"I don't believe it," Pansy muttered, staring at the wisps of dissipating smoke as yet another boggart imploded in the face of their laughter. Hermione wondered in an absent sort of way if Pansy was still having a hard time coming to terms with the boggarts, or if she was expressing astonishment that Neville had managed to destroy them himself without needing to be told how.
Neville shrugged, his round face a bit pink with pride. "It makes perfect sense, when you think about it."
Pansy rolled her eyes. "So I've been told."
Their group had swollen from three to nine as they made their way through the corridors of the dungeons, spreading the word. The mysterious new girls were not, after all, invincible. Once they were understood, they were really quite easy to destroy. Too easy, really. Anastasia Capricia Violet Sawney-Beane, Sable Onyx Nightwing Black, Emiliana Victoria Princessa Francesca Riddle, and Betsy Kline had all fallen with barely a fight, laughed away into nothingness. Hermione had never been the sort of person who was content with an easy solution. How had the boggarts gotten into Hogwarts in the first place? How had no one suspected them before? And why were the boys still acting strangely? These were questions that, as yet, had no answers. And she'd never been exactly fond of unanswered questions.
Ginny checked her watch. "Nearly eight o'clock," she said. "They'll all be heading for the Great Hall soon. If we want to rendezvous with the others, let them know what we've discovered, we should leg it."
"Brilliant," Susan said. "We'll go wipe out the bi-" She stopped abruptly, correcting herself mid-word. "The boggarts, and then go in and have breakfast. It'll all be over by lunch."
"Maybe not." There was an odd, tense note in Neville's voice; it silenced the rest of their little hunting party. For a moment, all was still. Then Hermione realized that she could hear footsteps approaching, and voices talking and laughing, coming up from the Slytherin common room. Two of the voices were distinctly masculine. One belong to Draco Malfoy. The other belonged to --
"Ron," Ginny breathed.
Pansy stepped close to Hermione. "Draco and Weasley aren't boggarts, Hermione," she murmured, her breath tickling Hermione's ear in a very uncomfortable way. "We can't just laugh them away."
"We can disarm them," Hermione replied, forcing herself to keep her composure. Though she would never have known it, her eyes strangely resembled McGonagall's at that moment. "Stun them if we have to. But we're not going to hurt our friends."
"Your funeral," Pansy said. Glancing to the side, Hermione realized that Pansy's fingers were twitching oddly. In fact, as she watched, she realized that the Slytherin girl was using Muggle sign language, repeating the same three letters over and over again. A -- S -- L?
Hermione held her arm out to the side, just within Pansy's visual range, and extended her thumb and pinky finger. Y. Yes, she could sign The voices were closer now, but she felt a little reassured. If they could talk to one another without their enemies understanding... Ron wouldn't know sign language, of course, and she doubted Malfoy would have bothered to educate himself in such an inferior mode of communication.
Still, her wand trembled slightly in her hand when Malfoy and Ron rounded the corner. Neither of them were the boys she'd gone to school with for so many years. Malfoy was dressed entirely in Muggle clothing - black leather pants with lacing up the side and a black tank top with skulls or something else on it. Hermione had seen a few people in this sort of outfit back at home over the summers, and she'd always found them a little bit laughable. It was harder to laugh at Ron. It was not as dramatic a change, but far more painful to see. Although he still wore his Hogwarts robes, the Gryffindor crest was no longer proudly emblazoned on the front. Now he wore the snake of Slytherin.
"What do you think you're doing down here, Granger?" Malfoy demanded, and the nastiness in his voice was somehow reassuring. Some things never changed.
Pansy's eyes narrowed, her gaze fixed not on Malfoy, but on Rebecca Astra Aspera Glorfindelia Black, Malfoy's new girlfriend. "Move, Draco," she said, "or we'll take you down with them."
Malfoy's face twitched. "It's over, Parkinson," he said, scowling. "I've found a love that's actually true, not some silly, shallow little b-b-" More twitching, and Hermione's eyebrow shot up. After a second or two, Malfoy recovered his composure, and finished what he had been saying. "A shallow little b-bint like you."
"Drakie-poo," Rebecca Black said, pouting. "You know I don't like it when you talk to the preps."
Ron took a step forward, and Ginny let out a low, hissing breath. Hermione could only imagine how difficult it must be for her to have to fight her own brother. "I'll handle this, Drake," he said, raising his wand. At first, Hermione thought he had a twitch like Draco's. Then her clever little brain engaged fully, and she realized that he was winking at her.
"Ron," she said, one hand holding her wand at the ready, the other just out of sight behind her back, signing furiously at Pansy. Wait. Wait. Ron no bad. Wait. "Ron, wait..."
"Aveda Ketosis!" he roared, and Hermione had to dive backwards to dodge a gout of anti-cellulite cream that poured from the tip of his wand.
Someone caught her - Pansy, it must have been - keeping her upright. "Ron, get down!" Hermione cried.
"Now!" Ginny shouted, and the rest was a blur of confusion. Ron, skidding face-first towards them through a puddle of lotion. Shouting, a barrage of hexes.
"Expelliarmus!"
"Stupefy!"
"Riddikulus!"
It was over before Pansy could set Hermione firmly on her feet once more. Draco lay crumpled on the floor, his wand several feet away. The Black sisters had dissipated into smoke. Dazed, Hermione put out her hand and helped pull Ron to his feet, struggling a little as he slipped in the anti-cellulite cream. His hair was plastered to his face, his skin slimy, and his robes smeared all down the front with the lotion, but he was grinning from ear-to-ear. Hermione stared at him for a moment, then flung her arms around him, standing on tiptoe to pull him down to her level. It didn't matter that she was now thoroughly coated in anti-cellulite cream herself. All that mattered was that Ron was finally back to normal. There was an awkward pause when she finally let him go. "Aveda Ketosis?" she repeated, feeling a ridiculous smile spreading across her face.
He shrugged, wiping his face with his sleeve. It only served to spread the mess, not to clean it. "You're top of every class you're in, Hermione, and it never once occurred to you that none of the boggarts could cast a spell without getting the words all wrong? Honestly, I think you're slipping."
Hermione found herself at a loss for words. It wasn't that he was pointing out one of her mistakes for a change; it had just been so long since he teased her that she had nearly forgotten what it was like. A strange rush of emotion swept over her, and she shoved it down, filed it away to be analyzed later.
Ginny stepped between them, grinning and shaking her head. "Scourgify," she muttered, tapping Ron on the nose with her wand, and the lotion vanished, leaving him as clean as he ever was. Another tap of her wand, and Hermione was tidy once more. "Don't suppose you want to tell us why you were acting such an idiot?" Ginny asked, her arms folded, her face set in an expression remarkably like her mother's.
Ron brushed his hair out of his eyes. "Long story short, I was shamming. But we'd better get out of here and get everyone together. I have a feeling we're going to need as much help as we can possibly get."