Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling.
WARNING: This chapter might be on the saucier side. Proceed with caution if you're afraid of Jenny Hazard! But seriously, there's a bit of sexy stuff, so I've got to tell you to be careful. It's humorous, at least. On the other hand, I'm adding a lot of character development for some other characters, so that's a good reason to put aside this warning and continue reading. So...take this for what you will. I've done my duty.
BTW: Escoger. Rules. You.
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Dool Tree
Chapter 17
A few days after her visit with Dumbledore, it was a few days before both Halloween and Deborah Smith's 17th birthday.
The girl was of more noble lineage than even the Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter, or Sirius Black of Hermione's time, being a direct descendant of the first son of Helga Hufflepuff as well as sharing close ties to a good number of European monarchs. Moreover, not only were they one of the most regal wizarding families in England, they had been the richest wizarding family since the eighteenth century.
From what Hermione knew from her history classes in the 1990s, Corpus Smith (whom she presumed was Deborah's father or grandfather) was a terrible investor and would ruin the family's capital by 1985 due to a number of particularly bad speculations that would severely deplete the family's finances. So it was said in Hermione's time, Corpus was extremely superstitious and paranoid, and had little respect for family money or heritage. His aim was admirable enough: to put away the money where Voldemort could not touch it.
However, as Binns had put it, the man was 'as ill-bred and ignorant as they came', and, in his frenzied attempts to protect it, he lost it all because people took advantage of him in his panic. Some people had made cheating old families out of their assets into a rote system, or even an art.
Given what had happened to Harry's 'fortune', Hermione knew that this was not an uncommon situation for wizarding families in the 1980s recession; the Smith family was a mere case study that represented a few dozen families of all house affiliations, including Slytherin. But it hugely surprised her when Deborah Smith announced her enormous Halloween Ball, hosted at the Smith's elegant winter mansion.
I suppose it's like America in the late 1850s, Hermione thought pensively. Even while the family is falling into economic disaster, they forcefully deny it by hosting extravagant parties to flaunt their wealth, pretending that it's not going down the drain.
Most of the girls and boys from Gryffindor were invited, particularly those in Deborah's class. This included Hermione, even if it was just out of a gesture of cordiality.
"Here we go, I made these myself this morning," Deborah said, handing out the pretty cream-colored parchment invitations to Hermione, Dorcas, and Mary. "You may each bring a date. But no Slytherins. My father detests Slytherins."
Mary nodded in sardonic acknowledgment, but Dorcas whined, "What about Barty Crouch, Debbie?"
"Hush!" Deborah insisted with a blush, jabbing Dorcas in the stomach with her elbow. "Don't blab about things like that! And do not call me 'Debbie!'"
What a hypocrite, Hermione thought, laughing internally. And what irony! She's got a crush on one of the most Slytherin Slytherins out there, despite how much she ostensibly hates them.
Hermione herself couldn't decide on whether she agreed or not; she knew that Snape wasn't all as bad as his house-mates, but was it because he was him, or because they just looked bad to everybody who wasn't them, or because she had a skewed perception of them. In any of these cases, however, she knew that she had some doubt.
Are they 'evil' because they are, or are they 'evil' because we think they are? she queried to herself.
She felt herself look for Lily at this time, wondering what the other girl's reaction to Deborah's obvious bias would be, but Lily was not there. She'd not come up with them after dinner to the dorms, so she was probably downstairs in the common-room.
"And everyone, please remember that not everyone is invited-"
"-Invited to what?" came a voice, preceding the entrance of Jenny into the room.
"Oh, hello, Jenny," said Deborah, clearly flustered. "It's a party. I am turning of age on the 31st, you know."
"Do I get to come?"
"Of course, of course," said Deborah, in such a way as to disguise her grumbling. It was evident that she hadn't meant to invite Jenny in the first place. "Just...don't bring a Slytherin for a date, understand?"
Jenny plunked onto her own bed and stretched out, her position making clear to the other girls that she was not wearing a bra. "Eh, Slytherins' are all right. Their snakes are just as firm as the rest of them. Sometimes they give me a treat after I've done them a good turn, too, though that's probably to make me come back to tickle their snakes again. Which technique works, 'cus I do."
Deborah looked grimly scandalized, Mary grinned, and Dorcas turned rather pink and looked at the floor.
"But don't I get an invitation?" Jenny asked, rolling across her bed in a fluid manner, reaching over, and grabbing an invitation out of Deborah's hand.
Deborah's eyes burned with indignation. "Give me back that invitation," Deborah ordered, standing with a military alertness and trying to twist the thing out of Jenny's hand.
"Cain't. I'd still remember when and where and whatnot!" the girl chortled, sliding the invitation into her underwear.
Hermione, safe from her vantage point on the bed, knew that Deborah was just leaping at the first chance she could get to justify uninviting Jenny. She also knew that Deborah would not be so weak as to do the inevitable finger-chasing. But she did not know what was up when the upcoming birthday girl drew her wand and pointed it at Jenny's temple.
"Obliviate."
She murmured the fateful spell while everyone else stared in horror, then quickly pocketed her wand again.
Jenny, on her part, shook her head vigorously, saying, "I don't think I had a joint after dinner...or did I? Eh, whatever, what's this in me pants?"
"It's mine, actually," Deborah said smugly. "Please give it back?"
Jenny slid her fingers under her waistband again and laughed. "Erm, do you want it back?"
"Yes, rather."
So Jenny withdrew the paper. Something gooey was all over it.
"Oh...Merlin..." Deborah turned very green and buried her face in the nearest pillow.
"I think ye'd be better throwin' that awaey, love," Mary said, looking ill at the sight as well.
"Don't get your knickers in a twist," Jenny said ironically, and chucked the thing across the room into the wastebasket. "I just love watching Slughorn's belly jiggle. It's such a refreshing change, to lust after a fat man. It's even better than thinking about Flitwick's spindly hands..."
"You are sickening," muttered Deborah.
"I know," Jenny said with a laugh, rising and stretching. "Is my fat fetish is just a phase? I don't know. But I think I'll nip over to the boy's rooms. I'm late for my date with a plump seventh year. Not as roly-poly as Slughorn, but still quite chubby and jiggly. So sexy." With a cheerful whistle, she reached under her bed and withdrew an enormous bag of assorted candy from Honeydukes and skipped out the door.
"Ugh!" Deborah exclaimed to Dorcas. "That invitation was supposed to be for Lily...now I've got to order more paper, because I only bought exactly enough to make exactly the number of invitations I was planning...do write that in my planner, will you, darling?"
"Of course," Dorcas said quickly, reaching into her pocket, withdrawing a little golden notebook and quill, and scribbling ferociously.
Hermione couldn't help but feel a force of indignation as she watched Deborah, a frog in a small pond, acting like such a spoiled brat. It made her so heated. This feeling is the reason I started S.P.E.W., she noted with frustration. I've got to do something.
"And do remember, Mary; you must R.S.V.P. to Dorcas by tomorrow if you are coming," Deborah said, biting back exasperation. "If you forget, I won't let you come."
"I knaow, I knaow," the northern girl said, sounding quite unconcerned. "It's jest like yeur winter jolly last year."
"Do you even want to come?" asked Deborah, very tense.
"Not shure eef I shoulde come, ye knaow," Mary said, shrugging. "It'll bae on Soonday. And I don' knaow if me captain's comin' or not. And I've not feenish'd the four fet for Charms yet, neither. "
"It wasn't a four-foot assignment," argued Deborah, but Mary was already going out the door, and the birthday-girl was met with the slamming of a door.
"I'd dis-invite her as well, but I don't think it would serve a purpose," Deborah said with a scoff.
"You know," Hermione said, taking advantage of the lull to stand up, "I don't think that what you did to Jenny was nice at all."
"How do you determine that?" Deborah mused, sitting and crossing her legs prettily. She looked so innocent, as delicate as a princess, but yet her behavior demonstrated that she was more like the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. It made Hermione so angry.
"You...why, you didn't want her to come in the first place," Hermione began, her face contorted with accusative rage, "And instead of honorably telling that to her face, you create some convoluted situation so that you can seem to be 'in the right' instead of just flatly saying to her, 'Jenny, I don't want my parents to find you shagging in the garden on the night of my party, so if you can promise to keep off the guys, you can come.' What utter bull is that!"
"Shush, Aussie, you don't know what you're talking about," Deborah said. "Jenny...she's not proper."
"That may well be," Hermione said in a rush. "But you're not even giving her a fair chance, you know? She could be proper, given the proper warnings and context. Do you know for certain that she wouldn't abide by your request on your birthday?"
"No, I admittedly-"
"-But have you ever tried talking to her?" Hermione continued, "Have you ever demonstrated your concern? Have you ever thought that she might have feelings, that she might actually care about you, but that because you don't seem to care about her, she therefore doesn't care what you say to her? What sort of Gryffindor are you?"
"Do acknowledge," Deborah argued, clearly getting upon a high horse, "that our mutual friend has a...propensity to do whatever she feels like. We have, in the past, tried to make her see reason," Deborah said, ignoring Hermione, her voice cold. After six years, we hardly think it worth any further effort. So drop it."
"But you're not even giving her a chance to prove herself! You're...so judgmental! A disgrace to Gryffindor!"
Her words rang throughout the room while the other girls absorbed them, the following silence echoing louder than any noise. For a moment, Hermione felt that she might have gone a tad too far, then Deborah spoke, her soft words cold as an arctic blizzard, her green eyes expressing nothing short of absolute fury.
"Judgmental? A disgrace? Well, Aussie, let me explain something to you: there are, as my mother says, the proper sort, and the improper sort. Jenny is a perfect example of the latter, what with her disgusting habits and embarrassing actions, and after this conversation it is clear that so are you." Taking a deep breath, the other girl then bellowed out, "Dorcas!"
"Yes?" asked the other girl, a little nervous.
Deborah, her haughty face deformed with hatred, spat out, "Please take Miss Granger's invitation, and cancel the order for new paper. It seems that we'll not be needing to make a new one for Lily."
Obedient, but with some apology in her eyes, Dorcas stepped forward, her hand extended. With haughty decorum, Hermione placed the invitation on Dorcas' hand, but crumpling it in her fingers first.
"Now," Deborah said, turning away, taking the invitation and tapping it with her wand until it looked fresh and new once more. "Go and give this to Lily."
"Yes'm," Dorcas replied, and speedily exited.
"Oh, and do tell her not to invite that uncouth Slytherin who hangs about her," Deborah called, but the door had already closed. "Ah well. I daresay, Lily being the proper sort, she wouldn't do anything so obscene...not like that Australian," Deborah stated, smirking at Hermione. "Now she is a disgrace to Gryffindor!"
And with that, the lights in the room went out, leaving Hermione cold and alone in the darkness.
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