Chapter Two:
Hermione threw her bag onto the couch in front of the fireplace, sighing heavily. She glanced at her watch and realized she had twenty minutes before Blaise was supposed to show up, and she figured she should get at least part of her homework done. Unzipping her backpack, she pulled out Runes and What They Really Mean, a piece of parchment, a quill, turned to page 458, and began to take notes on why the Romans had invented the Runes in the first place. She soon finished her four pages of required notes and began writing her two and a half scroll essay on the matter. She sat working silently for the best part of half an hour and then looked at her watch again.
"He's late…Typical…" she muttered to herself and went back to her essay. Ten minutes passed, and Blaise still hadn't shown up. Twenty…thirty…forty…Hermione was getting aggravated but she kept busy with her homework. She had already finished Ancient Runes, Potions and Charms. She just had the Astronomy homework that had been assigned yesterday left. As she began elaborating on why the moon couldn't be seen during the day, the portrait hole slid open and in came in Blaise Zabini and…Draco Malfoy.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "You're late," she said loudly, over the two boys' vociferous voices.
Blaise glared at Hermione. She glanced away; his angry stare was painful, literally. "Worried about me Mudblood?" he hissed at her.
"Never," she said, regaining her composure. "Like I said earlier, the sooner you learn the bloody spells, the sooner I can stop looking at your bloody face, which I may add, is almost as repulsive as yours Malfoy. You should feel proud, being the ugliest git in the school." Hermione stood tall, looking straight into Malfoy's eyes.
"You don't have the decency to talk to me, you filthy little Mudblood!" Draco practically yelled at her moving forward a few steps.
"Decency? Decency is not guaranteed by blood Ferret boy…" Draco winced. "So no matter how 'pure' you're blood may be, I am always, always going to be more decent than you," Hermione said smoothly.
A slight pink color crept onto Draco's cheeks. His eyes were blazing. "You bloody bitch!" he growled, walking briskly towards her. He reached for his wand but Hermione was faster. She pulled hers out with a quick motion of her hand.
"One more step Malfoy, and I'll make sure being a ferret was a good experience. Don't mess with me."
Draco made a "yeah right" face, but froze. Hermione glanced at Blaise, who had been standing by the portrait the entire time, his chin in his hand, silently watching the two argue. He pushed himself off the stonewall he was leaning on and began walking slowly towards Hermione. She felt her hand tense around her wand, as if preparing to hex the oncoming Slytherin boy. But she knew that if he became angry, her wand would be of no use.
"You're not as spineless as I thought you'd be without you're two lovebirds fluttering around your shoulders, Granger," he said, almost in a whisper. Hermione noted he spoke like this almost all the time.
"I don't need them to protect me Zabini, I'm perfectly capable of protecting myself, or hexing people when I feel like it, thank you very much," she said nearly angry, looking quickly at Malfoy who eyed her wand suspiciously.
It was Blaise's eyes that got to Hermione then. Half filled with amusement and curiosity, as if he was contemplating something. Then two words rolled out of his mouth.
"Prove it."
"Prove what?" Hermione said, although fully aware of what he meant.
"And they call you smart, honestly. Prove it Granger. Prove that you don't need Pothead and Weasel. Hex him," he said, smirking.
Draco shot a deadly look at Blaise as if daring him to tell Hermione to hex him again.
Hermione eyes moved to Draco and she watched him cautiously.
"Just as I suspected. You're too much of a goody-goody. I should've known better," Blaise said, teasing her. Hermione glowered at him, raised her wand and muttered a spell under her breath. She caught a glimpse of Draco's terrified face before the spell hit him and wished she had had a camera. Next thing she knew, Draco, or well, Draco the chicken was clucking around on the floor. Hermione had never liked chickens, so felt it suited Draco perfectly. Blaise looked at Hermione, with a half amused, half pleased and half shocked expression on his face.
"Happy?" she said coolly.
"Me? Very. But you shouldn't be."
"Oh, what? You think Mr. Chicken over there is going to try and get me back, do you?"
"No I don't think that. I know that."
"Well, for your information, Zabini, I am very well aware that Malfoy is going to do whatever he can to get me back, I just have one advantage over him."
"And that would be?" Blaise said, crossing his arms.
"I'm Head Girl," Hermione said simply. "Which means I can not only give him detention, deduct points from his House, and humiliate him, I can probably get him suspended. Plus, if you didn't know, Heads have permanent Shielding Charms around them, so no matter what he does, he cant harm me."
Blaise looked mildly impressed. "I knew we had the Shielding Charms. But you have a point."
Hermione's jaw nearly dropped. "You just agreed with me!" she said bluntly.
"Thank you Ms. Obvious! Look, I'm not in the mood to argue. Turn Ferret boy back and we'll get started. I have to be somewhere at some time."
"Thank you Mr. Vague…" Hermione said sarcastically. "The charm will wear off in about two minutes. I'm surprised you didn't recognize it; we learned it in two days ago. It's one of the ones you've been having trouble with." She sat down on the couch and motioned for Blaise to sit down next to her, and to her surprise he did without an insult or rude comment. Hermione had to control herself from letting her mouth fall off from shock.
"It's the Transformias Charm isn't it?" Blaise asked, his eyes, which had been filled with amusement moments earlier, turning dark again.
"Yes," Hermione nodded, just as Draco turned back into himself.
"I'm going to get the both of you if it's the last thing I do!" he muttered to himself. Blaise and Hermione exchanged smirks, and then quickly looked away. Draco threw himself onto an armchair and stared angrily at the two as Hermione began explaining the Transformias Charm to Blaise.
"It's quite simple really, Zabini. All you have to do is imagine the animal you want your person or object to transform into, aim and say the spell. Transformias Selamina, which is Animales backwards, which is animals in Spanish. But it takes a lot of concentration; you cannot think of anything but the animal, otherwise the spell could go horribly wrong," Hermione said, pulling out a small journal from her bag. "Professor McGonagall gave this to me for you to practice on." She placed it on the table, stood up and told Blaise to do the same. "Look, its not hard at all. Here, I'll do it once, and then you can try. Oh, one thing. The animal you think of has to be somewhat in corresponding size. For example I couldn't turn the book into a shark, I'd probably get a fin or something. Of course, the animal could be smaller than the thing you are transfiguring." Hermione pulled out her wand and closed her eyes. "Transformias Selamina!" she said loudly, and the next second a turtle was crawling around on the table. She was amazed the Blaise had let her lecture him without one snide comment. But she didn't say that out loud. "Now you try," Hermione said, turning the turtle back into a book.
Blaise looked at her for a moment, and then pulled out his wand. Gripping it tightly, he shut his eyes. He thought for a second and decided on a mouse. "Transformias Selamina!" he breathed nervously. He opened his eyes and to his surprise a large brown mouse was squeaking around on the table.
"Well done. I didn't think you'd get it on your first try, no offence…" she added, as Blaise shot her a look, cocking his eyebrow. "Here, lets try something a little bigger," Hermione said, pulling out a rather large book from Blaise's bag and putting it on the table. "Do you want me to go first, or do you just want to do it?"
"I'll do it," Blaise said, not looking at her. He closed his eyes again and muttered the spell, opened his eyes, and smirked. A small puppy was sitting where the book had been sitting.
"Aw! Bl…Zabini, you don't need that book, do you?" Hermione said, moving forward to pet the dog. "It's so cute!"
"Yes, I need the book," Blaise said, just to annoy Hermione, and turned it back into a book. Hermione turned and scowled at him silently. He falsely smiled at her.
"I think you can do people now," Hermione said, changing the subject. "Actually, I'm rather glad you brought the chicken-ferret crossover with you," she motioned at Draco, "you can practice on him."
"Oh, no! I will not have you letting him turn me into different animals, Mudblood," Draco said, standing up and facing her.
"Oh…I beg to differ, Draco. I think you will let me do so," Blaise said suddenly, glaring at Draco, who shrunk back slightly, but regained his composure immediately.
"Who are you to order me about Zabini?" he said maliciously, but obviously regretted it right after. Blaise looked at Draco, his normally blue eyes flashed red. Suddenly the room began to shake. The fire in the fireplace shrank, and the lights dimmed. Hermione gasped, completely frightened.
"Alright, Blaise, alright!" Draco yelled over the rumbling noise that had overtaken the common room.
"Er…Blaise?" Hermione said, barely over a whisper. He turned to look at her, the red in his fading back to blue.
He cleared his throat. "What?" he said, irately.
"Erm, I think we can continue this tomorrow. I'm kind of tired. Just…ah…bring Malfoy with you tomorrow; you'll try the spell on him then. Same time?"
"Yeah, whatever. Get out Malfoy!" Blaise barked. Draco eyed Hermione with an odd look on his face and left the common room.
"I'm going to go to bed. See you tomorrow then," Hermione said, starting up the stairs.
"I should care that you're going to bed because…" Blaise said, looking at her.
Hermione glared at him subtly. "You shouldn't. I just wanted to make sure you wouldn't be frightened all alone down here when you saw I was gone," she snapped.
"Aw, you cared that I would be scared?" He cocked his eyebrow.
Hermione couldn't come up with an answer to that, so she just turned and huffed up the rest of the stairs to her dormitory, hearing Blaise laugh at her the entire time.