"Hermione," Ron hissed at the girl beside him, her head in a book and a fork darting out to her plate occasionally. Alerted by his tone, she glanced at him.

"What?"

"Pansy… she's coming over here."

"I'm sure she's not, Ron." She looked towards the Slytherin table, seeing Draco beside Blaise, who usually had Pansy beside him. But she wasn't there. Ron pointed towards the teachers table and Hermione followed his finger, seeing Pansy walking purposefully, looking towards them. Harry, who had overheard, looked towards Draco, who appeared to be involved in a less than interesting conversation with Blaise. Draco felt Harry's eyes on him and looked up, smiling when he saw Harry watching him.

"Oh Merlin. She *is* coming over here," Hermione said, puzzled, dragging Harry's attention back to Pansy.

"What do you think she wants?" Harry asked.

"I bet she wants to get out of the dare," Ron suggested coldly.

"It's a bit late for that…" said Hermione.

"Hermione?" Pansy said, slightly hesitantly, as she approached them. Hermione waited, not sure what to expect. Pansy gritted her teeth and, after checking that no one but Harry, Ron and Hermione were listening, she said, "I want to talk to you… about the dare."

"Sorry, Pansy, but there's no getting out of it now."

"Oh, I know. I just need some advice."

"Oh." Harry, Ron and Hermione shared a slightly confused, shocked look before Hermione continued. "Ok. Advice about what?"

"Well, we think we know what we're going to do, but well," she stopped, still not sure if she could trust them. But Draco had assured her they were trustworthy. "We need to brew a potion, but we can't get caught. It's fairly illegal. Do you know somewhere we could make it?"

"You've decided already?"

"Yeah. That's all we've been talking about." Pansy beamed. She was enjoying having something constructive, well in a way, to do with herself.

"I haven't even thought about ours." Hermione admitted.

"Don't worry, ours is still a bit patchy at the moment. I mean, it's still in the works, but we have it almost sorted out. You still have plenty of time. So do you know a place?"

"Moaning Myrtles bathroom on the third floor corridor. No one goes there."

"Oh, of course." she winked. "Thanks!"

"If we're being friendly, well done on thinking of something so quickly."

"Yeah, I knocked a few ideas around with the boys and then Crabbe had this stroke of pure genius. Should be quite amusing!"

"Crabbe?" Hermione blushed at her outburst and added in a whisper, "It was his idea?"

"Yeah. Wait till you see it, its going to be hilarious. Oh," she glanced over their heads. "Goyle's signalling me over. Better go. This better be about the dare and not trying to get me to sneak food out."

"Oh, alright," Hermione said, smiling sincerely now, but still quite bemused.

Hermione wondered whether Pansy had changed or if it was just that Hermione was noticing she wasn't as bad as she'd thought. The same thing happened when Draco started tagging along with Harry. An image of all of them, Crabbe and Goyle included, hanging out and chatting like friends made Hermione chuckle.

And yet, maybe…

Hermione decided Dumbledore was even smarter than she realised.

Goyle pulled a crumpled piece of parchment out of his pocket. He showed it to Pansy, who seized it and began reading. As she read she muttered to herself, occasionally pausing to turn her eyes ceiling-ward, as though she thought the answer were up there. She got a pencil from her bag and made some alterations.

"The potion doesn't last 22 hours. It last 12. Oh, I see, that's supposed to be a 1. I'll just make it look more like a 1. There."

"Sorry."

"It's ok. Oh, look. It's *powered* centipede, not sliced." She made some more changes, then read out more of it. "Hagrid becomes Dumbledore, who becomes McGonagall, who becomes Sprout, who becomes Trelawney. She becomes Hagrid. Flitwick becomes Snape and Snape becomes Flitwick."

"All right?"

"Sounds like it. We just have to brew the potion, pick a day, sneak into the kitchen and *ahem* modify their food." Crabbe licked his lips at the mere mention of the word.

"Hermione says we can brew it in the girls' bathroom on the third floor." The boys looked disgusted. "No one uses it, because of that awful Moaning Myrtle ghoul. No one will know about it except us."