I know I haven't updated in about... FOREVER! But school is getting pretty demanding now days. But I promise I'll try to update at least once a week (probably on the weekends)!
Chapter Nine: Dirty Little Secret
The next morning, Hermione woke up early for a good start on the day. In fact, so early that she was able to look around her room for a bit. She hadn't taken notice of many things, but found something quite interesting sitting on her dresser. She didn't have anything as fancy as it at home. The closest thing to it was her portable C.D. player. So it wasn't much of a surprise to see Hermione bent over the large stereo atop her dresser with great interest.
She inspected the stereo, pressed a large round button and watched the lid rise up mechanically. Hopping over her bed and rummaging around her suitcase for a C.D., she found Move Along by The All-American Rejects.
The C.D. began to play…
Let me know that I've done wrong
When I've known this all along
I go around a time or two
Just to waste my time with you
"HERMIONE!" came a loud female voice from over the sound of the music. "OPEN UP!"
She turned the volume down a bit and scrambled over towards the door. But before she could open it, a flustered red head came bounding in, nearly hitting her in the face with her arms.
"Ginny? What are you doing?" she exclaimed.
"I," –breath-, "have to give you," –breath-, "this note."
Tell me all that you've thrown away
Find out games you don't wanna play
You are the only one that needs to know
She handed him a folded piece of parchment with her name in barely-readable writing across it.
"Whose it from?"
"Just read it, Hermione," Ginny said, once she had caught her breath.
I'll keep you my dirty little secret
(Dirty little secret)
Don't tell anyone or you'll be just another regret
(Just another regret, hope that you can keep it)
My dirty little secret
Hermione: meet me at the lake during the first break.
RonWho has to know
When we live such fragile lives
It's the best way we survive
I go around a time or two
Just to waste my time with you
"Wow. Very romantic,"
"Oh come on. Ron couldn't say or do anything romantic – much less write something romantic – if his life depended on it,"
"He could at least try,"
"I think he did."
Ginny walked across the room to her dresser where the music was playing softly from the stereo.
"Honestly… Ron can be so thick," she thought to herself.
Suddenly, Hermione felt as if her ears were about to burst.
"GINNY? WHAT DID YOU DO?"
"I JUST TURNED IT UP A BIT," she said innocently.
"A BIT?"
Tell me all that you've thrown away
Find out games you don't wanna play
You are the only one that needs to know
She ran over to Ginny, covering her ears with her hands and fumbled around for the button that turned down the volume. But Ginny had turned the volume up so loud that the stereo was stuck on 95.
Hermione felt around her drawers for her wand but it was nowhere. She tried her trunk. It wasn't there either.
"USE YOUR WAND TO TURN IT DOWN!"
"I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT!"
"GIN-"
"WHOA! IS THERE A PARTY GOING ON IN HERE?"
Blaise Zabini stood in the doorway to the bathroom, a smirk playing across his handsome face.
Before Hermione or Ginny could say something, Draco had followed Blaise into the room with his ears covered as well.
"BLAISE! GET BACK HERE I-"
I'll keep you my dirty little secret
(Dirty little secret)
Don't tell anyone or you'll be just another regret
(Just another regret, hope that you can keep it)
My dirty little secret
Draco bounded into the room after Blaise, nearly sliding across the floor and into the wall on the other side.
"COME TO JOIN THE PARTY, DRACO?" Blaise asked mockingly.
"THERE'S NO PARTY GOING ON IN HERE AND WE'RE TRYING TO TURN THE MUSIC DOWN!" shouted Hermione.
"BUT I LIKE THIS SONG!"
Then Blaise began to sing.
"Who has to know? The way she feels inside, those thoughts I can't deny. These sleeping dogs won't lie! And now I try to lie, it's eating me apart. Trace this life back!"
"SHUT UP BLAISE! YOU SING LIKE A SACK OF POTATOES!" Draco shouted to him, obviously amused to some degree.
I'll keep you my dirty little secret
(Dirty little secret)
Don't tell anyone or you'll be just another regret
(Just another regret)
Blaise ignored Draco's remark and walked across the room towards where Ginny stood next to the stereo, smiling.
"AND WHO MIGHT YOU BE MY DEAR?" he asked seductively.
Ginny giggled as he kissed her hand.
"THIS IS NOT THE PLACE OR THE TIME TO START SEDUCING MY BEST FRIEND!" Hermione shouted at Blaise.
"I AGREE!" said Draco.
Blaise rolled his eyes and let go of Ginny's hand.
"UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN."
He did a dramatic bow, winked at Ginny and left the room swiftly.
"YOU'VE GOT A PRETTY WEIRD FRIEND THERE,"
"SO I'VE NOTICED…"
I'll keep you my dirty little secret
(Dirty little secret)
Don't tell anyone or you'll be just another regret
(Just another regret, hope that you can keep it)
My dirty little secret
Dirty little secret
Dirty little secret
Draco turned to leave, but was stopped when Hermione tugged lightly on his wrist.
"Er…?"
She motioned over towards the stereo.
"Right."
Who has to know
Who has to know
With a flick of his wand, the music stopped and there was silence in the room once again.
"Thanks."
He exited the room and returned to his own to get ready for class.
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Potions had been a bore as usual. She spent the time scribbling down the notes that Ron and Harry would probably want to copy after class.
To Neville's relief, Snape decided on just notes for the class and that they wouldn't have to make any strange concoction that day.
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After class she had gone down to the lake to see Ron. The other students were busy either relaxing in their common rooms or outside enjoying the fall weather.
She couldn't see him, but his eyes followed her from the time she walked out onto the grounds.
He sat under a willow tree with Blaise who was blabbing on about who were the hottest girls in school this year.
But his thoughts left Blaise's conversation as envy shot through his veins. He laid eyes on Weasley. Hermione was walking towards him happily. Oh how he envied Ronald Weasley. He didn't envy who or what Ron was but his relationship to Hermione. She was his best friend.
He watched Weasley grab Hermione's hand, fighting the urge to stand up and walk over there.
He didn't know why he felt this way. It was a new feeling for him.
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"So… you wanted to talk with me?" Hermione asked Ron as they walked hand in hand along the shore of the lake.
"Yeah. Do you think Ginny would mind going with Harry to the Christmas Ball?" he asked nervously.
"Well, I don't know."
Ron looked at her curiously, trying to decipher if she was hiding something or not.
In fact, she was. She couldn't exactly tell Ron about Blaise Zabini, a Slytherin no less, had been flirting with his younger sister.
"Harry told me to ask you. Since you two are so close and all,"
"Oh…"
"I think Ginny would go with anyone to the ball… even Malfoy possibly…"
They walked in silence for another ten minutes. Hermione tried to strike up another conversation again but her attempt failed. She couldn't find anything to talk about with him. This usually wasn't a problem for her with anybody. Even when she was alone with Harry everything was normal. But she felt like she had to be on her toes at all times when with Ron.
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"-Sara is pretty hot too but… Draco, mate, what are you staring at?"
He grunted at Blaise's question and continued to stare at Hermione and Weasley.
"DRACO!" Blaise shouted at his friend. "You're screwing up your essay…"
Draco looked down and saw that he had been digging his quill into his wad of parchment. There was ink splattered all over the paper and he was surprised that he hadn't broken the quill in two.
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"Well… so how is it being in all those smart classes?"
"Malfoy's actually smarter then me probably."
There was silence.
"There's really nothing to talk about, Ron,"
"Yeah."
She dropped his hand and turned slightly to look out at the lake. Ron stared at her back and reached out to grab her hand again but she pulled away.
"Is there something wrong?"
"I just don't feel like holding your hand right now…"
"I'm sure you'd rather hold Malfoy's hand," he muttered under his breath.
"What was that?"
"You talk about him an awful lot now,"
"No I don't,"
"Is there something you're not telling me?"
"What's wrong with you, Ron? You're overreacting! Just because I was talking about Malfoy doesn't mean I like him like that!"
"But you're admitting you like him!"
"He wouldn't make a bad friend."
Ron stared at her and clenched his fists. It was like he was loosing her to Malfoy. She wasn't the same anymore. He could hardly even recall a time when she had fought back with him like this.
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He hadn't realized what he was doing until he was only a few yards away from them. He had jumped up and blocked Blaise's voice from his mind. He had seen them arguing and he had also seen Weasley clench his fists. Draco was sure that he was about to smack her in the face. But he had stopped himself just in time. If he had taken another couple of steps they would have seen him and that would probably just make the situation worse.
"DRACO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
Blaise's voice reached him from his seat under the tree.
"Just checking the weather for Quidditch practice…" He told him once he had returned.
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Hermione was so furious by now that she had simply decided to walk away from Ron. She stomped up the stairs and down the corridors in a fury until she had reached her common room. She decided to stay up there until her next class.
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Later that night, after his dinner had finished, he had snuck out with Blaise and they were now on their way to have a little fun with Filch.
Blaise had come up with the perfect prank. They were going to sneak into Filch's office and hang fake stunned Mrs. Norris look-a-likes around the room. It was simple procedure, really. Blaise had taken some of Mrs. Norris' hair and stole some polyjuice potion from Snape's cabinet along with several rats he found running around the castle corridors. (A/N: The book never really mentioned anything about animals being turned into other animals so I'm just guessing that there isn't something that could go horribly wrong with it) His plan was to mix the cat hair into the polyjuice potion and feed some to each of the rats so that they would all turn into Mrs. Norris. Then they'd simply stun and hang them up.
Blaise had snuck into Draco's dorm at midnight and once the clock had struck past ten, they leapt out the window and slid down a few roofs till they reached Filch's office window.
Blaise looked down at his watch: 12:19. Perfect.
"One more minute and Filch will start patrolling the library for sixty-eight minutes and twenty three seconds," Blaise whispered to Draco proudly as they waited upon the patch of roof above Filch's office.
"And how do you know this?" questioned Draco.
Blaise flashed him a rather large grin. "I snuck out of the dormitory for a couple of nights and followed him. Now I've got his whole schedule memorized! On Saturdays he patrols mostly around the second floor corridors and on Sundays, after he comes back from Hogsmeade with a bottle of Fire Whisky, he starts his usual rounds on-"
"For Pete's sake Blaise, if you spent as much time researching pranks as you do in school then you'd be even smarter then Granger!"
"Speaking of Miss Head Girl…"
"What about her-?"
"Shhh!" he hissed, "We've got to be quite its 12:20."
Blaise swung down from his seat and landed lightly on a short ledge of roof that stuck out from under the window. He peered into the dirty window and made sure the room was empty. Then he motioned for Draco to come down as well. With a few whispered spells, the window opened and the two crept into Filch's silent office.
"What do we do now?" Draco whispered to Blaise as he observed the small and dirty room.
He thought for a moment and reached into the sack they had brought with them. He took out the rats (they had cast a spell on them so they wouldn't make any noises) and the bottle of polyjuice potion with some of Mrs. Norris' hair in it.
He checked his watch once more.
"Right on time. It's 12:25 and by the time we've gotten all the rats turned into Mrs. Norris clones and stunned, it'll be about 12:30. Then we shall hang them all around the room (but not by the neck of course because that would kill them). Filch will get back here at about 1:20 and once he recovers from shock, he'll run to tell Dumbledore. That will take him about 10 minutes to get Dumbledore so we'll have to grab all the cat clones and once it is 1:30, they will turn back into rats and we can un-stun them and set them free. Perfect plan, eh?"
(A/N: Whoa… that didn't actually take much time to work it all out… maybe prank creating should become my passion! I'm kidding…)
"Do you have some kind of instruction manual that tells you all this?"
"I'm just naturally gifted at these things."
Evidently, Blaise's plan worked wonders and Filch ran, nearly screaming from his office, leaving Mrs. Norris looking like she had been petrified for the second time in her life.
Once Dumbledore had arrived at the scene of the crime, they had cleaned up their prank so well that Dumbledore had nearly thought Filch had finally gone crazy.
They let the rats go into the forest, not wanting them roaming the corridors for anyone's sake.
It was when Draco had helped Blaise sneak into the first floor boy's lavatory and he had dashed back down to his dorm in the dungeons that his thoughts went back to Hermione.
"What was Blaise trying to bring up when he mentioned her?" he thought to himself.
"Maybe he just wanted to talk about how hot he thinks Hermione and Ginny are," replied his inner voice.
"…Most likely."
He tried to push his thoughts of Hermione into the back of his mind but it made it nearly impossible when he found himself standing outside her bedroom window. Blaise had instructed him on how to get back to his own room by means of the Hogwarts roofs.
His curiosity got the best of him and he leaned forward, peering into the clean glass window. There she was, to the right of him, sleeping peacefully. He sighed to himself. She even looked beautiful when she slept. But these thoughts were forbidden for him to speak of aloud and the need burned inside of him like a raging fire. He would have to talk about it with Blaise if the subject came up again. There was no use avoiding it.
Ooof. That one was actually a bit longer than usual too! Hehe I tried to leave a cliffhanger but I've decided that it would just be easier if I'd give you guys a sneak peak of the next chapter!
By the way, the song I used was Dirty Little Secret by the All-American Rejects.
Chapter Ten Sneak Peak:
"MALFOY! LOOK WHAT YOU DID!" Hermione shouted at him, waving her arms around in the air.
"How many times do I have to tell you, HERMIONE? Call me Draco."
She rolled her eyes at him.
"Oh I'm sorry, Draco dear. I forgot," she said in a sweetinly mocking voice.
He smirked and stepped forward, leaning towards her slightly…