Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent

He wished he had progressed further in his Animagus training so that he could just transform into a lion and run off to hide in the Forbidden Forest. He had advanced to being able to grow and shrink his nails (on both his hands and his feet) in the blink of an eye, and also growing and ungrowing his hair (if he’d known it was that easy, he never would have put off the haircut). Professor McGonagall had been impressed by his rapid progress; he wondered whether he might be able to become an Animagus in less than six months.

Harry also had gotten to the point where he definitely needed to start shaving, but he decided to try to control his facial hair using the Animagus technique, too, and found that this worked quite well, and he was able to avoid being cut. No one questioned him about this. Ron used his wand, when he saw enough reddish growth on his chin and upper lip to warrant giving himself a shave. Hermione had suggested he try growing it, as Charlie had done; red beards looked really nice, she told him, coloring. This had greatly annoyed Harry.

That Saturday morning, Harry and Hermione went running as usual. When they were doing the warm-down stretches on the dewy grass of the Quidditch field, Hermione suddenly stopped, then sat down, staring into space. When Harry saw her sitting as if turned to stone, he crept over to her and touched her shoulder.

“Hermione?” he whispered. She looked up at him and he could see the fear in her eyes. “What is it?”

“Harry?” she said, as though she weren’t sure of his name. He put his hand to her cheek and she put her hand over his.

“You’re worried about Viktor,” he stated. She nodded. “Don’t be. You won’t be alone.” She nodded again.

“But--” she hesitated.

“Yes?”

“This thing with fixing up Viktor and Cho. Should we--should we do that to her? What do we really know about him? Maybe I should just break up with him and take my chances...”

“Do you want to do that?” he said gently, moving his hand to her shoulder. “I could cancel the date with Cho. We’ll do whatever you want.”

Suddenly, Hermione shook herself, as if trying to wake up. She rose gracefully to her feet and continued the stretching exercises. “I’m sorry, Harry. I’m just worrying needlessly. We’ve got a plan; we’ll stick to it. Hold my ankles?” He nodded at her, crouching down to grip her ankles while she did some sit-ups. He watched her closely, the way her face was scrunched up in concentration, the perspiration beading on her brow. Everything she did, she was so serious about it. Except Divination, and that had shocked everyone. He tried not to think about Divination; he’d been leaving Sandy in his room for Divination class ever since that first day, and he’d managed to avoid anyone else giving him a Tarot reading since then. He felt like he’d actually gotten better at doing them, though. He had performed one for George which had predicted some behavior of Angelina’s that he hadn’t suspected in the least. Of course, they hadn’t known until afterward that that was what the reading was pointing to. Still...

“Harry!”

“Wha--?”

“I’ve been sitting here shouting at you. You can let go of my ankles now. I think five thousand sit-ups is pretty much my limit for one morning. It’s your turn, now.”

“Oh, right.” And now she held his ankles while he did sit-ups. He took his shirt off first, wiping some sweat off his brow and then bundling it up to make an ad hoc pillow to put behind his head. He was about half through his sit-ups, counting in his head, trying to block out other thoughts, when a sudden shadow darkened the area of the field where they were. Harry stopped, panting, and looked up--

Into the pale, pointed, and extremely smug-looking face of Draco Malfoy. “Looking good, Granger,” he drawled, “for a Mudblood.” Harry saw Hermione color. She stood, as did he; he looked up at Malfoy (who was slightly taller than him now). He and the other six Slytherins with him were in their green Quidditch robes and carried what looked like brand new Nimbus 3000 broomsticks--probably courtesy of Lucius Malfoy, thought Harry.

Harry’s angry face was very close to Malfoy’s. “Language, Malfoy,” Harry said in a low, dangerous voice. He clutched his sweaty shirt in his left hand, wishing he had his wand in his right. Malfoy looked down at him.

“Sorry, are you trying to tell me what I’m allowed to say? You’re sweating all over our Quidditch pitch, and my team needs to practice.”

“Your team?”

“Yes,” Malfoy replied, his smugness increasing by the second. “I’m the new captain of the Slytherin team. How do you like that?” Well, that explains all the new broomsticks, Harry thought.

Hermione had come over and stood next to them. “Well, isn’t that a coincidence. You see, Harry’s now the captain of the Gryffindor team.” Malfoy’s face lost what little color it had. “Yes,” Hermione went on. “You are both prefects and you are both captain of your house team. Can you give it a rest, already? What are you going to compete over next?”

They both turned to look at her, glowing and tan in the morning sun, her running bra and bicycle shorts making it completely unnecessary to use any imagination in picturing the shape of her body, her short curls clustered around her face. Not wanting to hear what might come out of someone’s mouth next, she announced loudly, “I have to go get ready for my date with Viktor Krum!” And she turned and stalked back toward the castle.

Harry thought Draco Malfoy looked slightly dazed, watching her walk off; Harry had to admit, the view was quite nice...But Malfoy turned back to him after a second. “So,” Malfoy sneered at him. “The great Harry Potter lost out to Viktor Krum...”

“I wasn’t--” Harry began, then shook his head, smiling. “You can’t get to me, Malfoy. Not today.” He tried to look happier than he felt. “I’m going along with Hermione and Viktor with my own date: the Ravenclaw seeker, Cho Chang.”

He wished he could have had a camera to record Malfoy’s stunned expression. “But she’s a sixth year!” sputtered Malfoy.

“And she’s really pretty,” said Zabini, awe in his voice.

“Shut up!” Malfoy lashed out suddenly.

“I know,” Harry said, sounding like he was mulling it over. “She is really pretty. I was thinking that when she asked me out in Diagon Alley...”

“ She asked you out?” Malfoy was incredulous. Harry was trying not to laugh at his expression. He turned and walked after Hermione, calling over his shoulder, “Have a good day, Malfoy! I know I will!” He turned back in the direction he was walking, wishing that what he’d just said were true, not just a really good way to needle Malfoy.

As he walked away, he heard a Slytherin say, “Every girl in school is slobbering over him these days...”

“Well, look at him. He’ll probably cause a riot, walking into the castle with no shirt on...”

“Shut up, will you?” he heard Malfoy explode again. Harry smiled and kept walking.

The second Slytherin was just about right, however; the moment Harry walked into the entrance hall, he regretted not putting his shirt back on. He thought it was quite possible that Madam Pomfrey would be busy much of the morning from minor injuries to girls who had stumbled on steps or walked into walls because of him. On the third floor, just as Hermione was going into the girls’ prefect bathroom, Cho Chang was coming out. She stopped dead when she saw Harry.

“Harry--” she said softly, staring at him. Harry felt himself reddening,

“Good morning. We were just out running,” he said, gesturing toward Hermione, who smiled at Cho and slipped past her into the bathroom. Cho didn’t look at Hermione.

“Uh-huh,” she said, still gazing at Harry.

“I’m going upstairs to shower now. We’ll go after breakfast.”

“Okay,” she answered, looking a bit glazed-over. Harry continued on up to the fifth floor, wondering whether it was going to be possible to get her to notice that Viktor existed. I hope I’m not getting a big head, he thought.

The ceiling in the Great Hall was the same brilliant, cloudless blue they’d seen while running around the Quidditch pitch earlier in the day. When the post-owls came, a letter to Hermione from Viktor Krum confirmed that he would be meeting them at Honeydukes. After breakfast, Harry looked at Hermione sitting next to him at the Gryffindor table and said, “Ready?”

She sighed deeply. “As ready as I’ll ever be.” Ron and Fred looked at each other and nodded for some reason.

Harry and Hermione rose and went over to the Ravenclaw table. Harry tapped Cho on the shoulder and she turned around, smiling broadly when she saw him. He had put on his nicest black robes with his prefect badge, and he wore a simple black button-down shirt under it and black trousers and his black boots he’d worn for gardening, but newly shined and polished. With his newly cut black hair and black glasses, set off by his bright green eyes, he looked every inch a Triwizard Tournament winner.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked her. He tried to ignore the twitters of the other Ravenclaw girls, the elbow nudges being exchanged as Cho’s housemates saw who her date was.

“Yes,” she said simply, evidently not one for banter. She stood and took the arm he offered her--it was old-fashioned, but he it felt oddly appropriate to him, at this moment. They walked out to the entrance hall, all eyes at every house table following them.

As they walked down to the village, Harry tried to engage her in conversation, but every topic he introduced resulted in her making monosyllabic responses that frustrated his attempts. So he tried to make sure they were walking close enough to Hermione so that he could converse with her, and Cho seemed to be perfectly happy to walk along gazing up at him (she only came up to his shoulder) and listening to them talk (although Harry wasn’t convinced she really was listening; he and Hermione had each laughed at things the other had said, but no laughter was forthcoming from Cho).

When they reached the village, they walked up the High Street to Honeydukes Sweets Shoppe. Viktor was waiting outside, and kissed Hermione on the cheek when she was close enough. He actually looked like he’d been aiming for her mouth, but she had turned her head and presented him with her cheek at the last second. They bought a few sweets and then strolled through the village streets for a while; Harry was getting more and more tired of trying to talk to Cho, especially now that Hermione was with Viktor. It didn’t sound like there was much conversation going on there, either, inasmuch as his English was still heavily accented and there seemed to be a bit of a problem for him with British colloquialisms.

“I learn English from American television programs,” he explained to Hermione.

“But you don’t have a television,” she remembered. “You don’t even have electricity.”

“Oh, no. I go to the store in Sofia that sells televisions and I stand there and watch until they tell me to go. They don’t like people to stay too long who are not going to buy.”

That’s scintillating conversation, thought Harry, compared to what I’ve got here . He had thought perhaps of asking her whether she’d seen the Quidditch World Cup the previous summer, but since that was a whole year ago, and Viktor had played in the World Cup and he didn’t want to make it seem that he was gushing over Viktor, he couldn’t very well use that topic. He tried to ask her how bad the O.W.L.s really were, but she said, “Oh, they’re as bad as you’ve heard,” and would not elaborate. He tried to ask her what one could expect to cover in sixth-year classes, and she said, “Oh, pretty much what you learn in fifth-year, only more so.” I could have a deeper conversation with a lamppost, Harry thought.

Finally, when it was close to lunchtime, they opted to go to the Three Broomsticks. It was already pretty crowded with students who’d come down from the castle for the day, but they got a table in the corner--which just happened to be near a table with Ron and Fred Weasley, who seemed determined to pretend they didn’t recognize their housemates. Harry and Hermione told Viktor and Cho that they would get them all some butterbeers and order some food at the bar.

While they were waiting at the bar for Madam Rosmerta to notice them, they looked over their shoulders at their dates, who didn’t exactly seem to be talking up a storm together.

“Hermione, are you sure that love potions are illegal? Because I am dying to put something in Cho’s and Viktor’s drinks right now to speed up this process. I have never been more bored in my life!”

“Really?” Hermione said, her brow furrowed. “But she’s very pretty--”

“Oh, cut it out. You know that’s not all I’m looking for--”

“It was last year when you asked her to the Yule Ball.”

Harry grimaced. “I am obviously never going to live that down, am I?”

She smiled merrily at him. “Not for the next hundred years, anyway. Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad. Surely there’s something you two can do together...”

He didn’t take her meaning at first, then as it dawned on him, he exclaimed, “Hermione! How can I go from not even being able to talk to her to kissing her?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes I think when people have too much to talk about, it can keep them from kissing...” She looked at him very pointedly, and he remembered that moment in the Dursleys’ garden when they’d almost kissed, before Sandy had told him that Sirius was coming. He had no answer to this. He glanced back over his shoulder.

“They’re moving their lips a little. Maybe an actual conversation is imminent,” he said hopefully. Hermione placed an order for four butterbeers and fish-and-chip platters and indicated which table should get the food order. They each carried two mugs of butterbeer back to the table, moving slowly through the crowd more to prolong their absence than because they thought they would spill the beverages.

Harry thought that it was possible now that there was something in the world more boring than one of Professor Binns’ classes: a date with Cho Chang. This experience should be bottled and sold as a sleep aid, he thought. Meanwhile, he was acutely aware of Ron and Fred at the next table, trying to hear what little conversation was taking place among those on the date.

Once their food had arrived, at least they had the excuse of having full mouths to avoid talking. Harry had never even experienced such a quiet meal even at the Dursleys, where he routinely got the silent treatment (when he wasn’t being given the opposite, the yelling treatment). Even Ron and Fred were starting to look bored, he thought. When Spies Get Bored , Harry pictured the headline in Witch Weekly. By Rita Skeeter . If she were still writing.

After they were done eating, he decided he couldn’t take it any more. “Well,” he said briskly, “this has been fun, but Hermione and I have a load of homework to do. I have to put in some hours in the Potions dungeon, and didn’t you say Professor Vector had given you a ton of Arithmancy homework, Hermione?” His eyes looked pleadingly at her.

“Oh!” she said suddenly. “Yes. So much work. Unbelievable.” She nodded vigorously. Viktor and Harry paid the bill (Hermione argued with Viktor about paying her way; Cho did not say anything about Harry paying for her, despite having been the one to ask him out). They all rose to go, and as they reached the door, Harry saw out of the corner of his eye that Ron and Fred were also rising to leave.

As they were walking back to the castle, Harry with Cho and Hermione up ahead with Viktor, Harry simply decided to stop even trying to talk with Cho, and she seemed perfectly happy to just walk along, arm in arm, enjoying the spectacle of the autumn colors. Ron and Fred were skulking about forty feet behind them.

When they reached the entrance hall of the castle, Harry extended his hand to Cho, shaking it vigorously, thanking her for a lovely day, and saying that they would have to do it again the next Hogsmeade weekend, but thinking That’s five hours of my life I’m never getting back. As they were shaking hands, Ginny emerged from the stairs to the Potions dungeon. She stopped dead when she saw Harry and Cho, frowning at first, then looking happier as she saw that no kissing was following the hand-shaking. Actually, she looked like she was going to laugh, thought Harry, who sincerely hoped she wouldn’t. Then he saw Viktor and Hermione over Cho’s shoulder, and groaned inwardly; this plan wasn’t going well at all...

Their kiss in the entrance hall made the one on the train platform look sick. When they separated, Harry thought Hermione looked like she was having difficulty standing up. Cho went up the stairs toward Ravenclaw, seeing the end of Viktor’s and Hermione’s kiss and giving Harry a bit of a hurt look as she left. Viktor departed, and Hermione stood looking out the open door, her brow furrowed, pulling at her lower lip with her right hand.

Ginny started to come toward Harry and Hermione, but suddenly, Draco Malfoy emerged from the same stairs Ginny had ascended. “Ginny!” he called as he climbed the stairs. “You forgot your mortar and pestle...” He handed it to her and while Harry and Hermione whirled in surprise.

“Were you both in the Potions dungeon?” Harry asked suspiciously, just as Fred and Ron entered from the outdoors.

“Yeah. So?” Malfoy said, coming closer to him.

“So what were you doing down there?” Ron wanted to know.

“Potions homework,” Ginny informed him stiffly.

Ron regarded Malfoy through narrowed eyes. “And I’m supposed to believe that?” Harry felt rather than saw Ron and Fred come and stand on either side of him, facing Malfoy.

“Yes,” Malfoy said as Harry and the Weasley brothers presented a united front. “I do work for my grades, I don’t just depend on the goodwill of my head of house. I mean, I believe that Potter and the Mudblood aren’t shagging on the Quidditch pitch every morning...”

Simultaneously, Harry and Ron grabbed Malfoy’s arms and pinned him to the stone wall; they both quickly whipped out their wands and pointed them at Malfoy’s throat. “You stop calling her that, Malfoy,” Ron hissed at him. Malfoy grinned evilly at them.

“Ron! Harry! Let go of him!” came Ginny’s unexpected voice. “He’s my friend!”

“Your friend?” squealed Harry, Ron and Fred. “ Hermione is your friend,” Harry reminded her.

“Let go of him,” she said firmly, and Harry had a sudden vision of her someday being Head Girl. Alicia Spinnet probably couldn’t have mustered as much authority, he thought. They released him and Ginny strode over to him. “You know I don’t like that word...” she said to Malfoy quietly but sternly.

For the first time since Harry had known him, Draco Malfoy looked abashed. “Sorry--”

“Nope. Not to me. To Hermione.” Harry tried to suppress a smile; she was so in charge.

Malfoy walked over to Hermione and looked her in the eye sincerely. “I’m sorry I called you--that, Granger.”

“And--” Ginny prompted him.

“And it won’t happen again.”

Hermione crossed her arms and looked at him, expressionless. “Apology accepted. Excuse me,” she said, going up the stairs toward Gryffindor Tower. Harry, Ron and Fred were not going anywhere until Malfoy left; none of them wanted him to be alone with Ginny again. She turned to him once more. “Thank you for my mortar and pestle, Draco.” Draco? Harry thought. She was calling him Draco?

“You’re welcome,” he smiled at her, and Harry was shocked to see that he could actually produce a smile that wouldn’t better be described as a smirk or evil grin. He then shot daggers from his eyes in the direction of Harry and the Weasley brothers before going down another staircase leading to Slytherin house.

Just then, Neville Longbottom emerged from the stairway to the Potions dungeon, carefully carrying a glass beaker that was steaming and obviously hot; he was handling it with dragon-hide gloves. He stopped short when he saw Harry, Ron, Fred and Ginny standing around in the entrance hall.

“What’s up?” he asked, cautiously eyeing his potion; it looked as though it might have been considering overflowing its container.

“Were you down in the Potions dungeon with Ginny and Malfoy?” Ron wanted to know.

“Yeah. We all had stuff to do. Malfoy was dead useful, actually. Helped me finally get this memory-enhancing potion looking right...” He continued up the stairs, holding it out carefully in front of him.

Fred looked accusingly at Ginny. “Well, why didn’t you say you weren’t alone with Malfoy?”

She looked incredulous. “Why didn’t I--what am I, on trial here? Did you ever bother asking? And what if I had been? Why would that mean that we were doing anything other than Potions work? It just so happens that he helped me with my potion, too.” She looked challengingly at Harry and her brothers.

Harry leaned toward Fred and Ron, whispering, “Why don’t you two clear off--let someone who’s not her brother talk to her for a minute, all right?” Ron looked like he wasn’t sure that was such a good idea, but Fred nodded and motioned for Ron to follow him. He did so, looking over his shoulder at them.

Harry and Ginny walked up the stairs more slowly. “Sorry about all this Ginny. Ron and Fred spent the day spying on our date, and I had to actually be on the ruddy stupid date--and I suppose we’re all on edge...”

“So, it didn’t go well,” she said softly.

“That’s an understatement. I won’t bore you with details; I’m already bored enough. No point in doing it to you, too.” He smiled at her, and she gave a feeble smile back. They continued walking upward, slowly and steadily. “But, I suppose it was a bit of a shock to hear you calling Malfoy by his first name...”

She stopped. “Really? I suppose it’s just because--I’ve always thought of him as Draco. It’s his father I think of as Malfoy, since his father...”

“Gave you Tom Riddle’s diary,” Harry finished for her, also stopping. She nodded grimly, then started moving again.

“When he’s not showing off, when he’s not around a lot of people, he can be okay, you know. Actually, he seems a bit--lonely these days. Not even many friends among the Slytherins.”

“Some of them must be his friends. The Quidditch team just voted him to be their new captain.” But then Harry remembered the new broomsticks they’d all been holding. He didn’t have to wonder why they’d voted for him.

“I suppose. But think of this: he helped Neville, which you’d probably never expect, and he helped me, and I’m Ron’s sister, and you know what bad blood there is there.”

“So--I’m supposed to believe Draco Malfoy’s turned over a new leaf?”

“You’re supposed to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“That was the second time today he called Hermione a Mudblood. That’s not helping me give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“Well--I have my theory about that...”

He stopped. “What?”

She also stopped. “I think he might have--just possibly--a little crush on Hermione.”

“What? So he insults her with the rudest possible name he could call her?”

“It’s just--I think he knows she’d never give him the time of day. So he tries to convince himself she’s beneath him, or something, because she’s not pureblood...”

He looked at her levelly. “You’re pureblood.”

Then she surprised him by blushing. “Don’t be ridiculous, Harry. I’m also a Weasley....That would be...it would be...Don’t be ridiculous,” she repeated, finishing lamely. She walked up the stairs ahead of him, moving more quickly this time, and Harry wished he had Moody’s magical eye, so he could see her expression.