DirtCatharsis

Chapter 6

Ron alternately harangued her and slapped her on the back, which made her bounce more than usual. He took turns between "How could you give your underwear to Malfoy?" and "The look on his face was priceless!"

She regretted her rash bit of temper. Ron was right about one thing--Malfoy was now in possession of one of her bras--a favorite, to be honest.

"I expect my bra's hanging from the notice board in the Slytherin Common room?" she asked Pansy in the privacy of the girls' loo before dinner.

"I heard about that," Pansy said, chuckling. "I wish I could have seen the look on Draco's face. No one's ever hit him with underwear before."

"Too bad my underwires didn't poke his eyes out," Ginny muttered savagely. "Would you be a dear and fetch it for me when you get the chance? I'll owe you," she said, fully aware that being indebted to a Slytherin was a dangerous thing.

"I would if I could," Pansy said. "But it's not hanging from the notice board. Or any of the chandeliers. Or even the Knickers Banner."

"The Knickers Banner?" Ginny asked in spite of herself. She turned on the water full-blast and splashed her face.

"Blaise shot a pair of thong knickers up there last year. Her mother'd charmed them to stay where they were put--to keep any boys from being able to get them off her. Blaise just happened to put them up on the banner rather than on her own bum, and no one's been able to get them down yet. Shame, really. They could use a matching bra."

Ginny's attention kept sliding towards Malfoy's pale hair during dinner. She'd have thought he'd waste no time in parading her unmentionables in the most embarrassing manner possible. She picked at her food, half-afraid that he'd find some horrific way to humiliate her with it. When she chanced to meet Malfoy's eyes, he wore a faint, puzzled frown for a full half-second before his features composed themselves into his characteristic smirk. He pulled a wadded-up something from his pocket and waved it at her.

Of course, she thought. My bra. The idea of Malfoy, going from class to class with her bra in his pocket disturbed her on so many levels she didn't even want to think about it at all. He was likely to believe her rash action was the start of a lifelong career of having crazed women tossing their knickers at him as if he was the new lead singer of The Wyrd Sisters or something.

After dinner, the sixth and seventh year boys filed out of the castle in a restless mob. Or rather, two restless mobs, one made of yellow and red shirted Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors, the other in blue and green shirted Ravenclaws and Slytherins. They flung insults at each other as they left the hall.

"Slimy gits!"

"Inbred arseholes!"

"Knuckle-dragging half-wits!"

"Get on your knees and suck my mudblood--"

"Finch-Fletchley!" This from Harry. Hermione rolled her eyes. Trust him to be in the middle of a war and still insist on general good sportsmanship.

"Hey Creevey! Your mother--"

"Pucey!"

Hermione blinked. Malfoy had kept Adrian Pucey from finishing that thought?

Gods help Harry if he thought to keep it a clean fight when he finally had to face Voldemort. But Malfoy, too?

They'd barely made it out the doors, the sixth and seventh year girls all following them to watch silently as they trooped to the other side of the lake, when Harry and Malfoy escalated from hurled insults to hurled kicks at each other's ankles, and finally to out-and-out fists. They rolled in a knot, one blond, one dark, down the front steps of the castle, heedless of the bruises the stones gave them.

Her face crumpled in worry. She remembered the theory she'd come up with a few weeks ago, how Harry had thrown himself into this feud with Malfoy, dragging the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs in with him until it consumed them. Malfoy had done the same thing with the Ravenclaws and Slytherins until the speculation on the next prank or fight was all anybody cared about. If it weren't for the--

She frowned and rubbed her temples. If it weren't for--

I know what happened to start it all, she told herself. I do. Everyone does. The whole school was there when--

When what? Try as she might, she couldn't summon the scene where Harry and Malfoy first began the Feud. It wasn't as if they needed a reason to hate each other, but there had been...something that made things between them worse than ever before.

She turned to Ginny. "Ginny?"

Ginny leaned against the wall, a troubled look on her face as she watched the boys move away from the castle and towards the lake. "Hmm?"

"What started the feud between Malfoy and Harry?"

"His Dad's the Dark Lord's right hand man and Harry's his worst enemy. Does there need to be another reason?"

"No." Hermione shook her head. "The thing that started this--" she waved her hands at the retreating group.

Ginny shot her a look. "You know what it was. Everybody at Hogwarts saw it with their own eyes. It was the--thingy." She scratched her head. "You know--the, um."

Hermione pushed away from the wall. "Right. Lavender! Hey!" She ran after her dorm-mate and asked her the same question.

"What a silly question, coming from you," Lavender said. "You were right there. Harry and Malfoy--er, well--It'll come to me. Anyway, everybody knows the story. I just can't think of it right now. Besides, we're going to be late." Lavender quickened her pace as she took the stairs to Gryffindor tower.

Hermione stopped, her feet on the first tread. "Something's wrong," she said to herself. "Something's wrong and they don't even realize it," she whispered to herself. The entire school--girls included--was so focused on this Potter-Malfoy feud that for the past several months news of the outside world--Voldemort, Death Eaters, the rifts in the Ministry of Magic--had barely registered. "They're working together and they haven't a clue." Between them, Harry and Draco had managed to keep an entire school enraptured by their actions.

And prevented them from planning for a time about the uncertain, but almost certainly dark future heading straight for them.

"Hermione, are you coming?" Ginny sidled past her on the way up the stairs.

"Of cour--" she started to say, then stopped herself. "Hang on a tick. I've got to check something in the library." Her body protested when she turned right instead of left. It's almost as if I want to forget.

* * *

Ginny shimmied out of her uniform and robes, her limbs trembling slightly. Her stomach was in a tense knot. She took her hair out of the pigtail braids and ran her fingers through it, trying not to remember the feel of an emerald green snake sliding along the side of her neck, or pale, graceful male fingers plunging into her hair after it. In point of fact, this was the first time she'd let her hair out of some kind of binding since that night and it served as a sort of declaration of bravery.

A lazy breeze blew over her bare skin as she pulled the soft, thin cotton of a loose undershirt over her head. She slipped out of her knickers and traded them for a pair of men's boxer shorts, size large, and folded the waistband over several times until they rode low on her hips, where she liked her bottoms to rest.

"Ready, Gin?" Lydia Parsons, one of her roommates, appeared at the foot of her bed, identically clad. Her curly blonde hair was pulled back from her face and her petite body fairly swam in the shirt and shorts, even though they were the smallest size. She smiled nervously at Ginny. "I've felt like someone else has been flying my broomstick for the longest time. Doing this feels like I'm getting a little control back."

Ginny bit her lip. I started this, Ginny thought. It was a lark--a way to take our minds off what's to come. It was a little flirtatious teasing, a little light revenge, an outrageous effort to get the boys to notice us. But it's become so much more. We have to see it through to its end.

In spite of the oppressive heat, Hermione shivered as she led Lavender, Parvati, Ginny, Lydia, and the remaining Gryffindor girls down a long, narrow hallway to a portrait of a long-dead, stiff Calvinist lecturing at a podium. Mustn't forget, mustn't forget, she chanted to herself.

"My word! What are you young ladies doing 'round here so improperly clothed?" he demanded.

Hermione took her first two fingers and poked him squarely in the eyes. "Prefect's Prerogative," she said, her voice a sharply-hissed whisper.

"Oh fine, then," the portrait said grumpily, his eyes watering all over the book on his podium. "Traipse about in yer skivvies for all I care."

Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, Slytherins, and Gryffindors milled about the narrow dungeon hallway before a low wooden door blackened with age. A dozen different perfumes, from Red Portal to Erzebet Tailor's Potion assailed Ginny from all sides. Girlish bodies in thin white shirts and men's boxer shorts glowed in the faint torchlight. Like several others, her own clothing was already sticking to her in the heavy, moist air.

"At least it's not so hot down here," Eva Morales said. "Back in Texas, we get these days, right as the storms are brewin', that'd make a body feel like the whole world was just one big bathtub."

"Oh, enough with your sodding Texas stories, Morales," Blaise said irritably, lifting her hair away from her neck.

"I like hearing her Texas stories," Lavender said. "They're exotic."

Eva edged closer to the Gryffindor girls. "I should have been sorted into Gryffindor," she said loudly. "That hat made a mistake. Daddy oughta demand his money back."

"It's not your fault," Hermione said, pushing to the front of the crowd to reach the low door. She pulled her wand out of the thigh holster that Lavender and two Hufflepuff girls, inspired by Morales' "Texas stories" had rigged up. "You're American, that's all. Alohomora," she said to the door, aiming her wand at the heavy lock made of beaten iron.

Pansy Parkinson shook her head. "Look at that lock. Do you honestly think it'll respond to Alohomora? Its design clearly dates back to William the Conqueror, and Alohomora didn't come into England until Henry the Sixth."

"What's being American got to do with anything?" Morales asked plaintively.

Hermione stared at Pansy. "Parkinson, there's no excuse for you to get the marks you do in History of Magic."

"Of course there is," Pansy tossed back. "My reputation as a party girl hinges on my lack of good marks."

"Oh, of course it does," Hermione murmured sarcastically. "So how do you propose we get through this door. Our plan dies an infant death right here unless we get to the tunnel on the other side."

"With this." Pansy removed a pin from her dark hair. "It's enchanted to pick locks," she explained.

Hermione rolled her eyes and stepped aside to let Pansy at the door. "Slytherins," she muttered, conveniently ignoring the fact that Harry still carried the enchanted lock-picking penknife Sirius had given him. Glancing at Morales, who glowered back at her, she sighed. "It's not you," she said. "Every American who's come to Hogwarts has been sorted into Slytherin. It's to do with the way your magical society is set up."

Morales folded her arms. "And what way is that?" she drawled.

Hermione sighed impatiently. "Honestly, doesn't anyone read? Cultural Manifestations of Wizardry in Societal Structures? Sixth edition, of course, because the other five were woefully rife with interpretational bias...." Her voice trailed off as she realized everyone, including Parkinson, who was supposed to be picking the lock, was staring at her. "Well, it's got everything to do with the way American magical folk look at magic. They don't separate the Dark Arts from the Light. They prattle on about how the intent of the magic comes from the user and not the spell. As if an Imperius curse could be used for anything but nefarious purposes." She sniffed.

"I could think of a few uses having to do with Seamus Finnegan and an invitation to the May Day Ball," Lavender muttered.

"But in order to get into Miskatonic U., everyone has to take a Magical Ethics course and pass the ethics exams. If you don't pass, you don't learn magic at the university."

Hermione shook her head. "Our way is better. We learn the magic alongside the ethics. Right and wrong are taught at an early age."

Eva raised an eyebrow. "And then what happens when you figure out that right and wrong aren't black and white?"

"You get Sorted into Slytherin," Blaise said, slinging her arm around Eva's shoulders. "We're all about moral flexibility. Face it Morales, you belong with the rest of us evil gits and black-hearted rogues."

"I don't have to like it," Morales said stubbornly.

Ginny made an impatient noise. "Look, not all Slytherins are evil gits. Malfoy's not the sole spokesprat."

The mention of Malfoy's name seemed to trigger a mass reaction as the girls remembered what had brought them here. "Hello, could we move it a bit?" Hannah Abbott rubbed her arms. "I'm starting to feel rather--naked just standing here."

"You are rather naked," Blaise said tartly. "We all are--that's the point."

"Right, well, I'd rather be naked and doing something than naked and standing around in a dank dungeon somewhere."

"The dungeons happen to be our home, thank you," said Tracey.

"Well they're bloody dank if you ask me," another Hufflepuff girl shot back.

The argument degenerated before Hermione's eyes. "No, no, NO!" she shouted in exasperation. "We can't fall apart now! Parkinson, have you got that door open yet?"

"Just...right...ah, there!" Pansy pushed her hairpin back into her glossy mane with a triumphant shove. The lock made a rusty squeal as she undid the latch.

Ginny elbowed her way to the front and threw her weight and strength into helping Eugenia Whitford and Mina Danforth of Ravenclaw pry the door open. Dank air swelled out of the tunnel to greet them and several groans and mumbles of, "Eeuww!" filtered through the crowd.

She pulled her wand from her thigh holster. "Lumos," she whispered. Others did the same, and the dank, dripping passage was dotted with softly glowing light.

"Not too much light, dears," Blaise said, "I really don't want to know why the floor goes squish."

Girls began to file down the tunnel, led by Ginny, Hermione, and Blaise. With each step, the humid, musty air swelled with tension. It settled at the back of Hermione's neck like something heavy and reptilian--no offense to the Slytherins--as if a boa constrictor had settled itself in her hair. She stopped when they reached another low door. That door led to a small boat shed that opened onto the mud flats on the far side of the lake, very close to where the sixth and seventh year boys were serving their detention. A faint, rhythmic buzzing came from the other side.

"That'll be Hagrid," she said to Blaise. The other girl nodded. Neither of them made a move to open this door.

This is our all-consuming quest, she realized. In the larger scheme of things, one outrageous stunt isn't going to matter in the least, but it's ours.