Although Hermione was against being disrespectful to teachers, she had to admit, Snape was one of her least favourite teachers.
"Granger, you were a prefect in Gryffindor and Parkinson was the Slytherin prefect, which means that you and Parkinson will be exchanging your roles. You'll be the Sytherin prefect with Malfoy."
Snape leaned in close to Hermione. "And if...you cost us our house points...or deduct house points unfairly, I assure you, you'll have me to deal with." His voice was so cold it made her cringe.
"Of course." she tried to hide the slight shake in her voice. She hated the prospect of having him for a house head.
"What?" Draco asked. He had been silent till then. "I can't work with her." he protested.
"Neither of us want her here." Snape said coldly.
Wow, I feel so wanted. Hermione thought sarcastically.
"Unfortunately, Dumbledore has his mind made up. So we're both stuck with her."
"My father shall hear about this." Draco said furiously.
"Well, let's hope that he can change Dumbledore's mind then. Until then, you shall have to find a way to cooperate. I won't have my house name tarnished because two imbeciles can't put aside their own personal vendettas and work together. Malfoy, give her your class schedule. And show her to the Slytherin common rooms after class ends."
He swished his cloak and walked away, probably to his first class.
Draco threw her a disgusted look as soon as Snape left. He rummaged through his bag for the class schedules, purposely taking longer than usual as Hermione held out her hand for it expectantly.
"Here you go." he said when he had finally found it.
"Thanks." Hermione replied begrudgingly. But she had spoken too soon, he proceeded to tear his schedule into small pieces of parchment and threw them into the air. They fluttered to the floor around her.
"Oops." he smirked at her before striding away.
"So mature, Malfoy. Thanks a lot." she muttered to his back before trying to pick up the pieces of parchment.
Hermione was late to her first class of the day because she had spent a while picking up the pieces of parchment before casting a spell to make them join themselves together again.
Luckily, the Slytherins had A Care Of Magical Creatures with the Hufflepuffs for their first class on Mondays and Hagrid didn't dock house points from Hermione after she explained, in hushed whispers, why she had been late.
On the negative side, the project they were working on was a group project and Hermione was forced to join the same group that Pansy had been in when she was in to say, Malfoy, Daphne Greengrass and Theodore Nott were not happy when Hermione was instructed to join their group. Even worse, the project- catching and cleaning a Reflective Swarthog- required them to communicate.
The Reflective Swarthog looked a lot like a pig. The only difference being, their skin was impervious to any kind of magic and whenever a spell was fired at them, it was reflected off them like they were a mirror.
Hermione quickly realized that while Daphne didn't plan on taking part in the group exercise at all, Nott was perfectly willing to take part, but would do it in the stupidest way possible.
"Stupefy, Stupefy, Stupefy!" he shot multiple spells at the Swarthog.
"Nott, you moron, STOP!" Draco yelled at him, flailing his arms to get his attention.
Two of the spells backfired from the Swarthog but hit nothing, but the third spell hit a Hufflepuff girl who fell to the ground, unconscious and then got trampled by her own Swarthog, which she was supposed to be catching.
"Malfoy, you come at it from that side, I'll get it from this side." Hermione shouted at him over the shouts of the other students.
"I'm not taking orders from a mudblood." he yelled back at her.
She was tempted to let him catch the swarthog alone (Nott had taken advantage of the commotion of the students running about and was still firing spells in random directions), but Hermione hated failing. Hagrid had warned them that if they didn't at least manage to catch the Swarthog, they would be failing that project.
"Fine, what's your plan then?" she asked Malfoy.
"To catch the Swarthog and not fail."
"That's a brilliant plan, Malfoy. I can't believe I didn't think of that." she said sarcastically. Malfoy went back to running after the animal.
Hermione joined Daphne who was standing by Hagrid's hut, examining her nails. Daphne was one of the few Slytherins who didn't hate her for her blood status; she just hated her in general.
"Greengrass," Hermione said cautiously, "do you want to help me catch the Swarthog?"
Daphne gave her a once over, taking in everything from the frizzy brown hair on her head to the smear of dirt across Hermione's sweater.
"Nope." she popped the 'p'. "Unless you can tell me how I benefit from doing that."
"Imagine Malfoy's annoyance when two girls catch the Swarthog that he couldn't. Imagine his face." Hermione smiled to herself, it was rare that she let her mischievous side show.
Daphne thought about it for a second. "Only if you have a plan that doesn't involve me getting dirty."
"We just need to get it to open it's mouth. I think I know how to do that, you just need to scare it enough. Swarthogs screech when they're terrified. I'll shoot a stupefy into it's mouth."
Daphne sighed, and took off running. She ran straight at the Swarthog, flailing her arms and screeching like a banshee. Some of the students turned to stare at her, others burst into laughter. Hermione ran after her.
The Swarthog, who was having too much fun running away from Malfoy, didn't see Daphne until she was quite close. At that moment, the Swarthog became so scared that it stopped running, let out a load of poop and opened it's mouth wide and let out a loud screech.
Daphne clutched at her ears, Malfoy, who hadn't been expecting the sound, skidded on the pile of poop the Swarthog had ejected, and fell over.
Hermione, who was holding in her laughter, shot a stupefy at the animal, and it fell over unconscious.
Daphne laughed at the dung-covered Draco till she was red in the face, and high-fived Hermione. Hermione, who was still holding in her laughter, because she didn't want to make Draco feel worse than he was feeling, held out her hand to help him up.
"I would rather be covered in this shite than touch a mudblood." Draco growled at her. The small smile Hermione had slowly slipped off her face.
Pansy Parkinson was scared, although the last thing she would to do was show anyone exactly how scared she was. If anyone showed fear to a fellow Slytherin, chances were, someone was going to take advantage of that fear and use it against her. She wasn't sure how things worked in Gryffindor.
She put on an indifferent face as she took a seat in the only available seat left in the Potions classroom- next to the blood traitor Ronald Weasley.
He didn't even acknowledge her.
So that's how it's going to be.
Pansy didn't like Ron, but she hated being ignored.
"I hate potions." she said aloud to no one in particular, hoping he'd reply.
No response. He stared blankly at the door, waiting for Slughorn to enter.
"So...you're my fellow prefect..." she tried again.
Ron ignored her again. Pansy was irritated now.
"You're a stupid blood traitor and I hate you." she spat at him angrily.
He rolled his eyes at that.
"Look, Parkinson. We don't like each other. We both know that, so here's an idea, stop talking to me. Also, Hermione usually drew up the patrol route and schedule and I have no clue how to, so that's on you."
He turned back to his book and started doodling on it.
Pansy seethed silently in her seat, she wondered what Draco was doing then. Or if he was thinking of her. Most probably, he wasn't. Their relationship had been going downhill recently.
She looked over at Ron's doodle. It was a lion biting the head off a snake.
I wish I was in Hufflepuff instead. She thought.
The Ravenclaws had double potions with the Gryffindors that morning, so Neville wasn't feeling too uncomfortable.
He was sitting with Hannah,but only because he thought that it would be lame of him to follow Luna around the entire day, although Luna wouldn't mind if he did.
"So... Ravenclaw, huh?" he asked Hannah awkwardly.
Hannah probably felt as awkward as he did because she smiled shyly and just said "Yeah."
Neville scrambled for something to say in reply to that, but drew a blank.
This is your chance. He thought desperately. Say something charming.
"I...like your plants." he blurted.
"What?" she asked confused.
"I like to dance." he amended quickly. He couldn't dance. Sometimes, he couldn't even walk in a straight line without tripping over his own feet.
"You do?" Hannah asked him excitedly. "Me too. We should dancing together someday, they have karaoke nights at Madame Rosmerta's on Saturdays after eight. We could go there on our first Hogsmede weekend...if you want to." she added shyly.
"I would love to." he replied without thinking.
"It's a date then." she smiled at him.
Brilliant, Neville. Brilliant.
His face turned a mottled red slowly.
Harry had nothing against Michael Corner. They were acquaintances and nodded at each other whenever they met in the hallways. But when Michael decided to sit next to Harry for their potions class, Harry discovered that Michael talked, a lot. Which wouldn't have been so bad, but to top it off, he was also an obnoxious git.
"-We always go to my mother's villa in the alps for the snow-brooming season. We wouldn't be able to afford it really, but my mum is quite high up in the Ministry and-" he droned on and on.
Harry didn't want to outright tell him to shut up so all he did was reply in "hmm"s and "yeah"s as they worked on the potion together. The only problem was the fact that Michael took the "hmm"s to be encouragement for him to continue rambling.
At least his situation wasn't as bad as Ron's was. He was stonily ignoring Pansy and they were glaring at each other more often than actually working on the potion.
Harry was ready to tear his- or Michael's- hair out to get Michael to stop talking when it happened. Ron's and Pansy's potion exploded, showering most of the class in the viscous green liquid that had been in their cauldron.
"Weasley" Pansy shrieked. " I told you to measure the ingredients before you chuck them into the cauldon, you blithering idiot."
Ron looked a little abashed at that.
"Sorry." he muttered, sounding insinscere.
Slughorn was furious. "Detention!" he yelled. "Both of you . And fifty points from Gryffindor."
And that was when the screaming started.
A/N: Hey guys:) thanks for reading this. I wrote two chs in a day, yay! It's 2 am now so I'm gonna sleep now. Laters, tatertots.
