By the time the others had returned to the school, their trunks fatter with presents and their middles rounder from Christmas cakes and cookies, Hermione had given up finding a plan that would work.

She couldn't make herself ugly enough to repel him, for she had already once tried not showering for days to no avail. She could not carry out an Unforgivable curse on someone else, no matter how vile and well-deserved. She couldn't use her wand to protect herself in other ways without being expelled from school, and then, as she could tell no one what she had so desperately needed to protect herself from with the magic, she would simply be his on a permanent basis. She thought about running away but didn't know where she could go, and she had even dared to ask Flitwick (who had never shown much concern and seemed safest) about summer study programs, only to find out that no wizarding schools offered them.

Many other options had sprung to her mind in the preceding weeks, but none offered any more promise. Half the year was over, and she knew the other half could pass just as quickly. She doubted it would be enough time to find the idea she needed, if it even existed, and since she didn't have the guts to kill herself, returning to him was all she had left. Still, she was determined not to do it, even if it meant plying herself with ale at the end-of-term-feast until she found the guts.

Pushing out these thoughts, she squeezed in between Harry and Ron at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall and looked over the breakfast fare. Picking a piece of toast and a boiled egg for her plate, she settled Magical Maladies: An Advanced Herbologist's Guide down beside her and began to flip through the pages, pausing to acknowledge her friends' greetings and catching snippets of the conversation around her.

Today was the Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, and although it was assumed to be an easy win, tension was high. Their team had only had a close win with Slytherin, and had lost to Ravenclaw when one of their beaters had rendered Harry temporarily unconscious. In the pouring rain, she had mistaken his head, rising up to look for the snitch, as a bludger, and she had hit it accordingly.

Now, they needed to win by at least eighty points to even their standing for the cup, and red-and-gold-clothed players and fans alike were wearing their nerves on their sleeves.

Hermione, although not the biggest Quidditch enthusiast, felt more relaxed to see that she also was not the lone anxious-looking face at breakfast, at least not this morning. If it could give her that much of a respite all the time, she thought, she'd consider taking the sport up. As it was though, the game and the after party would at least fill up their day, and the latter might even give her time to sneak away unnoticed to her rarely-empty dorm room for a sorely needed nap.

As Hermione finished her toast and placed her napkin over her half-eaten egg, the boys grew more restless and began sharing funny stories, then bawdy jokes, to let off some steam.

She tuned most of them out, and instead tried to focus on the words in her text. Soon however, their laughter grew so loud that even she could not concentrate, and she bookmarked the page with a picture of a Shrivelfig before resigning to find out what was going on.

Ron was groaning and saying that he had heard whatever joke was just told at least a hundred times, to the frustrated assent of the others gathered.

Seamus, who was red in the face and must have been the teller, countered with, "Oy, but I bet you haven't 'eard this one. Me mum'd kill me if she knew I was repeatin' it. S'a limerick I read in one of me dad's books."

"Right then," Harry laughed, "Out with it!" And to punctuate the point, Dean Thomas gave his friend a hard thump on the back.

"Right then, right," Seamus muttered, taking a swig of his pumpkin juice and loudly clearly his throat:

"There once was a man with the Clap,

whose neighbor had quite a big trap.

She told the whole town,

so he tied the bitch down,

and he raped her, during her nap."

As he finished and the words sunk in, Hermione could no longer hear the sounds around her as clearly. She could not tell which boys were laughing so hard that they spit out bits of their food and which boys were simply staring with their mouths open, stunned at his poor taste.

Hermione could only sit there, staring at her plate, forcing herself to shut off molecule by molecule, to steel her breathing and not react. It became a mantra in her head, as she glared at her napkin with enough intensity to burn a hole clear through it. Don't react; react and they'll know. Don't react; react and they'll know.

Seconds may have passed or minutes, before all had recovered and other jokes were started. It gave Hermione the segue she needed, to stand as calmly as she could and, with painstaking care to control the rising bile in her throat, tell Ron and Harry that she had just remembered a mistake she had made in her Ancient Runes homework.

With as few additional words as possible, she assured them that, yes, she would quickly come down to the pitch to watch the game, and no, it couldn't wait because she might forget. Then, she carefully made her way out of the Great Hall, sprinting to the girls' lavatory on the first floor as soon as she was sure she was out of view of the others.

Flushing what would have been her breakfast had she been able to digest it, Hermione forced herself over to the sinks where she could splash cold water on her face. She could no longer hear any sounds from the halls and assumed that the rest of the school had begun making their way out to find good seats for the match.

Assured she would not now be bothered, she allowed herself to slide down the cold stone wall onto the matching floor. There, she brought her knees up to her chest, resting her head in them, barely even noticing the tears that had begun once more.

Was this to be her life?, she wondered. Hiding from her friends and crying in public toilets? Maybe she was wrong. Maybe ale wasn't what she needed to give her the guts, only Seamus' words. Not that she was angry with him. How could he have known that her life had been reduced to nothing more than a punchline?

Still, it was only that, and it was time she gave more serious consideration to its ending.