Hermione had been spending more evenings in the common room, mostly to comfort Ginny after Gryffindor's loss to Ravenclaw. Josie Purmer, a tall girl from Slytherin House, had proudly announced that Ravenclaw's Seeker caught the Snitch after just thirty-eight minutes, giving them a win with two hundred points and Gryffindor a loss with twenty points. Ginny, who had taken most of the blame, had been reliving the match over and over again, repeatedly telling Hermione what she could have done to change the outcome. With Extraordinary Potions for Exemplary Students lain open in her lap, Hermione listened vaguely to the redhead's dozenth regret.
"If I'd just warned her, maybe she would've been ready for Burke—waved my hands or screamed at her or something! I thought it was common sense but I can't just assume everyone knows the basics...especially second-years... Merlin's beard, what was I thinking?"
Hermione feigned interest with a hum; this had become her way of assuring Ginny that she was listening, even when she was engrossed in one of her many schoolbooks.
"I'll have to train them all twice as hard if we want to win March's game," Ginny decided aloud. "Slytherin's bound to be at their best with Siftwell on the team. If we're lucky, maybe he'll injure himself beforehand..."
"Ginny!" Hermione exclaimed, appalled.
"What? He deserves it anyway, the git... I'm just glad Madam Hooch changed the schedule or else that would've been our first game. If we lost to Ravenclaw like that, Slytherin would've pummelled us..."
"Are you on about that bloody game again?" Lydia Clappord asked, hopping down the steps from the boys' dormitory. Her friend was at her heel, his large cat in his arms.
"Piss off, Clappord," Ginny growled, still staring at the ceiling. She had sprawled across the sofa and put her hands behind her head, blatantly disregarding anyone that might want to sit down, not that many dared approach her since the match.
"I would," said Lydia, pushing her blonde hair behind her ear, "but Ben and I have homework to finish before we leave for Hogsmeade tomorrow."
"Go back upstairs and finish it, then."
The boy with the cat, who Hermione assumed to be Ben, reddened. "Well, we were trying but it was a bit—er—distracting up there."
"What he means to say," Lydia started, "is that Elizabeth Kirk and Sang Jae were practically attached at the mouth...again."
"Can't blame her. Sang's fit," Ginny said, nonchalantly.
"I don't care if he's fit or not! I don't want to see them licking each other's teeth while I'm trying to study!"
Ben grimaced and squeezed his cat closer to his chest. The tabby complained and writhed in his arms, earning a small "shush, you" and a scratch behind the ears.
"Hang on a second. You're a prefect," Hermione pointed out, closing her book. "Snogging's against school rules—especially in the dormitories. Couldn't you just make them stop?"
"Don't give her any ideas," Ginny mumbled.
Lydia ignored the comment. "I don't want to watch it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to interrupt them! Must've been awful trying to date when you were a prefect."
"I'll have you know that I was a very good prefect, thanks!"
"Hmm, right," the blonde said, disbelievingly, before turning back to Ben. "Let's try the library. I imagine there'll be a whole lot less lecturing and—" She gave Ginny a pitying glance. "—sulking."
"Yeah, alright." He dropped his cat onto the common room floor and awkwardly waved at Hermione and Ginny. "Nice chatting with you both."
Lydia murmured something at the dark-haired boy, but the studious pair was already climbing through the portrait hole, which happened to be well outside of Hermione's earshot. Hermione nearly wished that they hadn't left, because without them there, she would once more be Ginny's captive audience.
Ginny, seemingly unaware of Hermione's ache for silence, twisted a fiery lock of hair around her finger. "Speaking of Hogsmeade, you're coming with me, right?"
"I already told you that I'm not," Hermione said, resolutely, opening her book.
"But I didn't think you meant it!" Ginny swiftly sat up, her eyes wide. "Don't you want to see Harry?"
"Of course I do, but I have a lot of studying to do before I meet with Malfoy on Sunday."
Hermione knew better than to think that would be the end of their conversation. Before she could finish the first sentence on the page, Ginny asked, "You're ditching us because of Malfoy?"
"So I can spend less time with him."
"Rubbish. You can always study when we get back."
Hermione, desperate for some peace and quiet, decided to humor her. "I'll think about it."
"Good," Ginny replied, lying back down. "I know Harry would love to see you—Neville and Luna too."
A year prior, Hermione would not have doubted her friend's words, but with her and Harry's limited contact, Hermione was not sure that he cared to see her at all. Swallowing down the bitter thought, she started rereading the passage that Ginny had so dramatically interrupted, wholly aware that she, no matter what she said, would not be participating in the outing to Hogsmeade.
"Hermione? Is that you?"
His voice was distorted and distant—nothing more than a whisper among the corridor of knifelike brambles.
"It's me, Harry!" Hermione shouted, pushing a sharp branch from her path. It pricked her finger, which she sucked on to numb the sudden sting.
"Prove it." He sounded further away. "Prove you aren't an impostor!"
"If I were an impostor, why would I be looking for Ron? How would I know that he abandoned us last night?"
The brambles were closing in on her, hissing like snakes—hissing like Harry sometimes did in his sleep.
"Voldemort could know that! Volde—"
Suddenly, the hissing brambles were no longer brambles at all. They were hands, hands that seized her and pulled her wrists behind her back, hands that were forcing her onto the floor at the feet of Bellatrix Lestrange...
Hermione woke with a start, her chest heaving and her forehead slick with a film of sweat. Still reeling from the nightmare, she kicked off her damp sheets and glanced at her wristwatch: Breakfast would be starting soon.
A visit to the Great Hall would mean facing an insistent Ginny, and when Hermione thought about it, she was not all that hungry, anyway. Rather than arguing with the only friend she had left at Hogwarts, she decided to delve into her triweekly Charms lesson—a simple task that required quite a lot of focus; if she could not escape the vivid dreams, she could at least distract herself from them.
Hours had passed. Hermione had far exceeded the requirements listed on the Charms syllabus, and upon realizing that she was four chapters ahead, she decided that it was time to start the coursework she least wanted to do: her Ancient Runes translation. Unfortunately, Professor Babbling had much greater expectations than Professor Flitwick did, and the homework she assigned reflected as much.
The translation, though not particularly long, was ludicrously difficult. Full of nuance and a dialect Hermione was not familiar with, it seemed to be the type of document that a runeologist might need to translate, but hardly one that Hogwarts students needed to understand. Nevertheless, it was assigned to her, so she pushed onward, hoping that she was translating it properly with her clever use of context clues. Then, she reached the third paragraph.
At the very beginning of the first sentence, there was a rune she simply did not recognize. She stared at it for a long while, hoping that it was stained with water or that the ink had worn, yet the longer the stared, the more she realized that that was not the case. Irate, she seized her textbook and flipped to the end where the many symbols were translated into English and Welsh. The frustrated Gryffindor spent all too much time reading and rereading each and every column before she finally came to the conclusion that the rune clearly wasn't there.
Her plan to stay in her dormitory was foiled.
Befuddled by the strange mark, Hermione knocked on the back of Ulysse Moreau's frame three times. If she was going to go to the library, it was better to go while most of the student body was still in Hogsmeade.
"I was trying to sleep, you fille stupide!"
Hermione apologized as she stepped through the French nobleman's portrait hole. The Fat Lady had never been known for her manners, but Ulysse Moreau's poison tongue was far more threatening than the large woman's notorious mood swings or her ill-famed wine binges.
Fortunately, most of Ulysse and the Fat Lady's fellow portraits were quite pleasant, and they also happened to be some of Hermione's only company in the corridors, though she did not appreciate one medieval woman's comment about her hair. Aside from the depictions of the deceased, the halls were virtually empty. A group of first-years passed by, proudly announcing that the castle was all theirs, but this sentiment seemed to pass as soon as they saw Hermione. They scurried away, speaking in low voices, two of them nervously glancing back at her. When times were simpler, Hermione, Harry, and Ron might have reacted to an older student in the exact same way.
The hideous centaur statue was a much less welcome presence. It loomed over her like a great, ugly gargoyle with hooves, reminding her of Dolores Umbridge, the Forbidden Forest, and most upsettingly, her upcoming meeting with a particular blond Slytherin. With a heavy sigh, she pushed Malfoy out of her mind and stepped into her true home away from home: the Hogwarts library.
The intimate scene granted her serenity. She breathed in the scent of aged parchment and freshly polished wood, nearly forgetting what drew her to the place to begin with. It was a world that was truly hers, one that her friends had never understood—one that was her oasis amongst the chaos.
After taking in the beauty of her place of solace, she strode past Madam Pince, who was seated at her desk. Pinching her nose, the birdlike woman mumbled to herself in what Hermione believed to be Latin, although she could not be sure.
Weaving through the shelves, Hermione saw no sign of any other students. It was silent, set aside Madam Pince's occasional grumbles, the light sound of Hermione's shoes, and once she stopped in the Ancient Runes section, the thud! that echoed between the bookshelves as she pulled out tomes and defeatedly put them back. Then, after nearly thirty minutes, as she bent down to grab another book, she heard someone fishing through the shelves behind her.
"Should've known I'd run into you here," a familiar voice scoffed. "Your little ban has been lifted, has it?"
Hermione, somehow unsurprised to hear the cold tone, turned around and said, "Augmented Arithmancy? Good to see you're studying. Shouldn't you be in Hogsmeade, though?"
"Shouldn't you?"
"Too much to do," Hermione replied shortly, rifling through Obscure Runes for Advanced Translations, a seemingly promising text by Gil Affinack.
"No butterbeers with the Weasel Queen, then. Shame." Malfoy plucked out one more book and stacked it atop the scarlet copy of Augmented Arithmancy. "Til tomorrow, Granger."
"See you, Malfoy."
Then, as quickly as he was there, he was gone.
The strange rune was indeed mentioned in Obscure Runes for Advanced Translations. To Hermione's horror, it was, however, the first of many new symbols. The hours ticked on, and it was not until she heard Ulysse Moreau arguing with someone that she realized it was well past dinnertime.
"...strict orders. You may not enter without the company of the resident of the dormitory."
"But I have the password!"
Hermione recognized the voice as Ginny's.
"And how you have it, I do not know, but—"
Hermione leaned over from her small desk and knocked on the back of Ulysse's frame. "Let her in, Ulysse!"
"Fine, I suppose, since you have the resident's approval, that I can allow you inside," Ulysse conceded, "but I will be reporting you to the headmistress if I hear of any funny business! I am close personal friends with Eupraxia Mole, and you know where she is hung!"
Ginny sputtered a curse word and the silver-framed canvas reluctantly swung open. Before Hermione could even greet her, the redhead stumbled through the portrait hole and shoved her hand in Hermione's face.
"Hermione, he proposed!" she exclaimed in a pitch that Hermione had never heard her use before. Upon her finger, a diamond glittered between two small garnets—gems that had to cost Harry a large portion of his inheritance. "Oh, it was so beautiful, Hermione... Like a dream, really..." With a euphoric sigh, she dropped onto the single twin bed by the window. "My mum's going to lose her hat—not that I care..."
Hermione stared at the expensive ring from afar as Ginny admired it under the candlelight. Ever since she was a small girl, her parents warned her about young marriage, and after Ginny's announcement, she could not help but sadly reflect upon their words.
"A career should always come before—before...boys," her mother had said, sourly, fixing the collar of her blouse. "How my sister is allowing your cousin to marry that awful Lucas boy... They're mad, positively mad—the lot of them!"
"What your mother is trying to say," her father started, kneeling down beside her, "is that you're a special young lady and you should do something with yourself before you commit to someone. If he's going to marry my little Hermione, he'd best be quite the young man." He winked at her and ruffled her hair. "Now let's go get your shoes on, yeah?"
"Well? Aren't you going to say something?" Ginny's arms were crossed over her chest. It was no longer the ring that she was examining; it was Hermione.
"Oh! Sorry, er—congratulations?" Hermione managed, perhaps a bit more skeptically than she meant for it to sound.
"Are you asking me or telling me?"
"Telling you, of course." She swallowed hard.
"You think we're too young, don't you?"
Hermione chewed on her lip, trying to fight the dizziness of malnourishment. "I mean, it does seem a bit rushed..."
"My mum's bound to think the same thing. Her and my dad were young when they got married, though," Ginny said, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. "Harry's parents too."
"Maybe your mother has some insight," Hermione suggested, thinking about what her father had said to her before Cousin Ramona's wedding. "You want to play Quidditch for a living, don't you? Maybe your mother was never given a chance to do anything more than be a housewife and she wants you to have better opportunities than she did."
"So you think I'd throw my career away just because I'm getting married?" Ginny asked, getting to her feet. The octave of her voice warned Hermione not to press any further. "You think I'll get pregnant right off, do you? Lose my broom legs and end up brewing spit-up remedies and blasting boggarts from linen closets like some sort of common kitchen-witch?"
"Ginny, that's not what I said—"
"Look, I get that you're upset because you and my brother can't work things out, but other people are allowed to move forward in their relationships, Hermione."
"That's what you think?" Hermione asked, acidly. "That I'm bitter because of your brother?"
"Excuse me for preferring to believe that over the fact that my best friend can't be happy for me!"
"Gin—" Hermione reached out for her, but Ginny wrenched her arm away.
"I'd prefer if you didn't touch me," she spat. "Have fun with Malfoy tomorrow."
"I'll have more fun with him than I'm having with you right now!"
The words slipped past Hermione's lips as quickly as the gasp that followed, but the more that Hermione thought about it, the more she realized that it was the dismal truth.
"Yeah? Maybe he'll propose then. More likely than my brother ever coming around."
Even after Ginny left, the words hung in the air of Hermione's lonely dormitory. Did Ginny know something that she didn't? Were they simply words—meaningless and designed only to hurt?
Perhaps, she didn't want to know.
Author's Note: Sorry for the delay! I've been busy over the holidays. Thank so much for the wonderful reviews. If you're a new reader, please do leave some feedback! I adore you all.