The next day, Hermione arrived to find Draco lingering outside the laboratory's door. He looked up when he heard her footsteps and frowned.
"You didn't get Slughorn?" he demanded.
Bristling, Hermione retorted, "Was I supposed to?"
"Well, how else are we supposed to get in? He hasn't told us — oh."
The door gave way to Hermione's touch. She gave him a smug look but otherwise resisted the urge to call him an idiot and followed him inside, Bubble-Head Charm already cast.
"I hope that's warded," he remarked with a scowl as he hung his bag on the hook. "Wouldn't do for a second year to accidentally stumble in here."
"Maybe we can ask Professor Slughorn after Potions."
Draco made a sound of acknowledgement and surveyed their little room for a moment. On a little table in the corner sat the silver cauldron, happily marinating. The dish of Moonwater and deer's hairs waited on the workbench where they'd left them alongside the massive hide.
For an awkward moment, neither of them said anything. Hermione flattened out her parchment of notes on the workbench and pretended to read them while Draco paced around the lab aimlessly.
Say something.
Like what? He barely wants to speak to me at all, apparently!
Hermione jumped at his voice. "This is the ingredient cupboard, yeah?"
"Y-yes, I think so."
"Well, come on then. We've got to get those funny green plums."
Hermione wordlessly followed him as he pulled open the cupboard door (it took a few tries; Hermione wondered when the hinge had last been oiled) and stepped inside. The space was small, much smaller than Snape's, and to her dismay, a complete mess.
"Merlin's bloody bollocks," said Draco.
In growing horror, Hermione spun in a full circle, surveying the shelves. "Aren't Potions Masters meant to be meticulous about their craft? This is practically a hazard!"
"Calm down, Granger." Tentatively, Draco picked up a little jar that had fallen onto its side. A congealed goo dripped out of it, and he wrinkled his nose. "How many generations since this was last touched?" he wondered.
"Too many." Hermione eyed the broken and decayed ingredients around them. Very few looked salvageable, and she didn't want to imagine what they'd have to pick through to find the things they needed for today. "Honestly, how did Slughorn come in here and not immediately throw everything out? He should know how dangerous this can be!"
"Doubt he's seen it. He probably had an elf deliver our ingredients — oh, yuck."
"I'm surprised the elf didn't take it upon itself to clean it all…" Not that she condoned that sort of thing, of course, but she knew what house-elves could be like.
"Elves aren't allowed to handle ingredients unless given explicit permission by a wizard."
Oh. I suppose that makes sense.
"I doubt we have the authority to get an elf to take care of all this, either." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "We're going to have to clean it all ourselves, aren't we? Fucking hell…"
He looked bitter and exhausted. She'd never seen him quite like this, even last term. It made her nervous.
After a pause, he sighed and opened his eyes. "Fine. What do we need today, exactly?"
"Four of the 'funny green plums,' as you put it, and thirty-seven-and-a-half millilitres of Arctic wolf's blood."
"Right… You start over there, I'll start on this side and — I dunno, first one to find an ingredient that isn't either rancid or solidified gets the prize."
"What is the prize?" wondered Hermione. The eye-level shelf in front of her had half a dozen decayed purple eggs on it. Revolting. She moved to the next.
"I'll give you a lifetime supply of the finest hair potion galleons can buy."
Hermione scoffed. "And if I don't want that?"
"Oh, no, Granger. That would be my prize. So I don't have to deal with your hair trying to climb up my nose every day — oh, Merlin, do you see this? I think these are centaur bollocks. Or they used to be, anyway."
Hermione laughed at that, but it quickly turned to a sound of disgust as she found a half-intact bird corpse hiding behind a bottle.
It took ages to locate the blood (Hermione found it first and insisted he owed her a prize that wasn't Sleakeezy's. He maintained that she'd cheated and therefore forfeit her reward) and the plums and by the time they shut the cupboard behind them, they had an overflowing box of broken and otherwise unusable ingredient parts to be delivered to the nearest Potions Master or house-elf for appropriate disposal. They'd only removed what had been in the way of what they needed, which amounted to less than a third of the detritus. Hermione did not look forward to the next venture.
A short time later, the blood and plum solution was fizzing away quite merrily. Draco charmed the container to seal itself while Hermione wrestled with the deer hide, and together they carefully wrapped the metal in the heavy skin.
Work done, they gathered their belongings, stepped out of the lab, and went their separate ways.
The ingredient cupboard did indeed cause problems the next day. The time-consuming process of finding what they needed, plus the clean-up involved when one of the jars chose to explode, was untenable. They rushed to their next class — which, it turned out, was Ancient Runes together — and shamefully entered several minutes late. Professor Babbling gave them a raised eyebrow and silently directed them to take the last vacant desk.
Draco handed her a syllabus without looking at her and Hermione tried to ignore the sticky feeling of whatever slime refused to be Scoured from her hair.
She'd never sat next to him in a lesson before. She tried to ignore it, ignore him, but she couldn't help it. Every time he shifted in his seat, the way his handwriting changed when he wrote quickly… He didn't say anything, didn't give any indication he knew she existed. It was such a change from how he'd been half an hour ago, groaning dramatically as one of the plants he'd carefully picked up had liquefied in his hands, and then laughing at her when something old and gooey had stuck itself to her hair.
She wondered about it for a while. How mercurial he could be.
And then the lesson concluded, Professor Babbling shooed them out the door, and Draco was forgotten.
Hermione stared into the fire, thoughts full of Tom Riddle and how he'd come to be. When Harry had returned from Dumbledore, equipped with knowledge of Voldemort's parents of all things, Hermione had thought she must have heard wrong. Was Harry meant to defeat the most powerful Dark wizard in history with a family tree? A lifetime of brilliance and power and this was what Dumbledore saw fit to teach Harry?
She'd tried to interrogate him, because surely there must have been some crucial detail he'd missed, but Harry insisted that was all and wouldn't let her ask him about it anymore.
So, she retreated into her brain and tried to work it out herself.
Could there be a parallel between Voldemort's mother and Harry's?
Or maybe it's the other way 'round, since it was Harry's father who was the pure-blood, unlike Voldemort's parents —
"Hey, Hermione?"
She blinked, rapidly returning to the common room. "Yes?"
Harry looked stressed. "How would you run Quidditch try-outs if you were captain?"
"Harry, I've told you — I'm clueless about Quidditch —"
"I know that, but you're really good at organising things." He looked massively overwhelmed. "You've seen the sign-up sheet, Hermione. Do you know how many people want to try out? What if — what if fifty people turn up? How am I supposed to decide who makes the team?"
"Harry, I don't think fifty people will turn up."
"Still."
"You could try an age cut-off? Saying no-one under third year can try might narrow it down."
Harry shook his head. "That's not fair. I was put on the team as a first year." Hermione conceded that and frustratedly wondered why he was asking for her help at all. "What if I split them into two teams?" he wondered. "Make them play each other, and then see who the winners are…"
"What if you have too many people trying out for one position? You can't make equal teams if you have, say, twenty Beaters and only five Chasers."
Harry put his head in his hands and groaned.
The term picked up fairly quickly and within a few days, Hermione had a comfortable load of homework. Despite knowledge of the Dark Lord lingering outside Hogwarts, this was, more or less, the first "normal" year since before the Triwizard Tournament. Their fourth year had been significantly affected by the presence of the tournament itself, and the subsequent one corrupted by Umbridge and the meddling of the Ministry.
Now, it was just school again. More or less. Granted, it was only September, but Hermione would revel in the normalcy for as long as it lasted.
Well, as normal as it got when she spent her free time brewing in the little laboratory. After a week, the cupboard was nearly clean, bearing only the ingredients they needed and a few squishy things in the corners they were too afraid to touch just yet.
Hermione had taken to leaving her dragonhide gloves on one of the shelves by the worktop and had Spello-taped her brewing notes to the wall. She often caught Draco referring to them as he worked, not that he'd ever admit it. On days when the potion just needed supervision while it brewed, they'd take turns watching the cauldron and doing homework. Sometimes she'd ask his opinion on an assignment, and he usually offered it.
Overall, it wasn't a bad way to spend so many hours during the week. A far cry, certainly, from the dread she'd felt when they'd first started a year ago.
They both jumped at the sound of a knock on the door. For a moment, they just stared at each other, eyes wide, relaxing only when Professor Slughorn's merry voice came through the walls. "Hello! It's me! May I come in?"
Professor Slughorn bustled in, Bubble-Head Charm wobbling around his head, and clapped his hands in delight at the sight of their potion. He declared it perfect and went on and on about his pleasure in being able to provide them the laboratory. "I trust everything was up to snuff?"
Draco and Hermione looked at each other, thinking of the former monstrosity known as the ingredient cupboard.
"Yes, sir."
"Everything is perfect, thank you, professor."
"Splendid! Splendid… Well, I just wanted to pop by, see how you are, and — oh, Miss Granger, since I'm here, I'd like to invite you to a little supper party this Saturday. It's a little tradition I started when I first began teaching here; I always enjoy celebrating the work of my most promising students, and I think your potion work alone is evidence of that!" His eyes flickered to Draco, whose jaw twitched, and he sounded considerably less excited when he added, "And, of course, seeing as you have been a part of this endeavour, Mr Malfoy, I would be happy to see you there as well."
Draco ground his teeth for a moment and Hermione felt the temperature drop by several degrees. When Draco finally said, "Thank you, professor. I'm happy to accept," it was with great pain.
"Yes, lovely… Well, come by my office then, Saturday evening. Excuse me, Malfoy…" Slughorn shuffled around him to leave.
"Oh! Professor — we'll be in here brewing most of Saturday. I'm not sure we'll be able to be there on time —"
"Oh, no matter, Miss Granger! We will, of course, be completely understanding if you must arrive a little late. After all, it is fashionable, don't they say? Good night!" And then he disappeared behind the door.
Draco picked up his things sharply and yanked his bag off the hook.
"Where are you going?" asked Hermione, confused. His sudden change in demeanour unnerved her.
"It's done," he said shortly, jerking his head at the potion, and slammed the door on his way out.
"How's it going?" asked Hermione dubiously, nodding to the copy of Quidditch Through the Ages in Harry's lap.
Harry shrugged and made room for her at the table. "I think I'll know what to do when I see what kind of players show up."
This seemed like as good a plan as any to Hermione, so she turned her attention to breakfast. She was in the mood for marmalade this morning, but it seemed to have been misplaced somewhere down the table…
"Hey, Hermione, did Slughorn invite you to a dinner party?"
There! She summoned the jar and peered inside to make sure it was orange and not grapefruit. "Yes. I suppose he invited you, too?"
"Yeah… I was thinking of not going, but that seems rude."
"I was thinking the same thing." They looked at each other in a moment of mutual resignation. "Well, we can't both bail."
"Fine. But I'm trusting you to create a diversion if I need a quick escape."
"Deal, but only if you do the same for me."
They shared a nod of agreement and returned to their respective breakfasts. Harry's thoughts turned almost immediately to Quidditch, which was hardly surprising. "Shame he has to make it a Saturday. If try-outs go late, I might not have time to change before the dinner." He wrinkled his nose at that.
Hermione froze, dread pooling in her stomach. "Quidditch try-outs are this Saturday? Oh, no — I'm so sorry, Harry. I can't make it."
"What can't you make?" asked Ron as he took a seat opposite them and immediately reached for some sausages.
"Quidditch try-outs," Harry answered glumly.
"Oh."
Hermione looked between them, guilt swelling up with every heartbeat. "I'm really, really sorry. Truly. You know I'd love to be there and support both of you—"
"Yeah, we know, Hermione. It's alright." Harry lifted a hand to stop her and gave her a smile. "Potion needs you."
"Blimey," said Ron as he poked at his eggs. "I forgot how needy that recipe is. Are you going to be around for anything anymore?"
"Of course I will," she insisted. Ron still looked low, and she had the sinking feeling that he'd planned to rely on her support from the stands to get through the try-out. "I'm really sorry I won't be there, Ron."
"Nah, s'alright — don't worry about it —"
"No, really. I'm sure you'll do brilliantly. You were great on the team last year; you've got this."
Ron gave her a smile and she hoped it would be enough.
