Hermione felt so sick, her stomach twisted and turned. She was not prepared for that. She needed more time to study. She didn't want to get up and if she was sick then she might get more time to prepare for exams.

"Hermione," Lucius said sternly.

"I'm dying."

"No, you are not."

"But I'm so sick."

He exhaled. "Please tell me that I do not have to drag my wife to her university just to ensure that she is actually participating in her exams."

She looked at him with narrowed eyes. The way he had said that made it really sound ridiculous. For a moment she considered if he would actually do it, but then she remembered that he had to deal with Draco.

Lucius was much stronger than her and he had a wand, but she was pregnant that might work to her advantage.

Hermione wasn't going to quit before even trying. She stood up. She wanted to read at least one more time for her notes before breakfast and her exams. Hermione arrived extra early at University just to make sure that she had enough time to find the right room. Her hands clenched around her notes, she felt unsteady and unwell her stomach and hadn't stopped twisting and she was so short of having a breakdown. How could she have ever thought that taking an exam is in a foreign country with a foreign language was a good idea?

Walking through the clean corridors, she felt like an intruder, as if she should be here. Having found the room, she triple checked if it was actually the right one. She still had plenty of time to read over her notes before the exam.

She took her seat in the back of the hall. Putting her notes away, she fished a ballpen out of her bag. An older student went through the rows handing out the test papers. The Senpai didn't agree with her choice of writing utensils. She ran away talking to a few people and Hermione didn't need to know what to think about it. She wasn't even sure what she had done wrong, to begin with.

The Senpai returned and sat down next to her with a sharppen. She colored the entire area of the circle on the answer sheet of the multiple-choice test making Hermione wonder if the tests are correct by machine or automatically and that's why simply crossing the right answer wasn't enough.

The Senpai handed her the sharppen and an eraser. "OK?" she asked, making the gesture, and Hermione nodded.

She couldn't believe that she was actually supposed to take an exam using a pencil. Using something erasable in general seemed immature but using leads in an exam, that was just wrong entirely.

The time was on and Hermione turned around the question sheet. Her concerns about the sharppen were quickly forgotten. She didn't know the answer to the first question. Hermione and read it again and again, but she still could remember having read about it. She had known that one month was simply not enough time to prepare.

She was pulling on her hair wondering what she should do. A part of her wanted to hand in and floo home. What was the point in all of this id she couldn't even answer the first question? Hermione took a deep breath. There were 99 more questions waiting for her, she could still pass and even score well. It wasn't easy but she pulled herself together and read the second question.

There were a lot of questions, she wasn't sure about. But the clock was ticking and she decided to move on and come back to them later. Hermione gave her best until the very last second, but there are still a few questions she hasn't answered.

She quickly left the lecture hall after handing her answer-sheet, the question-sheet in her hand made noises because her entire body was shaking. Leaning against the wall, Hermione tried to calm down. Tears fell from her eyes, it has been an intense experience and she was so disappointed by herself. She had meant to do well.

Hermione wanted to return home as quickly as possible, but she hard to buy the right writing utensils before tomorrow's exams. Still shaky, she entered the nearest store. She had two exams the following day, on the very morning and the other in the afternoon. Hermione didn't feel like wasting precious start time, and simply grabbed a random sharppen, an eraser, and leads and flooed home to Tora-jou.

She was still uneasy, drained, and a little down by the time Lucas came home. She spent the entire afternoon studying, but it just didn't give her the same kind of joy she had previously experienced.

"How was your exam?"

Hermione flinched. She bit her lip not quite knowing what you should tell him. Taking the Griffindor-route, she was honest with her husband.

"You should have picked a box by chance for the questions you did not answer. That would have given you a 20% chance," Lucius said.

"That's all you're going to say?"

"What do you want to hear? You can still fuss about it after the grades are announced. For now, you have a few more exams to prepare for."

He wasn't wrong about that.

"Also, it is inappropriate to return something naked."

"Naked?" Hermione asked.

"Well, you should have at least put it in an envelope or a plastic bag."

Hermione rolled her eyes and Lucius left her alone to study. Kiki brought treats every couple of hours. Yawning, Hermione realized that it was late and that she couldn't see properly anymore.

Lucius was already in bed by the time she entered the room. She was careful not to step onto him, walking up to their futon. Crawling under the blanket, it wasn't long until sleep claimed her.

Sitting at the table, Hermione stared at the bowl in front of her. She knew she should study. There were four more exams coming up, but she was completely drained after the maths exam. As she didn't have enough time to prepare properly for all the exams. she had decided to forgo maths, it was something she was already familiar with.

The only problem was that she hadn't done any math exercises in over a year and she was therefor out of practice. It took her a longer to solve the equations then she had wanted it. This was not only stressful, but it also meant that she couldn't double-check her results.

There were still four more exams the following week, but her brain was all mush. Hermione could barely concentrate enough to eat with chopsticks.

Once she had eaten the last grain of rice, she decided to go to bed and nap a little. There was no point in sitting in front of the textbook if she couldn't even focus enough to read an entire sentence.

Lucius still wasn't home by the time she had woken up again. Heavy rain was hammering on the roof and her hair was even more curly than usual. Normally she didn't think hard about how her hair looked.

Hermione knew it had a mind of its own and she didn't really know what it was to have a more normal hair. Hair that she wasn't making fun of for. It bothered her that her hair was that curled that she couldn't tie it back and in the individual lose hair was hanging in her face. Annoyed, she used half a dozen bobby pins to remove even the last hair from her face.

Her movements were still slow and Hermione knew she should go to bed with Lucius their usual time which gave her a bit of time to fill. She wasn't feeling like going out or doing anything productive for that matter.

She aimlessly wandered through the castle. Hermione never actually straight from the few rooms they regularly used. For one, the castle was simply too big to make practical use of all the rooms, and then there was the weird feeling that she doesn't belong there. That has gotten much better after she got married, but Hermione had been simply too busy to look around properly.

Walking down a hallway, she had never used before, she saw the style change. She found herself standing on a dirty red carpet. The glass of the windows was broken and the small couch was wet. There was an old photograph hanging on the wall just about the marble fireplace.

Walking close to the wall, away from the windows to avoid stepping on something wet or shards of glass, she moved deeper and deeper into the castle leaving Meiji addition behind. Hermione walked upstairs to the former master's rooms where the light barely reached inside. It was dark and narrow.

In there the Shoji-screens were torn and a few of the tatami-mats were missing. Hermione almost stumbled into a hole in the floor. Something must have happened here. She circled the area avoiding to fall into any of the holes. The floor cracked beneath her feet. There were a few paths and rooms that were impossible to enter, the destruction was simply too substantial.

As she got closer to the center of the destruction, more and more rumble was lying on the floor. The pillars had signs of burnt and something left scratch marks. There was a huge hole in the center of the wing. Rain is purring down a couple of stories. Splashes of something dark covered the walls.

Holding onto the wooden structure for support, she took very careful steps. Hermione really didn't want to fall into the huge hole. It must've taken quite an explosion to cause destruction on such a level. Mold had taken over to brittle wood and some kind of stink came off. As if something is rotting in the corner.

The lining of the tatami-mats changed. They were no longer blue, but a lot more sophisticated green ribbon has taken over. There a few spots on the other side of the castle that had pink linings. Hermione wasn't sure, but she suspected that this meant something, she just didn't know what.

Stepping into the half of the room that was still there, she found judging by the pattern of the tatami that the room was twice as big as Lucius' and hers. It was covered by a layer off dust and stank horribly. She left footprints as she walked through the room.

Her curiosity got the better of her and with her hand covering her nose, she approached the source of the smell. The layer got thicker and thicker and cockroaches were running around, leaving trails. Standing on her tiptoes she looked over a big vase.

Hermione gasped. There was a werewolf limb or what was left of it. Maggots were crawling all over it and it stunk horribly. Started, Hermione jumped backward. She hit the wall and the brittle wood gave in. She rolled into a ball, protecting her sensitive belly and head with her arms and legs.

She didn't fall far, but she was still under shock. Hermione took a deep breath. She had known that something bad had happened here, but she wasn't prepared for the sight of a rotting werewolf limb.

By now, Hermione had no idea where she was anymore. Standing up, she knew that she didn't want to return the way she had come in. It was gross and dangerous. She was so deep into the building that no light could reach her.

"Lumos," she whispered.

A couple of candles lit themselves. The Japanese candles were thinner at the base and the flame flickered surprisingly little. The one pillar in the middle of the tower-like structure was massive and as she is ascended the stairs the floor was more and more shacky. She could barely stand upright.

Laughter echoed through the tower. Hermione turned, around but she couldn't see much in the dark corners.

"let's have a chat. girl to girl!"

Hermione was shivering. Backing down, her eyes were glued to the witch right in front of her. Her heart was racing and her nails dug into her arm. She almost forgot to breathe. Stumbling backward, she fell onto her butt.

Bellatrix was laughing loudly, closing in on her. Hermione was gasping for air and tears were running down her face. It's not real, it's not real. She moved away from her torture until her back came into contact with the wall.

She couldn't say who was more shaking, the floor, or her body. Think about something nice, Hermione told herself. Her gaze was fixed on the knife that Bellatrix was playing with. The insane witch showed her her rotten teeth, grinning maliciously as she approached her.

She's dead, it's over, Hermione told herself, but her fears weren't.

"Hermione?" Lucius asked, coming up the stairs.

"You are a disappointment, Miss Granger," Professor McGonagle said, "I've had such high hopes in you and you have let me down. Troll. Troll. Troll." Her former Head of House was throwing negative test results at her.

Hermione had tears in her eyes. She didn't want Lucius to see her like that.

"You fail to live up to the standards of your own world, how do you think you can you can ever please the needs of a pureblood? Your best to simply not good enough. You don't belong here."

Hermione was sobbing, she couldn't take it longer. She just wanted all of this to end.

"Ridiculous!" Lucius had his wand pointed at Professor McGonagle.

She undid her hair and shook it out. Licking over her lips, her professor let her long robes fall. Hermione didn't know what to think about it. Her former professor was standing in nothing but her black lace underwear in front of her. She didn't find it amusing.

All she wanted to know was if Professor McGonagall was really that attractive. She looked so much younger and there was nothing that would give away how old she really was.

McGonagall disappeared and Hermione slowly crawled out of that corner. She wasn't the most composed person, but she had never overreacted to a boggart that much. She was a war-hero and she had handled this situation poorly, and Lucius got to see her like this. She didn't even dare to look at him in the eyes.

He didn't say a word. Lucius was petrified, looking at a point in the other corner. She followed his gaze.

There was a body lying on the floor in a big puddle of blood. Draco was staring at his father as he bled to death.

Without thinking, Hermione took his wand and cast Reddikkulous making the boggart disappear.