Eight and Eighth--Chapter 9
Title: Eight and Eighth
Author: Marmalade Fever
Characters: Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, and more.
Genres: Romance, Drama, weird combo of in-Hogwarts and post-Hogwarts
Spoilers: DH (though no epilogue)
Overall Rating: PG-13
Summary: Up from the ashes of seventh year grow the roses of the eighth. Eight students return for their final year at Hogwarts, and Hermione Granger would never have thought Draco Malfoy would or could be one of those roses.
Eight and Eighth-Chapter 9-Conspiracy and Egg Shells
By Marmalade Fever
Hermione sat at the Gryffindor table during breakfast, pretending to be eating her Belgian waffle. However, she was actually keeping one eye on the staff table. It was odd, really, but a feeling of foreboding had come over her the minute Professor Trelawney decided to grace the Great Hall with her presence and sit down next to Amorell. That foreboding had taken a leap and bound as the two professors shook hands, Trelawney smiled widely, and then proceeded to gesture directly toward Hermione on one side of the hall and then toward Draco Malfoy on the other.
As was the crux of foreboding feelings, this could not possibly bode well.
Amorell nodded enthusiastically, a large grin splaying across her face and wrinkling her long pink scar.
It wasn’t exactly verifiable at this point, but Hermione would bet her copy of Hogwarts: A History that Professor Trelawney, that absolute stinker, was currently trying her utter best to make sure her little prediction worked itself into reality. And if, say, she was trying to convince Amorell that she and Malfoy would make a cute couple, or some such rubbish, then life was about to become just that much more unpleasant.
Ron nudged her in the elbow. “Hey, look.” He was pointing to a butter toffee-colored owl that was currently swooping right towards her. She managed to swing her plate out of the way just in time for it to land, flapping its wings into Dean’s goblet of pumpkin juice.
Dean groaned, mopping up the spill. “Times like this that I seriously miss good, old-fashioned postmen.”
“Who’s your letter from?” Harry asked.
“Hmm.” She extracted the letter from the owl’s leg and flipped it open. “Andromeda,” she answered. She made a quick skim of it. “She wants to know if we’d be interested in meeting with her in Hogsmeade some weekend to spend time with Teddy.”
Ron made a face. “Just as long as we don’t play, ‘pass the baby to Uncle Ronnikins’ and have him spit up on me again.”
Hermione shook her head. “It’s what they do, Ron. Besides, I wouldn’t let you hold that baby again unless you’ve learned not to throw him around like a football.”
“A-?”
“A quaffle,” she remedied.
“No, seriously, does it look like a foot, or…?”
“I believe it’s a round ball with black pentagons and white hexagons that is kicked around a playing field,” Amorell said from behind them, startling Hermione and Ron completely. She sent them a smile that was reminiscent of Luna Lovegood. “What’s this about a baby?”
Hermione moved to open her mouth, but Harry beat her to it. “My godson. We’re going to be visiting with him in Hogsmeade.” Apparently, Harry hadn’t learned to fear and/or rue Amorell in the same way Hermione had, having partnered with Hannah, who was relatively at ease with him, despite small amounts of hero-worship.
Amorell stroked her finger up and down her scar. “Problems taking responsibility with babies? Hmm, that’s very interesting.” She beamed at them again. “Well, I’ll be seeing you in class. Oh, and Miss Granger? If you could stay a minute or so late, I’d like to have a word with you.” She winked, and it wasn’t anything Hermione found remotely pleasant.
“What do you suppose she meant by that?” Ron asked, a mangled little frown on his face.
She sighed. “I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t think I want to know.”
Draco’s owl, X, had just swooped down toward him, extending his leg where familiar cream-colored parchment was tied with a bright silver ribbon. His mother was the only person he knew who actually used something other than twine or a leather postal pouch to attach everyday correspondence.
Dear son… miss you terribly… hope you’re doing well… have been catching up on all of my reading… have been ordering flower bulbs for the west garden… petitioned to be allowed to have a small dinner party… can’t believe the ministry made me promise to petition to have more than three guests at a time… wondering whether you’ll be allowed to come home for Christmas… received a letter from your aunt Andromeda….
Draco stopped his skimming to reread the portion about his aunt. He’d only met her once, and that had been during a Black family reunion. Apparently, said aunt had crashed without an invitation. She was the one who’d gone and married a Mudblood, and her daughter had married his old werewolf professor from the third year.
I received a letter from your aunt Andromeda. She’s recently lost her husband, daughter, and son-in-law, and is now raising her grandson on her own. She sent a photograph of him. He had violet hair, oddly enough. Did you know your cousin was a Metamorphmagus? The trait has apparently been passed on to young Theodore, or Teddy, as she refers to him. Such a common name. I expect your future children to have names worthy of their heritage….
And his mother had gone off on a tangent about proper baby names. She’d even suggested Scorpius, though even he found that one just a bit over-pretentious.
He was struck by her statement about Christmas. He wasn’t allowed to leave Hogwarts grounds, but surely the Ministry would allow him to go home for the holidays? It wasn’t really even so much for himself that he wanted it; it was for her.
Despite her nonchalant front, it sounded as if his mother felt every bit as lonely and cooped up as he did. She was stuck in the Manor for an entire year without the use of her wand. If it weren’t for the house-elves and mail ordering, he wasn’t sure how she’d be able to survive. At least he was surrounded by annoying twerps at all hours of the day to keep him moderately entertained… or something like that.
After lunch, Draco made his way to… what was it the Gryffindors had called it? Good Grief Class? It had been a mere two days since his grief counseling session that had run awry. For two blessed days, he’d been able to hide away from his fellow Eighth Years and pretend that Hermione Granger had not A) defended him, and B) allowed points to be docked from her class grade in order to spare his feelings.
He admitted he didn’t know an especially large amount about the girl, but one thing he did know was this: she did not enjoy losing points on an assignment.
Her martyrdom scared him halfway to Jupiter and back.
What was it with the Gryffindors that made them act so selfless so much of the time? Okay, so perhaps it wasn’t all of them. He’d never really noticed, say, Finnegan being especially upstanding, and that Brown girl certainly wasn’t a peach.
No, it was mostly Granger and Saint Potter. The Final Battle had certainly proven that, much to his annoyance.
He found a seat toward the back of the classroom. He wouldn’t be able to sit there for long, at least, not alone. Last class she’d had them all playing some game that he still couldn’t see the point of, involving favorite foods, worst fears, and a hot potato. Unfortunately, the hot potato had been doctored up with sour cream and chives, making it quite messy when they had to throw it to one another. He had a suspicion that it had been some sort of botched muggle practice.
Granger avoided eye-contact with him when she entered the room with Potter and Weasley, not that that was anything new. Thomas entered a moment later and sat down with Patil. Things had been rather tense with him as well, probably owing to the whole imprisoned-in-his-manor fiasco. Lovegood had forgiven him easily enough.
Amorell entered the classroom with a skip in her step. The actual session he’d had with her after Granger had left had been… disgusting, to say the least. But it could have been worse, he conceded. Much worse. She wore seaweed green robes today and carried a common shopping bag in her hand. “Well,” she said, taking a seat on the edge of her desk and surveying them as if she were looking at a display of chocolates at Honeydukes, trying to decide between them, “I’ve got a very special lesson planned for the day.” She looked downright giddy before reaching into her bag and removing an egg carton, as if she were unveiling something grand.
Across the classroom, Granger frowned, rolled her eyes, and mutely whimpered. Apparently, she had some idea of what the professor had planned.
Amorell snapped her fingers, a command they’d come to associate with her desire for them to pair up. Granger left Potter and Weasley to take the seat beside him. She kept her eyes to the front. One by one, Amorell gave each pair an egg. Draco left his alone. He’d never especially liked knowing that it had once been covered in goop after being pushed out of the end of a hen. A very similar idea could be said for mammals, but he had to draw a line somewhere. Granger reached out and moved the egg closer to her.
“This egg is your child,” Amorell announced. Draco blinked. What? “For the remainder of this lesson, I want you to practice handling this egg with care. Defend it. Make sure it doesn’t get broken. Pretend to be a happy little family unit.” She winked at Ron Weasley, who was staring blankly up at her with a “why me?” look upon his face.
Granger raised a hand in the air, looking slightly ill. “Professor, what does this have to do with anything?” Despite the discomfiture he was presently feeling around the fluffy-haired brunette, he couldn’t help but smile just the teensiest bit. It was similar to the tone she’d taken with Trelawney. The girl certainly knew how to be rude to incompetent professors when the need arose.
Amorell looked completely unfazed by the tone, however. “Remember back to the first day of class when we were talking about tolerance, Miss Granger? Remember how I spoke to you about sexism? I’d like to make sure that you all someday become happy, mutually hard-working parents. I don’t want the belief that women are meant to be the main caretaker to take root. Paternity is very important too.”
Granger closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“Whatever you do,” Amorell continued, “don’t let the egg break.” She flashed a smile. “Oh, and you’ll be graded on creativity, so you might want to come up with a name, maybe fashion a tiny pram.”
As Granger finally turned to face him, she had a look upon her face as if she’d just been sucking on a lemon. “Well, Malfoy,” she said, “congratulations, it’s a future omelet.”
He honestly couldn’t help it. He laughed.
Hermione stared at him for a long time. He was laughing at a joke she’d made? Seriously? Since when did he ever laugh with her instead of at her?
He seemed to make the same realization and sobered himself. There was an uncomfortable silence between them, broken as, five desks over, Ron made a wise-crack.
“I think it’s mostly related to you. See, it’s rather small.”
August slapped him upside the head while Amorell wasn’t looking. “Well, at least I’m not a chicken.”
“Chicken? Moon, I’m a Gryffindor. That’s an oxymoron.”
August simply raised an eyebrow as if she disagreed.
Returning her attention to her own egg-child, Hermione half-expected Malfoy to make some comment about her being an egg-head, to which she planned to quip with a comment about his lack of melanin, but he didn’t. He got out an inkwell and a quill and drew a funny little face on the side of the egg, one little tooth hanging out of the smile. “What are you…?”
“Creativity. She’s grading on creativity.” He shrugged. He topped off his artwork with a curly cue and a bow on the small end and a nappy at the other.
“Very… cute,” she said at last. “I didn’t know you could draw.”
“I used to need something to pass the time in Binn’s class.” He replaced the top on his inkwell and wiped his fingers off on a handkerchief. “Eggbert or Eggletina?”
Was it her imagination, or were they have a perfectly civil conversation? “Well, with the bow, I’d say Eggletina,” she answered.
“Eggletina Malfoy. Lovely.” He wrinkled his nose.
Hermione smiled very slightly. “Not quite how you’d hoped your first born to turn out?”
“Limbs would have been a nice addition,” he remarked drily. For one extremely awkward moment, they smiled at one another. But apparently Hermione had a death wish.
“So,” she said, as she removed a spare bit of parchment from her bag to work on transfiguring it into something apropos to the assignment. She coughed, suddenly nervous. “How, er, did it go on Saturday? After I left, I mean,” she added.
He bit his lip, looking at her slowly from the corner of his eye. She felt as if she were being studied under a microscope. “Fine,” he said at last. He would have been blasé if it weren’t for the slight grit to his voice.
“Fine?” she repeated.
He groaned. “Look, it’s nice,” he said the word with a grimace, “of you to be all concerned, but don’t be. Okay? Let’s just stick to the status quo. You be frumpish, I’ll be snarky, and that’ll be that.”
She blinked. “Frumpish?”
A weak smirk curled his lip. “You heard me.”
She sniffed indignantly, though, honestly, she wasn’t that hurt. For the two of them, this was relatively friendly, and he didn’t exactly sound like he was putting his heart into insulting her. They worked silently for a long time, working together to transfigure parchment and other odds and ends into a tiny, egg-sized perambulator. They’d just placed the finishing touches on the wheels when an awful crunching sound came from several feet across the room.
August stood, and despite her size, she currently looked just as scary and menacing as a professional wrestler before a match. “RONALD WEASLEY!” she bellowed. “WHAT DID YOU DO?”
Ron sat with his hands still poised from whatever position he’d been in before the tragic demise of his own egg-child. It almost looked as if he’d been juggling. “Um….” He gulped. “Oops?”
With all the agility of a python, Lil’ August Moon tackled him to the ground, and it took both Harry and Dean to get her off of him.
Amorell, wide-eyed and tickled-pink, swooped in and laid one hand on Ron’s shoulder and one on August’s. “Now this,” she said, “is one reason why I’ve been encouraging you all to work in pairs. You need to learn to be interdependent, that your actions can have negative consequences, not only on yourself, but on others as well.” She turned to face Ron. “I’m hereby assigning you and Miss Moon a second egg. The two of you will take turns keeping it safe throughout the week. It must be within one foot of either of you at all times. And I really do encourage you to work together.”
Ron opened his mouth. “But won’t it go bad?”
Amorell gave him a disgustingly saccharine smile. “A rotten egg only reeks if it breaks,” she said, as if reciting a proverb. She clapped his shoulder before she started making her rounds to inspect her work, Ron still looking stunned and August looking ready to break something.
Amorell stopped in front of Hermione and Malfoy. “Wonderful… wonderful,” she praised, pushing the miniature pram back and forth with one ill-manicured fingernail. “Full points on the assignment and an extra ten points to both Gryffindor and Slytherin.” She paused to write down their grade on her clipboard.
“Oh, and Miss Granger?” she added, as everyone else began to pack up. “I’ve got a little make-up assignment for you to substitute for Saturday’s snag.”
A.N.: I’d just like to issue a little apology for the fact that we’re now over twenty-thousand words in, Ron and Hermione are still a couple, and neither Draco nor Hermione have started getting goo-goo eyes. But, if it makes you feel better, I plan another forty to sixty-thousand words.
Also, finals are coming, followed directly by summer vacation. You’d think that would mean I’d update more often, but it might actually slow me down. Just to warn you.
Brownie points to anyone who caught the Mr. Rogers reference.
Please click the tag for a list of chapters.
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Author: Marmalade Fever
Characters: Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, and more.
Genres: Romance, Drama, weird combo of in-Hogwarts and post-Hogwarts
Spoilers: DH (though no epilogue)
Overall Rating: PG-13
Summary: Up from the ashes of seventh year grow the roses of the eighth. Eight students return for their final year at Hogwarts, and Hermione Granger would never have thought Draco Malfoy would or could be one of those roses.
Eight and Eighth-Chapter 9-Conspiracy and Egg Shells
By Marmalade Fever
Hermione sat at the Gryffindor table during breakfast, pretending to be eating her Belgian waffle. However, she was actually keeping one eye on the staff table. It was odd, really, but a feeling of foreboding had come over her the minute Professor Trelawney decided to grace the Great Hall with her presence and sit down next to Amorell. That foreboding had taken a leap and bound as the two professors shook hands, Trelawney smiled widely, and then proceeded to gesture directly toward Hermione on one side of the hall and then toward Draco Malfoy on the other.
As was the crux of foreboding feelings, this could not possibly bode well.
Amorell nodded enthusiastically, a large grin splaying across her face and wrinkling her long pink scar.
It wasn’t exactly verifiable at this point, but Hermione would bet her copy of Hogwarts: A History that Professor Trelawney, that absolute stinker, was currently trying her utter best to make sure her little prediction worked itself into reality. And if, say, she was trying to convince Amorell that she and Malfoy would make a cute couple, or some such rubbish, then life was about to become just that much more unpleasant.
Ron nudged her in the elbow. “Hey, look.” He was pointing to a butter toffee-colored owl that was currently swooping right towards her. She managed to swing her plate out of the way just in time for it to land, flapping its wings into Dean’s goblet of pumpkin juice.
Dean groaned, mopping up the spill. “Times like this that I seriously miss good, old-fashioned postmen.”
“Who’s your letter from?” Harry asked.
“Hmm.” She extracted the letter from the owl’s leg and flipped it open. “Andromeda,” she answered. She made a quick skim of it. “She wants to know if we’d be interested in meeting with her in Hogsmeade some weekend to spend time with Teddy.”
Ron made a face. “Just as long as we don’t play, ‘pass the baby to Uncle Ronnikins’ and have him spit up on me again.”
Hermione shook her head. “It’s what they do, Ron. Besides, I wouldn’t let you hold that baby again unless you’ve learned not to throw him around like a football.”
“A-?”
“A quaffle,” she remedied.
“No, seriously, does it look like a foot, or…?”
“I believe it’s a round ball with black pentagons and white hexagons that is kicked around a playing field,” Amorell said from behind them, startling Hermione and Ron completely. She sent them a smile that was reminiscent of Luna Lovegood. “What’s this about a baby?”
Hermione moved to open her mouth, but Harry beat her to it. “My godson. We’re going to be visiting with him in Hogsmeade.” Apparently, Harry hadn’t learned to fear and/or rue Amorell in the same way Hermione had, having partnered with Hannah, who was relatively at ease with him, despite small amounts of hero-worship.
Amorell stroked her finger up and down her scar. “Problems taking responsibility with babies? Hmm, that’s very interesting.” She beamed at them again. “Well, I’ll be seeing you in class. Oh, and Miss Granger? If you could stay a minute or so late, I’d like to have a word with you.” She winked, and it wasn’t anything Hermione found remotely pleasant.
“What do you suppose she meant by that?” Ron asked, a mangled little frown on his face.
She sighed. “I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t think I want to know.”
Draco’s owl, X, had just swooped down toward him, extending his leg where familiar cream-colored parchment was tied with a bright silver ribbon. His mother was the only person he knew who actually used something other than twine or a leather postal pouch to attach everyday correspondence.
Dear son… miss you terribly… hope you’re doing well… have been catching up on all of my reading… have been ordering flower bulbs for the west garden… petitioned to be allowed to have a small dinner party… can’t believe the ministry made me promise to petition to have more than three guests at a time… wondering whether you’ll be allowed to come home for Christmas… received a letter from your aunt Andromeda….
Draco stopped his skimming to reread the portion about his aunt. He’d only met her once, and that had been during a Black family reunion. Apparently, said aunt had crashed without an invitation. She was the one who’d gone and married a Mudblood, and her daughter had married his old werewolf professor from the third year.
I received a letter from your aunt Andromeda. She’s recently lost her husband, daughter, and son-in-law, and is now raising her grandson on her own. She sent a photograph of him. He had violet hair, oddly enough. Did you know your cousin was a Metamorphmagus? The trait has apparently been passed on to young Theodore, or Teddy, as she refers to him. Such a common name. I expect your future children to have names worthy of their heritage….
And his mother had gone off on a tangent about proper baby names. She’d even suggested Scorpius, though even he found that one just a bit over-pretentious.
He was struck by her statement about Christmas. He wasn’t allowed to leave Hogwarts grounds, but surely the Ministry would allow him to go home for the holidays? It wasn’t really even so much for himself that he wanted it; it was for her.
Despite her nonchalant front, it sounded as if his mother felt every bit as lonely and cooped up as he did. She was stuck in the Manor for an entire year without the use of her wand. If it weren’t for the house-elves and mail ordering, he wasn’t sure how she’d be able to survive. At least he was surrounded by annoying twerps at all hours of the day to keep him moderately entertained… or something like that.
After lunch, Draco made his way to… what was it the Gryffindors had called it? Good Grief Class? It had been a mere two days since his grief counseling session that had run awry. For two blessed days, he’d been able to hide away from his fellow Eighth Years and pretend that Hermione Granger had not A) defended him, and B) allowed points to be docked from her class grade in order to spare his feelings.
He admitted he didn’t know an especially large amount about the girl, but one thing he did know was this: she did not enjoy losing points on an assignment.
Her martyrdom scared him halfway to Jupiter and back.
What was it with the Gryffindors that made them act so selfless so much of the time? Okay, so perhaps it wasn’t all of them. He’d never really noticed, say, Finnegan being especially upstanding, and that Brown girl certainly wasn’t a peach.
No, it was mostly Granger and Saint Potter. The Final Battle had certainly proven that, much to his annoyance.
He found a seat toward the back of the classroom. He wouldn’t be able to sit there for long, at least, not alone. Last class she’d had them all playing some game that he still couldn’t see the point of, involving favorite foods, worst fears, and a hot potato. Unfortunately, the hot potato had been doctored up with sour cream and chives, making it quite messy when they had to throw it to one another. He had a suspicion that it had been some sort of botched muggle practice.
Granger avoided eye-contact with him when she entered the room with Potter and Weasley, not that that was anything new. Thomas entered a moment later and sat down with Patil. Things had been rather tense with him as well, probably owing to the whole imprisoned-in-his-manor fiasco. Lovegood had forgiven him easily enough.
Amorell entered the classroom with a skip in her step. The actual session he’d had with her after Granger had left had been… disgusting, to say the least. But it could have been worse, he conceded. Much worse. She wore seaweed green robes today and carried a common shopping bag in her hand. “Well,” she said, taking a seat on the edge of her desk and surveying them as if she were looking at a display of chocolates at Honeydukes, trying to decide between them, “I’ve got a very special lesson planned for the day.” She looked downright giddy before reaching into her bag and removing an egg carton, as if she were unveiling something grand.
Across the classroom, Granger frowned, rolled her eyes, and mutely whimpered. Apparently, she had some idea of what the professor had planned.
Amorell snapped her fingers, a command they’d come to associate with her desire for them to pair up. Granger left Potter and Weasley to take the seat beside him. She kept her eyes to the front. One by one, Amorell gave each pair an egg. Draco left his alone. He’d never especially liked knowing that it had once been covered in goop after being pushed out of the end of a hen. A very similar idea could be said for mammals, but he had to draw a line somewhere. Granger reached out and moved the egg closer to her.
“This egg is your child,” Amorell announced. Draco blinked. What? “For the remainder of this lesson, I want you to practice handling this egg with care. Defend it. Make sure it doesn’t get broken. Pretend to be a happy little family unit.” She winked at Ron Weasley, who was staring blankly up at her with a “why me?” look upon his face.
Granger raised a hand in the air, looking slightly ill. “Professor, what does this have to do with anything?” Despite the discomfiture he was presently feeling around the fluffy-haired brunette, he couldn’t help but smile just the teensiest bit. It was similar to the tone she’d taken with Trelawney. The girl certainly knew how to be rude to incompetent professors when the need arose.
Amorell looked completely unfazed by the tone, however. “Remember back to the first day of class when we were talking about tolerance, Miss Granger? Remember how I spoke to you about sexism? I’d like to make sure that you all someday become happy, mutually hard-working parents. I don’t want the belief that women are meant to be the main caretaker to take root. Paternity is very important too.”
Granger closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“Whatever you do,” Amorell continued, “don’t let the egg break.” She flashed a smile. “Oh, and you’ll be graded on creativity, so you might want to come up with a name, maybe fashion a tiny pram.”
As Granger finally turned to face him, she had a look upon her face as if she’d just been sucking on a lemon. “Well, Malfoy,” she said, “congratulations, it’s a future omelet.”
He honestly couldn’t help it. He laughed.
Hermione stared at him for a long time. He was laughing at a joke she’d made? Seriously? Since when did he ever laugh with her instead of at her?
He seemed to make the same realization and sobered himself. There was an uncomfortable silence between them, broken as, five desks over, Ron made a wise-crack.
“I think it’s mostly related to you. See, it’s rather small.”
August slapped him upside the head while Amorell wasn’t looking. “Well, at least I’m not a chicken.”
“Chicken? Moon, I’m a Gryffindor. That’s an oxymoron.”
August simply raised an eyebrow as if she disagreed.
Returning her attention to her own egg-child, Hermione half-expected Malfoy to make some comment about her being an egg-head, to which she planned to quip with a comment about his lack of melanin, but he didn’t. He got out an inkwell and a quill and drew a funny little face on the side of the egg, one little tooth hanging out of the smile. “What are you…?”
“Creativity. She’s grading on creativity.” He shrugged. He topped off his artwork with a curly cue and a bow on the small end and a nappy at the other.
“Very… cute,” she said at last. “I didn’t know you could draw.”
“I used to need something to pass the time in Binn’s class.” He replaced the top on his inkwell and wiped his fingers off on a handkerchief. “Eggbert or Eggletina?”
Was it her imagination, or were they have a perfectly civil conversation? “Well, with the bow, I’d say Eggletina,” she answered.
“Eggletina Malfoy. Lovely.” He wrinkled his nose.
Hermione smiled very slightly. “Not quite how you’d hoped your first born to turn out?”
“Limbs would have been a nice addition,” he remarked drily. For one extremely awkward moment, they smiled at one another. But apparently Hermione had a death wish.
“So,” she said, as she removed a spare bit of parchment from her bag to work on transfiguring it into something apropos to the assignment. She coughed, suddenly nervous. “How, er, did it go on Saturday? After I left, I mean,” she added.
He bit his lip, looking at her slowly from the corner of his eye. She felt as if she were being studied under a microscope. “Fine,” he said at last. He would have been blasé if it weren’t for the slight grit to his voice.
“Fine?” she repeated.
He groaned. “Look, it’s nice,” he said the word with a grimace, “of you to be all concerned, but don’t be. Okay? Let’s just stick to the status quo. You be frumpish, I’ll be snarky, and that’ll be that.”
She blinked. “Frumpish?”
A weak smirk curled his lip. “You heard me.”
She sniffed indignantly, though, honestly, she wasn’t that hurt. For the two of them, this was relatively friendly, and he didn’t exactly sound like he was putting his heart into insulting her. They worked silently for a long time, working together to transfigure parchment and other odds and ends into a tiny, egg-sized perambulator. They’d just placed the finishing touches on the wheels when an awful crunching sound came from several feet across the room.
August stood, and despite her size, she currently looked just as scary and menacing as a professional wrestler before a match. “RONALD WEASLEY!” she bellowed. “WHAT DID YOU DO?”
Ron sat with his hands still poised from whatever position he’d been in before the tragic demise of his own egg-child. It almost looked as if he’d been juggling. “Um….” He gulped. “Oops?”
With all the agility of a python, Lil’ August Moon tackled him to the ground, and it took both Harry and Dean to get her off of him.
Amorell, wide-eyed and tickled-pink, swooped in and laid one hand on Ron’s shoulder and one on August’s. “Now this,” she said, “is one reason why I’ve been encouraging you all to work in pairs. You need to learn to be interdependent, that your actions can have negative consequences, not only on yourself, but on others as well.” She turned to face Ron. “I’m hereby assigning you and Miss Moon a second egg. The two of you will take turns keeping it safe throughout the week. It must be within one foot of either of you at all times. And I really do encourage you to work together.”
Ron opened his mouth. “But won’t it go bad?”
Amorell gave him a disgustingly saccharine smile. “A rotten egg only reeks if it breaks,” she said, as if reciting a proverb. She clapped his shoulder before she started making her rounds to inspect her work, Ron still looking stunned and August looking ready to break something.
Amorell stopped in front of Hermione and Malfoy. “Wonderful… wonderful,” she praised, pushing the miniature pram back and forth with one ill-manicured fingernail. “Full points on the assignment and an extra ten points to both Gryffindor and Slytherin.” She paused to write down their grade on her clipboard.
“Oh, and Miss Granger?” she added, as everyone else began to pack up. “I’ve got a little make-up assignment for you to substitute for Saturday’s snag.”
A.N.: I’d just like to issue a little apology for the fact that we’re now over twenty-thousand words in, Ron and Hermione are still a couple, and neither Draco nor Hermione have started getting goo-goo eyes. But, if it makes you feel better, I plan another forty to sixty-thousand words.
Also, finals are coming, followed directly by summer vacation. You’d think that would mean I’d update more often, but it might actually slow me down. Just to warn you.
Brownie points to anyone who caught the Mr. Rogers reference.
Please click the tag for a list of chapters.
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