"If you're here to talk about Professor Snape, I'll punch you in your face again." Hermione spoke to Draco though she didn't look up from her work. She was seated at Hagrid's desk in the Care of Magical Creatures classroom, grading the last set of papers turned in by the third year students before the weekend started. Draco pressed his lips together and pulled out a chair of a nearby desk and sat down quietly. He was going to start off by telling her to give Severus another chance, but had to push that thought from his mind with her strict orders. He didn't like the first punch she had given him, and didn't fancy another.
"Honestly, you think these students would be able to tell the difference between a flying horse and Pegasus by now." Hermione was pulling at her hair and pushed the papers away from her, dropping her quill on the desk in frustration.
"Maybe Hagrid will locate Pegasus and bring her in." Draco mused. Hermione glared at him.
"Him." She said. Draco raised an eyebrow.
"Pegasus is a he, not a she, and it would do well to brush up on your Greek mythology." Again, Draco raised his eyebrow. Hermione sighed, reached for the papers she had pushed away and returned to grading.
"The last known whereabouts of Pegasus is in the sky, the constellation. Even if he wanted to, Hagrid could never reach that far to bring him down."
"I'm sure you could find a way." Draco teased. Hermione looked up and this time grinned at him. He flashed a smile back, crossed an ankle over a knee and bounced his foot. His attention was drawn to the Moon Frog cage where the frogs had nestled together in one corner, forming a pile that looked more like stacked stones than anything. He went over to them, noticing that one was missing and separated all of them to count them for himself.
"'Mione?" He asked, looking over his shoulder. "You're missing a frog."
"One of them was sick, we contained it alone on the table over there." She lifted her hand just enough to point in the general direction of the cage. Draco looked at it, not seeing the frog in it, and stepped closer to confirm. There was no frog in the cage.
"He's...he's not in here." Draco said.
Those words were enough to get Hermione out of her chair and away from her grading. Missing a frog was a bad thing, and she did not want to be chasing another frog down knowing what she went through last time. She joined Draco at his side and glanced in the cage, then ran over to the other cage, pointing her finger at each one twice over to make sure their count was right, and then counting as she kept a finger on each frog to make sure she just wasn't counting wrong. Every way she did it, the count remained at four.
"Oh no." She gasped. Draco looked to her and saw she had turned pale.
"This isn't good." She said and quickly ran out the door, Draco once again following after her.
Hermione had ran to Hagrid's hut just a short, up-hill distance away and rapidly knocked at his door. Within seconds, and just as Draco had caught up, panting, Hagrid answered. His large, red eyes were the first thing noticeable, and as he looked at Draco, and then at Hermione, he broke down into heaving sobs.
"He's dead." He cried. "I though' tha' maybe he was too cold an' brought 'im inside to the fire." Hagrid stepped aside, allowing Hermione and Draco to enter.
"It didn' help."
Hermione raced to the fireplace and saw on the hearth, placed upon a fuzzy towel, the body of the fifth Moon Frog. It's powdery sparkle had faded away. It didn't glisten as it should have being so close to the flames. It's eyes were closed. She turned slowly, seeing Hagrid had sat in a chair, Draco standing next to him looking worriedly better him and Hermione. Hermione approached him, trying not to cry herself, then immediately threw herself to hug the giant.
"I'm so sorry, Hagrid." She said. "I'm so sorry."
"If I only knew how to care for a sick Moon Frog, I could've helped 'im." Hagrid let out a few deep hiccups. "I could have saved 'im."
Hagrid sobbed again. Hermione looked at Draco whose forehead was burrowed so deeply together, the creases made aged him by five years. Hermione pouted, hating to see her friend in such agony, then it dawned on her. She stood upright and grabbed Draco's arm.
"Hagrid, I have an idea." She said. Draco had to only take a moment before that idea also dawned on him. She didn't need to pull him hard before he was running beside her to the castle. By the time they reached the potions classroom, a plan had been formed. Draco was to take the box used for catching spirits directly to Hagrid's while Hermione remained behind to get Color Mortis warmed up and ready. Though being in the potions classroom working on a potion meant for Severus had put her on edge, knowing she was working on it to help a friend was the drive that kept her from turning back or giving up. She had no idea if the Resurrection Stone would even have an effect at all, if it even worked after a third of the Hallows had been destroyed, but she could only hope.
She feared destruction as she watched the Color Mortis potion fight to stay inside the container she had placed it in for storage, it had grown thick and clung to the sides as if reluctant to be of any use, and it smacked into the cauldron only after Hermione had given the container a good shake. It jiggled, sitting there looking like old putty, taking a while to melt itself into liquid form after Hermione had heated a small fire underneath, and coated her stirring rod with a thick, blue gummy substance as she tried stirring. It took the better part of an hour before the potion had resumed its normal form, and she cast a quick protection spell around it to keep both the fire under, and the potion inside of the cauldron before she carried it out of the castle and down the hill to Hagrid's hut. Draco held the box out to her the minute she stepped through the door, Hagrid watching them carefully from his table. He had only heard of the potion through Hermione, had never seen it, only having caught Severus in the flesh during a rare moment when he'd walk around the castle grounds from afar.
Hermione took the box from Draco as soon as she freed her hands from the cauldron-which was placed on the table. When Draco removed the Stone from his pocket, an audible gasp was heard from Hagrid, his jaw working to form words, but nothing came out. Hermione raised an eyebrow at him, holding it out to him.
"Turn it in your hand three times." She said, knowing from her research that in doing so, it should bring back the ghost of the chosen loved one. "Think of the frog and turn it three times over, then drop it into the potion."
"Is that how it's done?" Draco asked. Hermione furrowed her brow at him before shrugging. She hadn't a clue, actually. Seeing as this had never been done before, the only way to find out if it would work was to try. Trial and error was the only way, and she looked back to Hagrid who had closed his eyes tightly in concentration. His thick fingers held the rock that looked so tiny within them, and he began to turn it. After the third turn, he opened his eyes, gave one last longing glance at the stone and let it fall into the bright blue liquid that almost glowed in Hagrid's dimly lit cabin. The liquid seemed to swallow the rock, folding it under the surface quickly and hiding it deep within the cauldrons belly. Hermione held the box over the cauldron and opened it just enough to allow whatever had been inside to fall out, expecting to hear a splash of some kind, or a plopping noise when the spirit had been dumped in.
It didn't happen. There was no sound, and for that matter, no spirit to come out of the box. The spirit of the Moon Frog had evaded capture. There was a sudden drop in temperature as they took a moment to think of what went wrong. Of course Hermione knew there was a slim chance it would work at all, it was worth a try, and she had immersed herself into believing that it would happen immediately. She wanted to so badly see the small, glimmering body of the Moon Frog climb from the liquid, up the stirring rod and into the palm of her hand, but nothing of the sort had happened. She even would have settled to have captured one of Hagrid's many other deceased pets ending up alive again, something that would have made the tears and sweat that went into the potion worth it.
"I'm..." Hermione bit her lips together and shook her head, placing the box down gently beside the cauldron. "...I'm sorry, Hagrid." She said in a whisper before she stepped away and left, wanting to get far away from the hope she let build. There was still a lot of experimenting to be done, she was aware of this, but she had hoped for a miracle.
She didn't get far, managing to take only a few steps away from Hagrid's hut before she smacked into Severus. He looked down his crooked nose at her, not with scorn, but with grief. Hermione wanted nothing more than to be alone, but he blocked her path, pleading with her to stay.
