Disguised Affections

A/N: Here you go. To apologize for accidentally alerting you twice to my last chapter and for that horrid "under construction" sign for chapter five, I'm giving you an extra chapter tonight.



I'm not JK Rowling. I don't own Harry Potter. I do this for my own edification and make no money off of my acts of terrifying fanfiction.

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Chapter Six



“Ms. Granger! Those shrivelfigs were to be mashed, not eviscerated and beaten to death!” The voice was both silky and sharp.



Hermione whirled around, her heart in her throat, the mortar and pestle still clutched in her hands. She shrieked when she saw who was standing in the doorway to her private lab.



“Constantine, you arse!” Hermione smacked him on the shoulder and he smirked. “You scared the life out of me. I thought you were Professor Snape for a moment. You sounded just like him.”



“My statement still stands no matter who I am. Those must be truly villainous shrivelfigs to have you so upset.” His voice was teasing, but his eyes were enquiring.



After that night in the Gryffindor common room and the day when Constantine had defended her from Lucius Malfoy, the dynamic had changed between Con and Hermione. The air that surrounded them had warmed from cool disinterest to the electric flush of first friendship. He sought her out more, frequently sitting next to her and pulling his book out with a sigh of contentment. The first time she turned to him and tucked her freezing toes under his leg, he gave her such a look of long-suffering patience that she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. That sat together in the library, and when she’d rummage through her bag trying to find a quill (where had they all gotten to??) he’d smirk and refrain from pointing out that she had at least six shoved into her messy bun.



They still didn’t talk much.



In fact, to the uninformed eye, the only thing that appeared to have changed was their proximity. At any given time, they were about five feet closer together than they would have been just two weeks ago. If she was sitting on the common room couch, so was he. If she was in the Great Hall, he was sitting across from her. If one was missing, so was the other.



Hermione wondered if Constantine was courting her.



She felt a bit of anxiety at the thought. Aside from Viktor Krum in her fourth year, she’d never had a beau and was worried that she might be misinterpreting Con’s actions. He was still withdrawn and frequently surly – even with her, but it was as if there was a silver cord stretched taught between the two of them. It tugged at a spot just below her belly button when he was near to her, and communicated a velvet, febrile tension that caused the hairs at the nape of her neck to rise. She loved it. Hermione hoped that she was not wrong.



Of course, that’s what she had been thinking of when Con entered the room and caught her committing figicide on her potions ingredients.



“Hermione?” he asked again.



“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about the research. Lost in my own head for a bit there.” She sighed and looked at the shrivelfigs in her mortar. They were nearly paste. “I don’t suppose these are useable any longer.” She Vanished the contents with a flick of her wand.



Con slid behind her to get to his Potions station, and began carefully setting out his cauldron and heat source. “I was thinking about it as well. What you said last week about the Ginkgo Biloba being too fragile to resist the armadillo bile made sense. The acidity of the base would cause the memory-enhancing elements of the herb to degrade. We’d have to add twice as much to get the same potency, but it’d throw off the arithmantic principles of the whole Potion – it’d go from a positively charged integer of seven, to a neutral multiple of three. We’d have to rebalance it from the very first step.”



Hermione’s mouth fell open slightly, but she motioned for him to continue. She loved how clever he was.



“So, we have two choices as I see it. Either we go back to square one and essentially recreate the Wit-Sharpening Potion to align with our Arithmantic calculations – an absolute waste of our time, or we find a substitute for the Gingko.” His eyes gleamed, and a smile was playing around the corners of his mouth.



Sighing, she tilted her head and rested her cheek on her palm. “I can tell by your expression that you think you’ve already found the solution.”



He grinned, and Hermione was enthralled. It was the first real smile on him that she’d ever seen, and it transformed his face. Con’s eyes were unshadowed, and dear lord, was that a dimple? “I don’t think. I know, my dear.” He began pacing in the aisle between their work stations and the cabinets where their finished potions were stored. “Have you ever read The Cunning Potions of Edvard Hesselton?”



“Yes, last year. But Con, Edvard Hesselton never worked on any memory-modifying potions. In fact, he specialized in - ”



“Defensive Potions, I know! But don’t you remember? Hermione, use that abnormally well-developed brain of yours for more than vomiting back facts. Think, girl! What about the Cloaking Potion?”



“Con, nobody ever did anything with the Cloaking Potion because it was so expensive to make, and only shields against level one curses and jinxes. I mean, who needs a shield against the Jelly-Legs Jinx anyway? Not only that, the side effects are…” She trailed off.



The boy stopped pacing and just watched her with his gleaming, dark eyes, waiting for her to connect the dots.



“The side effects were nausea, chills, and eidetic memory.” Her eyes flashed to his and they stared at each other for a moment in total harmony. “Which ingredient was it? Con, which one caused the drinker to have a photographic memory?” Her hands reached forward and wrapped around the lapels of his school robes as if prepared to shake the information out of him.



He leaned forward ever so slowly and brought his lips to her ear. “The water jenett,” he whispered, forming the words slowly. Hermione shuddered as the information blossomed in her mind like a lotus and his lips brushed her ear and his hot breath washed down her neck. In that moment, she knew.



She knew he was the smartest boy she’d ever met and she wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anything.



“Oh, gods,” she choked. His cheek was pressed against hers, and she could feel the first faint scratch of stubble. It took a supreme act of will to unclench her fists from his robes and step away. “The water jenett.”



Con’s face was intense as he nodded, and he tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. “We’re going to need to talk to Professor Sprout as soon as possible. By the time we brew enough batches of the base, it’ll be time to start brewing for Madame Pomfrey again which means another two weeks before we can get back to our independent research. That gives us one month to grow enough jenetts with which to experiment.”

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Professor Sprout listened to their explanations with good grace. They were standing in the middle of a patch of immature mandrakes that she was preparing for her second year classes. The teacher wiped her forehead with the back of a dirty hand leaving a smudge of mud down her face.



“Water jenetts? I’ve never actually grown any myself… Honestly, I’m not sure why you’d want to. They’re certainly not used in many potions because of the nausea and chills and they’re no good to look at because they live below the water surface.” Pomona Sprout scratched her elbow absentmindedly. “Jenetts are hardy, though. Not difficult to grow, just a pain in the…” She seemed to realize she was still talking to students at the last minute. “They can’t be exposed to air at all, and they’re very finicky about the plants and animals with which they share their ponds.”



“Do you have the facilities that would allow us to cultivate jenetts?” Hermione asked her politely.



“Not in the main Herbology department. As a general rule, we don’t encourage the cultivation of water plants because of liability. First years will get themselves in trouble if at all possible, won’t they?” She smiled and winked at Hermione, and the Head Girl blushed remembering all the trouble she, Harry, and Ron had caused in their search for the Philosopher’s Stone. “However, there’s an abandoned greenhouse that does have the facilities for a jenett pond if you feel up to cleaning it out and cultivating it yourself.”



“Oh, yes. Thank you so much, Professor Sprout.” Hermione paused a moment, and glanced back at Constantine who stood at her back like her shadow. “Professor Sprout, I’m afraid we don’t have access to the same Herbology suppliers that you do. If we pay you the money up front, could you owl order us two dozen seedlings?”



“Of course, dear.” She turned and shouted over her shoulder. “Neville!” The sweet-natured Gryffindor poked his head around the row of Mandrakes. He walked towards the professor, wiping his hands on a rag that he then shoved into his back pocket. “Can you show Mr. Prince and Ms. Granger to Greenhouse 11?”



Neville’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline, but he nodded and smiled at Hermione. She felt a rush of affection for her gentle housemate. He was awkward and a menace in Potions, but the love he lavished on his plants was nearly glowing on his face. “This way, you two.”



The three walked in silence until they were nearly at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. There, growing like a baobab in the desert, was a small, dilapidated greenhouse with half of the glass roof tiles broken and shattered on the floor. There was just enough room for one medium-sized water habitat, three meters wide by six meters long. It hadn’t been used in ages and was dried out and covered in sludge and debris. Hermione groaned at the sheer amount of back-breaking labor it was going to require to get this project up and running.



“Well, then. Let’s get to it,” Con said, and reached forward with his wand towards the pool.



“Wait!” Neville shouted.



Con stared at him with an irritated expression on his face.



Neville looked sheepish. “I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop on your conversation with Professor Sprout, but I heard you saying you wanted to cultivate water jenetts?”



Constantine just stared at the Gryffindor, stony-faced.



“Well,” Neville said, gamely pushing on in the face of Con’s disapproval. “Well, you see, water jenetts are in the lotus family, and they all absolutely detest magic. If you want to grow them successfully, you’re going to have to clean the pool by hand.” The smile he gave to Constantine was a little sickly. It seemed to beg, please don’t shoot the messenger.



The raven-haired boy blinked for a moment and lowered his wand. “That could have set us back ages.” He reached forward and squeezed the other boy on the shoulder. “Thank you, Neville.”



Hermione was pleased at the gesture, despite the fact that she had seen that Con had squeezed too hard and Neville blanched under the pressure.



“Well, boys? Shall we get to work?”



A/N: Like it, love it, hate it? Review it and let me know!