Chapter 3: Potions

The last thing Hermione remembered before she opened her eyes was Colin Creevey's mangled body falling through a fissure in the ceiling and onto the floor before her.

She was sitting upright, breathing heavily, having been shocked awake by the image. She could still see it behind her eyes—Colin's lifeless gaze meeting hers for a split second as she looked down upon his body. Colin. Colin who had idolized Harry and fought with Dumbledore's Army. Colin with his milkman dad and little brother Dennis. Colin with his grieving mother.

Hermione pulled her legs up to her chest and rested her forehead on her knees for a second, gathering herself. Judging by the dim light in the dormitory, she hadn't woken up at an ungodly hour this time, even though she felt like she had only closed her eyes for a few seconds. It was certainly not the best way to start the first day of classes, but as sleep had abandoned her, it was time to start her day.

After a simple breakfast with Ginny, who had a meeting with Professor McGonagall immediately after to discuss Quidditch plans for the year, Hermione headed to Charms with a sense of fatigue and lethargy weighing her bones down. Professor Flitwick greeted her with a friendly nod as she took her usual seat in the classroom, already somewhat filled out by seventh year students that she didn't recognize. She pretended to be engrossed in her textbook while they pointed and whispered, and ignored the fact that other students streaming in avoided the seats right next to her—until Dean walked in and took the seat to her left.

"Hey there Hermione," he offered a bright smile as he sat down.

"Morning, Dean," She returned his smile. For someone who had been on the run for the past year like her, Dean seemed to have recovered exceptionally well, and his relief to be back in Hogwarts was clear.

"Seems a lil' strange, dunnit?" He looked around the classroom with some bemusement, and she followed his gaze, watching the younger students quickly dart their attention to Professor Flitwick or their desks. "I hardly recognize anyone here."

She chuckled. "I know, it's a strange feeling. But at least there's the bunch of us—I think Justin and Michael are going to be in this class too—"

Her final words rang out extra loudly in the classroom as someone gasped loudly and all the murmuring about her and Dean stopped abruptly. The girl who gasped was red in the face as Malfoy looked at her with eyes cold enough to freeze the Great Lake over on a summer day. All the uncomfortable attention was directed to him now, the war criminal, donning school robes that they thought he didn't deserve.

The last time she saw him as such—half done tie, elegantly combed hair, signet rings on his slender fingers—he had yet to let Death Eaters into the castle, yet to make unforgiveable mistakes. On the surface he was the same young man with pale skin and light hair and a characteristic sneer on his face, but everyone knew that the difference between then and now went far beyond the mark upon his left forearm.

His eyes, scanning the room while he stood frozen, fell upon hers and for a second they seemed to soften a tiny fraction, perhaps from the comfort of seeing at least one familiar face in the room.

"Mr Malfoy," she heard Professor Flitwick say curtly in his usual wheezy voice. "Please find your seat. We are about to begin."

She watched him with her jaw tight and her fists clenched under the table as he quickly took a seat in the furthest corner of the classroom. Michael and Justin stumbled in barely a second after Malfoy took his seat and settled down a short distance away from where Hermione and Dean sat. Justin turned around to give them both a friendly wave, which Dean and Hermione reciprocated with smiles, as Professor Flitwick began addressing the class.

By the end of class, Hermione had scratched down perhaps less than a page of notes on Disillusionment charms and couldn't recall most of what Professor Flitwick had said about assigned reading. She knew what she had been doing—alternating between staring beyond the windows behind the teacher's podium to the forest and glancing at Malfoy, who spent most of class napping on his desk. She wanted to kick herself mentally for not paying attention, but in all honesty felt even too fatigued to do so.

To make matters worse she had incorrectly answered one of Professor Flitwick's questions, which had, in her memory, never occurred before, thus drawing more murmurs and secretive looks from the other strangers and a "It's alright dear, good try" from the perplexed Professor.

It was off to a bad start.

She parted ways with Dean quickly after class as he headed to Care of Magical Creatures and she to Advanced Arithmancy, where the small class size of 6 forced her to pay more attention to Professor Vector, and barely made it through the difficult material with a clear head. By lunchtime, Hermione was drained. She sat alone at in the Great Hall, a distance away from the chattering younger Gryffindors, and picked at a pathetic portion mince pie without much appetite.

Her next class was Potions, which she was not looking forward to for a multitude of reasons; for one, Professor Slughorn had returned to his old collecting ways and was now keen to add her to his self, with her newfound war heroine status that she still had trouble confronting. To make the class even more uncomfortable, none of the other returning Gryffindors were taking the class, nor were any Gryffindors she was familiar with, leaving only Terry, Michael and Malfoy as the other returning students in the class with her.

By the time she walked into the dungeon classroom, having finally given up on her meal, most of the tables that were set up for the N.E.W.T. level class were occupied. There were two benches of regular seventh years, while Michael and Terry occupied a two-person bench, leaving one last two-person bench open. She took her seat at the open bench while the seventh years cast her not-so-secretive glances, and a rising unease in her throat was confirmed when Malfoy was the last person to stride into the classroom, followed closely by Professor Slughorn, who shut the door behind him.

For the second time that day, their gazes met, and Hermione could pinpoint the exact moment when Malfoy understood the situation. His eyes narrowed, jaw tightened, and he walked towards their bench with hard, angry steps. His bag hit the ground with an equally angry thud as he slid rigidly into his seat, not before shifting it several inches away from her towards the edge of the bench.

Hermione let out a shaky breath that she had not realized she was holding in, casting her eyes forward to where Professor Slughorn had begun introducing the class, but her posture remained as stiff as Malfoy's. The last time she had been this physically close to him, she had broken his nose. She didn't notice back then, or perhaps it was a habit he picked up later, but he smelled of expensive cologne. A tinge of cinnamon with geranium and sandalwood, and a multitude of other things she couldn't pick out.

Her eyes swept across the classroom again, to avoid looking at the blond Slytherin next to her and thinking about how warm and non-threatening he smelled (could someone smell non-threatening?)—Michael appeared as uncomfortable as she was, but Terry…

Hermione had seen enough during the war to pick out murderous intent from someone's gaze. And Terry's wide eyes, fixated in her general direction, was burning with it.

"—Ms Granger?"

Her head whipped forward and noticed the rest of the class looking expectantly at her, along with a mildly concerned Professor Slughorn. "Y-Yes sir?"

"Could you tell us the key ingredient in a Shrinking Solution, Ms Granger?"

"U-Um…"

Shrinking Solution. Chapter 3 of Advanced-Potion Making. Includes… includes…

"Come on now, Ms Granger," Professor Slughorn let out a hearty, if not somewhat nervous chuckle. "You have the answer for us, don't you?"

"I… I don't remember, sir. B-Billywig, perhaps?"

The momentary disappointment that fell across Professor Slughorn's face was all the indication she needed. An iciness spread from her gut through her torso, down to her fingertips. "Not quite, Ms Granger, but a good try—it's our first day back after a long year, not to worry, you'll be back on it in no time." Another nervous chuckle. "It is in fact shrivelfigs—"

Shrivelfigs. Of course.

"Now, I understand some of you may have made this in your previous years under the tutelage of the late Professor Snape, but have not quite succeeded. This potion is disastrous should you get it wrong, and so we will be tackling it again this year, in pairs—"

Pairs?

Malfoy's knuckles were white. As if to answer their shock, Professor Slughorn cast a somewhat apprehensive glance at the two of them specifically. Evidently, like them, he had not foreseen the unusual seating arrangement.

"In pairs, yes, so you can look out for what each other are doing and consult. You will be attempting the brew together today, and submitting a report evaluating your potion's quality by next class. We will be doing this for multiple difficult potions throughout the year, and I would prefer…" Another uncomfortable glance. "If you stayed with the same partners—but of course, under… necessary… circumstances, swaps can be arranged personally with me. Your final grades for each assignment will depend on both of your contributions, so, happy working!"

Silence.

She was not quite sure what she expected to feel. Anger would have been logical, but she was tired, too tired to fight today, and all that filled her now was a slowly spreading sense of cold acceptance and dread. The other students had begun conversing with their neighbours, picking out necessary ingredients from their stashes and the ingredients cabinet. Michael was shaking Terry out of his unexplainable rage, which Hermione had yet to figure out.

It was Malfoy who moved first. Drawing his textbook out of his book bag, he flipped it open nonchalantly to the specified page and began gathering what was necessary. She was surprised by his willingness to partake in this paired activity, until he pulled the scales and cauldron towards his side of the table quite unceremoniously. She frowned.

"Malfoy, we're supposed to be working together."

"And I don't need your help," he snapped back while keeping his eyes on the scales, already measuring out the first ingredient. The icy dread in her stomach melted away, slowly giving way to irritation.

"And I don't either, but there's only one set of apparatus—"

"—So just watch and write your report."

"Malfoy." She called him out through gritted teeth, finally catching his attention. He turned to her with a face of irritation that rivalled her own. "Our grades depend on both of our contributions now, and I am not going to sacrifice my grades because you refuse to cooperate—"

He sniggered back at her. "I should be the one who's worried about you contaminating my grades—you couldn't even answer Slughorn's simple question just now, could you?"

She could punch his sneering face again right there. Upon inspection this up close, she could see that his nose never quite healed properly from when she broke it in third year. There was a small bump on the bridge of his nose that disrupted its sharpness, and the sight of it gave her pride a tiny boost and fuelled her current irritation.

"I will have you know—"

"Ah, Ms Granger, Mr Malfoy…"

Professor Slughorn had approached their bench, nervously holding on to two vials of leeches. Hermione noted that he looked fairly uncomfortable in Malfoy's presences. "You will be needing these… is there an issue?"

"I'd like to work alone," said Malfoy flatly.

"Ah… see, part of the reason we would prefer pair work is…" He looked rather sheepish at this point, and lowered his voice considerably so he would not be heard by the rest of the chattering classroom. "The apothecary that supplies our ingredients have fallen on hard times during the war and is still putting their stock back together. We'd be rather short on ingredients if all students were to work individually. I'm sorry, but…"

"Thank you, Professor, we'll get to work," Hermione said quickly. Professor Slughorn moved on with a speed that betrayed his desire to get away from their bench, leaving Hermione with two vials of blood-sucking leeches in her hands, and Malfoy scowling at the set-up before them.

000

By the middle of class, Draco was ready to hex the next living thing that got on his nerves. Granger was nowhere near as precise as he was in measurements and technique, making him wonder how she had managed to trump him every single year in this class.

She was careless—whether it was just this strange new Granger who was distracted and stupid, or whether she had always been this liberal with the quantities of ingredients, he did not know, he had never paid much attention to her habits in Potions-brewing. Twice now she had added a little too much of something to their brew, and now, instead of the bright green that they should be expecting, their brew was a sickening brownish-green that resembled troll vomit and was also emitting a rather concerning rumble.

"What the fuck did you do, Granger?" He spat at her as he glanced between his textbook and their cauldron. He had abandoned his robe at this point out of frustration and the unnatural amount of heat spewing forth from their cauldron, and had rolled up his sleeves to his elbows to give him more use of his hands. Her hair which had seemed somewhat deflated when he first saw her this year had inflated back to its usual volume and messiness, and she wore a look of confusion and panic that he had not seen since Potter became the Prince of Potions in sixth year.

"I don't know—I was following the instructions—maybe, maybe it's because we didn't add enough shrivelfig blood—"

"It can't be that, Granger, use your fucking brain," he swore rather liberally, earning him a disdainful look from Slughorn. "This colour derives from the daisy roots—"

"I added exactly four—"

"Well maybe you're shit at chopping them then," he snapped at her, turning his attention back to the page before him. "Caterpillars next, don't mess up now—"

"Will you do something more productive rather than pointing out everything wrong with what I'm doing?!" She retorted without looking at him, and proceeded with the hairy caterpillars. Or what she thought were caterpillars.

Draco reached out a hand too late, and a leech fell into the cauldron with a resounding plop.

BANG.

Draco was hit by a heat wave and he quickly brought his arm up to shield his face from whatever came at him. Someone was screaming. When he lowered his arm, he saw Granger frantically, comically, putting out flames on the left side of her head. Her mane, drenched in their failed concoction, had caught on fire from the blast. Upon examining his forearm, he realized that most of his arm hairs had been singed too.

He would have laughed if not for the fact that the class was now staring at them, some trying to hold back giggles, while others looked on with concern. Granger had managed to put of the flames, though her ridiculous hair could not be salvaged. Half her head still bore her signature mane, while the other had been burned down to perhaps two inches away from her panicked, tear-stained face.

"Ms Granger, are you alright?!"

"Y-Yes sir," she croaked out, covering her face. "I'm so terribly sorry—I was—"

"Simply stupid," he said it before he could gather his thoughts. He saw her flinch at the word and raise her teary eyes to him. The defiance he had expected to see in the Gryffindor's eyes was nowhere to be found, which only unnerved him more. This new Hermione only looked back at him with uncertainty and panic. "What were you thinking?! That's the third time you'd added something wrong to—"

"Mr Malfoy, these kinds of words are not necessary," Slughorn said, having suddenly grown a backbone or something. Draco glared at the man with his fists at his side.

"I told you—"

"No more of this today—I think Ms Granger must be tired from helping us to fix the castle..." Slughorn added, looking at the frazzled witch again with concern. "Class dismissed. Leave your potions for me to inspect—and I expect your reports on Thursday. Mr Malfoy, you will meet with me to discuss—Mr Malfoy!"

He had gathered up his robe and books in record speed the moment Slughorn had dismissed the class and stormed out of the dungeons, leaving behind the smoke and the chaos and this new messed up Granger that made his inside knot up and squirm like Dumbledore's stupid portrait had.

She used to put up a fight. She used to match his jibes and made him feel challenged. She used to be strong—

His long legs carried him up the stairs two at a time, and only slowed on the landing that led to the Slytherin corridor when a sickening realization hit him.

Draco knew all of it quite well, having grown up around people who had tossed the curse around casually. The potential side effects of the Cruciatus Curse, the lasting trauma and damage to one's sanity. The Death Eaters, his fucked up aunt… they had relished in all of this pain and confusion and damage inflicted upon their victims.

He had been there, of course. When Bellatrix had Granger pinned to the marble floor of his house. The images were part of his nightmares, had been ever since it happened, along with Dumbledore's last words to him. Screams—the kind of screams that would drive you to stab your wand into your own ears to stop hearing them. Granger's broken, writhing body, wrecked by the worst pain imaginable—

"Malfoy!"

He turned around at the sudden yell, and could only make out a blur of blue on the other person's lapel before a solid fist collided with his jaw, knocking him back against the wall. While he struggled to blink away the spots in his vision, the wind was knocked out of him with another punch, and he slid down against the wall, his legs giving way. His head was throbbing, and the sharp pain in his abdomen forced him to double over. His assailant gave him no chance to recover, and aimed a sharp kick against his thigh, forcing a pained grunt out of Draco.

There was a fluttering of robes—someone was attempting to restrain his assailant. Shouts.

"Terry—stop it—"

When Draco finally gathered himself, he saw Michael Corner desperately trying to hold back Terry Boot, whose face was beetroot red with anger and eyes were similarly bloodshot. He resembled a bull, ready to charge and run Draco over with as much force as he could muster. Other students from Potions class had arrived at the scene, and stood on the stairway leading up to the landing with wide, fearful eyes.

"He killed me dad… THIS BASTARD'S DEATH EATER OF A FATHER KILLED ME DAD."

Draco did not know, but he was not surprised. He pulled himself back up slowly against the wall, noticing small blood splatters across his white shirt from where Terry had split his lip. The Ravenclaw had finally stopped struggling. His outburst seemed to have taken some of the anger out of him, and now he stood with his fists shaking and chest heaving, still restrained by Michael.

"Me mam's in St Mungo's, did'ya know that? She stopped speaking after they hit 'er with the Cruciatus Curse. 4 of 'em. Took turns. Your scum of a father and his cronies," Terry squeezed his words out slowly, between deep breaths. He was trying so hard to control his anger that his whole person shook. "She won't even look at me now. How they let your bloody Death Eater arse out of Azkaban, I don't know—"

"Well it wasn't me, was it?"

"YOU'RE HIS SON, YOU HELPED TO KILL PROFESSOR DUMBLEDORE—" Terry looked livid, and stepped out of Michael's grip when Michael had just loosened his arm a notch. He raised an accusing finger at Draco, his whole face contorted with rage. "HOW ARE YOU ANY DIFFERENT?"

"How dare you—"

Terry must have caught sight of Draco's hand twitching towards his wand, because in the next moment, Draco was thrown back against the wall again, having been socked a second time on the same side of his face.

"You don't deserve to live, Malfoy, you and your scum of an old man—"

"Stop it!"

A mane of brown curls—or rather, half a mane of brown curls—appeared in his field of vision, facing Terry.

"Please, don't fight like this—"

"You're defending him?!" Terry hissed. Draco looked over Granger's head to see Terry's bewildered gaze travel between her and him. "Hermione, have you forgotten—"

"No I have not, and I am not defending him," she said, returning somewhat to her old, resolute, Gryffindor-to-the-moral-rescue voice. "But fighting like this now is bad, Terry—"

"Hermione, you've lost people too—"

"Yes but not to him," Hermione snapped back, and her voice fell immediately, taking on an imploring tone. "To… To people who were on the other side. Please, Terry—you have every right to be angry but just—"

It was all becoming too much. Granger had been messed up too bad—she was defending him. The mudblood girl that was tortured in his house was defending him.

"Out of my way, Granger."

She whipped around, eyes suddenly wide, concerned and terrified.

"Malfoy—"

"I said out of my way, you filthy mud—" he barked at her, but the rest of his sentence was drowned out by another furious yell from the still-murderous Ravenclaw, who probably thought that he owed it to Hermione to defend her honour or something. Hermione flinched at both of their sudden outbursts, a mixture of shock and hurt flashing briefly in her eyes, which only added another kick to Draco's already hurting stomach.

Mudblood. The insult had been literally carved into her by his deranged aunt. How could he forget.

Turning away quickly, he pushed past her and the rest of the crowd to limp his way down the corridor towards the common room.

"Malfoy, wait—"

He continued down the hallway carrying the last ounces of his dignity, ignoring the burning pain in his abdomen and Terry's ensuing threats following his exit.

The common room was quiet when he entered. The few occupants, younger students with fresh faces, stared at his bashed up face unashamedly, having undoubtedly heard the loud altercation in the hallway. He met their questioning, fearful gazes with a cold, hard glare of his own before weaving through the space and storming up the staircase to his dormitory.

He stopped abruptly in the doorway after bursting in—there, in the centre of the round room, stood another Slytherin that he barely recognized as someone from his year. Taller than he was, lanky, with brown hair and a chiselled face. He looked up from where he was bent over his trunk, and regarded Draco.

Heryntton… something Heryntton.

The Herynttons were not one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, but their status within the Wizarding world were just barely below that of the old pureblood-families. It was said that some ancestor of the Herynttons, a half-blood with some Muggle family fortune, made enough money in the the production of wizarding fineries to earn him entrance to the social circles of the wizarding aristocracy. Six generations later and their blood was purer than most others.

"Oh great, it's you," Heryntton spoke in a disinterested voice, and then furrowed his brows. "What happened to your face?"

Draco wanted to hex something.

"None of your business—and who the hell are you again?"

"Archie, short for Archibald, Heryntton."

Draco snorted. "Right."

"My Floo connection got delayed because some Muggle got attacked by one of the leftovers of your lot yesterday, so I got in this morning," he continued, turning away from Draco to continue with his unpacking. "It's just the two of us now, I suppose."

Draco really wanted to hex something. He stepped cautiously towards his bunk, two beds away from Heryntton's, and threw his robes onto his covers.

Apart from the Heryntton's family history, Draco knew next to nothing about his new roommate. He had never stood out, apart from being bullied during his first years for having a name like Archibald, and in his later years faded even more into the background as Draco heard rumours about him being disowned by his family. It is unsurprising that he'd be back. He had spent most of his time with students in the other houses. He had been one of the few Slytherin students who had fought alongside Slughorn during the war, and one of the fewer that survived. Most of Draco's other schoolmates had transferred—Pansy to Beauxbatons, and Theodore up north to Durmstrang—or were under house arrest or simply thrown into Azkaban along with their parents.

The great downfall of Salazar Slytherin's protégés.

"So," Heryntton began again, and Draco fought the urge to sock him so hard that he would never speak again. "Why aren't you locked up? Aren't you one of them lot with your old man? He did some pretty bloody shite during the war—"

Draco lost the fight against what little was left of his rationality after the long day. He stormed up to Heryntton, who had just enough time to react to the angry footsteps behind him and turn around, and hit him hard across the jaw with a left hook. Heryntton stumbled and only managed to stay upright by catching on to one of his bedposts.

"Don't you dare," Draco hissed through gritted teeth, his head hot and pounding. "Say a word against my family."

Heryntton merely touched a hand to the corner of his bleeding mouth and moved his jaw about to confirm that nothing was broken. He let out a bemused chuckle without meeting Draco's livid gaze.

"Of course, Malfoy."

000

Hermione willed the steady stream of steaming hot water to wash away all that had happened to her that day. It had already taken her a full half hour to try to get gunk out of her matted curls, even with the aid of several spells. She had since given up, and cleaned the rest of herself, turning the heat up to draw out the fatigue in her muscles that have plagued her the whole day.

If she stayed in her long enough, maybe the water would take away the clouds that surrounded her mind. Stupid, Malfoy had called her. She hated that she agreed with him. Her usually sharp mind had been taken over by an incessant buzzing of thoughts and images and voices and memories and being distracted by little things like how, just two week ago, she had uncovered a rotting, dismembered hand in Professor Flitwick's classroom, right by the collapsed windows—

By the time she stepped out in her bathrobe, her fingertips resembled prunes and her cheeks were flushed from the heat. She stood in front of the mirror, enchanted to prevent it from steaming up, and took the first good look at herself in a long time.

She was a mess. She could no longer deny it. Pulling back the folds of her bathrobe, she ran a wrinkly finger across her collarbones—they had never been this pronounced. She knew she had lost some weight, she didn't need to check to know that she would feel her ribs if she touched her torso, and find segments of her vertebrae easily if she touched her back. Her eyes had sported permanent dark circles for a long time now, having gotten minimal quality sleep over the past year.

She looked tired. She was tired. Too tired to focus. Too tired to be angry at Malfoy for being a dick. Too tired to miss Harry and Ron.

Finally, she turned her attention to the newest indication of her recent failures. Running her hand through the shortened locks on her left and the matted curls on her right, she fought back a fresh wave of tears and bit down on her trembling lower lip. She had never been this careless in any situation before. It was terrifying to realize how much she did not have a grip on things.

Hermione Granger. The brave one. The smart one. The logical one.

No longer.

Hermione looked at herself again in the mirror, and made a snap decision. Raising her wand, she moved it around her head while muttering Diffindo under her breath, focusing all her attention on aligning her wand tip with the proper locks of her dirtied, tangled hair.

Moments later, her long curls laid in messy, gunky heaps around her slippered feet. She took in deep, shuddering breaths and found her reflection looking back from the mirror with a small, shaky smile. It looked alright, her new short, pixie-cut, for a do-it-yourself job in the middle of the girl's bathroom. She'd clean up the mess later—for now, she reached up and ran her fingers through the soft, wet curls that laid plastered to her scalp. The sleeve of her bathrobe fell to her elbow, and her eyes briefly glanced over the still healing scar on her forearm before she focused on her reflection once again.

She looked good—more put together. She briefly thought about how everyone was going to react to her in the morning, and opened her mouth to laugh—or at least, her image in the mirror seemed to—but the cackle that resonated in the bathroom was not hers. Hermione clamped a hand over her mouth and froze.

She would know that sharp cackle anywhere. The kind of laugh that told you something was not right with the owner of the voice. That something more terrible than your worst nightmares was about to happen to you.

Hermione trembled violently, her gaze fixated on the mirror—her reflection's eyes widened, and from directly behind her, a dreaded, familiar witch stepped out, with her crazed hair and heavy-lidded eyes and a nightmarish grin upon her face.

"Ooo, what a pity, love, I had wanted to rip those pretty locks off your head myself…"

Hermione whipped around and felt a scream tear through her throat. Then the world went black, as a sharp pain shot from her head through her body.

A/N: I went to Universal Studios Orlando for the first time over Thanksgiving weekend and I basically had a near religious experience exploring Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley and now I have this renewed fervour to WRITE THIS SHIT and 3 other fic ideas that I have bu and I have 30 pages of academic writing to do in the next week or so, so PLEASE BEAR WITH ME, the next chapter may only come in two weeks or so, depending on how much I procrastinate my academic papers :P Please let me know what you think about this chapter, it will start getting more interesting from here! xoxo