A Slip of the Tongue
by Sienna

Chapter Four: Of House Elves and Chess

Hermione Granger was sitting in her maroon beanbag chair in her apartment, reading Hogwarts: A History, for probably about the seven hundred and thirty second time. (Since she had moved into the apartment a year ago.)

The radio was playing softly in the background as Hermione idly flipped through the pages of the thick book. Nowhere in Hogwarts: A History, did it say that there were house elves in the castle. But, of course, there were. Thousands of them. Who weren't even paid.

She frowned at the book. Although it was one of her favorites (she certainly read it often enough) she disapproved of its... lying ways. You would think that a school such as Hogwarts would at least have the decency to pay its servants. Or even give them a day off a week, or something?

However, Hogwarts house elves definitely had better lives than some other house elves. Take, for instant, the house elves of Malfoy Manor. Poor creatures. Not only did they have to work tirelessly to keep the (unnecessarily) large place beautiful (and it was, really) and clean, but they had to abide by their (stupid) master's constant whining and absurd requests, which could come at very (very, very, very) odd hours of the day.

Tossing the book aside, she got up and headed for the kitchen to get a drink. (With her own two hands, thank you very much. No magic or help –coughhouseelvescough- would be needed to do something so simple, she was capable of doing it herself. And she wasn't lazy like a certain blonde, indolent, smug-assed Slytherin, otherwise known as her boyfriend…)

The night before, Hermione had gotten into a very heated argument with said boyfriend. Regarding house elves. They had been enjoying a very nice dinner (apart from a few minor disagreements about how much she spent in the office, and how much Crookshanks was eating)in Hermione's (very tidy) home, when all of a sudden, he jumped out of his chair, hurried over to the fireplace, threw in some Floo Powder and stuck his head into the green flames, shouting loudly for Dipsy.

Hermione had narrowed her eyes at this. There was no need to order the elves about! Honestly! He could easily have flooed –or apparated- home himself without having to trouble his poor elf, who was probably up to her ears (or maybe even higher, as house elves are not large) in housework.

Then he had ordered poor Dipsy to fetch his silver quill on his desk. In a very bossy, arrogant way. Dipsy, of course, handed it to him almost instantaneously, and Draco had pulled his head out of the flame, without thanking her or anything. After he had inconsiderately dragged her away from her work, to fetch something so trivial, like a quill, he hadn't even bothered to thank her for her efforts!

Holding the quill in his long fingers, he had turned to look at Hermione with a great big smile on his face. But Hermione was not smiling. In fact, she was frowning and she had crossed her arms, (and her legs) and was tapping her foot on the ground in typical I-am-Angry fashion.

"What?" Draco had asked. (Quite stupidly, in Hermione's opinion.)

"You didn't even thank Dipsy!" Hermione cried, outraged.

Draco blinked at her. "So?"

Hermione glared at him. "So? I thought you were supposed to have been brought up with manners?"

"Wha- I do have manners!" he protested indignantly.

"No you don't! You didn't even say thank you!"

"You don't need to thank the house elves," Draco told her gently. But instead of soothing her, it only made her angrier.

"Well then! I don't want arrogant scum in here. Out!" she told him, pointing to the door.

"What? Hermione! Baby, you're overreacti-" Draco pleaded imploringly.

"Don't say I'm overreacting, Malfoy," Hermione warned.

"But.. But they're house elves. I know you feel.. Strongly about them, but honestly, babe, they like doing work. And they're supposed to be tre-"

Hermione's eyes narrowed into slits. She hadn't been that mad, but if he really thought that house elves were supposed to be treated that way… "Out. NOW!" She pulled out her wand threateningly. Draco eyed it warily. An angry witch was bad enough, but this was a very, very, very, very (veryveryveryveryvery) smart angry witch. (In other words, he feared for his life.) "I mean it!"

Sighing exasperatedly (which really was a very brave thing for Draco Malfoy to do), Draco turned on his heel and apparated away (which was the smart thing to do, really, because Hermione nearly had steam coming out of her ears).

And that was how she spent her night. Fighting with Draco Malfoy.

Muttering darkly about the cruelty of Malfoys towards house elves and not paying any attention whatsoever to her surroundings, she nearly tripped over the long legs of her best friend, Harry Potter, who sat on the carpeted floor, playing Wizard's Chess on her coffee table, with her other best friend, Ronald Weasley.

Damn. She'd forgotten that they were there. For once, Harry and Ron hadn't been making any noise. Or maybe they had, and she had been too busy thinking about Draco Malfoy's imperious, slave-driving, selfish ways.

"Oh, Hermione. Give it a rest," Harry sighed, as she scowled. Harry propped his chin on his arm and stared at the chessboard in deep concentration.

"House elves like working, Hermione," Ron added. "Hurry up, mate." He nudged Harry, who was still staring intently at the chessboard. "They don't want to be paid. I thought you'd already realized that with the Winky incident in school. They're happy! Please don't start with the Spew thing again."

Hermione put her hands on her hips. "Ronald Weasley! It's S.P.E.W.! And it has dismembered, because its members didn't support the causes!" She glared at him. "And anyway, I didn't say I was going to start S.P.E.W. again. I was just annoyed because Malfoy just orders his house-elf about, like there's no tomorrow!"

Harry sighed again. He didn't look up at her, simply kept looking at the chessboard. "Hermione. He's Malfoy! What do you expect? He's grown up ordering the things –house elves," he corrected hastily, as though he knew that she was about to open her mouth and give him the telling off of his life, "around. You can't expect him to suddenly stop."

"It's been six months," Hermione said sullenly. "And he just keeps asking poor Dipsy to do silly things like getting him his, I don't know, shoe which will be probably three feet away from him. It drives me crazy! And then he said that Crookshanks was getting fat." She gazed across the room at Crookshanks, who was sprawled across the carpet in a patch of sunlight. (He was, actually, getting a bit overweight, but Hermione couldn't see it.)

Ron snorted and Hermione fixed her metal-melting glare at him. "He is not! And why are you on his side, anyway?" she demanded suspiciously.

"Hurry up, Harry," Ron said quickly, choosing to pretend he hadn't heard her.

Harry thought for a moment, carefully turned the chessboard in a full circle, peering at it from every possible angle, and finally said, "Castle to E4."

"Sucker!" Ron yelled, pumping his fist into the air. "Knight to E4!" Hermione rolled her eyes as Ron's black knight moved to cruelly stick its sword into Harry's white castle, which collapsed.

"Boys," she muttered, and stalked off into her kitchen to get that drink. After pouring herself a glass of pumpkin juice, she walked back into the lounge, where Harry was banging his head on the table, muttering, "Why didn't I see that? Why? Why!?", while Ron gloated.

"What are you two doing here anyway?" she asked, sipping the cold juice.

"Ginny and Luna have gone shopping," Ron explained. "We didn't want to get in their way. So we decided to get into yours."

Harry stopped hitting his head on the table. "Also, we wanted to make sure you didn't do anything stupid. Like you did the last time you and Malfoy had a fight." Harry smirked at Hermione.

"Harry! You said you weren't going to bring that up again," Hermione pointed one chipped Passion fruit Pink finger at him threateningly.

"I didn't," Harry assured her. "I was just bringing it up… In passing."

"Well, I'm not going to do it again," sniffed Hermione. "So, if you're here just to keep an eye on me, don't worry." She plopped down on her beanbag chair and eyed the chessboard in between the two of them. Harry was in a very bad position. If he made one wrong move, Ron would win, hands down. But if he moved his queen to the right square, he would have quite a good chance at beating Ron.

"Bishop to F7," Harry said foolishly. Hermione sighed and set her glass carefully down onto the floor, as she watched Harry's bishop move four squares diagonally to the square. Ron's eyes glittered as he tried to conceal his grin. "Oh no!" Harry cried, staring in horror as he realized his mistake. "No, no, no, no, no! Can I take it back?"
he pleaded with Ron, who smirked, prodded his black castle forward, which promptly smashed Harry's bishop into smithereens.

Just then, Crookshanks flopped onto Hermione's feet. "Can you believe it?" she asked, stroking his orange fur. "Dra- Malfoy thinks you're fat. You're not, of course," she assured him. "Just because he's as skinny as a toothpick, it doesn't mean anyone else is fat. Self-absorbed git."

"Now, now Granger," drawled the familiar voice of the self-absorbed git, who had apparently just apparated into her apartment. "Play nicely."

A/N: I'm not happy with this chapter, as I told Boogie. But, anyway, here it is. I can think of nothing more to do with it.

What do you guys think?

Oh, and since so many people are asking, I meant the Order of the Phoenix movie. Sorry. I should have said. It's coming out on July 17th in the rest of the world but Australia. How unfair is that? We have to wait four months until we watch it on the big screen, which really is very sad.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed. I love you all.

xx
Sienna