"You work too much."
"Forget it Ginny, she can't hear you."
"She is once again completely absorbed in her work. Do you see how she's sitting slightly hunched over, frowning, her fingers flying over the keyboard of their own accord? This is what she always looks like when she's completely submerged. Nothing has changed since we graduated, only back then it was parchment and quill instead of a laptop."
"Harry is right. She doesn't even blink while she's pounding away at her keyboard. It's almost a little scary. She probably wouldn't even notice if a herd of centaurs stormed into the Three Broomsticks and trampled us all."
"Oh, Draco, that's not funny. I think this is seriously worrying. It's nice to be absorbed in what you're doing, but you can also overdo it. Mom would immediately take the laptop away from her and hide it from her until she recovered a little. She already has dark circles under her eyes. Is she currently doing anything other than working?"
"You're becoming more and more like your mother, but even Molly Weasley wouldn't be so suicidal as to try to take her laptop away. But hey, if you want to try and actually survive this, I'll pay for your drinks for a week."
"Oh, the bet stands, Harry Potter. Pay attention..." Ginny cleared her throat theatrically, then sucked in a sharp breath and pointed her finger excitedly at the front door of the Three Broomsticks : "Is that Professor McGonagall coming in in that skin-tight red dress and her hair loose?"
Hermione's head, which had just almost disappeared behind the screen of her laptop, shot up excitedly, her gaze fixed on the front door of the inn and her posture ramrod straight.
Draco and Harry, who had been watching Hermione carefully but had not expected their friend to actually react to Ginny's absurd interjection, startled when Hermione shot out of her hole like a meerkat in the African savannah and looked at her in shock. They exchanged a look with Ginny, who grinned triumphantly, and burst out laughing.
"Oh my God, I can't believe that seriously worked," Draco confessed through tears.
"Hermione, don't tell me you still have a crush on McGonagall after all these years?!" Harry asked in shock, still holding his stomach from laughter.
Hermione, who had just realized that her so-called "friends" had just made a fool of her to get her attention and that there was no Minerva McGonagall in sight, blushed bright red and crossed her arms over her chest. "You guys are so stupid, really."
Frustrated, she glanced at the screen, which she had neglected for nothing more than a childish joke. "Now I have to start the sentence again from the beginning. Thank you very much! You are really such good friends…"
But before she could put her fingers back on the keyboard, Ginny had already snatched the laptop away from her, briefly clicked "Save" and slammed the laptop shut. With a quick wave of her wand, she shrunk the device and shoved it into her jacket pocket. "I'm sorry, Hermione, but good friends sometimes do things that you don't like at all. Trust me, it's for your own good."
"For my own good?! How can it be for my own good if I miss my deadline because of you?!" Hermione shouted reproachfully.
"Which is when exactly?" Draco asked completely calmly.
"Please?"
"When is the deadline, Granger?" Draco clarified his question, raising an eyebrow.
Hermione scowled at him, crossed her arms even tighter over her chest and remained silent.
"Well?" Draco asked her again, while Ginny and Harry looked at her expectantly.
Frustrated, Hermione avoided her friends' gaze and looked around the crowded inn where they had agreed to meet tonight, which was packed despite it being a weekday.
There were witches and wizards sitting at every table, some in wizard clothes and some in Muggle clothes, but they all seemed to be in a good mood, judging by the volume and laughter, and enjoying the evening with good food and a glass or two of alcohol, Madam Rosmerta took care of this, diligently serving plates and glasses to her guests and spreading even more good vibes with her beaming smile.
Apart from her, there was definitely no one else in the room who was being subjected to the type of questioning that Hermione had just endured and she let out an annoyed sigh. Her gaze returned to her friends and she knew that they meant well, but she also knew that she was the only one in this group who had great ambitions and high expectations for herself and thus set standards that no one of her friends could meet and therefore no one really understood her.
She loved her friends with all her heart, but she was also frustrated that she was always the one who stepped out of line and suddenly she felt incredibly alone. Resigned, she lowered her head and looked sheepishly into her lap, fully aware that she couldn't stay silent forever and couldn't lie to her friends either. She could already see their reactions in her mind's eye and braced herself for the moral sermons she was about to hear.
"Mmmhnd of the moommmt," she mumbled quietly into her lap, nervously picking at her cuticles with her fingers.
"What was that?" Ginny asked.
"Speak up, Granger, come on, let it out," Draco urged her.
Harry just sat patiently next to Ginny and looked calmly at Hermione when she looked his way, fully expecting him to join the other two in pushing for an answer. He smiled when their eyes met and nodded encouragingly.
She exhaled gratefully. Only then did she realize that she had been holding her breath tensely as she felt backed into a corner. Harry had always been the one who never pushed her, even when he obviously disagreed with her.
She chewed her bottom lip for a moment to ground herself and face the inevitable, took a deep breath, sat upright again, and repeated audibly after letting her bottom lip pop forward again: "End of the month."
She looked at her friends challengingly and didn't have to wait a second longer before she was bombarded with indignant exclamations.
"End of the month?! Hermione, there are still four weeks until then! Are you completely crazy?" Ginny blurted out, gesticulating wildly with her arms to express her incomprehension and almost knocking over the wine glass that was standing in front of her if Harry hadn't had the foresight to put it some distance away to safety from his stormy girlfriend.
"Honestly, Granger, don't you think you are exaggerating your ambition?," Draco commented, shaking his head and taking a sip of his whiskey.
Harry also couldn't resist some well-intentioned advice: "Honestly, Hermione, you've already reached the required number of pages for your master's thesis and this will be your third degree in just six years. In addition to your masters in Transfiguration and Charms, you'll also have a Potions master. If anyone in the wizarding world still doubts you and your abilities after that, I will eat my Firebolt."
Despite his serious words, Hermione had to smile at the pun on the Muggle phrase, especially since she knew how much Harry loved his broom and especially flying. It warmed her heart to hear these words of praise and sincerity.
But the smile she gave him was still marked by sadness, because he had hit a mark with his statement and Hermione's fears, all the self-doubts and inferiority complexes about not being worthy of the wizarding world as a Muggle-born, which she usually tried to cover up and suppress with work and discipline, were brought into the light of day in just one sentence.
She suddenly felt very small, insignificant and vulnerable. Panic began to rise within her as all these emotions threatened to overwhelm her and she felt like she was losing control. Instinctively, she took flight forward, blind to the well-intentioned advice of her friends and in a helpless attempt to regain control, sink her claws into it and never let go.
"Give me back my laptop immediately, Ginny!" she demanded of her red-haired friend, unable to remove the poison from her voice that desperation and panic had injected there.
But Ginny wasn't intimidated for a moment by the threatening look the brunette gave her, leaned back in her chair, retrieved her wine glass that Harry had placed next to his beer, and took a relaxed sip of the red liquid , before simply saying, "No."
Hermione saw red and snapped, "You can't do that!"
"Well obviously I can " With every moment that Hermione got angrier, Ginny only seemed to get calmer. In all her years as a professional Quidditch player for the Holyhead Harpies, she had heard far worse threats when playing against a team that simply couldn't lose, not to mention the numerous Bludgers she had received over time. It would take more than an angry bookworm like Hermione to frighten the fearless chaser, who was known for her risky flight maneuvers.
Harry had also leaned back, but was anything but relaxed and fearless. He knew when to take cover, and this was definitely one of those situations. Draco, on the other hand, watched the exchange between the two friends with amusement. Like a spectator at a tennis match, he looked back and forth between the two witches, eagerly awaiting who would land the next hit.
"Ginny, you don't understand." Hermione ran her hand through her hair in desperation. How could she make her friend understand how important this thesis was to her?
"Oh, I understand very well, Hermione, even though I'm not nearly as smart, well-read and educated as you. You 're completely overworked, overtired and so tense, as if we were at war again and one horde of Death Eaters was just waiting behind the next corner to kill you. When was the last time you actually did something that didn't have to do with work? Even tonight, after weeks of trying to get you out of your work frenzy and getting you to take a little break with us, you seriously bring your laptop to our meeting and don't look at us all evening while you obsessively hack at this thing?" Ginny was just getting warm.
"This is my life, Ginny. You don't understand how important this is to me. I need this," Hermione tried desperately to make her friend understand what these degrees meant to her.
"What you need is to get laid properly so that you lose the ability to hear and see, and to have your brain fucked out to such an extent that your synapses then need a few hours to be able to form a coherent sentence again. Because you" she poked her in the chest with her index finger, which Hermione dismissed with an annoyed wave of her hand, "are also important and that" she circled her open palm in front of Hermione's face to enclose Hermione's entire existence in this one word , "is not a life!"
Hermione looked at her friend in shock and couldn't believe what she had just heard. Mouth agape, she sought both Harry's and Draco's gaze, hoping that they would offer her support, but Harry just shrugged apologetically and nodded softly, acknowledging his girlfriend's words, while Draco tilted his head again, brought the whiskey glass to his lips and confirmed what she was already seeing, "She's right, Granger," before taking a small sip of the amber liquid.
Hermione let out an exasperated sigh, put her elbows on the table in front of her, put her head in her hands and closed her eyes, hoping that this wasn't really happening. Why hadn't she stayed at home and just worked there instead of going to this meeting that she hadn't wanted to go to anyway? Of course she wanted to see her friends, but so close to the final stage of her thesis, she was just too tense and felt guilty every time she did anything that had nothing to do with work. She knew she was overworked and tired, but that was just how it was at a time like this. If you wanted to achieve something, you simply had to make sacrifices. She really needed her laptop back...
"Ok, you'll get your laptop back." Hermione thought she misheard as she raised her head and stared at Ginny in surprise. Was that just her wishful thinking that made her hallucinate? Was she dreaming? Was she already so overworked that she could no longer tell the difference between fantasy and reality? But Harry and Draco also looked at Ginny in surprise, so Hermione seemed to have heard correctly.
"Are you still in your right mind?" Draco blurted out. "She'll immediately turn back into that work zombie if you give her that thing back! Just don't do that!" He raised a threatening index finger.
Harry just seemed confused, "Ginny, I don't think that's a good idea..."
"On one condition," Ginny interrupted before Harry could finish his sentence and grinned diabolically in Hermione's direction. Her eyes flashed with excitement.
Oh no, I know that look. This is not good. Not good at all. Hermione swallowed hard. "Which is?"
Ginny took her time, apparently immensely pleased with with herself and whatever idea she had suddenly had. She giggled, couldn't suppress that devilish grin again and quickly took a sip of wine. "Oh, this is going to be so good."
Hermione drummed her fingers impatiently on the table. "So?"
"You're going out."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"You heard me. You're going out." Ginny smiled triumphantly, as if she had just discovered a cure for cancer.
"With you guys?" Hermione asked confused.
"Oh no, no, no." Ginny wiggled her index finger back and forth in front of her nose. "With a woman. On a date. You're going to go on a hot date with a hot woman and really relax for once, if you know what I mean." She winked at Hermione.
Hermione rolled her eyes and slapped her hand against her head in frustration. "Oh please, don't do this to me." The last thing she needed right now was making irrelevant small talk with some woman who couldn't even keep up with Hermione's intelligence, which had unfortunately bee the case in all her past relationships, if one could describe them as such, even when Hermione knew how conceited that sounded.
"I really don't have the nerve to search all the bars in town for women in the hope that there will be one with whom I can have a reasonable conversation and who is good in bed. You know exactly how frustrating my dates always were, Ginny, why should things suddenly be different now?" Hermione couldn't hide the frustration and desperation in her voice.
"Don't worry, that's where we come in." Ginny looked invitingly at Harry and Draco, who just looked at her expectantly and Draco in particular seemed to be incredibly amused by the conversation.
"You want to find me a woman?" Hermione asked skeptically.
"Most definitely", Ginny nodded affirmatively, while Draco leaned forward, a telltale glint in his eyes.
"Oh yes, Granger, we do. We will find you a woman who is exactly your type. Intelligent, attractive, confident, well-spoken. Someone who challenges you and is a match for you."
"Not to forget mature" Harry chuckled, earning a glare from Hermione, who knew exactly what he was referring to. It wasn't her fault that most of the witches who were her intellectual equal were much older than she was. Not to mention that she found older women extremely attractive because they exuded a self-confidence and sophistication that young women who were barely girls simply didn't have.
"Oh, I already have just the right witch in mind for you." Ginny clapped her hands excitedly.
"Oh yeah, me too", Harry grinned.
"So do I", Draco completed the trio.
"Wait a minute," Ginny hesitated, "are we all thinking about the same witch?"
They gave Hermione a suspicious look as they put their heads together and began to whisper excitedly to each other. When they had finished their discussion and straightened up again, Ginny couldn't contain herself and laughed: "Oh. My. God. This is even better than I originally imagined!"
She turned formally to Hermione, as if she had something official to announce that was of the utmost importance. Hermione shifted uncomfortably in her chair. That couldn't mean anything good.
"My dear Hermione," Ginny began. Oh, my goodness. Hermione rested both elbows on the table and dropped her chin into her hands. She would need the proverbial support.
"The gentlemen present here, Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy", she pointed to the two men, who nodded in confirmation, "and my humble self will choose not just one, but a total of three", Hermione opened her eyes in shock, "witches for you, who will go out with you in the next three weeks."
"What? Three weeks?" Hermione blurted out, but Ginny ignored her
"Each of us will choose a witch that we think suits you best and in the end you will choose one of them. The one of us whose witch you ultimately choose will win and therefore obviously knows you best and deserves the title of being your best friend." Once again, a victorious grin graced her face, as if she had already won this "prize". "And then, I emphasize, only then will you receive your laptop back, which gives you another week to proofread and submit your completed thesis, which should be child's play for you."
She looked expectantly at Harry and Draco, as if she were the judge in a legal case who was getting the consent of the lawyers present to her verdict.
"And look at it this way: after these weeks you will be incredibly relaxed and able to concentrate much better," Draco added.
"And from a purely neurological point of view, it is better to leave a work like this for a while before revising it one last time, because then you get a completely new look at your own words," confirmed Harry.
The three nodded to each other again to encourage and congratulate each other on their crazy idea. Hermione couldn't believe what was happening in front of her and how it would affect the next three weeks of her life. She shook her head in disbelief. Did she have a choice? She knew this was the only way she would get her laptop back. Oh God, I can't believe I'm actually doing this.
Resignedly, she reached for Ginny's wine glass and downed the rest of the drink in one gulp before asking, "When do we start?"