complicity
Chapter 7
Hermione checked her watch for the first time all day. She was starting to use it less, now that it reminded her of a certain problem she had been ignoring for a few weeks now. However, to the ‘problems’ credit, she had laid off Hermione since the library incident. She decided to give Greengrass the benefit of the doubt and accredit that to her attempting to give Hermione enough space to mull over the damned proposal.
The words kept replaying in her mind. “I want you to show me how you manipulated the magic on it and around Hogwarts.”
Hermione had curtly told Greengrass that she would think about it, but Hermione already knew her answer. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to teach some rich, slytherin girl that she had only met this year magic that she had worked so hard to teach herself. Magic she didn’t even completely understand yet. Honestly it could almost be chalked up to pure luck. Hermione thought back to when she had casted that manipulated charm on the watch over and over again, almost breaking her wrist waiting for something to happen. Finally the watch screen had started vibrating and flashing. She didn’t know if that meant it had worked but she was willing to take a risk and find out. Lucky for her, it did. She didn’t want to reveal that to Greengrass. She also didn’t want to get snitched on. Unlucky for her, she was pretty confident most slytherins would snitch. Then again most slytherins wouldn’t offer her a seat in potions.
Personal reasons aside, she couldn’t risk teaching that kind of magic to a pureblood slytherin. Not when there had been a death eater attack so recently. Hermione’s whole body shivered at the memory of the quidditch game. She hated the way it made her heart palpitate because of the sickness of her vulnerability. She had been angry and outnumbered and so targeted . But she refused to let herself feel weak. She would rather they take her life before her strength.
She looked at her watch again, in need of a distraction. Hannah Abbott was late for their after-curfew patrol. Just as she decided to go on without her, she heard a slightly out-of-breath voice calling out to her, “Granger! Hey sorry I'm late.”
She turned around to see none other than Daphne fucking Greengrass.
“Super last minute switch with Hannah.” she explained, “Said she had a migraine so I offered to take her place.”
Hermione was beyond annoyed. But mostly anxious. Apparently Greengrass' days of “laying off her” were over. “Well you're late. Let’s get it over with.” She added tardiness to the growing list of grievances she had with the blonde.
Their patrol has been going perfectly well, and by that Hermione meant perfectly silent. She let herself wonder if she was patrolling alongside a future death eater. Hermione had found herself doing that a lot since the world cup attack. She used to just feel weary around those who had actively made their prejudices known, but now she was cautious around all purebloods she wasn’t completely familiar with. Of course, she didn’t want to believe it; Greengrass had recently become a nuisance to her, but the jump from ‘annoying’ to ‘death eater’ was pretty far. Still, she was aware of the type of environment Greengrass had likely grown up in, the type of beliefs it perpetuated…
She tried to recall the type of people she usually saw Greengrass hanging around. Never Malfoy, so that was a good sign. Pucey, Davis— wasn’t Davis actually halfblood herself? And as far as she knew the Puceys weren’t blood supremacists. More good signs. She couldn’t ignore Parkinson though. They practically went everywhere together and Parkinson had definitely said some fucked up things in the past. Plus her family was close to the Malfoys— that was common sense. Nott. The Notts definitely had death eater ties, she remembered Mr. Weasley mentioned their name. Zambini? Hermione didn’t know much about his family. He could be secretly muggleborn for all she knew.
“Y'know this would go by faster if we were talking or playing a game or something.”
Hermione groaned as quietly as possible. There goes the ‘perfectly well’ patrol . “I think it’s going fine.” She replied curtly. Greengrass didn’t give up though and kept trying to make small talk, asking the most useless, dead-end questions. Her favorite food, the weather lately, and wasn’t history of magic just sooo boring (this especially got on Hermione’s nerves because, no, actually, the subject is extremely fascinating if she would just do some research beyond Binns’ assignments). Eventually, it was more than she could take. Besides, Hermione noticed Greengrass glancing down at her wrist every 5 seconds. God, if she’s here to say something can’t she just skip the small talk and spit it out! Greengrass was in the middle of discussing her hatred for the color yellow when Hermione interrupted, “Stop- just stop! Why did you fill in for Hannah? Patrolling sucks, no one wants to take up extra shifts, so why’d you do it?”
Greengrass paused, her face transforming into something more genuine. Hermione wasn’t expecting an earnest answer but she got one anyway. “I’m trying to overcompensate for messing up the last meeting. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m not good enough to be a prefect.”
“That's it? That's your only reason?”
Greengrass sighed, “Well, y'know it was a major reason.”
“And the minor one?”
“We both know you haven’t forgotten about my request, Granger.” Hermione visibly stiffened, it was the first time since the library that either of them had dared to bring it up. “I still want you to teach me, I just- well I guess I've realized that blackmailing you isn’t really gonna do much and that I need to make you realize you can trust me instead. Patrolling with you seemed like a good start.”
“So you're saying you wanna make me trust you so you can gain something… you realize how manipulative that sounds right?” Typical for a slytherin.
Daphne rolled her eyes, “I’m just trying to start off this friendship with some honesty okay!”
“That’s not what this is.” Hermione spit out bitterly.
“It’s not?” Greengrass asked with fake surprise. Hermione shook her head. “Could have fooled me. I mean, same year, same classes, we’re prefect and head girl, we talk in potions, I offered you a seat, you saved my prefect position, we know each other's secrets— well, I know yours.” She spun on her heal to face Hermione as she said this, wearing her stupid fucking grin. A reckless arrogancy thrashed around violently in her eyes. She could try to make the vitality in her stupid blue eyes seem like beauty, but Hermione saw it for what it really was. A false sense of superiority. As if a bit of dumb luck that caused her to find Hermione's secret distinguished them significantly, put her above Hermione. And maybe it did, for now, but power built on fate would never last. Hermione would make sure of it.
Hermione balled her fists, she just had to add in the last part, cocky git. “I already told you, I vouched for you so that Malfoy wouldn’t take your spot, not because I cared for you.” And you just got mad instead of thanking me anyways.
“Okay well whatever” Greengrass said, waving her hands as if this was some small detail she could swat away like a fly. “You have to admit you liked me before that whole incident though.” She said confidently as they entered the next corridor.
Hermione crossed her arms, because while that was true, she wasn’t going to admit it now. “You were tolerable, at best.”
“And now?” Her only response was silence. Hermione was to prideful to let her give Greengrass some type of reaction.
They turned into a new hallway, one where the quidditch pitch was visible from the windows. Windows that seemed clean for the first time since Hermione had attended Hogwarts, no doubt to impress their international guests. “Isn’t it crazy that we’re not going to have quidditch games this year? I know it’s being replaced by that tournament but it just won’t feel the same will it.”
“I never really cared about Quidditch. This tournament is a bad idea though.” She doubted the ministry had thought it through as much as they were claiming. For her, the most annoying part of all this was having to hear about Harry and Ron complaining daily about how their quidditch skills were gonna get rusty without a year's worth of practice and how they had nothing to occupy their minds. They were acting as if there weren’t hundreds of other hobbies to have. Seriously, why can’t they just read.
“Really?” Greengrass said surprised, “Didn't you go to the Quidditch World Cup?” Hermione froze almost instantaneously. Greengrass kept walking for a moment until she turned around, looking confused.
“How’d you know that?”
“Um, Blaise went too. He was just telling us about the people he saw from school there and you came up, because of Cedric I think. He was with you, right?”
Hermione calmed down a little bit. Okay. So maybe that was the only reason she knew. She wanted to leave the subject behind, but apparently Greengrass had other ideas. “I read about the attack that happened there— with the dark mark and everything. It was terrible. I can’t believe that sort of thing could happen nowadays.” She said solemnly
Hermione scoffed at the slytherin. This day had already been draining enough hearing the shock in her voice was enough to send her over the edge; as if she had been blown off a cliff by the simpleness of Greengrass’s tone. “Well it’s not really that surprising. With people like you running the ministry.” She spit out bitterly.
It was Greengrass’s turn to get defensive, as if Hermione was the snake and not her. “People like me? That’s the second time you’ve said that! What the hell is it supposed to mean?”
“Oh come on, I think we both know what I mean! PUREBLOODS! Rich, powerful, purebloods!”
“Isn’t one of your best friends a pureblood? I don’t know why you’ve got some vendetta against us—”
“BECAUSE WHO DO YOU THINK IS PERPETUATING THE FUCKING IDEAS THAT LEAD TO AN ATTACK? WHO DO YOU THINK IS LETTING BLOOD SUPREMACISTS WORK IN A BLOODY MINISTRY? IT’S NOT EXACTLY MUGGLEBORNS!”
“WE’RE NOT ALL PREJUDICED BLOOD SUPREMACISTS!”
“Oh my god, NO SHIT!” Hermione scoffed, feeling herself flaming by the second. As if the devil's tongue was wrapping around her mind, leaving burns in its wake. Except it wasn’t the devil’s tongue, not really. It was just Daphne Greengrass’s ridiculous amount of ignorance that was pissing Hermione off. “BUT ALOT OF FUCKING BLOOD SUPREMACISTS HAPPEN TO BE PUREBLOODS!” She took a deep breath. She didn't want to seem like she was a slave to her emotions. She didn’t want to seem weak. “You guys like to be a part of this community that holds all these bullshit values that never include respecting muggleborns, and then act like these attacks are some isolated incidents of extremism, like some type of fluke. But you just conveniently ignore all the rhetoric and the legislation and the culture that makes people reach that type of extremism in the first place! I mean, there was an attack at Godric's Hollow not even a year ago, and one in Knockturn alley before that, I could go on, really. Don’t even get me started on the privilege that lets these people get away with it. You heard about the Quidditch attack but did you hear about a single person who’s getting arrested for it?” Hermione was calmer now, but her commitment to resentment was still clear in her voice.
“They haven’t been found—” Greengrass tried weakly
“Yeah, because of the type of people that run the departments in charge of finding them.” Hermione stated certainly.
Greengrass' head shot up in disbelief, “Are you saying the people in charge in the Ministry were involved in the attack?”
“Well I wouldn’t put it past them. I’m saying that at the very least, the people in power don’t respect muggleborns to the point where they would rather protect a fellow pureblood. Or that the purebloods involved in the attack are rich enough to protect themselves. Or both. Or what you suggested.” Greengrass just stared at her like she was trying very hard to comprehend some type of paradox. “I don’t know why you look so shocked, this has all happened before. See! This is what I mean about purebloods conveniently ignoring everything. You can’t even accept that our authority is against us when they’ve proved it time and time again.”
“Look Granger, I see why you would be weary of us now, but I just want you to know that I don’t believe in any of that stuff. My family didn’t raise me like that, we think it’s all hogwash, really!”
“Yeah but you're complicit.”
“I- what?”
“I mean, be honest, maybe your family isn’t prejudiced but are they close with any families that are?” Silence. “Haven’t you been friends with people that are?” Silence. “How many times have you heard one of your house members say some dumb shit in the comfort of your common room? How many times have you heard someone say mudblood? And how many times did you do anything about it?” Hermione was only answered with even more silence. Well, silence and a look of shame. At least she got that much.
Hermione rested in the moments of stillness between them that followed, although she was hardly conscious of its extreme profundity because Greengrass was about to interrupt it once again. “What do you expect us to do? Cut off all the people in our life that say anything wrong?” Hermione felt the tongue burn around her again.
“You have no idea what it means for you, that you even have the option to keep those people around you and still be safe. In fact it helps you doesn’t it— gets you internships, and recommendation letters, and whatever else matters from powerful people right? Anyways, I would never ask you to do anything. I stopped expecting anything from you lot a long time ago. I'm going to bed now. We only have one last hallway and classroom to check, I trust you can manage it yourself.” And with that, Hermione turned away before Greengrass could protest and before she gave into the urge to punch her pretty little face.