Her satisfaction was short-lived and quickly replaced by mounting anxiety. Would Malfoy retaliate? He was hardly the sort to take the moral high ground. There was no way in hell he would let a comment like that go unpunished in a suitably humiliating fashion.

Pity for the inbred… if only there were a potion for you, too!

Idiotic jab! What had she been thinking? He wasn't worth the effort. He never had been.

And yet she couldn't deny the thrill of satisfaction it had brought.

Standing by the staircase down to the Great Hall for breakfast the next morning, Hermione tried to hold on to that feeling of triumph, even as horrible images of curses directed under tables that would make her regurgitate her toast — or worse! — flickered through her head. What if he charmed her hair to fall out? He had certainly mocked it often enough. Or something horribly painful? She'd read of a curse, once, that —

Hermione yelped as a body collided with her, nearly sending her tumbling down the staircase.

"Oh, sorry, Hermione!"

"No worries, Neville. I was just… thinking."

"You coming to breakfast?"

"Yeah, of course…"

Obediently, she fell into step behind him. Surely Malfoy wouldn't be so stupid as to do anything truly egregious in such a public venue? He got away with all sorts of misbehaviours, but he at least had some sense of what was merely mischievous and what was cruel.

She hoped.

Regardless, she told herself with a squaring of her shoulders and setting of her jaw, there's nothing he could throw at me that I can't handle. And, after allowing herself a fond moment to reminisce back to when she had very sturdily slammed her fist into his face, she strode into the Great Hall and sat herself in full view of the Slytherin table.

Go on, then, she dared as she aggressively buttered her toast, do your worst.

He did nothing. For days. It was enough to drive Hermione near completely mad, to the degree that she sat in the common room, tugging on her own hair as she struggled to focus on her Charms essay, muttering furiously enough to drive Harry and Ron a few extra inches away with weary looks to each other.

Why wouldn't he do anything? That wasn't how Malfoy worked! If she had learned anything at this school, it was that that boy savoured every opportunity to humiliate and demean her. She'd handed him one on a silver platter — or rather, in a silver flask — and here he was, ignoring it. If anything, the lack of casual jibes in the corridors could be considered improved behaviour.

"Ergh!" Hermione tossed her quill onto the parchment, splattering droplets of ink where it landed. Could it be possible that he'd taken the more subtle, Slytherin approach, knowing that this sudden disengagement would unsettle her just as much as direct aggression?

No, she thought. The Hat may have put him in Slytherin, but Hermione knew that Malfoy was so desperate for attention he would never be able to bear such an uninvolved approach to tormenting her.

Which meant that surely he intended to do something — it was only a matter of time, perhaps he was concocting something now, as she sat —

"Argh!"

Back to square one.

Harry and Ron took one startled glance at her and hastily excused themselves to go to bed.


"Merlin, you must have that memorised by now."

Without looking away from the page, Hermione raised her eyebrows at Ron's absurd suggestion that she could possibly have fit this frankly ridiculous recipe into her head after only having brewed it once. Really.

"You've got, like, two weeks before you have to go back to the greasy git, don't you?"

"Tonight, Ron! It's the Full Moon. The second batch starts tonight."

"What? No way. Are you ever going to not be in the middle of brewing this potion?"

"Well," she sighed impatiently as she went over the stirring procedures for the first week, "it's needed every month, for obvious reasons, and takes nearly that long to brew, so no, not really."

Ron seemed genuinely surprised by this information, much to Hermione's aggravation. Why don't you ever just think?

"Merlin," he muttered around several bites of roast chicken, "don't think I could do it. Makes you wonder how all the other… y'knows… manage it."

"They don't, Ron! That's the whole point! If you would just look around you, you would see that Moony is extraordinarily lucky to be able to have the resources and security to get this potion! And that's why it's so important that people like — like Umbridge and You-Know-Who can't win! Because people like Moony and everyone else who aren't good enough by their standards are just going to keep being denied the things they need just to stay alive!"

Panting, Hermione glared at Ron from across the table for a handful of seconds before slamming her book shut and snatching up the rest of her belongings to storm out of the Great Hall.

Pity, really; the elves had done a wonderful job with the quiche, but her pride would not let her turn around and finish her plate. She knew she was being ridiculous by stomping out like this — Ron's questions hadn't been that stupid — but she couldn't help it: she felt so on edge after a week of expecting an attack around every corner. Her bloody heartrate wouldn't stop skyrocketing each time she entered a classroom or turned into a new corridor. And part of her hated herself for how fearful she was (she was a Gryffindor, for God's sake!), how one prat had turned her into an anxious, self-conscious mess who now experienced pronounced nausea at the prospect of making a single mistake in this recipe —

And then there was the other part of her, who fumed in trembling rage that nearly scared Hermione in its ferocity. But really, how dare someone take so much obvious pleasure in tormenting someone for sport? And how dare he be allowed to get away with it?

As her legs took her back to Gryffindor Tower, Hermione's head tied itself into complicated knots of anger and hurt and fragments of Wolfsbane instructions which, she thought by this point, would certainly echo around her cranium until the end of time.

Time, of which she didn't have much before she needed to go down to the dungeons.

I wish I still had the Time-Turner… I can't go down like this… They'll tease me more, and if I'm this much of a mess I'm bound to screw up the potion, anyway… I don't want to do any of this! God, I just want to take a nap and hold Crookshanks, please…

But time kept trotting on, as time was wont to do, and Hermione found herself standing before the dungeon door, resigned to her fate — whatever it was.

The closing of the latch behind her felt far more dramatic than it had any right to. Yet while part of her expected to meet the sight of Draco Malfoy's wand aimed at her face, flanked by a moderate army of Slytherins, all that awaited her in the brewing laboratory was the empty bench. She expelled a nervous breath and took great care at settling herself on the left-hand side, which she had unofficially adopted as her designated spot, and carefully unpacked her gloves, her notes, arranging them all just so…

With barely a minute to spare, Malfoy sauntered in. Hermione swallowed anxiously yet furiously worked to make sure she appeared as nonchalant as she wanted to feel, all the while keeping a close watch on his movements in her periphery.

He didn't even look up as he dumped his bag on the ground beside her and tossed his own gloves onto the bench. For all he seemed to care, she may as well not have existed.

Dammit!

Exactly on the hour, Professor Snape emerged, and Hermione knew that the opportunity for true retaliation on Malfoy's part had passed.

Sighing, she pulled on her gloves as Professor Snape carefully placed the box of toxic flowers before them. Now I just have to make sure I don't accidentally poison myself. Or Malfoy.

Ha.

"You have the recipe, as well as all necessary ingredients for the first night of preparation. I will assist or interfere when necessary. Begin."

And so the process recommenced, and all thoughts of Malfoy rapidly fled Hermione's brain as she focused on the painstaking task of precisely severing the delicate petals from the stems, all the while keeping the buds of pollen intact. Snape's demonstration the previous month had been nearly elegant; she felt a bit like a troll in a china shop as she tried to handle the blade while trapped in the bulky dragonhide gloves. The experience only served to increase her begrudging respect for the surly professor, and she winced as his voice once again halted her movements.

"Granger!"

"Sorry, professor. Knife slipped."

It was a testament to how delicate the process must be, or perhaps the fatigue level of all involved, that Snape did not take the opportunity to critique her further.

"Mr Malfoy, you are severing the petals too high."

"Sorry, sir. I'm worried about nicking the stem."

"May I advise you, then, to use the blade to feel out the joint between the stalk and the flower itself? You will feel through the knife the ideal incision point and, if you are careful, you will not 'nick' anything."

"Right…" Hermione heard the glide of the blade across the plant and then the neat slice. "Thank you, sir."

That first night a month ago, Snape's meticulous masterclass had taken half an hour. For the pair of them, the same process took 49 minutes, and included the sacrifice of one entire flower due to a wayward fist and a slippery patch on the floor. Hermione watched the marinating petals with dismay, wondering how long the more complex procedures would take if they continued at this rate. She actually felt badly for Professor Snape — the poor man only had them take on this task to save him the time of doing it himself. Now, he was having to spend three times as long just to watch them do it. Badly.

"I will dispose of the plant and store the potion. See to it that you exercise caution with the gloves and any residual monkshood."

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you, professor."

Snape exited with the cauldron and Hermione carefully tugged off her dragonhide gloves, finger by finger. Chopping vegetables had never left her quite this exhausted, though at least she could say she'd survived.

"Well, well, Granger,"

Never mind.

"What, Malfoy?"

"What, don't fancy a chat?"

"With you? Not really, no."

"Really? Seemed awfully keen last week —"

She spun to face him, all her pent-up anxiety resurging in a burst of anger. "What do you want, Malfoy?"

"What do I want?" he spat, advancing on her with a wicked gleam in his icy eyes. "I want you to learn your fucking place!"

"And what place is that, Malfoy? I'm a student here, just like you! We have the same rights!"

"You don't understand!" And here he laughed at her, as though the whole world were some jolly joke for everyone's amusement except Hermione's. "You are no better than a guest here, you Mudblood! You have been invited into a world full of history and tradition. My history. Do you know how many generations back my family goes? All of us wizards, all of us essential to the continuation of magical society in Europe."

Hermione rolled her eyes and Malfoy surged forward, close enough to touch her, close enough that she felt spittle land on her face.

"You have no respect! Do you really think you can just waltz into the wizarding world and just — make yourself at home, show off like you own the bloody place, when you don't even have it in you to honour the people who made it possible for our traditions to exist despite centuries of persecution from people like you!"

"I do have respect, Malfoy," she snarled, advancing until he had no choice but to take a step backwards. "But not for your family. You aren't the ones who made it possible for me to be here. Pure-bloods like you lot, with your disgusting wealth and — and ancient lineages are the reason it's so hard for 'people like me!' How well at home do you think I feel in a world where I'm called horrible slurs every day? Why do you think I should be grateful to you, and your family and the lot of you who care more about wealth and meaningless purity traditions than reason or kindness? You're a stain on the wizarding world! You make me ashamed to be a witch sometimes, you know that? It's families like the Weasleys who I respect, and wizards like Dumbledore who are working towards a world where we don't need all these — all these categories!"

"You —!"

"No, Malfoy! You have no right to tell me which one of us ought to be put in their place — I'm not the one who feels entitled to get everything handed to them on a silver bloody platter!"

"Bitch —!"

CRASH!

Both jumped as the horribly metallic clatter echoed throughout the laboratory; Malfoy's hand flinched where it now hung suspended over the workbench, thrown out to his side by an uncontrollable burst of fury. Not one second after Hermione spotted the set of silver scales on the ground did the door open and Professor Snape swept in, scowling.

"Sorry, professor," apologised Hermione before he could so much as raise an eyebrow. "My hand slipped. It won't happen again."

The professor's gaze travelled down to the ground at Malfoy's feet; a moment later, he vanished the pile of broken, twisted metal with an irritated flick of his wand. "See that it does not, Miss Granger, for while this is a private extracurricular activity, and thus I cannot reasonably deduct points, the same cannot be said of your in-class performance. Am I understood?"

"Yes, sir, of course. Thank you."

He glanced between the pair of students. "You are not required here any longer tonight; you may leave. You will return in forty-eight hours' time."

Hermione nodded and picked up her bag; she heard Malfoy do the same. In silence, they walked out into the corridor, whereupon the door closed behind them.

"You owe me, Malfoy," she hissed. "You owe me for every time I didn't magically castrate you when you deserve it and more."

Without giving him so much as the suggestion of a glance, she strode away in the direction of Gryffindor Tower before he could even think of a jinx to throw at her back.