Healing the Broken

Chapter 27- He Loves Her

Harry was eating a lovely looking stack of pancakes the next morning, Hermione wolfing down waffles beside him, when an owl dropped two letters into their laps- well, mostly in their laps.

"Oh-" Hermione says in surprise as the letter drops into her pumpkin juice. She pulls it out, groaning. "Scourgefy!"

The paper dries up, smelling faintly of pumpkin juice, and opens it wide. Harry reads his aloud. "Dear Mr. Potter- your detention will take place tonight at seven o'clock, which you will be spending with Professor Trelawney, cleaning the glass balls and tidying up the Divination classroom." Harry groans, leaning over to look at Hermione's letter, resting his chin on her shoulder and grinning a bit when her hair tickles his cheek. "What'd you get?"

She frowns. "Detention with Slughorn- cleaning the potion pots... but he isn't here, remember? Professor Slughorn left for a meeting with the Minister-"

"You'll be spending the detentions with me." A voice says from behind them, and they both jump. Harry pulls away from her and looks back at the person, Malfoy, anxiously,

"Why you?" Harry asks rather harshly, and Malfoy flinches at the harshness in his voice, but covers it quickly. Harry had tried to be friends with Malfoy, but it was hard- it was easier to just be... not enemies.

"McGonagall says that I'm responsible enough to watch over Granger when she's cleaning out the cauldrons... seeing as I've been made a prefect in the past."

"And Hermione was a prefect, and now she's Head Girl too." Harry says indignantly. "Seems as if she could watch over herself."

Hermione tugs on his sleeve and whispers into his ear "Harry, why are you so against Malfoy overseeing my detention?" she says.

"Because, I'm afraid he-" He breaks himself off, afraid she's going to laugh at him. He was still worried that people would try to take Hermione from him- and he couldn't afford to lose the girl that he's wanted for a while now. "I'm still afraid he'll try to get you to fancy him instead of me."

Hermione grins, shaking her head. "As if that'll ever happen- have you seen yourself? You're quite the stud." She throws him a joking wink, and he laughs before she turns back to Malfoy. "I'm coming to detention, but no funny business- I have no intention of talking to you about what you did." She says, and Malfoy frowns, his cheeks turning a light pink.

"If that's what you want." He says softly. "Detention will be for an hour- and if you don't want me to talk to you, I won't, only to tell you the instructions." He looks at the ground. "We don't have to be friends if you don't want to be." He adds quietly before turning and leaving them to sit there in astonishment.

~~~~~

The clock stroke seven eight o'clock, and three different clocks set off, clanging like they did everytime an hour passed. Harry was mistified at how they even worked up in Trelawney's office- most clocks and devices didn't work in Hogwarts- but at the same time, Collin had a fully functional camera just clicking away when he was younger.

Harry glances up at Professor Trelawney, who had been giggling while scribbling a letter for the first ten minutes of his detention. The rest, she had been talking to him and just thinking out loud.

"I do wonder why they call it wisdom teeth? I mean, they don't make you any wiser, and all they are is trouble- they should call them Stupid Teeth. Useless Teeth maybe."

Harry recalls asking Hermione why they even had wisdom teeth a while back, to which she gave an explanation about why they were there. "Hermione told me that a long time ago, before we were cooking and preparing food, our jaws and bodies sed to be shaped different- our jaws were longer and leaner, and they could fit more teeth, so the wisdom teeth came in handy." Harry says to her, scrubbing furiously at the white glass orb. Trelawney had said that he wasn't to have a speck of dust on the orbs, and he couldn't leave until all fifty were cleaned.