The Green Girl

First Year

Potions was brilliant. Hermione sat with Theodore Nott and as she listened, rapt, to the professor's speech about bottling fame and stopping up death she passed the boy a quick note: How would you bottle up death?

He rolled his eyes.

The professor seemed to have it in for the Potter kid, which was a bit odd since they'd just started, but as she herself was a bit miffed that, as far as the Boy Who Lived was concerned, she had become invisible as soon as she'd been sorted into Slytherin she couldn't exactly feel bad for the brat.

The professor had started the first class by asking the boy a variety of questions and Theo had had to physically restrain her from shoving her hand into the air. "Cut it out," he'd hissed at her. "You'll look like a brown-nosing swot."

"But I know the answer," she'd hissed back.

"So what?" he'd replied, and, at his narrow-eyed glare, she'd stopped raising her hand. Whatever else she'd figured out since she'd been sorted, one thing was eminently clear: Slytherins looked after their own. Even if Theo wasn't her chum – and he was – he'd have kept her from making herself look bad if it took hexing her into immobility.

Slytherin, as it turned out, was also brilliant. She'd punched some boy who called her a mudblood and, instead of getting into trouble the way she had when she'd handled bullies at her primary school – Hermione could be very physical when she was angry – everyone had laughed at the kid she'd pummeled and told him to watch his language around their housemate. "Go call the Gryffindorks mudbloods if you want to be vulgar," an older girl had said with a sneer before adding to Hermione, "He does it again, go for the balls."

"He does it again," Draco had said, "he won't have any balls left for her to kick."

She'd shoved him for that. "I can look after myself," she'd said and he'd grinned his evil little grin at her.

"Yep," he'd said. "If you couldn't, you wouldn't be any fun."

Draco was also brilliant; spoiled and impulsive and mean as a snake but brilliant. Having friends – real friends – was amazing. She never ever wanted to leave this place.

Flying, unfortunately, wasn't brilliant. Or, rather, she wasn't brilliant at it. That Draco was was particularly annoying. He spent so much of their first flying lesson offering her tongue-in-cheek suggestions Theo had finally told him to cut it out before he became the second member of the 'Slytherins Hermione Has Punched' club.

At least there was one boy worse than her, she thought as she sat down in the grass and sulked. Pansy flopped down next to her and Blaise joined them, his long legs kicked out in front of him as they watched some Griffyndor whose name she couldn't remember lose control of his broom.

"See," Blaise said, poking Hermione. "It could have been worse."

"Yeah," she said, lying back. "I could have been sorted in with them. I wanted to be, you know."

Pansy gave a dramatic shudder before asking. "What's Draco doing? Why is he getting into it with Potter again? What now?"

Hermione sighed. "Wasn't it your turn to watch him?" she muttered. "I wish he'd leave the kid alone."

"Potter's a spoiled brat," Pansy said, lying down next to her, "and Draco can look out for himself." Hermione rolled her eyes. As far as she could tell, Draco was drawn to trouble like the proverbial bee to honey, with never a backup plan to his name.

"Shit." Blaise pointed up at the sky, at Draco streaking towards the ground as fast as he could while Potter swooped higher in the air. Both girls sat up and watched as Draco landed smoothly and he, Greg, and Vincent sauntered over to them, smug grins plastered on their faces. "Cutting it close, mate," Blaise added as Professor McGonagall, protector of all things Gryffindor, came racing out of the building shrieking at Harry Potter.