DirtCatharsis

Chapter 2

"I smell something rotten," a clear voice called out as the herds of students came running at the explosion. Ginny's hackles rose.

"There's nothing that stinks worse than dungbomb, except when it's dungbomb and poverty. Good Gods, it must be a Weasley." Draco Malfoy's mocking words cut through the murmurs of the crowd. She whirled around to find him, looking impossibly clean for having been in the middle of a food fight, sneering at her, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle.

Her lip curled in a sneer of her own. Inside, she trembled, with fear or anger, she couldn't say. Some small thing about Draco reminded her of Tom Riddle, and it terrified her because she was almost attracted to it. "I may stink of dungbomb, Malfoy, but at least I have something to blame it on." She brushed past him, knocking his shoulder with hers as she went. She didn't need to look back to know that Ron had jumped on Malfoy and would be trying to pummel him into something that would fit into a howler envelope.

She hoped they beat each other to a bloody pulp, and Harry, too. And every other boy in the school.

Later on, in the Gryffindor common room, chaos reigned. Ron shouted for vengeance and Harry shouted for quiet. Ginny just screamed in frustration.

Harry made a move to approach her, but stopped a good two yards away as his eyes began to water. "We'll get them for you, Gin," he said.

"What if I don't want you to get them for me?" she asked.

Ron hopped off the windowsill. "You mean, let this go? Bloody hell, woman! Where's the Weasley sense of justice?"

"It's in the back of my closet, along with a May Day Ball dress I'll never get to wear!" she shouted at her brother and stalked out.

Ron looked over at Hermione. "Barking mad, my sister is."

"Humph!" she said. "More like barking sane. The rest of you lot are the mad ones!" She flounced out herself, Lavender and Parvati tossing their heads as they followed her.

Harry and Ron looked at each other. Seamus and Dean were shaking their heads. "They've taken this too far. To have at our women like that--it's just not done," Seamus said.

Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived For Swift and Terrible Vengeance, pounded one fist into the other and agreed.

To retaliate, the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs hexed the water pipes that went to the Ravenclaw showers, turning the water into sour milk.

After the dungbomb incident, Filch had been furious and Dumbledore had given the boys from Gryffindor and Ravenclaw detention for an entire month. Ginny and Hermione decided they would rather have seen Filch's idea of detention than Dumbledore's. Especially if it involved thumbscrews.

The Slytherins and Hufflepuffs hadn't escaped punishment, either, once the teachers got a look at the dining hall.

Ginny spent the week stinking like dungbomb, but she spent it in good company. The Gryffindor girls were reduced to sponge-bathing using the third floor loo--as long as they didn't mind Moaning Myrtle's snide comments. Hermione got her own revenge when she arranged with Myrtle to clog the toilets when any Ravenclaws or Slytherins attempted to come in, in exchange for the promise to let Myrtle know the next time Harry Potter tried on a new pair of lucky boxer shorts before a Quidditch match.

As a result, Ginny's stink didn't seem so bad when the sweltering dungeon of Snape's Potions class also reeked with the sweat of several dozen Ravenclaws. Snape taught the entire week wearing a more pinched expression than usual, exacerbated by a distinctly watery-eyed demeanor. "Snape's taken so many points from Gryffindor that we'll still be in the negative when our children attend Hogwarts," she complained to Hermione at the end of the week.

The first day their showers returned to function, they all spent longer than usual in the billowy steam of the lavatory. The topic of conversation was, as per usual, the Feud.

"They've been all but ignoring us no matter what we've tried," Lavender said.

"And we've tried almost everything," Parvati said, "Short of parading around in our knickers and singing 'Rule Britannia.' "

"I'm up for it," Lavender said. "Anyone remember the words?"

A week spent as a pariah, with a body odor sharp enough to cut glass had the unexpected side effect of sharpening Ginny's thoughts as well. A plan sprung fully formed in her mind, and she wasted no time in voicing it. Hermione looked horrified. Ginny cut through her shock with the same alacrity that her former odor had cut through the Gryffindor common room last week. "Are these not desperate times?" she said. "Do they not call for desperate measures?"

Hermione's protests drowned in Lavender and Parvati's enthusiasm for the idea.

"This whole mess started with Potter and Malfoy," Lavender said. "They sucked the entire rest of the school into it."

Hermione said nothing, knowing that Harry and Draco had deeper reasons to hate each other than the feud. Much as she hated it, this feud of theirs--limited to pranks, practical jokes, and scuffles in the halls between classes--was preferable to the alternative. Inside Hogwarts, the feud was a boys' fight, because outside the school, the fighting was done by men. And deep in her heart of hearts, she wanted very badly to believe that neither Harry nor Draco was in any hurry to bring the outside world through the doors of Hogwarts. It was perfectly capable of coming in on its own. She shivered, rubbing her arms in spite of the heat. Time was running out for all of them. "They all could use a break," she said, almost to herself. "Time out to remember we're still young." Her eyes cleared when she realized Ginny was looking at her oddly. "Right. I'm in, then."

"But what about the other houses?" Parvati asked. "This won't work if they think it's just a Gryffindor plot."

Hermione remembered Hannah's tears, Millicent's look of despair. "I think we might have allies in strange places," she said cryptically.

* * *

Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini slumped at the heavy, scarred table in the dungeon of the Slytherin common room. Pansy wore a rapidly melting cucumber face pack, and didn't seem to give a rat's arse as to whether someone would see her in it or not. "It isn't as if they remember we exist," she said tartly when Blaise asked her if she was all right with talking in the common room. The Slytherin common room was located in the deepest part of the dungeon, and for once, that was an advantage, as the cool stones broke some of the oppressive heat that seemed to encase Hogwarts in a bubble of high-pressure irritability.

Blaise tipped her chair back and flung her quill across the room. The pointed end stuck in a corkboard whose only denizen was the blank sign-up parchment for couples attending the May Day Ball. She wondered if the other houses had equally blank sign-up parchments.

Just then, the fireplace flared to life. Both girls jumped. Hermione Granger's head and shoulders appeared in the green flames. Blaise went for a poker and Pansy settled for a hostile glare from her cucumbered eyes.

Hermione held up both hands. "Wait! Don't hit! I come in peace."

Blaise shook the poker menacingly, but didn't bring it down. "What do you want, Gryffindor?" she demanded.

"The same thing you do," Hermione said.

"How do you know what we want?" Pansy asked.

"Because it's what every girl in this school wants. A date to the May Day ball, and for this stupid feud to stop messing up our lives."

Blaise's grip on the poker relaxed. "We're listening."

Hermione smiled. "The plan was Ginny's, really. It involves the sixth and seventh years, and we need every single one of us for it to work." By the time she was done explaining, Blaise's poker lay forgotten on the rug, and Pansy's cucumbers had melted down the front of her pyjamas.

When Hermione signed off, the two girls looked at each other. "Bugger me," Pansy said.

Blaise's eyes turned speculative. "I'm thinking that a thousand years of sorting has made that bloody hat more than a little bolloxed. If that hat didn't make a mistake sorting Weasley into Gryffindor, I'll eat those cucumbers off the front of your shirt."

* * *