The Gloriana Set

Unraveli

Hermione was becoming unglued. It was mid-afternoon on Monday and she was no closer to breaking up with Theo. She couldn't believe it; she'd begun her day so decisive and well-organized, with a script and a plan and even a scheduled time after Potions. Then Slughorn—who had officially morphed from Irritating Dodgy Codger to Eighth-Year Personal and Educational Nemesis—ruined everything with his last-minute partner switch and yet another daft potion. She couldn't break up with a wizard who'd just shed a pink bow slapped on him by his rival, a rival who had decided to take his own Bad-Boy-Slytherin-Asshole quality to a degree that Hermione considered excessive and taunt her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend mercilessly about choking during sex. She just couldn't do it.

So it was all Malfoy's fault, as usual. Slughorn's and Lavender's, too, but Malfoy's most of all, Hermione concluded as she headed to the Entrance Hall. Honestly, Hogwarts should develop a correspondence program to keep annoying blond wizards at home instead of forcing them to return to school and distract everybody. Now instead of concentrating on her NEWTs this year with the help of a supportive—if rather mysterious—boyfriend who actually followed her study guides, she was running all over the castle to find said boyfriend so she could break up with him. She was not just encouraging bad behavior, she was rewarding it. This was not how Eighth Year was supposed to go. She had come to Hogwarts determined to shed her prim bookworm persona, and now she yearned for the days when everyone considered her a swottish harpy. Two months into the term and she was a violent loon with man-hating jewelry who would soon be—if she continued her current mad trajectory—carrying on some sort of open relationship with the former Death Eater who betrayed the school and almost killed Dumbledore. It didn't bear thinking of.

Worse yet, she was proving entirely incompetent at implementing phase one of her dastardly plan. She'd missed her allotted time windows after Potions and lunch, so now she was heading to Hagrid's hut during her free afternoon period (no DADA today) to catch Theo before he left his Care of Magical Creatures class. She would not be thwarted again.

She arrived at the hut to see Hagrid still teaching, his huge back to Hermione, the students in front of him practically catatonic. Some of them were actually asleep. This was unusual, especially this time of year. The half-giant usually brought in a monster or two around Halloween, and this year he'd arranged to ship in three baby Hydras from Greece—just four feet tall but very dangerous, each one with three fire-breathing heads. Hermione had helped Hagrid with the import paperwork, hoping to Godric someone at Magical Customs in Dover would have the sense to forbid them entry. Her prayers were somewhat answered, with the little Hydras detained at the Customs House, not because they were deadly dangerous, but because each Hydra was considered three individual monsters rather than a single unit (part of a new creature standardization metric), and thus requiring three separate certificates per hydra. Hermione had been torn between irritation at the inadequate instructions on Magical Customs forms and relief that the horrid creatures were someone else's problem down South.

Still, Hermione soon learned, if the hydras had been allowed to arrive at Hogwarts, then Hagrid wouldn't have brought out a few trays of flobberworms to study instead. And then Theo wouldn't have gotten bored and wandered off to the lake and gotten himself caught by Ernie Macmillan. Ernie was, of course, thrilled to run across Theo on Hogwarts grounds without a prefect. The Hufflepuff sent a student to inform McGonagall, who sent back word that Theo was to go immediately to the Slytherin dungeons.

Hermione heard the whole story from the Squeaky Mice, who she found fooling around in Hagrid's pumpkin patch. The First Years had heard the whole exchange between the two older wizards while searching for more Squeaky Flowers by the lake. Bertie had been the student Ernie sent to McGonagall. Now the children wanted to know why the Head Boy disliked Mr. Nott so much and why Miss Granger's name was mentioned. Percival wanted to know why Mr. Nott kept talking about tents and breasts.