and the book) and went to work at Draco's table. She looked at all the books he had found. They were all very useful, full of the four founders original plan of the school, subjects that were originally taught and other things like that. The books that were the most useful were part of a series.
It was titled: 'The four founders of Hogwarts', and there was one book about each of the founders. They were very detailed and each had some diary entries written by the founders.
"Right, Granger,"Draco started, "Let's make a deal."
"If it's a truce then there's no way I'm agreeing to it." Hermione interrupted. She could not stand to be near him, let alone try to be nice to him.
"Well, no actually, I wasn't going to suggest anything of the sort." He snarled. "If you would have listened, Miss Know-It-All, I was going to suggest that I do Salazar Slytherin and Rowena Ravenclaw, while you do Godric Gryffindor and Helga Hufflepuff. Then, afterwards, we can tape it all together to make one piece of work."
Hermione thought about this. It seemed logical (although she would never admit that to Draco) but she didn't see why she couldn't do Rowena Ravenclaw. There was nothing wrong with Helga Hufflepuff; it was just that she had always considered herself either to be a Gryffindor or a Ravenclaw. However, she knew it wasn't wise to argue right now. It was already seven thirty - they only had one and a half hour to finish, and the sky was now completely dark. Creeping around Hogwarts at night was not a good idea. And so, Hermione kept quiet and nodded reluctantly.
They worked silently until the noise of quills scratching against the parchment had stopped. Hermione checked her work, as did Draco.
"Give your work here." Draco snatched Hermione's stack of parchment and using some spellotape from his pocket, he stuck them together. Hermione scowled at him.
"You needn't snatch it. Asking would have been nicer."
Hermione snatched the parchment back and scanned hers and Draco's work. Her eyebrows furrowed at what she read. It wasn't the fact that Draco's (or her) work was bad. It was what it contained. It seemed the four founders always had problems with each other.
Gryffindor and Slytherin having a problem with each other were normal, but apart from the pureblood and dirty blood problems, it seemed that they used to fight over a certain lady – Rowena Ravenclaw. Hufflepuff seemed to be more of a tomboy (and a little too obsessed with plants) but Ravenclaw; she was a lady, one of high class.
It seemed (from their diary entries), that they had fought for her hand in marriage and in the end, she had chosen Gryffindor. Slytherin was furious, but he had eventually fallen in love with a woman who was much like Gryffindor: brave, courageous, and full of Gryffindor spirit. This seemed strange, as Slytherin hated Gryffindor and yet he had fallen for a woman just like him.
She turned a page and read more. Draco had written about some sort of legend. A Seer had written the legend shortly after all the founders had died.
The legend said that when great danger would come in the future and the warrior was weak, true love would help him survive - but the legend explained that it was not just any true love. It had to be a love much like the one Slytherin and his bride had shared. It said that this was so, because their love was the greatest, and would be the most help in times of peril. But at that moment,Hermione was interrupted from her reading.
"Come on, Granger, it's nearly nine."
Draco took the work from Hermione and handed the paper in to Madam Pince. As Head Boy and Head Girl, Hermione and Draco had to do their night patrol at nine. They left the library and patrolled half the school each before heading to bed: exhausted after a hard day's work.
"I must say, this is a long essay!" Madam Pince exclaimed, flicking through the paper.
"I agree," Professor Binns nodded, gliding around Madam Pince. "I think it deserves the top mark. After all, they found and wrote out what Albus wanted them to."
Madam Pince nodded, pointed her wand at the essay (making a mark appear in the corner) and set the essay on her desk. She got off her wooden chair and bid Professor Binns a goodnight before heading to her room for some sleep. Professor Binns planned to do something of the sort. He blew out the last candle in the library and glided to his classroom to prepare for his next lesson in the morning. The library fell silent.
All of a sudden, a rustling could be heard. It crept around until It came up to Madam Pince's desk. It rustled around some more, papers being moved from their original place, and then carefully moved back. Its hand hovered above her desk until It saw what It was looking for. Quickly and swiftly, It snatched the essay and ran silently away.
Edited Version: 29th July 2005