Chapter 4
Hermione took a deep breath and ran over to where Malfoy had left, and screamed,
"MALFOY!" but he was already gone. Since he was gone, couldn't she leave now? She could flag down the knight bus now, and it would take her away. There wasn't anyone here to stop her now, and she could get away from everything that was making her life worse. She would be home, with her father and mother, and she could enjoy time with them
But a nasty voice in the back of her head told her that if she left a lot of things at the school would fall apart. She was a prefect, she was in this special Transfiguration class, and she had so many things that she was supposed to be working on and grades to keep up. She was sure that her parents wouldn't want her to come home, because they wanted what was the best for her, and leaving school and letting your grades drop is not the best for anyone.
Sighing, Hermione turned and began trudging back to the Advanced Transfiguration room, where she would, undoubtedly, endure more pain and whispers from the Ravenclaws that were in her dorm room. She wanted to strangle the portrait at the front of the common room, and then she wanted to cast a silencing charm on the three in her dormitory, to make them silent for eternity. That would be nice.
"My life stinks," Hermione voiced aloud as she walked up the large stone steps of Hogwarts school, and she nodded at her own words.
There was nothing more that could possibly go wrong now, because everything imaginable had gone wrong. Everything in her life was falling apart, and here she was, forced to watch it as it crumbled around her feel.
It felt as though someone was mocking her. Telling her that no matter how far she ventured, the ability to grasp something solid in her life was always going to be that one step ahead of her that she could never make, that one step that was impossible yet so close, that one step that was mere inches from transforming her life into something she could stand, or something that she would begin to regret for the rest of her life.
Hermione could feel sleep prickling at her eyes and she tried to force it out of her mind. How wonderful it would feel to just go to sleep. To curl up and fall into a sleep that would rid her of all of the feeling in her mind and leave her as a feeling-less shell, something nobody could penetrate.
Before she could think or stop herself, Hermione was on her knees, opening the trunk. She pulled out another pair of robes, wadded them up, and put them on the floor like a pillow.
Placing her head on the pillow, Hermione closed her eyes and tried not to think about anything as she felt sleep overtaking her features, swamping her mind . . .
She dreamed that a small ginger cat, not unlike Crookshanks, was basking in the sun, obviously absorbed in its own matters. . . licking its paws and mewing disdainfully, though Hermione couldn't see why.
A snake was slithering through the grass, slowly sneaking up to the cat as though it had done this before. Hermione thought that the snake was going to attack the cat, but it approached it slowly and cautiously, as though afraid of the cat.
The cat shifted over and the snake slithered over to it, winding its self around the cat's paw and the cat purred contentedly. Hermione thought this was odd, and that they surely couldn't stay like this for long, because it was sure to attack the cat. . . snakes and cats don't get along.
Hermione vaguely remembered trying to grab the snake before she felt herself being flung out of the dream, moved, hurt. . .
Hermione awoke to find herself on the floor. Although she couldn't remember most of her dream, Hermione remembered something about a snake and Crookshanks, but who was the snake? She didn't know anyone with a pet snake, and for that she was glad.
Trying to shake this memory from her mind, Hermione began untangling herself from the blankets in order to go back to sleep. None of her roommates had woken up, and Hermione was extremely thankful. She didn't want to endure any more whispering than she really had to. She could feel herself slowly losing more control of her temper each time they pointed at her.
Hermione lay down and she tried to fall asleep, but as she tried to fall asleep, something about the snake's eyes bothered her and she couldn't shake their image from her mind. She didn't know where she had seen theme before, but she was sure that she had seen them somewhere.
She tried to think through her memories and remember where she had seem these eyes, but she didn't see any resemblance with any of the eyes that she thought about.
Shaking the thought, Hermione rolled over and buried her head in her arms as she tried to think about absolutely nothing. It was going to be a long night.
~+~
As Hermione woke up and looked around the room, she realized that she was the only one left in the dormitory. She got dressed as fast as she could and hurried down the stairs, where she almost walked into Pansy Parkinson, who seemed to be waiting for her to come down the stairs.
"Watch it, Cow." Hermione said so that only Pansy could hear as she walked toward a couch and sat down. Just as she sat down, Professor McGonagall walked in and Hermione slowly stood up.
"I need everyone to listen," Professor McGonagall said and Hermione turned to listen. There was an important announcement before breakfast? Something had to be going wrong. Hermione looked at her expectantly and Professor McGonagall seemed to be avoiding her gaze, but she didn't know why.
"There is going to be a slight change in the dormitory arrangements. I need to move a few students to please their parents." Hermione disregarded this as a threat now, because she was sure that her parents wouldn't be preoccupied with anything that had to do with her dormitory arrangements.
"I am moving Miss Witherspawn from the Eagle dormitory to the Rabbit dormitory. That means that one of the Rabbit dormitory members will have to take her place in the Eagle dormitory." Hermione froze. SHE was currently in the Rabbit dormitory. Not believing it, she glanced back at it and, sure enough, there was the rabbit on the door that she hadn't though a thing of before. That meant that she was sure to be in the worst position possible.
"All of the members of the dormitory should agree on who moves." Professor McGonagall said and Hermione's heart sunk. She was sure that it wouldn't matter what she said, because the Ravenclaws in her room would all agree that she could be the one to move. She never really understood them - what had she done to make them dislike her?
"Please talk among yourselves to decide who will move." Professor McGonagall continued, and Hermione noticed that she still was avoiding eye contact with Hermione, and she still wasn't quite sure why.
She walked resignedly over to "talk" it over with her roommates. She was sure they were going to have "thought hard" and they were "really sorry" but she "fit in the least with the mold" so they had to "let her go".
Hermione sighed and turned to face the other three. All of them looked at each other, obviously the cue for a well-rehearsed routine.
"Herninny," the boy said, and it was all Hermione could do to contain herself from correcting him in loud tones.
"We've thought hard about it," he began, and then, as though a practiced play, one of the girls spoke up.
"We're really, REALLY sorry Herninny," she said and again, Hermione felt her temper rise. "But we think it should be you that goes." The third girl then jumped into the conversation.
"We don't think you really fit in the mold too well - out of all of us, you fit the least." They all looked at her with mock sadness written obviously across their faces.
The boy spoke again, "We're afraid we're going to have to let you go, Herninny." Hermione shoved her hands into her pockets to hide the fists that were now being clenched tightly. She was so angry that she was sure she would have cursed or hexed them if she wasn't trying to keep herself under strict control.
She felt her teeth clenching and her eyes narrowing, yet she forced her voice to sound light and happy, which was the complete opposite as she felt.
"Oh, alright." She said.
I wouldn't want to spend another day with you freaks, you're always pointing and laughing and whispering and every time I hear it I wanna scream while I hex you until you die, Hermione thought, but was smart enough not to say it out loud.
Sighing again, Hermione sulked all of the way up to the dormitory where she flung the door open and resisted the urge to set their things on fire.
She kicked her trunk open and began throwing things in it again, and couldn't help the odd feeling of de ja vou - she seemed to remember doing this same action not too long ago. Rolling her eyes, she tried to think what dormitory she would be in. She was pretty sure that the Miss Witherspawn was a Hufflepuff, which meant -
Hermione froze in the middle of hurling her book into the disastrous trunk. Hadn't the Hufflepuff been in the same dormitory as the three Slytherins? That would mean that she was going to be in the same dormitory as MALFOY, PARKINSON, and SOME OTHER SLYTHERIN. Hermione suddenly felt sick to her stomach.
Avoiding the urge to hurl, she continued throwing things into her trunk, pretending that each one was hitting the Ravenclaws in the head and knocking them unconscious. She was so angry that she couldn't think straight and almost tried to open the mirror before she stormed down the stairs with her trunk floating slowly behind her.
Professor McGonagall looked at her with a mixture of sadness and pity and Hermione glared at her before she let her trunk fall to the floor with a loud thud.
Catching the look on Malfoy's face, she decided that she wasn't going to let him enjoy the face that this was going to make her miserable, so she put up the emotional barrier between herself and the world, blocking her emotions out. She was going to make Malfoy as miserable as she felt.
She walked over to the dorm, kicked the door and stormed in. Her heart fell, if possible, even lower that it was before she walked into the room. The entire room was full to the exploding point of emerald green and silver hangings, decorations and pillows.
Smiling slightly, she flicked her wand and changed the room to red and gold, the black frames turned gold, the green bedposts red. She changed the grotesque, ugly and eerie shapes of the various items in the room to more enjoyable and upbringing shapes and colors. When she was finished, she smiled happily and lay down on her bed as she directed the items to their places with her wand as she hummed to herself.
The door swung open and banged the wall as someone strode in, but Hermione completely ignored them and continued putting her things away and occasionally changing more things from hideous green to warm red and silver to gold. She felt someone yelling at her, but she took no notice.
"Shut up." She said, without a glance toward who was speaking to her. The person stormed over and pulled on her hair, to which she responded with a quick succession of flicks from her wand. The person fell to their knees, whimpering in pain.
At last, Hermione turned to see who she had hexed, and saw, with much satisfaction, that she had hexed Pansy Parkinson, but she was less satisfied to see that with the boils, she was now more attractive than she had been before.
"I can't believe you," Pansy shrieked. "You - you - you bit-" Pansy surely would have gone on to call Hermione a great number of things before she was stopped, but Draco Malfoy walked into the room, which stopped her from talking or doing much else, and he seemed to be recovering from a loss of breath when he saw the room. Apparently he hadn't expected her to have converted the room so quickly.
"What the - ?" he said, and she noted that he seemed utterly bewildered and shocked, which Hermione found extremely amusing. Smiling broadly, she flicked her wand again and changed his robes to a wonderful shade of red.
Unfortunately, this move seemed to bring him back to his senses and he lunged for her as he whipped out his wand. He muttered something and flicked his wand and she noticed that her hair was now emerald green. In order to pay him back, she turned his silvery-blonde hair red.
"I will not be a Weasley." He spat at her and he flicked his wand in retaliation. It took her a few seconds to see what he had done, but she now caught sight of her robes, which were silver with emerald green snakes throughout the pattern.
Narrowing her eyes, she flicked her wand and muttered like mad, and when she next looked up, Malfoy's eyes were hot pink, and she was sure that he didn't know what she had done to him, because he was looking around himself, trying to see what was wrong now.
Throughout this whole display of magic, they had forgotten Pansy Parkinson had been there, and they didn't notice when she left the room. Both of them were still trying to hex each other.
"You're right," Hermione said a few minutes after the initial spells. "You can't be a Weasley, they're nice." She said and Malfoy narrowed his eyes at her and muttered another spell. Whatever the spell was, she didn't know, but it apparently didn't do what it was supposed to do, because she LIKED what it did.
Her hair, which was not totally under control, was now straight and hanging down her back. She took some of it and twirled it around her finger. It would have been perfect had it not been emerald green.
She turned back to Malfoy and waved her wand in a figure eight and prodded the air with it. A jet of yellow light made its way over to him, and when it connected with him, his pants turned to a skirt.
Seething with anger, he waved his wand and Hermione noticed that he had made her feet grow to the size of flippers. She was extremely angry now, because he had ruined her slippers, and she flicked her wand at him again.
His hair was now curly and fluffy, so that it was like a Shirley Temple hair do, and she quite liked it - because it wasn't on her.
And then, remembering how he had teased her in earlier years, she directed this spell at his teeth. The two front teeth on the top were growing at an alarming rate. She stopped them from growing when they reached his chin.
Smiling with satisfaction, she whipped around and looked at herself in the mirror. Considering what he could have done, she didn't suppose she looked too bad. It could have been much worse, and she liked the fact that she had straight hair, and the green wasn't too bad, other than the fact that it was green.
She turned and was about to hex Malfoy again when she heard the door open, and she saw the last person she wanted to see, standing at the doorway. Professor McGonagall had come, obviously that was why Pansy had left, and with one wave of her wand, Professor McGonagall cast a spell that returned the room to totally boringness, and Hermione wondered why she didn't change her back to her normal state. Quite the reverse happened.
Professor McGonagall muttered something that Hermione was sure wasn't a counter spell, and, with a horrible pang, realized that she knew what that spell was. Professor McGonagall had just made the alterations that they had made on each other permanent.
"Professor," Hermione tried to protest, but Professor McGonagall held up a hand to stop all of the explanations that were bound to be coming out of their mouths. Professor McGonagall looked quite angry, and Hermione stopped talking at once, and she was sure that Malfoy wouldn't be doing a lot of talking in the near future - he couldn't talk through his teeth.
"I would have expected better of you two, especially since you are prefects. What kind of an example are you trying to set for our younger students?" Hermione didn't answer, and, happily realized that Malfoy couldn't.
"These alterations are permanent until you two can get along." With that, Professor McGonagall swept out of the room, and left Hermione, Malfoy, and Pansy in the room.
Hermione and Malfoy rounded on Pansy. If it hadn't been for her, neither of them would be stuck looking how they did.
"I'm going to hex you into the next universe, Parkinson." Hermione said, her wand pointing near Pansy's eyes, and Pansy stared at the wand nervously, as though expecting pain at any time.
Malfoy grabbed her arm and threw her toward the other end of the room. Hermione watched as he said something to her, and each time, Pansy's eyes seemed to get wider with fear, until she looked like someone had glued her eyes open.
Hermione didn't know what Malfoy was saying, but if it instilled this much fear in Pansy, it was worth it.
At this point, another realization dawned on Hermione.
They were going to have to go to classes looking like this. She was sure that this was going to be a permanent look of her, because she was never, in a million years, going to be nice to MALFOY, no matter what. It didn't matter that Professor McGonagall wanted her to. For the first time, Hermione disregarded what a teacher said altogether. She was never going to get along with Draco Malfoy.
Sighing, she looked in the mirror, trying to decide what she could do about her appearance.
Hermione took a deep breath and ran over to where Malfoy had left, and screamed,
"MALFOY!" but he was already gone. Since he was gone, couldn't she leave now? She could flag down the knight bus now, and it would take her away. There wasn't anyone here to stop her now, and she could get away from everything that was making her life worse. She would be home, with her father and mother, and she could enjoy time with them
But a nasty voice in the back of her head told her that if she left a lot of things at the school would fall apart. She was a prefect, she was in this special Transfiguration class, and she had so many things that she was supposed to be working on and grades to keep up. She was sure that her parents wouldn't want her to come home, because they wanted what was the best for her, and leaving school and letting your grades drop is not the best for anyone.
Sighing, Hermione turned and began trudging back to the Advanced Transfiguration room, where she would, undoubtedly, endure more pain and whispers from the Ravenclaws that were in her dorm room. She wanted to strangle the portrait at the front of the common room, and then she wanted to cast a silencing charm on the three in her dormitory, to make them silent for eternity. That would be nice.
"My life stinks," Hermione voiced aloud as she walked up the large stone steps of Hogwarts school, and she nodded at her own words.
There was nothing more that could possibly go wrong now, because everything imaginable had gone wrong. Everything in her life was falling apart, and here she was, forced to watch it as it crumbled around her feel.
It felt as though someone was mocking her. Telling her that no matter how far she ventured, the ability to grasp something solid in her life was always going to be that one step ahead of her that she could never make, that one step that was impossible yet so close, that one step that was mere inches from transforming her life into something she could stand, or something that she would begin to regret for the rest of her life.
Hermione could feel sleep prickling at her eyes and she tried to force it out of her mind. How wonderful it would feel to just go to sleep. To curl up and fall into a sleep that would rid her of all of the feeling in her mind and leave her as a feeling-less shell, something nobody could penetrate.
Before she could think or stop herself, Hermione was on her knees, opening the trunk. She pulled out another pair of robes, wadded them up, and put them on the floor like a pillow.
Placing her head on the pillow, Hermione closed her eyes and tried not to think about anything as she felt sleep overtaking her features, swamping her mind . . .
She dreamed that a small ginger cat, not unlike Crookshanks, was basking in the sun, obviously absorbed in its own matters. . . licking its paws and mewing disdainfully, though Hermione couldn't see why.
A snake was slithering through the grass, slowly sneaking up to the cat as though it had done this before. Hermione thought that the snake was going to attack the cat, but it approached it slowly and cautiously, as though afraid of the cat.
The cat shifted over and the snake slithered over to it, winding its self around the cat's paw and the cat purred contentedly. Hermione thought this was odd, and that they surely couldn't stay like this for long, because it was sure to attack the cat. . . snakes and cats don't get along.
Hermione vaguely remembered trying to grab the snake before she felt herself being flung out of the dream, moved, hurt. . .
Hermione awoke to find herself on the floor. Although she couldn't remember most of her dream, Hermione remembered something about a snake and Crookshanks, but who was the snake? She didn't know anyone with a pet snake, and for that she was glad.
Trying to shake this memory from her mind, Hermione began untangling herself from the blankets in order to go back to sleep. None of her roommates had woken up, and Hermione was extremely thankful. She didn't want to endure any more whispering than she really had to. She could feel herself slowly losing more control of her temper each time they pointed at her.
Hermione lay down and she tried to fall asleep, but as she tried to fall asleep, something about the snake's eyes bothered her and she couldn't shake their image from her mind. She didn't know where she had seen theme before, but she was sure that she had seen them somewhere.
She tried to think through her memories and remember where she had seem these eyes, but she didn't see any resemblance with any of the eyes that she thought about.
Shaking the thought, Hermione rolled over and buried her head in her arms as she tried to think about absolutely nothing. It was going to be a long night.
~+~
As Hermione woke up and looked around the room, she realized that she was the only one left in the dormitory. She got dressed as fast as she could and hurried down the stairs, where she almost walked into Pansy Parkinson, who seemed to be waiting for her to come down the stairs.
"Watch it, Cow." Hermione said so that only Pansy could hear as she walked toward a couch and sat down. Just as she sat down, Professor McGonagall walked in and Hermione slowly stood up.
"I need everyone to listen," Professor McGonagall said and Hermione turned to listen. There was an important announcement before breakfast? Something had to be going wrong. Hermione looked at her expectantly and Professor McGonagall seemed to be avoiding her gaze, but she didn't know why.
"There is going to be a slight change in the dormitory arrangements. I need to move a few students to please their parents." Hermione disregarded this as a threat now, because she was sure that her parents wouldn't be preoccupied with anything that had to do with her dormitory arrangements.
"I am moving Miss Witherspawn from the Eagle dormitory to the Rabbit dormitory. That means that one of the Rabbit dormitory members will have to take her place in the Eagle dormitory." Hermione froze. SHE was currently in the Rabbit dormitory. Not believing it, she glanced back at it and, sure enough, there was the rabbit on the door that she hadn't though a thing of before. That meant that she was sure to be in the worst position possible.
"All of the members of the dormitory should agree on who moves." Professor McGonagall said and Hermione's heart sunk. She was sure that it wouldn't matter what she said, because the Ravenclaws in her room would all agree that she could be the one to move. She never really understood them - what had she done to make them dislike her?
"Please talk among yourselves to decide who will move." Professor McGonagall continued, and Hermione noticed that she still was avoiding eye contact with Hermione, and she still wasn't quite sure why.
She walked resignedly over to "talk" it over with her roommates. She was sure they were going to have "thought hard" and they were "really sorry" but she "fit in the least with the mold" so they had to "let her go".
Hermione sighed and turned to face the other three. All of them looked at each other, obviously the cue for a well-rehearsed routine.
"Herninny," the boy said, and it was all Hermione could do to contain herself from correcting him in loud tones.
"We've thought hard about it," he began, and then, as though a practiced play, one of the girls spoke up.
"We're really, REALLY sorry Herninny," she said and again, Hermione felt her temper rise. "But we think it should be you that goes." The third girl then jumped into the conversation.
"We don't think you really fit in the mold too well - out of all of us, you fit the least." They all looked at her with mock sadness written obviously across their faces.
The boy spoke again, "We're afraid we're going to have to let you go, Herninny." Hermione shoved her hands into her pockets to hide the fists that were now being clenched tightly. She was so angry that she was sure she would have cursed or hexed them if she wasn't trying to keep herself under strict control.
She felt her teeth clenching and her eyes narrowing, yet she forced her voice to sound light and happy, which was the complete opposite as she felt.
"Oh, alright." She said.
I wouldn't want to spend another day with you freaks, you're always pointing and laughing and whispering and every time I hear it I wanna scream while I hex you until you die, Hermione thought, but was smart enough not to say it out loud.
Sighing again, Hermione sulked all of the way up to the dormitory where she flung the door open and resisted the urge to set their things on fire.
She kicked her trunk open and began throwing things in it again, and couldn't help the odd feeling of de ja vou - she seemed to remember doing this same action not too long ago. Rolling her eyes, she tried to think what dormitory she would be in. She was pretty sure that the Miss Witherspawn was a Hufflepuff, which meant -
Hermione froze in the middle of hurling her book into the disastrous trunk. Hadn't the Hufflepuff been in the same dormitory as the three Slytherins? That would mean that she was going to be in the same dormitory as MALFOY, PARKINSON, and SOME OTHER SLYTHERIN. Hermione suddenly felt sick to her stomach.
Avoiding the urge to hurl, she continued throwing things into her trunk, pretending that each one was hitting the Ravenclaws in the head and knocking them unconscious. She was so angry that she couldn't think straight and almost tried to open the mirror before she stormed down the stairs with her trunk floating slowly behind her.
Professor McGonagall looked at her with a mixture of sadness and pity and Hermione glared at her before she let her trunk fall to the floor with a loud thud.
Catching the look on Malfoy's face, she decided that she wasn't going to let him enjoy the face that this was going to make her miserable, so she put up the emotional barrier between herself and the world, blocking her emotions out. She was going to make Malfoy as miserable as she felt.
She walked over to the dorm, kicked the door and stormed in. Her heart fell, if possible, even lower that it was before she walked into the room. The entire room was full to the exploding point of emerald green and silver hangings, decorations and pillows.
Smiling slightly, she flicked her wand and changed the room to red and gold, the black frames turned gold, the green bedposts red. She changed the grotesque, ugly and eerie shapes of the various items in the room to more enjoyable and upbringing shapes and colors. When she was finished, she smiled happily and lay down on her bed as she directed the items to their places with her wand as she hummed to herself.
The door swung open and banged the wall as someone strode in, but Hermione completely ignored them and continued putting her things away and occasionally changing more things from hideous green to warm red and silver to gold. She felt someone yelling at her, but she took no notice.
"Shut up." She said, without a glance toward who was speaking to her. The person stormed over and pulled on her hair, to which she responded with a quick succession of flicks from her wand. The person fell to their knees, whimpering in pain.
At last, Hermione turned to see who she had hexed, and saw, with much satisfaction, that she had hexed Pansy Parkinson, but she was less satisfied to see that with the boils, she was now more attractive than she had been before.
"I can't believe you," Pansy shrieked. "You - you - you bit-" Pansy surely would have gone on to call Hermione a great number of things before she was stopped, but Draco Malfoy walked into the room, which stopped her from talking or doing much else, and he seemed to be recovering from a loss of breath when he saw the room. Apparently he hadn't expected her to have converted the room so quickly.
"What the - ?" he said, and she noted that he seemed utterly bewildered and shocked, which Hermione found extremely amusing. Smiling broadly, she flicked her wand again and changed his robes to a wonderful shade of red.
Unfortunately, this move seemed to bring him back to his senses and he lunged for her as he whipped out his wand. He muttered something and flicked his wand and she noticed that her hair was now emerald green. In order to pay him back, she turned his silvery-blonde hair red.
"I will not be a Weasley." He spat at her and he flicked his wand in retaliation. It took her a few seconds to see what he had done, but she now caught sight of her robes, which were silver with emerald green snakes throughout the pattern.
Narrowing her eyes, she flicked her wand and muttered like mad, and when she next looked up, Malfoy's eyes were hot pink, and she was sure that he didn't know what she had done to him, because he was looking around himself, trying to see what was wrong now.
Throughout this whole display of magic, they had forgotten Pansy Parkinson had been there, and they didn't notice when she left the room. Both of them were still trying to hex each other.
"You're right," Hermione said a few minutes after the initial spells. "You can't be a Weasley, they're nice." She said and Malfoy narrowed his eyes at her and muttered another spell. Whatever the spell was, she didn't know, but it apparently didn't do what it was supposed to do, because she LIKED what it did.
Her hair, which was not totally under control, was now straight and hanging down her back. She took some of it and twirled it around her finger. It would have been perfect had it not been emerald green.
She turned back to Malfoy and waved her wand in a figure eight and prodded the air with it. A jet of yellow light made its way over to him, and when it connected with him, his pants turned to a skirt.
Seething with anger, he waved his wand and Hermione noticed that he had made her feet grow to the size of flippers. She was extremely angry now, because he had ruined her slippers, and she flicked her wand at him again.
His hair was now curly and fluffy, so that it was like a Shirley Temple hair do, and she quite liked it - because it wasn't on her.
And then, remembering how he had teased her in earlier years, she directed this spell at his teeth. The two front teeth on the top were growing at an alarming rate. She stopped them from growing when they reached his chin.
Smiling with satisfaction, she whipped around and looked at herself in the mirror. Considering what he could have done, she didn't suppose she looked too bad. It could have been much worse, and she liked the fact that she had straight hair, and the green wasn't too bad, other than the fact that it was green.
She turned and was about to hex Malfoy again when she heard the door open, and she saw the last person she wanted to see, standing at the doorway. Professor McGonagall had come, obviously that was why Pansy had left, and with one wave of her wand, Professor McGonagall cast a spell that returned the room to totally boringness, and Hermione wondered why she didn't change her back to her normal state. Quite the reverse happened.
Professor McGonagall muttered something that Hermione was sure wasn't a counter spell, and, with a horrible pang, realized that she knew what that spell was. Professor McGonagall had just made the alterations that they had made on each other permanent.
"Professor," Hermione tried to protest, but Professor McGonagall held up a hand to stop all of the explanations that were bound to be coming out of their mouths. Professor McGonagall looked quite angry, and Hermione stopped talking at once, and she was sure that Malfoy wouldn't be doing a lot of talking in the near future - he couldn't talk through his teeth.
"I would have expected better of you two, especially since you are prefects. What kind of an example are you trying to set for our younger students?" Hermione didn't answer, and, happily realized that Malfoy couldn't.
"These alterations are permanent until you two can get along." With that, Professor McGonagall swept out of the room, and left Hermione, Malfoy, and Pansy in the room.
Hermione and Malfoy rounded on Pansy. If it hadn't been for her, neither of them would be stuck looking how they did.
"I'm going to hex you into the next universe, Parkinson." Hermione said, her wand pointing near Pansy's eyes, and Pansy stared at the wand nervously, as though expecting pain at any time.
Malfoy grabbed her arm and threw her toward the other end of the room. Hermione watched as he said something to her, and each time, Pansy's eyes seemed to get wider with fear, until she looked like someone had glued her eyes open.
Hermione didn't know what Malfoy was saying, but if it instilled this much fear in Pansy, it was worth it.
At this point, another realization dawned on Hermione.
They were going to have to go to classes looking like this. She was sure that this was going to be a permanent look of her, because she was never, in a million years, going to be nice to MALFOY, no matter what. It didn't matter that Professor McGonagall wanted her to. For the first time, Hermione disregarded what a teacher said altogether. She was never going to get along with Draco Malfoy.
Sighing, she looked in the mirror, trying to decide what she could do about her appearance.