Disclaimer: Hakuna Matata, what a terrible phrase! Hakuna Matata is (hopefully) a passing craze! It means watch out, because Hermione’s here! It means duck and dive, and close your eyes…Hakuna Matata! Hakuna Matata, it also means. Hakuna Matata signifies HP. It means that Icy… can’t claim HP…Hakuna Matata.
(Thanx for the suggestion apparateawayhp13!)
Parenting Class
Hermione's a Teacher!
Dead silence met Hermione’s announcement. Draco froze. His spoon full of oatmeal that was raised halfway to his mouth hovered in the air, bits of the brown stuff falling off as it shook.
Neville, who’d been pouring himself a glass of milk continued to do so, the drink overflowing the cup and soaking into the tablecloth, not that anyone took any notice.
Harry, who’d been expecting something terrible but not knowing what, placed his head on his arms and tried to decide the easiest way to vanish. He could apparate…but as Hermione said, you can’t do that in Hogwarts and he didn’t know how to either. Maybe one of Fred and George’s Vanishing Capsules…but he didn’t have any with him. His invisibility cloak? Upstairs in his room…
Ginny covered her mouth to hold in laughter, the result an odd sounding sort of snort. She didn’t know why it struck her as so funny… But at least she couldn’t be blamed at all and had no need to feel embarrassed. After all, she wasn’t watching Hermione.
Across the room, Pansy fell off the bench, a napkin stuffed in her mouth to muffle her giggles, and rolled around on the floor, bumping into the bench with a loud thud.
At the head table, Dumbledore had a smile tugging on his face, although he fought to remain serious. Snape was glaring at Hermione and Harry, dubbing it their fault for the declaration. McGonagall had her teacup to her lips, to hide her growing grin.
Next to Neville, Blaise tugged on his guardian’s robes. “What’s sex?” he asked softly.
That broke the dam. Students roared in laughter, Ginny banging her fists on the table and upsetting the milk pitcher. Mrs. Norris, clearly frightened by the noise (which was sounding more and more like a gigantic battle cry) ran from the room, Filch right behind her.
“How is my announcement funny?” Hermione frowned, plopping back down on the bench and picking up her glass of orange juice.
“What is it?” Blaise repeated, looking up at Neville. The boy, however, merely covered his eyes and began to laugh.
“He’s going crazy,” Draco commented, nodding at Neville, who was now rocking back and forth.
“Can you blame him?” Terry muttered. “I should be going crazy too…”
“One of you is enough,” Harry moaned.
Blaise sidled over to Hermione. “What is it?” he asked again.
“It means that we slept together,” she grinned.
“We did?”
“Uh huh. Sex is when two people around the same age of different genders sleep together. And you slept with me last night!”
“I did?”
Flashback: 3:26 AM
“Move over,” Hermione whispered, pushing Blaise to the far right of his sleeping bag.
“W-what?” he yawned, rolling over to let Hermione in. “Hermione? What are you doing?”
“I want to have sex,” she said, snuggling down next to him and dragging her pillow from her own sleeping bag. “That’s okay, right?”
Blaise didn’t answer. He’d fallen asleep.
“Silence is always taken as a yes,” she said. “Night, Blaise.”
6:30 AM
Sitting up in bed, Hermione looked around the silent common room. Well…almost silent. Ron was snoring like a bulldozer on the couch. It was amazing anyone was even able to fall asleep.
Hermione smirked and patted Blaise on the head. He had fulfilled her requirement. Hopping up, she made her way into the bathroom.
End flashback
“I forgot about that,” Blaise admitted. “So that’s what sex is?”
“Well, that’s what Harry and Draco told me. And they wouldn’t lie.”
By now the din in the Great Hall was beginning to die down and everyone looked expectantly at Harry and Draco. “Why are they looking at us?” Harry whispered.
“Because they want us to explain.”
“Oh. You do it.”
Draco cleared his throat and stood up on the bench. “Harry would like to make an announcement,” he said proudly, before taking his seat once more.
“You…you,” Harry sputtered, pointing his finger at Draco.
“Slytherin,” Draco smirked.
Harry, muttering curses under his breath, rose to face the crowd. “Umm…well, you see…um…Hermione…she…”
Draco groaned and pulled Harry back down. “What he’s trying to say,” Draco said, taking Harry’s place, “is that he told her that it, sex, meant sleeping together. As in, what the definition sounds like with nothing else implied. She had some of her friends over for a sleepover last night…I can only assume that’s why she said this.”
“So she didn’t…”
“No,” Draco snarled at the Slytherin who had dared implied it.
McGonagall, finally regaining control of herself, stood and tapped her spoon smartly on her glass. "Your attention please," she said, a twinkle still in her eye. "I understand that all of you would like to stay and talk, but classes do start in two minutes."
Her proclamation was greeted with a flurry of activity and panic.
“TWO MINUTES!” Terry screeched, shoving a last orange slice in his mouth. “fWhere’d the time go?”
“It was spent laughing at us,” Neville said miserably. “We have Transfig next, right?”
“Yeah, and we’d better get going,” Harry said, throwing his bag over his shoulder and grabbing Hermione with one arm, the child protesting as her half finished doughnut fell from her fingers.
“We’ll bring it with us,” Draco said, sensing that Hermione was about to yell. Wrapping the pastry in a napkin, the Slytherin tucked it in his robe pocket and grabbed his own stack of books.
The small group, consisting of Harry, Draco, Hermione, Ron, Neville, Terry, Lavender, Blaise and Pansy, who refused to walk next to Draco, made their way down the hall at a sprint, bowling over students who got in their way. Guess it really wasn’t so small…
“Sorry!” Harry yelled as a huddle of Hufflepuffs were knocked down by Draco, who was leading the pack and didn’t even look to see who was in his way.
Breathless, they arrived at McGonagall’s door and rushed in, just as the bell rang behind them. “We made it!” Ron cheered, flopping into a desk. “Halfway across the castle in two minutes! It must be a record!”
“The official record, Mr. Weasley, is one minute and six point four seconds,” McGonagall said, entering from her office and passing by the redhead.
“You actually timed it?” Terry asked, mouth agape. “Why?”
“Back in the day, Hogwarts held all kinds of races and events to keep the students in top notch condition. This race, from the Great Hall to my room was a favorite and so was from the Great Hall to the trapdoor of Sibyll’s.”
“Why don’t we hold that kind of thing anymore?” Pansy asked, smoothinfg down her hair.
“There was no open space in the curriculum. But perhaps I could speak to Albus for next year… We could have an actual class for exercise.”
Neville paled as McGonagall made her way up to the front of the room, a thoughtful smile on her face. “I don’t like that sort of thing,” he said nervously, wringing his hands together.
“If she’s talking about a gym class, I agree with Neville,” Harry said. He could still remember one of his P.E. classes…
Flashback: Kindergarten
“All right, line up on the white line,” barked a tall, rather heavyset woman, a whistle in her mouth. “Hurry up you lot!”
Little six-year-old Harry scrambled to find a spot in line, which happened to be the very end. The teacher, Mrs. Wiegel, went down the row, counting off by ones and twos. Harry was a two.
“Now, twos in the outfield and ones up at bat.” Harry, giving the safety of the kicking box a last, final glance, trotted off to join his classmates on the blacktop.
Kickball was a favorite game of the children at Harry’s grade school. And their teacher, Mrs. Todd, was very fond of the sport and loved it when her students wanted to play it. However, the friendly P.E. teacher was out sick with a cold and Mrs. Wiegel had taken her place.
With almost inhuman speed, the substitute rolled the ball towards the kickers. It bowled the child right over. “TOMMY!” screeched his twin, falling beside her brother. “DON’T DIE!”
“Take him to the nurse,” Mrs. Wiegel commanded. “If you can’t keep up, out you go.”
The next kicker managed to hit the ball and it soared in the air. Harry ran beneath the growing shadow, his hands outstretched.
WHAM!
It collided solidly with his face and Harry fell down from the force, his glasses, that’d he gotten that year, knocked askew.
“Are you okay?” asked one of his teammates, bending down and picking up Harry’s glasses. In Kindergarten, Dudley had had no influence on Harry’s classmates yet and none were scared to be nice.
“I’m fine,” Harry said, woozily sitting up, a large red mark covering most of his face.
A few minutes later, his team went up to the kicking box. Harry was the third kicker, the previous two having been knocked out with Mrs. Wiegel’s wild throws. Taking a deep breath, Harry readied himself.
The ball game, bouncing down the blacktop, a vibrant speck of red. It came closer. And closer.
And then the only thing Harry saw was black.
End flashback
“Definitely no P.E.,” Harry shuddered.
“P.E. is fun!” Terry argued. “There are a lot of sports. And warm-ups are the best! Back in fourth grade, before I came to Hogwarts, we’d get to jog half a mile around the school! It was awesome!”
“You’re one of those gym freaks,” Harry argued. “The athletic people who like to do that sort of stuff.”
“Yup.”
“I hate to sound stupid, but what is P.E.?” Ron asked, Draco, Pansy, and Neville all nodding along with him.
“It stands for Physical Education,” Harry shuddered. “Muggle schools have it. It’s bad…very bad and dangerous.”
“Professor McGonagall is talking,” Hermione whispered, poking Harry to make him shut up. “Be quiet! I can’t hear!”
The group quieted down before the teacher scolded them for talking and pulled out textbooks.
“-isn’t as difficult as most, but caution is to be exercised. Please come up to the front of the room and select a ferret.”
Draco, who’d been taking a sip from his water bottle, choked.
“But we already have one,” Ron grinned, pointing at Draco.
“You don’t look like a ferret,” Hermione observed.
“It’s an old joke,” Harry laughed. “Back in our fourth year, Draco got turned into one by a professor here.”
“And it’s not a funny one,” Draco scowled.
“I’ll get it!” Hermione squealed, running to the front of the room and arriving back with a solid black ferret. “Isn’t she cute?”
“I thought Draco looked much better,” Pansy smirked, patting him on his head. Seeing Draco’s frown deepen she said with a chirpy air, “Just kidding!”
“What are we supposed to do?” Neville asked, prodding his own brown ferret. “Did anyone listen?”
“I did!” Hermione exclaimed, bouncing up and down. “But…I’m not telling.”
“Oh, come on Hermione. Please tell us,” Harry begged.
“Only if I can have my doughnut.”
“Give her the doughnut,” Harry commanded. Draco took it out of his pocket and handed it to Hermione, who happily chewed it. “Now, what do we do?”
“Turn to page seventy-one and follow the instructions,” Hermione said, taking another bite of her pink sprinkle doughnut.
The group did so and read the directions. “We’re turning them into binoculars,” Draco announced.
“But you will turn them back to ferrets when you’re done, won’t you?” Hermione asked tearfully.
“I don’t think so,” Harry said slowly.
A gleam entered Hermione’s eye and Harry gulped. She got that look whenever her older self talked about S.P.E.W.
“Hermione, you can’t change the ferrets back into ferrets,” Draco said gently.
“Yes, I can! You can’t just leave them like that! They’re living creatures! And they deserve to have freedom! Who says they have to stay as a fixed object?”
“The teachers,” Terry said.
By now, Hermione’s rant had bought the attention of the other students and even McGonagall.
“Why do we condemn them to a life of misery when they could be free?” she continued. “Are they not part of our earth? Our world? Without them we wouldn’t be the society we are today!”
“She does have a small point,” Neville said softly. “It is kind of mean that we transfigure them.”
“Kind of! You’re wrong there! It’s animal abuse! We neglect them for our own enjoyment! How do we know that the transformation doesn’t hurt them? What do we know about these poor animals?”
“Miss Granger, please calm down,” McGonagall instructed. The child, in her argument, had picked up her group’s ferret and was using it to jab at various people to make her point. “There are certain laws on the animals we have here.”
“What kind of rules?”
“The animals, as a known fact, don’t feel anything during the transformation. It was part of a program many years back by an animal right activist. And all the animals we use have their minds cleared as soon as the spell is performed so they won’t be stuck thinking when they can’t move. If the countercharm is applied, then the animal regains his memory.”
“But it’s still mean to transform them. What if they don’t want to be an object?”
“They don’t really have a choice in the matter there, Miss Granger. I can assure you though, that Hogwarts does free its animals so that they can be used the next year.”
“Oh.” Hermione adopted her thinking face. “I guess that’s all right then.”
Grateful that the debate was solved, Harry and Draco began to read the material while Hermione wandered over to Lavender. "Are you as bored as I am?”
“More so,” Lavender sighed. “Terry won’t let me hold the ferret…he’s afraid it’ll bite me.”
“Oooh, who’s that?” Hermione asked, pointing at a girl who had just walked into the room and up to McGonagall’s desk, a note in her hand.
“I don’t know her.”
McGonagall nodded and spoke with the girl, before taking the note. The girl left.
Hermione and Lavender watched the professor as she read the letter.
“Excuse me, class,” she said. “I have to leave for a few minutes. Can I trust you to behave?”
Nods and soft replies of ‘Yes, Professor’ could be seen and heard.
“If anything is wrong, I will deduct house points.” The woman swept from the room a minute later.
“I know something to liven the class up!” Hermione grinned. “Draco and Harry use some language they tell me not to repeat. Well, why don’t I teach it to everyone?”
“But if they told you not to say it, then why are you?”
“Because they told me not too,” Hermione smirked. “Do you want to go round up some of the other kids?”
“Sure! I’ll meet you at the front of the room.”
The group the two girls managed to round up consisted of themselves, the Patil twins, Gregory Goyle, and Susan Bones. “Okay everyone,” Hermione grinned, picking up a piece of chalk. “I’m here to teach you some vocabulary that our guardians like to use.”
“Will it have any bad words?” Susan asked.
“I think they’re all bad words.”
“Awesome!” Parvati and Padma chorused.
“Okay, first word,” Hermione grinned, writing it on the chalkboard. “All of you line up in a…well, a line. When I point to you, read the letter that follows after the one the person in front of you read, okay?”
“Huh?” asked Goyle, picking at his nose.
“You’ll get the hang of it,” Hermione assured. “I’ll start. B!” She pointed the stick of chalk at Parvati.
“A!”
“Your turn, Padma.”
“S!”
“Gregory?”
“Uh…”
“Nope, wrong letter. Does anyone know it?”
“T!” Parvati cried, bouncing up and down.
“That’s right, good job,” Hermione praised. “Lav?”
“A!”
“Susan?”
“R!”
“Okay, Greg. Do you know the last letter?”
“Anyone know the last letter?”
“D!” Lavender supplied.
“Great job! Does anyone know how to pronounce it?”
All of them shook their heads.
“Do you know what it means?”
Again, heads were shaken.
“First things first. It’s an insult. It’s what Harry called Draco one time. I guess it’s pretty bad because Harry got all upset when he realized he said it. The word is bastard. Bass-turd. Say it with me.”
“Bastard.”
“Again!”
“Bastard!”
The students who’d been working quietly at their desks jerked up. “Hermione!” Harry scolded, going up to McGonagall’s desk and prying the chalk from her hands. “We don’t use that language in school!”
“But you did.”
“That was a mistake. Now, apologize for causing a disturbance and go sit in the corner. Those are swear words…not things you should be repeating.” Looking sternly at the other children he said, “That goes for you too. I don’t want to hear that word again, understand?”
They all nodded solemnly and went to sit in the corner with Hermione. “That isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Harry muttered.
“At least they’re out of the way,” Draco argued. “Just leave them. They’re just talking…but really, see what a bad influence you have on her?”
“Me? You’re the Slytherin, teaching her all those tricks.”
“What tricks?” Draco asked innocently.
Harry coughed and tried to imitate Draco from earlier. “Harry would like to make an announcement. What the bloody hell was that?”
“That was me being a Slytherin. There’s a reason I’m there and you’re in Gryffindor, Harry. I’m mean…and you’re nice.”
“You’re not all mean. You do have a good side. I mean…we’ve both come a long way. Just last year we were at each others throats and you were always trying to get me in trouble. And now, we’re on a first name basis, we actually help each other out, and we both have the job of looking after a miniature demon.”
Draco nodded, tapping his wand on the desk. “We have, haven’t we? It’s…almost nice in a way. You’re not as bad as I thought you’d be. Guess I’ll have to thank Dumbledore someday for putting us all in a group.”
“Shall we get back to nailing this ferret?” Harry asked, indicating the ferret they’d been working on. It’s head had the lenses of binoculars but the rest of it was still fur. “It’s times like these I really wish that Hermione wasn’t…that she was here.” Draco wholeheartedly agreed.
Back in the corner, Hermione was conducting lessons again. “This is a word Draco used,” she said, pointing at the paper. “Although I honestly don’t see what’s wrong with it.”
“Bird,” Susan read. “No…that’s a normal word. I mean, there are birds that fly, right?”
“Right,” agreed Lavender. “I wonder why he used that one.”
Hermione shrugged. “Do you guys want to move on?” Nods. “Okay. This next one is a phrase. Ron uses it a lot.”
“Can I guess?” Lavender giggled. “Bloody hell?”
“That’s it!” Hermione grinned. To the rest of her students she said, “We’ve deemed that this phrase is used when something really strange happens, or when the person who says it is mad. Repeat after me. Bloody hell!”
“Bloody hell!”
“Again!”
“Bloody hell!”
“WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?”
The room silenced immediately, the children’s words dying from their lips. The students in the class were looking horrified at the group, especially since Harry had already told them off.
“All of you, detentions tonight,” McGonagall said, her nostrils flaring in anger. “In all my years as a teacher at Hogwarts, I’ve never seen such outrageous behavior. And none of you did a single thing to stop it.”
“But we-”
“No buts, Mr. Potter. I’ll see you all, including children, here at eight sharp tonight. If you’re late, I’ll deduct even more points. Speaking of which…”
The Transfig professor scanned the room, counting students from houses. “Fifty points from Gryffindor, sixty from Slytherin, forty from Hufflepuff, and fifty from Ravenclaw.”
“Professor, you can’t take away our points!” cried Pansy. “We should all get the same amount taken away! That’s not fair!”
“Leave it!” shouted Ernie, who was happy with the deduction.
“Quite right, Miss Parkinson. Even if there are more Slytherins in here, it’s all equally everyone fault. Sixty total from each then.”
“But I don’t want to go to detention!” Hermione wailed.
“Too late for that, Miss Granger. I’ll see you all at eight tonight. No exceptions.”
BOOM!
Neville’s ferret flew up and through the ceiling.
“Ten more points,” McGonagall growled. The bell rang before anymore damage could be done.
The students raced for the door, ferrets being flung into the box, some half transformed and unable to see or walk. One thought was on all the minds of McGonagall’s sixth year Transfiguration class.
What the bloody hell were her detentions like?
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