Chapter Thirty

The Shampoo Duel

Between their shared visions and their interrupted argument, Harry and Draco were both in a foul mood the whole way back to the dormitory. While neither of them spoke much, Hermione could practically feel their anger radiating off of them in waves… which only increased when they returned to the Gryffindor common room (after retrieving the chair and removing the cloak) to find everyone who'd been in the common room when they'd left and then some waiting for them, all of them with eager expressions, as though they were hoping for explanations or more stuff to gossip about. Ginny was nowhere to be seen. Ignoring everyone, they headed for their room.

"I need a shower," Hermione mumbled the moment they got into the guestroom.

"You've already had one today, not six hours ago," Harry pointed out.

"And about seventeen yesterday," Draco muttered with a pained expression. It seemed like the head-inflation incident, the hospital wing, the food fight, and the bathroom fiasco had all been ages ago; it was hard to believe that they'd only been chained together for three days.

Hermione glared at him before looking back at Harry wearily. "I need another one," she said tiredly. She'd gotten slightly sweaty being under the cloak and running from Draco at practice, and felt somewhat grimy; maybe it was just her imagination—or maybe one of the boys hadn't bathed properly—but she also thought she could still smell rancid cheese.

Harry glanced at the books, no doubt thinking that he'd at least get a chance to research the visions if he was in the bathroom instead of in bed, and nodded, pulling out his wand and aiming it at Draco, who scowled but didn't say anything. Hermione gathered up her nightgown and some fresh towels, then led the way to the bathroom.

Harry attempted to read while Hermione showered, but it seemed that Draco had a bad habit of being unable to keep quiet or still, and eventually Draco started to antagonize Harry. Before she knew it, they were screaming at each other.

"At least I don't have to have a Mudblood girl do my homework for me!"

"You're just jealous because your only friends are as stupid as you are!"

Hermione growled, having been able to block them out up until now; she was starting to lose all patience, however. Somewhere between "At least they're purebloods!" and "Yeah, and inbred!" Hermione did the only thing she could think to do—she grabbed a spare bar of soap from the shelf in the shower and lobbed it over the shower curtain in Harry and Draco's general direction.

"OW!" Harry yelled a split-second later.

"What the—?" Draco exclaimed before he burst out laughing.

"Sorry, Harry," Hermione called meekly.

"What was that for?" Harry demanded.

"I was aiming for Malfoy!"

"No offense, but your aim sucks."

"BWAHAHAHAH—OW!"

Hermione heard a slight slapping sound, and could only assume that Harry had thrown the soap bar at Draco. She turned to look through the shower curtain; all she could see was shadows, but it looked like they were now playing a demented game of catch with the soap; one would throw the soap, the other would use his Quidditch-player reflexes to catch it (occasionally fumbling it a little from the slipperiness), and then throw it back. Why they were bothering to throw soap instead of use wands or fists, she couldn't say, but she was worried that they'd finally lost it.

She sighed, figuring that she might as well finish her shower and turning away, too tired and annoyed to deal with their antics right now. Just as she'd closed her eyes and stuck her head under the spray to rinse off her shampoo, she heard the curtain rustle and a moment later, something touched her back.

Hermione yelped and leaped to the other side of the shower. Turning as quickly as she could and opening her eyes, she saw Draco's arm inside the shower, waving around for some reason. Just as she started forward, intent upon ripping his fingers off, Draco's hand closed around her conditioner bottle and withdrew.

"HEY! Give that back!" Hermione cried.

"Ha! Come on, Potter! Show me what you got!" Draco yelled, ignoring her.

Another hand brushed her back, and Hermione shrieked and jumped back towards the front of the shower. This time, it was Harry's hand that was groping around inside the shower; he seized her bottle of shampoo and retorted, "Anytime, you little prick!"

A series of loud thwacking noises and miscellaneous shouts of things like "HA!" and "Take THAT!" began. Hermione rolled her eyes and peeked around the shower curtain; Harry and Draco were duking it out with her hair care products, parrying blows like they would in a fencing match and occasionally landing hits on each other.

"Give it up, Malfoy!" Harry said during a momentary pause where he and Draco stood back, panting and holding their bottles at the ready.

"Never!" Draco proclaimed, and lunged at Harry, swinging madly.

Harry sidestepped him and smacked him in the head as he passed. "You're not going to beat me," Harry warned. "I've sword-fought a basilisk, and won."

"Yeah? That was five years ago, and I knocked a few twigs loose from Wood's broom only this afternoon, so I think I'll take my chances!"

Draco, forced to stop his lunge because of the chain, turned and swung his bottle at Harry, who blocked. Almost too fast for the eye to see, Draco whipped the bottle under Harry's guard and walloped Harry in the side. Hermione turned away in disgust as the battle continued, then realized she couldn't finish her shower without her conditioner.

Hermione reached for her wand, which she now kept in her arm cuff, fastened with a spell high up on the shower wall away from the water. She stuck her left hand through the curtain, then raised her wand and yelled, "Accio conditioner!"

Even as the bottle zoomed into her hand, she heard Draco shout "No fair! You little bitch!" and Harry's bottle smacking more repeatedly against Draco's body. Before Hermione could begin to feel smug about it, Draco's hand plunged back into the shower, startling her half to death once again. This time, his hand was in front of her; not wanting him to get up the nerve and the brains to open the curtain to look and see where another bottle was, she whacked him with her conditioner bottle a few times and grudgingly handed him a bottle of his own expensive "Young Wizards" shampoo.

Hermione refused to let their petty fight bother her (after all, she'd seen and been involved in her fair share of petty fights over the past few days), and did her best to ignore them. She used mostly her right arm to condition her hair and finish washing herself (as Draco kept jerking around her left in the course of the fight) and singing old Muggle pop songs to cover up the noise. She finished her shower without any further annoyances, and managed to get dried and dressed inside the shower without falling over (which was no easy task, with Draco running around the bathroom). Once she was done, she paused in her singing to see if they'd stopped fighting, and, when a shout of "DIE!" reached her ears, followed by "When will you evil jackasses learn that NOTHING KILLS ME!" she resumed her singing.

Half an hour and most of an album later, Hermione decided that she couldn't stay in the shower all night and pulled back the curtain, halting her singing.

If she hadn't been singing so loud, she might have noticed that somewhere along the line, Harry and Draco had stopped shouting insults at one another and that each hit the bottle made caused a much more hollow sound, but as she'd been half-screaming herself, she was completely surprised by the sight that met her eyes. Harry and Draco were still dueling, but it appeared that sometime during the fight, one of them had gotten the bright idea to squirt the other with their shampoo, and the other had followed suit. Harry was now coated in a blue slimy substance that could only be "Young Wizards," while Draco was covered from head to toe in Hermione's apple-scented Muggle shampoo. The entire bathroom seemed to be coated in blue and green slime, and through it all, Draco and Harry were still going at it with their mostly-empty containers, slipping in the shampoo but somehow managing to stay upright. The shouting had stopped because both boys were keeping their mouths firmly closed, in an attempt to keep the gunk out of their mouths.

"What are you DOING?" Hermione shrieked.

Harry looked over at her and promptly lost his footing; he landed hard on his side. Draco let out a triumphant yell and advanced on him… and then fell flat on his back, thanks to Hermione giving the chain a good hard yank.

"What is WRONG with you two?" Hermione shouted. "Are you complete infants? Who in their right minds has a shampoo duel?"

"He started it!" Harry said indignantly.

"No, HE started it!" Draco was quick to say.

"No, HE—"

"Technically, I started it," Hermione cut in, "but that was an accident—"

"Was not," Draco muttered, sitting up.

"And it shouldn't matter! That does not give you the right to waste perfectly good shampoo while beating each other—"

"My shampoo!" Draco wailed, only just realizing that he'd just wasted it all. "You're going to pay for this, Potter!"

Harry struggled into a sitting position. "Bring it, Malfoy."

"STOP IT!" Hermione screamed, waving her wand about wildly. "JUST STOP! Do you have ANY idea how many curses I know? You're going to stop, and you're going to go to sleep, or you're going to be turned into hermit crabs!"

Grudgingly, Harry looked at Draco and held his bottle out to the side. Draco did the same; he waited for Harry to drop his bottle first, then dropped his own, not wanting to get hit with a curse in the back by an angry girl, especially not since he'd become rather bruised over the past hour, between hitting the shampoo bottles, Harry's fists, and the walls and floor (and he had had enough bruises already, given how badly his weekend had gone).

"Evanesco," Hermione intoned, pointing her wand at the room in general. The shampoo vanished, leaving only a faint smell of apples and what she assumed was Draco's shampoo. Fighting the urge to growl, she stomped over to the sink to brush her teeth. She reached for her tube of toothpaste… and discovered it was missing. Sighing heavily, she asked, "Does someone want to tell me what happened to my toothpaste?"

"Um… it's… over here," Harry mumbled, and got up, crossed the room, and picked something up off the floor before walking to Hermione and holding out a tube of nearly-empty toothpaste.

"What happened to it?" Hermione asked wearily, unable to muster any more Mrs.-Weasley-like moments.

"Um… well…" Harry began, reddening and rubbing the back of his neck, "I disarmed Malfoy… and he got out his wand and tried to Summon something, but I think he missed—"

"I did NOT," Draco muttered darkly.

"And your toothpaste zoomed over, only it didn't really work well as a sword, so he squirted me with your toothpaste, and while I was trying to get out of the way of it, I saw your lotion—"

Hermione spluttered angrily; now that she thought of it, the smell in the room wasn't apples and "Young Wizards," but apples and peaches. "My favorite lotion? My wonderful-smelling, wonderful-feeling, very expensive peach-scented lotion?"

"I'll buy you a new one," Harry said meekly, picking up a large bottle from the floor and setting it down on the counter with a hollow clunking noise.

"And then what happened?" Hermione demanded, narrowing her eyes.

"Well… I squirted him with the lotion, then I ran out, so I tried to go back to the sink… only it didn't work out too well; I slipped in the lotion and toothpaste, and I accidentally kicked his shampoo back over to him… and he squirted that at me, so I shot back with your shampoo…"

Harry trailed off, blushing and seeming to cower before her like a first year student facing an angry McGonagall. Hermione sighed, used a spell to clean her teeth as best she could, and headed for the bedroom. "I'm going to bed."

No sooner had she stepped into the main room than a knock sounded on the door. "Um… Hermione?" came Neville's voice, sounding rather worried. "Are you in there?"

"What is it, Neville?" Hermione asked, hurrying towards the door, Draco dragging behind her.

"I was just… wondering if you were okay. I heard shouting…"

"And who was that singing old Backstreet Boys tunes?" yelled another voice, which was unmistakably Lavender Brown. Hermione froze with her hand on the doorknob.

"How many people are out there, Neville?" Hermione called cautiously, backing slowly away from the door.

"Um… a few…"

"Thirty-two!" called Dennis Creevey helpfully.

"Thirty-two?" Harry repeated incredulously.

"You've been making quite a racket, you know," called George. "We heard you all the way in Ron's room."

"What are you talking about?" said Dean Thomas. "You both had your ears pressed to the door when Seamus and I—OW!"

"Was that Harry yelling 'I am immortal; eat potion?'" asked Colin Creevey.

"It was lotion!" Draco called back without thinking.

"Why does everything smell like apples and peaches?" Parvati Patil demanded.

"Forget that, what were you fighting about?" Jack Sloper wanted to know.

"Hey, whatever happened with that cheese monster, guys?" Seamus Finnigan asked.

"Can I come in?" came Ginny's voice. She was apparently over whatever had happened in McGonagall's office; she sounded rather amused. "This I gotta hear."

"Oh, be quiet, Ginny, or I'll make sure you have another campout with Snape!" Hermione yelled crossly.

There was silence on the other side of the door for a few minutes; Hermione could only speculate, but she was fairly certain that everyone was now staring questioningly at Ginny. "…Thanks, Hermione," Ginny said after a moment, sighing. "Thanks a lot."

"Campout with Snape?" Fred repeated.

"...I think I'll just retreat now, and think up a good explanation… though I can tell you now, its foundation will be the argument that Hermione is delusional."

"I am NOT delusional! Just for that, you get lemon drops for Christmas!"

"…What's a lemon drop?" asked Neville, who, like most purebloods, was unfamiliar with Muggle candy.

"Goodnight, Hermione!" Ginny called. "G'night, Harry!"

"Goodnight," they both called back sourly.

"You can't leave, Gin! You're our ticket in!" exclaimed one of Ginny's roommates.

"Somebody stop her!" Fred yelled.

"Get back! I'll put the Bat-Bogey Hex on each and every one of you!"

"Watch it, guys, I think she's serious!" George said nervously.

"You're damned right, I am!"

"But she's the only one who knows the password! How will we get in?" Lavender whined.

"NO ONE is getting in!" Hermione fairly screamed. "I'm going to bed!"

"Hey, is it true that you and Malfoy have to share a bed?" Parvati asked.

"NO!" Harry, Hermione and Draco shouted as one.

"Fine. We'll just wait out here. Harry has to come out sometime!" Lavender yelled. Harry nervously edged away from the door.

"Actually, Harry hasn't been sleeping in our room," Seamus said.

There was another long pause. Hermione put her head in her hands; sure enough, a few moments later, everyone started talking at once, speculating on just why Harry was now rooming with Hermione.

"So he's sleeping in there?"

"With Hermione and MALFOY?"

"I KNEW Hermione dumped Ron for him!"

"Never thought you had it in you, girl!"

"Go Hermione, go Hermione, go, go, go Hermione!"

"Pay up, Andrew! That's five Galleons!"

"I AM SOUND-PROOFING THE DOOR!" Hermione screamed.

"Really?" Fred said, his tone so suggestive that Hermione vowed to strangle him. "Why, exactly?" A loud round of laughter sounded.

"Oh, that's IT!" Hermione roared.

Hermione unlocked the door and yanked it open, raising her wand… and suddenly there was a stampede to get back through the wall and into the common room. Harry rushed forward to try and hold her back, doing his best to get her wand down and succeeding just long enough for the wall to start to close behind the last Gryffindor. Fred and George, seeing her contained momentarily by Harry, paused.

"By the way, Hermione," Fred called as the wall slid shut, "nice nightgown!"

Harry released Hermione, who glared at the blank wall but turned around and marched back into the bedroom, flopping down on her bed. Harry smiled weakly at her as he shut the door, locked it, and put a few charms on it.

"Remember what you said last summer," Harry said as he got into bed next to her, "about writing a book? Maybe even a series, telling the story of me and you and Ron, and defeating Voldemort, and our time at Hogwarts?"

"Yeah?" Hermione said.

"If you ever do write that book," Harry told her as he took off his glasses, "leave this part out."