Disclaimer: Дивовижний світ чарівників і персонажі (крім тих, які є оригінальними) належать J.K. Роулінг.

"I know how to use a fellytone now..." – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

The weekend passed quickly, and when Monday came, Hermione was glad to have the classes to concentrate on again. She had sent the letter off to Mrs Weasley on Saturday evening, and had received word the next afternoon that her parents had received it, and were making progress in the recovering of their memories. The news, while positive, had barely cheered her up. She had, all weekend, been stuck in a strange sort of melancholic mood. Ron and Harry had been understanding, of course, sticking by her despite her gloom but not pestering her.

Classes never failed to cheer her up, however, and by the time morning classes were over and it was time for lunch, Hermione was in a significantly better mood, very nearly skipping towards the Great Hall.

'Creating your very own charm – it's such a fascinating process!' She beamed from ear to ear as she enthused to the two boys, who clearly did not share her excitement. 'And just imagine, you could make a charm for almost anything you wanted if you tried hard enough!'

'Really? I would never have guessed,' mumbled Ron to Harry. 'I mean, it's not as if we just sat through an hour and a half of class of Professor Flitwick giving us a comprehensive lecture on the exact same thing…'

'I heard that!' Hermione said, laughing. 'But I'm going to pretend that I didn't.'

Lunch served that day was a variety of dishes involving pasta, ranging from macaroni in chicken soup to the classic tagliatelle with beef ragu. Hermione helped herself to a heaped portion of lasagna, one of her absolute favourite dishes, and tucked in eagerly. The conversation quickly turned from class content to some amusing thing Luna had said to Ginny the other day about something or other. Hermione ate quickly, not paying too much attention to what the others were discussing, wanting to be early to her next class – Muggle Studies.

Class with Malfoy was proving to be an interesting affair. While she had been in the same class as him before, he had always been sitting with the other Slytherins so she had never paid him too much attention while the classes were going on. Now, however, she had observed that he usually sat alone and apart from the other students, even in the smaller classes such as Arithmancy and Ancient Runes.

Another thing that she had noticed, not that she had been intentionally watching him, of course, was that he was always early for class, and seldom in the Great Hall for meals. I bet he's already in class, she thought, casting a brief glance over to the Slytherin table.

Sure enough, the familiar icy blonde head was resting on his usual desk when she strode into the classroom, still nearly half an hour early. She placed her wand in the basket alongside Draco's, and walked over to sit beside him, placing her bag under the table with a light thump. The sound caused him to jerk upright abruptly, eyes wild and body taking on a defensive posture.

'Woah,' she spluttered, holding her hands up, startled by the sudden movement. 'It's just me, relax.' He regarded her suspiciously for a moment more, then did as she had suggested. With a sigh, he blinked hard and ran his hand through his hair wearily.

'Sorry, habit,' muttered Draco, 'though you really ought not to sneak up on people like that.' Hermione raised an eyebrow.

'I didn't sneak up on you on purpose, you were asleep!' she said. 'Why weren't you at lunch, anyway? I've noticed that you haven't been at meals much this term.'

'What, have you been watching me?' he asked. Draco's mouth had curled into a sneer, though the effect was rather dampened by the tentative curiousity that was clear in his eyes.

'No, I haven't!' she said, flustered as his question caught her off guard. 'Regardless, you really shouldn't be skipping meals. Do you use meal breaks as nap time or something?' He furrowed his eyebrows, confused at her concern.

'What's it to you what I do with my time?'

'Ah, forget it!' Hermione snapped, frustrated. 'I was just asking! There's no need to be so infuriating.'

'But I didn't do anything!' Draco said, laughing lightly at her frustration, which only seemed to infuriate her further. She pursed her lips and crossed her arms, turning away from him slightly. Why did he always deflect her attempts to show concern? Couldn't he see that she was just trying to be a friend?

They sat in silence for a while, Hermione quietly seething. Draco took out his notebook and pens, setting them on the table and flipping through his notes absentmindedly. When he had finished this, he looked around the room, still silent, fingers tapping the table, waiting for her to relent. Finally, after several minutes, he broke the silence.

'We're starting the topic of Communication today, aren't we?'

'Yeah,' Hermione replied, her tone still slightly bitter. 'Some people will definitely benefit from the lesson, if you ask me.'

'Don't be like that, I didn't mean to offend you!' Draco groaned, then added after a moment of hesitation, 'I'm just not used to people showing concern about me like that.' At this admission, Hermione turned to him in mild surprise.

'What, really?' she asked. 'What about Crabbe and Goyle? Parkinson? Nott?' Draco shook his head.

'Never,' he said, voice matter-of-fact and without any trace of bitterness. 'It's just not the Slytherin way – we cared for each other, but not like that. If they were your friends, you ignored their moments of weakness or anything else you noticed and let them keep their pride. And if they weren't, you teased the hell out of them.'

'But that's so inhumane!' Hermione exclaimed.

'That which does not kill you, makes you stronger,' replied Draco. 'You got used to it with time.'

By this time some of their classmates had begun to trickle into the classroom, taking their usual seats. Chatter filled the room, and as it did, Draco and Hermione's conversation turned to lighter topics, primarily a discussion of the material they had covered in Arithmancy that morning.

Precisely at two o' clock, Professor Hope strode in. The class hushed as she entered, watching her as she walked directly to the basket which had been placed on the desk and tilted it towards her, peering in.

'That doesn't seem to be all,' she said. 'Any more wands?'

A few students rose and walked to the front of the class to surrender their wands, evidently having forgotten to do so upon their entry. Satisfied, the young professor smiled and walked to the shiny white wall, which she had previously referred to as a whiteboard.

COMMUNICATION

'Good afternoon,' she said, nodding at them. 'Today we will begin the topic of Communication in the Muggle World. As you know, us wizards communicate primarily through Owl Post and Floo. Similarly, Muggles make use of a non-magical version of a postal system, as well as a device called the telephone.'

She wrote these two methods on the board, and the students copied them into their notebooks. Draco double checked his spelling of telphone, then quickly corrected it to telephone. Glancing over at Hermione's notes, he observed that she had shortened the device's name to phone, and noted this down accordingly in his own notebook. He opted not to copy down the little drawings she had doodled along the margin, though.

'Today and in our next lesson we will be covering the theory elements of these two primary methods of Muggle communication, and during our lesson on Thursday, we shall cover the practical elements. Is that understood?' She paused as the students nodded, and then continued her lecture.

'The main difference between the wizard's postage system and the Muggle system is the usage of stamps, which is a form of pre-payment as the Muggles usually do not communicate directly with their message carrier. I will cover this in more depth later in the lesson, however – first we shall cover the history of this particular system. While the postal system was only made available to the public in the seventeenth century, the first known postal system was actually started by a Squib named Augustus of the Roman Empire in the first century…'

Professor Hope proceeded with the lecture, writing the key and new words on the whiteboard as she did. During the lessons she covered the basics and brief history of both methods of communication, which was quite a feat in a mere hour and a half, if you asked her. She could see some of her students looking vexed and others looking bored of even dropping off to sleep, which she quickly rectified by asking for questions or walking up to the offending students' desk and rapping on them sharply.

As she reached the end of her lecture, she brought the lesson to her grand finale, pulling out her very own mobile phone, a bright orange Nokia 5110 she had bought earlier that year.

'This is a mobile phone, which is used in the same way as a telephone but operates with batteries and therefore can be moved away from power sources to be used. This type of phone was introduced in 1973, though the idea came from a model introduced in 1946, which operated as a car radio telephone. Cars will be covered soon under the topic of Transportation.'

The clock on her desk chimed, signaling that it was time to end the class. She quickly rounded up her conclusion and dismissed them, but not before assigning them homework – to read and annotate the chapter of Communication in their textbooks.

As the students filed out, collecting their wands as they did, she was happy to hear snatches of conversation as they discussed the material that she had just covered. In particular, the two students who were seated in the back of the classroom, the pale blonde male, Draco Malfoy, and the brunette female, Hermione Granger, that is, if she had remembered their names correctly – agree to a study session the following night. How delightful to have students intent on actually learning!

The students now gone, she wiped the whiteboard and her brow, exhausted from the lesson she had taught. Taking a drink of water from her bottle, she smiled to herself. A successful lesson, she was glad to say.

A/N: Again, sorry for the delay in updates – I'm probably not going to able to post quite as often as I want to due to the approaching N.E.W.T.s! Writing is a really great way to procrastinate/reward myself, though I keep ending up doing too much vaguely-related research instead of actually writing! (whoops) Thanks so much for your reviews, favourites and follows, they really do motivate me!