The Practical Application of Cows

Hermione stared curiously at the door. It was bright yellow. She looked around for some idea as to where it had come from, but the milk-white room was empty and featureless. She tried to turn, to walk away, but the door was behind and to the side and above and beneath her, too.

She sighed resignedly and opened it, then ran inside.

It was a library.

Not only was it a library, but it was the biggest she had ever seen. Shelves - each of them towering at something like fifteen feet - loomed above her, groaning under the weight of ancient tomes. She bent closer to get a good look at a row of them, and found to her absolute delight that she didn't recognize a single one of the titles. Added to that, each one was written in ancient Latin or French or Outer Mongolian and just begging to be translated.

She fairly salivated with joy, picking a random volume and opening it to the first page. She had just begun to work her way through the first sentence when something mooed.

Now, Hermione spent a good deal of time in the Hogwarts Library and was well acquainted with the oddities one might find there. Magical libraries - particularly those as large as Hogwarts' - operated by virtue of something called 'L-Space', which no-one yet completely understood. This meant that odd things came out of the shelves (most commonly the Restricted Section) and rumbled around until they found their way home. Hermione had been witness to a doddering witch from the nineteenth century, a knight who kept trying to stick his lance through the card-catalogue system, a silent monk, and a zombie who was determined to rally the forces of the undead and fight for equal treatment against the oppressing masses (which, at the time, consisted of Hermione and an irate Madam Pince).

But she had never yet encountered a cow. She hadn't thought that non-sentient beings could traverse the L-Space barriers, but apparently she was about to be proven wrong. She turned around.

The cow was a particularly large one, and had the saddest, most mournful eyes Hermione had ever seen. But that is typical of cows; they think if they look pitiful enough, you might ignore their incredible stupidity. This one, though, was remarkable for the fact that it had large purple wings protruding clumsily from its back.

It ruffled them discontentedly and a small pile of lavender feathers collected at its hooves. It mooed again and gazed at Hermione reprovingly.

"Oh, you poor thing," she gushed, taking its great heavy head in her hands and looking into its stupid, soulful eyes. "Are you lost? And look how you're losing your feathers! I bet you've had a terrible time of it, haven't you?"

"Moo," the cow agreed sadly. Then it nudged Hermione in the ribs hard enough that she nearly fell into the bookshelf behind her, which would have been an utter (or, dare she think such an awful pun, udder) catastrophe.

"Oh," Hermione said crossly. "Well, that's rude. I was only being nice, you know. No need to bruise me."

"Moo!" the cow demanded, and stamped a hoof, shaking its head furiously at her.

"Oh dear. Are you a person? That is," she said quickly, lest the cow take offence, "a humanoid sort of being who is not normally a cow. I mean, you're a very lovely cow, I just meant..." The cow nodded its head twice in quick succession. "Well, then," Hermione said, "we'll just have to turn you back into a person then, won't we? Anti-Bovinus!"

Pansy Parkinson stood before her, clothed in an enormous blanket of lavender feathers. She looked murderous.

"Thank you, Granger," Parkinson said icily. "Please excuse me. I have to find a boy and a rhinoceros and Drunken-Sailor them until their bellies are raw with razor-burn!" She stomped off in an extreme huff.

"I don't like her at all," Hermione told the Orang-utan who was perched atop one of the shelves. "She's really incredibly rude."

"Ook," the Orang-utan agreed, and vanished.

Hermione sighed, feeling quite alone, and leaned against the bookshelf. She was really very lonely.

Victor Krum sauntered up to her. She blinked, and realized that she'd been mistaken - he was, in fact, only Neville Longbottom. She wondered how she could have possibly confused the two. "Hello, Neville. What are you doing here?"

He looked guilty. "I caught Draco Malfoy snogging Harry Potter, but everyone knows that Harry is supposed to be yours. Besides, he wasn't a rhinoceros and he's supposed to be and everything has gone wrong!" He burst into tears.

Hermione patted his back, rather lost. "Um, yes. There, there. Well. That is, I'm going to have to have a talk with Harry, but... he isn't 'mine', you know. We aren't, um, romantically involved in any way."

Neville looked aggrieved. "I know that! I mean, he's supposed to be your doorstop and he isn't and now everything has gone wrong! Snape's sure to shiver my timbers for this," he added mournfully.

Hermione retracted her hand. "I don't even want to think about what that implies," she said.

Neville ignored her. "What is this, anyway? This is all so rational. It's not supposed to be rational! You dream horribly, did you know that?"

"What -" Hermione began, but he was gone. "I'm sorry!" she called out hopelessly after him, and then decided that she probably ought to find Dumbledore or McGonagall and tell them that someone had turned Pansy Parkinson into a cow, and possibly Harry into a rhinoceros (if Neville was to be believed), and that there might well be a dangerous, rogue Transfigurationalist on the loose. She set off determinedly.

It wasn't long before she realised that she was not in the corridors of Hogwarts, but instead on a great rocky plain that seemed to have more than the usual number of decaying skeletons, ancient magical swords sunken into the ground, secret hidden relics, and similar items of heroic nature.

"I wonder why..." she mused aloud, bending down to more closely examine a thin golden band embedded in the edge of a cliff. It seemed to be covered in thin, sharply spiking elvish writing.

"You're in Fantasy-Land, you silly little chit," said a voice behind her authoritatively. She turned.

Professor Severus Snape was standing behind her. He appeared to be wearing overly tight black pants, a billowy white shirt unlaced most the way down his chest, an eye patch, and an assortment of earrings, handkerchiefs, and baubles. He looked as if he had just stepped out of one of those Romances of the High Seas that Ginny Weasley was so fond of. (And no, Hermione was not responsible for Ginny's slowly vanishing Rogue Buccaneer series. Really.)

Hermione took several steps backward, more frightened than she had ever been in her entire life. "Um, yes, of course, Professor Snape sir," she said in a rush. She had never, ever wanted to see Snape's bare chest. But she managed to collect herself with remarkable speed and sallied forth. "I'm afraid I don't quite understand Fantasy-Land, Professor," she ventured.

"Avast!" Snape said furiously, exuding machismo with every syllable. "Blow the man down! Out the bung hole!"

Hermione drew herself up in full indignation. "I beg your pardon, sir!"

"It's a hole in a barrel, Granger, don't get your knickers in a twist," Draco Malfoy said testily. "You've got to know how to talk to Pirate!Snape."

She blinked. "Why did you just shout the word 'pirate'?"

"It's got an exclamation mark after it," he said. "How else are you supposed to say it? Anyway, to answer your question, you're in Fantasy-Land because people do quests here, and you have a quest." She looked blank. "To capture the Rogue Transfigurationalist, Granger, honestly."

She titled her head. "Well, Malfoy, I'm impressed. You seem to be a decent human being today."

He shrugged. "I can't help it. I just snogged a boy who won't stop popping into a rhinoceros and back again and occasionally spouting off long, angst-ridden monologues, Longbottom attempted to shave my belly with a rusty razor, and someone threw raspberry jam in my hair this morning. It unnerves a man, you understand."

"Yes," she said, and he disappeared. She turned back to Snape, who was fuming quietly at being ignored. "Sorry, Professor," she said, although she wasn't quite sure why.

"Wench," he said crossly. "Fetch me some rum, and smartly!"

"Oh, go commandeer something," she snapped back, and threw a rock at his head. He ducked it fluidly and came up swinging a cutlass and screaming 'JOLLY ROGER!' at the top of his lungs.

She ran.

She lost him fairly quickly, but failed to notice that she had also lost herself in the process.

After a while, she came upon the Gryffindor Common Room. She wondered why it was in the middle of a rocky plain, but disregarded this as irrelevant. The Fat Lady opened at her word ("Verisimilitude!"), and she strode quickly inside.

Ginny was standing on a chair, and she was wearing very little. What she was wearing seemed to be made primarily of leather and the nets one normally used for fishing.

"Ginny!" Hermione said, slightly scandalised, although she had thought herself past such things ever since she had caught Professor Sinistra and a Hufflepuff Seventh Year together in the Astronomy Tower. "What are you wearing?"

"What are you wearing, I'd like to know," Ginny returned. "What a question to ask. Are you blind, then, or have you only lost the ability to recognize clothing? Hermione, honestly." She cracked a whip for emphasis. Hermione's eyes travelled down to the stiletto thigh-high boots, each of which had a selection of knives and darts tucked into the tops.

"I didn't mean to cause offence, really," Hermione said, her eyes watching Ginny's riding crop, which was altogether too close to her left ear for comfort.

"Then you shouldn't talk." Her eyes lit up suddenly, and in a voice that should never, ever have come out of Ginny Weasley's mouth, and certainly not while she was outside of a bedroom, she called "Oh, Oliver..."

Oliver Wood sauntered down the Boy's Dormitory stairs. Ginny's whip flicked and wrapped around his waist, pulling him in. "You have been a very, very naughty boy, Mr Wood," she said dangerously.

"I hope I have," he said. Hermione coughed pointedly and they turned around, both looking very miffed at being interrupted.

"Sorry," she said, "just wondering if you've seen a rogue Tranfigurationalist around here somewhere."

"No," Oliver said rather coldly. "We haven't." Ginny's riding crop snapped out and narrowly missed clipping Hermione's nose.

"All right then," she squeaked, "that's very good. I'll, er, be leaving now then." She bolted.

By and by, she came to her parent's house. Only it wasn't her parent's house, not really. It was a castle that her parents happened to be living in at the moment. She was certain of this because it had a tiny plaque above the door that read 'Beyond Here Be Dentists'.

She opened the door and was mildly surprised to find herself in an obscure blend of her house and the Potions classroom. Her mother's prized oriental rugs warmed the cold dungeon stones, and the endless rows of strange, pickled objects in jars had been replaced by similarly endless rows of Hermione's baby pictures. Other than these things, though, it seemed to be rather lacking in furniture - either Snape's desks or her mum's eclectic chair collection.

The old chintz couch, though, was firmly in place in the middle of the room. It was being sat upon. Hermione stared at it. It was really being sat upon.

Blaise Zabini, whom she vaguely recognized (that is, she had admired his remarkably pretty hair) but had never spoken to, was sprawled all over the couch, long legs hooked over one arm. His amber eyes were half-lidded, his green silk button-up shirt falling elegantly over his smooth, hard stomach.

He was wearing leather pants. Really, really pretty leather pants.

Hermione wondered if someone has started up a potion; really, it was getting quite hot in here.

Zabini's eyes flickered open and he turned his head to regard her. He was playing absently with a daisy, spinning it back and forth between his fingers. The petals spun in a mesmerizing pattern. "Hello," he purred.

"H-hello," she said, and then quickly gathered herself together. She was absolutely positively not going to fall apart in front of a Slytherin. "How are classes?"

"They could be better, you know," he said thoughtfully, and plucked one of the daisy's petals off to more closely examine it. "If only that great lump Potter wasn't there. So I turned him into a rhinoceros."

"Aha!" said Hermione, forgetting all sex appeal. "So it's you, then! I knew I would find the Rogue Tranfigurationalist eventually. It was only a matter of time."

"Yes," said Zabini, and put the petal between his lips, chewing thoughtfully. Hermione's knees felt rather week. "I... am a rogue, I admit."

"Oh," she said vaguely. "That's... nice." Something occurred to her. "Did you make Pansy Parkinson a cow as well?"

He shrugged. "It was for a good cause. Surely there's merit in that."

"Mm," Hermione agreed as he snipped another petal off with his teeth.

"Also, I'm afraid that your little annoying photographer friend... Creepy, his name was, I believe? Yes. He is... How would you say - no longer alive?"

She gasped, and nearly dropped the beehive in her arms, which would have been a mistake indeed because bees tend to hold a grudge. "No! You wouldn't!"

"Yes," he said, grinning wolfishly. "He makes a rather striking ficus tree, I think you'll agree."

"Oh," she said, calming down a bit.

Blaise rose liquidly from the couch. He tucked the daisy (oh, it was a rose, she must have been mistaken to think it a daisy before) - or what was left of it - behind one ear. "Here now," he said, "I have something to show you. Come a little closer."

Hermione took three steps forward. They were very small steps.

He swept up to her and dipped her over one arm, gazing into her eyes smokily. His voice was husky with rough, barely contained lust when he spoke. "I will show you the stuff dreams are made of," he whispered, bending closer.

She flung her arms up, planting her palms firmly against his chest and pushing back. Unfortunately, she forgot that he was holding her and such sudden movements made him drop her. She hit her head rather painfully, but got up almost immediately, pointing an accusing finger at him.

"That," she said dangerously, "was a line from Lavender's Witchy Romance Series book, 'When Bosoms Heave'."

He shrugged. "I cannot help it if others are so jealous of my pickup lines that they steal them."

She huffed. "How ridiculous! I don't believe you."

"That's not how this is supposed to go," he said crossly. "This is your fantasy, you know. I'm supposed to kiss you. Why else would I be wearing leather pants?"

"Um," she said. "You had a traumatising encounter with dragons as a child and have felt the need to wear proper protective gear thereafter?"

Zabini considered this. "Well, if one could consider being pushed down a flight of stairs by Draco Malfoy a traumatising encounter with dragons, then yes... but that is not the reason." He swung her about and dipped her again, this time pinning her arms more firmly to her sides in his grip. "I wear them to seduce you, my lovely wench."

"Wen-!" Hermione started, but was cut off as his lips descended on hers.

Hermione Granger woke up with a start, half-falling out of bed in the process.

Her eyes flickered and she passed a hand over her face. "Never, ever reading those damn romance novels ever again," she said hoarsely, and fell back asleep.