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bookishwenchGreat day in the morning, this took much too long to finish for something under 3000 words! That's what I get for writing myself into a corner.
Previous parts can be found here.
Author: Meltha
Rating: PG at this point, but likely to rise
Feedback: Yes, thank you. Melpomenethalia@aol.com
Spoilers: Currently, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Again, this will rise.
Distribution: The Blackberry Patch and Fanfiction.net. If you’re interested, please let me know.
Summary: At long last, Hermione and Draco give Lavender and Parvati a taste of their own medicine.
Author note: I’m sorry because this took FOREVER for me to write. It’s not perfect, but rather than writing and re-writing it to death, I figured imperfect was better than nothing at all. Also, this is now officially 100 pages long. Whew!
Disclaimer: All characters are created by J. K. Rowling, a wonderful writer whose works I greatly enjoy. I have borrowed them for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
Part 16: Sweet Revenge
Plans for the Great Revenge Caper were progressing, and Draco was enjoying himself immensely. For the next few days, Hermione and he were owling one another multiple times at all hours. Draco had insisted that passing notes in class would be much speedier, but Hermione looked at him with undisguised horror.
“We might get in trouble! Besides, I want to pay attention to the lessons,” she said simply as they held a brief war council in a deserted corridor before dinner.
“Fine, fine, have it your way,” Draco said with a melodramatic sigh.
He still found it chaffing that he couldn’t have his own way in everything at Hogwarts, and the indignity of having to bend to rules he didn’t like felt very insulting. Still, Hermione had a point. Pansy had been penalized three points for trying to pass a note to Daphne in Transfiguration, but then again she’d really been rather stupid about it. McGonagall wasn’t the kind of professor one tried to fool about anything. But Binns? He was the sort where you could stage a full blown ballet in the middle of his classroom and never have him catch wise. Draco had a momentary vision of Crabbe and Goyle in frilly pink tutus and stifled a laugh.
However, Draco also needed Persephone to carry out an errand that was unrelated to revenge, one that made him feel a bit odd. He’d had been struggling with the idea of buying a gift for Hermione’s birthday. On one hand, he firmly reminded himself, he was betrothed to Pansy, and he was relatively sure neither she nor his parents would appreciate the idea that he was buying another girl a birthday present. On the other hand, Hermione was not anything like a girlfriend to him, so there was no real reason for Pansy to be jealous. Granted, Pansy wasn’t really his girlfriend either; in fact, he found that while he certainly noticed when a girl was pretty, other things were far more interesting, like Quidditch or the newest Zonko’s products or House points or any number of things. Still, Pansy certainly fell into the category of pretty girls, and, if Draco were honest with himself, Hermione, well… didn’t.
Eventually, Draco did what he usually did. He did what he wanted, and to hell with what everyone else thought, at least for now. He supposed if he really did get into trouble he could always find a way to smooth things over. Still, as Draco filled out the order form for a bar of the best chocolate from a tiny wizarding sweet shop in France that his family had visited on holiday a few summers ago, he caught himself feeling strangely nervous. Persephone held out her foot with a little more patience than usual, and he carefully tied the paper and a few Sickles into a small bag and then onto her leg.
“Am I doing something stupid?” he asked her.
The eagle owl hooted back and fanned her wings, eager to be out the window and off, apparently ignoring his question.
“Of course not. I’m a Malfoy. It’s physically impossible for me to be stupid,” he said, trying to put enough feeling into the words to be sure he believed them. “If there’s any problem, you’ll let me know, right?”
Persephone bobbed her head twice, then took off through the magical window and into the autumn sunset. Draco watched her until she became nothing but a speck in the distance, heading towards Provence. At any rate, he told himself, there was no need to worry yet. Hermione’s birthday wasn’t for more than a week, and any number of things could happen between now and then, not least of which was their little revenge plot.
Just at that moment, another owl alighted on the sill and stood, hooting insistently. Since Hermione used school owls for their communications, Draco never knew what bird would show up with her latest letter. This one seemed particularly impatient, though.
“All right, all right,” he said, quickly detaching the roll of parchment. “Keep your feathers on!”
The bird did not fly off, though, and instead stood on the sill, tapping her clawed foot and looking at him with an expression he associated with an annoyed McGonagall. Apparently, Hermione had told the owl to wait for a reply. She’d never done that before. Raising an eyebrow in curiosity, he opened the letter. It was very brief.
I think it had better be tomorrow at breakfast. I don’t want to lose my nerve. Agreed?
Draco sucked in a deep breath. Tomorrow? They’d spent a good bit of time covering their tracks and being certain neither of them could be pinned with anything incriminating, so he really had no worries there, but it was still sudden. All he needed to do was put pen to paper and make it definite. He paused, picked up his pen, and added only one word to the note.
Yes.
The paper was once again attached to the owl’s still-tapping leg (no easy task), and it took off in a flurry of dull brown feathers. Draco wasn’t sure how he would sleep that night, but he found that trying to remember the lecture Binns had given on post-Neanderthal fire spells put him out faster than a whole bottle of Tadwick’s Slumbering Solution.
His sleep was uneasy, though. All night long, he dreamed he was looking for something, wandering from room to room in the castle. He wasn’t sure what he was searching for, only that it was something very important, something that he’d forgotten. Each room he entered became progressively darker and more unsettling until finally he was certain the object was behind the door he was about to open. He knew now that he didn’t want to find whatever the thing was, that once he saw it, something terrible would happen, but he felt compelled to open the door. He placed a hand on the knob, cold and rusty beneath his fingertips, and fought against some outside pressure to turn it. He thought he heard his mother’s voice saying, “It’s your duty,” but at the very last moment, just as a thin seam of darkness was opening between the heavy wooden door and the frame, he jolted awake.
Draco shook his head, clearing it from the strange nightmare, and realized that this was it. The day had come. For once, there was no way he would possibly be late for breakfast. He threw on his robes with almost comic speed, grabbed his bag, and shot through the Slytherin common room like a Nimbus 2000 with its tail on fire. Perhaps it wasn’t the most dignified exit, but for once in his pureblood life, Draco really didn’t care. He was having far too much fun.
As per their careful plan, Draco attended to some important business on his way up from the dungeons and then met Hermione just outside the Great Hall by the suit of armor that was holding a mace made of Bowtruckle bones. She was already there when he arrived, and the moment she saw him, she burst into a truly devilish grin, which had an immediate twin on his own face.
“Ready?” he asked as they moved unobtrusively through the sea of black robes.
“Merlin, yes,” she said. “They were worse than ever last night in the girls’ dormitory. They poured color changing ink all over my pillow last night when I was asleep. Do you have any idea how hard that is to get out of your hair?”
Draco noted that one small, unruly curl near her right temple was indigo blue, but as he watched it slowly changed to a truly horrifying shade of tangerine. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the two girls.
“Amateur hour,” he said dismissively. “They really have no idea who they’re playing with, do they?”
“Well, in fairness, they don’t realize they’re going up against a serpent as well as a lioness,” she said, smiling even more broadly. “No one could expect to beat that combination. Come on, we need to get a good view of this. The southwest corner should provide the best vantage point, but we’ll need to split up to avoid suspicion.”
Draco nodded in agreement as they continued onward. He didn’t even think about breakfast, or for that matter the fact that he was walking openly in the Great Hall with a Gryffindor at his elbow. Eventually, Hermione stopped on the pretense of checking her book bag for something, and Draco continued on a few paces more, leaving several small groups of students between them before he casually removed a small whistle from his pocket. When he blew it, not a single head turned towards him since it didn’t make any noise a human could hear, but a scant few seconds later Peeves was rocketing into the Great Hall, right on cue.
The poltergeist whizzed once around the Great Hall, causing students to duck right and left, terrified that water balloons or worse would come flying at them, but that wasn’t his game today. Instead, after shooting a surreptitious look at Draco, he skidded to a halt in front of the dais where the teachers were eating their breakfast. Dumbledore’s spoonful of porridge paused in its course towards his mouth, and Snape seemed to have eaten a bad boiled egg from his sour expression, but Peeves quickly turned his back on the faculty, blowing a quiet raspberry in token of wishing them a good morning, and faced the students. He cleared his throat loudly then put his hands behind his back and stood as though he were about to recite a lesson promptly burst into song.
“Oh, the gorgeous girls of Gryffindor
Are such a mighty prize!
Their brains and cunning are well known;
You can’t believe your eyes!
In fact that’s really quite the truth,
For things are rarely what they seem,
And what is seen and what is real
Only rarely form a team!
Look at that dear Lavender Brown,
Possessed of lovely form and face,”
At this Lavender smiled and actually took the opportunity to blow Peeves a kiss.
“Merlin, she really is thick, isn’t she,” Draco muttered under his breath.
“But without glamours or enchantments strong
Things would take a different pace!”
The smallest of changes started to occur to Lavender’s features, and it took most of the students a moment to realize that a whole bevy of beauty spells she had used were starting to melt away. Three large spots, one each on her chin, nose and forehead, were rapidly appearing from underneath concealing charms, and her previously perfectly sleek ponytail was unraveling into a tangled mess as her veritable cornucopia of controlling spells on it broke. Her hands went immediately to her face as dozens of little imperfections suddenly became perfectly clear, but it appeared Peeves wasn’t yet done with his song.
“Yes, that is the face that you truly wear,
But you are not alone in your tricks,
For sweet Parvati, that radiant pearl,
Shall now see if her enchantment sticks!”
A glance at Parvati showed that her own complexion was suddenly far from clear itself, as well as having a rather sizable mole above her right eyebrow that had previously been charmed into submission. The two girls stared at each other in horror.
“But if the outside mirrored the way of the heart,
And showed them for who indeed they are
A pair of old hags would sit in their place,
With nary an inch without a mar!”
And then, quite suddenly, the two girls looked utterly dreadful. Where one spot had been, six appeared. Unruly hair took on the proportions normally seen only on people who had stuck their fingers into an electrical outlet. Parvati’s nose increased to three times its original length and developed a hook that made her resemble Snape, and Lavender’s hair became streaked with grey while crows feet imprinted themselves at the corners of her eyes.
The result from the rest of the student body was truly uproarious laughter as the duo shot back towards the corridor, their robes pulled up to hide their faces, wailing in misery as they sped towards the Hospital Wing.
Peeves took a victory lap around the tables, and just before he left, shouted, “Lavender fancies Michael Corner! Parvati thinks Anthony Goldstein is fit!” before shooting back through the doors and off to parts unknown.
The general uproar, which suggested at least half the student body had their own issues with Lavender and Parvati, provided the perfect camouflage for the two plotters, who had ducked down into a deserted corridor as the students began to head towards their first class.
Draco looked at Hermione, who had her lips pressed together while her whole face was going red, and then at exactly the same moment, they burst out laughing.
“That was absolutely brilliant!” Draco said. “I can’t believe we pulled that off!”
“The only ones I’m a little worried about are the teachers,” Hermione said as she slid down the wall to sit with her legs sticking out in front of her. Draco sat beside her in moment, even though the idea of getting his robes dirty on the floor wasn’t very appealing. “They probably know Poltergeists can’t actually do magic.”
“Yeah, maybe, but no one’s going to peg that display on First Years,” he said proudly. “How did you manage to get the Reversing Solution into all that rubbish they slather on their faces?”
“Oh, that wasn’t the hard bit,” Hermione said. “They leave their things all over the place in our dormitory. The real trick was getting it to start working in response to the words pace and sticks, then go into overkill on mar.”
“And it really will wear off in an hour?” Draco asked.
“Yes,” Hermione said. “I’m sure. That test I did on myself two nights ago worked perfectly.”
“You’re amazing,” he said, shaking his head. “Absolutely amazing!”
“Well, you’re the one who managed to get Peeves to cooperate,” she said, grinning. “That’s unbelievably impressive! Poltergeists are notoriously difficult to control.”
Draco felt an unaccustomed warm sensation on his face, and he realized he was blushing. He had no idea why, and he decided not to ponder the question.
“Best get to class,” he said, clambering to his feet then turning to offer her a hand up. Perhaps, just possibly, her fingers trembled a tiny bit in his grasp, but he thought it was best to add that to the list of things he was deciding not to think about too much.
“See you in Potions, Drake,” she said over her shoulder.
“Adieu, Mademoiselle d’Arc,” he called after her.
She’d never called him that before, but he found he didn’t mind. In fact, he rather liked it. He was halfway to History of Magic when he stopped short, struck by a sudden thought. They wouldn’t need to be plotting all the time now. There weren’t going to be any more urgent exchanges of owls or secret meetings to sort out last minute details. That made him feel strangely empty, and, honestly, a little worried that perhaps now that she no longer needed his help, she might just fade into the background.
Just at that moment, Peeves whipped into sight and gave Draco a deep bow. He looked around to make sure no one had seen the gesture, and when he was sure they were safe, he permitted his features to assume the moderately pleased expression his father wore on rare occasions when Draco had done something particularly impressive. He was trying for “suave urbanity,” but judging by Peeves’s reaction of sticking out his tongue and crossing his eyes, he’d missed the mark. Damn. He was going to have to practice in front of the mirror again when the others were out.
“Stop that at once,” he commanded with as much authority as he could muster, and he was glad to see Peeves grimace and grudgingly stop pulling faces. “You did well.”
“Like doing my own poetry better, I do,” Peeves said, “but the rest was funny fun fun!”
“Right,” Draco said. Peeves was best in small doses. “You can go now. I’m pleased. You’re safe from being ejected from the castle until at least March… provided you don’t harm anyone I like, of course.”
Peeves bowed once more than floated off behind a corner and immediately blew the loudest raspberrry Draco had ever heard. Even the poltergeist’s rudeness and disrespect for proper authority couldn’t dampen his elation over the success (and lack of detention) from their plan, although he was already plotting ways to make sure Hermione and he would remain a decidedly dangerous duo.
Previous parts can be found here.
Author: Meltha
Rating: PG at this point, but likely to rise
Feedback: Yes, thank you. Melpomenethalia@aol.com
Spoilers: Currently, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Again, this will rise.
Distribution: The Blackberry Patch and Fanfiction.net. If you’re interested, please let me know.
Summary: At long last, Hermione and Draco give Lavender and Parvati a taste of their own medicine.
Author note: I’m sorry because this took FOREVER for me to write. It’s not perfect, but rather than writing and re-writing it to death, I figured imperfect was better than nothing at all. Also, this is now officially 100 pages long. Whew!
Disclaimer: All characters are created by J. K. Rowling, a wonderful writer whose works I greatly enjoy. I have borrowed them for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
Part 16: Sweet Revenge
Plans for the Great Revenge Caper were progressing, and Draco was enjoying himself immensely. For the next few days, Hermione and he were owling one another multiple times at all hours. Draco had insisted that passing notes in class would be much speedier, but Hermione looked at him with undisguised horror.
“We might get in trouble! Besides, I want to pay attention to the lessons,” she said simply as they held a brief war council in a deserted corridor before dinner.
“Fine, fine, have it your way,” Draco said with a melodramatic sigh.
He still found it chaffing that he couldn’t have his own way in everything at Hogwarts, and the indignity of having to bend to rules he didn’t like felt very insulting. Still, Hermione had a point. Pansy had been penalized three points for trying to pass a note to Daphne in Transfiguration, but then again she’d really been rather stupid about it. McGonagall wasn’t the kind of professor one tried to fool about anything. But Binns? He was the sort where you could stage a full blown ballet in the middle of his classroom and never have him catch wise. Draco had a momentary vision of Crabbe and Goyle in frilly pink tutus and stifled a laugh.
However, Draco also needed Persephone to carry out an errand that was unrelated to revenge, one that made him feel a bit odd. He’d had been struggling with the idea of buying a gift for Hermione’s birthday. On one hand, he firmly reminded himself, he was betrothed to Pansy, and he was relatively sure neither she nor his parents would appreciate the idea that he was buying another girl a birthday present. On the other hand, Hermione was not anything like a girlfriend to him, so there was no real reason for Pansy to be jealous. Granted, Pansy wasn’t really his girlfriend either; in fact, he found that while he certainly noticed when a girl was pretty, other things were far more interesting, like Quidditch or the newest Zonko’s products or House points or any number of things. Still, Pansy certainly fell into the category of pretty girls, and, if Draco were honest with himself, Hermione, well… didn’t.
Eventually, Draco did what he usually did. He did what he wanted, and to hell with what everyone else thought, at least for now. He supposed if he really did get into trouble he could always find a way to smooth things over. Still, as Draco filled out the order form for a bar of the best chocolate from a tiny wizarding sweet shop in France that his family had visited on holiday a few summers ago, he caught himself feeling strangely nervous. Persephone held out her foot with a little more patience than usual, and he carefully tied the paper and a few Sickles into a small bag and then onto her leg.
“Am I doing something stupid?” he asked her.
The eagle owl hooted back and fanned her wings, eager to be out the window and off, apparently ignoring his question.
“Of course not. I’m a Malfoy. It’s physically impossible for me to be stupid,” he said, trying to put enough feeling into the words to be sure he believed them. “If there’s any problem, you’ll let me know, right?”
Persephone bobbed her head twice, then took off through the magical window and into the autumn sunset. Draco watched her until she became nothing but a speck in the distance, heading towards Provence. At any rate, he told himself, there was no need to worry yet. Hermione’s birthday wasn’t for more than a week, and any number of things could happen between now and then, not least of which was their little revenge plot.
Just at that moment, another owl alighted on the sill and stood, hooting insistently. Since Hermione used school owls for their communications, Draco never knew what bird would show up with her latest letter. This one seemed particularly impatient, though.
“All right, all right,” he said, quickly detaching the roll of parchment. “Keep your feathers on!”
The bird did not fly off, though, and instead stood on the sill, tapping her clawed foot and looking at him with an expression he associated with an annoyed McGonagall. Apparently, Hermione had told the owl to wait for a reply. She’d never done that before. Raising an eyebrow in curiosity, he opened the letter. It was very brief.
I think it had better be tomorrow at breakfast. I don’t want to lose my nerve. Agreed?
Draco sucked in a deep breath. Tomorrow? They’d spent a good bit of time covering their tracks and being certain neither of them could be pinned with anything incriminating, so he really had no worries there, but it was still sudden. All he needed to do was put pen to paper and make it definite. He paused, picked up his pen, and added only one word to the note.
Yes.
The paper was once again attached to the owl’s still-tapping leg (no easy task), and it took off in a flurry of dull brown feathers. Draco wasn’t sure how he would sleep that night, but he found that trying to remember the lecture Binns had given on post-Neanderthal fire spells put him out faster than a whole bottle of Tadwick’s Slumbering Solution.
His sleep was uneasy, though. All night long, he dreamed he was looking for something, wandering from room to room in the castle. He wasn’t sure what he was searching for, only that it was something very important, something that he’d forgotten. Each room he entered became progressively darker and more unsettling until finally he was certain the object was behind the door he was about to open. He knew now that he didn’t want to find whatever the thing was, that once he saw it, something terrible would happen, but he felt compelled to open the door. He placed a hand on the knob, cold and rusty beneath his fingertips, and fought against some outside pressure to turn it. He thought he heard his mother’s voice saying, “It’s your duty,” but at the very last moment, just as a thin seam of darkness was opening between the heavy wooden door and the frame, he jolted awake.
Draco shook his head, clearing it from the strange nightmare, and realized that this was it. The day had come. For once, there was no way he would possibly be late for breakfast. He threw on his robes with almost comic speed, grabbed his bag, and shot through the Slytherin common room like a Nimbus 2000 with its tail on fire. Perhaps it wasn’t the most dignified exit, but for once in his pureblood life, Draco really didn’t care. He was having far too much fun.
As per their careful plan, Draco attended to some important business on his way up from the dungeons and then met Hermione just outside the Great Hall by the suit of armor that was holding a mace made of Bowtruckle bones. She was already there when he arrived, and the moment she saw him, she burst into a truly devilish grin, which had an immediate twin on his own face.
“Ready?” he asked as they moved unobtrusively through the sea of black robes.
“Merlin, yes,” she said. “They were worse than ever last night in the girls’ dormitory. They poured color changing ink all over my pillow last night when I was asleep. Do you have any idea how hard that is to get out of your hair?”
Draco noted that one small, unruly curl near her right temple was indigo blue, but as he watched it slowly changed to a truly horrifying shade of tangerine. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the two girls.
“Amateur hour,” he said dismissively. “They really have no idea who they’re playing with, do they?”
“Well, in fairness, they don’t realize they’re going up against a serpent as well as a lioness,” she said, smiling even more broadly. “No one could expect to beat that combination. Come on, we need to get a good view of this. The southwest corner should provide the best vantage point, but we’ll need to split up to avoid suspicion.”
Draco nodded in agreement as they continued onward. He didn’t even think about breakfast, or for that matter the fact that he was walking openly in the Great Hall with a Gryffindor at his elbow. Eventually, Hermione stopped on the pretense of checking her book bag for something, and Draco continued on a few paces more, leaving several small groups of students between them before he casually removed a small whistle from his pocket. When he blew it, not a single head turned towards him since it didn’t make any noise a human could hear, but a scant few seconds later Peeves was rocketing into the Great Hall, right on cue.
The poltergeist whizzed once around the Great Hall, causing students to duck right and left, terrified that water balloons or worse would come flying at them, but that wasn’t his game today. Instead, after shooting a surreptitious look at Draco, he skidded to a halt in front of the dais where the teachers were eating their breakfast. Dumbledore’s spoonful of porridge paused in its course towards his mouth, and Snape seemed to have eaten a bad boiled egg from his sour expression, but Peeves quickly turned his back on the faculty, blowing a quiet raspberry in token of wishing them a good morning, and faced the students. He cleared his throat loudly then put his hands behind his back and stood as though he were about to recite a lesson promptly burst into song.
“Oh, the gorgeous girls of Gryffindor
Are such a mighty prize!
Their brains and cunning are well known;
You can’t believe your eyes!
In fact that’s really quite the truth,
For things are rarely what they seem,
And what is seen and what is real
Only rarely form a team!
Look at that dear Lavender Brown,
Possessed of lovely form and face,”
At this Lavender smiled and actually took the opportunity to blow Peeves a kiss.
“Merlin, she really is thick, isn’t she,” Draco muttered under his breath.
“But without glamours or enchantments strong
Things would take a different pace!”
The smallest of changes started to occur to Lavender’s features, and it took most of the students a moment to realize that a whole bevy of beauty spells she had used were starting to melt away. Three large spots, one each on her chin, nose and forehead, were rapidly appearing from underneath concealing charms, and her previously perfectly sleek ponytail was unraveling into a tangled mess as her veritable cornucopia of controlling spells on it broke. Her hands went immediately to her face as dozens of little imperfections suddenly became perfectly clear, but it appeared Peeves wasn’t yet done with his song.
“Yes, that is the face that you truly wear,
But you are not alone in your tricks,
For sweet Parvati, that radiant pearl,
Shall now see if her enchantment sticks!”
A glance at Parvati showed that her own complexion was suddenly far from clear itself, as well as having a rather sizable mole above her right eyebrow that had previously been charmed into submission. The two girls stared at each other in horror.
“But if the outside mirrored the way of the heart,
And showed them for who indeed they are
A pair of old hags would sit in their place,
With nary an inch without a mar!”
And then, quite suddenly, the two girls looked utterly dreadful. Where one spot had been, six appeared. Unruly hair took on the proportions normally seen only on people who had stuck their fingers into an electrical outlet. Parvati’s nose increased to three times its original length and developed a hook that made her resemble Snape, and Lavender’s hair became streaked with grey while crows feet imprinted themselves at the corners of her eyes.
The result from the rest of the student body was truly uproarious laughter as the duo shot back towards the corridor, their robes pulled up to hide their faces, wailing in misery as they sped towards the Hospital Wing.
Peeves took a victory lap around the tables, and just before he left, shouted, “Lavender fancies Michael Corner! Parvati thinks Anthony Goldstein is fit!” before shooting back through the doors and off to parts unknown.
The general uproar, which suggested at least half the student body had their own issues with Lavender and Parvati, provided the perfect camouflage for the two plotters, who had ducked down into a deserted corridor as the students began to head towards their first class.
Draco looked at Hermione, who had her lips pressed together while her whole face was going red, and then at exactly the same moment, they burst out laughing.
“That was absolutely brilliant!” Draco said. “I can’t believe we pulled that off!”
“The only ones I’m a little worried about are the teachers,” Hermione said as she slid down the wall to sit with her legs sticking out in front of her. Draco sat beside her in moment, even though the idea of getting his robes dirty on the floor wasn’t very appealing. “They probably know Poltergeists can’t actually do magic.”
“Yeah, maybe, but no one’s going to peg that display on First Years,” he said proudly. “How did you manage to get the Reversing Solution into all that rubbish they slather on their faces?”
“Oh, that wasn’t the hard bit,” Hermione said. “They leave their things all over the place in our dormitory. The real trick was getting it to start working in response to the words pace and sticks, then go into overkill on mar.”
“And it really will wear off in an hour?” Draco asked.
“Yes,” Hermione said. “I’m sure. That test I did on myself two nights ago worked perfectly.”
“You’re amazing,” he said, shaking his head. “Absolutely amazing!”
“Well, you’re the one who managed to get Peeves to cooperate,” she said, grinning. “That’s unbelievably impressive! Poltergeists are notoriously difficult to control.”
Draco felt an unaccustomed warm sensation on his face, and he realized he was blushing. He had no idea why, and he decided not to ponder the question.
“Best get to class,” he said, clambering to his feet then turning to offer her a hand up. Perhaps, just possibly, her fingers trembled a tiny bit in his grasp, but he thought it was best to add that to the list of things he was deciding not to think about too much.
“See you in Potions, Drake,” she said over her shoulder.
“Adieu, Mademoiselle d’Arc,” he called after her.
She’d never called him that before, but he found he didn’t mind. In fact, he rather liked it. He was halfway to History of Magic when he stopped short, struck by a sudden thought. They wouldn’t need to be plotting all the time now. There weren’t going to be any more urgent exchanges of owls or secret meetings to sort out last minute details. That made him feel strangely empty, and, honestly, a little worried that perhaps now that she no longer needed his help, she might just fade into the background.
Just at that moment, Peeves whipped into sight and gave Draco a deep bow. He looked around to make sure no one had seen the gesture, and when he was sure they were safe, he permitted his features to assume the moderately pleased expression his father wore on rare occasions when Draco had done something particularly impressive. He was trying for “suave urbanity,” but judging by Peeves’s reaction of sticking out his tongue and crossing his eyes, he’d missed the mark. Damn. He was going to have to practice in front of the mirror again when the others were out.
“Stop that at once,” he commanded with as much authority as he could muster, and he was glad to see Peeves grimace and grudgingly stop pulling faces. “You did well.”
“Like doing my own poetry better, I do,” Peeves said, “but the rest was funny fun fun!”
“Right,” Draco said. Peeves was best in small doses. “You can go now. I’m pleased. You’re safe from being ejected from the castle until at least March… provided you don’t harm anyone I like, of course.”
Peeves bowed once more than floated off behind a corner and immediately blew the loudest raspberrry Draco had ever heard. Even the poltergeist’s rudeness and disrespect for proper authority couldn’t dampen his elation over the success (and lack of detention) from their plan, although he was already plotting ways to make sure Hermione and he would remain a decidedly dangerous duo.
