The Ninth Hour
"We never did it," Ginny told her truthfully as she motioned to Harry and herself. We kissed, we attempted to, but we never actually had sex. We couldn't. I wasn't ready and…," she trailed off, no longer meeting Hermione's eyes. "I'm so sorry. It's just that Lavender thought we did and you know how big her mouth is."
"Yes," nodded Hermione. "I do."
"Friends?" Ginny asked meekly, holding out her hand.
"I never did it either," Cho walked over, making Ginny and Hermione look up at her. "I'm not a nymphomaniac...I'm a compulsive liar."
"You are such a bitch! You did that on purpose just to fuck me over!" Ginny yelled, standing up, and forgetting all about making up with Hermione, who reverted to going back by Draco's side, much to Harry's displeasure.
"I would do it though," Cho stated in a more serious tone than any of them had heard out of her all day. "If you love someone, it's okay," she said, glancing over at where Hermione was presently cuddled against Draco, who was looking down at her tenderly. The two of them didn't notice Cho's eyes, but Harry saw them and it was enough to make him red with anger.
"I can't believe you, you're so weird. You don't say anything all day and then when you open your mouth...you unload all these tremendous lies all over me!"
Draco lifted his face away from Hermione's long enough to tell Ginny off. "You're just pissed off because she got you to admit something you didn't want to admit to."
"Okay, fine, but that doesn't make it any less bizarre," the Weasley girl stated, crossing her arms back across her chest.
"What's bizarre? I mean we're all pretty bizarre! Some of us are just better at hiding it, that's all," Hermione stated evenly, leveling her eyes with the girl, who moments before, wanted to rekindle their lost friendship.
"How are you bizarre? You are practically perfect in every class. You're going to graduate as valedictorian, and you are going to be the hottest guy in school," Ginny finished, sending Hermione a death glare of jealousy as she saw Draco's arm slither around her waist and tighten his hold.
"She can be bossy," Cho provided before another fight between Weasley and Granger occurred.
"So why are you really in detention, Gin?" Hermione asked, using her mock interest and putting the old friend nickname in for special effect.
"Iskippedschooltogoshopping," she mumbled, cluttering all her words together.
"What was that?" Draco asked, rather amused.
"I skipped school to go shopping, alright?" she hissed.
"Harry?" Hermione inquired. He glanced up at her, unsure. "Same question."
"I…um," he scratched the back of his neck, clearly embarrassed and not willing to give out the information. "I put Collin Creevy in a full body bind and then dressed him up as Professor McGonagell."
"What?" Hermione cried.
"You did that?" Cho asked, sounding hurt.
"Yeah," he sighed, "You heard about it?"
"Everyone heard about it, Potter," snapped Draco. "But no one knew who did it. You attacked the poor kid in the dark, in the back, when he was all alone and defenseless."
"I know," Harry shook his head back and forth, ashamed. "I didn't even do it for…I did it," he laughed a bit, though it was a sad sound. "You aren't going to believe this, but I did it for Sirius."
"What?" Hermione cried yet again. "But Harry, Sirius has been gone for years now."
"I know," he growled, causing her to jump, and making Draco hold her more. "It's just that…my dad…Sirius and my dad used to do wild things, crazy things when they were in school. I was thinking a lot about him lately and it seemed like the perfect thing to do, you know? Where ever he is, he would see this and feel proud of me, know that I was following in his footsteps."
"No, Harry, no," Hermione shook her head, taking his hand in her own. "Sirius regretted what he had done in the past. He told me once that he wished he could take everything he ever did to Snape back. He said the worst thing he had ever done in his life was make someone as pathetic as that even worse." She held her breath for a moment, then continued.
"Harry, he wouldn't have wanted you to do that. You were the one who helped show him the error of his ways. Don't think he ever wanted you to turn out like that. He didn't. He was proud of you for who you were…who you are."
"I know," the Boy-Who-Lived began to sob. It was a sad sight to see him cry, but Hermione, being the friend she always had been, pulled him into a loving embrace and hugged him until he was done. Draco wasn't exactly happy about this, but he was starting to understand that she was still Potter's best friend and she was going to be there for him when he needed her. No matter what happened.
But he was still hurt.
When she moved back to sit with him, he shrugged her off. For a moment, she stared at him, but then gave up since he wouldn't meet her gaze. Sighing, Hermione moved a couple feet away, now across from where Cho was sitting. The two looked at one another, one sad pair of eyes boring into another.
"Are you going to push her away just because she hugged me, Malfoy?" Harry suddenly spat.
"You pushed her away enough for the both of us, Potter!"
"At least if I was in your position I wouldn't have gotten so damn jealous that I lost sight of what was right in front of me."
"Are you saying I should be all soft and let her come back into my arms? Look at you! What did you ever do to deserve her? All these years she's been trailing along with you and Weasel just to help you out. You know you'd be long dead by now if she wasn't with you. However, you still find time to go behind her back and have a semi-affair with none other than her best friend. And you say I'm the one pushing her away?"
"Stop it! Both of you! Honestly," Hermione grumbled. "Neither one of you is any better than the other one." That statement made both boy's heads turn. They weren't upset to hear it from each other's mouths, or their own mouths for that matter, but coming from the girl they cared about, that was a different story.
Cho interrupted with a completely off the subject declaration. "I can write with my toes! I can also eat, brush my teeth!"
"With your feet," Ginny winced in disgust.
"And play Heart & Soul on the piano," Cho beamed with pride.
"I can knit the Muggle way!" Ginny added, sounding a bit impressed.
"What can you do?" Cho asked Harry.
"I can...uh...put you all in a full body bind and then dress you up as a professor." Everyone laughed at this, trying to make him feel better, even though Draco's idea of making some feel better was to laugh at them instead of with them.
"I wanna see what Hermione can do!" Draco grinned over at her.
She went pale, dead white, and looked like she was going to pass out. Then, quickly recovering, she said, "I can't do anything."
"Now, everybody can do something," the Malfoy brat told her, not sounding convinced.
"There's one thing I can do, no forget it, it's way too embarrassing," she shook her head, blushing furiously as she tried to cover her cheeks with her hands.
"You ever seen Mr. Podger's Wizardhood? I mean that guy's been doing that show for thirty years," Draco informed her. Not really into television or having any thing to do with the wizarding world outside of Hogwarts, Hermione had no idea what he was talking about, but from the sound of it and the facial expressions he was getting from Ginny, Cho, and Harry, she decided it was a bad thing.
"Okay, but you have to swear to God you won't laugh...I can't believe I'm actually doing this." Hermione took a deep breath then slowly started to slide out her right leg front and her left back. She went down in a perfect split, then while holding down her skirt, she slid her legs on the ground as she turned them out and into a perfect gymnast's straddle.
"All right, great! Where'd you learn to do that?" Harry asked, clapping with Ginny, and Cho.
"Camp, second grade," she told him quickly, the flush in her cheeks slowly starting to die away.
Clapping slow and sarcastically, Draco said to her, "That was great, Hermione...my image of you is totally blown."
"You're shit! Don't do that to her you swore to God you wouldn't laugh!" Cho stood up in Hermione's defense, earning her a smile of thanks from the girl who couldn't help the tears brimming in her eyes.
"I don't believe in God babe, besides, am I laughing?"
Harry stood up now too. As Cho went to Hermione's side to help her up, he shouted, "You fucking prick!"
Glaring at Harry, Draco snarled, "What do you care what I think, anyway? I don't even count, right? I could disappear forever and it wouldn't make any difference...I may as well not even exist at this school, remember?" Then turned abruptly at Hermione so that she squeaked in fear, he snapped, "And you...don't like me anyway!"
"You know, I have just as many feelings as you do and it hurts just as much when somebody steps all over them!" she retorted, her face damp with salty tears.
He rolled his eyes and ran a hand through his platinum blonde hair. "God, you're so pathetic!" he growled, his anger from the early happenings with Harry fueling his anger at her. "Don't you ever...ever! Compare yourself to me! Okay? You got everything, and I got shit! Fucking Aristotle, right? School would probably fucking shut down if you didn't show up! "Brains isn't here!""
"Sod off!" Hermione screamed. Draco made a move to hit her, then looking at her fearful face, dropped his hand.
"My God, are we gonna be like our parents?" Harry whispered, just loud enough for the rest of the group to hear him.
"Not me," Hermione vowed, a single tear rolling down her cheek. She looked at Draco, "Ever."
"It's unavoidable, it just happens," Cho said wisely from behind Hermione.
"What happens?" Ginny asked as she stood up with the rest of the gang.
"When you grow up, your heart dies."
Draco snorted. "Who cares?"
Cho, who was on the verge of tears herself, managed to gasp, "I care."
Hermione cleared her throat, trying to make the tight feeling of crying loosen so she could speak. "Um, I was just thinking, I mean…I know it's kind of a weird time, but I was just wondering, um, what is gonna happen to us after we leave here? When we're all together again? I mean I consider you all my friends, I'm not wrong, am I?"
"No," Harry told her, putting an arm around her shoulders. They shared a friendly hug, but nothing more. Hermione didn't want to hurt Draco, even if he had hurt her.
"So...what happens?" Cho asked for Hermione.
"Are we still friends, you mean? If we're friends now, that is?" Ginny went on, looking at each of them as she spoke, then lowering her eyes to the floor.
"Yeah," whispered Hermione and Cho.
"Do you want the truth?"
"Yeah," the two girls whispered again.
"I don't think so," Ginny shook her head, not looking at either of them, neither Harry nor Draco either. She couldn't face any of them.
"Do you mean all of us, or just Hermione and Draco?" Cho asked.
"With all of you," Ginny sighed, slumping back down to the floor.
"That's a real nice attitude, Ginny!" Harry growled, upset with his present girlfriend so much that he left his arm drop off of his ex's shoulders.
"Oh, be honest, Harry...if Cho came walking up to you in the tomorrow, what would you do? I mean picture this, you're there with the entire Quidditch team. I know exactly what you'd do, you'd say hi to her and when she left you'd cut her all up so your friends wouldn't think you really were friends with her!"
"No way!" Harry snapped, turning away, though they all knew what Ginny had said was most likely true from his reaction.
"What if I came up to you?" Cho turned to Ginny.
Shaking her head, the redhead replied, "Same exact thing."
"You're such a bitch!" Draco yelled, the veins in his neck bulging against the fine layer of skin that was over them.
"Why? 'Cause I'm telling the truth, that makes me a bitch?"
"No! 'Cause you know how shitty that is to do to someone! And you don't have the balls to stand up to your friends and tell them that you're going like who you want to like!"
Hermione was pretty pissed off at that point. No one had ever seen her so mad. Before Ginny could make a come back, Hermione Granger exploded at Draco Malfoy in a way no one had ever seen her act before. She shouted every word out with poison and truth. Had she spoken to Snape like that, it was likely he would give up his position as the most feared teacher at Hogwarts in a heartbeat.
"Okay, what about you, you hypocrite! Why don't you take Cho to one of your heavy metal Slytherin parties? Or take Ginny out on the Quidditch pitch to help you practice being a good Seeker? What about Harry for that matter, what about me? What would your friends say if we were walking down the hall together. They'd laugh their asses off and you'd probably tell them you were doing it with me so they'd forgive you for being seen with me!" she hollered at Draco, the boy she had just been with moments before.
His temper rivaled hers. "Don't you ever talk about my friends! You don't know any of my friends, you don't look at any of my friends and you certainly wouldn't condescend to speak to any of my friends so you just stick to the things you know, reading, the library, and those pathetic two guys you call your friends!"
"SOD OFF!" she screamed, shaking with her overwhelming anger and tears.
Everyone else in the room was silent as the fight raged on.
"And as far as being concerned about what's gonna happen when you and I walk down the hallways in school, you can forget it! 'Cause it's never going to happen! Just bury your head in the sand...and wait for your fucking graduation!"
"I hate you," Hermione cried as she rocked back and forth, hugging herself.
Draco looked at her, then muttered, "Yeah? Good!"
For several long moments there was only silence in the room. No one knew what to say. Hermione was crying without sound, Draco was fuming opposite of her, Cho was attempting to comfort the first, and Harry and Ginny couldn't understand what to do at all.
"Then I assume Hermione and I are better people than you guys, huh? Us weirdos..." Cho trailed off, knowing that Hermione was nice to just about everyone. "You wouldn't look the other way when I came down the hall, would you?" Hermione shook her head and gave Cho a friendly smile. Cho smiled back before looking at each of the others. "I just want tell, each of you, that I wouldn't do that...I wouldn't and I will not! 'Cause I think that's real shitty."
Ginny took a deep breath, then sighed. "Your friends wouldn't mind because they look up to us."
Cho just stared at her and laughed. "You're so conceited, Ginny. You're so conceited. You're so, like, full of yourself, why are you like that?"
"I'm not saying that to be conceited! I hate it! I hate having to go along with everything my friends say!"
"Then why do you do it?" Cho wanted to know. She didn't have any mercy in her voice. This kind of this was one person's decision. If Ginny said she wasn't going to acknowledge her in the halls of Hogwarts, it wasn't her friends' faults it was her own fault. There was no sympathy emanating from the Ravenclaw on such a topic, no matter how sad Ginny Weasley looked.
"I don't know, I don't...you don't understand...you don't. You're not friends with the same kind of people that Harry and I are friends with! You know, you just don't understand the pressure that they can put on you!"
"I don't understand what? You think I don't understand pressure, Ginny? Well fuck you! Fuck you!" Cho started to cry a bit and hide her face in the sleeve of her robes. "Know why I'm here today? Do you? I'm here because I tried the Avada Kervada curse on myself."
"You what?" Harry asked, flabbergasted. He had been through tough scrapes in his many years. Quite a few of them included dodging that kind of curse. He didn't know why anyone would want to die such a painful way, but he kept that to himself.
"I was ready to die. When he left there was nothing more for me here. I don't have a good home life. My parents didn't want kids. So…but then they got stuck with me, and a witch baby at that. What where they to do? Cedric was all I had. I was ready the day he died to follow," she explained.
"Two days ago Professor Snape caught me looting his private supply of herbs. I was attempting to make a certain poison that would claim my life, but he caught on and stopped me. He warned me about stealing, until he caught on to what it was for. Then he sent me off with a warning, so I figured I had to do it some other way."
"And?" Hermione prompted.
"Do you know how hard it is to aim your wand at yourself?" Cho asked. None of the others had ever tried it so they had no clue. "I missed. Instead of hitting myself, I hit Mrs. Norris," she told them, hanging her head down.
"Mrs. Norris!" Draco started to peel with laughter.
"Filch's cat?" Harry and Ginny asked. When Cho nodded they started laughing too. Only Hermione could hold her tongue, but soon Cho and her were laughing with the rest of the group.
"You want to know what I did to get in here?" Hermione asked. Everyone became silent, even Draco. "Snape told me there was an extracurricular activity in his classroom on Saturdays. I never had him for detention before and I didn't know any better. I told him to sign me up."
Silence.
Then immense laughter.
"You're laughing at me!" she exclaimed.
"No…no we're not," Cho tried to stop but failed.
"Yes," Hermione giggled, "Yes you are."
Not one of the five students noticed that they only had one more hour of this torture to endure before it would be time to go and then they would be set free.
A/N: Ok, did I answer all the questions, tell me in a review if I didn't. Next! The final chapter! Yay!!!!! Thanks for all the reviews! I promise to try to do shout-outs in the final chapter or epilogue if I write one. ~ Nev