"So, have either of you seen the new Defense teacher?" Ron asked with a surprising amount of articulation, given that his mouth was entirely stuffed with roast beef. Men have no manners.
"Ron, honestly. Chew, and swallow. Then talk," I instructed before having the presence of mind to stop myself. I had inadvertently aged myself about sixty years with that remark. However, considering the boys' behavior during the past couple of hours, perhaps giving off a grandmotherly aura would be an effective deterrent to unwanted attentions.
Then again, ever since we'd left the train, Ron and Harry had been treating me very normally. I mean, I hardly thought that Ron would've eaten like a barnyard animal if he was still concerned with my femininity. Due to the several layers of cloth now covering my breasts, my friends seemed to have forgotten that they ever existed. Thank Merlin.
"Yes, mother," Ron replied with an amount of contempt that I could've easily predicted. It wasn't exactly difficult. It didn't often matter what I said to him, I would always get an edgy response.
"I heard that he…or she…isn't arriving until tomorrow, for whatever reason," Harry broke in loudly, giving us the Look that signaled that Ron and I were to end our bickering that instant or else experience the intensity of One-Volume-Only Harry.
For the only time I could ever remember, I truly did not care one bit about the new teacher. The only thing that I cared about at that moment was the announcement of Head Boy and Head Girl that would directly follow dinner. Not that there was a great load of doubt overwhelming me, or anything; I was aware of my position at the top of the class. I just would've liked to get the whole bother over with so I could relax. Knowing our Headmaster, there could easily be an upset. I remembered Harry's father, who hadn't been a prefect but had somehow secured the position of Head Boy.
I really could not fathom surviving the year knowing that someone inexcusably vapid, such as Lavender Brown, had stolen my most sought-after goal directly from beneath my summer-freckled nose.
"Students!" Dumbledore bellowed from the staff table, his voice cutting through the din of the Great Hall with the efficiency of a hot knife through butter. Everyone decided it would be a good idea to shut up right about then.
"This year, we have decided to wait until the Welcoming Feast to announce the Head Boy and Head Girl for the seventh-year class—"
I'll admit, I may have growled slightly as he said this. It really was unfair for him to up and change the normal procedure just for the hell of it. Even more unfair was the fact that he had changed it for the only year it would ever impact me.
"So, without even further ado…this year's Head Boy is Mr. Draco Malfoy, and Head Girl is Miss Hermione Granger."
Whew.
Wait.
WHAT!
My private moment of relief and my proud sense of accomplishment felt like they'd both been pricked with a pin. Trust stupid DRACO BLOODY MALFOY to deflate my moment of triumph!
For a moment I considered just not moving at all. I could always pretend that I'd forgotten my own name. Hermione who? Granger? Don't know her. And she's most definitely not me. No, sir.
Malfoy was named Head Boy. I'd heard it with my own ears. If someone had suggested to me yesterday that Draco Malfoy would get the most prestigious honor Hogwarts could give him, I would have laughed heartily in the informant's face.
But I couldn't deny that Dumbledore had just said the accursed words, and I had just heard them. The only possible explanation was that all of the laws of the universe had been changed approximately one minute ago. I actually convinced myself of this for a few blessed seconds, entirely expecting to crash up to the vaulted ceiling of the Great Hall, because surely the center of gravity was now up, not down…
"Hermione, he wants you to go to the front table," Harry informed me, breaking into my personal evaluation of physics with a nudge of his elbow.
I couldn't even muster a reply. I tried, but all that came out was a miserable sighing sound not unlike a rapidly deflating rubber tire. It was exceedingly difficult to even bring myself to my feet.
"Miss Granger?" Dumbledore called from the very front of the enormous room. Malfoy had already come up to stand beside the headmaster, who was peering over his glasses in the usual way, smiling as though I had something to be happy about. But, had he simply looked to his left, where he would've seen living proof that organisms do sometimes participate in reverse evolution, he may not have been beaming at me like that.
It may have been a residual effect from the news of my own appointment to greatness, but my mouth somehow twitched into a very unnatural smile. I felt like a piece of machinery as I made my way to the front of the Great Hall. Very lifelike, but a robot nonetheless. In dire need of oil, actually.
It felt like years before I finally reached Dumbledore, who shook my hand with a vigorousness I could not even begin to return.
Malfoy offered his hand to do the same.
Wait…what's wrong with this picture? I simply stared at him for about thirty seconds, trying to figure it out. Ah, yes. The part where Malfoy was acting chivalrous. See, it didn't compute in Automaton Hermione's motherboard. Draco Malfoy would not have recognized chivalry if it did a striptease and flipped him the bird.
I searched his face for a sign that this was not actually Draco Malfoy, but a very lifelike wax replica. His lips curled into a sneer before my very eyes. Nope, wax can't move.
I decided there was no acceptable excuse for not shaking his hand in front of the entire school and its staff, so I bit the bullet and very gingerly clasped his hand in mine. He tightened his fingers convulsively, and I fought not to show any outward sign of pain, or even of surprise. The idiot was trying to break my fingers.
In order to calm myself, I took a nice, deep breath. Unfortunately, said breath was taken in close proximity to Draco Malfoy. Meaning I got a noseful of that bloody cologne for the second time that day.
Mercifully, before I could get too lightheaded from the scent, Malfoy let go and stepped back. Dumbledore took this as an opportunity to clap a bony hand onto my shoulder, and apparently Draco's as well.
I was numbly aware of him informing the masses that Malfoy and I would be sharing our very own dormitory. I was already very far-gone down the road of sorrow by this point, so this terrible news only served to give me a splitting headache, due to the laughter and applause it generated.
Being Head Girl was shaping up to be incredible fun. So fun, in fact, that I really sort of wanted to die.
- - - -
"Ouch! What the hell did you do that for!" Malfoy snarled at me. It seemed I had "accidentally" knocked my trunk rather forcefully into the soft spot behind his knee as we approached our dormitory. Oh, I felt absolutely terrible about it, too.
"What the hell did you try and break my hand for?" I shot back, although I thought the answer was probably nothing more complicated that the fact that he hated me with every fiber of his being.
The Slytherin made a derisive, disgusted sort of sound and didn't answer. I figured as much.
"I'm sorry, Draco," I said sweetly, taking a new tactic. Perhaps if I called him by his first name, he would become so utterly aggravated with me that he wouldn't be able to bear my presence at all.
If only I were so lucky.
"What did you just call me, Mudblood?" he spat, turning around to assault me with a look of death…and, to my dismay, another soft draft of that accursed cologne.
Despite my knees promptly feeling a bit weakened, I hit upon a brilliant idea right about then. As he glared at me, obviously waiting for some sort of response, I pinched my nose delicately and blinked as though trying to clear my head. Which wasn't entirely an act, but of course, he couldn't know that.
"Draco! What'd you do, bathe in Eau de Dead Hippogriff?" I exclaimed in very false repulsion. I released my nose and instead waved my hand about in front of my face for a moment, as though trying in vain to dissipate a very unpleasant smell. In reality, I was secretly delighting in breathing in the steady aura of whatever the hell he was wearing.
His eyes flashed dangerously. "I don't wear cologne, Granger. Don't waste my time," he sneered, turning abruptly away from me and pulling his trunk down the hallway behind him with renewed vigor. Leaving me gaping after him like an idiot.
He doesn't wear cologne? Is it possible for a human being just to smell that damned good without any help? I was getting slightly dizzy thinking about it.
I managed to regain my composure, most likely due to the sudden absence of the scent that affected me very much.
"If you say so," I said airily, as I breezed past him, hitting my trunk against the side of his leg as I went. Of course, inside I was still reeling just a little bit, wondering what particular brand of evil went around smelling like bottled masculinity of its own accord.
The portrait that would have normally sealed off our own private little wing was opened to its fullest extent, so I didn't even have a chance to see what the painting looked like before I entered.
I walked into what was unmistakably the common area, for the simple reason that there was not a single shred of red or green visible anywhere.
Now, my bedroom was an entirely different story. Instinctively taking the left-hand hallway, I found myself facing a veritable fortress of red and gold. Red and gold area rugs sprawled grandly across the gleaming hardwood floor. Red and gold tapestries depicting crowned lions hung upon the high stone walls. Red drapes framed the windows, and golden ropes held them open to admit the shine of the full moon. A red bedspread fringed in gold covered a rather lush canopied bed. The canopy itself was, of course, heavy red velvet that dropped to the floor on all four sides, comfortably similar to my bed in the girls' dormitory.
As I said, nothing but red, red, and more red. With a little touch of gold, gold, and more gold. It was actually sort of ridiculous, but I figured it was much easier to deal with than the dragon living down the hall, so I decided not to complain.
Speaking of which, just then an irritated blond head poked into the room. "Dumbledore wants us in the common room," Malfoy said contemptuously. He paused, and took in the sheer Gryffindor quality of the room, his eyes narrowing. "Bloody hell," he muttered before ducking right back out.
The common room was quite nice, I had to admit. It had a large fireplace, which was already well on its way to warming the room, a sizeable, cushy-looking sofa in a warm toffee shade, and two equally inviting armchairs of the same color. A deep brown area rug covered most of the stone floor, and there was a low mahogany table placed just in front of the sofa, looking to be very convenient for use as a footrest.
I cast a quick glance down the opposite hallway to the Head Boy's bedroom, the door to which was hanging wide open, and noted that the decoration there was as obviously rooted in Slytherin as mine had been in Gryffindor.
"Just a few basic rules you both need to know," the headmaster began, appropriately drawing my attention back where it belonged. I walked further into the room and perched gingerly at the opposite end of the couch as Malfoy. I tried to ignore the disdainful look he was aiming at me, reminding myself that it would do no use to acknowledge it right in front of Dumbledore.
"You must be back here by ten o'clock every night. You will, like the other students, be confined to your dormitory after this time, although due to your duties as prefects, you may be required to patrol the hallways on certain nights. There will be a schedule for nighttime watch posted in the Great Hall tomorrow morning." He gave me an odd look that I distinctly felt indicated that he didn't really expect me to follow this rule, considering my past history. The expression was gone very quickly, and he regarded the both of us once again.
"Furthermore, I believe that if you look behind the portrait in Mr. Malfoy's bedroom, you will be quite delighted." Dumbledore gave us this mysterious smile, as though we should have had any clue what the hell he was going on about.
"Don't even think about it, Granger," Malfoy hissed at me out of the corner of his sneering little mouth.
"Like I want to go into your bedroom?" I replied, rolling my eyes. In truth, I was just the slightest bit curious. But I'd be damned if I would let that on to Ferret-Boy.
"You wouldn't be the first," he stated with a pompous smirk. Somehow I didn't doubt that. But that was entirely beside the point. The point was that this human ice cube had worked himself into believing that I would rather go to bed with him than eat a dead cat. When in fact, it was just the opposite.
"Also, please try your best not to kill each other. There are no other new rules for you." He handed us each a sheaf of parchment. "Here are your class schedules. Pleasant dreams."
I looked over the neat script written across my paper in perfect lines. It seemed my first class the next day was going to be Potions. Bloody perfect.
I heard the muffled clang of the portrait closing behind Dumbledore. Meaning that I was truly trapped with Draco Malfoy. I scanned the rest of my schedule, seeing that, according to a note at the bottom of the sheet, the password that would open our portrait was "Ever-Bashing Boomerang". Splendid.
"Well, I'm going to find out what the nutter was going on about," Malfoy sneered, getting up from the couch and walking away, as if he thought I would be content to just sit there.
"I'm coming, too," I informed him very matter-of-factly, hurrying after him and ignoring the evil glare with which he attempted to intimidate me.
Oops. Hadn't I just said that I wouldn't ever want to go into his room, or something like that? Oh, well, as Dumbledore once said, the wisest of us must sometimes eat our words…Onward!
I tried not to faint from the onslaught of bright green that greeted me as I crossed the threshold into his room. It was almost blinding, but somehow, I survived. We stepped up to a rather dusty painting of an elderly witch, who smiled toothlessly down at the both of us.
"Well, we'll be needing a password, I expect," I murmured, more thinking aloud than actually trying to converse with the new Head Boy.
Malfoy snorted. "No shit, Slytherin."
That irked me.
I grabbed him by the collar and tried very valiantly to haul him around, so that the stupid git was facing me. I was extraordinarily successful in my attempt to manhandle him, but he ended up turning around anyway, looking rather homicidal.
"Listen. We're going to have to come to a truce, or something, or we're going to end up killing each other."
"Granger, I wouldn't rule that out as a possibility just yet," he spat coldly. His eyes glinted with a malicious pleasure when he spoke again. "If I were you, I would never go to sleep."
Okay, I'll admit, that bit frightened me just in the slightest.
But I forgot all of that pesky shock when the painting in front of us slid very suddenly to the right, revealing a very dark crawlspace carved through the stone wall.
"But…what? We didn't even say the password," a stunned Malfoy protested feebly. I could already tell from the look of him that he wasn't too keen on hopping headfirst into the slimy little hole we had just discovered.
The withered crone in the portrait grinned toothily at us, or as toothily as was possible, given that she had only three very yellowed teeth. "Sleep, dearie. The password is 'sleep'." One of her wrinkled eyelids squeezed shut in a complete abomination of a wink. "Now, don't you forget it, handsome."
Eeeurgh.
Deciding to begin ignoring the old witch, I stepped forward and peered into the opening revealed by our inadvertent use of the word "sleep". It smelled very strongly of mildew, and the couple of feet into the passage that were sufficiently illuminated by the light in the bedroom looked unnervingly moist.
"Well, should we?" I turned and implored Malfoy. He looked rather grim at the prospect of soiling his new robes in the grimy crawlspace, but surprisingly enough, he gave absolutely no snide response. It seemed we were to temporarily lay aside our differences in light of this very intriguing, albeit slightly forbidding, discovery.
He sighed, and removed his robes to reveal the green-edged sweater vest and green-and-silver tie that were necessary staples of the Slytherin uniform. I supposed I'd been right about his wanting to keep his Madam Malkin's clean.
"Might as well."
The momentousness of this statement took a few seconds to register. It would appear that…
Draco Malfoy, spoiled pureblood snob and one of my archenemies since the age of eleven, had just agreed with me.
I concealed my shock rather well, I thought. I picked my jaw up off the floor and smiled warily at him. He gave me a "Don't push your luck" sort of look, so I turned right back around and crawled into the opening.
"Lumos," I murmured, raising my wand and hoping the sudden addition of light would not reveal any hidden nests of any sort.
I moved along enough so that Malfoy could get in behind me, and tried to ignore the little voice in the back of my head that commented on how perfect this area would be to hide my body, should my new dorm-mate decide to kill me.