Chapter Two: Decisions

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Scotland

Monday, September 16 – Thursday, September 19, 1996 (Hermione Granger's sixth year)

Hermione sat down at the Gryffindor table for breakfast in the Great Hall, across from her best friends, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. "Morning," she tersely replied, setting her repaired (but still ratty) shoulder bag down next to her on the wooden bench.

"Morning," they mumbled back, instantly sensitive to her tense mood.

Harry wordlessly handed her a mug of strong English breakfast tea, while Ron passed her a small plate. She took both with a curt nod of thanks even as she caught the two trade a secret look out of her peripheral vision. It was obvious from that silent exchange that they believed it to be that "time of the month" for her again by the way she had greeted them. As her best friends for the past five years, the two boys had come to realize that they needed to carefully word their sentences and requests around Hermione when she was having her period; it was safest all around for them to do so, for she was, after all, a pretty powerful witch. So, it was by unspoken agreement that the three adhered to the idea that for seven days out of every month, they behaved much more respectful of each other's personal space than usual. Apparently, Ron and Harry believed today was Day One. It wasn't, but Hermione was certainly more sensitive and agitated than usual this morning, so she allowed them to believe whatever they wanted. She'd apologize to them later.

The truth was that she was stressed out from the extra workload she was carrying and exhausted from lack of sleep. Her advanced classes required a lot of reading, so she'd spent most of her free hours and up late into the early mornings studying. There had been the autumnal change in weather; she hated lightning storms, as they tended to keep her awake. But the most intolerable thing of all was that for the past few weeks, since their collision in the corridor that fateful morning, Draco Malfoy kept staring at her. At every meal she'd had in the Hall, at every class they shared, or when they passed each other in the corridors, she'd catch him openly watching her. And during those moments when their eyes would connect, he'd wag his eyebrows at her and smirk, or stare at her like he was considering her from all angles, and in a new light. Every bloody time she turned around, there he was!

What Hermione couldn't figure out was why Malfoy was spending so much time actively antagonizing her now. Their run-ins had always been unpredictable one-shots in the past, so what had changed? She couldn't decipher a reason, and that mystery irritated her, blackened her mood, and distracted her in moments when she should have been concentrating on more important things.

It was Viktor Krum all over again, minus the good feelings.

While passing her a tea refill, Hermione noted that Ron once again pulled his fingers away before they accidentally brushed against hers. For some reason, instead of finding this behavior charming as she previously had, today it felt rather childish. She was turning seventeen this week, he was just sixteen. Couldn't they act like the almost-adults that they were and talk about their feelings yet? She knew he liked her, and she him, so what was the problem with them touching? She almost said something biting to that effect, but at the last moment, clamped her mouth closed. She wouldn't accomplish anything but to make him angry if she pointed out his emotional procrastination.

"Did you get your homework done for Potions yet?" Ron asked, blushing.

She nodded, inwardly cringing at the same time. She didn't want to be reminded of Potions class just that minute. It was her only class for the day, and she was dreading it, because she knew Malfoy would be there.

She reached into the center of the table to grab a scone, and her eyes shot past Harry's left shoulder to spy movement beyond. Malfoy was sitting at Slytherin's table across the room, and again, he was staring at her, openly smirking. As soon as she saw him, her gut tightened and she lowered her eyes, uncomfortable with the exchange. Quickly making the decision to leave for class to avoid the awkward contest of wills with the snake, she started gathering up her things. "I'm going to head off to Potions a little early today. Do you want to come?" she asked them, hoping they didn't notice the way her cheeks were heated. The two boys seemed startled by her pronouncement and they shared another quick glance.

Annoyed with their surreptitious communication, Hermione chugged the rest of her tea, grabbed a scone and a napkin for the road, and with a murmured, "See you later, then," she leapt to her feet and rushed away.

When she'd reached the edge of the Slytherin table, a hop away from the exit, Harry's hand grabbed her robes. "Hermione, wait!" he called out a little more loudly than she would have liked. They both stopped and she turned to him. He cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable. "So, um, your birthday is this Thursday, right? You'll be seventeen. Ron and I wanna know if there is something special you wanted? You know, to mark your passage into adulthood and all that."

Hermione honestly couldn't think of a thing to ask for. She shook her head and readjusted the strap across her body, to redistribute the weight of her book bag. "I don't really need anything, Harry." She kissed his cheek. "Thanks anyway, though. I really appreciate your thoughtfulness. Ron's too." With that, she left.

X~~~~~X

By six o'clock on Thursday night, Hermione had completed all of her homework for this week's Arithmancy and Defense Against the Dark Arts classes, and she had already read chapters one through five of her Wizarding Law compendium to prepare for her private lesson next week. She'd buried her nose in her books as much as possible, tuning out the bad weather, finding the rhythm to her new schedule's demands, and ignoring Malfoy completely. As a result, she'd finally achieved a comfortable equilibrium. It was now time to catch some dinner, followed by a leisurely evening of lounging and light reading in the Gryffindor common room.

As she walked from her dormitory to the Great Hall, she passed by Katie Bell, Jimmy Peakes, Demelza Robins, Cormac McLaggen, Dean Thomas and Ritchie Coote, all members of the Gryffindor Quidditch main and reserve teams, on their way back in from practice. She traded waves and greetings with them, stopping long enough to extricate her hand from Cormac's, after he'd reached out and grabbed her in an overly enthusiastic, and very unwelcome manner. In their wake followed the rest of the team: Harry, Ron, and her best girlfriend, Ginny Weasley. Everyone looked exhausted, and they were dirty. Immediately, Hermione offered to go down to the kitchens and ask a house-elf to provide some hot meals up to the Gryffindor common area so the team wouldn't have to drag themselves all the way down stairs to eat after cleaning up. As Captain, Harry agreed and thanked her. He then made her promise to come back up immediately after. That settled, she headed for the Entrance Hall to the stairwells leading down into Hogwarts dungeon-basement area, where the kitchens were located.

As she walked, she smiled and began humming, light-hearted for the first time in weeks. Primarily, the reason was that Hermione had guessed earlier in the week that her friends were going to throw her a small, surprise birthday party tonight. The plan hadn't been too difficult to smoke out, however, as Ron, Harry, and Ginny would all stop whispering and jump apart as soon as she walked into any room. Her friends were no masters of cloak-and-dagger tactics, but she loved them for their efforts and their kindness. She really was the luckiest girl alive to have such wonderful friends!

That coupled with the good news she'd received yesterday – namely, a note from Professor Binns explaining that the topic of next week's Wizarding Law lesson would be the Wizengamot – and her attitude overall had improved remarkably from the previous week.

To tell the truth, Hermione was ecstatic to finally study the role of the wizarding High Courts. Secretly, the infamous Death Eater Trials of the 1980's had mesmerized her since her third year at Hogwarts, when she'd first heard of Sirius Black. According to the letters he'd later traded with Harry, his trial had been ruthlessly dispatched by the court outside the parameters of normal legal protocol, and all in the name of public safety. Consequently, an innocent man had been locked up in Azkaban for years, made to suffer at the hands of the vile Dementors. In fourth year, she'd seen the Unforgivable Curses in person, and as a result of that rather loathsome demonstration by Professor Moody – actually it had been Barty Crouch Jr. in a Polyjuice Potion disguise – she had felt compelled to learn all she could about the trio of evil curses. That research, in turn, directly affected her ideas of wizarding crime and punishment, and brokered an understanding – although not an endorsement – of how and why the courts had handled Sirius' case as they had.

This past summer, she'd gone frequently to the Ministry of Magic to dig into their public documents about various laws and precedents governing wizarding educational institutions in an effort to foster an understanding of how the events of her fifth year – specifically regarding Professor Umbridge's displacement of Professor Dumbledore as Headmaster of Hogwarts - could have legally been allow to occur. At the same time, she'd also looked up information on the rules governing non-human magical beings, hoping to find some significant ruling on the minimum moral treatment of house-elf servants. Throughout it all, she had discovered something profound about herself: wizarding law enthralled her, because if there was one thing Hermione Granger appreciated, it was organized regulation – logical structure combined with the ideals of justice, equality and fairness.

Although she hailed from a family of Muggle dentists, both of whom wanted her to follow in their footsteps, Hermione believed now that her own path lay down the road towards the Law. Magical Law, specifically. It seemed an excellent fit to her personality. Hence the reason her mood had been, and now was, elevated to such energetic levels.

No sir, this week hadn't turned out badly at all!

Engrossed as she was with thoughts of her future career path, Hermione wasn't paying attention to where she was heading. When she reached the bottom of the stairs in the Entrance Hall, she accidentally took a right turn down another flight of stairs. Upon later analysis, she realized the mistake had been an easy one make, as the kitchens were a right turn if you'd been coming in through the Great Entrance. However, taking a right turn while standing at the bottom of the grand stairwell, facing the Great Entrance, ended up directing her into the labyrinth dungeons instead. Of course, Hermione hadn't realized her mistake until she was good and lost in the maze that was the basement of Hogwarts. Half way down the first corridor she realized her error and turned to go back, only the stairwell wasn't there anymore; a blank stone wall with a lit torch hanging from a sconce faced her instead.

"Why is this bloody castle always changing?" she murmured with a sigh.

Quick on her feet in a sticky situation, Hermione determined that the easiest way to get back to what she knew was to find something familiar. She'd been in the dungeons many times over the years for various reasons, so she'd try to find her Potions classroom, since she knew the way out from there. Ten minutes later, when her attempts ended in fruitless frustration, she tried instead to find Professor Snape's office, which she knew to be near the Potions classroom. Again, she had no luck. She changed tactics at that point, and tried for the Hufflepuff and/or Slytherin common rooms instead, knowing them to be against the basement's outer most walls. Try as she might, however, she couldn't seem to locate the exterior curtain of the castle. Every way she turned there were only dead ends, closets or empty rooms, and nothing was at all familiar.

After an hour of searching for any sign of life or an exit, Hermione began to panic. She aimlessly ran up and down the corridor, and opened a random door, hoping to get lucky.

On the other side of the door was a classroom with traditional school desks. Dust on the floor and desk tops proclaimed that classes were no longer being taught in this room. Still, that meant she was close to finding a way out, as most classrooms were close to the stairwells. Above her, embedded into the ceiling, a strange yellowish light flickered into existence. Its luminosity was that of candlelight. An automatic spell, she guessed, activated whenever someone moved about the room. Her Potions class had something very similar, as did most other windowless areas in the castle.

On the far side of the long room, she spied another door. Perhaps this was the way out, as she'd seen no stairwells on her side. Hermione crossed the threshold, and the door closed behind her. Only then did she feel the odd tingling sensation travel down her spine. With a sinking feeling in her stomach, she raced to the opposite door and tried to open it. It was locked fast. "Alohamora,"she called out, waving her wand at the keyhole. She tried the door again – no dice.

Screaming behind her teeth in frustration, she kicked the wooden portal in agitation, turned around and headed back across the room to the door she'd come through. To her exasperation, it, too, was locked fast. She tried the unlocking spell again, but like its twin, the door held against her attempts to open it. Casting every jinx and spell she knew on both doors, trying to blast, burn, and freeze either of them down, did nothing more than exhaust her as her magic was somehow nullified by the room. She resorted to physical attacks with her fists, pounding against the solid oak frame, and finally picking up a chair and smashing it against the door. It didn't budge.

Merlin help her, she was trapped!

TO BE CONTINUED…

AUTHOR'S NOTES FOR CHAPTER TWO:

Musical selection recommended for this chapter:

"Right Now" by Atomic Kitten (Hermione's thoughts about Ron).