Gryphon's Wings and Crocodile Tears

Chapter 10-The Best Laid Plans


Hermione wasted no time getting to her dorm room in Gryffindor Tower. Once inside she sealed the door behind her with a silent flick of her wand. By the time she’d retrieved the parchment and unrolled it her hands were shaking like a rattlesnake tail. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to steady her mind and her nerves; she opened her eyes and read:


\"Well that was just too close.\"


\"I don’t think we should be discussing this with Hermione in the library.\"


\"God, I know. She always acts like everything is her business.\"


\"Well Ginny, I think that this really is her business and that if you were any kind of friend that you’d tell her what is going on.\"


\"Who died and made you Queen of the World, Ashley?\"


\"Fine, all of you can just turn your backs on what a great friend she’s been to Ginny. But I hope that you don’t expect Ginny not to turn on you too, well that is if she has something to gain. No matter what you think, people don’t change their behavior any more than a tiger changes its stripes.\"


(A long silence draped the astonished girls who watched Ashley stomp away. How could she talk like that about Ginny? Who in their right mind would take Hermione’s side in this? The stunned silence was disrupted by a loud sneeze that sounded like it had come from the next row of books, but Ginny saw no one when she’d looked. It all seemed rather silly to them to be scared witless by a sneeze and they lost a few moments to fits of laughter.)


Hermione shook her head at the piece of paper she held in her hand it was worthless it hadn’t helped her at all. These were all things that made specific mention of her, but did it mention whatever Ginny was hiding from her. But, at least now she knew that it was Ginny hiding something, still there was definitely more to it. Hermione couldn’t imagine what might make someone as tolerant as Ashley become so angry with her friends. The only thing Hermione was certain of was that this was no trivial matter. Something in the back of her mind started to make connections that she was not yet ready to deal with.


Draco was surprised to find that Mandy Brockelhurst was not going to be the easy mark that he’d thought she’d be. He could not think of any reason that this plain girl, who was nothing short of a wallflower, would prove so damned difficult to catch. No matter how much attention he paid to her, she simply regarded him with a curious indifference. This was truly infuriating to the young blond wizard.


Draco was not at all accustomed to the idea that he might actually have to work in order to get close to the latest object of his affection, or more accurately his libido. Was he not the most stunning example of male physical perfection? Was he not possessed of an unsurpassable and irresistible charm? For the first time in his life Draco Malfoy was beginning to doubt himself.


Could it be possible that the problem was not with her, and if so did that mean that his trouble was due to him losing his edge? If he’d gotten this far and lost his…charisma how did he have any hope at all of breaking Hermione? The answer was as simple as it was distressing, he did not have any such chance.


‘Damn, what in the name of the blackest hells is wrong with me?’ he thought. He knew that if he could not woo a girl toward whom he’d held an indifferent attitude for years that there was little likelihood that he’d be able to sway the only girl who he’d ever met who displayed outright contempt toward him. Especially when Hermione was constantly surrounded by that insufferable Potter and the dim bulb that was Ginny Weasley. Not to mention the fact that it was so incredibly obvious to an outsider that the beast, Ron, desperately wanted her back. He dogged her every step it made Draco sick.


He also wondered why Hermione was being so naïve, it was most unlike her not to see what was going on under her very nose. ‘Perhaps she doesn’t want to see it. Maybe she already knows and she’s just waiting for one of them to confess,’ it was this thought that derailed Draco’s earlier intention to expose the clandestine relationship between Hermione’s two best friends. He forcibly shook off these thoughts; he should not be thinking about that filthy mudblood with any degree of sympathy. Besides, he had work to do; he would have Mandy, no matter what it took to do so.


Hermione broke the magic seal she’d put on the door of her dorm room and she tramped down the spiral stair to the Gryffindor common room wearing a sour face. She saw Ginny scurry out of the portrait hole and throw an angry glance in her direction. ‘Where on earth does she get the nerve to give me that kind of look? I’m not the one hiding something from her,’ Hermione thought, seething with anger and frustration.


Hermione had no idea how long she stood glaring at the closed portrait hole, but she was pulled from this cycle of anger and depression by one of Ginny’s friends, a fifth year named Ashley. ‘She’s the one who was defending me to Ginny and the rest of those snotty little bitches. I wonder what it is she wants?’

“Hermione?”


“Hey, Ash. I haven’t seen you much recently.”


“Yeah, about that…we need to have a talk.”


“What about? I’m always happy to help.” Hermione smiled disarmingly; if Ashley was going to spill the details of Ginny’s strange behavior she wanted to make it extremely difficult for the younger witch to back out at the last minute.


“It’s not about me, it’s about you,” Ashley said seriously. “We should find some place more private to discuss this.”


“Yes, I agree.”


Hermione dashed up to her dorm room to grab her cloak, the grounds would be the best place to have a quite word that one might not wish to have overheard. Her stomach clenched and twisted at what she thought she was going to hear from the fifth-year girl who had promised her answers. There was a part of her that already knew what was going to be said, that part had been pushed down and out of conscious thought for weeks by this point, but it was threatening to resurface at any moment. Hermione did not like that prospects of what the truth would bring. Whatever it was, it was too big to go back to the way things had been before. This was conversation was likely going to change her forever.


She swallowed to clear the lump in her throat as she and Ashley walked out onto the sweeping sunlit grounds of Hogwarts Castle.