Sometimes It's Good to be Bad

Chapter 23 The "Dreamy" Professor Davis

The next day at breakfast they recieved their course schedules from their new Head of House, Professor Davis. Once he had passed by, Lavendar Brown whispered something to Pavarti Patil that sent them both into fits of giggles. The trio had NEWT double Potions first thing, followed by Arithmancy for Hermione and a free period for the others. After lunch she had rounds to see that all students were in their classes where they belonged before Transfiguration.

The first week of classes proved to be much the same as last year, lectures on how important NEWTS were for the rest of their lives and lots of homework. Hermione had been taking so many classes not only because she loved to learn and wanted to prove that as a muggleborn she could could be just as good or better than the purebloods but also because she thought it was a stupid system to force people to decide what they wanted to do for the rest of their lives when they were only teenagers. So she wanted as many options open to her as possible.

Between the time she spent doing her homework, attending to her Head duties, and keeping up appearances with her friends in Gryffindor, she hadn't had much time to work on the wards. She decided that she would spend at least two hours on it that night, no matter how late she ended up going to bed.

After dinner she was in the Gryffindor common room with Harry, Ron, and Ginny harassing the others on their studying. When they had all acquiesced to her, sitting down with their homework, she went over to Harry under the guise of showing him something for potions. She put her hand on his shoulder (an effect only picked up by Ginny) and whispered in his ear that they had to find time soon to go down to the Chamber and have a look around. He looked up and smiled at her, nodding his head before she went back to her seat.

When she finally left the room, giving them all hugs, Harry murmuring in her ear to tell her that he'd talk to Ron that night, she recieved a sweet smile from Ginny, whom she knew was thinking that Harry had just propositioned her via scanning the top of the girls' thoughts. The last year had found her learning legilimancy and occlumency to practice with Harry and while he was much better he was nowhere near perfect at occlumency, and he couldn't read people's thoughts to save his life.

Walking into the room she shared with Zabini, she found him on the loveseat, accompanied by Nott, Crabbe, Goyle, Pansy, and a couple other seventh year girls. "And here I was, thinking that the Slytherin common room was in the dungeons," she commented dryly as she walked towards her desk, dumping her books onto it as well as throwing her school robes on the chair behind it, revealing the jeans that made her ass look good, despite the fact she hadn't intended on anyone actually looking at her ass today, as well as a v-neck tshirt. She then walked to her doorway and climbed the stairs, gaining appreciating looks from a couple of the guys, who were then prompty smacked by the girls. Hermione was a bit surprised that Pansy hadn't make a snide remark, but she was happy not to get into a fight.

The next hour found her sitting on the toilet usuccessfully trying to take down the wards. Coming to the decision that it would be easier to try a smaller area, so she went into the shower and decided to just try and work on the wards within the tub. After another two hours she felt she had the wards in the tiny space stripped, but as it was now almost one in the morning, she chose to go to bed rather than spend another couple hours trying to put up her own.

At breakfast, Harry and Ron let Hermione know that they conferred their schedules and came to the conclusion that they would be able to go and check out the Chamber in three evenings. During Transfiguration, Professor Davis asked her to stay after class, garnering her with looks of jealousy from several students. When the class was finished, she walked to the front of the room, and sat at a desk when he prompted her to.

Apparently, some of the students, particularly in the younger years, but also a few in the older ones were already showing difficulties in his class, probably just needing to go over some basics. He was wondering if she could possibly find a couple hours of her time every week to help him hold a study/tutoring session to help them out. As he asked he sat on the desk she was behind, moving his left hand to run his fingers through his short hair. For a split second, his robes fell partway down his arm, revealing the bottom of a black tattoo.

She wasn't sure she could trust her eyes; the new teacher, approved and appointed by Headmistress McGonagall to teach her class, could NOT be a Death Eater. No way. But then there was the way his eyes were boring in to hers... as though he knew everything about her that there was to know. She agreed to the study sessions and left the room, her head in a fog.

She went back to her bathroom, but found she couldn't put as much concentration as she should have into the wards, and didn't get anywhere with them. When Zabini came pounding on the door she knew she wasn't going to get anything done anyways, and left to her room, unlocking the one to his on her way out.

She went back downstairs to work on her homework, settling in at her desk. Looking at the clock, she knew that quidditch practice would be over, (the tryouts were two days before and Harry wanted to start training as soon as possible) so she decided to go hang out with her friends. As much as she wanted nothing more than to stay to herself in her room, she wouldn't be able to get info for the Dark Lord that way.

When she entered the Gryffindor common room, she was assaulted by questions, mostly from Lavendar and Pavarti, but also some of the younger girls, all wanting the "intimate details" of whatever it was Professor Davis had wanted to talk to her about. When she told them of the study session they all decided they wanted to join, even those with perfect grades.

She was then forced to an hour of play-by-plays of the entire practice from Ron, Harry, and even Ginny. Harry had sat next to Hermione on the couch. Ginny was staring at Hermione the whole time. It seemed that she was wearing more low-cut shirts than she had in the past, almost flaunting the scars given to her by Bellatrix. She, on the other hand, was almost always clad in long-sleeved shirts with as high a neckline as possible to cover up her scars, thanks to her "friend".

That bitch of a whore wasn't going to stop. First she took the Mark and was spying on them and who knows what else, and now she was trying to steal Ginny's man. How much more of this was she supposed to take? In her spare time she had taken to try and remove the curse that wouldn't let her talk the way she wanted or act the way she wanted, but all she ended up doing was causing herself so much strain she'd want to curl into a ball and sleep.