Chapter 7: Walk Like An Egyptian

Monday, September 29, 1944

5:44 P.M.

"Have I already mentioned that I don't like Dippet?" Harry asked a little more than three hours later, leisurely lounging back across the length of an entire Gryffindor bench in a completely deserted Great Hall. Every place at all four massively long tables was set, already prepared for the students arriving on the Hogwarts Express later that evening.

"Keep it down, and Dumbledore - modern Dumbledore, I mean - did mention that he was something of a weasel", Ginny mused in a low voice, lying farther down the same bench that Harry was on.

"He was indecisive. Couldn't make up his mind long enough to get a job done", Ron said, stretched out along a Ravenclaw table bench. He shifted his hands behind his head as he stared up at the swirling, setting sun and purple and pink clouds on the ceiling. "I mean, a guy's got to stick to his guns. And he's not just any guy, he is the guy."

"Great observation, Ron". Hermione turned her head to the right and rolled her eyes over at Ginny from her bench on the opposite side of the Gryffindor table. The curly brown top of her head was just touching the silky blond top of Draco's, who was mirroring her position along the other half of the bench. She raised her hand into the air and, with her fingertip, began to gently trace the outline of a reddish-orange cloud near the disappearing sun.

"You know, Hermione", Lavender suddenly said, sitting up and gazing thoughtfully at her, "If you're going to walk like an Egyptian, talk like an Egyptian... I've been thinking up some ways to make you look more Egyptian."

Oh sweet Merlin. Not this.

"Yeah, that's right", Ron exclaimed, flipping over in his side and squinting over Harry and under the table in order to get a good look at Hermione. "I don't know... your eyes are sort of uniquely almond-shaped, I think that's a good thing... Maybe you could, I don't know, outline them with that eye stuff you use or something? When we went to Egypt, we saw some mummies, and their eyes were like that—"

"Since I haven't been dead for over 6,000 years, Ron, thanks, but no", Hermione interrupted stubbornly, her finger moving on to another cloud.

"Aw, Hermione, you at least have to be tan. All real Egyptians are tan". Lavender sighed reluctantly and grudgingly added, "That's it, I promise. I know a great tanning spell. And maybe I'll darken your hair up just a touch..." She surveyed Hermione's body critically. "You know, that might be all it takes to do the trick..." she mused.

Hermione echoed Lavender's deep sigh, this one in defeat. As much as she hated to admit it, Lavender did have a point: They would have to be both audibly and visibly convincing. "All right, Lav, I'll let you tan me before the Hogwarts Express gets here, good? But let's talk strategy now, you lot. We've got to get our stories as straight as a razor if we're ever going to pull this off."

"We can't speak Egyptian", Harry pointed out instantly. "No, I don't think that'll be much of a problem", she said, shaking her head and furrowing her brow as she studied the ceiling. "I highly doubt any student or teacher here can speak Egyptian, either – or, if they did, not nearly enough to call our bluff. Gibberish should work well enough if that ever becomes a problem."

Lavender laughed, and Ron raised a volunteering hand from his spot on the bench. "All right, I'm guessing the plan is to follow mini-You-Know-Who around until we get him alone, then blast the bastard back to the last millennium where he belongs", he finished in a low, icy voice, all the anger from two years of war and Merlin knew how long of fear channelled in his words.

Automatically, Hermione felt the sheer hate she had toward that evil man - no, that evil thing, spring up as it had in her own time - No, Hermione, relax, a calm little voice in the back of her mind called airily as Ginny muttered bitterly, "We'll make him pay before he even knows what hit him."

Miraculously, Hermione actually felt herself deflate, and she took a few, steadying breaths to clear her mind. Maybe this was why Lavender was such a yoga fanatic. "I don't know about you, but I don't especially feel like rotting in Azkaban because of killing some seventeen-year-old without an apparent motive", she disagreed, shaking her head. "I think the best thing to do is to assess the situation thoroughly for a few days, weeks, whatever it takes, before we make any definite plans of destruction."

"She's right, West." Draco rolled over on his stomach, dropping his British accent and taking on an American southern drawl. "See, we gotta go about this real sneaky-like. This isn't some idiot we're dealing with, this is probably one of the smartest sons of a bitches Hogwarts has ever seen. We gotta find out what his game is, and we gotta play it."

Hermione tilted her head backwards, raising her eyebrows at Draco. "Very... expressively put, ferret. I agree with him", she continued in a louder voice, drowning out Draco's inevitable retort. "But I don't want you to be playing some sort of character that isn't really who you – we - are in order to get information, if you know what I mean."

"I see your point", Lavender said slowly. "We're going to be stuck here forever, and pretending to be someone else for that long would be really exhausting". Hermione couldn't help but laugh. "Way to put this whole thing in a positive light, Lav", she said as she finished tracing cloud number eight and dropped her finger back to her lap. "Thank you", Lavender replied cheerfully, climbing off the Hufflepuff bench and moving into a yoga tree pose.

"The thing is, we want to get as close, figuratively speaking, to Voldemort as possible", Hermione said, trying to flip through every piece of information she had on the Dark Lord. "From what modern Dumbledore told us, Voldemort was really very aloof in school. Had a few friends that you couldn't exactly call friends—more like partners in crime, I suppose... Apparently could have had a girlfriend if he wanted to, but Dumbledore said that he oddly ignored every girl who came his way no matter how much she may have thrown herself at him-"

"Which will be changing", Draco stated confidently, and Hermione suppressed the urged to gag. "Seriously, Grang—Nefertari, did you look through this year's yearbook? The sampling of male specimen is far less than desirable, especially if the Dark Lord was at the top of the Vixen's list". He grinned. "I might have to help alleviate some of the weight of that awful burden..."

"The girls aren't too hot, either, you know", Harry mused thoughtfully. Hermione stared at him, shocked at the words that had just exited his mouth. Never before had she heard Harry Potter say something as superficial as that. "Harry!" she gasped.

Ginny groaned, shooting Hermione a knowing look, which Hermione interpreted perfectly: Guys. Without hesitating, Ginny reached over her head and whacked Harry's leg lightly. "You better keep saying that", she grumbled.

"Yeah, but did you see that, er, that one Slytherin?" Draco asked, snapping his fingers several times in rapid succession. "Um, what was her name ... Columbia Salvi! She was hot". "Oh! That one!" Harry snapped his fingers in agreement and pointed at Draco under the table. "Right she was!"

Letting out a growl, Ginny lifted her wand over her head, and said nonchalantly, "Expelliarmus". Instantly, a blue jet of light shot out of Ginny's wand into Harry. Instantly, he flew off the bench, banging into the Ravenclaw table and sending dish ware rattling in all directions. "OW... Gin!"

Tilting her head backward, her luscious auburn hair spilling toward the floor, as she did, his girlfriend cooed unsympathetically, "Aw, did that hurt? I'm sorry!" She rolled her neck and resumed staring innocently back up at the ceiling. "Great form, by the way". Harry groggily picked himself and his glasses off the floor and stumbled back to the Gryffindor bench. "Yeah, great form my ars—"

"Ugh!" Lavender gracelessly fell out of her tree pose and slammed both of her hands on the Gryffindor tabletop with a bang. "You lot are messing up my concentration!"

"You know, as entertaining as this all is, the Hogwarts Express is arriving in exactly—" Hermione glanced up at the large face clock in the northwest corner of the Great Hall "—one hour and four minutes. Which basically means-"

"Nose to the grindstone, people!" Draco barked in high-pitched imitation, popping his head, upside down, over Hermione's, his blue eyes glittering deviously in an oddly Dumbledore-esque manner. On inspiration, Hermione reached up with both hands and grabbed his neck. "Ack!" he gasped in surprise.

"Bloody hell", Lavender growled. She finally gave up on her tree pose and huffily sat down at the Hufflepuff table to watch Hermione strangle the Slytherin. "I don't believe it, she's finally doing it! Go, Hermione! Go!"

"Arrgh... Nefertari... leggo..."

"Hey, Hermione, when you finish killing Mal—uh, du Lac, I have a question."

"Arrrr!" With a grunt, Draco flipped himself off the bench and out of Hermione's grasp. He landed unceremoniously on the floor, gasping for air before glaring at Ron through the various gaps in the Gryffindor table. "Some friend you are, West. Your ex-Head Girl was about to murder me, and you had a question?"

"Yeah... that's a cryin' shame, mate, a cryin' shame... Right, Hermione, about what you were saying earlier about You-Kno- Voldemort ignoring all the women that came his way", Ron continued in a efficiently professional manner, obviously completely unconcerned about Draco's close demise. Ginny glanced over at Draco and began to laugh.

"What about it, Ron?" Hermione asked, tensing slightly as she wondered what sort of off-handed remark Ron had come up with now. "Well... What if he's, you know..." Ron trailed off uncomfortably, but at Hermione's 'No, I don't know' look, he waved his hands as if they could express his thoughts for him. "What if he's not exactly on the, er, straight and narrow?"

Even Lavender stopped her incessant laughing, and the silence in the Great Hall abruptly became so thick, Hermione could actually hear the low ticks of the distant but huge clock. Finally, Draco held up his hands from his spot on the floor, "If he swings the other way, I'm not going to be the one making the moves! I call out!"

Lavender giggled again, and Hermione's body relaxed against the bench again. "Well, erm... interesting thought you had there, Ron, but I think the point Dumbledore was actually trying to is that Voldemort might not have feelings, so he's going to be extremely difficult to get through to, or get past, depending on how you look at it."

"And what do you propose, O Fearless Leaderette?" Harry asked, still trying to get comfortable back on the Gryffindor bench after his wild flight á là Ginny.

Hermione paused. "I say, we don't go out of our way to get to him", she began dramatically, twirling her wand around the fingers of one hand and a lock of her hair around the fingers of her other. "We make him want to come to us." Harry gave up trying to get comfortable and sat up, cricking his neck before shifting his piercing green stare toward Hermione in interest. "You've got me hooked, Hermione. Don't stop."

"All right, let's think. What are the things that make people appealing?" Hermione held her hands above her head, still lying down, and ticked off her fingers. "Here are a few. Number one: Popularity. Number two: Mysteriousness. Number three: Having something or being someone that other people can't have or don't know about. The last one is where you come in. Each time someone asks you where we transferred from, or why, I want each of you to make up a fabulous work of rubbish. Tonight, I purposely asked Dippet to not announce where we came from specifically for that reason... though I obviously didn't tell him that", she added thoughtfully. "Throw it to the wind. Make them wonder."

"Good Merlin, that is good thinking, Hermione!" Lavender exclaimed, and Hermione could almost hear her making up a false storyline as she spoke. "So we can say anything?"

"Oh, yes". A sly smirk emerged, a rare occurrence on Hermione's normally sincere face. "I want you to make those stories good, as long as no ideas of time travel are mentioned. I don't want that being a possibility; it's too close to the truth. But keep the rumours going. Our mystery will only add to our popularity, which reminds me... We're going to have to prepare ourselves for the strong possibility that we might be sorted into different houses."

"Do you really think that we will be?" Ginny asked. She sat up and shaded her eyes from the rays of the setting sun so she could look over at Hermione questioningly. "We got sorted into the same house last time... Well, all except for him." She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder in Draco's direction.

Hermione wagged a finger at her redheaded friend knowingly. "Yeah, but that was because we all wanted to be in Gryffindor... or something to that extent. Ginny, Ron, you know the real reason Gryffindor was your only choice is because it ran in your family. And Harry, the only reason you weren't in Slytherin was because you told the Sorting Hat to not put you in."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa—What?" Draco interrupted, his ears perking into the conversation. "That's right, du Lac". Harry smiled contemptuously over at Draco "Your resident Golden Boy was once a lead candidate for the Snake House." "Good Merlin, what is this world coming to?" Draco muttered, shaking his head.

Hermione stared directly at Harry, upside down, as she said her next part of the plan. "This time, I want you to let that Sorting Hat put you wherever the wind blows. Yes, even in Slytherin, if it wants", she added at Harry's surprised, almost loathing expression. "We all know that separation can only help us collect more information. Are we all clear on that?" "Crystal," Ron quipped.

Harry was nodding. "This is good, Hermione. We've got a chance, I can feel it. But", he added, his voice hovering in warning, "We can't forget who we're dealing with". "Oh, we won't," Ginny said darkly under her breath, no doubt remembering her horrifying experience with Lord Voldemort in her first year.

Hermione lay her wand on the table and pulled herself up, meeting each of her friend's eyes. "Whatever you do, don't let him catch you in a lie," she warned, shaking her head grimly. "He's smart; he'll know. Once we've seen how things run here, we'll come up with a solid plan of attack, but we absolutely cannot get him suspicious. This is going to have to go as slowly and carefully as it needs to in order to work."

"And if the slow approach doesn't seem to be working by the end of the year, we'll just kill him and go live in Muggleland," Ron interjected under his breath, an eerie sincerity to his voice. "So don't go out of your way to worry about this bloody nonsense; there'll always be a fast way out. We have the advantage. Right, Hermione?"

For some reason, Hermione's stomach knotted, an uneasy peace settling over her. Yes, they did have a plan. Yes, by all rights, they probably would be more than justified in killing Lord Voldemort. But she had a feeling, a guilty feeling... Rather like if they killed him, they would be lowered to his level of darkness. "Yeah," she muttered, her eyes once again flicking up toward the clock. Ten past six. Fifty more minutes left. "Right."

Her thoughts were interrupted by the grating sound of a door sliding open, echoing off the walls of the Great Hall. "Uncle Al at seven o'clock," Draco muttered.

Hermione grinned and glanced over at the teachers' entrance on the far side of the Hall through which Dumbledore had entered, watching him glide — no, more like float — into the Hall. He surveyed the group of six, spread out across the width of three House tables, and, surprisingly, met her eye. "Miss Nefertari, Headmaster Dippet would like a word."

Hermione sucked in one deep breath, the calmness of a worry-free, currently warless life that had seeped into her being mixing with thrilling anticipation and more than a little fear of whatever was to come. She grinned down at Draco and, in a super-soft voice she knew Dumbledore wouldn't be able to hear, murmured, "Well, du Lac, let the games begin."