Author Note: Harry Potter and company are not mine. I didn't create them and do not own them. They belong to Ms. Rowlings. As always I remind you this story is already finished. All I need to do is upload each chapter for you to enjoy. And I hope you do.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Trio of Misfortune

But the Trio were enjoying their pity party. The Headmaster had left the Castle again on the first of October before the Triad had gotten to see him about the evil Harry had done to them but they were still hopeful he'd handle the situation for them when he returned this time. They were still of the opinion that Harry had done them a grievous wrong and was being allowed to get away with it. Simply because of who he was. But they'd finally come to realize the only person who would make Harry remove his mark was the Headmaster. They knew there was a good chance he wouldn't actually punish the brat for it but he would make him remove it and apologize to them for even thinking he had the right to do it in the first place.

Naturally Hermione had suggested they keep a running tally of all the wrongs Harry did to them until they got to see the Headmaster. That way he'd be more likely to understand why they wanted him punished for what they were being forced to deal with right now. Ron and Ginny agreed and so Hermione had dedicated an entire roll of parchment to keeping a list for them. Because naturally she was better at it than either Ron or Ginny would be.

Hermione really wanted to think of a way to make Harry remove it before they had to explain the marks to the Headmaster. She knew he wouldn't be happy about them or what they'd been doing when Harry had marked them. For the life of her though, Hermione couldn't figure out a method to make him remove it or get anyone to punish him for his transgression. Nor could she harangue on him over it until he got tired of listening to her like she usually did. He no longer sat near her in classes and wasn't housed in the tower with them. And though they knew where his room was, they couldn't get near the place.

It went without saying she never saw him outside of classes since all three of the Triad were forbidden from going anywhere near his rooms. They'd been told that by Professor McGonagal after she'd discovered they'd lied to her the morning after their marking. So they couldn't even sneak off to go bug him in his cell. Oh she knew exactly where it was. They all did. Albus had told Ron and her back in their second year when he wanted to see if Harry was ready to follow orders yet. And they'd told Ginny the following year. Harry was a creature of habit. It'd never occur to him to change his room. Heck, he never even tried to change the password so why would he change his cell for a real room? She had no idea the Castle had done that for him.

But try as they might, they couldn't get close to Harry's room. Stepping a foot into the hallway his room was in, seemed to set off a trigger that would bring a member of the staff down on them. Which usually led to another detention. Just for being in the hall. Or talking to someone. Or not talking to someone. Anything they could think of. Hermione was getting really tired of being in detention. Never in her life had she ever gotten into so much trouble at a school.

None of the teachers would let her or Ron sit next to Harry in classes either if they actually managed to come late enough to a class where he had arrived ahead of them. It was usually Ron who tried that since Hermione had an aversion to sitting in the back of her classes and that was where Harry always sat now. That was where the goof-offs sat. The only serious students who sat in the back of the room were the late arrivals and to Hermione, they weren't really serious students since if they were, they wouldn't have been late.

Harry had a seat in the back of each classroom and the teachers seemed determined none of the students would sit near enough to bother him in it. Ron had even tried to pass Harry a note threatening bodily harm if he didn't remove his mark one day on the way into their Potions class. Professor Snape had swooped down on it where it lay being ignored by Harry. He'd read it aloud and given Ron a detention for threatening another student. He'd then harassed Ron so badly Ron had walked out of the class with a weeks worth of detentions and Gryffindor one hundred points lighter. Needless to say there had been more grief to come when the rest of Gryffindor found out.

And every single classroom had enough seating that there was no reason for any student to need to sit next to him. Not even Professor Trelawney would let Ron sit next to Harry and she was a dingbat of a teacher. If they tried to follow him outside of classes, the other students got in the way or a teacher came by and gave them a detention for loitering. Or something. No word of explanation from them was ever listened to or believed.

And that only served to convince her more than ever the Wizarding World was outdated and needed to be revitalized before it imploded on itself. Because in her eyes it was only because of her blood status that no one would help her force Potter to do as she wished and remove his awful brand from her face. She refused to understand she had done him wrong. Because Hermione Granger was never wrong. She never did anything bad or against the rules. She didn't deserve this treatment. And he was only getting away with it because she was a muggleborn.

Nor were either of the afflicted Weasely's much help. At this point in time, all Ginerva wanted to do was cry for her Mother while Ron wanted to rant and rave about the injustice of it all. Of course, due to the nature of the punishment, he couldn't actually get far in his ranting before he was left gasping for breath with a very swollen face. But that was mainly because he had long ago worked all his lies about Harry into his rants so the runes would react when he got going. But Ron was like Hermione in that he refused to believe he had done anything wrong. He insisted that Harry had done him wrong by daring to mark him as he had. Because he was a pureblood and outranked Harry who was only a halfblood.

Sometimes Ginny would stop crying long enough to suggest she go seduce Potter into removing the brands. That would set off Ron again as there was no way he wanted to think about his pureblood sister seducing a pathetic half-blood. Bloody rich halfblood or not. Hermione would simply roll her eyes and send the redheaded girl a sneer because Hermione knew Ginny was still trying to trap Harry. Snootily she'd tell her, "You can't marry him any more, Ginny. That door closed when he marked you and told the whole school you're his property. So even if you did succeed in seducing him, it'd do you no good. No one would make him marry you. All anyone would say is, he was taking advantage of his property rights."

That would set Ron off again and send Ginny into a fresh burst of tears. But it was also the truth and Hermione knew it. So did Ginny if she was honest with herself. Eventually the girl would get it through her head. But honestly Hermione was much more concerned with herself right now. One thing she knew for certain. She could NOT return home to her parents with this rune on her face. They definitely wouldn't understand and unlike a majority of this world she knew her mother could read runes. It had been a pastime hobby for her in her college days. That meant her Mother would know exactly what her mark said and she would tell Hermione's dad. Both of them would be very angry with her.

But Hermione was a strong believer in right and wrong and in justice coming to those who deserved it and were willing to work for it. Especially when the wrong in question had been done to her person. This meant spending hours researching just exactly what Harry had done to her and the siblings. Because there was no way she believed what Professor McGonagal had told them. Judgement magic didn't exist. There was Light magic and there was Dark magic. And what wasn't known as Light Magic therefore had to be Dark Magic.

So she spent hours haunting the Library stacks reading book after book and passage after passage trying to find information she'd already been given. And then more hours late at night in the tower working out just how exactly he had crossed the line and why it was up to her to see to it he didn't get away with his crime.

She firmly believed he had wronged her and, without any true parental figures in his life willing to teach him right from wrong, it was up to her to do so. And of course it went without saying that when she finally figured out what he'd done to her and got him to admit it, she'd need to punish him. Because behavior like this couldn't go unpunished. No good parent allowed their responsibility to get away with doing obviously bad things. Not for a second did she stop to consider she wasn't Harry's parent or guardian and therefore had no right or responsibility for teaching him anything. She certainly didn't have the right to go around punishing him for things she believed he did wrong.

Hermione had convinced herself Harry had committed a crime of the darkest nature against them as a part of his descent into darkness to equal the darkness known as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and therefore deserved to be punished for it. Not for a second did she think it was this Judgmental magic the teachers said it had been. She'd never once caught any sort of a reference to that branch of magic so therefore it didn't exist. The teachers were just saying it did because they didn't want to admit the truth. Harry had gone dark and used Dark Magic against them.

She fully believed it had to be Dark Magic Harry had used because she hadn't heard him say the name of the spell. That made it a wordless spell and she knew all wordless spells were dark magic. The Headmaster had told her most the wordless spells fell into the category of Dark Magic because it made it easier for them to get away with being dark and hurting others. If they used verbal words to trigger the release of their dark magic, then it would be a simple matter to counter them and cure their victims of the effects as well as prove said caster had slipped too far away from the light and intervention was needed to save them.

But given who Harry was compared to who his victims were, she was also reasonably certain the rest of the Wizarding World wouldn't choose to punish him at all. She knew Harry was right when he claimed he outranked them even if both her Weasely friends disagreed. Halfblood or not, to the Wizarding World, Harry Potter was practically untouchable. That meant it was up to her and his other victims to handle things appropriately. Because no one would bother to try and get justice for them. They just weren't important enough to risk having him turn on whomever tried to intervene. Not at this date in time anyway.

But that also opened a door for them to deal with the situation themselves. Since he had assumed he had the right to punish them himself when he was in no manner a person of authority over them, they could punish him as well. All they had to do was discover a method of doing so. And that meant spending some time in the library doing research. As the only one capable of properly researching anything, she knew it would fall to her to find a spell they could use against him. Something that would remain with him and grow stronger the longer he refused to admit his wrongdoing and lift his curse from them. And maybe when he finally removed his curse they'd remove theirs from him. Maybe. After they were sure he'd gotten the message, of course. He couldn't be allowed to go around thinking he had the right to strike out at them any time he felt like it after all. They were his masters. He wasn't theirs.

The tricky part would be finding a spell or curse that wouldn't trigger the effects of the branding that she could use against him. Because just as with the research, she knew she would have to be the one to cast their punishment spell on Harry. Neither Ginny nor Ron were as capable as she was and therefore it was likely neither would be able to cast any spell she discovered to do the job. But she'd still need their help to enact it. Given the way the school was behaving, she'd never be able to get close enough to him without their assistance.

Maybe they could even hoodwink Professor McGonagal into helping them waylay Harry long enough to cast their punishment on him. The Professor did seem to still care about them. And she was upset over their branding. She knew Harry had been wrong to brand them as he had and they had a right to be upset with him over it. She just couldn't help them force him to remove it. Because she wasn't strong enough and didn't have the authority.

Knowing the Professor, the only thing she would ask was the nature of the spell the three wished to use. Hermione wasn't worried about choosing a spell to use. She knew any spell she found would be a Light orientated spell. Simply because a Dark spell wouldn't work for her. Therefore if she could cast it, it had to be Light orientated. And of course she'd practice it before asking the Professor to help her contain Harry.

Professor Dumbledore had told her dark magic wouldn't work for anyone who wasn't inherently dark by nature. What he didn't tell her was that all living, thinking creatures were dark by nature. One had to choose to be light. It wasn't inherent in a person though all people thought themselves to be light natured and only wanting good things for themselves and those they cared for. She was too sheltered to understand all people were inherently selfish. They wanted good things for themselves and those they cared about, true enough. But they didn't particularly care if they got those good things through the misfortune of someone else. But to Hermione, because Professor Dumbledore said Dark Magic wouldn't work for those who weren't dark, that meant she couldn't use it. Because she definitely didn't see herself as a dark witch.

Not for a second did she stop to consider how the Dark side of magic got new recruits if it only worked for those who were already dark to begin with. Or if the only people who could use dark magic spells were those who were already dark by nature, how then could just using a dark magic spell make you evil? It stood to reason if no light magic person could use dark magic than those who did use it, were born that way. But Hermione didn't realize that because she never stopped to think about it and she was too sheltered and cherished by her family to understand the world wasn't black and white.

Between their classes, the weekly meeting with Professor McGonagal, homework and countless unfair detentions from Professor Snape as well as the other teachers, they had very little spare time though. And that made it hard for Hermione to find the time she needed for her research. Which was why her homework had slacked off. She was slacking on it to try and make more time for research. Not that she had much time for homework any more anyway.

It had been surprising to them to find themselves being given more and more detentions and having to serve them either in the dungeons doing manual labor with Argus (Ron), in the kitchens with the elves doing more manual labor (Hermione)or with Hagrid still doing manual labor (Ginny). Unknown to them, Minerva had actually had to go to the staff and request they not be given a detention during the hour she had set aside to meet with them to try and get them to understand their new social position and to leave them at least an hour per day for homework completion. Naturally, none of them were actually getting all their homework completed in that hour making for a lot of late nights. So all three were suffering from a decided lack of sleep to add to their troubles.

The elves didn't allow Hermione to get on her soapbox and preach to them about how they should desire their freedom any more than they would've allowed Ron to spend his detention time eating. She was put to work doing the dirtiest, most disgusting job the elves could come up with. And they could come up with some very dirty jobs. The more she preached at them, the dirtier the job they assigned her the next time. But again she wasn't making the correlation.

Hermione definitely wasn't used to it as she was the cherished only daughter of mildly affluent parents. While they didn't have any servants, her Mum did have a maid service that came in once a week to clean the house and her Dad got a yard service to come mow the lawns and trim the hedges, driveway and walkways. Her Mum did all the cooking unless her Dad wanted to barbeque or they ordered out. All Hermione had ever had to do along that line was maybe throw together a sandwich or cut up a bowl of fruit and pick up the clutter in her room.

Not even at Hogwarts had she been exposed to real house cleaning or manual labor. Any detention she'd incurred in previous years had been spent helping a Professor grade the homework of lower years or aiding Madam Pince in tending to the Library. Well, except for the Forest of Death one and that was more Harry's fault than anyone's. If he hadn't gotten them caught by forgetting his cloak, Professor McGonagal wouldn't have given the detention at all. But he had and so she'd to punish all of them equally. But even that detention hadn't been manual labor. All she'd done was walk alongside Neville and Hagrid.

It further surprised them to discover Argus, the crotchety squib caretaker of the Castle, actually liked Harry personally. He claimed to feel sympathy for him for all he had been forced to deal with as a student here, which none of them believed. He was just a mean-spirited old man jealous of the students for having the gift of magic when he didn't. It never occurred to them to wonder how he could be here at the Castle if he wasn't possessed of magic himself. Though all three of them knew the Castle wasn't visible to those not blessed to have magic of their own.

But because of his jealousy, he made their detentions with him as nasty and hard as he possibly could. And no matter what chore he assigned them to do, he always complained about the level of work they did on it. Telling them how Harry was much better at the work than they were and sneering at them for thinking they were better than he was in any way. Luckily, the girls only got detentions with him when the elves and Hagrid were too busy to supervise it.

Sometimes though they all had a detention with the House Elves whom all three knew were very fond of Harry Potter. He had saved Dobby from a very cruel Master and made certain Winky also got saved when her former master set her free for something outside of her control. Harry had come to the kitchens as often as he could when Winky had first been released from service to her old Masters nd Dobby had told him of her plight. He had spent a lot of time talking to her and helping her learn to deal with her new status as a free elf. As a result both Winky and Dobby adored Harry Potter and as they loved him, the other elves did as well. Winky still wasn't happy being a free-elf but at least she was willing to live with it.

At first, the trio hadn't been worried about detentions with the elves. They'd thought their time with them would be a relaxing as all three knew House Elves weren't allowed to do anything that might cause harm to their human masters. And all humans were the masters of elves. So they thought they'd us the time to plot their revenge on Harry and a way to get themselves back in good flavor with their classmates and teachers. They were wrong.

The elves made it clear they saw them as bad children. Bad children who needed to be punished. They actually made them clean rooms in the Castle no one ever used or visited in years. Ron told them that's what Argus had him doing too. They didn't even know where the rooms actually were because the elves would hand them the cleaning products they needed and then pop them to the filthy room and leave them there to do the work. Without their wands! And since none of them could do wandless magic, that meant they had to clean it the muggle way.

Ron had actually tried to walk away from it the first time they'd done it to him, only to find both the door and the window were locked and wouldn't unlock with any unlocking spell he knew. Not that, without his wand, he could do any of the unlocking spells he knew of. Nor could he manually unlock the room they'd taken him to. There literally wasn't a lock on the door or window he could see and therefore touch to unlock.

Nor did they work together to clean one specific room. Each teen was taken to a different room and left there alone to do the work. They'd only be allowed to leave when the time expired or the room was clean and the elf would pop back to pick them up and return them to the hall outside of the kitchens. And if it was close to curfew where they wouldn't make it back to the tower on time, how was that the fault of the elves? If Filch was standing there waiting with watch in hand, and followed them on their way to the tower making sure they didn't dare to run for it or venture into the secret passages to save time; Again. How was that their fault? If someone, Professor Snape, intercepted them on their hurried walk back to their Tower, again how was that the fault of the elves or the custodian? Needless to say they were racking up a lot of detentions for being out after curfew. And since they didn't have the benefit of Harry's map or cloak any more there was nothing they could do to avoid them.

If they finished cleaning the room but still had time to serve, they'd be put to work turning table scraps and food scrapings into mulch for Hagrid's vegetable beds. This was a chore all three of them absolutely hated because the elves didn't allow for the use of tools in the process. In order to turn the left over bits of food into mulch they had to add wood pulp, hay, ash from the fireplaces, used straw, and buckets of stinky fertilizer none of them wanted to think about to the vat. The mixture had to be blended together manually which involved climbing into the tub minus their shoes and socks and stomping on it the way wine makers used to mash grapes. Nor could they avoid having to put their socks and shoes back on their soiled feet as they did have to walk through the Castle to reach their tower after the detention. And since the elves would do nothing more than hand them a damp cloth to clean-up with, they came out of those detentions covered in filth and reeking of all manner of disgusting things in desperate need of a good, long, cleansing shower. With Filch always waiting for them, there was no way any of the three would give him anything like deliberately soiling the Castle to assign them a new detention over.

What they hadn't realized was Hogwarts House Elves didn't work for the students. They worked for the Castle or for an individual adult in the Castle personally and every adult had at least one elf that answered specifically to them. Also Wizarding history was replete with tales of House Elves being the child care providers for their masters. This meant they could indeed deliver discipline to misbehaving students so long as the adult they answered to specifically gave them permission to do so. But because Hermione was a muggleborn and the Weasely clan had never owned an elf, the triad didn't know those stories were actually true.

And in this case, even the Castle was in favor of the Triad being disciplined harshly for their actions against Harry. Even Harry had a story of a House Elf harming a person to protect Harry personally. The elf that featured in his story personally hated all three of them with a passion. All three of them were almost positive Dobby was behind the disagreeable detentions they were currently serving. They were right. He was.

So no. Detentions with the house-elves wasn't fun. But there wasn't anything they could do about it until people woke up and realized they were the victims here. For all three, these detentions were just one more debt Harry owed them.

What spare time the three did have, they needed to do the massive amounts of homework they were being given. It seemed word had spread amongst the teachers how Harry was subsidizing the educations of the two Weasely children and they were now determined that his money wouldn't be wasted. The children would either buckle down and earn their patronage or they'd be dropped from the roster as failures. Tolerance was at an all time low when it came to their class work, essays, quizzes and exams. They piled the homework on them to make up for their slack in previous years. And considering all they really had was an hour each day, it was understandable they were falling way behind. Even the weekends didn't seem to give more time for homework as most those days were being filled with run-over detention time.

Nor did the Professors care Hermione wasn't one of the scholarship students. She too had taken coin from Mr. Potter. From what Harry had said during the Library Confrontation, she had tried to sabotage him in the classroom by making his completed homework unacceptable for turning in. That made her just as disagreeable a student as the Weasely duo. So the teachers were holding her to the same impossibly high standards as they held the Weasely duo. That they'd held Harry to in previous years. No longer could Hermione turn in work that meandered all over the place while barely touching on the assigned topic and was far longer than the asked for length. No longer did they even bother to read anything she wrote that was over the specified essay length. Each teacher measured out the assigned length of her turned in work and then only graded what she'd written to that point. Every inch beyond that length was a deduction on the assignment. And they were meticulous about it. Even if the cut-off line was right in the center of a line of writing, they would draw a red line through it and not count it as a part of the assignment to be graded. For the first time in her educational time, Hermione Granger was receiving failing grades. She didn't know what to do. How to react. She wasn't used to failing at schoolwork.

Nor could Ron skate by with essays that just barely met the length requirements while being sloppy, disjointed, incorrect or incomplete and full of grammatical errors. Now that his work was being fairly graded, he found himself receiving marks far lower than what was acceptable for a Hogwarts student in good standing. And his grades hadn't been all that good before this so he was failing in every subject now. More than once he found himself being assigned a mandatory Remedial Study Hall over the weekends when no classes were held. And if he already had a detention for that time period, he had to choose which to go to knowing full well not going to the other would only result in yet another detention.

Unlike Hermione, Ron knew exactly how to react. He blamed Harry. If Harry hadn't reminded the Professors of their scholarship, the Professors wouldn't be acting like they were. If Harry hadn't decided to pull their funding, they wouldn't have confronted him in the Library. And if Harry had done what he was told and removed the marks he'd put on them, this would've all blown over by now. Yes, this was all Harry's fault.

Because Ron was such a poor student, Minerva had to actually draw up a weekend schedule for him just so he could take part in the Remedial aide Hogwarts offered their failing students as he was being given Remedial Study Hall for all of his classes. Including his electives. It surprised her to discover even Sybil Trelawney had assigned him a Study Hall. But now that Ron's mark forbid him from doing or saying anything harmful to or about Harry, he found his usual topics for her assigned essays impossible to write or orate. Naturally, it never occur to him to simply substitute Harry's name for his own to complete the assignments.

Each subject had it's own room in the Castle for it's Study Hall and a time on Saturday and Sunday when the room would be open. This was to give Mr. Filch and the elves time to clean and restock the normal classrooms for the teachers as well as the Remedial rooms since the Study Hall rooms were only open during those periods because even Professors had other things they liked to do besides try and hammer new knowledge into stone dense children's heads.

Study Halls were overseen by the teacher of the correlating class and commonly referred to as Remedial sessions. They were open to any student having a particularly difficult time in any of the offered classes. But for some students, like Ron, they were mandatory because their grades had fallen below acceptable standards. Especially those students who were yet to sit their Owls. Because there literally no job available in the Wizarding World one could get without their Owls. So the Hogwarts staff did everything they could to ensure that all their students would pass at least those exams.

In these Study Halls, bright students could earn extra credit by assisting those who attended on their assignments. Each student assigned to the Halls would be helped to redo their assignments for the previous week while being coached on the assignments for the upcoming week. Needless to say as soon as the bright students saw Ron enter the classroom, most found other students to assist. Those who didn't, drew straws to see who would work with him. No one wanted to. And not just because of his part in the years drama. Ron had a reputation thanks to all his arguments with Hermione. As a result, everyone knew he hated doing homework and therefore working with him was sure to be a trial wherein he was almost certain to try and get them to do the work for him. Just because they already knew how to do it and he clearly didn't. As a result whomever drew the short straw would always make the experience as unenjoyable as they possibly could for Ronald. Only Professor Snape would take on Ron personally. The rest of the teachers didn't bother.

While Ron's grades had never been all that high, Ginny had been doing relatively well. Hermione's bragging about being the smartest witch of their year hadn't been idle boasting either. But now all three were finding themselves hard pressed just to keep their grades above failing. Naturally, they were at the bottom of their class standings. If something wasn't done soon, none of them would pass any of their classes and all of them blamed Harry for it. Nor was Professor Snape the only teacher to openly disparage the two Weaselys for being scholarship students unworthy of and ungrateful to their patron.

Ron and Ginny had both sent messages off to Molly complaining of their disfigurements and subsequent treatment by their previously sympathetic teachers but the twins, who knew their habits well, had intercepted them so Molly had never gotten them. The twins had no use for the younger Trio and were doing everything in their power to cover Harry's back making sure all the kids heard the real truth of what had been occurring over the years. For the first time, the twins had the willing help of their tower mates in creating and planning their pranks so long as the intended target was one of the Trio. Even Slytherin children were coming up to them to report things they had seen or heard one or more of the Trio doing which they thought deserved recompense. And it really didn't matter to the students if the one the trio was targeting at the time was Harry Potter or not. Nor did it matter to the twins. Payback really was a bitch and right now she was screaming their names.

Author Note: Please review. As always I hope you enjoy my story. Happy Reading.