Disclaimer – Everything you recognise belongs to JKR. All the rest is simply me playing in her sandbox.

-oOoOo-

Hermione's Book Nook

Chapter 21

As Harry, Hermione and Neville rounded a corridor on the fourth floor later that day, they came upon a sight that froze two of them in their tracks.

This particular corridor that lead to the Transfiguration classroom was lined with nearly a dozen suits of armour. Normally, they, along with the hundreds of others dotted throughout the castle, were a dull silver, their armour long since past its prime.

Filch, whose job it was to keep the castle clean, was forever disparaging the effects of having hundreds of children constantly befouling his castle. One of Filch's favourite tasks when students were assigned to him for detention was to have them cleaning the castle by hand. Indeed, more than once since they'd been at Hogwarts, the three Gryffindors had heard their fellow students bemoaning having had to polish the suits of armour.

But never had they looked like this. Harry doubted that the armour had ever looked this good even when it had been brand new. Now, almost every suit along this particular corridor shone with a brilliance that was almost blinding. Shields and weapons gleamed, sparkles of light shone off of helmets and breastplates. And it wasn't just the armour that was looking cleaner either. Cobwebs and the dust of decades had been scoured away leaving the corridor looking like something that actually invited people to walk down it.

As amazing as that scene was though, it wasn't what brought Harry and Hermione up short. No, that honour was held by the three small creatures that stood at the far end of the hall. All had large, bat-like ears, huge protruding eyes and were identically dressed in a white toga the size of a bath towel.

As they watched, one of the three snapped her fingers causing years' worth of grime to instantly disappear from the last of the suits of armour. A soft gasp escaped Hermione and the three small creatures turned, their eyes widening before, with a soft pop, they disappeared.

"What …what were they?" Hermione asked quietly, as though the creatures could hear her.

"House elves," Neville replied.

Harry nodded in agreement. "They looked just like Dobby, that weird house elf who started all of my troubles over the summer, except cleaner. And free of injuries."

"Where'd they come from?" Hermione asked.

Neville shrugged. "They're always around the castle. It's just that we don't see them. That's part of being a good elf."

"Are there many here?" Hermione asked, still staring at the spot where she'd last seen the elves.

"Hundreds, I reckon," Neville replied. "Hogwarts is supposed to have the largest number of house elves in Britain."

"Please tell me that they get paid for the work that they do?" Hermione pleaded.

Neville looked at her as though she'd just grown a second head.

"Of course they don't! You don't pay house elves and I'd say that they'd be insulted if you tried to pay them," Neville replied.

Seeing Hermione spluttering, Harry made a snap decision. "Straight after class, I'm sending a message to Mick. I think we should learn about House Elves this Sunday."

-oOoOo-

As Hermione put down the book that she'd been reading, Founding Fathers: The Life and Times of the Hogwarts Four, she looked around the table at her study group. The expressions around the table were almost as varied as the number of people who were there.

Some appeared shocked, others overwhelmed by the amount of information that she'd just read out. The Ravenclaws among the group primarily appeared contemplative, although one or two had their heads lowered over the notes that they'd been taking. And then there was Zacharias Smith who appeared to have fallen asleep.

"That's a lot of information," Su Li stated, looking up from her parchment, "definitely a lot more than I've ever seen or read about him before."

"Should we compare notes?" Lisa asked.

"Okay," Padma began. "Salazar Slytherin grew up in the fen area of England."

"Where's that?" Ernie asked.

"Norfolk, Lincolnshire, that sort of area," Terry replied.

"He met up with Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff and Rowena Ravenclaw some time or other and then the four of them established Hogwarts at an abandoned castle here. They used their magic to enlarge it and enhance it and hide it away," Padma continued.

"The four of them worked well together for a couple of decades before there was a big fight between Slytherin and Gryffindor, but no one knows why, before Slythering left and completely disappeared," Terry summarised. "Most likely to somewhere in Eastern Europe."

"He excelled in potions and the mind arts," Lisa stated. "Not to mention what we'd now consider the Dark Arts."

"And he was a parselmouth," Hermione intoned.

"What is that anyway? Parselmouth?" Neville asked.

"He could talk to snakes," Susan replied darkly.

"Oh, could he? I can do that," Harry commented airily, looking up from his own notes.

The expressions on the majority of the faces that surrounded him caused sweat to break out in the middle of his back and on the palms of each hand.

"What?" he asked cautiously.

"You can talk to snakes, Harry?" Susan asked.

"Yeah," he replied slowly. "I only found out a bit over a year ago. I accidentally set a snake on my cousin once when we were at the zoo."

"That's not good, Harry," Hermione stated. "Being a parselmouth is a very big deal. Only Dark Lords have ever had that ability."

Suddenly, Harry's mouth dried up. His mind whirled as he tried to process not only Hermione's statement, but also the way that everyone was now looking at him. He didn't feel like a Dark Lord. He didn't feel dark at all. Not that he knew what that would feel like.

"I'm not … I'm not going to go dark, am I?" he asked nervously.

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Hermione declared, staring around the table.

"Hermione's right," Hannah said into the sudden silence. "It's just Harry. We know him. He'd not the type of guy to go dark. He got rid of You-Know-Who for Merlin's sake. If we just keep this information to ourselves, then it won't matter. Alright?"

Slowly, one by one, those around the table nodded but Harry still noticed the furtive glances that he was being shot. And every single one of them looked nervous at the sight of him in amongst their midst.

Unsurprisingly, at least to Harry, the 'Puffs and the 'Claws found excuses to leave very soon afterwards. Dropping his head to keep the pained expression that he knew that he was wearing out of Hermione and Neville's sight, Harry packed his own bag up, excused himself and rushed out of the library.

-oOoOo-

Over the next days, Harry made a point to distance himself from those he normally hung out with. Once or twice he thought he saw Hermione trying to race after him, but after over a year in the castle, his knowledge of the hidden passageways was good enough to aid him in slipping away from any attempt at pursuit.

In classes or in the Great Hall for meals, Harry continuously saw mistrustful looks directed at him from all those that he'd once spent time studying with in the library. Whether these were real or imaginary didn't matter. He saw them and, seeing them, his thoughts on how the others saw him diminished until he was left with only one course of action: run. Run and hide.

In every waking moment, in every unconscious moment, Harry became fixated on snakes. The sudden rush of water in the bathroom reminded him of the hiss of snakes. Even his eyes began seeing snakes everywhere he went – on the shield of a suit of armour on the fifth floor; etched onto a wall sconce on the third floor; hidden within a tapestry on the seventh floor.

Even here, in the one place that he'd always found refuge within at Hogwarts had begun to mock him.

Frustrated at the looks that he'd been running from, Harry'd slipped into the tiny cupboard under the stairs to Gryffindor Tower and flung his bag into the far wall. Of course, seconds later, his brain caught up with what he'd done, sending him striding the half dozen steps across the cupboard and dropping him to his knees to survey the damage. Thankfully, this time at least, none of his ink bottles had smashed against the stone wall.

It was as he was hunched over on his knees that he saw it. There, close to the wall, half hidden behind the coil of rope that he usually used as a seat, was a tiny snake carved into the very bottom stone, right beside the floor. With a heave, he shoved the rope away before dropping to his belly, the mess of his bag long since forgotten.

Ever so slowly, he traced the outline of the coiled snake with one finger. Surprisingly, he felt every raised ridge and bump. As he looked closer, the eye of the snake seemed to stare right back at him. It was almost hypnotising and it was only with a massive effort that he was able to tear his gaze away and shake the cloud-like feeling away.

Looking back, Harry continued to trace the snake with a careful finger, wondering why it was there. That, of course, led his thoughts to the other snake designs that he'd thought that he'd seen in the last couple of days. Having confirmed one, then, it stood to reason that the others had might actually have been real as well.

The answer to the mystery of who could have carved them all was fairly obvious: a Slytherin. But as his mind toyed with the idea, Harry began to wonder whether it had actually been a Slytherin or the Slytherin.

For the longest time, he chewed on his inner cheek before making up his mind. This was something that he needed a second opinion on. It was time to bite the hippogriff's tail and show Hermione what he'd found.

-oOoOo-

Not for the first time, Hermione wondered what in the world she was still doing there.

"And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I defeated the Bandon Banshee and saved the people of Surat Thani Province in Thailand," Professor Lockhart smiled broadly as he twirled slightly, allowing his cape to flare out in a dramatic sort of way. "Please retake your seat, Mister Malfoy."

For a fraction of a second, Hermione felt sorry for the blonde git. Ever since Harry had ditched Defense Against the Dark Arts, Lockhart had been forcing Malfoy out to the front of the class to reenact various scenes from his books. So far, Malfoy had been forced to portray a werewolf, a yeti, a ghoul and now a banshee, complete with appropriate sound effects, of course.

"Kindly open your book Break with a Banshee to page seventy-two and read over the wand movement and incantation that I used, just as I demonstrated with young Mister Malfoy," Lockhart instructed.

Moving on pure instinct, Hermione opened the appropriate book, her eyes beginning to skim along the words that she already knew by heart.

Beside her, Lavender and Pavarti gave her identical exasperated looks. She knew what they were saying. What they were probably screaming at her from inside their minds. It was the same thing that the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw girls had been wondering for the past few weeks: how much longer was she going to put up with this idiot of a professor.

Glancing around the classroom at Ron and the Slytherins, Hermione saw identical looks of loathing on all the faces there. Well, perhaps not on Crabbe and Goyle's faces. The two of them would probably still be thinking Lockhart was a good teacher ten years from now.

Of all the Slytherins, it was Daphne Greengrass, Tracey Davis and Fiona Spinks who she felt most sorry for. The three girls seemed almost okay as far as Slytherins went. They'd never mocked her or abused her or called her names or put her down simply because she was muggle-born. But because of their Houses, they were forced into the role of the 'enemy', the 'hated ones'.

And even when she finally gave in and admitted that Harry was right all along and Lockhart was the worst teacher that they'd ever had, the three girls would be left here with Malfoy and his cronies. Oh, and Ron, of course. There was no way that he was going to even get a chance to switch to Harry's DADA tute class, not with all the detentions that he still had to serve.

Realising that she'd just reread the same complete drivel for the third time in a row, she heaved a massive sigh. There was simply no getting around it. There was absolutely no chance that she learn anything here. And worse still was hearing the excited chatter between the boys in the common room on Tuesday and Thursday nights. What Professor Lupin had them doing sounded not only useful and important, but fun.

Closing her eyes in defeat, Hermione made her decision. This was not going to be fun. She was always right. Always. But her education was more important than her pride. Wasn't it? Snapping her eyes open, she slammed her book shut.

Beside her, excited eyes looked to her for confirmation. If she was going to switch to Harry's class, then they knew that they, too, could as well. It'd been an unspoken decision amongst the girls from all three Houses that Hermione hadn't even realised at first. Not one of them was going to go to Harry's class before her.

After giving her two fellow Gryffindor girls a nod, and receiving a squeal of glee in return from Lavender, the three girls stood up.

"Yes, Miss Granger? Is there something that I can help you with?" Professor Lockhart asked, a dashing smile upon his face.

Firmly looking over the lilac-coloured shoulder of the professor to avoid that insidious smile, Hermione squared her shoulders.

"Yes, Professor," she stated firmly. "I'm sorry, but I feel that I have to withdraw from your class."

Not knowing what else to say, she promptly hefted her bag and made for the door.

"Us, too, Professor," Lavender and Pavarti declared, following along behind.

On her way to the door, Hermione's eyes couldn't help but meet those of three of the Slytherin girls. Fiona's face was nearly covered by her short brown bob as a sigh of resignation escaped her. Tracey's anguished eyes met hers for a fraction of a second before she looked skywards, her black hair falling behind her a wave. The blonde Daphne was the only one to meet her gaze for any length of time. Her icy blue eyes were hard, her face emotionless as she watched the three Gryffindor girls walk past.

Yanking open the door in her exasperation, Hermione was pulled up short at the startled visage of the short, black haired boy leaning against the far wall.

"Hermione?" Harry asked, clearly confused to see her storming out of the classroom. Then, at the appearance of the other two, "Lavender? Pavarti? Is everything okay?"

Hermione found herself pulled up short by Harry's appearance. When she'd first made her decision, her aim had been to go straight to find her friend and to ask for his forgiveness and then to beg a place in his DADA class. Seeing him standing there, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, though, sent her words flying straight out of her head.

A poke in her side brought her attention back to the here and now.

"Ask him Hermione," Lavender demanded.

Hermione sighed. "Alright already. Harry. You were right. Lockhart's a useless teacher and we're never going to learn anything from him. All we're doing is listening to him prattle on about stories that I'm starting to find very hard to believe."

"Hurry up," Lavender insisted when she petered out.

"Harry, can I join you and Professor Lupin in your Defence Against the Dark Arts classes?" she finally forced out in one massive rush.

Harry's grin nearly split his face. "Sure, Hermione. You only had to ask."

"Us, too, Harry?" Pavarti and Lavender immediately chorused.

"Yep, there's still a few spots left," Harry agreed.

"Thanks, Harry," the two girls smiled before heading off in the direction of Gryffindor Tower.

Suddenly Hermione's brain caught up with what had been bugging her from the instant that she'd seen the bespectacled boy outside the classroom.

"Harry? What are you doing here?"

Harry's nervousness instantly reappeared. "There's something that I want to show you, Hermione. Do you have time to come with me now?"

"Well, as I've just ditched the second half of Defence, I really should go and see Professor McGonagall, but I guess that I can do that later. Okay, Harry, what do you want to show me?"