Chapter 7
Hermione peaked around the human shield formed by Crabbe and Goyle, thrusting her wand past their arms, blue paint exploding across the front of Hannah Abbott’s robes. The hit drew out a very out of character shout of “FUCK” from the usually cheerful and polite Hufflepuff.
“Behind” Came a shout from Malfoy and Hermione spun to see Michael diving in front of her, yellow painting his robes. She retaliated, quickly hitting Wayne Hopkins, Morag taking out Stephen Cornfoot. That was disappointing, if you had the element of surprise you shouldn’t miss. She scanned around to see all of the Hufflepuff first years had blue on them and she couldn’t help but celebrate.
“I AM BASICALLY MERLIN.” She helped Michael up from the ground. “You know how many that is for me?” She wasn’t going to wait for him to answer “Six. I’ve got six downs.”
Michael grumbled a bit. “Yeah, and it only cost my sacrifice.”
“You’ll be fine.”
She wouldn’t have believed that she could say this a week ago, but she had to give credit where it was due. “That was a good warning Malfoy. Thanks.”
The blonde boy looked very proud of himself. “It was wasn’t it.” He looked over at Parkinson. “Wouldn’t have been necessary if someone had done their job.” The girl didn’t reply only scowled.
They were three days into what Hermione had learned was a yearly competition between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw and she was having some of the most fun of her entire life. It was basically a giant game of paintball between the two houses, although the entire castle was the arena and you just shot paint from your wand, quite an easy spell actually. The two houses were gambling better Quidditch pitch times, prefect patrol schedules, the rights to their table’s cookies- Hermione didn’t know how to explain it but they were the greatest cookies ever and there were only so many each week. Also, Ravenclaw was gambling studying help and Hufflepuff was promising to have no patrols go near the kitchens. The last house with people standing won.
Of course, with stakes like that, Ravenclaw had immediately gone and promised Slytherin a share for their assistance, sparking Hufflepuff to proposition Gryffindor the same way. Although neither of the other houses could cast spells in assistance, they could scout and act as shields. So, despite their recent adversity, the Slytherin first years had become their escorts around the castle. While not a Hufflepuff of a Ravenclaw, Malfoy might be the most invested in the contest of anyone. Hermione had heard that he had made a bet with Potter, another with minimal stake in the issue, that he was determined to win. Malfoy had self-appointed himself as the “strategy leader” for their group, something that Hermione had to admit he was actually doing quite a good job at.
On the first day of the game, he had designed a trap for the Hufflepuffs that involved them baiting the other House into chasing them into the winding corridors of the fourth floor to be massacred from behind tapestries. It had been a pretty resounding success. Even though they had lost Oliver, Padma, Sue, and Terry they had managed to get six of the Hufflepuffs, the remaining four making it out because Ron Weasley of all people realized they were going towards a trap and stopped as many as he could.
That ambush had also fixed her relationship with him. Although she wasn’t liable to become friends with Malfoy anytime soon, she had nailed Potter in the face with a shot of paint on accident. An action that had the Slytherin deciding that she “Wasn’t half bad.” She was just happy he was over it; the original prank hadn’t been that big of a deal and she already had to deal with Parkinson from his house.
Speaking of Parkinson, Hermione was pretty sure that girl was trying to get her knocked out of the game. Malfoy had assigned Nott and Zabini to be their scouts ahead while going through the corridors. The boys had done a great job, the two of them had spotted the Hufflepuffs ahead and quietly retreated back to the group, allowing the Slytherin’s to form a wall of body blockers for them. Giving the Ravenclaws the easy ability to pick off Bones and Abbott.
Parkinson’s rear guard however had completely failed to see Cornfoot and Hopkins sneaking up behind them. Because of that they had lost Michael blocking for her, and Mandy and Kevin had been taken out before they could react.
They were escorted back to Ravenclaw tower quickly, now that their year from Hufflepuff was completely eliminated they likely didn’t have to worry too much until the defeated students got back to their common room, but you could never be too careful.
They pushed their way through the crowd in the common room to the table in the corner, Michael choosing to speak for their year. “The rest of the first year Hufflepuffs are out and Hermione has six eliminations now!” She didn’t know the sixth year at the table, but he crossed the first year names off a long list a pulled a different parchment towards him, tracing his finger down it. “Granger, Granger… Okay. Well Granger, you are as of now in second, one behind the lead.”
Michael smiled at her, “If you win, you owe me for my sacrifice.” Hermione smirked back at him. “We’ll have to see about that.” She looked at the bag of Galleon’s hanging from the wall behind the table. She was going to win that prize. It turned out that a good portion of her house were massive gambling addicts. They gambled with the Hufflepuffs, and they also gambled with each other. Hermione had learned that there was a pool going for who could most accurately guess why their Defense professor wouldn’t return next year and everyone had put a galleon into a pot for whomever had the most kills against Hufflepuff. Seventy galleons was more than 350 pounds and Hermione wanted it.
“Want to go camp out the library?”
“Again?” Michael complained.
Terry gave him the most unimpressed look Hermione had ever seen. “Where was that opinion when you made me come along yesterday when you were still in.”
“That was different.”
Hermione grabbed her bag, “It’s fine, I can go alone, just wondered if anyone wanted to keep me company.”
Because she was alone, she had to be more careful about walking around, checking each corner carefully, looking out for alcoves or secret passageways that anyone could be hiding in. But it didn’t take her that long to get to her destination: a small alcove covered by a tapestry. It was a little bit off of the path from the Hufflepuff common room to the library, so hopefully some puff would take it thinking they were being evasive.
She could definitely understand why no one wanted to come with her. While she was invested in trying to get more people, they had no reason to huddle in a small compartment. Hermione pulled out her book, a badly damaged book in what she had managed to figure out was some early Germanic language. She had managed to find a dictionary for a slightly later version of it in the school library, it wasn’t perfect, she needed to do some reading between the lines, but she was pretty sure she was getting most of the meaning.
She had quite the setup going in her little nook. Her book -cover charmed to look like a history book- couldn’t be too careful was in her lap, her dictionary was hovering open next to her, nifty spell an upper year had taught her, and her notes were on the floor next to her so she could write on the hard surface. She had started taking notes, writing down components to rituals so she could have a chart that she could use to dissect the symbolism of everything. It was starting to get pretty good, she had at least one meaning for most ingredients and she thought she had the effects of the seasons and some planets pretty well mapped.
From what she could tell, ancient magic was like performing any spell with a wand, if that spell was far more sensitive to external factors. But if you did it correctly, there should never be any more risk than just a normal spell. She had never had an issue with doing spells properly and it rankled her a little that some Ministry moron had so little faith in her that they had blanket banned so much magic.
It certainly didn’t help her opinion that in her research for debate she had learned that the primary reason for a lot of magic banning hadn’t been its danger to others, but its danger to the caster should the spell backfire or be miscast. Obviously, there was an extensive list of spells that were on the ban list for a reason, but reading through it there were more than a few that were just difficult to cast, along with the ban on ritual and elemental magic. Hermione had learned that elemental magic was apparently something very few people could do and it sounded awesome, but apparently too many people were accidentally windlessly combusting themselves or turning their brains to water or a myriad of other things before they fully mastered it.
Hermione heard steps coming down the corridor and peeked out from behind the tapestry, damn it that was a Slytherin. Hermione was on the fence about what to do. On one hand, she was completely confident in her ability to pull off a ritual properly. On the other hand it was illegal, although her research for debate was making her less and less confident in the ability of government to properly regulate. Was she becoming an anarchist? No, she was pretty sure she was just getting more cynical, that happened with age right? Anyways, she had galleons to win. She peeked out again at the sound of footsteps, that was a Hufflepuff, put the pin on his breast meant he was already out. Come on, somebody walk into her kill zone.
Hermione didn’t win the pool. Ravenclaw won the competition, but she fell short. She wasn’t really that mad about it though, she was a first year she had a lot of time. Also, there was a book that had all of the results for the last 216 years and in all that time the record was four wins. Very much still within her grasp. Also, she had more important things to think on now, their exams were coming up now and the Quidditch season had started. So, for now her personal research had to be shelved in favor of studying. Luckily, they had finished the first debate a week ago so that freed up more time for her as well. It had gone much how she had expected. Flitwick, Flaherty, and surprisingly Professor McGonagall acted as judges. Grace’s team had won the coin flip and chose to debate for restriction which their whole team was fine with. Hermione honestly thought it was the easier side to argue, especially as Britain had the strongest restrictions in the entire EU.
It was all the well-rehearsed arguments they had expected. “We’re just trying to protect people.” “We’re not saying all magic should be legal, but how does banning a spell to find one’s child protecting people?”
“British imports of food have gone up 40% since fertility rituals were banned.” “You can’t prove that those are correlated, there are dozens of factors involved in this.”
“Much magic banned has historical context and you’re destroying traditions.” “We need to change to move forward as a society and there was a reason all of that was banned.”
And so on. It was close, Grace had done a good job and there was a reason the debate was always close in the Wizengamot, but in the end they managed to pull out the win, the Judges not voting but instead having a private discussion and them coming back with a decision.
So, now it was time to watch quidditch and study her ass off. After watching the Slytherin vs Gryffindor quidditch game she had decided that while she would likely never be good enough on a broom to play it, it was an incredible game. The first ten minutes were very entertaining, a vicious back and forth with great teamwork and saves. Also, her family wasn’t big on sports, so it was the first match she had been to and just being there was fun. The stands breaking out in chants, although she thought the one about Potter being a nonce was a bit unnecessary. Also, despite the fact that it was eleven, many of the upper years were visibly drunk and had snuck flasks into the stands. The professors tried to intervene, but they clearly didn’t care that much.
Anyway, the game had been really interesting. Then, Potter’s broom had started having an aneurism, managing to buck him off. The cherry on top as he fell, he somehow managed to almost swallow the snitch so after being saved by Dumbledore before he hit the ground Gryffindor had won. The ending had kind of disappointed her if she was being honest. She had wanted Slytherin to win just because they were strategically so much more fun. They had been using their seeker as a fourth chaser, likely assuming that Potter hadn’t had enough time in his few months on the team to learn how to help his chasers well. And, they had been right. Using their man advantage they had been slowly pulling into the lead, they were already up 180 – 80 by the time the game was getting to its end and the entire time Potter had just been flying around looking useless. She didn’t have anything against the guy, he seemed nice, she just didn’t like that he got to break the rules about having a broom because he was famous.
Now, though was time for the much more important Quidditch game, at least to her. She was wearing her Ravenclaw scarf in support and she and the rest of her dormmates had charmed their hair copper colored. Unfortunately for Ravenclaw, as soon as the whistle was blown it was clear to almost everyone that Hufflepuff would be taking the match. The puffs were almost all older players and the Ravenclaw team was mainly third and fourth years. Maybe good for the future, but this year they had to witness their team getting dragged through the mud until their seeker put them out of their misery.
She shouldn’t have worried so much about the exams, they were honestly boringly simple. They had been learning so much cool theory they had been learning in transfiguration and so many fun uses of charms, but it was all just boring standard stuff. On a bright note she would get to see her parents again! She was spending through new years with her family, then she was going to spend a couple days with Morag. She wanted to see what it was like where she lived and Morag sounded excited to have a friend over.