Disclaimer: I'm not making any money from this. Anything you recognise is not mine but Jo's. Sadly.

A/N: Though I've been writing fanfiction for various fandoms for the past twelve years, this is my first attempt to get one actually posted. I'm very excited about this story and want to give it my best, so criticism and ideas on how the story could progress will be greatly appreciated. This is possible since this is a work in progress and a great chunk in the middle (namely their sixth year at Hogwarts) is still missing.

I will try to follow the course of the Half-Blood Prince as accurately as possible, but since this story is mainly from the point of view of Hermione and not of Harry, some things are bound to be different. I also admit that to make this story work, I had to change the setting from The Burrow to 12 Grimmauld Place at the beginning of the story. I've tried to give a plausible explanation for it, but if you feel I need to add something, please let me know.

This is categorized as a romance, but it will be slow in coming. It's mainly friendship at first but there's plenty UST, rest assured.

On another note there is a non-con warning to this story for a good reason. Although it won't be depicted at all, the story will deal with the emotional repercussions of such an event. If you have problems with that kind of thing, please don't read it. It is not until a long time into the story, but it will be an integral part of it later on. But I want to say that it is not going to be between Hermione and Snape.

Now I want to thank my wonderful beta, Dark-Hamadryad, who polished off the rough edges and bore the hopeless situation of lack of commas and too long paragraphs.

Additional thanks goes to my two pals, HoneyB and Bi, who gave it a once-over (and more) and kept me from drowning myself in the bathtub in despair when some things didn't work the way I wanted.

And finally, I want to thank my baby girl, who is always wondering what the food person is doing in front of that flimmering box and who bore the occasional delay of a milk bottle and cursing when something went wrong with all the amused confusion of someone who does not understand the language - yet.

Boy, am I glad of that:)

Shal

Wicked Game

by shalimar1981

Prologue: Frustration

The summer between her fifth and sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was passing more slowly than Hermione Granger would have liked. It was three weeks into the holidays, and she had already run out of things to do. She was fast coming to the end of her tether.

Countless times Hermione had sat in the library of number twelve, Grimmauld Place, and had pondered what she hadn't tried yet to keep herself busy. Staring at books was only getting her so far. She needed something to keep herself from thinking about... things. So far, that had proven to be a fruitless endeavour, though it certainly wasn't for lack of trying. Purposely not thinking about something was far more difficult than she had imagined.

For safety reasons, the Weasleys, Hermione and Harry, who would join them later, were spending the summer holidays at number twelve, Grimmauld Place instead of at the Burrow. Too many accidents had happened to witches and wizards with connections to the Order to not take the threat seriously. As a result, Harry had been notified of his godfather's will immediately after the events at the Ministry. It was not very tactful, under the circumstances, and none of the Order had been comfortable with it, but it had been necessary since it involved headquarters.

Predictably, Harry had still been very much in shock and had difficulty accepting that Sirius was really gone and that all Sirius had possessed was now his. Still, with some persuading on the Weasleys' part, he had finally relented before they had gotten on the Hogwarts Express at the end of the previous term. He knew it was wiser to stay at headquarters. The only stipulation Harry had made was that Kreacher, the treacherous house-elf, had to remain at Hogwarts (with strict and very detailed instructions). Dobby would join them instead – paid, of course. He'd had to be convinced of that, but Mrs Weasley had managed it.

Mrs Weasley was quite relieved at Harry's demand. Not being solely responsible for an even larger household than she was normally used to meant that she only had the kitchen to worry about. That suited her just fine. More than enough chores would have remained for the younger generation to tend to, but after several Tonks-induced explosions, Mrs Weasley wouldn't let anyone help in the kitchen again. Ever.

The others rejoiced, while Hermione's jaw ached from pretending to smile.

Now she spent most of her time here, in the Black library, staring at all the treasures within. She had already read all books she was allowed to, of course. Not that there were many of those since the family's main occupation had apparently been to accumulate as many texts on the Dark Arts as possible. Those were shielded with a Restrictus Charm – a particularly nasty version of an Identiy Charm. It had the unfortunate side-effect of zapping the hand of anyone who dared to touch the forbidden books without permission, leaving the limb lifeless, yet in excruciating pain for the rest of the day.

She knew because she had tried, of course – an unread book was too much of a temptation for her to resist – and had no desire to repeat the experiment. Once was quite enough, thank you very much.

Her next avenue had been to study, because after the OWLs was before the NEWTs, after all. Studying, however, had – strangely enough – lost its appeal for her. She was still eager to learn, but in the face of death and destruction, her wish to achieve the highest NEWT scores ever simply left a bitter taste in her mouth.

So her studies were conducted only half-heartedly at best.

Thanks to her Time-Turner experiment in her third year, Hermione had already turned seventeen and thus reached her majority a year early last autumn. At first, she had kept it a secret because at the time, she was still somewhat shocked that her additional study-time had affected her life so much. Then, she had been too embarrassed and had finally decided to wait for the opportune moment to tell her friends. That moment had simply never arrived, though, and so they'd found out when Professor McGonagall had pulled her aside before leaving Hogwarts and gave her a stern talk about "responsible use of magic during the holidays". They were overjoyed of course and needless to say, conversation was very tense on the ride to King's Cross.

After the initial shock had worn off, she'd been quite excited about the prospects. The fact that she was no longer subject to the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery seemed to open up a whole new area of activity. She could now do magic whenever she wanted.

Charms, Transfiguration and Defense Against the Dark Arts were foremost on her mind because she knew she'd need them in the fight against Voldemort. She had realized this shortly after Umbridge had started her theoretical approach to Defense Against the Dark Arts the previous year and had thus convinced Harry to back the practical defense club they had dubbed the D.A.

The events in the Department of Mysteries, too, had taught her a lesson: Death Eaters didn't care how young or inexperienced you were, and if they had time, they would torture before they killed, simply because they enjoyed it.

Harry had arrived two weeks into the holidays, accompanied by Dumbledore, no less, with news of how they had convinced yet another teacher to join the ranks of Hogwarts' numerous and unfortunate DADA professors. He'd been glad to be rid of the Dursleys, of course, but was subdued and determined not to show that he was taking Sirius' loss hard. Along with the others, he seemed to have no trouble at all thinking up distractions; they were always playing Quidditch in the backyard, testing the twins' newest inventions when they came to visit, wreaking havoc on Mrs Weasley's nerves by exploring number twelve, Grimmauld Place or some similar nonsense she had no patience for.

After the fiasco in the Department of Mysteries in June, which she felt more than a little guilty about, the last thing she wanted was to have time on her hands to relax or join the others in their frivolous pursuits. In other words, she had a hard time not climbing up the walls.

Ron also hadn't taken very well the fact that she was already seventeen, and had been for almost a year. It was just one more thing in which he felt deficient. Age had never been an issue between them before even though she was the oldest of the trio, but now, she fell in the same category as his brothers: all older, better and – most importantly - more special than him in some way.

She didn't know what she had done to deserve what followed because she'd never dreamed the additional time would be added to her official age by the Ministry. She told him so, repeatedly, but it didn't matter. He avoided her whenever he could. And so did Harry. Again.

Even though it had happened before – third year with the Crookshanks vs. Scabbers debacle instantly came to mind – it still hurt more than she wanted to admit. She knew that when it came down to it, Harry would always choose Ron – the two of them had been friends with each other before they had been friends with her. It was a sad truth. Harry still talked to her occasionally, but it just wasn't the same.

Thank god she still had Ginny. Ginny, her only female friend, thankfully hadn't changed a bit. Though she still fancied Harry, she was always ready to praise Hermione's ingenuity to be able to do magic way earlier than the others (as if that had actually been her plan) and to badmouth the 'two insensitive prats', as she called them, whenever she felt it would cheer her up. Bless her.

But her majority also meant that whereas she could do magic now, the others couldn't. So she'd tried to practise all she had learned so far and some things she had only read about on her own. And it had helped. For a while.

Yet it also became even more frustrating because her options were limited. Only a few charms would be useful in dire situations. Transfiguration was practically useless except for Human Transfiguration, which they wouldn't start until next term. She had read a fair bit about it and had been itching to try it, but after an incident which left her hair standing even more on end than usual, she decided to ask someone more experienced to help her.

Only no one ever seemed to have time to spare.

What was her foolish practising compared to a real situation where her life would be in danger? Nothing! From there on it only got worse. Practising spells, hexes, jinxes and counter-jinxes for Defense Against the Dark Arts was all very well and good, but without an opponent to practise with like they had in the D.A., how would she know it worked?

It was futile.

Her new privilege of doing magic outside of school was proving to be more of a curse than a blessing with each passing day. If she wasn't of age, she could have at least complained along with the others, shooting murderous looks at those allowed – like they were now doing with her. But she was of age, and every day, her frustration was growing.

The only things left for her to do were to research ahead what they had yet to learn, memorize the relevant school texts and wait for the new school year to begin. How predictable.

Oh, and practise Potions, of course.

She had actually been quite hopeful regarding this avenue since she knew Professor Snape had a laboratory on the third floor.

Only it wasn't quite that easy.

Though they were in desperate need of healing and restorative potions, Professor Snape didn't seem to have any time to brew them, what with his main duty as spy for the Order.

Nor had anyone else, apparently.

This seemed to be the perfect opportunity for her to get rid of her frustration and unrest, to do something useful and restock their meager potions supply all at the same time.

She should have known it was too good to be true.

After an accident in which she'd burned her hands slightly with Bubotuber Pus, she'd been forbidden to use the Potions laboratory again. And had received two stern talks from Molly Weasley and Professor Snape on her "foolish assumption she could brew potions a witch in possession of all 'Outstanding' NEWTs still needed a three-year apprenticeship with a longtime Potions Master for".

For that they had time.

Of course they'd conveniently forgotten her incompetence when they used the potion she had just finished to heal her hands.

"Go study, Miss Granger. That's what you're best at. And if it's not too much to ask, keep yourself out of trouble! Some of us have more important things to do than baby-sit a restless teenager." Professor Snape had sneered at her as a parting gift before he went to another Order meeting.

As if she needed reminding.

"Fine. Rub it in!" she'd muttered under her breath, as she left the room with her hands tingling. After-effects of the healing, of course.

In direct violation of the order she had just received, she'd gone immediately to the Potions laboratory.

Fuck the lot of them she had thought ungraciously as she stomped up the stairs to the attic. Her arms had been loaded with stolen ingredients to brew the rest of the needed potions she was "due to her lack of mental capability and imagination incapable of producing", to quote Professor Snape again.

HA.

Hidden in an otherwise unused room in the attic, she'd managed to brew the required potions with only slight difficulties within a matter of days, and soon, they'd quietly found their way into the supply cupboard of the Potions laboratory.

If Professor Snape had noticed the much needed addition to their supply, he certainly hadn't said anything. He'd studied her, though, when she was waiting like the rest for dinner to start in the parlour that evening. That was unusual in itself; he normally avoided looking at anyone directly and glowered at his tea cup instead.

She supposed he thought this way no one would dare pester him with idle conversation in mind.

When the others filed out of the room into the kitchen, she'd been last in the hallway. The swirl of black at the edge of her vision had made her stop in her tracks and turn around to the front door. He'd been preparing to leave, wrapping himself in a tatty-looking cloak so as not to draw unnecessary attention to himself in the Muggle square in front of the house.

He never stayed for dinner.

He'd opened the door but looked back at her as if he'd known she'd been standing there the whole time.

It was hard to believe, but nevertheless she could have sworn that he smirked at her briefly before he vanished into the night.

He knew. He knew and... approved?

When that realisation finally sank in, cold sweat broke out on the skin of her neck and she hurried in after the others to sit down for dinner.

As suddenly as that the steam which had kept her brewing those potions against direct orders went out of her.

After that, she hadn't dared steal ingredients from his stores again. She wasn't that eager for more reprimands or something worse.

Instead, Hermione had continued brewing with her own supply of ingredients. Easy and harmless potions so as not to loose practise, but other than that a waste of time and ingredients.

She had no idea what to do with herself anymore. She had to find herself a distraction quickly, or ...

Or what exactly?

She... didn't know.

And that scared her more than anything.

A/N: So, what do you think?

Seems like Hermione is very stressed out. She is also feeling guilty about something. What can that be?

Twenty-five points on the correct guess where the title came from!

Next: Night-time visitors, some tea and an unusual conversation.