An Unexpected Ally

A Stack of Toast

"Now be honest with me..." Harry said to Hermione as she turned to him. "Would you trust anything he says after seeing that?"

Hermione's following fit of giggles caused Professor Flitwick to check her for any cheering charms being cast on her before the class was over.

_____________________________

Later on, Harry and Hermione were deep inside the library, the girl's nose deep inside a book while he attempted to copy her.

"Hermione, I have no idea why I didn't come here earlier." Harry flipped through his book excitedly. "There are so many spells that could be useful here! The impedimenta jinx, the stunning spell, the shield charm, summoning charm, disillusionment charm, the conjunctivitis curse!" He showed her each one. "Although there is this one that apparently hatches eggs that I guess we could get to eventually. How does that even work, do you think? Is it a time-altering spell or does it just break the egg itself?"

"L-Let's pace ourselves, Harry. It takes a long time to fully master a spell, especially ones with such difficulty as those." Hermione advised him, truthfully perplexed herself about his words.

"You're the expert." Harry smiled. "So, which one do you think we should do first?" He asked, a glimmer of excitement passing through his eyes. Hermione seemed to withdraw slightly at his question.

"Well..." She began tentatively. "I was hoping we could follow a timetable. I also thought we could write down a plan of which spells to cover first." She bit her lip, expecting him to reject her idea or perhaps complain.

"You're brilliant, Hermione." Harry simply smiled at her, opening his notebook and finding a blank page. Hermione then realised that it was mostly Ron that had shown such disinterest in his studies and that Harry was only following his lead. She was glad that he had finally decided to think for himself. Not to mention she was beginning to like a Ron-free Harry more and more.

Hermione observed as he wrote a small list of every spell they had mentioned so far, including the egg-hatching spell, and they brainstormed together in order to add more spells to the list. Soon the page was completely full, as were the next three.

At the top of the list was the shield charm. Although some say the best defence is a strong offence, others would claim you were retarded, but Hermione and Harry were firm believers that until he could wield magic like Albus Dumbledore, he would need to know the basic shield charm. The list then descended all the way down to the less obscure, less applicable spells such as the cheering charm.

Unknown to the two of them, they were being watched. Two icy blue eyes peered across the library, studying the way the two Gryffindors interacted together. Sleek and thin blonde hair framed her face delicately, her eyebrows elegantly knitted together as Daphne Greengrass stared curiously at Harry Potter.

She had heard many things about the Boy-Who-Lived, mostly from loud public conversations Draco Malfoy would have with anybody who took the time to listen, though upon further inspection, Potter appeared to demonstrate little to no amount of the qualities he was so famous for. Malfoy called him arrogant, yet Daphne had never heard of an instance where Potter had acted in a conceited manner. He was also rumoured to be quite the idiot, but as the blonde girl pondered this, observing how excited Potter seemed in the library of all places, she would be inclined to disagree with Draco in that regard.

The one quality that Malfoy seemed to abhor most intensely about Potter was that he always seemed to be able to one-up him at any given moment. Thanks to his furious ramblings, Daphne learnt of many times that this had happened. It was quite amusing to view his expression upon realising that Potter had entered the Gryffindor Quidditch team, coming back the very next year with a superior broom, only for Potter to do the exact same thing the following year.