Fire // Fred Weasley

Chapter 36

"I know you study a lot Hermione but even this is a bit extreme." Melanie said. She was sitting on her bed putting on her black school shoes.

"I'm not studying for any of our school subjects right now. Although to be honest I probably should. It's March already and Buckbeak has one last hearing in April. I'm just trying to help out both him and Hagrid as much as I can."

"You're a saint for that honestly."

"You're the saint. How you got Draco to convince his father to let Hagrid keep his job I will never know." Hermione said as she put away the pieces of parchment.

"Wait a second. How do you know that?"

As the weeks went by Draco has become more social when it came to Melanie. He'd appear in the library and around the grounds when she was alone. Melanie didn't mind it at all, but she made it clear to him that if he ever insulted the Weasleys again in front of her he'd regret it. One afternoon Melanie was coming up to the castle from the lake when Draco appeared. They sat in the courtyard together and after a long talk she got him to promise to talk to his father about the whole situation with Buckbeak and Hagrid.

"I just said I don't know how you did it."

"How do you know I'm the one who convinced him? I haven't told anyone about that and I know for a fact he didn't either?" Hermione tensed up. "I thought you and Harry were in the library at the time?"

"We were."

"So how. It's not like you could have been in 2 places at once." At that sentence Hermione inhaled sharply and Melanie raised an eyebrow suspiciously. "Mione, what is it? You know you can trust me."

"I was just going down to the greenhouses to go over some herbology material with Professor Sprout." She blurted out.

"How did you manage that if you were in the library? You do realise your explanation doesn't make any sense." Melanie asked. Hermione sighed deeply and reached into her collar she pulled out a necklace that she was wearing, it had a small sand timer charm on the end.

"This is a time turner. McGonagall gave it to me at the beginning of the year. You must have noticed by now that I've been taking a lot of classes. This is how I do it. I go back in time."

Melanie's eyes widened, "that's incredible."

"I'm sorry I didn't mean to overhear your conversation with Malfoy. But please You can't tell anyone about this." She continued.

"It's alright and don't worry your secret is safe with me." She put her school cloak on over her shirt and picked up her bag. "Come on, let's go have some breakfast before ancient runes."

The girls headed down to the great hall and joined Ginny. The three of them deep in conversation.

"So, Mel have you figured out what you're going to get Fred and George for their birthday?" Ginny asked.

"Well they're your brothers, any idea what they might want?"

"I mean I always get them sweets. It's not like I could afford anything else." Hermione and Melanie looked at her sympathetically.

"There's no point buying them books either. It's not like they'd read them." Hermione stated.

"Just because they don't read for pleasure doesn't mean they're not smart." Melanie protested. "And actually Fred got through that book I got him for Christmas incredibly quickly."

"Yeah, I've never seen him with one until then." Ginny chuckled. "The only thing that was able to pull him away was a quick Quidditch match." At that sentence Melanie got an idea.