Back at the burrow, Harry, Ron, Ginny and I packed our things quickly before sitting together in the living area, cherishing our last night of freedom. I told them, finally, about being head girl. I told them about seeing Malfoy. As I explained everything, Harry and Ginny's expressions were as I predicted. Pissed, then confused, then surprise melted into dumbfounded. Ron's face (well, everything above the neck, really) got redder and redder as he heard the terrible news. Which, granted was terrible, but it was more confusing. Malfoy wasn't a total asshole. He was civil. He swallowed his pride and (god forbid) shook a mudblood's hand. So I had decided that, until further notice, I would be civil to the ferret boy. But Ron still blew up.
"Why would McGonagall do this? You hate him, he hates you! This is bollocks, it would never have happened if Dumble-" Ron exclaimed, but I cut him off.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!" I lost it when he said aloud what I had been thinking. Somehow it sounded worse coming from him. "That's not necessarily true, ok? He was civil, he didn't call me names, sneer, nothing. And don't question McGonagall's abilities just because she did something you don't like. It's not fair!" everyone looked at me in absolute shock. I knew I'd just told off Ron, but we'd yelled before, and this was worse. They all looked at me, totally aghast. Oh yea, I never used to swear. Oops. Well, they would just have to get used to it.
"Her-mion-ne, you, I, um, sorry," Ron sputtered, looking lost. I felt a wave of remorse and sat. But I didn't say anything. Apologizing would be giving in, but to lecture him further- well, nothing could be done.
"Show us the letter, Hermione," said Ginny. She was a quick thinker, and right now I really admired her social skills and patience.
"Yea, I want to see exactly what she said on it," Harry seconded. I pulled it out of my purse and gave it to them. I still hadn't spoken. I handed it to them and sat by Ron, I gave him a look of apology, and he inched away from me fearfully.
We spent the rest of the night analyzing the letter, Malfoy's actions, and my response.
'I say you don't let up. Don't be nice to him! It's a trick, Hermione, I don't what he's doing, but it he's up to no good," Ron didn't insult anyone outright, but didn't cave on his opinion. I didn't explode, either. He might have been right.
"Well, I feel like I should give ferret a chance, and start afresh. If he's going to be civil, then I will too. Starting now. So I take back the ferret comment," I grinned at Ron.
"Well, you don't have to be more than civil. If you go making friends with him, I'll- umm… hit.. a girl… I guess," harry faltered on his empty threat and we laughed.
"Aww, bummer," I said. "I was so excited to replace you jackasses."
They all looked at me reproachfully. "Well, except you Ginny. I still love you," I smiled at her.
"OK, good. Because I was going to be insulted," she said.
"actually, I'm a bit frightened to move in with the bugger, I was wondering if you wanted to have a repetitive sleepover all year" I asked, half joking. "I'm sure the heads dorm is lovely."
"Ooh, and get away from those jackasses?" she pretended to consider it.
"Hey, this jackass is your brother!" Ron protested.
"This jackass is your boyfriend!" Harry's complaint followed.
She laughed, "OK, I rescind the comment about you, Harry, but Ron, you're my brother. You kinda have to be a jackass."
Ron pretended to pout, but we all ended up laughing. The conversation lilted and rolled happily until bedtime, when harry and Ron bid us adieu and we all tried to sleep.
The next morning we got to the train with seconds to spare, thanks to zombie Ron, and Ginny's forgotten hairbrush. We rushed our goodbyes to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, but Ron's and Ginny's seemed more sincere than usual. It may have been my imagination, but it seemed as though they wanted to make every goodbye meaningful. Ron even returned his mothers 'I love you' instead of groaning and turning red. The seemingly simple display tugged my heartstrings more than I wanted to admit, so I rushed through the portal and leapt onto the train. I strode quickly as possible to the heads compartment and sat down without looking up, fiddling with my iPod and muttering an incantation to make it work through magic with no batteries. As I concentrated a tad too hard to be normal, Malfoy walked in. I honestly was surprised, because I hadn't looked around enough to know whether he was there or not.
"Hello, Granger," he said casually, and sat across from me. "is McGonagall here yet?"
"Uh, no, I haven't seen her" I said. "She's probably directing traffic until the train leaves." Just then, the train lurched and we were off. I looked mildly surprised, then laughed. "Perfect timing." Malfoy laughed, too. An unexpected sound coming from him. It startled me, and made me realize that this was more than civil. I rushed to put my headphones in and murmured a sort of goodbye before blasting Aerosmith. Malfoy looked confused and moved next to me to rip one out of my ear.
"What is that?!?" he asked in a hysterically bewildered tone.
"It's a muggle thing." I looked at him challengingly to see his reaction to the word. Nothing. His eyebrows went up quizzically, but there was no sneer, no nothing, a lip twitch was the only hint of reaction.
"You can keep music from a lot of different artists on it and play it wherever you go. It keeps me sane nowadays." I continued, but shut my mouth when McGonagall walked in. She surveyed us on the same seat together, looking at a common object, and I can't be sure, but it looked to me as though she relaxed a bit, knowing that both her heads were intact, neither of us had set the other on fire or ripped them to pieces. I looked to see if Malfoy noticed. He had a smirk on his face, so he must have. It was his trademark smirk. I guess old habits die hard, and I was glad that it wasn't directed at me.
She launched into a spiel about professional behavior, no killing (or kissing, but she glanced through it in a way that seemed as though she didn't want to offend us) curfew is 4 AM, yada yada, and some other stuff. Everything she said was fairly predictable (no one could even visit our dorm because the location was a secret, so Ginny's sleeping over was out) eventually I tuned her out.
When she left, I yawned and replugged myself and listened to Bob Marley for a while. I must have dozed off, because as I was dreadlocking my hair in the African savannah with my wand and smoking a hookah with a kangaroo, it started to shake me and whisper in a British accent it didn't have before "Hermione, Hermione, wake up. You have to put your robes on, we're almost to the school. " my eyes cracked open and I groaned. I awkwardly wiped the string of drool from my mouth and Malfoy doubled over with laughter.
"OK, shut up now. Haha, yea, I get funny. You can stop now though," I smiled despite myself. He gradually hiccupped it all out as I sat, arms folded, and stared him down with mock ferocity.
"So, you were talking in your sleep, you know," his eyes glinted mischeiviously. "you said "load it, man." And muttered and something about "drink it all, death cup, loser' whats a death cup?" he asked. I swallowed hard as I realized that I'd been dreaming about a with interspecies party with beer bongs, beer pong, and hookahs."
"it's, uh, a party – muggle, thing you uh, wouldn't know about it," I stammered. "it's not important, really. Forget it."
He grinned. "Uh uh", he said, "death cup, what is it? What did you mean by load it?" I didn't want to answer. But I figured that I'd surprise him a little. He wouldn't know what to do with the other side of me. Maybe he'd see me differently, not a bookworm. So I explained my summer to him.
"well, my parents put me in muggle school every summer. Really, boring I always hated it. No friends, no fun. I study boring bullshit that I'll never need all summer long. But this summer, in my college writing class, I met these really cool girls, Ashley and Tiffany." I spoke quickly, quietly. It was so strange, crossing the two opposite parts of my world, explaining non magical society to a wizard- my worst enemy who had put them all in danger, no less. But I pressed on. "Well, I started hanging out with them a lot. First time I had marks lower than my peers, actually. We went to parties, and we drank some. We went out and caused trouble, and had a great time. Anyway, load it is probably hookah, it's a device to smoke flavored tobacco out of. If you try hard enough and get your mouth just right, you can blow little rings out of your mouth, it's quite cool. And a death cup is when in beer pong you shoot someone cup of beer that they have to drink-"
"well, this is all very interesting," he interrupted, "but what's beer pong?"
Well then I had to explain the rules and he expressed his surprise at my capricious and undignified existence out of Hogwarts, and we had a grand old time chatting about how much of a scoundrel I was. We completely forgot the time and I was almost late leaving the train, but I changed in the compartment (he promised not to look) and we scrambled out into the crowd looking as illustrious as possible.