The Rise of Rouge

No name chapter (Hermione)

"What's up?" Natsu asked, finally dragging his attention away from his food.

"It's - oh, how ridiculous-" I gave the letter to him to read.

"They're all the same!" Lucy said, opening the letters one after another. "Harry Potter can do much better than the likes of you... You deserve to be boiled in frog-"

"Ouch!" I had opened a letter, and a thick yellowish green liquid that smelled like petrol gushed out all over my hands, which were now covered in big yellow boils.

"Undiluted Bubotuber pus." Erza said. "I recognize it from class."

The more time passed, the more my hands hurt. I tried to wipe off the remaining pus off my hands with a napkin, but my fingers were so swollen it looked like I was wearing thick, knobbly gloves.

"You'd better get up to the hospital wing." Harry said as the Owls around me started to leave.

"We'll tell Sprout where you've gone." Gray said.

I nodded, and started to leave, not catching whatever comment Juvia made about Gray's kindness. Geez, she was obsessed with the guy!

As I was about to leave the Great Hall, a tawny owl landed on my shoulder. I noticed it had my copy of the Daily Prophet and took it from the beak of the bird. I put a few knuts in the pouch attached to its foot for its efforts, and with my aching hands, set off for the hospital wing.

My hands were a quick fix for Madam Pomfrey, just a matter of draining the pus out of the boils. While I sat there for the few minutes I needed to, I read the article in the Prophet those letters must have been about.

Just some silly (untrue) gossip that I was in a relationship with Harry and Viktor each, and somehow she had gotten information about my private life and a conversation Viktor and I had on the beach after the second task.

The article itself wasn't what bothered me. It was that she knew Viktor had asked me to come visit Bulgaria, even though nobody else was around, and that everyone believed her so readily.

On that happy note, LINE BREAK!!!!

At half past eight, Harry and Natsu went down to the quidditch pitch, which apparently Professor McGonagall had told them to do after Transfiguration.

The rest of us just sat in the common room and did our homework.

At about nine o clock, Natsu appeared back in the common room, yawning. "Hey guys, Harry's gonna be another few minutes, Krum wanted to ask him something." He said, and plopped down on an empty seat.

A few minutes passed.

A few more.

"Where is he?" I wondered out loud.

"Yeah, shouldn't he be here by now?" Lucy asked, looking at Natsu, who shrugged.

"I don't know, maybe they took a detour around the lake or something." Natsu said, barely looking up from his charms essay that he'd been staring at for the whole while he'd been there.

Ten minutes of tense silence later, Harry fell into the room, huffing and puffing.

"You'll never believe what happened!" He exclaimed.

After explaining that while he and Viktor had been in the forest, Mr Crouch had appeared, acting very odd, talking to a tree in between his fits of desperate begging, Harry went to the castle for help and by the time he'd returned, Viktor was unconcious and Crouch was gone, naturally we began to speculate.

"So you're suggesting Crouch, in a the state he was, attacked Krum, and then ran away in about ten minutes." Lucy said, disbelieving what I'd suggested.