Chapter Two-The Feast and The Beast
"Hermione…" Harry began.
Kaylee and Sarah, coming down from talking with Dumbledore, each grabbed one of Hermione's arms and steered her with them to some empty seats a few feet down, taking a seat on each side of her. Sarah leaned closer and said something that made the girl laugh, and Harry looked at them for a long time before dragging his gaze away.
"Where's Adelle?" Ron asked distractedly, scanning the hall.
"Dunno." Harry answered with a sigh, "Maybe…"
The sound of silver on glass interrupted them as Headmaster Dumbledore stepped up to his podium and spread his arms wide, taking in the whole hall.
"Welcome," his voice echoed off the rafters, "To another year at Hog…"
BANG!
The doors slammed open and crashed against the marble on either side, coming around to swing limply on their hinges. Silhouetted in the doorframe, black hair falling in front of her face, stood Adelle.
"Which part ofnot drawing attention to ourselves does she not seem to comprehend?" Sarah muttered to Kaylee, leaning around behind Hermione and speaking so quietly the other girl barely caught it.
"All of it." Kaylee muttered back.
Adelle just stood there, staring the whole hall down with her piercing blue eyes. All the girls turned away, but it seemed all the boys couldn't take their eyes off her. Finally she smirked and waltzed up to Dumbledore.
"Pompous little…" Sarah trailed off into incoherent mumbling.
"Somebody's a little full of herself." Kaylee agreed.
Hermione chuckled and nodded.
Still looking overly smug, Adelle strode over to the Slytherin table. All the boys in her path, in a continuous wave, followed her with their eyes, then their heads, then in an effort to keep looking at her leaned back and fell out of their seats and dropped onto the floor. Adelle herself slid into the seat just made empty by Draco Malfoy.
"What is she doing?" Hermione narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
"It looks like she's…tickling his chin." Sarah said, leaning around Hermione, "…Yup. Yeah she's definitely tickling his chin."
Dumbledore cleared his throat, an act which gave several people sore necks as they looked around wildly for Umbridge, and continued. "And we begin another year at Hogwarts. To our new students, welcome! To our returning students, welcome back!..."
"Now she's playing with his hair." Kaylee said, ignoring Dumbledore's speech.
Hermione literally spun around so fast that her back cracked.
"Holy Merlin it moves!" she exclaimed.
"Is…is….is that steamcoming out of that girl's ears?" Sarah stared, jaw dropped.
"Who? Pansy?" Hermione smirked, "I hope so. She really flirts with anything that moves doesn't she?"
"Adelle? No she's usually just attracted to bad boys." Kaylee remarked.
"But wasn't she flirting with me on the train?" Harry asked Sarah confusedly.
"First of all…why are you listening to our conversation? And second of all…Harry! You dog!"
Everyone nearby roared with laughter, except Harry who turned bright red and glared at Sarah.
"It's a bit unnerving that she flirted with me, and then my arch nemesis." He grumbled.
"I thought he was your foe." Ron said.
"No he's my arch nemesis."
"Since when?"
"Last week."
"What happened last week?"
"Well it all started with a particularly weird dream…"
The girls tuned them out.
"When are they going to realize how pointless this conversation is?" Kaylee asked Hermione.
"Somewhere in between the steak and the strawberry tarts."
The food appeared on the table then. Tantalizing chicken and steak, fluffy mashed potatoes, creamy gravy, moist peas, all topped off with cold pumpkin juice.
"So explain again why he went from foe to nemesis." Ron said around a bite of chicken.
"We already went through that." Harry sighed.
"Yeah but I wasn't listening."
Sarah, her plate laden with chicken, steak, and potatoes, stared incredulously at them from down the table.
"They're still talking about that?" Hermione asked.
"Oh boy." Kaylee said.
"Yeah I know, how can someone possibly talk about a dream for that long?" Sarah said, shaking her head.
"No not that," Kaylee rolled her eyes, "Now Adelle is smiling and flipping her hair."
"Why are you still watching them?" Sarah asked.
"It's fascinating," she answered, "it's like a black widow catching her pray."
"Nice simile," Hermione remarked.
"Thank you."
"And it's just as disgusting to watch." Sarah said dryly after swallowing a piece of steak.
"Do you think we'll find his corpse in the courtyard in the morning?" Hermione asked hopefully.
Sarah and Kaylee exchanged a significant glance.
"So he's your arch nemesis now?"
"Yeah."
"Now I get it."
"They're still talking about that?" all three girls asked, not quite in unison,as the boys remained locked in conversation.
"So if he's your arch nemesis what does that make Voldemort?"
"He's my adversary."
"Oh…what's the difference between an adversary and an arch nemesis?"
"My adversary keeps trying to off me."
This conversation had taken them, and the girls following them, right up to the Fat Lady.
"Password." The large woman asked regally.
Hermione, who had up until then completely forgotten that she was Head Girl, turned to Harry.
"Harry, you did tell everyone at the prefect meeting what the password is right?" she asked.
Harry, startled because this was the first time she had talked to him since the train, nodded and said to the impatiently waiting painting, "Subrepticio."
She nodded and swung open.
They all stepped into the common room and looked around. Harry, Ron, and Hermione all glad to be back, and the rest admiring the warm atmosphere that the fire and fellow Gryffindors gave off.
"The girls' dormitory is up that stair case," Hermione said and pointed to the stair case on the right of the common room. She pointed to the stair case in the other direction and said, "the boys' is up there."
They all put their stuff away in their dormitories and met back in the common room for a tour of the grounds.
With the Slytherins
As the Slytherins made their way to the dungeons Adelle walked to the front of the line to torment the first years.
"You know that there's a monster deep in the darkest part of this castle that will kill you if you look into it's eyes?" She asked in a whisper. The first year gasped in horror as Adelle described, in gory detail, how a basilisk ate it's prey. She went on and on about the different magical creatures and how they prefer to eat their first year meals.
When the young first year was nearly reduced to tears, she had felt satisfied and left with a, "Don't go near the second floor bathrooms," and "Remember, if you go swimming and somehow get past the lake monster, watch out for the mermaids and their spears, or they'll run you through!"
After the first year ran up the dormitory stairs sobbing there was an applaud coming from the other side of the room. "Bravo! Encore!" said Draco Malfoy as he crossed the room, smiling with delight.
"Well those brats can't grow up thinking that they're top dogs around here." She replied. "Someone's gotta' keep them in line."
"So true," replied Draco as he fell onto a sofa. "Loved the story about Umbridge and how she got torn apart by the centaurs in the Forbidden Forest. It's a classic, and nice touch adding how 'nice a lady' she was. Ha! You had that one going good."
"Yeah, I really liked that story when I first heard it too. Of course what's a revision if you don't put your own twists in it?"
Draco let out a laugh and sat up, "You are amazing." He walked over to the chair Adelle had sat in and bent down, locking her lips in a kiss. "See you tomorrow," He said with a broad grin.
He walked away and Adelle sat there completely dumfounded about what had just happened. What the… she thought Did he just…? Did I just…? Did WE just… She sat there in silence for a moment more than shook it off.Forget this, I'm going out. Adelle walked out of the Slytherin common room and was completely oblivious to that fact that she was about to have one of the worst nights of her life…
Back With Harry, Hermione, Kaylee, Sabrina, and Sarah
"The castle looks a lot smaller from the outside." Sabrina whined as they came to a stop.
"We're almost done, all that's left is the astronomy tower, the tallest point of the castle." Hermione said.
"Oh goody, first we get to walk a trillion miles now we get to climb to the tallest part of the castle." Sabrina replied sarcastically.
"Stop complaining Sabrina, you're the one that begged us to come." Sarah said, rather enjoying their long walk.
Sabrina grumbled some more as Harry and Kaylee finally caught up with the rest of the group, they had taken a minor detour to see the Quidditch Pitch.
"Hey!" Hermione greeted them.
"Hey Hermione." Harry said, "Ready for the astronomy tower?"
"I'll be right back, rest room break, anyone else need to go?" When everyone shook their heads Hermione said. "Well then you can go on without me, I don't want to hold you all up."
"Are you sure? This is one of your favorite parts of the castle." Harry said sadly.
"Don't worry, I won't miss it, you'll just get a head start." She smiled, turned, and walked away.
Harry stood there for a moment gazing at her as she walked away, still dying to know if she fancied him or not, but not wanting to bring up the subject again.
"Uh…Hello? Earth to Lover Boy!" Sarah called as she Kaylee and Sabrina started off toward the Astronomy Tower. "Come on!"
"Oh! Uh…Coming!" Harry said with one last glance at Hermione he ran after the others to finish the tour.
Hermione walked down the dark desolate halls towards the girls' lavatory. She laughed at the memory of her second year when she had accidentally mixed the hair of a cat in her Polyjuice Potion and turned herself into a two legged, talking, feline. Ron had burst a gut laughing, but Harry had worried about her. He had always been there for her and always would be, as he told her so many times.
When she was leaving the lavatory less than 5minutes later, she looked around realizing that it was her last year here at Hogwarts and after this she'd be a grown witch. Her eyes glossed over as she remember all of the adventures she'd been through with Harry and Ron. Everything from how they met on their first day of their first year, to their most recent encounter in the Common Room. They had gotten through everything together, homework, tests, the most boring of classes, Malfoy and his drones, attacks from Voldemort, Umbridge…the thought of the toad lady sent a chill down Hermione's spine.
The uncomfortable presence of someone, or something, snapped Hermione back to attention. She looked around, but saw nothing, however the feeling of being watched didn't lift from her one bit.
Something whizzed past her from behind.
Hermione spun on her heel as fast as she could in an attempt to catch whoever it was and give them detention for being out after hours, but there wasn't a soul to be seen.
Again something whizzed past her back, closer this time.
And once again she turned to see nothing.
"Who's there?" She called sounding confident despite her increasing pulse. "Show yourself now!"
Nothing happened.
"I demand whoever it is to come out this instant " She yelled, but it was no good, whoever it was, wasn't moving.
Hermione took out her wand and had it at the ready, prepared for any Slytherin who may try to be spooking her on her first night.
"Lumos." She said and in an instant the tip of her wand lit up giving her at least ten feet of vision before the corridor plunged into darkness again.
A giant beast with razor sharp teeth and blood red eyes suddenly leapt out of the darkness. With ears pointed like a bats and wings that spread out to have a span of at least fifteen feet, it lunged for Hermione.
Nothing could have prepared her for the horror that had just leapt at her from the shadows. She screamed as loud as she could, and tried to get out of the way, however, was too slow for the speed of this unbelievably huge creature, it sunk it's knife like claws into her shoulder and brought her down. Losing grip on it, her wand went flying, plunging them into darkness, leaving Hermione with nothing to look at but the two pools of bright blood red that were the monster's eyes…