DISCLAIMER: ONCE AGAIN! I am required by the laws of fan fiction to say that I do not own Harry Potter. (What do they know? jk! jk! jk!)
Author's Note: I am reposting the first five chapters after doing some major revising in parts to try to make it a bit closer to canon. I hope you enjoy the new version of "A Year to Remember" (and if anyone can think of a better title, please tell me :-)
Chapter 5: The Beginning of Operation GT and, Perhaps, the End of a Friendship
"I hate him! He is a stupid, idiotic, discriminatory I-don't-know-what!" Elizabeth yelled, back in the common room.
"Git?" Ron offered.
"Yes! He's a stupid, idiotic, discriminatory GIT! What's a git? Oh well, I don't care as long as it's an insult," she roared as Ron began to open his mouth to explain the meaning of 'git', "I'd kill him but I think you'd get expelled for killing a teacher, wouldn't you?"
"I think you would," Hermione agreed, smiling a bit, "I do agree slightly on the git part of that whole thing. I mean an essay on the very first day of classes! That is a bit much."
"Who cares about a stupid essay?" Hermione looked appalled when Elizabeth said this, "He gave me detention! When Malfoy attacked me first too! He is such a favourer! And stupid, idiotic, discriminatory Malfoy-git is his favourite!"
"Elizabeth, calm down!"
"I will not calm down Harry! I was just given detention for something I didn't do, well I did do it but it was Malfoy's fault, and I lost ten points from Gryffindor! Don't I have an excuse to be in a bad mood?"
"Yeah, but you don't have to yell the whole time. I think you're scaring the first years over there."
"Ooops! Sorry little first years!" Elizabeth yelled across the common room, waving at them, scaring them even more. "Hey I'm really hungry. Is it almost time for supper?"
"It's still fifteen minutes away," Hermione said, "I hope you can wait until then."
It turned out Elizabeth could wait although her stomach was growling terribly by the time the food appeared on the tables. After supper she and Harry hurried up to their dormitories to change out of their school clothes before their important meeting. Elizabeth had told Lavender and Parvati during Herbology and Ginny during supper. They all said that they would be there and were extremely curious what it was about. Elizabeth hurried down the stairs and back to the common room to meet Harry.
They were just about to leave when Ron said, "Where are you two going?"
"Ron, we're going to the library to work on our Potions essays," Elizabeth explained.
"Yeah, that's what you want everybody to think!"
"Ron, why don't do the world a favour and stop being a stupid idiot."
"Ouch! That hurt."
"Maybe you should go to the kitchen, Ron," Harry said.
"Why would I go to the kitchen?"
"To get some ice for that burn!" Harry replied as he and Elizabeth left the common room, laughing.
"That was great, Harry."
"Really?"
"No, not really. Now where are we going?"
Harry stuck his tongue out at her and then said, "It's called the Room of Requirement."
"And why are we going there?"
"Because that's where we're having our meeting."
"I know that! But why are we meeting there?"
"Because it will have everything we need."
"And where is it?"
"On the seventh floor across from the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy being clubbed by his ballet-dancing trolls."
"I've been by there with Hermione…I think. I don't remember any doors."
"That's because it's not always there. You've got to walk by it three times, thinking of what you want the room for and then the door appears."
"That has got to be the coolest and/or weirdest thing ever!"
"Yeah. It is." They kept walking until they reached the tapestry. "Well, here we are," Harry announced, "Think of what we want the room for."
"Okay. We want a room where Ron and Hermione won't find us. It has to have places to sit and one of those easel-with-paper-attached-thingies so we can write stuff on it, and…"
As Elizabeth turned to walk past the fourth time, thinking Harry must have got this wrong, a door appeared. Harry held it open for her and she walked into the room.
It was perfectly what she wanted. There was comfy looking pillows for everyone to sit on, the easel she had thought of, a stick for pointing at stuff on the easel, and even a rolly chair, which Elizabeth quickly claimed and adjusted so she could write stuff on the easel and sit down at the same time.
She grabbed a black marker and quickly wrote, "OPERATION G.R.A.H.T."
"Harry?"
"Yeah?"
"Give me an adjective starting with G."
"Why?"
"Don't ask! Just give me an adjective!"
"Okay, umm… how about green?"
"Great! Now I need a noun starting with R."
"Rollercoasters!"
"Okay! A verb starting with A."
"Hmmm… let me think… attack!"
"Yeah, a noun, no, an adjective starting with H."
"Hot!"
"And lastly, I need a noun starting with T."
"Towels."
"Towels?"
"Yes, towels."
"Well, welcome to Operation Green Rollercoasters Attack Hot Towels! Of course that's just the codename," Elizabeth said, as she finished writing 'owels' underneath the T.
"Yeah, well it's code-ish for sure."
"You came up with it!"
"What's the real name anyways?"
"Operation Get Ron and Hermione Together."
"Oh, it's like an acronym thing."
"Yeah! But we can call it Operation Green Towels (or Get Together) for short!"
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"Okay guys," Elizabeth announced as soon as Neville (the last person) arrived, "You're likely wondering why you're here. You are here to participate in a secret operation. Welcome to Operation Green Towels, also known as Operation G.T., or Operation Get Together!"
"What about the rollercoaster part?" Harry interrupted.
"I decided to get rid of that part. Anyways…"
"Umm…why are we here?" Neville asked, just before he tripped over a pillow and did a nose dive into the floor.
"I was just about to say that if you people would let me talk! Today after Transfiguration you guys might have noticed, except for Ginny of course, that Hermione completely snapped at Ron. After talking to her at break she admitted that she was madly in love with him."
Everyone stared at her, mouths open, even Harry.
"Okay she didn't say that exactly. She said she liked him and was afraid to do anything about it because she doesn't think he likes her, even though he so obviously does. When I told Harry this in Divination, I confirmed his suspicions that Hermione had a crush on Ron and he confirmed mine that Ron liked Hermione, so we decided that since neither one of them was planning on making a move anytime soon, we should give them a push in the right direction."
"So Operation Green Towels means we get to play matchmaker?" Lavender asked, looking mischievous.
"Exactly!" Elizabeth answered, "Now we just have to plan our operation. We need something original. If we lock them in a closet together, they're going to realize someone's trying to set them up. But what can we do?"
"We could send them anonymous love letters from each other!" Dean suggested.
"Or we could just make them spend a whole lot of time together alone," Seamus added, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.
"Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!" Parvati said excitedly, "There was this article in Teen Witch last month about how to set up two people who obviously like each other without them realizing! I can't really remember the details now though. I can bring it to our next meeting and we can look at it for ideas!"
"Great idea, Parvati! That means we can't really do much else tonight, so I guess we should schedule our next meeting. How about tomorrow night?" Elizabeth suggested.
"We can't," Harry said, "Quidditch tryouts are tomorrow. Katie wants the whole team there, so I've got to go to that. She wants to see you what you can do too, Elizabeth. I mean, you're pretty much guaranteed to be on the team but officially she needs to see you play before she can sign the papers."
"You're trying out for the Quidditch team?" Neville asked.
"Yep, you're looking at Gryffindor's new reserve seeker, hope-!" Elizabeth said eagerly then stopped, "Oh no! I have my detention tomorrow night with Snape! I hate him even more now! Anyways, can everybody get here the night after tomorrow night?"
"Nope," Ginny said, "I promised my friend Janine I'd go over some of last year's Arithmancy with her that night."
"How about the next night?"
There was a chorus of yes's from the surrounding people. Soon everyone had left except Harry and Elizabeth.
"Harry?"
"Yeah?"
"What am I going to do about the Quidditch tryouts? I obviously can't go tomorrow night."
"Don't worry. When I talked to Katie earlier she seemed really excited to have a reserve seeker, so I'm sure she'll arrange something if we talk to her."
"Good! Oh no!"
"What's wrong?"
"You do realize that we should've got Ginny or someone to wait for us? Now Ron will think we really were sneaking off to 'be alone'."
"Oh yeah. Well, too late now!" Harry said, not sounding concerned at all.
"I appreciate your concern," Elizabeth said sarcastically, "What if he tells my parents?"
"They'll most likely laugh their heads off at him."
"You know what?"
"What?"
"I think you're right."
"Of course I am," Harry said, earning himself a punch in the arm.
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Luckily Ron wasn't in the common room when the pair returned. As they sat down, an older girl with blonde hair came over.
"Harry, can I talk to you about the tryouts tomorrow?" said the girl.
"Oh sure, Katie! By the way, this is Elizabeth, the seeker I was telling you about. Liz, this is Katie," Harry introduced.
"Hi," Elizabeth said, "I'm really, really sorry but I can't make it tomorrow night."
"Shoot!" Katie exclaimed, "Ummm, how about you come to our first practice, and I can make my 'decision' then. How come you can't come?"
"Well, I sort of cast a semi-permanent silencing charm on Draco Malfoy, and Snape gave me detention even though he didn't see me do it."
"Oh! So you're the one who did that! Awesome!"
"Yeah, except for the whole got-detention-going-to-miss-Quidditch-tryouts part!"
"I suppose you're right about that. Anyways, Harry can tell you when our first practice is, and you can come then, okay?"
"Sounds great, see you then!"
"Right back at you! Anyways Harry, I want the team there at 7:15 just so we can get things ready before the tryouts start at 7:30. Is that okay with you?" Katie said.
"Yeah, that works," Harry replied.
"Okay, see you tomorrow then. Elizabeth, I'll see you at our first practice," Katie said, as she walked across the common room to her friends.
"I wonder where Ron and Hermione are," Harry said as they got out their potions homework.
"I don't know, but we better get some of this done before Ron gets back or he'll use our lack of finished homework as evidence that we were 'sneaking off'."
"Yeah, that's Ron for you. There's Hermione." Harry pointed over at the common room entrance.
"Hey Hermione! Over here!" Elizabeth called as she waved to get Hermione's attention.
"Where have you guys been?" she asked as she sat down.
"We were…" Harry stopped.
"In the library!" Elizabeth said quickly.
"Oh, I must have not seen you guys when I was there." Hermione looked like she was suspicious.
"Well we…were off in a corner. You know, so no one would bother us at all," Elizabeth said. Harry nodded in agreement. Hermione still looked slightly more suspicious of them but obviously decided to wait until later to ask Elizabeth.
"Do you know where Ron is?" Harry said, changing the subject, "He was here when we left, but he isn't now."
"No, I don't. He was working on his essay when I left for the library, but I haven't seen him since. I really need to find him though. I saw Professor McGonagall when I was in the library and she told me that we have our first prefects meeting tomorrow."
"Uh-oh, that's our Quidditch tryouts," Harry informed, "He can't go to the meeting and miss the tryouts."
"Harry, he's going to have to. As our first meeting of the year, it is one of the most important," Hermione objected, "Much more important than silly Quidditch tryouts. Why does he have to go anyways? He's already on the team."
"Hermione, who's going to guard the hoops when we have Chasers trying out? He is our only Keeper you know," Harry argued.
"Prefect duties come before Quidditch practices, Harry. If I were on the Quidditch team, I would go to the meeting not the tryouts."
"Yeah, well you're not on the team, Hermione," Harry retorted. The common room had gone dead quiet. Hermione and Harry never argued.
"You know what Hermione?" Harry continued, getting angrier, "Near the end of last year, Dumbledore told me something," Elizabeth saw Ron come through the door, "Dumbledore told me that I was his first choice for Gryffindor prefect, not Ron! He didn't give it to me because he thought I had too much responsibility already. I should have that badge…not Ron!"
"Thanks mate," Ron cut in, "You could've told me you were jealous, you know."
The whole common room was silent as Ron walked over to the stairs to the boys' dormitories.
"Smooth move, Harry," Elizabeth said sarcastically, as he and Hermione sat down, their own argument forgotten.
"I didn't mean to. It just sort of…happened," Harry sighed.
"Yeah, it just sort of happened," echoed Hermione, standing up again, "I'm going to go do my homework upstairs."
"See you later," Elizabeth called, as she left. She turned back to Harry, "So what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to finish my Potions."
"I meant about Ron! You're going to have to apologize, sooner or later"
"But…I don't want to."
"Trust me Harry, you'll want to before it's too late and your friendship's ruined for ever," Elizabeth said sadly, as she remembered an old friend of hers. "I'm going up to the dorm. See you in the morning, Harry."