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"Hermione," Ron asked, pain in his eyes and voice barely a squeak, "please tell me this isn't due tomorrow in um… whatever class it's due in." He held up scroll five of the twenty-two part saga depicting Hermione's breakthrough work on runic travel. Hermione, hiding behind a decent sized fortress of research and abandoned drafts, huffed loudly and took the effort to climb over the lowest book wall to speak to the dead man walking who was interrupting her concentration.
"That thing you are so cavalierly waving in distress, dangerously close to the fire I might add, happens to be part of my dissertation on the new runic array I derived from the demon summoning. You may recognize it, we happened to use it just this Friday? You, Harry, and Neville were captured, and the Hufflepuffs were—"
"Neville! It's great to see you standing up straight in the middle of a room! I am so glad you aren't cowering in the dorms anym—er… Neville! That was a fantastic potions explosion by the Hufflepu—er… Hey! Neville! Fancy seeing you here, in the common room, on the way to your dorm!"
"Smooth, Ronald," Hermione hissed, busying herself with not looking Neville in the eye. Since the day of the accidental visit to the Universe-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named (Ron was no longer allowed to name universes), Neville had been skittish around Hufflepuffs, Hermione, the nifflers Hagrid was keeping in view of greenhouse three, and the word 'citizen.' Harry and Ron, in a rare moment of maturity, had spoken to Hermione about either obliviating, or stunning the now paranoid herbologist and taking him to the Hospital Wing for shock treatment, but this was vetoed when Harry brought up the possible side effect of Neville's paranoia levels passing Harry-levels and reaching Moody-levels.
This, they all agreed, was completely unacceptable.
In the meantime, Hermione was brewing a Shock Absorber potion in her wardrobe, shielded from the sight and smell of her extraordinarily nosy roommates. Neville would just have to wait another week for the potion to simmer to completion, and he would be back to relative normality.
"H-h-h-hi, R-ron. J-j-just g-going to r-r-read up on s-s-some n-new p-p-plants, h-heh-heh." Ron looked oddly at the closed windows, as if expecting a stiff breeze, or perhaps Snape. Neville's first year stuttering had come back with a vengeance after That Place.
Neville flicked his eyes at Hermione, adopted a deer in the headlights pose, flashed a smile that was more terror-filled than anything, and scuttled up the stairs.
"His potion will be done soon, Ron. Maybe next time, you can just nod in greeting?" Ron grinned sheepishly at Hermione, and handed back the absurdly complicated scroll so Hermione could return it to the proper place in her extensive filing system.
Harry was always saying she had some kind of compulsion, something with letters… COD? No, he would remember if it was named after delicious fish…
"Go play chess with Harry. I'm very busy right now," Hermione interrupted his contemplation of the merits of a fish and mushroom pie.
"Harry's got detention again. I think Snape-"
"Professor Snape, for the sixty seventh time this week." She marked a tick on a scrap of parchment hanging in the depths of Book Fortress.
"-is stalking him. Wait, are you counting?"
"I need proof." Ron looked askance at Hermione, decided she must be weird because she was a girl and that's what girls did, and moved right along with his complaining.
"And Fred and George are so jealous, because they never got Snape into a vendetta against them before November," Hermione tuned out, nodding at appropriate intervals, and 'hmm'ing at pauses.
"-so, we were never allowed to play hide and seek again-"
"-but when I hid in the flying carpet stall, there was a jar full of scarabs-"
"-I was making fun of Harry 'cause he keeps charming a golden triangle on his hand-"
"-cherry pie and apple pie and then the hobbity-ones pulled out a mushroom pie-"
"-too bad Slytherin wasn't replaced by Toclafane here-"
"-can I name your runes whatsit?"
Hermione noticed the flow of nonsense had ground to a screeching halt. She tried to remember Ron's other naming escapades, perhaps the Universe-that-shall... That Place was a fluke. He did call his stomach 'Palace of Deliciousness,' and Ginny claimed he wanted to name Pig 'Completely Wicked Owl of Death that Flies and Delivers Mail and Stuff' but surely, surely, she thought, he couldn't come up with anything worse.
"What exactly did you have in mind?"
"Fiery Tunnel of Death that Moves You to New Places and Turns You Into Fire," he said promptly. Hermione wondered how he could keep a straight face, decided it was best not to ask about trains of thought that were devoid of passengers, and smiled awkwardly.
"I think that might be, um, a bit long. Do you have any other ideas?"
He responded with a surprisingly accurate impression of the noises one heard while traveling between universes. Hermione found it hard to be cruel to him at this point, and wondered exactly what experiments Fred and George had put him through as a child. She made a note to owl them later.
"That was, um, very nice Ron. But I don't uh, don't know how to spell that. Yes. Last idea? I really need to send this to the Department of Mysteries before dinner." Ron perked up, as she knew he would, at the mention of food.
"Well, I suppose you could be boring and use the base Latin incantation. It is in Latin, right?" Hermione's right eyebrow twitched.
Complex runic arrays should never be named after literary devices. It was a rule.
"How about this," she asked instead, patting Ron on the head to match his puppy-like attitude,"I will name it after the English translation of the root. Does that satisfy your proclivity to name everything?" He looked like he would argue the point, but Harry chose that moment to dive into the room, rolling behind an armchair and getting to his feet in a move worthy of a James Bond movie.
"Luna! Insane!"
Resisting the urge to snort at the obvious nature of Harry's opening, Hermione once again chose to be patient with her minions.
"What has she done now, Harry?"
"I don't know, she was talking about the hunting practices of nerfherders, and then she transfigured her book into a glowing, green stick-thing and began chasing after me! I am So. Utterly. Confused."
Hermione sighed and ushered the two boys towards dinner, assuring them that nerfherders only existed a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Shrinking the scrolls to a convenient size and placing them in a featherlight, tamper proof mailing package, Hermione attached her dissertation to the four waiting owls. Adding the name of the spell, as well as her author signature, to the outside of the case, she watched "The God Machine by Hermione Granger" make its way towards the Minsitry. Sniffing again at Ron's suggested spell name, she headed to the fifth floor to rescue the boys from Luna, who had acquired an odd black mask and a 'sinister voice' spell.
"Deus ex Machina indeed!"