Content warning for dissociation. Really weird dissociation.

"I'm sorry, Red, but Zelda said she couldn't find anything about delayed Hylian transfigurations," Hermione said. "Magic like that was always instantaneous, usually meant to Petrify people or turn them into magical creatures. Slow transfigurations were only ever on the scale of kingdoms, never any one person."

Red sighed. "Figures. Blue said about the same thing." He ruffled his hair in frustration. "Is this how smart people feel when they don't have answers to stuff? Usually I'd just shrug and move on, but this thing keeps bothering me."

"If a question or a problem exists, it warrants answering," Hermione said firmly. Her parents had taught her to ask questions and forever seek ways of explaining the world using solid evidence. No question was too silly, even ones like "can cats always land on their feet without gravity?" (to which the answer was "no"). "Why haven't you told me why you're so focused on this, though? Did Madam Pomfrey find anything—"

"During my check-up? For, like, the twentieth time, no," Red snapped. "I'm fine. All of me are fine. Like I said, I'm looking into this for someone else."

"Who, though?"

"Someone I'd rather wasn't slowly losing his mind over this." Red turned on his heel and left the common room to go up the stairs to the boys' dorms, muttering about finishing his Charms essay before class.

Hermione's gut roiled with worry. Red hadn't said anything about his visit to Madam Pomfrey to her or Ron. She wasn't sure he'd even spoken of it to the other Harrys. He'd just come back to the tower with a story about seeing someone turning green and the school nurse being unable to do anything about it.

She hadn't gone to any teachers with her misgivings about Harry's family yet. The thought had slipped her mind in the commotion after Shadow Harry had bombed the school, and she hadn't yet done anything now that everything had calmed down because she wasn't sure how to go about it. Harry and Ron frequently complained about her being a tattletale, which wasn't a trait she considered entirely negative. However, with Harry's consistent secrecy about his family, she wasn't sure whether her tattling would help in this situation. What if Harry actually began to hate her for telling his big secret? She had to confront him about it, yet for once in her life found herself unable to initiate a discussion. Her inability to broach the subject made her as anxious as the subject itself did.

A voice called out above the general buzz of conversation. "Hermione! Mail!" Lavender stood at the top of the girls' steps.

Excitement supplanted Hermione's worry as she hopped to her feet. "They're here!" She dodged the Gryffindors milling about the common room and blew past Lavender on her way into their shared room. She squealed happily when she spotted the three plain brown owls perched on the end of her bed. One bore a small box, while two had been carrying a rod-shaped package that now lay in front of them. "Yes! I've been waiting ages for these," Hermione said, sending the owls off with their tips. She bounced onto her bed and eagerly began opening her mail.

"What'd you get?" Lavender asked. She watched Hermione with curiosity as she dragged a brush through her long hair.

"Er, I ordered..." Hermione was reluctant to tell her rumor-happy roommate about her intent to learn about Hylian magic. She wasn't sure she wanted all of Hogwarts to know about Hylian enchanting magic or staffs just yet. For one thing, it simply wasn't wise to encourage hundreds of children trapped in the same building to start carrying stone-topped metal clubs. "I ordered some materials. For a craft project," she said vaguely.

"You? Doing a craft project?" Lavender raised a skeptical eyebrow. "I thought you only knew how to do research projects."

"I have hobbies other than reading!" Hermione huffed, although she could silently admit she wasn't much of a hands-on person. Some subjects were much easier to read about than involve herself in.

After Lavender headed off to the bathroom to assault her hair with holding spray, Hermione resumed opening her packages. Through a wizarding middle-man service she'd ordered out to Muggle businesses for the materials of her staff, so as not to contaminate her future magic rod with any outside influences. A crystal seller in Liverpool had provided her with a four-inch globe of smoky quartz, while an industrial supply shop near London had sent her the 18" aluminum pipe she'd ordered. Zelda had told her that quartz was a fairly neutral stone within both their cultures, and the smoky quartz had been on sale.

"Now to make time," she murmured, gathering the crystal orb and metal rod in her arms. After a surreptitious look around to make sure no one would see her acting strangely, she ducked down and rolled under her bed. She would have gone to a hidden place outside of Gryffindor tower for this, but she had to retrieve Zelda's book from the common room before she could start her project.

Hermione transferred her materials to one arm and pulled out her Time-Turner necklace. According to Zelda, the hardest part of using a staff was making it work. The ritual to enchant the crystal and bond it to the rod was tedious and time-consuming, even for professional staff-makers. Not only that, but the magic wouldn't stick unless it was done continuously, with absolutely no breaks in spellcasting. Hylian enchantments demanded a high level of investment and focus for a long-term payoff. Hermione began flipping the Time-Turner with trepidation fluttering in her chest. She would have eight hours. Enough time to account for mistakes and retries if she messed up a chant.

The winds of time slid past her with the feeling of cool silk on her skin. Golden waves of magic—noticeable only to her, she'd been quick to learn—rose from the floor and swirled around the confined space beneath her bed. She ignored them, her focus on the dimming lights and feet scurrying in reverse. Three, two, one…

All became dark and quiet. This was her stop.

Slowly and carefully, she edged out from underneath her bed. She was a light sleeper, and while a confrontation with herself wouldn't be the end of the world, she preferred not to risk damaging time. A moment of concentration summoned her Hylian glasses onto her nose. Though they weren't as effective as a Lumos, they lessened the darkness of night to the level of dim torchlight. She stowed the orb of smoky quartz in her pocket and quietly pulled her cloak out of her trunk.

There were only three students in the common room at half past eleven, all of them upper-years. Percy Weasley wasn't one of them; she'd checked to make sure the first time she'd lived through this evening. Even when Hermione was being reckless and breaking curfew, she made sure to iron out any bumps in her plans before they became real problems.

She scooped up the Hylian Bestiary from its little pedestal and tucked it under her cloak as she made her way toward the portrait. None of the other Gryffindors even looked up when she opened the door, either too engrossed in their studies or figuring that someone as responsible as her had a good reason to break curfew.

The back of her neck prickled as soon as the Fat Lady closed behind her. The halls of Hogwarts were more dangerous at night. Skulltulas took advantage of the darkness to creep into more commonly-traveled hallways, some parts of the castle dropped into pitch-blackness that rendered any monsters within completely unseen, and lamp-carrying Moblins became more numerous. It was the Moblins that concerned Hermione the most. Skulltulas could be outrun and Wizzrobes could be disarmed, but a Moblin was fast enough to catch up to any fleeing students and their lanterns didn't do the same muted damage as their spears and arrows. Apparently, whatever force kept students from being pierced through by a Moblin's spear couldn't do anything about flaming oil.

Every footstep thundered in Hermione's ears. She knew logically that all of the monsters depended solely on line of sight to spot potential victims; however, that didn't keep her from doing her best impression of Crookshanks's prowling gait as she crept through the castle.

A high-pitched chittering noise caught her ear a moment before she was dive-bombed by a cluster of Keese. She swatted blindly at the shadowy little monsters to drive them away, pulled her cloak over her head, and then ran. More duty-oriented teachers like Professors Snape and McGonagall still patrolled the halls at night; she couldn't afford to draw their attention with flashy fire spells.

Hermione ran down the next two corridors, leaping over a couple of slithering Ropes in the process. Last she'd checked, there had been a trio of Floormasters one main corridor, two rights, another straightaway, and one left turn away from the Gryffindor dorm. They'd been entertaining themselves by knocking over the suits of armor on display there and chucking pieces of metal at anyone who tried to banish them.

After rounding the next corner, Hermione was gladdened to see stray pieces of plate armor littering the end of the hall. If she took the turn up there, she'd find her transport down to the Hogwarts entryway. She was almost there!

She jogged down the corridor, glad that her nighttime trial was almost over. The ritual was going to be enough of a challenge on its own without this additional test of nerves to bookend it—

"Ergh?"

Hermione's breath caught in her throat. Her jog became an all-out sprint, all sense of minding her volume forgotten. She could hear the clicking hoof-steps and jingling lantern of the Moblin behind her, but she didn't dare look back. As fast as spear-and-lantern Moblins were in a full charge, she couldn't afford to.

The girl skidded around the corner and ran for the Floormasters milling about the next hallway. Perhaps five meters behind her, there came the sound of hooves sliding on stone and then a heavy body crashing into the wall. Thankfully, the Floormasters didn't take long to notice her. Their magenta outlines flared brighter and the one nearest her, which had been pawing at an agitated portrait, slid closer.

"Hurry!" Hermione urged. She raised her arms to make herself easier to grab and welcomed the feeling of being grasped and lifted from the ground. The Moblin had almost caught up now and its arm was raised to toss its lantern. She dearly hoped the Floormaster wouldn't be affected by its fellow monster's fire. Would it only transport part of her if it got startled? Would she wind up lost in the between-space if the process were disrupted? As much as she liked having questions answered, she hoped those ones would remain mysteries for a while yet.

She was plunged into the ground just as the Moblin let fly. The sound of her relieved laughter warped and echoed around her as she fell through the Floormaster's internal portal. With a jolt, she was deposited on her rump in front of the closed doors of the Great Hall.

"Thank goodness for Floormasters," she muttered, dusting herself off. She'd be a little sad to see them go once Vaati was defeated. Even outside of using them to dodge Moblins, they were incredibly convenient creatures if utilized correctly.

Her journey to the Black Lake went much more quickly once she stepped out into the cold, dark night. Ironically, the shelter of the castle was much more hazardous than the school grounds, regardless of the time of day. There were only Octoroks and the occasional Buzz Blob to worry about, all of them spread far enough apart that Hermione had noticed that there were some sections of the grounds that they never wandered into. A significant stretch of the Black Lake's shore was one such area.

Finding a nice patch of thick grass, Hermione settled down cross-legged and set her materials out. The Hylian Bestiary went in her lap and the orb and rod for her staff lay in front of her. She stuck her wand behind her ear and then flipped through the Bestiary to the lined pages in the back.

"I'm ready," she said resolutely. "We have all night to do this, so let's begin."

"This will be a physically draining process, dear. Are you sure you're in a safe area where you won't be attacked by Vaati's beasts while you're weak?" Zelda wrote. "You likely won't be able to cast spells for an hour or two after this, and that's assuming you don't immediately fall asleep."

"Monsters never come here. I've been watching their patrols and I've made sure."

"And you're sure no one will disturb you? Even the ritual for a low-level staff can backfire spectacularly if interrupted."

Hermione smiled fondly at the spirit's concern. "You sound like my mother, Zelda. Yes, I'm sure—" A soft snuffling sound from nearby made her stop short. She got halfway to her feet and took up her wand, her heart suddenly pounding. Moblins? All the way out here? She'd scoped out this spot for three days and none had ever appeared here!

With her vision enhanced by her enchanted glasses, she quickly spotted what had startled her. "Dog? Is that you?" she called to the shaggy shadow sitting on its haunches closer to the softly glittering Black Lake. Hermione was pretty sure that was Malfoy's pet. She doubted too many creatures of the Forbidden Forest had collars like that.

The large silhouette on the shore turned and barked a greeting. Hermione looked back at the Hylian Bestiary and her supplies for a moment, then walked over to Dog. The ritual could keep for a few minutes while she figured out what Malfoy's mutt was doing so far away from the Slytherin dorm.

Hermione smiled and ruffled Dog's fur. From the cool temperature and dewy slickness of it, he'd been sitting out there for a while. She just hadn't noticed him because he blended in well against the backdrop of the moonless night. "Are you alright, boy?" she asked in a friendly voice. "You shouldn't be all the way out here! Do you want me to take you back home?"

Dog shook his head and then gave a short bark, pointing his nose to the left. Hermione, though slightly confused, followed his gaze. "What is it…? Oh."

Some meters away stood Malfoy, looking so pale in his white nightgown that he was hardly distinguishable from the sand bordering the lake. He stood perfectly still in water that lapped at his shins, staring off into the distance. The boy's body looked startlingly small without robes around it. With as much of a sense of presence as he'd always carried with him (negative presence, but still), Hermione had never noticed that he was nearly as waifish as Harry.

"Malfoy?" she said. He didn't respond.

Hermione began cautiously approaching him with Dog silently padding in her wake. "That lake is freezing! Aren't you cold?" she asked. "Malfoy? Draco? Can you hear me?" She stopped at the edge of the water. If Malfoy continued acting strange, she'd take off her shoes and wade in to pull his silly arse out. "Why are you out here in your nightclothes?"

The boy appeared to notice her, then. She saw a small curling of his fingers and a minute lifting of his slumped shoulders. "I had to go in the water," he said dully. "The water wasn't close enough. Never is."

"You could have taken a bath," Hermione pointed out. "No need to freeze out here. Why didn't you bring a cloak?"

"I had to go in the water. The water is here."

Okay, Malfoy clearly wasn't right in the head. For one thing, he hadn't snapped at her for daring to exist near him. Hermione took off her shoes and socks, hiked up her robes, and then stepped into the shallows of the Black Lake. "Come on, Draco. You should be in bed, not standing out here and trying to catch a cold."

He turned to look at her when she entered the water and she froze for a second. His eyes were luminous. They emanated a faint aura of radioactive green. As he moved, speckles on his cheeks caught the starlight and shimmered like coins. "Why are you here?" he asked dully. "Are you here for the water, too?"

Hermione pulled out her wand and cast a Lumos to better see him. In a voice made hushed by horror, she asked, "What happened to you?" The boy did not look right. Malfoy's skin bore a very noticeable greenish tint, especially in the heavy bags under his eyes and the gaunt hollows of his cheeks. Silver spots dotted his pale nose and cheeks like a pox, a few trailing up to his forehead. His slightly parted lips were a vivid pink despite the cold, chapped to the point of looking scaly, and the skin on the sides of his neck was red and striped with lines of scratch-marks.

'I guess I've found out who was turning green. Why didn't Red tell me?' Hermione thought as she reached out to the sick Slytherin. "You need to go to the Hospital Wing," she pronounced. Her ritual could wait until tomorrow, or however long it took for conditions to be favorable again. The health of her...teammate (teammate was a better descriptor than "friend", she decided) was more important. "Just let me gather up my things and then we can go, alright?" She seized some of his nightgown and towed him backwards. His feet shuffled unwillingly before following her prompting. Hermione made sure to get him completely out of the water before kneeling down to collect her shoes.

Malfoy blinked and rubbed his heavy-lidded eyes. "S'cold," he mumbled. A shiver went through him. Dog walked over and tentatively butted him in the side with his head. Malfoy looked down, gave a soft "oh" of recognition, and then mechanically gave Dog a pet.

Hermione shoved the materials for her Hylian staff in her pockets. Scooping up the Hylian Bestiary with the hand not holding her illuminated wand, she whispered, "I'm sorry for taking off like that. I think one of my dungeon teammates has a Hylian sickness. He was standing out here in the dead of night wearing nothing more than a nightgown, and I'm sure you're familiar with the climate here."

"Oh my, that sounds serious," Zelda wrote. "Thanks to the many dark sorcerers Hyrule's heroes faced in its past, we had a number of terrible magical illnesses in circulation. You'll have to describe the child's symptoms to me in detail once you've gotten him to the nurse."

"Yes, I'll start interrogating him once he's lucid. I'll see you later." Hermione closed the book, shoved it under her arm, and then hurried back to Malfoy.

Now that he'd been removed from the water for a couple of minutes, the blond was looking a bit more himself. He was still green and spotty, though. "I'm outside, aren't I?" he asked groggily. "I shouldn't be." His eyes, now their proper shade of gray, blinked sleepily and then opened wide. "Take those off!" he snapped. Malfoy's weary face twisted in anger. "Those glasses! Take them off! Now!" He took a step toward Hermione with one hand raised, poised to snatch the offending accessory if she didn't do it fast enough.

Though she had no idea what the Slytherin's problem was, Hermione banished the glasses before he could get more agitated. As soon as she did, she understood why he'd wanted her to do so; Malfoy didn't look half as ill without them on. His skin was still pale and marred by exhaustion, but with hardly any green, and his cheeks were free of metallic freckling.

"You won't tell anyone about this," he snarled. "I don't care if I have to cast an Unforgivable to keep you quiet! Nobody finds out! Including Weasley and Potter. Is that clear, Granger?"

Hermione couldn't help but shrink a bit at his intensity. "Yes, I understand," she said quickly. "I wasn't going to tell anyone, anyway. Spreading rumors is more in your wheelhouse than mine." She absolutely would have told her friends, though, if only to keep them informed. That was just how she, Harry, and Ron worked.

"Only because you lack the skill to use them effectively," he sniffed. Hermione supposed that was his way of agreeing that she could keep a secret. "What time is it? It's positively freezing." He wrapped his thin arms around himself.

"Close to midnight," she told him. "What are you doing out here? This is a long way to sleep-walk. I'm surprised a Moblin didn't get to you."

"I wasn't sleepwalking." Malfoy turned away from her and hunched his shoulders. "I'm…aware, to a degree, when I come out here. I guess. The first two times this happened, I thought I was navigating a realistic dream. Now, it appears I was actually wandering about the grounds in my nightie." His face scrunched up in distaste. "At least it was you who caught me, not the Weasel or one of my roommates. You wouldn't know proper decorum if someone cursed you to recite a book of manners."

Hermione sighed. Even shivering, wet, and looking so run-down that he could hardly stay upright, Malfoy couldn't sound any less like a viper. 'He was raised by the wrong sort,' she reminded herself. 'He can't help being an arse. No strangling him allowed.' "Do you want to wear my cloak for the walk back to the dungeons?" she asked, because her parents had raised her to have manners. "You'll catch your death in this cold."

The young aristocrat pursed his lips, considering. "I guess you keep clean enough. Better than the blood-traitor, at least." He held out his hand expectantly.

With an eye-roll at his princely ungratefulness, Hermione dropped her cloak into his hand. "Er, how long has this been happening?" she inquired as they began their trek up the shallow hill to the castle. "You said you've walked out here twice before. Do you know why?"

"Why is it any of your business?" Malfoy all but hid under her cloak. "It's my problem. I already have people dealing with it."

"Yes, I know. He's been asking around for information to help 'some guy he found in the hall'," Hermione said dryly. "You didn't think Red would ask me for research assistance? Harry was doing that before he split into four, and Red isn't his studious side."

"Unfortunately, he was the one I ran into in the hallway. I'd have brought the blue one in, but he's smart enough that I don't trust him," Malfoy grumbled. "It's a sad fact of life that the people most likely to be trustworthy are also the least likely to be intelligent help."

Hermione gave him a pitying look. She couldn't imagine only seeing people as possible tools or betrayers. No wonder Malfoy was such a prickly git. "I have Blue's notes on the Hylian Bestiary, you know," she said, trying to sound nonchalant. "Harry's been translating it for him, since he can read Hylian. If you like, I can read through them and see if there's anything about what might be wrong with you." 'Other than a terrible personality, that is,' she silently added.

"Why would you do that?" He eyed her suspiciously. "What do you want? Money? Status? A spell to shrink those rabbit teeth?"

"I don't want anything!" Hermione denied, though she ran her tongue self-consciously over her front teeth. "Harry's been itching to investigate what the Deku Scrubs by the Forbidden Forest are guarding and you can't help us explore the next temple if you're sick. That's all." She shifted her grip on Zelda's book to hug it to her chest. "You're useful to me and my friends. Is that a Slytherin enough reason for you?"

"Hmph." He wrapped himself more tightly in her cloak.

They walked in silence for a minute or so. Malfoy positively vibrated with tension. Though he stood in a weary slump, he clutched her cloak tightly over his shoulders and his jaw kept clenching and unclenching. Hermione edged away from him, fearing an angry outburst from the emotionally erratic, sleep-deprived Slytherin.

Her fears turned out to be (partially) unfounded when the boy instead started fountaining words in a frantic rush. "My father sent me a letter ten days ago. I read it in the Drowning Room. It's this…torture closet, one could call it, inside the Slytherin dungeons. Troublemakers would get locked inside and then be treated to a view of the Black Lake from the bottom. I went in there to read my letter because…it doesn't matter. What does matter is that a whole host of merpeople decided to swim up to the window and gawk at me. If they weren't incapable of using wands, I'd have thought them responsible for whatever this is." He shuddered and then reached up to scratch at his neck. "A few days after that, I dreamt about going to the Black Lake for the first time. Except, obviously, it wasn't a dream." He laughed bitterly. "And then, a couple days ago, I stepped out looking an utter mess because my skin had burned through every spell I'd cast on it! Thank Merlin none of the Slytherins use their magic glasses. If Blaise or Millicent were any less fashion-conscious, they'd have seen me as whatever ghoul I've turned into." His carefully maintained nails dug deeper into his neck. "So, Granger, is that enough information for you?"

"Yes, but…Malfoy, you're going to make yourself bleed at the rate you're going." Hermione resisted the urge to pull his hand away from the abused skin of his throat. "Maybe we should stop by the Hospital Wing, if only to get those scratches looked at."

Malfoy's hand stilled. Holding it out in front of him, he scowled at his fingers. "There's no point. I'll only wind up clawing myself again," he said with grudging resignation. "It doesn't even itch. I just keep scratching without thinking, even when I'm asleep. Horrid, isn't it?"

Hermione added that to her mental catalogue of symptoms. "I've come up with a hypothesis. It's not exactly founded yet, but—"

"If you have an idea, feel free to voice it. Unless you're going to tell me you're convinced my grandmother was a mermaid, because then I might have to curse you and leave you for the Octoroks."

"I think you might have a Hylian illness," she ventured. "Or something else related to them. You might even be part Hylian, and your heritage is only becoming noticeable because of all the Hylian magic affecting Hogwarts."

"If it were an illness, I wouldn't be the only one sick. Red, Vincent, and Gregory were in the same group as me when we were traveling through that ghastly death temple, so they should have developed the same symptoms," Malfoy reasoned. "And if I were a Hylian descendant, one would think I'd suffer my hair turning bright yellow before I started turning green. You've seen it in the book yourself, I'm sure. Hylians were the same color as us, not—" He stopped walking. "Hylians."

Hermione walked a few steps back and raised an eyebrow at him. The boy looked like he would have gone pale if his skin weren't already the color of milk. "Yes? Hylians weren't what?"

"Nothing. I need to get back to my dorm." His eyes flicked to the book in Hermione's arms for the briefest of moments before focusing on her face. "I'll do my own research, so tell Red to stop asking around." He shoved her cloak back into her arms and took off running toward the castle. Dog bounded after him.

"Er, okay?" Hermione watched his progress until his pale form disappeared into the night. What an odd boy. When he wasn't being nasty, he was just bizarre. Were all Malfoys raised to be so eccentric?

"Well, I suppose that leaves me with time before morning, then." She secured her grip on Zelda's book and then returned to her spot by the lake. If Malfoy was content to take care of himself, then she was free to do what she'd originally set out to accomplish. Setting the Bestiary down in front of her, she once again flipped to its back pages and set out her staff materials. "We have time after all," she told Zelda. "Now, how does the chant start?"

Item Get: Magic Rod—an unspecialized staff for general spells.

-I wanted Hermione and Draco to have another chat, especially now that Draco's an anxiety-ridden sleep zombie. After over a week of psychological torment as he's watched his humanity slip away, he's getting a little desperate to speak with someone who can help him figure out what's going on and won't hold his shifting blood status over him.

-Next week, the Dungeon 3 arc begins! I've done a lot of preparation for this one, so I'm super excited!