Femininity and the House-Elf Liberation Front

Femininity and the House-Elf Liberation Front

By Hwkngrl412

Well, he had done it again. Eyes wide open and forkful of eggs halfway to his sagging mouth, Ronald Weasley had spent the whole of breakfast that snowy Saturday morning gawking unblinkingly at Fleur Delacour.

Hermione fumed, ripping through the pages of So You Want to be a Highly Respected Ministry of Magic Official Who Does Not Have to Worry About Being Hexed on a Daily Basis? at top speed, trying to figure out just why she was so angry. Well, of course she knew why she was angry. Not completely though, just enough to get a start on...

It was that Fleur Delacour girl. Flipping her hair around all the time, entrancing boys just to get attention, and she was a veela, which was even worse than the first two offenses added together. Honestly, the things some women would do to get a boy to look at her, even enchant them so they had no choice but to worship her. And Ron! The way he always acted around her! Sure, sometimes he couldn't help the stupid things he did, but a lot of the times he could and didn't! Swooning over her like some broomstick with hair. It wasn't even pretty hair, she thought scornfully. It was just silver, like someone had put a sheet of it through a paper shredder and stuck it all to her head. Not that Hermione had much room to talk, though. Her own hair was one huge jumbled mess of bushy brown curls. But still. That Fleur girl was so haughty and conceited, so French! Not that Hermione disliked the French people; she had come to love them on holiday in France the previous summer, but they, too, were rather self-important and arrogant. That fact that Ron even slightly fancied Fleur made it all the much more difficult for Hermione to tolerate her.

But Hermione didn't really care at all that Ron liked Fleur, no, not at all.

It was just annoying sometimes.

Yes, that was it.

She could almost hear Ginny's laugh. "Yeah right!"

Hermione came to the section entitled: The Sometimes Scaly but Altogether Enthralling Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, tore the corner of the page in her haste to read it, repaired the paper, and made a rather angry noise.

"SSSH!" hissed Madam Pince from her desk near the door.

Hermione stuck her tongue out at the deprecating librarian, such was her fury, and skimmed down the page with her finger, searching the tiny print for the necessary words. "A-ha!" she seethed under her breath. "Just as I thought! Nothing mentioning the representation of House-Elves whatsoever!" A kind of sick triumph filled her at having found yet another weapon against the Ministry's unfair treatment of House-Elves, when Ron's jeering, freckled face swam into her mind, snickering at her.

"What are we now, then, the House-Elf Liberation Front?"

"And you think we want to walk around wearing badges saying 'spew', do you?"

"Hermione--open your ears! They. Like It. They like being enslaved!"

Why did things always come to Ron?

"Hmph," she muttered, tossing the book aside and now grabbing her belt-buckled copy of The Monster Book of Monsters. "How can he say that sort of thing? He doesn't understand...how would he feel? 'It's in their nature to take care of us...' well it's certainly in his nature to be an arrogant, callow little..."

"Excuse me?"

Hermione jumped in her seat with a rare squeak, and her Monster Book of Monsters took the opportunity of freedom from its belt and clamped itself firmly over her left pinkie finger. "OW!" she yelped, shaking her hand so as to rid it from the book's grasp. A large, lightly scarred hand zoomed from out of nowhere to pound the book harshly on the binding, and with a tiny howl, it relinquished Hermione's finger.

"Thank you," Hermione said with pink cheeks, ashamed at being attacked by a book. Ron would have never let her hear the end of it. She looked at her pinkie to avoid the person's eyes; it was red and throbbing.

"You are velcome," said the same voice as before. It was deep and strong and intelligent, and the tiny accented 'w' informed her that it was a Durmstrang student. Preparing herself for a difficult conversation with someone she didn't want to converse with, Hermione looked up.

It was Viktor Krum.

While attempting to get over the fresh shock that a world-famous Quidditch player had decided to not only approach her, but engage her in conversation, Hermione noticed that, up close, he actually wasn't that bad looking. His face was familiar, from the Quidditch World Cup, from the figure often waddling around in Ron's palm, he was, of course, the Durmstrang champion, and from the fact that he was in the library every day as well, followed by his fan club. And while he was not bad looking, he did have a rather beak-like nose and heavy eyebrows that made him look like a hawk, and he was rather duck-footed and not as graceful on the ground as in the air. However, Hermione found her cheeks becoming hot as she and Krum looked at each other for a moment, and she remembered that only the night before, Lavender and Parvati had been engaged in a "What it would be like kissing Viktor Krum" conversation (accompanied, of course, by insane giggles). "No, Hermione," she scolded silently. "He's the champion from Durmstrang; that horrible school Malfoy wanted to go to, remember? He probably just wants information on Harry. Or the egg." She got herself ready to be brutally frank. He was here for something, and if it was a decent request, she might comply. However, if the words 'Harry', 'Tournament', 'Task', 'egg', or 'help' came up anywhere in the conversation, she would deny him anything.

"I hope he gets along before his little fan club shows up," she thought scathingly. "Waltzing around just to get a look at him...honestly! How is anyone supposed to get anything done in here? All I wanted was to look up the Ministry's representation of Elfish Rights, and I get accosted by some Quidditch player and his fan girls, who are no doubt right outside the door waiting for him to sign their hats in lipstick or something. Some girls these days are..."

"You are Hermy-own, are you not?" Viktor Krum asked somewhat coyly.

"Here it comes," she thought, with scarce annoyance at the mispronunciation of her name. Even though it was kind of cute in its own little mispronounced way. "Yes, I am. Actually, it's Hermione," she elaborated, emphasizing each syllable of her name. He looked at her funny. She blushed again. "I mean, yes, I-I am...Hermy-own," she stuttered, thoroughly embarrassed.

"My name is Viktor Krum," he said unnecessarily. "From Durmstrang?"

"Mm-hmm," she replied brilliantly. "School champion; congratulations."

"How are you today?" he stammered with a nod of his head, still looking at her oddly.

"Fine," she said, and her voice came out as barely a squeak. "You?" What in the world was wrong with her?

That got her another funny look. "Actually," he said, "I vos vondering if you..." she heard a tiny gulp; "...vell, the Yule Ball, it's coming up and..."

She had to exert all of her self-control in insuring that the tiny squeal struggling to escape her throat did not do so, made all the more difficult thanks to the girlishly Parvati- and Lavender-like thoughts rushing around in her mind. If her face was warm before, Hermione was now quite sure it was the same color as Ginny's hair.

"...you don't haff a partner, do you?" Krum finished finally, looking quite red himself.

"Uh-uh," she managed after a moment, fully aware of what was coming next, and half hoping she was wrong. The half that was hoping she was right, based on the fact that she was always right, beat her other half into submission until the only thing she could think was the un-Hermione-ish thought: "Please ask me to the Yule Ball! Please ask me to the Yule Ball!"

"Good. I mean, um, vat I am trying to say is..." he stuttered, slowly turning the burgundy color of his robes. Then, he took her hand, looked straight into her eyes with the ferociousness of the Quidditch player he was, and said to a pleasantly shivering Hermione: "Vould you vant to go to the Yule Ball vith me, Hermy-own?"

She screwed up enough energy to shove the squeal in her throat roughly back down to her stomach (where it made its presence known by gurgling loudly) at the thought of: her hand clasped in both of his, the fact that he was looking directly into her eyes, and that he had asked her to the Yule Ball! Suddenly, the fact that he was a famous Quidditch player, Ron's idol, and that he and several of his fans interrupted her studies every day didn't matter much. She was firstly, flattered beyond belief that, out of all the girls in Hogwarts, plus the female delegations from both Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, he had asked her to the Yule Ball. Not Fleur Delacour (the banshee!) or Zandria Fedorova (the Fleur of Durmstrang), or even Harry's obvious crush Cho Chang. He asked her. She knew what she wanted to say. She wanted to say yes. But all she could manage under the current circumstances was: "Um..." Honestly! There was something about this guy that made her very un-Hermione-ish, and it was disturbing. She missed the eloquent comfort of her mind not inhabited by boys.

"I haff come up here every day to ask you," he vouched, as though sensing he was losing a battle. Which he was not. "I haff just been too...nervous. And there are all the girls around," he gestured. "It's very annoying." She nodded her agreement, trying to force a "Yes!" instead of that infernal squeal out of her mouth. "You are very pretty," he continued, turning red again. "I vos just vondering...if you don't vant to..."

"O-of course I do!" she managed, a brilliant pink. "I-I've never been so flattered! I would love to go with you!"

"All right, that's enough, Hermione," said something inside her head. "You don't want to sound desperate."

Krum looked extremely pleased. "All right, then," he said, beaming at her. "Thank you very much."

"All right," Hermione repeated, ecstatic beyond words and blushing like there was no tomorrow.

There was a space of a minute where everything was silent, and he relinquished her hand, which she was sorry of.

"All right," he said again, and he turned to leave the library. "I vill see you then."

Just as Hermione was feeling very pleased with herself and was returning to her book, Viktor reappeared at her side and kissed her once on each cheek.

And as used to it as she was, having gone on holiday to France, she turned such a brilliant burgundy that Viktor's robes looked white. She could only stare, wide-eyed, at him as he left the library like nothing unusual had happened, and do so for about five minutes before seven girls, each sporting Bulgarian scarves, tiptoed in and plastered themselves to the window in the door, giggling maniacally.

"Saw him, did you?" asked one of them with a smirk.

Hermione nodded blankly, dropping her head to smile at her book.