Part Three, in which Hermione Granger seizes the reins.
Watch in horror as I steal Rowling's Barbies, cut off their hair, and give them ball point pen tattoos.


20th Sept
My team is so beautiful together; this must be why quidditch is so popular. I could do this all day. I move right and they step together with me to let me loose a volley; a finger in my ribs and I duck under the shield in the direction they tell me before my head gets hit. My snipers alternate raising and lowering their air pistols, taking turns on either side of me to load up with potions pellets and then fire. My shielders toss the energy wall back and forth between them, in perfect time with the snipers. My comm called up our backup- for practice really, we weren't going to need backup; we were going to finish this in the next thirty seconds.

I conjured a trampoline behind our target, somewhat at an angle. Our target let my sniper's pellets go on by him, thinking they'd missed him. The pellets hit the trampoline, bounced off, and struck our target in the back.

Dean was right; pool is a useful game to know.

Our target stumbled and fell. My team broke apart in exhaustion, but I waved them up again -our target might be faking it after all- and then we all trooped over the broken ground together to see if we had really gotten him. We had.

I pointed my wand at him one more time. "Enervate," I said, and Professor Snape regained consciousness. He pulled his stopwatch out of his pocket. "Three minutes. Took you even longer this time. You're getting worse."

I shook my finger at him. "We are not. We are even better. You have become accustomed to our style and we no longer have the advantage of surprise. And still we took you out."

"Mm. Perhaps. ...You didn't follow through and transfigure me. Sloppy."

I bent over him. "I would have, but you already look green. How many times have you done this today?"

Snape dropped his head back onto the mucky grass. "Eengh."

I checked my own watch. "Aren't you going to get up? Pansy's group has a new trick and they want a turn with you."

"Or, instead, I could have a nice cup of tea and you lot could rough up Lupin."

Professor Lupin, who'd come over to peer at our prone target, jumped. "I say!"

Snape opened his eyes and looked up at him from the dirt. "I think it would be only fair."

I jerked my head at my team. "Neville. Millicent. Pick him up." I pulled out my dayplanner. "Who else is on the roster? Moody's flaked out again..." I looked back at my team, who'd mostly caught their breath back. "Are you all still fresh? You want to take on Pansy's group?" I asked them.

Zach didn't look particularly thrilled to volunteer for this one, but Neville shrugged, Millicent and Dean nodded excitedly, and Luna smiled. Lavender, however, shot out a ray of amorphous viciousness that even a half-trained Legilimens like me couldn't miss. I had no idea who on Pansy's team she held a grudge for, but I looked her right in the eyes. "No pain," I told her. She looked at her feet. I said, "We disarm, we stun, we amphibify! Altogether now!"

Some of them sighed, but they chorused back at me obediently, "Frog them all and let Bill sort them out."

"Right. Belt up."

~

After practice I was so covered in mud that I had no choice but to wash my hair, which was the second day in a row I'd washed it, forcing me to hide in the dorms waiting for it to unfluff. Eventually a miracle occured; I had no more homework to do.
I dug out my phone and punched in numbers.

"Yah?"

"Hiya, Dudley."

"Hermione?" he said. He recognizes my voice...

"I did say I'd call," I said. "So. Do you think Professor Snape's battery was built with lithium ions?"

"What? ...Did you nick my chemistry text?"

"Excuse me?" I said.

"You did, didn't you."

"I borrowed it. I'll give it back. It wasn't on your syllabus, so why do you care? How's uni?"

"Lots of work. But fun anyway, I suppose. How's the barmy army and he who must not be sane?"

"We are magnificent and, if you're speaking of Voldemort, his days are numbered."

"Are you looking up the locations we worked on?"

"Harry wishes we were pulling a Riki Tiki Tavi and running and finding out about each one instantly, but, sadly for him, first there's a lot of research. Our professors have switched from theory to practicals though, from defensive to offensive magic -and, boy, do I love offensive magic- but we're still very careful. We're sending in probes to each site and then we do a lot of sneaking around in disguises and then at last we send in the teams. And then, finally, it's like a scavenger hunt except with dynamite. We blow up everything we find. Best school practicals ever."

"You blow things up for school? I am almost a bit jealous. What's on your scavenger hunt list?"

"Oh, you know, household implements, ancient jewelry, evil beings, odds and ends. We blew up a giant snake, too, not because it was on our list, just on general principle- because it was there."

"I thought you were a tree-hugger. What's with the-"

"-Not at all, I love snakes, especially the small, stripey kind. Anything over forty feet long, though, is fair game."

"So it's a size issue with you."

"Forty feet long, Dudley. Picture that in your mind for a second. It preyed on cute gothy little magic flying horses. It needed to be taken down."

"Meh. Well, I suppose it's okay if you eat the game you kill. Was the snake yummy?"

"Oh, come on. It would have been snake steaks for the whole school for years on end. You know we didn't eat it. We blew up the building on top of it and made a century's worth of snake paté, which we also didn't eat. Although, gosh, ... now you've got me wondering. Do you think Voldemort tastes like chicken?"

And that took us on a fabulous, wild conversational tangent about biology and mutagens and magic until Dudley said, "When will I see you again? What with you being a teleporter and all, these ought to be some awesome excuses. Lay it on me."

"Erm. The school has apparition wards. I can't just pop away, I have to leave the school grounds first, which-"

"-Which you're not allowed to do-" "-During the week," I continued, "but I can at the weekend, and I do. Sometimes I like to visit my parents-"

"-But for the foreseeable future you can't visit me because..."

You're beginning to piss me off, bucko. "Because you haven't invited me and also because I'm at risk for splinching at the moment. They only recently put my leg back on and if I apparate, they're afraid it might fall off. It works fine though, doesn't hurt, but the colour still doesn't match. I'm trying to look on the bright side. I like mauve." "

You- You- and you're fine. Okay. I suppose this means you'll want nookie with the lights off now."

"Why? Don't you like mauve." Wait, what did he say?

"I can honestly say I've no idea. Mauve. I'm flipping through the dictionary right now. How is that spelled?"

"It's spelled dark lavender. Actually, it changes in the light. Make that pink. Purple? No, definitely mauve. If you have some kind of sad pathetic inhibiting problem with mauve, I'll cheerfully protect your delicate sensibilities by wearing long stockings. With garters. No chance of seeing the mauve."

There was a long silence and then he said, "Yeeeeah. I don't think 'cock tease' is in this dictionary. Is it in yours?"

I giggled and that only encouraged him. Oh my god, what is wrong with me, I sound like Padma.

"Uh-huh. What are you wearing right now? Please tell me you've got a pointy hat on. I love those."

My gales of laughter were cut off when I noticed Parvati and Padma lurking outside my bedcurtains with the Extendable Ears which they were supposed to be threading into the robot bats. "Victor?" said Padma to Parvati. "Percy?" said Parvati to Padma. "Tonks," Padma said, nodding knowingly.

Velvet doesn't slam, so I swashed the bed curtains closed and then swashed my wand around and made a Cone of Silence around the bed. My phone went, "Beeeeeep, bip, bip, bip," and switched off.

"Crap," I said and canceled my Cone. I put my pillow over my head and hit redial. Dudley picked up the phone instantly. "Sorry," I said.

"Glitch in the time space continuum?"

"Something like that. Speaking of space and time, can I post you a few more locations to feed into your computer?"

"...Oh. Right. Yeah."

"Stop it, Dudley."

"Mind-reading again?" he asked.

"Not at this distance; you're just obvious. You should invite me before the siege starts and I-"

There was a loud and disturbingly familiar boom. I jumped off my bed and looked out the window.

"Oh, Harry! Not the fire! Aaaaagh! Gotta go, bye-"

I dropped the phone and ran, with Padma and Parvati right behind me.









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