Disclaimer: wait a minute...nope, they still don't belong to me. DAMN HER AND HER OWNERSHIP OF HARRY POTTER!!!!! ([shake fist angrily at sky] Panther)
Don't worry about the panther thing – it's due to far too little sleep and far too much sugar and random cloud hallucinations and...in fact, I won't try to explain.
The Breaking of the Friendship
As there has been no mention of anyone actually attending class, it had better be included, just so everyone realises that this is a school, rather than an escapist fantasy. Potions seems rather appealing because then we can all delight in Harry's pain. Unless you like Harry (you are a sad, strange, little man, and I pity you), in which case you can feel righteous anger. It's all good.
"Double potions with Slytherin," Hermione sighed, dreamily as they walked towards the dungeons. Her hair was styled fashionably, which was the result of a lot of hair gel and two hours of Lavender's help before breakfast.
"Why is it that we seem to have double potions with Slytherin every year?" Ron asked sulkily, misinterpreting her sigh.
"Yeah," Harry mused, "it's almost like whoever arranges our scheduled deliberately does it to create a tense atmosphere."
Ron nervously poured potion down Harry's throat, glancing up occasionally, to make sure the tartan bagpipes weren't approaching. "Don't be silly Harry," he soothed, "no-one is deliberately making your life hell."
Hermione sighed dramatically again, annoyed that they hadn't noticed her earlier I-have-a-crush-on-Gregory-sigh. They should be questioning her, so she could blush and deny having a crush on anyone, not ignoring her! She would have stormed off, but she needed their support for when they approached Gregory – entered the dungeon – in case she fainted.
Once in Potions, they were told to pair up, as always. Hermione, as Ron and Harry were partners, and she couldn't possibly go with, say, Neville, was left alone. Snape sighed as he saw the obvious "tension-trap" set by the author, for he was going to have to split up the other obvious trio – Crabbe, Goyle and Malfoy – and put her, just to be as detrimental to her self-esteem as possible, with Malfoy.
Just so you know, this isn't some twisted display of his hidden affection for her. Did you know that the search finds 55 Hermione/Snape romances! Fifty-five! That's fifty-five people who have devoted time to figuring out a way to get Snape and Hermione to love each other. Malfoy/Hermione pairings, terrifying thought the prospect is, at least don't involve one person being over twice the age of the other!
In any case, the point is that Snape, for no other reason than because he's intrinsically sadistic and malicious, was planning on forcing Malfoy to be her partner. Hermione, however, did something most unexpected.
"I see Gregory is also partner-less, sir," she said, surprised by her own boldness. Snape, after taking a minute to realise to whom Gregory referred to (his and Vincent's first names were actually mentioned in the fourth book – we aren't just making it up), noticed that 'Gregory' was indeed distancing himself from 'Vincent'.
"Yes..." Snape said, staring in shock at Vincent, who was discussing the controversy about the pronunciation of controversy (ok, that isn't as funny written down, but even so), which he seemed to find terribly amusing.
"Yes, go with Goyle, uh, Gregory," he said, clearly quite rattled. Then, turning to the rest of the class, he snapped, "Instructions are on the board – get on with it!" He stormed out of the dungeon up to the staff room to have a quick fag. If the authors were doing this to Hermione – quite a popular character – then what would they do to him – the most despised teacher in the school?
For the purposes of assuring the American reader that Snape's actions were not at all suspect, I shall now correct a misinformed definition. 'Fag' means cigarette, so by 'having a fag' he is merely smoking. That misunderstanding was the cause of much embarrassment during a 'drugs awareness' discussion, when we lived in America. The word 'rubber' also has painful memories – in England, it means eraser, not condom. As you can imagine, the words "can I borrow someone's rubber – just in case" have quite a different meaning depending on which definition one interprets them with. And I was only seven...
After an hour, as Snape had not returned, everyone put a labelled sample of their potion on his desk, cleaned up and then filed outside. Such was the terror he instilled in them.
Hermione rushed over to Harry and Ron – "Guess what!" she squealed. Before they could answer, she continued, unfortunately for everyone's ears, at the same high pitch, "Gregory just asked me out!"
Ron cracked up into hysterics while Harry stared at her with morbid fascination. Hermione, choosing to interpret Ron's laughter as excitements, said, "I know – isn't it great? We're going on our first date this weekend."
There was an abrupt halt in Ron's laughter, before he resumed laughing again. Eventually, he had recovered enough to say, "You almost had me fooled there, Hermione." He has 'not' had a crush on her for the past seven years, after all – you can't expect him to take it well.
"What do you mean 'fooled'?" Hermione questioned sniffily. "Me and Gregory have something special." And she stormed off, leaving Ron staring after her. (Sorry about that – sentences shouldn't start with a conjunction. Now I feel bad; bad Bernard.)
Ron, faced by this betrayal from Hermione, did what he had been trying to do for quite some time – behave like a teenager. The moody behaviour, the sullen expression, the expression, the possibly fatal drug addiction...he had it all. What? If we told you outright whether it killed him or not, it would ruin all the suspense.
Ron had started on small stuff – magic mushrooms from the forest (well, he is a wizard). However, only a week after Hermione's announcement of her new relationship, he had already moved on to marijuana (more commonly known as cauldron).
Harry, bored of talking to Hermione about Gregory and of watching Ron consume vast quantities of cereal when he had the munchies, had nothing to do. This made him depressed.
Very depressed.
After all, he had always had something to do in the past: play Quidditch, do homework, solve a mystery, escape from yet another person who wanted to kill him... There was no Quidditch – Gryffindor had been disqualified after the match the precious day. Harry had, as it was a cold day and he was sure Ron wouldn't mind, offered Ron's thermos of tea to the whole team.
Honestly, how stupid (yet with noble intentions) can he get? Ron was on drugs, specifically magic mushroom, which are brewed into a tea, yet Harry thought it was normal tea? It did warm the team up, but it also made them think their opponents were riding dragons. They won, of course – who wouldn't fly faster, and therefore better, if they thought dragons were chasing them? Unfortunately, they were busted for taking performance enhancing drugs, so now, no more Quidditch.
As for homework, it was no fun without Hermione doing it for him, so he didn't bother. And the thing about the other two was he knew that either one or the other or both would eventually happen, but he had to wait until the climax. Or climaxes in the case of this fic, which, due to its enormous respect for accepted literary technique, does things like talk directly to the reader and have two climaxes.
As Harry sat in the common room, being depressed, a small and, because of her age, intrinsically annoying first-year approached him. "Remember that there are people worse off than you," she said, trying to comfort him.
It is widely known that people remind depressed people about this to cheer them up. What is not widely known is why this is meant to cheer them up.
Harry, not feeling in the mood to discuss the finer points of psychology, decided to just listen to the general populace and take her advice. In fact, he decided to go even further and not just remember those who are worse off, but actually visit her. Harry purposefully got up from his char, strode out of (or rather, ungainly scrambled through) the portrait hole and set off to visit Moaning Myrtle.
Unfortunately, he had forgotten which girls' toilets she lived, well, undead-ed, in. Or at least that's what he told the angry group of girls surrounding him like a lynch mob and chanting "Pervert!" The gullible fools believed him.
After that lucky escape, Harry decided that he might as well actually go and see Myrtle. He had nothing else to do and, besides, he might as well cover his tracks.
"Myrtle?" he called as he entered her bathroom.
"Yes, Harry?" she asked, floating gracefully towards him, a slight pink tinge in her cheeks. For a ghost, that's the equivalent of that full body blush that Peter does in the new version of Peter Pan. They don't have much blood, you see.
Harry, rather than unload all his problems on her, like he had been planning, suddenly noticed something about her – her glasses. He glanced at a mirror to confirm – yes, she was wearing exactly the same round glasses as him.
His stomach rode a unicycle before cart-wheeling through hoops of fire. What? It did back flips for Cho.
It was fate. Two people wouldn't just, by coincidence, actually choose to wear the geekiest glasses possibly available. And Harry Potter wasn't one to argue with fate. I mean, he clearly believes all that stuff, what with how he's actually worried about the prophecy.
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I'm sorry, that was the worst ending to a chapter ever. Let's try again:
Far away, in a dark underground lair, Lord Voldemort sat watching the proceedings on a large flat screen TV.
"Mwah hah hah hah hah!" he laughed, evil, dark, foreboding.
That's right – he had managed to obtain an illegal copy of Harry Potter 7, the movie, several years before it was even made.
What a truly evil man.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Just so you know, probably won't update for a while because:
1) Spinach is writing the next chapter, so that will take ages
2) Am going to summer school with the youth orchestra and then having a friend over for a few days
3) Grandmother has come down and I feel it is terribly antisocial to hide away writing rubbish about Harry Potter
Don't worry about the panther thing – it's due to far too little sleep and far too much sugar and random cloud hallucinations and...in fact, I won't try to explain.
The Breaking of the Friendship
As there has been no mention of anyone actually attending class, it had better be included, just so everyone realises that this is a school, rather than an escapist fantasy. Potions seems rather appealing because then we can all delight in Harry's pain. Unless you like Harry (you are a sad, strange, little man, and I pity you), in which case you can feel righteous anger. It's all good.
"Double potions with Slytherin," Hermione sighed, dreamily as they walked towards the dungeons. Her hair was styled fashionably, which was the result of a lot of hair gel and two hours of Lavender's help before breakfast.
"Why is it that we seem to have double potions with Slytherin every year?" Ron asked sulkily, misinterpreting her sigh.
"Yeah," Harry mused, "it's almost like whoever arranges our scheduled deliberately does it to create a tense atmosphere."
Ron nervously poured potion down Harry's throat, glancing up occasionally, to make sure the tartan bagpipes weren't approaching. "Don't be silly Harry," he soothed, "no-one is deliberately making your life hell."
Hermione sighed dramatically again, annoyed that they hadn't noticed her earlier I-have-a-crush-on-Gregory-sigh. They should be questioning her, so she could blush and deny having a crush on anyone, not ignoring her! She would have stormed off, but she needed their support for when they approached Gregory – entered the dungeon – in case she fainted.
Once in Potions, they were told to pair up, as always. Hermione, as Ron and Harry were partners, and she couldn't possibly go with, say, Neville, was left alone. Snape sighed as he saw the obvious "tension-trap" set by the author, for he was going to have to split up the other obvious trio – Crabbe, Goyle and Malfoy – and put her, just to be as detrimental to her self-esteem as possible, with Malfoy.
Just so you know, this isn't some twisted display of his hidden affection for her. Did you know that the search finds 55 Hermione/Snape romances! Fifty-five! That's fifty-five people who have devoted time to figuring out a way to get Snape and Hermione to love each other. Malfoy/Hermione pairings, terrifying thought the prospect is, at least don't involve one person being over twice the age of the other!
In any case, the point is that Snape, for no other reason than because he's intrinsically sadistic and malicious, was planning on forcing Malfoy to be her partner. Hermione, however, did something most unexpected.
"I see Gregory is also partner-less, sir," she said, surprised by her own boldness. Snape, after taking a minute to realise to whom Gregory referred to (his and Vincent's first names were actually mentioned in the fourth book – we aren't just making it up), noticed that 'Gregory' was indeed distancing himself from 'Vincent'.
"Yes..." Snape said, staring in shock at Vincent, who was discussing the controversy about the pronunciation of controversy (ok, that isn't as funny written down, but even so), which he seemed to find terribly amusing.
"Yes, go with Goyle, uh, Gregory," he said, clearly quite rattled. Then, turning to the rest of the class, he snapped, "Instructions are on the board – get on with it!" He stormed out of the dungeon up to the staff room to have a quick fag. If the authors were doing this to Hermione – quite a popular character – then what would they do to him – the most despised teacher in the school?
For the purposes of assuring the American reader that Snape's actions were not at all suspect, I shall now correct a misinformed definition. 'Fag' means cigarette, so by 'having a fag' he is merely smoking. That misunderstanding was the cause of much embarrassment during a 'drugs awareness' discussion, when we lived in America. The word 'rubber' also has painful memories – in England, it means eraser, not condom. As you can imagine, the words "can I borrow someone's rubber – just in case" have quite a different meaning depending on which definition one interprets them with. And I was only seven...
After an hour, as Snape had not returned, everyone put a labelled sample of their potion on his desk, cleaned up and then filed outside. Such was the terror he instilled in them.
Hermione rushed over to Harry and Ron – "Guess what!" she squealed. Before they could answer, she continued, unfortunately for everyone's ears, at the same high pitch, "Gregory just asked me out!"
Ron cracked up into hysterics while Harry stared at her with morbid fascination. Hermione, choosing to interpret Ron's laughter as excitements, said, "I know – isn't it great? We're going on our first date this weekend."
There was an abrupt halt in Ron's laughter, before he resumed laughing again. Eventually, he had recovered enough to say, "You almost had me fooled there, Hermione." He has 'not' had a crush on her for the past seven years, after all – you can't expect him to take it well.
"What do you mean 'fooled'?" Hermione questioned sniffily. "Me and Gregory have something special." And she stormed off, leaving Ron staring after her. (Sorry about that – sentences shouldn't start with a conjunction. Now I feel bad; bad Bernard.)
Ron, faced by this betrayal from Hermione, did what he had been trying to do for quite some time – behave like a teenager. The moody behaviour, the sullen expression, the expression, the possibly fatal drug addiction...he had it all. What? If we told you outright whether it killed him or not, it would ruin all the suspense.
Ron had started on small stuff – magic mushrooms from the forest (well, he is a wizard). However, only a week after Hermione's announcement of her new relationship, he had already moved on to marijuana (more commonly known as cauldron).
Harry, bored of talking to Hermione about Gregory and of watching Ron consume vast quantities of cereal when he had the munchies, had nothing to do. This made him depressed.
Very depressed.
After all, he had always had something to do in the past: play Quidditch, do homework, solve a mystery, escape from yet another person who wanted to kill him... There was no Quidditch – Gryffindor had been disqualified after the match the precious day. Harry had, as it was a cold day and he was sure Ron wouldn't mind, offered Ron's thermos of tea to the whole team.
Honestly, how stupid (yet with noble intentions) can he get? Ron was on drugs, specifically magic mushroom, which are brewed into a tea, yet Harry thought it was normal tea? It did warm the team up, but it also made them think their opponents were riding dragons. They won, of course – who wouldn't fly faster, and therefore better, if they thought dragons were chasing them? Unfortunately, they were busted for taking performance enhancing drugs, so now, no more Quidditch.
As for homework, it was no fun without Hermione doing it for him, so he didn't bother. And the thing about the other two was he knew that either one or the other or both would eventually happen, but he had to wait until the climax. Or climaxes in the case of this fic, which, due to its enormous respect for accepted literary technique, does things like talk directly to the reader and have two climaxes.
As Harry sat in the common room, being depressed, a small and, because of her age, intrinsically annoying first-year approached him. "Remember that there are people worse off than you," she said, trying to comfort him.
It is widely known that people remind depressed people about this to cheer them up. What is not widely known is why this is meant to cheer them up.
Harry, not feeling in the mood to discuss the finer points of psychology, decided to just listen to the general populace and take her advice. In fact, he decided to go even further and not just remember those who are worse off, but actually visit her. Harry purposefully got up from his char, strode out of (or rather, ungainly scrambled through) the portrait hole and set off to visit Moaning Myrtle.
Unfortunately, he had forgotten which girls' toilets she lived, well, undead-ed, in. Or at least that's what he told the angry group of girls surrounding him like a lynch mob and chanting "Pervert!" The gullible fools believed him.
After that lucky escape, Harry decided that he might as well actually go and see Myrtle. He had nothing else to do and, besides, he might as well cover his tracks.
"Myrtle?" he called as he entered her bathroom.
"Yes, Harry?" she asked, floating gracefully towards him, a slight pink tinge in her cheeks. For a ghost, that's the equivalent of that full body blush that Peter does in the new version of Peter Pan. They don't have much blood, you see.
Harry, rather than unload all his problems on her, like he had been planning, suddenly noticed something about her – her glasses. He glanced at a mirror to confirm – yes, she was wearing exactly the same round glasses as him.
His stomach rode a unicycle before cart-wheeling through hoops of fire. What? It did back flips for Cho.
It was fate. Two people wouldn't just, by coincidence, actually choose to wear the geekiest glasses possibly available. And Harry Potter wasn't one to argue with fate. I mean, he clearly believes all that stuff, what with how he's actually worried about the prophecy.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
I'm sorry, that was the worst ending to a chapter ever. Let's try again:
Far away, in a dark underground lair, Lord Voldemort sat watching the proceedings on a large flat screen TV.
"Mwah hah hah hah hah!" he laughed, evil, dark, foreboding.
That's right – he had managed to obtain an illegal copy of Harry Potter 7, the movie, several years before it was even made.
What a truly evil man.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Just so you know, probably won't update for a while because:
1) Spinach is writing the next chapter, so that will take ages
2) Am going to summer school with the youth orchestra and then having a friend over for a few days
3) Grandmother has come down and I feel it is terribly antisocial to hide away writing rubbish about Harry Potter