Getting back on track! Enjoy!

January flew by. Hermione watched Harry's attempts at romancing his girlfriend, Cho Chang, with a bitter-sweet view. She was glad to see him doing something normal, but sad for how utterly dejected Ron looked. More and more as the weeks since Minerva's observation about Ron's sexuality passed, she found more and more evidence to support the idea that Ron fancied Harry, and Harry being Harry and very much wrapped up in Cho, remained oblivious. Hermione and Minerva had agreed that, at least for the time being, it would be best to allow the boys to deal with this love triangle on their own.

Having just finished rounds with Leland, Hermione was heading back to her quarters at quarter till twelve, more than ready for a stiff drink. She's caught two Ravenclaws on the Library, claiming to be studying, although the swollen lips they'd each sported said otherwise. Snog fests were all well and good… during free periods and before curfew. Otherwise, it was detention. Filius would not be happy when she told him in the morning, especially given that the young lady she'd caught was Head Girl. Further, she'd caught two Gryffindor second years trying to find a secret passage they'd heard about via Fred and George Weasley, and a single Slytherin sixth year attempting to charm a corridor to become a wind tunnel whenever any student not in Slytherin happened to walk down it. He'd be in detention for a month, if Hermione knew Severus at all.

Suddenly, Hermione got a tingly feeling down her back, and a sense she was being watched. Acutely aware of the unknown threat to Harry that was presumably still in the castle, her wand was out in a moment, turning swiftly and casting - "Petrificus Totalus!"

Hermione swiftly moved toward the person now frozen stiff and on their back, and upon identifying said person, she let out a huff and reversed the spell. "Harry James Potter!" she hissed. "You'd better have a damn good reason for being out of bed right now!"

Harry scurried to his feet, rubbing his arms and thighs to get the warmth back into them. "Er… well… that is…"

"I'm waiting!" she said, tapping her foot. Yes. Tonight would call for a very stiff drink.

"I have a reason, but I don't want to tell you," he finally mumbled. "Can't we just leave it at that?"

She looked at him incredulously. "You're joking, right?"

"I don't want to lie to you," he tried explaining. "But I can't tell you why I'm out."

"I see," she commented. It was then that Hermione noticed a bit of parchment sticking out of Harry's back pocket. Certain it would offer some clue as to what her ward was up to, she summoned it non-verbally, eliciting a yelp of objection from the boy.

"That's mine!"

"Not anymore it's not," she said, looking at the offending article. Ah, the Marauder's Map. She knew Harry had it, but he'd never shown her how to work it. She tapped it with her wand as Harry looked on. "Well let's see then," she muttered. "Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs offer their compliments to Professor Slytherin, and request that she be less of a prick tease to poor Padfoot."

Harry guffawed.

Hermione glared, but continued reading. "Further, being the wife of a Marauder makes you an honorary one, and therefore we welcome you to make use of our creation. We solemnly swear that we are up to no good, and so must you."

She smirked at Harry's look of astonishment. "You didn't think Sirius told me about this?"

"But… but… he made the Marauder's map?" Harry asked. Obviously Sirius had not gotten to mentioning this to his godson. In fairness, he'd only mentioned it to her in passing, while they discussed the various secret passages he knew of in the school.

"Padfoot, Moony, Prongs, and Wormtail are, respectively, your godfather, Remus Lupin, your father, and finally Peter Pettigrew," Hermione explained. "They were all friends back when they were students here."

"Bloody hell!" Harry exclaimed.

"I'll be keeping this for the time being," Hermione said, holding up the map. "Not only are you not supposed to be out after curfew, but you insist upon not even telling me why. Harry, you are in imminent danger, and it is beyond reckless for you to be wandering the corridors late at night, and worse yet, alone! If I cannot trust you to use good sense while utilizing this heirloom, then I'm sorry, you may not remain its keeper. When you are prepared to tell me the truth, we'll discuss you getting it back -"

"BUT!"

"But nothing young man. See yourself back to Gryffindor Tower at once," she said firmly. "I'll know if you make any detours."

Harry grudgingly turned to go, looking dejected, though not angry. He knew he'd been out of line, though it seemed that whatever he was hiding was of more value to him than her trust, and that was truly surprising. She thought they were past that sort of thing.

With a sigh, Hermione turned and went into her quarters, taking a seat at her desk and laying the Marauder's Map out before her. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," she said, tapping it again. Moments later, the whole of the castle's blueprint was laid before her, little footprints with names beside them following their paths. It occurred to her that this map depended on the foreknowledge of the mapmakers, and that there were probably a few secrets they'd never discovered. She quickly located the seven they had found, and resolved to go and check each of them another day to see which of them had survived the last twenty-odd years since the map had been initially made.

There were quite a few they'd never found, and that really didn't surprise her, as several of them were only accessible via parseltongue. The Chamber of Secrets, of course, Harry had discovered with her and Ron's help during their first year, though she was doubtful he'd gone back since to find the two other passages that led between the Chamber and other locations. One led between the chamber and the Head's Quarters, and the second led from the chamber to the Slytherin Dorm rooms. Sal had added the latter so he could check up on Lucy after she started school.

Beyond that, there was a passage between the Kitchen and The Three Broomsticks, which she doubted Rosmerta knew about. There was also one behind the fireplace in the Gryffindor Common Room, which led to the Hufflepuff Common Room, and another from Ravenclaw Tower, where Filius' office currently was, to a secret Potions lab which had belonged to Rowena. Hermione imagined Severus would be thrilled to find it, if it was still even partially intact. The final secret passage that Hermione knew of led from the original staff room - only a few rooms away from the current one, and it led deep underground to a cavern that lay in the cliffs Hogwarts was built on. She, Rowena, and Salazar used to go down to those caves often…

Need for a drink now gone, Hermione pulled her cloak back on and made for the Entry Hall, off of which was the corridor leading to the old staff room. When she entered the room, it became obvious it hadn't been utilized for anything in years. The thin coat of dust covering the tables left behind and the cobwebs along the window frames told Hermione it was one of the rooms which the House Elves only bothered cleaning during the summer absence of students to keep them busy. A few flicks of her wand cleared the filth - she didn't want to access the secret tunnel and leave a trail of footprints in the dust to be followed.

That done, she reached for a stone in the windowsill, and with a shuddering groan, a portion of the floor in the right hand corner of the room slid under the wall, revealing a narrow staircase. "So far, so good," Hermione muttered to herself.

Wand clutched tightly in her hand, prepared for any number of threats that could be waiting for her, she descended the stairs, not bothering to clear the extensive dust in fear of letting her guard down. By the looks of things, no one had been down here in hundreds of years. Likely, Salazar and Rowena had never shared this place with anyone. In fact, knowing how sentimental the two of them could be, she wouldn't be surprised if the last people to walk down these stairs had been the three of them, the night before she left. They'd made love down here, saying their goodbyes in kisses and touches all through the night. This had been their place. It had been the only of the passages she'd been responsible for creating. It had never occurred to the other four that there might be caverns under the ground they were building on.

Step by step, meter by meter, Hermione trudged along the almost half a mile of stairs and corridors. She met no creatures, and only a minor cave in that she'd been able to repair in a matter of minutes before pressing on. Then, there it was.

The enchantments to simulate sunlight, or at present, moonlight had held all these years, and the huge cavern was now rich with a small forest of trees, untouched by animal or insect damage. The sound of the creek still running across the one side of the cavern was music to her ears, and the moss that covered the floor was thick and spongy. She took off her shoes and sighed as her feet pressed into the ground covering - not wet or slimy, but rather feeling like a warm carpet - the head of the nearby hot spring radiating into the plant and keeping the creek's moisture from permeating the growth. The ceiling glowed as if a full moon was kissing the rock formations, casting a soft light on the whole of the cavern. The odd stalagmite thrust out of the mossy floor, mostly near the creek, though the ceiling was covered with stalactites to the point of sometimes even dipping down to touch the treetops, and in most places, seeming less like individual rock formations, and more like misty blue curtains that stage light was just peeking through.

It was as beautiful as it had been the last time she'd been here, even though it had been a thousand years, waiting for her to come home. Some things truly were timeless.

Hermione walked around for a bit, finding the smaller caverns to be just as intact, though the magically simulated lighting enchantments had not held up in those. Their getaway bedroom was dusty, and the linens had long since decayed, but the wooden frame of the great canopy bed was in perfect condition, and the matching dressers and bedside tables were much the same. The bathroom off of it was, again, dusty, but otherwise was in perfect condition. Even the plumbing seemed to have held up over the centuries. Three other caverns being a small kitchen, an office, and a den were also in like condition, and with great trepidation Hermione unwarded the final attached cavern.

A sigh of relief escaped her lips when she walked into what had been their private library. Preservations spells were in place, even if the magical lighting was not. Before her lay thousands of books on cherry shelving that went floor to ceiling, going up ten meters, and likewise cherry ladders beckoning her to climb and explore the tomes above.

As much as she'd liked to have stayed here for hours, Hermione knew she had classes to teach in the morning. She'd make time to come down here in the coming weeks and clean things up, and then, she decided she'd bring Minerva to this getaway. While a part of her selfishly wanted to keep this place to herself, to keep what she'd had with Salazar and Rowena separate from what was developing between she and Minerva, she'd already known she'd need to find some way to bridge the two - her past and her present. This place would be a perfect means of doing so.

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