Disclaimer: I only own Troth and the seagulls. :)
Author's Note: Thank you so much xPPx & patback247 for your highly encouraging reviews!
=Chapter 4: That Horrible Sinking Feeling...=
It was the blinking which first clued Hermione off.
Experimentally, she twitched her fingertips the tiniest bit. Nerves moved, muscles responded. She closed her eyes, felt the rise and fall of her chest, listened to her heartbeat. Yes. Oh yes. The Petrificus Totalus Body-Bind curse had worn off again. Brilliant, Hermione thought, feeling her excitement escalating.
Now if only I could warn the others before that nutjob Mr. Troth notices, perhaps we could all draw our wands- well, except Malfoy, and, and-
The thought of Malfoy reminded her that his ankle was still irritatingly tangled in her hair, tugging it sideways so that it stung, and there wasn't a thing she could do about it without attracting undue attention.
And for that matter, she concluded bleakly, there isn't a thing I can do about Troth either. I mean, I'm just a second year, and he's the self-proclaimed 'best friend' of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named... I don't stand a chance... well, perhaps if Harry, Ginny and I all try to cast a blinding hex on Troth at once, or Expelliarmus, or petrify him, and then run...
"Harry," Hermione whispered softly between her teeth, without moving her lips or head, "don't nooth, don't sleak, I hath a tlan." She rapidly realized that she couldn't pronounce the v's, m's, and p's without her lips, so it was a pretty shabby first attempt at ventriloquism.
After a few heartbeats, Hermione realized that the purry, grumbly vibrating sound was Harry snoring. Oh, only Harry would be asleep at a time like this... whenever this time is, Hermione added uneasily to herself.
Finally, she got bored of waiting for Harry to respond to her garbled whispers, so she nudged her elbow lightly into his ribs.
"Hmm- Oh yeah- yeah, I'm awake, Wood! Am I late for Quidditch practice?" Harry yapped out, sitting bolt upright onto his shaky elbows, and blinking dizzily behind his emerald specs.
Hermione cringed. There goes the plan, she thought sourly. Her very next thought was to draw her wand and shout, 'Petrificus totalus!' at Troth before he had the chance to petrify her again- but she only got as far as "Petrif-!" before the gold necklace she wore was yanked as tight as a garrote, cutting off her breath.
"Going to charm me, were you, smarty-skirts?" Troth hissed down smugly from above her head. "Charming. Just charming." He whipped out his wand.
Hermione writhed and twisted, gasped like a fish out of water, and desperately tried to wrestle her fingertips under the thin golden stranglecord.
But instead of repeating 'Petrificus Totalus!' four times over yet again, Troth just chewed on the end of his stolen wand thoughtfully for a moment, then stuck it behind his ear like a pencil. "Now lets see," Troth added, absentmindedly drumming his gloved fingertips one-by-one atop Hermione's head, as he held the gold chains bunched up tight in a fist in his other hand. "Death Valley? Nah, too overdone. The Congo, there's a thought! Nah. Ooh, I have it!"
Seizing the wand back out from behind his ear Troth touched the nib of it to the little pendant all their necklaces were strung through- that strange little trinket of concentric gold rings encircling a tiny hourglass. "Portus," Troth murmured.
The trinket began to glow a faint, phosphorescent blue- the telltale sign of a Portkey.
The next thing Hermione knew, she felt a lurching in her chest like she was being jolted backwards at the highest bend of a malfunctioning roller coaster. Wind and color pelted her eyes and her mind's eye from all directions, and suddenly-
-she was over her ears in saltwater.
As Hermione resurfaced through the briny, bubbly blueness with the others, she choked, gasped, and rubbed her hair and the water out of her eyes frantically, while also gripping her wand as tightly as she could without actually snapping it.
Through the water clogging her ears, she heard Troth's slightly distorted voice saying,
"Well, this isn't the Bermuda Triangle at all, is it? Botherment. Well kiddies, I was going to take you back to the time of the dinosaurs, Jurassic or Cretaceous period, you know, those eras featuring lots of big teeth and claws and fifty-foot carnivorous reptiles- but, I can't feel my fingers, and it has just dawned on me that I shall still have to get back to the future. So whenever this is shall have to suffice. Adios!"
With a glimmery grin, the drenched Deatheater unclasped the hourglass trinket from everyone's necklaces except his, and then gave the hourglass a twirl.
And just like that, he vanished, leaving four Hogwarts students stranded who-and-when-knew where.
"WHAT, was that all about?" Harry asked shakily.
But as Hermione opened her mouth to answer, it was suddenly filled with swishing water, as her neck was tugged downwards. Forcing her eyes open in the stinging, seaweed-speckled saltwater, Hermione saw that it was Malfoy who was dragging them down by their inter-looped necklaces- he was sinking like a millstone.
Thrusting her arms out in a wide butterfly stroke, Hermione grabbed hold of the blond boy's elbow, and kicked madly to propel herself up. As she neared the glittering, sunlit surface of the water, Malfoy slipped through her hands a bit, till she was just barely holding onto his wrist, and she again hoped her wand wouldn't snap under the pressure.
She resurfaced with a shuddering gasp. "Thanks for helping, Harry," she coughed sarcastically.
"I was trying to keep ahold of my glasses," Harry protested, as he fitted them firmly over his nose again, "and Ron's sister! she was sinking too! Hey, is he breathing?"
Turning her attention back to the blond snob, Hermione realized that his eyes were shut, and his neck lolled limply backwards in the water. "Oh, criminey," she muttered, then in a louder pitch, she asked, "Harry, d'you know the Heimlich?"
"The what?"
"Never mind."
Sticking her wand firmly up her sweater sleeve under her soggy robe, and twisting in her tangled necklace until she could position herself behind Malfoy, Hermione let his limp head drop backwards onto her shoulder, reached her arms down, and clasped her hands tightly together around Malfoy's slender waist, then thrust them hard up under Malfoy's ribs, towards his spine. The first try was a flop, since Hermione's fingers slipped, and she plunged nose-forward into the surf.
"Harry, hold my shoulders!" she ordered, once she had breath enough to order with. After Harry awkwardly grabbed her, she tried the Heimlich maneuver on Malfoy several more times, thinking, This would be ever so much easier with a chair. Not to mention dry ground. Finally giving up on the Heimlich, Hermione just one-handedly gripped Malfoy around the chest, and began pounding on his back as hard as she could- which wasn't nearly as hard as she wanted, due to the water's dampening drag.
Abruptly, Malfoy started coughing out frothy mouthfuls of seawater, and thrashing furiously. He looked funny with his hair all crazy- Hermione had never seen it as anything but perfectly slicked back, never a hair out of place. She'd speculated his hair might be held back with magic, but since it washed out in water, it had probably just been a very potent hairgel.
Reaching out and lightly snatching Malfoy's wrist again before he went under again, Hermione asked, "Are you okay?"
"Ugh, the mudblood's touching my skin!" he exclaimed in disoriented disgust, whirling around in the water to glare at her hand on his wrist.
"I just saved your skin!" Hermione retorted hotly.
"I'd rather drown," Malfoy retorted snidely.
"Fine!" Hermione growled, letting go of him irately.
"Hermione!" Harry exclaimed, but it was too late- they were all being dragged under by their necks again as Malfoy sank.
After some effort, they all resurfaced yet again- only this time, Harry was keeping Malfoy's head above-water by a fistful of Malfoy's soggy robe.
"Maybe we'd better ditch these," Harry said practically, wrenching his gold necklace off over his ears with his free hand.
"Gladly," Malfoy said, viciously yanking off his own pearl-studded chain.
Following suit, Hermione slipped her own gold necklace off over her wet hair, trying not to catch the tiny chain-links, tiny fossilized amber gems, triangular abalone shell chips, and old coins in her tangles. It was quite an attractive piece of jewelry, she saw, now that she actually looked at it- she especially liked the small scorpion trapped in the largest chunk of amber.
Ginny just stared emptily at the three empty necklaces connected to her necklace (which was a plain gold chain with a small gold crucifix), and then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she tugged them up out of the water, and looped them all around her own neck. Then she went back to placidly, vacantly backfloating, and staring up wide-eyed at the seafog-riddled, midmorning sky.
"Probably you can use every little ounce of cash you can get, eh Weasley?" Malfoy scoffed.
Hermione stared at him in disbelief. "You seriously want to do this? Now?" she scoffed back.
"Course, why not now?" Malfoy retorted, just before a five-foot wave crashed over all their heads.
"Well, for one," Hermione coughed primly, sloshing the water out of her eyes with the back of her hand again, "there's that glaringly obvious fact that we don't even know when now is!"
"Course we do," Malfoy retorted highhandedly, "at least those of us whom can afford calendars. Last night was Monday, it's morning now, ergo, it's Tuesday."
Groaning in exasperation, Hermione rolled her maple-brown eyes heavenward, and moaned, "Goodness, weren't you even listening these past seven hours?"
"Why should I have listened?" Malfoy snapped. "Half the time I couldn't hear a thing, and half the time that newsie was jabbering gibberish having not an iota to do with Astronomy, and half the time I was asleep!"
"Oh, honestly, you too?" Hermione moaned. "Oh, and, F.Y.I., nothing can be divided in half three ways," she added tartly.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Malfoy demanded.
"So, what did happen, Hermione?" Harry interrupted earnestly, looking desperate to know.
Well, she was desperate to tell.
"Alright then," Hermione began, "here it is in summary, and do actually listen."
Malfoy made a face at her, and silently mock-mouthed 'and do actually listen'.
Really, he's as annoying as Cornish pixies, Hermione thought sharply. Taking a shallow, steadying breath as she felt herself unbalancing in the waves, she said, "We have just been stranded in time by Riksamiren Troth, who-"
"Stranded in time for what?" Harry asked, tilting his nose up to keep his glasses from slipping off.
"Not in time for," Hermione explained carefully, "just in time. We have been transported backwards in time to an earlier date."
"But that's impossible, right?" Harry interrupted with a nervous little smirk. "I mean, that's just science fiction- like what you see on the telly, right?"
"Harry... you're a wizard," Hermione sighed impatiently. "Redefine 'possible'. Be a bit open-minded."
"She means be 'gullible', like her," Malfoy interrupted snootily.
"Now," Hermione continued to Harry, adamantly ignoring the silver-blond Harry was unfortunately keeping from sinking, "the method by which Troth relocated us in the timeline was-"
"Oh come now, he didn't even!" Malfoy interrupted again. "That lunatic newsie-"
"Riksamiren Troth," Hermione interrupted over him.
"-has trapped us in my parents' memories," Malfoy continued smoothly, totally ignoring her interruption.
"And, WHY would he do that, Malfoy?" Hermione sighed. "Why would anyone want to do that?"
"To torment me and humiliate me out of spiteful jealousy, obviously."
Hermione gave him a crooked-lipped smile. "This isn't all just about you, you know. It's about all of us. Look the thing is, Troth, is from the future- and sort of from the past too- oh, it's like this. Troth claims he was best friends with the Dark Lord,"
"Voldemort?" Harry interrupted in disbelief.
"No, some other Dark Lord," Malfoy sneered sarcastically, "and don't say his name!" he added, giving Harry a wet cuff on the ear.
Harry looked like he wanted to hit Malfoy back, but instead countered goadingly, "What name, Voldemort? Voldemort, Voldemort, VOLDEMORT!"
"Shut up!"
"Oh stop it, the two of you!" Hermione snapped. "Voldemort," she said, uncomfortably enunciating the syllables of the unnameable menace, "isn't even born yet."
"Yeah, if you're chump enough to believe some crackpot attention-grubbing newsie," Malfoy retorted. "He so wasn't qualified to teach astronomy..."
"Yes, Malfoy, I think we established that already," Hermione replied dryly. "Where was I even? Oh yes- so anyway, Troth and Voldemort went to Hogwarts together-"
"Hang on- how?" Harry put in. "Wouldn't Troth be like, seventy? He looked more twenty-ish."
"I was getting to that," Hermione replied patiently. "Troth was a troublemaker and got expelled- I think it had something to do with Voldemort... and, well, after that, they didn't get on for some reason- Troth wasn't very clear on that point, but from what I gather, it had something to do with needles and dolls and girls-"
"Yeah, girls can drive any bloke to psychopathic tendencies," Malfoy interrupted.
"Know a lot of girls then, do you Malfoy?" Harry taunted.
"More than you, I bet."
Gritting her teeth, Hermione stated, "And Voldemort-"
"Gettin' awfully comfy with his name, aren't you?" Malfoy scoffed.
"I've been interrupted nine times since I started explaining!" Hermione exclaimed loudly, starting to lose her temper. "Now may I get a word in edgewise, or shall I leave you all guessing as to why we're up to our necks and noses in seawater?"
"Go on," Harry prompted. "If he talks again, I'll plunge his head underwater."
"Try it, Potter," Malfoy interrupted menacingly, or at least as menacingly as he could with water sloshing up his nose and wet, cobwebby hair plastered all over his ears and glowering eyebrows, and his robe all bunched up at his throat from where Harry was grabbing it, keeping him afloat. "Just try-"
Harry grabbed a chunk of Malfoy's pasty-pale hair, and, true to word, plunged his head underwater, then yanked him back up. "Told you," Harry stated evenly.
As Malfoy sputtered and coughed, Hermione cleared her throat of kelp specks. "Basically," she said, "Troth betrayed Voldemort, Voldemort tried to kill Troth, so Troth went into hiding in some nook where he made time stand still for himself- keeping himself young and cut off from the rest of the time-receptive world- don't ask me how, he didn't say. Finally, Voldemort died, and it was safe for Troth to come out of hiding. But then, we came into the equation. Apparently, ten years from now- well, ten years from 1992- all four of us will discover Troth's secret lair just as he's about to make his bid for power, on account of the Dark Lord being dead, on account of Harry having killed him-"
"I kill Voldemort?" Harry exclaimed in surprise, forgetting to not interrupt.
"Yes... I think so... unless Troth was talking about when you were a baby, or was confused about the events of last year," Hermione speculated. "But, in any case, since we all end up as Aurors ten years from now- or- I mean then-"
"What's an Auror?" Harry interrupted yet again.
Malfoy broke out into a grating fit of laughter. "Ha, ha, he, ha, ha! He doesn't know what an Auror is! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, he, ha,"
Harry plunged Malfoy's head under again.
"Well- well now-" Malfoy coughed upon resurfacing, "-now I just won't tell you what an Auror is, and you can just go on being stupid!"
"Aurors are sort of the wizard police," Hermione sighed. There was still so much about the Wizarding World that Harry was blissfully unaware of... usually, only Ron and her were present when they were explaining common-knowledge type things to Harry, to avoid the embarrassment of dealing with people like, say, Malfoy. "So, being Aurors," she went on, "we'll be trying to arrest Troth and take him to Azkaban- the Wizarding World's most high-security prison," she added cautiously.
"Uh, yeah, Azkaban," Harry replied, sounding miffed and confused.
"Seriously?" Malfoy scoffed.
"Yes, Malfoy," Hermione snapped, "haven't you ever heard of Azkaban? I should think you'd be rather familiar with it, seeing as half your relatives call it home!"
"Oh yeah?" Malfoy sneered, "Well as for your relatives-"
"But- why were we trying to arrest Troth?" Harry asked loudly, quickly intervening. "I mean, yeah, he was Voldemort's chum once, but if he'd been missing all those years, how'd we even know he-"
"He had the mark of a Deatheater," Hermione replied shortly.
Reluctantly, Harry asked, "What's a Deatheater?"
"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" Malfoy cackled, pointing mockingly at Harry. "He, hee, ha, ha, ha, heh!" The Slytherin twit couldn't have been laughing harder if Harry had hit him with a Rictum Sempra curse. "Ha, ha-he ha, ha ha, heh, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, h-"
The last 'ha' was drowned out as Malfoy's mouth filled with saltwater- since he'd been slowly falling backwards as he pointed and laughed. His robe slipped out of Harry's grip, and he again started sinking like his bones were made of iron.
Irritably, Hermione plunged over and yanked Malfoy back up by his green-striped tie- but she accidentally unbalanced him and he fell too far forwards, banging his head into her shoulder.
Shoving her forcefully away, Malfoy snarled, "Stop, bloody, touching me, Mudblood! I don't care if you've got some vulgar salacious girlish fantasy about groping your filthy hands all over me- hands off!"
Hermione smacked his wet tie in his face. "Get over yourself, creep," she hissed. He really was a revolting git sometimes. She felt like vomiting, and not from seasickness either- well, partly from a touch of Portkey-sickness too. She recalled reading in 'Hogwarts, A History' that the hysterics and nausea that commonly followed traveling by Portkey was what led to the creation of the Hogwarts Express, as a less troublesome way to reach Hogwarts.
Malfoy's nose went under, and he hastily seized Harry's arm, holding on for dear life.
"Hey, don't drag me under! I think you're cutting off the blood circulation to my fingers," Harry complained. "How d'you sink like that anyway? People generally float," he added, glancing at Ginny, who was still silently, vacantly back-floating, with her arms and legs out wide in an X shape, and her eyes on the sky. "You should try it sometime."
"Not that anyone would mind if you did sink," Hermione added cuttingly. But since she couldn't help giving advice, even to jerks; and because Malfoy looked dangerously close to sinking Harry, she added, "Oh relax, Malfoy. Breathe. Press your weight onto your shoulderblades. Lift your arms above your head. Trust. Believe you can float. Go on, try it."
"True pureblood witches and wizards sink in water, Granger," Malfoy shot back.
Rolling her eyes again, Hermione countered, "On the contrary, during the witchhunts in the Dark Ages, if someone floated in a trial by water instead of sinking, it meant they were a witch or wizard."
Malfoy snorted. "Shows how much you know. Learned that in some boneheaded superstitious Muggle book, did you? Any real wizard would sink underwater and then Apparate away, rather than just floating about like a wooden duck."
"Speaking of Apparating," Harry put in, "is that how we got here? Did that Troth guy Apparate us here?"
"No, goodness no," Hermione replied fervently. "With four students and his level of concentration? He'd have splinched us all for sure!"
"Splinched?" Harry repeated.
Sighing again, and mentally blocking out Malfoy's sniggering, Hermione said, "It's what can happen if you Apparate sloppily. You can get put back together... wrong when you get to where you're going. It can get... er... messy."
Happily detailing the gory particulars, Malfoy added, "Bones cracked and sticking out at all angles, huge chunks of muscle sliced into badly strung-together slabs, and eyeballs popping out of their sockets or wedged down your throat or up your ear canals or brain- not that there'd be much to see there, Potter, and, oh yeah, the best part-"
"Alright!" Hermione yapped, "He gets it! We didn't Apparate!"
"Then how did we get here?" Harry wondered, staring out forlornly at the thrashing waves and walls of dewy seafog surrounding them.
Hermione had been expecting this question a while. "By Portkey," she answered, "which is an item enchanted to transport a person from one place to another upon skin contact- sort of like a touch-based form of Apparating, only it doesn't disassemble and reassemble you the way Apparating does."
"Yeah," Malfoy scoffed, "but every intelligent person present already knew that, so who were you addressing? The fishes?"
"So that thing the necklaces were hooked to was a Portkey?" Harry guessed.
"Yes- but you can enchant anything to be a Portkey, Harry," Hermione explained. "That trinket of Troth's was firstly and foremost a Time-Turner."
Harry looked foggy and lost again. "What's a-"
"It allows its wearer, or wearers, in our case," Hermione specified, "to travel forwards or backwards through time,"
"Which is the thing that clocks measure, dear, stupid, ignorant Harry," Malfoy informed in a sickly-sweet, mocking drawl.
"Time-Turners are very rare, and dangerous, and hush-hush-" Hermione went on,
"Which means you're just making it up," Malfoy concluded haughtily.
"I am not!" Hermione snapped.
"Then the newsie made it up," Malfoy concluded, shrugging one of his shoulders out of the water a bit. "Come on, Granger, think, what's more believable, that some nutters newsie just came up with some random knowledge to scare some gullible little girl, or that I become an Auror when I get older, and work with you?"
"He's got a point," Harry admitted.
"Well I don't know if he was telling the truth about everything!" Hermione hissed irritably. "But I've read about Time-Turners- once, in one book, one passage, one mention- and they're real. I haven't the slightest notion how Troth got ahold of one, but he has, and this is bad- this spells trouble for the entire Wizarding World, for the entire rest of the world- for the entire space-time continuum! Who knows what Troth might do with it! I mean, he's already twisted history by going back in time and kidnapping and stranding our younger selves for trying to interfere with his dastardly plans- his words, not mine- If he disrupts some key events- if he starts mucking about with time, he- he could upset the balance of the entire universe as we know it!"
"So what the deuce were the necklaces about?" Malfoy drawled, in a bored tone, as if the end of the universe were a pretty dull subject, overall.
"I should think that bit was obvious," Hermione replied, trying to calm her frazzled, fretful nerves. "They were for channeling magic- did you know that gold channels time manipulation energy better than any other medium?"
Malfoy yawned widely, somehow managing to not swallow another lungful of ocean. "Fascinating, Granger, fascinating. But how, may I inquire, do you know he 'transported us backwards in time', know-it-all? You can't know that! Look around you, for magic's sake! We're in the middle of the ruddy OCEAN!"
That last, doomy word rang hollowly in Hermione's ears for a few chill heartbeats. "I wonder," she said finally, staring out at the vast, roiling expanse of water, "how could Troth tell, just by looking, that it's not the Bermuda Triangle?"
"Probably he was bluffing, idiot!" Malfoy yowled. "He hadn't a clue whether it was or wasn't! How do you get better grades than me anyway?"
Smiling back challengingly, Hermione retorted, "Figure it out, genius. And we won't know for sure who's right until we meet somebody here, now will we?"
"Oh, and how do you propose we do that, Granger?" Malfoy countered ridiculingly.
Hermione pulled her wand out of her sleeve, and lifted it high up out of the water. Red sparks shot upwards from the wand's tip. "Help me, Harry!" she exclaimed. "It's the universal distress signal amongst wizards and witches!"
"And wizards and witches are all we want to attract," Malfoy added in a low mutter, as some of the smoldering sparks began to flicker back down, sizzling as they hit the waves, and melting into tiny puddles of ash.
"Good thinking, Hermione," Harry said, pulling his own wand out of his waterlogged robe pocket and sending up his own, less tidy stream of ruby sparks. "The Ministry will figure out we're doing underage magic out of school, and, and then-"
"-And then," Hermione finished impatiently, "they'll just send an owl with a note from the Improper Use Of Magic Office, and pleasantly threaten to expel us if we keep it up."
"Hey, Ron's dad works for the Ministry!" Harry realized. "And Ron was able to find me when my Uncle Vernon had me locked up in my room, so maybe-"
Hating to crash Harry's hopes, Hermione reminded him, "Ron knew your address, Harry."
"But maybe if the Ministry sends an owl, we could send a note back with it-"
"If we can catch it," Hermione pointed out. "And if we had paper and ink. And if owls and underage magic monitors are even in use yet in this age."
"But there is a chance, right?"
"Let's just hope someone sees the sparks," Hermione concluded darkly.
"Oh come on," Malfoy sneered, "I can barely see them in this beastly fog, and I'm right under them!"
"Want a clearer view?" Hermione threatened, ceasing the sparks and whipping her wand down towards Malfoy's face.
Their eyes met in a locked glare for a full sixty seconds.
Then Hermione held her wand upright again, and said, "C'mon, Harry, lets try Bluebell flames."
As the two jets of blue flames danced upwards, Malfoy commented sarcastically, "Wow, this might actually work if it wasn't midday, if there wasn't any fog, if the sky wasn't blue, and if we weren't a billion miles from civilization."
"At sea its leagues, not miles," Hermione corrected crisply.
Long, sparkly blue moments followed.
Bird-shaped shadows started wheeling in and out of the fog overhead.
"Oh look, you've attracted seagulls!" Malfoy crooned. "Nice job! We're saved. Maybe we can catch one, and put a note on it, do you think?" he mocked. "Seagulls are scavengers, you know. Vultures of the sea. So in other words, we're pretty neatly screwed. We're doomed. We're dead. Just carve the gravestones now. Well, those of us who can afford them. And who actually have parents to mourn us."
"Or parents who would mourn us," Harry countered acidly.
"Of course my parents would mourn me!" Malfoy protested sharply. "I'm irreplaceable!"
Harry just smirked, looking supremely unconvinced; and Hermione gave Malfoy a pitying look.
"Well, they would!"
When Harry and Hermione continued ignoring him, Malfoy started glaring sulkily at their flame-spewing wands. In the background, under his breath, Hermione heard him muttering,
"That stupid newsie stole my wand. I hate him so much. I loathe him. I astronomically despise him. I want to stretch him on a rack by his thumbs and toenails. I want to twist his kneecaps till they snap. I want to make him swallow a gallon of fishhooks. I want to punch his head down his throat and introduce him to his intestines. I want to turn his bones to jelly like Lockhart did to-"
Hermione slapped the crook of her arm down, splashing a spray of water into Malfoy's sour face.
He splashed back at her as best he could without letting go of his glasses-wearing flotation device.
"Careful, Malfoy," Hermione choked out, "I know how to do that deboning trick of Lockhart's."
"Really?" Harry asked, pausing his Bluebell flames to gawk curiously at Hermione. "Since when?"
"Since Saturday night, after Professor Lockheart 'fixed' your arm- it was so weird and unusual, I couldn't sleep, so I stayed up stirring the stewing lacewings and cross-referencing some of Madame Pomfrey's books with Lockhart's book 'Gadding with Ghouls', where he mentions healing a girl who'd had every bone in her body- including her skull and pelvis- broken by a manic poltergeist, which Lockhart singlehandedly and bravely and expertly exorcised, and- and anyway, I figured out what Lockhart did wrong, and I learned the right way and the wrong way to 'mend' bones. Both ways could come in handy."
"Who'd you practice on?" Harry asked uneasily.
"Spiders, mostly," Hermione admitted. "I know they've got exoskeletons, so it differs a bit from real bones, but I was able to heal them again with a few drops of Skellegrow in scarcely minutes, and anyway, there were just so many of them around. Have you noticed there's been an awful lot of spiders scuttling around Hogwarts lately, Harry?"
"You'd really debone someone, Hermione?" Harry asked, uncomfortably shifting his wand-arm in its socket. "It was awful."
"Will you be able to swim, d'you think?" Hermione wondered tentatively, trying to shift the subject off of her infatuation with unorthodox spells.
"It's still a bit stiff, but yeah," Harry replied. "I shouldn't have trouble swimming so long as Malfoy lets go of my arm."
"What, and drown myself?" Malfoy retorted. "Forget it!"
"What are our other options?" Harry wondered. "The Bluebell flames don't seem to be doing much besides pestering the seagulls."
Hermione thought. "Well, perhaps we could use Wingardium Leviosa to propel one of us up above the fog, to see if we can see anything-"
"No, Muggles might see!" Malfoy argued.
"That'd be good, right?" Harry asked optimistically.
Malfoy shot him a demeaning look. "Not if they ask you, 'Why again were you floating thirty feet in the air?'"
"Hey, Harry," Hermione said, getting another random idea, "d'you still have any of Fred Weasley's Filibuster fireworks in your robe pockets?"
"Fresh out," he answered with a heavy shrug.
With a gleeful, wide-mouthed gape, Malfoy stuck his finger at Harry's face and exclaimed jubilantly, "I knew it was you! I knew it was you who put that firework in that cauldron during Potions Class! Wait till I tell Professor Snape!"
"Oh..." Hermione muttered blackly, remembering about the ingredients she'd stolen from Snape's stores during Harry's distraction, and remembering her unattended cauldron, bubbling away in the future... it would all go to waste, her complex, month-long potion would go to waste- "Oh, and the polyjuice potion was almost ready too!" she moaned aloud. "Just twelve more days- isn't it awful?"
"You were brewing a polyjuice potion?" Malfoy snapped, gaping again.
"You know what it is?" Hermione asked, surprised that he'd know about something she'd researched in Hogwarts' library's Restricted Section.
"Yeah, real dark stuff," Malfoy drawled.
"Look who's talking," Harry retorted.
"Why were you brewing a polyjuice potion, Granger?" Malfoy asked pleasantly, with the slightest hint of a razor edge to his words. "Couldn't stand the sight of your own face anymore?"
"Go ahead, tell him, Hermione," Harry prompted, glaring confrontationally at Malfoy. "Doesn't matter now, does it?"
Hermione took a deep breath, looked Malfoy straight in his icy grey eyes, and stated, "We were going to spy on you. To see if you were the Heir of Slytherin."
Malfoy stared for a stretch, cocked one eyebrow, then the other, then broke out laughing again. Only this time, it was harsher, and came in short barks. "What?" he sniggered, "Me? The Heir of Slytherin? Oh, I wish. Really, I'd love to claim responsibility for trying to clear Hogwarts of all the Muggleborn filth-" he said with relish, "-but it's not me," he added, with a distinctly disappointed shrug.
"Don't you even care about Filch's cat, you jerk?" Harry hissed. "Or about poor Colin Creevey getting petrified?"
"What, the janitor's spy, and your pathetic little worshiping fanboy?" Malfoy sneered. "Oh, oh let me think... no. No, I shouldn't ruddy well say so. Hogwarts will be far more decent once the Heir and the Creature of the Chamber have cleared it of all the... refuse," he said, staring directly at Hermione when he said it.
She held her chin high, refusing to let Malfoy crumple her dignity like a piece of parchment.
"Mudbloods will be the first to go, and that's alright with me," he added goadingly.
"Stop calling Hermione that!" Harry snarled, glaring viperously past his wet glasses-lenses at the parasitic Slytherin latched onto his arm. "Take it back! It's foul and dirty!"
"Just like her blood," Malfoy retorted primly.
And then Harry lost it. He jammed his wand back in his pocket, grabbed Malfoy's shirt collar, and then, in a fluid arc, he socked Malfoy in the jaw with a wet fist.
"THAT'S IT!" Malfoy yowled, swiping the trickle of blood off his split lip, ripping Harry's clutched fingers off his collar, and floundering wildly. "I've had it with you losers!"
He attempted to swim off in a huff, and made it about three feet before going under.
Hermione swapped a glance with Harry. "Should we?" she sighed plaintively.
"I suppose we should..." Harry muttered reluctantly.
"Yes... probably..."
"Do we have to?"
"Rooster," Ginny commented unhelpfully.