Everything seemed to happen too quickly then, or maybe it was just Daphne herself who was thinking too slow, as Flint let out a bellow of indignation and his hand yanked Hermione back and threw her into the Ravenclaw table, and she bounced off a student's back and collapsed onto the ground -
The quiet spread out in ripples.
Hermione pushed herself up on her hands, though she didn't get all the way to her feet, Daphne could see that her whole body was shaking, and that her face was still covered with mashed potatoes with scattered pieces of steak.
For a long moment, nobody spoke, nobody moved. Like nobody in the whole Great Hall could imagine, any more than Daphne could, what happened next.
Then Flint's powerful voice, the voice of the Slytherin Captain that bellowed commands on the Quidditch pitch, said in a dangerous rumble, "You ruined my food, girl."
Another moment of frozen silence. Hermione's head - Daphne could see it trembling - turned to look at the Slytherin Quidditch Captain.
"Apologize to me," said Flint.
Harry Potter started to push himself up from the Ravenclaw table, and then stopped abruptly, halfway to his feet, as if he'd just thought of something -
Then five other people stood up from the Ravenclaw table.
All of the Slytherin Quidditch team stood up, their wands coming into their hands, and then students stood up at the Gryffindor table and at the Hufflepuff table and without thinking Daphne turned to look at the Head Table and she saw that the Headmaster was still sitting down, watching, just watching, Dumbledore was just watching and he had one hand out as though to restrain Professor McGonagall - in just one second someone would shout a spell and then it would be too late, why wasn't the Headmaster doing anything -
And a voice said, "My apologies."
Daphne turned back to look, her mouth gaping open in absolute shock.
"Scourgify," said that smooth voice, and the mashed potatoes vanished from Hermione's face, revealing the Ravenclaw's surprised expression as Draco Malfoy approached her, sheathed his wand again, and then knelt to one knee beside her and offered her a hand.
"Sorry about that, Miss Granger," said Draco Malfoy's polite voice. "I guess someone thought they were being funny."
Hermione took Draco's hand, and Daphne suddenly realized what was about to happen -
But Draco Malfoy didn't raise Hermione halfway up and then drop her.
He just pulled her to her feet.
"Thanks," said Hermione.
"You're welcome," Draco Malfoy said in a loud voice, not looking to either side to see where all four Houses of Hogwarts were staring at him in total shock. "Just remember, being cunning and ambitious doesn't mean you have to be like that."
And then Draco Malfoy went back to his seat at the Slytherin bench and sat down like he hadn't - he hadn't just - he'd just -
Hermione went to the nearest empty place at the Ravenclaw bench and sat down.
A number of other people, rather slowly, sat down.
"Daphne?" said Tracey. "Are you all right?"
Draco's heart was hammering in his chest so hard he worried it might explode right out of his chest in a shower of blood, like that curse Amycus Carrow had used once on a puppy.
Draco's face stayed completely controlled, because he knew (it'd been drilled into him over and over) that if he showed the slightest sign of the fear he was feeling, his Housemates would rip him apart like a swarm of Acromantulas.
There'd been no time to check with Harry Potter, no time to plot, no time to think, just the instant of realizing that the time to start rescuing Slytherin's reputation was right then.
From all sides of the long Slytherin table, angry faces stared at Draco.
But they were outnumbered by the faces that just looked puzzled.
"All right, I give up," said a sixth-year boy that Draco didn't recognize, sitting across from him and two places to his right. "Why did you do that, Malfoy?"
Although his mouth was very dry, Draco didn't swallow. That would have been a sign of fear. Instead he took a bite of carrots, which had the most moisture of anything on his plate, and chewed and swallowed, thinking as rapidly as he could.
"You know," Draco said, making his voice as cutting as he could - as his heart thumped even harder in his chest, as everyone around him stopped talking to listen - "there's probably some way to make Slytherin look even worse than attacking eight first-year girls from all four Houses who are working together to stop bullies, but I can't think of how. This way we get the benefit of what Greengrass is doing."
The puzzled faces stayed puzzled.
"What?" said the sixth-year boy, and "Wait, what benefit?" said a fifth-year girl sitting to his right.
"It makes Slytherin House look better," said Draco.
The Slytherins around him were giving him quizzical gazes like he'd just tried to explain algebra.
"Look better to who?" said the sixth-year boy.
"But you just helped a mudblood," said the fifth-year girl. "How's that supposed to look good?"
Draco's throat closed up. His brain was experiencing a hideous malfunction during which it couldn't think of anything to say except the truth -
Then, "It's probably some kind of tremendously clever scheme Malfoy's got going," said a fifth-year boy. "You know, like in The Tragedy of Light, where everything that looks like a setback is part of the plot. And it ends with Granger's head on a stick and nobody suspecting that it was him."
"That makes sense," someone said from further down the table, and there was a lot of nodding.
"Do you know what the boss's up to?" Vincent muttered in an undertone.
Gregory Goyle didn't reply. In his mind he could hear very clearly his master's voice, saying, I can't believe I believed every word of that, the day the rumor had started about Salazar Slytherin showing Potter and Granger where to find bullies.
"Mr. Goyle?" whispered Vincent.
Gregory Goyle's lips shaped the words, Oh no, but no sound came out.
Hermione had left lunch early that day, for some reason she hadn't felt hungry. Those few seconds of horrible humiliation had kept burning through her mind, over and over, the feeling of her face squishing into the mashed potatoes and then being thrown through the air and then the Slytherin's boy's voice saying 'Apologize to me'... it might have been the first time in her whole life that she'd felt like hating someone. The boy who'd thrown her (Marcus Flint, they'd said his name was) and whoever had cast the tripping Jinx on her in the first place... she'd felt it, for one horrible instant she'd wanted to go tell Harry that if he started getting creative on her behalf, she wouldn't object.
She hadn't been a minute out of the Great Hall before she'd heard the sound of running feet behind, and turned to see Daphne racing toward her.
And listened to what her Sunshine Soldier had to say...
"Don't you understand?" Daphne's voice was barely below a shriek. "Just because someone's nice to you doesn't mean they're your friend! He's Draco Malfoy! His father's a Death Eater, all the parents of all his friends are Death Eaters - Nott, Goyle, Crabbe, everyone around him, do you get it? They all despise Muggleborns, they want everyone like you to die, they think you're good for nothing but being a sacrifice in horrible Dark rituals! Draco is the next Lord Malfoy, he's been raised from birth to hate you and he's been raised from birth to lie!" Daphne's gray-green eyes stared fiercely at her, demanding assent and understanding.