Miss Moony would like to say that she doesn't own Harry Potter and that she had no help with this story from Miss Wormtail, Miss Padfoot or Miss Prongs, even though SkoosiePants did try to give her a few ideas.
Written for the Gryffindor/Slytherin ficathon at livejournal, for snapshotty. Blaise/Hermione, no clichés, no smut, and 3D characters.
Warnings for the fact that I've never written Blaise/Hermione before, so the story was a bit hard coming. Please don't laugh, however ridiculous it may be.
------- I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good -------
Echo
'Mr Zabini?' Madam Pomfrey said, sighing as he entered the Hospital Wing. 'What's wrong?'
'I've got a stomach ache, ma'am,' Blaise replied, and she nodded and bustled away, gesturing for him to take a seat on one of the beds.
He sat, and looked around, bored, his eyes lingering for a moment on the drawn curtains around one of the beds to his left. And then someone coughed.
Frowning, Blaise got up and wandered towards the dividing curtain. 'Who's there?' he asked.
Whoever it was coughed again, and then said, 'Hermione Granger,' in a rather miserable voice. 'Who're you?'
'Blaise Zabini,' he answered, and he took hold of one of the edges of the curtain and was about to pull it aside when she spoke again.
'Don't,' she said.
'Why not?'
'You'll laugh.'
He raised his eyebrows in surprise, wondering what had happened to her. 'What makes you think that?' he asked.
'Even Harry and Ron laughed, and you're a Slytherin, so you probably automatically hate me anyway.'
Surprised at her incredibly illogical answer, he promised her solemnly that he wouldn't laugh, and then drew aside the curtain. Of course, though, upon seeing her cat like face, he was hard pressed to stifle a snigger, and she sniffed, looking upset. 'I told you you'd laugh,' she said.
'Sorry,' he said, biting down on his lip, 'but it is very funny.' Granger scowled, and he quickly moved the conversation away from his apparent amusement, not wanting to upset her further. 'I suppose this explains why the Golden Trio has been the Golden Duet lately. Malfoy was thinking they'd ditched you.'
'I suppose he would think that,' she replied in a superior tone.
'Mr Zabini?' He looked behind him, and then said, 'I've got to go.'
She nodded. 'Goodbye.'
Pausing once before he drew the curtain again, he looked directly at Granger. 'I'll see you around.'
'I suppose,' she said, and then he was gone.
-------
Hermione Granger closed the book she had been reading with a contented sigh and a smile at the warm, fuzzy feeling that was rushing through her now that she'd finished her Charms project. 'Now to test it,' she said, almost to herself.
Just before the Christmas holidays had started, Professor Flitwick had asked if each of his students could do an independent study project, with practical work as well as theory if they would be staying at school. Hermione had chosen to further investigate a spell she'd seen mentioned in passing in one of the experimental charms books she'd been looking through at the time – a charm that enabled the caster to communicate with animals for a short amount of time.
Crookshanks, she hoped, would be in her dormitory, so she headed up from the library to Gryffindor tower with a grin on her face and a spring in her step, only to find that he'd wandered off again – her familiar seemed to be doing that a lot these days. Sighing, this time in frustration rather than contentment, she went back down to the common room to speak to Harry, working on a Defence Against the Dark Arts essay.
'Have you seen Crookshanks anywhere?' she asked when she'd drawn his attention away from his work, which wasn't hard.
He nodded, and then said, 'He's over there…' pointing at the fireplace, and then trailing off when he realised that the cat had obviously moved from his place in front of the fireplace. 'Maybe he went wandering the grounds again.'
I don't have time to search the grounds, Hermione thought impatiently, and was then struck by an idea: the spell supposedly worked best with felines, but any animal would do, really. 'Can I borrow Hedwig for a while?' she asked Harry.
He nodded distractedly. 'She's in the owlery – I think,' he said, and then went back to his essay, and Hermione slipped out of the portrait hole.
On her way up to the owlery, she saw a cat – small, black, short-furred and yellow-eyed, wearing an untagged blue collar. 'Hello,' she said, crouching down and offering her hand for the cat to sniff, which it did very daintily. 'What are you doing all the way up here?'
Naturally, the cat didn't answer, but then Hermione decided to cast her new spell. 'Anidico,' she chanted, and then greeted the cat – who had now begun to wash herself – again tentatively, hoping that it would work.
The cat stopped washing and stared into Hermione's eyes with an unnerving, unblinking gaze that reminded Hermione for a second of Luna Lovegood's, and then opened her mouth. Hermione, expecting to hear a yowl or a meow, was quite surprised when the words, You were speaking like a human a moment ago – how is it that you know out language?
'Oh, I've been working on a spell,' she answered after one giddy moment of realising that all her hard work had paid off, 'to help me communicate with animals.'
The cat gave her what seemed to be a very thoughtful look, and then turned her head away and resumed licking her back leg.
Hermione sat still for a moment and then addressed the cat once more. 'What's your name?' she asked.
The cat looked at her once again, opened her mouth, and then said something incomprehensible. But my human calls me Echo, she finished.
-------
When the Christmas holidays were over and it was time for the half-term, week-long break, and long after she'd given her talk in Charms about her project, Hermione came across Blaise Zabini in an otherwise empty hallway, peering into dark corners and looking anxious.
'What are you doing?' she asked, frowning and thinking of her duty as a prefect to report anyone looking suspicious, and he jumped about a foot into the air.
Spinning around to face her in alarm, he exclaimed, 'Don't sneak up on me like that!'
Hermione scowled. 'I asked you a question, Zabini,' she reminded him.
Glaring right back, he said, 'I don't see how my free time activities are any of your concern, Granger.'
'It is my duty as a prefect to report –' she began, but he cut her off. 'You're not going to start saying I was looking suspicious, were you?' he asked, looking fed up.
She opened her mouth and then snapped it shut again, changing her mind about what to say. 'You looked pretty suspicious from here,' she said.
Rolling his eyes, Blaise replied, 'I was looking for my cat. Black, yellow eyes, blue collar, quite small – you seen her?'
'Echo?' Hermione asked in surprise.
Blaise nodded, and then frowned. 'How do you know her name?' he asked suspiciously. 'I never told you. And it's not like she has a name-tag like the Muggles use, or anything.'
'Oh,' Hermione said, blushing. 'You remember my Charms presentation? -' He nodded, realisation beginning to dawn in his expression- 'Well, I met her on the way up to the owlery in the holidays, and she said "my human calls me Echo".' And Hermione quoted this complete with the hand gestures for quotation marks.
Blaise bit his lip, obviously not sure of what to say, and after a brief awkward silence, Hermione added worriedly, 'Do you need some help?'
Surprised, he met her eyes, and then nodded hesitantly. 'That would be nice,' he said.
-------
On the first day of the search, Hermione remembered Crookshanks' habit of wandering around the grounds, and so she took Blaise outside and introduced him to Hagrid, but the gameskeeper had seen neither head nor tail of Echo anywhere recently. So then they went to the Quidditch pitch, and let themselves into the changing rooms for each house, but Echo was nowhere to be seen. 'I hope she's not in the Forbidden Forest,' Hermione said, but Blaise told her that his familiar had more sense than that.
On the second day of the search, the two of them looked around all the classrooms, though neither of them held high hopes that she'd be in any of the rooms that either of them had used recently. They spent longest in the Muggle Studies classroom, searching for possible Echo-sized hiding places amongst all the Muggle equipment at the back of the room, but they didn't find her anywhere. 'I hope she didn't get transfigured into anything,' Blaise said when they finally got 'round to searching the Transfiguration room, and the two of them eyed the various goblets and pin cushions, though they didn't really believe that such an occurrence would've happened.
On the third and fourth days, Blaise and Hermione searched every single unused classroom from top to bottom, but there was no sign of Echo anywhere. 'Have you seen a small black cat with a blue collar anywhere, Professor?' Hermione asked Firenze when they bumped into him late one evening in the corridor outside his classroom, but he just gazed out of the window and gave his typical answer for everything; 'Mars is looking bright tonight.'
On day five, they went up to the Astronomy Tower, and though they bumped into no less than three snogging couples, all hidden from each other around the room, who looked at the pair of them with eyebrows raised and suggestive grins on their faces which made Blaise blush and drop Hermione's arm like it was a hot brand, there was no Echo to be seen, and Blaise soon had to rush off for Quidditch practice, so Hermione made her way back to Gryffindor Tower on her own.
On the sixth day of their search, Hermione asked Luna Lovegood to let them into the Ravenclaw common room under Harry's invisibility cloak which she'd borrowed. They poked around for a while, but even with Luna's assistance, they couldn't find Echo. Justin Finch-Flechley bumped into them afterwards, and Hermione made him agree to search his own common room, though she didn't even bother trying to get him to let her and Blaise in – she knew how that would end; with a report to Professor McGonagall about Gryffindors trying to get into Hufflepuff, and several lost points or a detention that she didn't need.
On the last day of half-term, Hermione let Blaise into the Gryffindor common room, and no one objected too vocally. They approached Harry, who was being beaten at chess by Ron, in front of the fireplace, and asked if they could borrow the Marauders' Map. Harry looked at them oddly, but agreed, and then abandoned his game temporarily and went up to the boys' dormitory to fetch it for them. When he came down again, they explained their situation, and he looked thoughtful. 'I could ask Dobby for you if you like,' he offered, and then at Ron's look, he added, 'when we've finished playing, of course.'
Hermione smiled and thanked him, and then she and Blaise left her two best friends to finish playing. Justin Finch-Flechley was easily tracked down with help from the Map, and when he saw them he gave a prompt report on the animals he'd found in the Hufflepuff common room and dormitories – there were no black cats among them.
When Hermione suggested searching the Hospital Wing half-heartedly after classes the next morning, Blaise chuckled, as if remembering something particularly amusing. 'This was where we first met, remember?' he asked when they'd managed to persuade Madam Pomfrey that neither of them were ill.
Hermione blushed furiously and then asked rhetorically, 'How could I forget?'
'If it makes it any better,' Blaise told her, 'you were a very pretty humanoid cat.'
She blushed again and punched his arm lightly. Grinning like a Cheshire cat, he leant over suddenly and kissed the corner of her mouth, and then he disappeared, knowing that Madam Pomfrey would have had a heart attack by now if Echo had been in her tidy Hospital Wing all this time.
Back in Gryffindor about an hour later, Harry admitted to Hermione that the night before, he'd forgotten to ask Dobby about Echo. Afterwards, he quickly hurried out of the portrait hole before Hermione had a chance to respond.
-------
The next morning, Hermione and Blaise ate breakfast together at the Gryffindor table. 'I know where she is,' Harry said, running in and joining them, and the two of them finished off their meals quickly and followed Harry down to the kitchens.
'I suppose she would be here,' Hermione said, mentally bashing herself for not thinking to look down here herself – cream, warmth and good food all in one place: of course Echo would come here. But the truth is, she'd come to think of the kitchen as a House Elf place to be, rather than a cat place.
'Kittens?' Blaise asked, gazing in adoration at his familiar as she lay in front of the fireplace, near where Winky's chair had been in fourth year, and at the various blacks, ginger tabbies and tortoiseshells surrounding Echo.
Hearing a yowl, Hermione turned around and then moved aside as a large ginger tabby walked past her and lay down behind Echo. 'So this is where you've been disappearing off to all term, Crookshanks,' she said in disbelief, and Blaise looked at her curiously. She told him, 'Crookshanks is my familiar, but he disappears often enough that I didn't really think too much of him wandering off this week.'
Sneaking an arm around her waist and pulling her close to him, Blaise nodded and then said playfully, 'What d'you say; we follow their example?'
She smacked him around the head, blushing furiously, and then said, 'Not quite yet, Zabini: We have NEWTs coming up soon.'
She planted a kiss on his cheek and then rested her head on his shoulder, and he grinned goofily, still holding her close.
Then, of course, Harry broke the silence by saying, rolling his eyes at their brief display of affection and pointing at the five-odd kittens, 'What are you going to call them?'