Epiphany by phlox

Beta Reader: My ever-faithful beta, eucalyptus, deserves kudos and cookies for the extraordinary work she did on an inordinately tight schedule! She's so generous with her time, and I'm so grateful to her for her input.

I also need to thank four others for their input: when I was completely blocked and didn't know how to proceed, four lovely ladies swooped in to give me prompts and support: Misdemeanor1331 and Dayang Lucilla: thank you for your cheerleading and inspiration; Riptey, thank you for the use of an awesome piece of dialogue; and Sage, thank you for the key to the mystery!

~*:*~

Although she'd been out of her Hogwarts uniform for over a decade and wearing her professor's robes for almost four years, Hermione's nerves could still be rattled by an unexpected visit from Minerva McGonagall. The headmistress had always had that power over her students, and it didn't seem to fade with time. Like seeing a policeman when out with friends on a Friday night: no matter the circumstances, you couldn't help but check yourself to be sure you weren't doing anything wrong.

And it would, of course, have to be this class she'd come to observe, standing imperiously in the back so that she was never out of view. Hermione was a confident teacher who knew how to keep order, and Charms was an interesting subject liked by most. But this one class, a mix of fifth-year Hufflepuffs and Slytherins, always proved to be her most challenging.

There was the usual age-old lack of compatibility between the two Houses, but there was also a handful of students who she felt she had to win over each class. The toughest of them were Greta Carmichael and Mitchell Gibbon: best friends, bright students, Slytherins. Never was there any outright insolence, but there was always a strange edge to their questions as though they were testing her every move.

Hermione had known them since she'd begun teaching, and they'd never seemed to have an attitude with her before this year. She was sure enough in her authority and skill not to be intimidated by them, but she worried what their issue with her could represent; if it was just the two of them being teenagers, that was one thing, but if they had developed a problem with her personally, that could be a sign of worse to come.

The moment the headmistress entered the classroom, the two of them started whispering. Hermione didn't rule with an iron fist, so she gave them some time, seeing if they'd settle down on their own and get back to the lesson. The murmuring continued, however, every time she turned her back.

"Is there something you wanted to ask, Miss Carmichael?" Hermione called, her back toward the room. When it was met with silence, she turned around, raising an eyebrow, doing her best impression of McGonagall herself. It only took a moment for the boyish, strawberry-blonde girl to collect herself.

"No, ma'am," Greta replied primly. "We were just wondering if you were going to teach us the ancient derivation of the Homorphous Charm as developed by Brutus Schmidt, instead of merely speaking of the reductive, modern usage."

Hermione was prepared for this, as she'd grown to be over the course of teaching these students. "Excellent question, Miss Carmichael. We'll be discussing that very thing once we learn the modern incantation, but it sounds like you've got a head start on the next essay."

Some groans sounded from the back of the classroom as Carmichael nodded stiffly and turned to whisper to her friend. Gibbon was a sickly looking boy, having grown too tall too quickly, and his large, round, brown-eyed stare always struck Hermione as rather baleful. His glance to her was through narrowed eyes, but she turned her back on them and continued with the lesson.

Hermione had regained her footing by the time the students filed out at the end of class. Minerva had become her friend as well as her mentor in the last several years, but she'd never get over the nervous twitches of the little girl inside herself who badly wanted to impress.

"It might not be apparent from that, but I feel like I'm making progress with them."

"Fifth year is a difficult one for students... and a difficult age, as I'm sure you'll recall," said McGonagall.

"Well, some more than most, Headmistress," Hermione replied, sharp with irony.

"Indeed." She nodded tightly, a shadow coming over her face. It was suddenly apparent to Hermione that she was not about to be invited for a casual afternoon tea. "If I might have a moment of your time, Professor Granger, there's something that requires your expertise," she said, her lips tight and her voice more reed than its usual steel.

Hermione was taken aback by her manner but agreed without thought. McGonagall looked so old all of a sudden. Of course, that was a silly notion; she'd always been old, as long as Hermione had known her. But from time to time, some small part of the flinty façade would slip and the woman would look suddenly feeble, as though she weren't indestructible, as though she were a mere mortal. It never lasted long, but it was enough to shoot a chill through anyone who had grown up believing in superheroes.

On the walk through the castle to McGonagall's office, they made small talk about this and that while Hermione tried to quell the uneasiness bubbling in her gut. Recent events had done much to put her on edge. In the last few months, there had been a rash of vandalism at Hogwarts and the surrounding village of Hogsmeade pointing to a new wave of pure-blood pride. She'd been anticipating what was to come with dread, and as she followed the headmistress up the circular staircase to Dumbledore's old office, her sense of apprehension grew stronger.

She was so distracted, in fact, that when McGonagall led her to a pedestal with a clear, magical casing on top, wherein lay a large scroll of parchment and an ostrich-feather quill, her reaction was (in retrospect) entirely inappropriate. She'd never noticed the pedestal in all the times she'd been in this office, in the corner and out of the way as it was. When the headmistress turned to her with her eyebrows raised, her expression inscrutable, the sheer innocuousness of the thing caused Hermione's tension to unravel.

"What?" she blurted with a shake of her head.

"It's the Muggle-born Quill, Professor Granger."

Hermione turned to look back at it with a gasp of recognition.

McGonagall's voice continued softly through her reverie, "What do you see?"

With a thrill of discovery, Hermione was too overcome at the history before her to respond. She knew very little about the Muggle-born Quill, as Hogwarts, A History only mentioned it in passing. The fact that it was what brought those of Muggle birth into the wizarding world imbued it with a sense of controversy, and it was spoken of rarely.

Funny though, you'd never know there was anything extraordinary about it to look at it: the parchment was rolled into a scroll, the top-most part thick and heavy with the records of years past. The bottom roll was less thick, but being a magical object, it surely had a never-ending supply for the Quill's use. Between the two rolls stretched blank parchment. The feather itself lay diagonally across it.

Once Hermione had finished her examination, finding nothing terribly remarkable other than the obvious age and potency of the artifact, she looked back to McGonagall with a furrowed brow and shook her head, bewildered.

The headmistress smiled tiredly. "It was an unfair question. The more pertinent matter is what you don't see." With that, she pulled her wand from her left sleeve and flicked it toward the case with a murmured Pellego, causing the top part of the scroll to unroll, revealing words written in swirly, ornate handwriting.

To the left were headings marking the school year, and next to each were lists of the Muggle-born students who were eligible to attend for that period. Skimming, Hermione recognized the names of a number of her students, and she smiled thinking of the magic that bound her to them and the force of the enchantment that had brought all of them into this world. Scanning for all of her favorites, it was then she noticed that there were indeed many she didn't see.

Upon closer examination, she realized it was only her older students she found there; the last entrance-year listed was 2008-2009. Below that was just blank parchment. Four years of students between then and now were not on the scroll, and those written for the latter year seemed to be written more faintly than those above them, as though they were in the process of fading. Hermione's feeling of alarm returned, and she looked up as McGonagall began to speak.

"I noticed something was wrong with it about six weeks ago. I've been waiting for the quill to transcribe next year's students, as this is the time we usually plan home visits to the Muggle families for orientation. At first, I merely found it odd that nothing had been written. Then, instead of hovering over it at the ready, the quill laid itself down entirely. And a few weeks ago, the names started to disappear from the bottom up." She paused, her heavily lined face creased in concern. "If it were only this, I would have called on the Ministry weeks ago. But along with the other incidents and what happened last week..."

Hermione nodded, recalling the previous Sunday when a great and abrupt clacking noise had thundered in from the Entrance Hall, and most of the students had left their dinners to rush out to see. Hermione had arrived with the rest of the staff to find that the House Point Hourglasses had all suddenly reset themselves. The rubies, sapphires, emeralds and topaz had en masse leaped back to the top half of their glasses, leaving all Houses with an even score of zero. Since then, no awarding or deducting of points by any professor, prefect, or Head had any effect.

"The Quill and the Hourglasses..." Hermione mused. "They're both Founders' magic."

"That's right, Professor Granger. They're a part of the charter and as old as Hogwarts itself."

"But what of the rest? From what you're saying, the other pranks aren't likely to be a part of it. No student could go up against this level of enchantment."

The incidents had been admittedly unsettling and had become more and more frequent since the beginning of the year. Graffiti proclaiming the superiority of pure-bloods had been emblazoned on walls, Muggle-borns had been the target of petty theft and trickery, and the animosity between Slytherin House and the others was at a level of ferocity unmatched since the Second Wizarding War.

Hermione had found herself looking around at the students more often during meal times, classes, and at school events like Quidditch matches; on occasion, she'd catch one just as they were looking away. Mostly she could convince herself that it was just her imagination, but at times she swore she'd seen a gleam of hatred or hostility in the young face as it turned. Hermione was understandably wary of the perpetuation of bigotry, and she was always concerned about what could be done to educate, unite, and uplift.

But if there were an outside force, a greater organization that was influencing events within the school, there was much more to worry about than inter-house unity.

"My instinct tells me those incidents are students acting alone, but I've been wrong before," McGonagall said, letting that hang in the air as Hermione knew exactly who she meant. "What I want to avoid is panic. I don't want an Inquisition on my hands."

A witch hunt, Hermione thought with a shudder as she nodded her agreement. It wasn't a term that was common in the wizarding world, for obvious reasons, at least as a metaphor. But she'd grown up with the phrase as a warning of what could happen when mob-mentality took over and people became no more than the sum of people's perception of them. There were those here who'd been hurt by that in the past, and they didn't need old wounds reopened.

"For that reason, I don't want to involve the Ministry unless I have to. I need your help, Hermione, in researching what went into the creation of the Quill and the Hourglasses, as well as any other information on the foundation of the school itself. Naturally, I'd ask you to be as discreet as possible."

"Of course, Headmistress," she said, rather excited suddenly as though she had just been set an extra-credit essay. "I'll begin in the library tonight after dinner."

Hermione made to leave as McGonagall turned from the pedestal and made her way to her desk.

"You would probably benefit from finding out about the nature of any spells or curses on the objects themselves. I'm afraid it's beyond my skill in that area, but I'll leave it up to you if you'd like to enlist any help from anyone on staff," she said, sitting heavily at the desk, her look nearly neutral but for a spark in her eye that caught Hermione off-guard.

It could only be a stab in the dark, surely; no one was privy to Hermione's feelings one way or the other. But McGonagall had been known to meddle in places in the name of expediency and healing, a tactic she'd learned from the man in the portrait above her right shoulder. Hermione glanced up at him accusingly, but he was either dozing or doing a rather fine impression of it. With a tight nod as the only response she could give, she left the office, hoping to solve this mystery herself and let sleeping dragons lie.

~*:*~

Hermione had always prided herself on being able to change course when required. She was not one who was incapable of admitting fault, and she never let pride get between her and doing the right thing.

Eventually.

So it only took a couple of evenings of research to admit that it would not be enough. Something she'd learned in her years in Magical Law Enforcement, in fact, was that it never was. You needed practical knowledge, the kind you could only get from working in the field; you needed evidence: hard, tangible experience of the problem at hand to get a full enough picture to find its solution. She could gather all the considerable amounts of writing by and about the Founders themselves that she liked, but it would do no good. There was too big a pile on her table in the Hogwarts library to have any inkling of what she was even looking for.

Besides, there wasn't anything particularly wrong with asking him for help. They'd had a fine working relationship since he'd begun at Hogwarts that past fall, having had little contact beyond what was necessary. Nearly a whole school year had gone by, and there had been no awkwardness beyond the stretching of underused muscles it had taken to get through meeting again. Hermione was sure it was all due to the years that had flown by and the fact that they hadn't had to live them out in close proximity.

Yes, his leaving to work on the Continent was exactly what had needed to happen for them to get over their little... flirtation. Coincidentally, the job that had taken him away was what made him so bloody useful now; years of being a Curse-Breaker both for Gringotts and in private practice made him ideally suited to help her with this. Indeed, it had all worked out just... perfectly.

With a sigh, Hermione pushed away the work in front of her, rose to her feet, and cast a spell over the piles of parchment and books so that her workstation in the library wouldn't be disturbed. It was a Saturday afternoon and a Hogsmeade weekend to boot, so there were few students in the castle. She knew he'd be in, though; he rarely went to town with the school. His excuse to McGonagall was that he needed to leave office hours for his N.E. -level students, but even the most dedicated of them didn't miss a chance for Butterbeer and Zonko's, especially once spring came to Scotland.

But he'd gone on only the first trip after he began as Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and never again.

The classroom was on the first floor and was notable only for being wholly unremarkable. Teachers tended to put their mark on their spaces, for aid in teaching if not purely for vanity's sake. But the room had been left as it was when he'd moved in: whitewashed, uncluttered, and airy with its many windows and open areas. It had the feel of one who was not planning on staying long and who was prepared to leave on a moment's notice. But it was very functional as a work studio, and his reputation held that it was used as precisely that. He was well-respected by the students as no-nonsense and fair, and this room was conducive to flying through the curriculum with efficiency.

Looking up from the bottom of the curving staircase into his office on the floor above, Hermione could see that the sparseness of decoration continued in there. Also visible was a head of white-blond hair bent over its work. She took a deep breath and ascended the stairs. By the time she reached the doorway, he'd raised his head, put away whatever he'd been working on, and was waiting with rather detached anticipation.

"Professor Malfoy," she said, standing purposefully tall under his regard.

"Professor Granger," he replied, his expression softening and a slight smile pulling one corner of his mouth. He had a way of using her title in an inexplicably inappropriate way, as though they weren't actually teachers and colleagues but merely playing at it. Like children in a game of make-believe. He gestured to the chair in front of his desk and leaned back. "Have a seat."

She looked around for a moment, feeling strangely awkward and unsure how to begin. "I love what you've done with the place," she said finally, smirking.

"Thank you."

Sighing inwardly, she realized small talk would be too much work and decided instead to be abrupt. "What do you know about the re-setting of the House Point Hourglasses?" she blurted.

Immediately, a shutter came down over his expression and his light manner vanished. "What do you mean?"

Initially surprised by his reaction, she realized that had sounded rather like an accusation. She softened her voice and tried again. "Weren't you a part of the group that looked into it?"

"No," he said, relaxing marginally.

"Oh? Who was, then?"

"That was Vector and Twycross."

"I thought I saw— Weren't you running diagnostic spells the other night?"

"Yes."

There was a flicker of curiosity in his eyes at that, and she realized she'd just admitted to watching him. Not that she was habitually watching, she'd just... noticed.

"Well, did you find anything of interest?"

He nodded. "Wards and enchantments are always of interest to me."

Hermione huffed in exasperation. This conversation was reacquainting her with something distinctly and infuriatingly Draco that she'd had the pleasure of forgetting over the years. When he felt unsure about something, when he didn't know exactly where a conversation was going or what advantage was to be had in a situation, he'd offer up nothing but the barest bits of information he could get away with in order to answer the question. With this skill, she'd always thought he'd make a spectacular witness at trial.

"Would you like to share your findings with the class, Mr Malfoy?" she asked wryly.

He smiled slightly but his look was still more calculating than sly. "It would be entirely premature for me to draw any conclusions."

"Perhaps you could make an educated guess, then." She was getting decidedly irritated by the path this conversation was taking.

"There are no educated guesses in curse-breaking, Granger. Approximations can get you killed."

She could never stand to be patronized or scolded, and that sounded like both. "I'm well aware of the importance of care and precision in all fields of magic, Professor," she snapped. There just happens to be something of greater import under consideration, and I'm not here to play games. If you would care to be of use, Headmistress McGonagall needs help with a very sensitive issue of which the Hourglasses are merely a part."

"And what is that?" He leaned forward on his elbows, suddenly fully engaged.

At this, Hermione recalled another thing about Draco. He'd always said that sitting back and offering as little information as possible usually led to the other person spilling all. Her cheeks heated in irritation. She simply needed his help. There should be no reason why she couldn't just come right out and ask him, but everything between the two of them had somehow always turned into a power play.

Well, Hermione was well-versed in the intricacies of that sport.

She stood, leaning forward, her palms on his desk. "What would you say if I told you the Hourglasses were not an isolated incident? Or if I told you that this most surely involves deep magic going back centuries to the founding of Hogwarts?" Seeing interest spark in the flint of his eyes, she hit her stride. "What would you say to helping me solve a mystery that could hold the future of the school in the balance?"

Because Hermione knew one very important thing about Draco that she'd never forget: he could never resist intrigue wrapped in a challenge.

His smile was slow and genuine, and he spoke with sincerity as he stood to meet her eye-to-eye. "I'd say it'd be just like old times, Granger."

And there it was, clean and simple. There had been no cause to dread talking to him, because there was no conflict between them, apparently; none whatsoever. They were nothing to each other after all these years, and that's just how she wanted it. Being acquaintances was appropriate and it was plenty. It was a relief.

There'd been absolutely no point to Hermione worrying about silly, almost-things from years ago that never were and never would be.