Chocolate Wands & Pumpkin Juice

Chapter Two

(Hermione) Chapter Two

Hermione tightens her scarf around her neck and raises it up over her nose as the wind chills the Quidditch field. The game won’t start for a few minutes and students are still filing up in to the stands with their gloves and bulky yet warm boots, but Hermione eyes are busy wondering. Looking for him. She spots the Twins walking towards her and she tenses up. She wants to talk to him. She’s been avoiding George ever since the other day in the Great Hall because now he and Fred know too much.

Fred sits in between two rows, where normally someone’s feet would go, and George sits right next to Hermione. They both have wicked grins plastered on their faces and she’s almost fearful of them extracting ever little secret she has ever had. Not that she had a lot.

Fred looks up at her and says, “We saw you write ‘I heart Weasley’ on that parchment a few days ago.”

“We’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not Ginny because you’re not a lesbian, and it’s not Ron because you have standards,” George adds.

“Not Percy because he’s a prat, not Charlie because you barely know him,” Fred continues.

“And not Bill because he’s married,” George finishes.

And then there’s silence for just a second until the both say, “So which of us is it?”

Hermione purses her lips together and her body tenses as George smirks at her and leans his body close to hers and Fred reaches up to brush his fingers against hers. She snatches her hand away and scoots an inch to the right to distance herself between George, and the Twins find these movements amusing. “I…I am not going to dignify that with a response,” She says uncomfortably.

For months after the Twins would pester and tease Hermione, they even managed to recreate her mindless doodling and leave copies of it in her books and notes and over the break they even sent her letters.

And when her fifth year began and she helped Harry and Ron start Dumbledore’s Army, she found herself partnered up with George to help him with the patronus charm. Yaaaaaay.

“You’ve got the wand movements down, that’s for sure. But you’re not getting the concept of the happy thought business are you?” Hermione says as she walks around George in a circle. “It can’t just be any happy memory. It’s gotta be that thing you think about when listening to sad music. Something that would break your heart if you ever lost it.”

“You sound like an expert,” George says, and he shoves his hands in his pockets and eyes her curiously. “Why don’t you tell me your ‘happy thought’?”

Hermione stops moving and looks down at the ground. “I have…a difficult time casting the spell. It’s just something I’m not good at…” Her voice wavers and she makes sure not to make eye contact with George. The two are silent, and that silence-although inconsistent throughout the rest of the room-engulfs them.

“Playing pranks with Fred,” George says suddenly. Hermione looks up at him and opens her mouth to speak but no words come out. “If I couldn’t have a laugh with my brother, I don’t know what I’d do.” He waits a moment then extends his arm out and whispers “Expecto patronum” and from the tip of his wand a ghost like coyote appears and stalks about, walking around George and Hermione until George smiles, and he stops it.

When it disappears, George looks down at Hermione and asks, “Why do you have trouble with it?”

“Well,” Hermione says and she’s not sure exactly how to explain it. “I just. I try to picture the situation in my head. Me, faced with a Death Eater. And somehow I just can’t find any happiness in that. And that emotional side of your brain that helps with this charm, I can’t seem to tap in to that for whatever reason.”