Author's Note: I'm a terrible person, and should not be trusted with nice things. I am the reason we can't have nice things. So, I'm back. It's been forever… I just read through everything, and am just as nervous as the first time about writing. But I'm picking the mantle back up. I won't make excuses- I shouldn't have been absent for so long without saying anything. But to be honest I've been in a terrible place during my time away, and I've just recently come out the other side. Mature audiences only for my life, honestly. Death, pain, poverty, all the makings of an excellent TV drama.

Edit: Working on some formatting issues, hopefully this go around it works...

Disclaimer: I literally own nothing. Check with my bank.

Act VII

In which, Hermione Granger contemplates homicide.

Hermione was certain that her eyelashes were welded to her cheeks. She struggled to open them, cursing fluently at her alarm spell. She could see it flashing from behind her eyelids, and hear it chirping merrily at her.

"Wake up! It's a beautiful day outside, and I'm sure the view will be lovely from your classroom while you enrich the lives and minds of the impressionable youth!"

Hermione growled, almost ferally, as her eyes popped open and she withdrew her wand from underneath her pillow and waved it roughly in the direction of the far wall, cancelling the spell as it began a cheerful monologue on the benefits of waking up with plenty of time to eat the most important meal of the day. Blinking blearily, she rubbed the heels of her palms viciously into her eyeballs as she sat up.

"I didn't picture you as the sort to wake up to something so… upbeat. Here and I thought you only rise from your coffin encased in the soil of your homeland to the tolling of many great bells at midnight, with the curses of the oldest gods rumbling throughout your chambers."

She responded with, "No one ever thinks to change those alarm spel-," before she grasped what was going on.

Pausing with her palms to her eyes, Hermione bared her teeth and promptly rolled herself out of her bed, a guttural moan sharply escaping as her bad leg hit the cold floor. She whipped her wand towards the sound of the voice, and came face to face across the room with Riddle hovering almost primly on top of her dresser, the mirror making his glow seem exponentially brighter in the dim room.

"And just what exactly do you think you are doing in my quarters," Hermione hissed, fury dropping her voice an octave lower.

"Did you know that your tangles have tangles? I've never seen anything quite like it."

"RIDDLE!" Her voice rose to a crescendo, rising even higher at the end of the word.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite hear you. I think some dogs at that Hagrid," the name rolled off of his tongue with distaste, "fellows hut might have been able to, though."

"How did you even get in here?" Shrill did not quite describe the decibels she was achieving.

"Your wards are terribly complex, but… predictable," Riddle replied as he wafted over to her bookcase, filled to the brim with books, leaving very little space for her sparse amounts of knick knacks and photos, "Really, it's your fault. You've warded me from your classroom so much that I know exactly how you tend to layer your enchantments. A partial overlap of two foundation spells, with a tight weave of protections surrounding, and sealed with gusto."

Hermione stared wide- but bleary- eyed at the ghost, as he picked up a photo of a younger version of her smiling brightly between her two best friends, the tiny version of her continuously wrapping her arms around the boys and squeezing them tightly as she grinned.

"But… why?" Her voice was just a bewildered whisper.

Tom turned his eyes to her sharply, setting down her picture with a quiet click. He mulishly looked away, running his fingers over, and occasionally through, tiny knick knacks and photos. He finally turned towards her, floating closer so slowly as to almost be imperceptible.

"Do you have any idea…" here, he paused, before his brows drew closer together and his murky light dimmed in displeasure, "Have you ever been trapped? Had someone else solely responsible for where you can go, how far you can explore? Someone you don't even like? Days turn to weeks, weeks turn to months, and you don't sleep. You don't eat. There is nothing to break apart minutes from hours, and in the wee hours of the night, you're stuck in…. a hallway."

Brown eyes met with silvery black, clashed, and then looked away.

"I'll leave some books, parchment and quills out there while I sleep, but stay out of my quarters, Riddle. That's too far. If you'll recall, I don't just dislike you, I hate what you represent. And I'm stuck with you, too," she replied in a voice that only just barely wavered.

"I'm not some dog to be left scraps at night," he growled out, his voice so low it was almost sibilant.

"Just get out so I can change," Hermione uttered on a long-suffering sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose as she grabbed her cane from where it was propped near her bed and began limping to the en suite bathroom.

Riddle faded from view, so slowly it was almost mutinous, as he drifted towards the door.

So it was something of a surprise when a disembodied voice remarked with distaste that her underwear would inspire nuns to sainthood, could evoke religious praise from the celibate monks of Tibet, would shame even Artemis, the virgin huntress, herself at how distinctly impure she was in comparison to such matronly undergarments.

"RIDDLE! I will eviscerate you and scatter your mince meat across the vast expanse of the dead sea if you do not get out of here this instant!"

The students wondered that day at the dark chuckles coming from no one, and nowhere, in the Transfiguration hallway that morning.


"I think you should take Minerva's offer, Hermione."

Hermione arched a brow, and paused with a fork full of egg halfway to her mouth.

"Oh, dear. This much be an intervention if you're deigning to use my given name, Severus," she remarked rather drily.

"We're four weeks into the term, and the students are beginning to whisper about the Mad Eye Moody incident. How no one took it seriously until it was too late, and 'you know how oddly Professor Granger has been acting,'."

"I think it's a bit premature to think that I've been locked in a trunk, and my life taken over by a polyjuiced imposter. I mean, really. What sort of imaginations do these children have?"

"The sort that was raised by war veterans."

Sighing, she gave up on breakfast as a lost cause and stared moodily out at the students, steepling her fingers in front of her mouth with her elbows braced on the table. When she caught the eyes of some of the students, they gulped and looked away quickly.

"It's just the lack of pain potions, Severus. I'll acclimate to the pain, and the withdrawals… will fade with time. I've come this far, they can't last much longer, right?"

She pushed her plate away, as if her speaking of the matter had brought the intermittent nausea to the surface at her beck and call, with a cool sweat popping on her forehead.

Severus tapped a finger on his upper lip, keeping his expression bland as he leaned back in his seat, ignoring his own breakfast in favor of scrutinizing her. Finally, he murmurred quietly, so as not to be overheard, "You know as well as I that magical addiction is brutal. You can't properly kick the habit without detox potions, which I'm not willing to risk having even more unexpected side effects. You need bed rest, and a calm environment. And not a classroom where you can accuse your sixth years of stealing your quill when it was tucked behind your ear and coloring your hair gold."

"You heard about that? Not one of my best moments, I admit."

"And then… there is the trouble of Tom Riddle."

The ghost faded into view between them on cue, arching an eyebrow at the Potions professor.

"He does not belong in a classroom, where he can disrupt the learning environment. And your nerves are already…. Fragile, for lack of a better word, enough, without having to keep him in check, and your students, while teaching, and constantly expending magic you truly cannot afford to use whilst healing."

"I can't just leave him in the corridor, not anymore! If I dare leave him a book, he destroys it in a fit after he's read it! He terrorizes students on their way to class!"

"Why do you both insist on referring to me as though I am a familiar of some sort?" Tom scowled as he ground this out.

"Just take him on walks during free periods to break up his day and keep him entertained so you can bloody well teach if you insist on that rather foolhardy endeavor?"

"Oh, yes, Snape, I'm the bleeding poster child for walking as recreation," she drawled, leaning forward to hiss, "If I enjoyed walks anymore, I'd get a fucking pet."

"I am not a dog!" The ghost sharply interjected in his otherwordly voice.

"Will you both just shut-," Hermione realized several things at once. She was yelling. She was standing up. And every eye in the Great Hall was on her. "the front door and leave me the French alone so I can get some frilling rest," she finished lamely. But at least more quietly.

Hermione Granger had not blushed since she was twenty-two.

Imagine how peeved she was that her cheeks were brighter than freshly ripe apples as she stalked from the hall.


"I think I'll take you up on that offer for rest, Minerva. I'm just… not getting along very well, right now," Hermione whispered from where she was slumped in achair in the Headmistress' office, "The seventh years think I've lost my head entirely. Some of them even flinch when I'm perfectly fine and ask them a reasonable question."

"It's for the best, Hermione. I'll tell them you've taken medical leave, let you recollect yourself."

"For the best, entirely," said the smirking ghost, barely visible in a shaft of sunlight.


"Just… don't touch anything," Hermione muttered from where she sat at her desk, eyeballing Riddle through the door that led from her study to her private quarters.

"'Except the books, parchment and quills, and the other, neutral objects which we have previously discussed,'" Tom quoted right back, though he may have made it sound more vicious than she did.

Or perhaps he made it sound nicer than it came from her. It was hard to recall, with the mood swings.

Three days into quarantine for the safety of the precious little snowflakes, and besides the occasional fit of paranoia, claustrophobia, swearing, inarticulate fury at the unfairness of it all, and unbearable pain, she was feeling minutely more relaxed. Without the added pressure of making sure she met the Ministry mandated minimum curriculum, or hurting anyones feelings, she even managed to brush her hair every day. Sometimes it was evening before she remembered, but the tangles were kept out on a fairly regular basis. Why, it almost resembled real people curls at the moment, albeit with more volume than was strictly necessary.

"And stay out while I'm sleeping," she reminded him firmly, looking up from her parchment and pausing her hand from where it scrawled out runes, "When I sleep, you may have the study."

"That should be about an hour a day," he remarked snidely.

"Never you mind my sleep habits," she rebuked, frowning as she touched a finger to the hollowed out dark circles beneath her eyes unconsciously, "I hardly think the undead have any place telling me what's what about proper bedti- what's this?"

Looking to her window curiously, she saw a tiny black owl pecking at one of the panes.

"An owl at this hour of the night?" She arched an eyebrow, before looking quizzical, "At least, I think it's a poor hour of the night."

A quick tempus reassured her it was an entirely improper time of night for owling.

Flicking her wand at the window, the owl flew in and dropped the parchment while flying over Hermione, before soaring back out into the night. The temporarily replaced Transfiguration Mistress promptly began extricating the pieces of parchment to the tune of, 'fucking owls with no Gods given sense of any fucking manners or fuck all die in a fire you fucking fucker fuck,' quietly, but increasingly more ferocious before she got the parchment unrolled, the window shut, and sat before the fire in her quarters to read.

Riddle, who was busy playing her enchanted chess set- it was sentient enough to provide a multitude of challenging games in its very own manner of artificial, magically enhanced intelligence- glanced up, only to watch as Hermione's eyebrows climbed higher and higher until they were practically in her hairline.

He set down the pawn he was about to move, and drifted closer. He paused and frowned when she held her hand up, as if to stop him from further progress. He did, but scowled magnificently when he realized he had stopped at her gesture. He would have continued further, but her next action stopped him dead in his tracks.

She started laughing.

Loud, echoing belly laughter, deep from her gut and doubling her over, the parchment falling from her limp hands as she chortled. Ten minutes in, as she was just beginning to calm down, he swept over in an icy gust and picked up the letter with an arched eyebrow at her, and began to read.

Mudblood,

Filth like you has no place teaching our children. Hogwarts is no home for abominations to nature. With the rise of a new order, we're going to eradicate your kind from all of the wizarding world, guarantee the pure bloodlines never risk being sullied by a mudbloods presence in the hallowed halls of wizarding institution. Do you remember Alecto Carrow? Your severing hex ended her life. I watched her die on the battlefield. And you cut down many others on that day. I will make that little hex that mangled your leg seem like a swat from a kitten. I will paint the stones of Hogwarts with your filthy blood, and then slaughter your little mudblood lambs as you gasp your last dying breath.

Signed,

A very old friend

"Who on earth would write such a thing?" Tom uttered with a scowl of distaste.

Hermione's eyes got wide, and she covered her mouth. But it happened. The dreaded chuckle snort. Which undid her entirely. She slid bonelessly half out of her chair, shrieking with the maniacal laughter of the cheerfully deranged. When she finally quieted again, all she could do was gasp out,

"Fucking Frygg's frigid snatch, whatever will Harry think when I tell him Lord Voldemort doesn't approve of my fan mail."


Final Author's Note: Sorry if it feels a bit disjointed, I'm still stretching out the ol' writin' muscles. Next chapter is already in progress, hopefully I can smooth out my story telling soon. Also, FanFiction seems to be taking out my fancy schmancy break up the story symbols, and I'm having a hell of a time getting any method of breaking up the sections to stick. If you read the first incarnation uploaded of this chapter, I apologize for how rambling it must have been with no space to signify a jump in tangent for me. It doesn't like asterisks, alt-254, nothin'.