Ok!  Chapter 7!  It's short, I know, but there's a reason- the chapters will be shorter from now on, so I'll be able to dish them out more quickly.  Hopefully.  X_X

Anyways, I owe my undying gratitude to everyone reading this for being so patient.  I LOVE YOU ALL!!  *worships*  I am not worthy… ;_;  Thank you so much.

Chapter Seven

End of Day One

            Hermione gave a heartfelt groan, sinking tiredly to the ground.  Ron followed close behind, sighing as he leaned against the sun-warmed stones of the castle.  It had been a long, long day.

            "Well," Hermione said after a while, voice heavy with exhaustion, "I guess we made it."

            Ron snorted.  "I guess YOU made it, you mean.  All I did was trail behind you while you hacked those book pieces to… uhh… pieces."

            "AHH!!  Don't even talk to me about it!" Hermione wailed, burying her head in her hands.  "A- a while back, I t-think I saw the sixth edition of- of 'An Anthology of Rare Magical Antidotes!'  Ron, do you know how rare that book is??"

            She sounded as if her parents were being murdered.  Ron, rather alarmed, awkwardly patted her on the head, mumbling, "Um… there, there.  Don't be sad…"

            When Hermione had more or less composed herself, (though she still wouldn't look at the wall of thorns rearing up around them) Ron continued, "I wonder why they chose book spines, though.  If they're going to make thorns, why can't they just make normal ones?"

            "This is Snape's mind we're trying to decipher here, Ron.  He's twisted.  He's a book slaughterer!!"  She would have continued in this vein for quite a while, but Ron stopped her with a glare.  Struggling to compose herself, she dabbed at her eyes and continued (in a slightly choked voice), "But if there was a reason, it was probably to aggravate me ("Aggravate??" Ron interrupted here, "More like drive into a blinding rage…"  Hermione just talked over him.) into using up all my strength and emotional energy, so that we can't go into the tower right away.  I'm much too drained to do anything right now except collapse.  So whoever's in there is probably using this time to set up more traps, or feed the dragon, or something of the like."  

            "More like not feed the dragon," Ron shot back, "They'll want it to be nice and hungry when it faces us, won't they?"

            Hermione rolled her eyes.  "Ron, with a brother like Charlie you would THINK that you would know by now that dragons don't eat people."

            Ron blinked.  "… I knew that.  Really, I did!!"

            Hermione snorted, and they settled into a companionable silence for several minutes, watching the sky.  The dying sun glinted off Ron's fiery hair and cast a strange, orange glow on their faces.  A sudden thought crossed Ron's mind as he stared at a particularly fluffy cloud, and he turned towards Hermione, a frown creasing his forehead.

            "Speaking of future traps," he said slowly, "what else do you think this person has in store for us?  I mean, you never told me the rest of the story.  Only up to the dragon."

               Hermione, who had been picking idly at the grass, suddenly froze.  She glanced quickly at him, and then quickly back up at the sky, her face turning several interesting shades of magenta. 

            Ron started blankly at her, vainly attempting to decipher her actions.  He couldn't.  He sighed, muttering, "Girls."

            Luckily for him, Hermione didn't hear him.  Wrenching up an entire clump of grass, she hastily blurted out, "After the dragon's defeated in the real story, he… well, the prince, erm… he goes into the castle where he… where he… mind you, this is only the story we're talking about, maybe Snape adjusted it for us, I don't know, but this is what happens in the story, and I really don't th…"

            "HERMIONE!!!" Ron exploded, face flushing crimson with exasperation.  Leveling her with a glare, he barked, "What's wrong, for Agrippa's sake??  You never ramble like that, you're Hermione!  Just… just tell me what's going to happen!!"

            Ron was become more and more certain that he did not want to know what was going to happen, but hey, he had to find out sometime, didn't he?  Better sooner than later.

            Hermione sighed, her eyes losing the frenzied gleam they'd held before.  Sinking back into the wall, she stared dully at her shoes.  "I'm in love with Seamus and you're in love with Lavender."

            Ron stared at her.  He stared some more.  His brain was not processing this information. 

            After several seconds of gaping, his highly intelligent response was: "Wha?"

            "It's the fairytale, you see," Hermione said wearily, dropping her head back against the castle wall with a thunk.  "The prince finds the princess in the castle, and wakes her up with a kiss.  We are the princes.  They are the princesses."

            Ron's face turned deathly white.  He tried to speak, choked, and tried again.  "I have to kiss LAVENDER???" he howled, "I'm in denial about being in love with LAVENDER????"

            "Apparently," Hermione sighed.  She looked oddly depressed, her shoulders slack and mouth tense.  She glanced quickly at him and away again, eyes clouded.

            Ron, however, had flung himself into a full-fledged fit of hysteria.  "I don't LIKE Lavender!!  I am SURE that I don't like Lavender!!  I AM NOT IN DENIAL!!!  Snape is CRACKED!!  I am NOT KISSING LAVENDER!!!"

            "Good, keep on screaming like that, Ron.  If you're loud enough, maybe you'll wake them up, and then we wouldn't have to go through all the trouble."

            Ron suddenly stopped yelling, and blinked hopefully at her.  "Would that work?"

            "NO!" Hermione snapped, curling up in a ball and facing away from him.  "Now, Ron, if you don't mind, I'm going to sleep.  I want to have my wits about me when we face the dragon tomorrow.  Goodnight."

            Ron stared blankly at her back for several seconds, taken aback by her abrupt behavior.  Shaking his head, he sighed, and nestled back into the ground.  "'Night," he responded gloomily, staring up at the sky.  Before he drifted off, he glowered at the stars and added sullenly, "And I do not like Lavender."

~*~*~*~*~*~

            Night fell, leaving a school in utter chaos.  Snape snickered as he pranced around Dumbledore's empty office, irritating the portraits, who were trying to sleep.  They had snapped at him, telling him to shut up and go away, but they stopped once Snape revealed that he had a Sharpie, and he damned well knew how to use it. 

            Anyways.  As I was saying, Snape was happy.  No, ecstatic is more the word for it- he was practically brimming with sheer giddiness.  Everything was going swimmingly.  Well- Potter and that stubborn boy Draco had given him some problems, but that was to be expected from them.  He was quite certain he would have them swooning and pining for each other in no time.  (Did Malfoys pine? Snape wondered.  Well, they would once HE was done with them.  BWAHAHA!!!)

            Shrieking with delight (Snape was now receiving pointed death glares from the portraits), he skipped and twirled through the moon lit room, wings sparkling dimly.  He was going to transform Hogwarts into a pink sparkly paradise if it was the last thing he did.

            Because, hey.  Think about it.  Would Voldemort want to destroy the all-new glimmery gorgeousness of his Hogwarts? 

            No!  He wouldn't!  It would be too pretty!

            Snape was very proud of himself.  Patting himself on the back for his brilliant thinking, he bid a cheerful goodbye to the now murderous former headmasters, and slid down the revolving stairs.

            He would start tomorrow.

~*~*~*~*~

Fairytale Count:

            *None!  How depressing.