Pride and Polyjuice Potion

Chapter 21

Nobody had seen Draco Malfoy for over a week by this point. Parvati and Krum had been gone for over two weeks. Luna had lied; it was too late.

Hermione noticed a gradual change in Padma's expression. She still avoided any conversation with her roommates, only speaking when forced to. However, the more time that passed, the more melancholy and pensive Padma seemed to become. Hermione wasn't sure if perhaps she was having some trouble with Neville or if it had to do with something else entirely. But she was most definitely concerned for her friend, even if they had fallen out.

The girls were all in their dorm getting ready for a quidditch match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff was due to take place that day. They painted their faces with gold and red paint, threw on their hats, scarves and gloves, making sure to wrap up warm as they would get very cold from sitting in the spectator seating area.

Ginny had left some twenty minutes prior, being one of the team's chasers.

Padma kept looking at the girls but looking away when she met their eye. She was behaving rather strangely.

"Are you alright, Padma?" Hermione asked.

Padma burst into tears.

"No," she replied through her tears. "I can't pretend that I am any longer. I just really want to apologise for having treated you all so terribly, particularly for the things I said. You were right all along to be concerned. I hadn't expected her to be gone this long. And to not write, to not reassure me - nothing. I am so afraid that something might have gone wrong and I really just need my friends right now. I have been so awful and I really don't deserve your forgiveness, so I understand if you don't want to speak to me again."

The two girls looked at each other, nodded and went over to her with their arms stretched out.

"We are always here for you, Padma," said Luna. "Of course we forgive you, you made an honest mistake."

"Please don't worry about us or what you said. It's all forgotten," said Hermione. "All we need to think of now is Parvati."

"Yes, that's all we need to do," she repeated, drying off her tears with the end of her scarf.

"Come on, no more tears or you'll smudge all your face paint," said Luna. "Let's get you cleaned up now."

Luna did a quick incantation that restored Padma's face paint to its original perfection.

"Are we all ready to go then?" Asked Hermione.

"Oh hang on, I almost forgot my lion hat!" Exclaimed Luna, pulling it out from under the bed she shared with Hermione.

They then set off for the quidditch pitch.

~

Hufflepuff took the win this time round, with Cedric Diggory catching the golden snitch when he fell down from his broom. Harry almost took hold of it, but Hermione could see that his thoughts in that moment lay elsewhere.

The Gryffindors were all left rather upset, but not excessively so because they saw how well their own team had played and how close of a call it had been.

All except Oliver Wood, who had tried to drown himself in the nearest puddle. It took five people to slap some sense into him.

Hermione was a little concerned for Harry, noticing his rather strange and unfocused behaviour on the pitch and so she excused herself from her friends and made her way down to the Quidditch changing room to make sure Harry was okay.

She was just turning into the main part of the changing room when she hard some rather peculiar muffled sounds. What on earth was going on in there? She ventured in deeper and when she spotted the source of these sounds, her mouth dropped and she was unable to move.