2

"Miss Granger!"

Hermione groaned and slowed her stride at the sound of McGonagall's beckoning. She wanted nothing more than to find a quiet place to hide and process the stupidity she'd just displayed. Wrapping her arms around herself as a means of protection, she turned to face the elder witch.

Somehow, McGonagall managed to look older and frailer than Hermione had ever seen. The wrinkles in her face ran deep, the crease between her brows endless. "Yes, Professor?" she asked, studying the worn, exhausted witch.

"I wanted to know how you were feeling after landing yourself in such a predicament."

Hermione's eyes followed robes of onyx and emerald, taking her lips between her teeth as she watched Daphne and Pansy whispering to one another and shooting her looks over their shoulders. Their fingers intertwined as they cupped hands over their mouths to laugh on her behalf. "I don't honestly know, Professor," she told her truthfully, dragging her eyes away from her peers to stare into McGonagall's. "I thought I was ready for whatever change would be thrown my way."

"I cannot make the Hat change his mind. Gryffindor Tower will now reject your advancements, you see." McGonagall's lips pursed into thin lines and she seemed to chew on the inside of her cheek. "You'll have to face the consequences of your decision."

Hermione nodded only once, taking a step back. "I did it because I wanted a change. You must understand—"

"I do, Miss Granger. I do. Had you considered Beauxbatons?"

"I'm not running away. I'm facing this head on. How bad could it honestly be?"

McGonagall's lips thinned again, worry written across her features. "Do be careful."

Hermione simply nodded once more and turned on her heel. The Great Hall was cleared, only a few stragglers trying to eavesdrop. With her heart thudding, she strode from the Hall, only to be snatched by the arm upon exiting. With a roughness she wouldn't expect from him, she was pulled into the nearest alcove by a furious Ron. "Let go. Ronald, let me go!"

He dropped her hand to turn on her, folding his arms across his chest. "How could you?" he bellowed, drawing the attention of a few passersby.

Hermione bristled and cast a silencing charm on the space around them, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. "I didn't do this to hurt you—"

"You know bloody well this was supposed to be our year! We can finally have some privacy without my mother lurking around," he accused, softening enough to brush a curl behind her ear. "There's so much left for us to learn about one another. And you had to ruin it by doing this!"

She tried to blame the flopping of her stomach on guilt at taking those experiences from him, tried to tamp down the nausea that rose at his innuendo. Lauded as being one of the bravest witches in the wizarding world, she only wished she could find any ounce of that courage now. She was leading him on and things were bound to get messy, especially now at her perceived betrayal of Gryffindor House.

"Ron, I just need a change," she confessed, lifting her shoulder to shrug his hand away. "I need to go."

Crossing her arms tight over her chest, she tucked her head and nearly sprinted toward the dungeons. Ignoring Ron's outburst behind her, she picked up speed until she reached the top of the winding stairwell that led down into the Slytherin common room. The air around her seemed to leech all oxygen from her lungs and blood rushed, loud enough to deafen her. With every step she took downward, dread filled her bit by bit. Beginning in her toes, each step slid icewater through her veins until she stood directly outside of a nondescript wall, shivering uncontrollably.

She hadn't departed from the Great Hall with the rest of her House and the prefects were likely inside, showing first years to their new living quarters. Slughorn had already appeared to be soused at the feast, so retrieving the password from him was entirely out of the question. Hermione began to pace in front of the wall, weighing her options. A patronus could go through stone, yet who would she call to within? She could patiently wait outside until someone came through—though, they were all likely turning in for the night after the long train ride from London.

As she turned to make a pass in front of the wall for the tenth time, the stones beside her began to shake. Bits of dusty mortar fell over her as an iron door began to form where the bricks curled away. Her throat ran dry as she took a step away from it, her hand raised into the semblance of a knock before dropping it. Bloody hell, it's just the Sly—

Her thoughts were cut short when the door opened and Draco Malfoy stood before her. He looked down his nose at her, irritation painting his features. "Are you going to come in, then? We can all feel you pacing out here."

She opened and then closed her mouth, feeling out of sorts as he stepped to the side and gestured into the common room. Gathering her wits, she straightened her spine and gave him a thankful nod. "Sorry. I didn't get the password."

She felt his gaze follow her even as the metal of the iron door clanked into place, sounding rather like a prison cell slamming shut. "It's serpensortia," he huffed, moving around her to toss himself languidly over the nearest sofa.

Hermione's eyes grew wide as she took in her surroundings. The room was vast—a cavern, yes, but immaculate in its design. Rather than stone, the walls were made of polished black limestone. Emerald green light sparkled off its surface, reflecting in from large cutouts overlooking the depths of the Black Lake. Everything was bathed in it, giving it all a haunting tone. Chandeliers larger than her mother's Volkswagen hung above them, lit by jumping bluebell flames and swaying gently as floors of students and moving stairways shook the castle imperceptibly.

Couches, both overstuffed and made of uninviting leather, formed a square around heavy ottomans of matching materials. There was a loft above, long desks lining the railings and looking down over the room. More settees and armchairs dotted the loft, gaudy green and silver blankets draping them all. Cupboards made of black walnut with glass fronts lined every inch of the right side of the room. Within were strange creatures in jars, human skulls, and thick tomes bound in flesh. To the left hung a massive portrait of Salazar Slytherin, who sneered down at her from his perch. His lips moved, but no words came out. "We silenced him a long time ago," came a quiet voice from behind her.

She turned to see Tracey Davis emerge from a nearby door, pulling an oversized black sweater over her head. "Oh?" Hermione managed to murmur.

"Yeah. Bigoted prick kept telling me my muggle mother was sullying the House. So Theo and I silenced him back in third year after my mother died."

Hermione's eyes darted from the painting to rest on Tracey's face. She cleared her throat, feeling awkward as the others simply watched her. "I'm sorry to hear that. I had no idea."

"Why would you have known? We aren't exactly friends. I suspect there's a lot about all of us that you don't know," she mentioned, waving her hand vaguely to the room. A few younger students sat on the outskirts of the room, but the core group was made up of the other returning adult students—Malfoy, Nott, Parkinson, Greengrass. "Do you want to sit?"

Hermione's eyes looked at each student in turn before she looked back at Tracey, who was staring at her expectantly. "CiCi, she probably wants to get changed and settled in," Parkinson quipped from where she sat, stroking along Daphne Greengrass' hair in her lap. "It's the door behind you. Eighth door."

While her tone wasn't exactly biting, she wasn't being friendly either. Her attention on Hermione spent, she dropped her gaze to Greengrass once more, the conversation finished. Hermione only nodded, dismissed from the group within the first five minutes. She turned and went through the door she'd just seen Tracey exit and was greeted with yet another winding stone staircase.

The youngest students were behind the first door, with the years descending in order until she felt as though she'd traveled a mile. She reached the eighth door, dizzy from her efforts. Dropping her forehead to the door, she fought to still the swimming in her head. The knob clicked and the door creaked open. A soft silvery blue light filtered out into the corridor and she took a deep breath before making her way into the room. A massive fireplace filled with regal black flames roared along the far wall, providing no light though the flames siphoned out the damp chill of the dungeons. There was very little light coming in from the windows now that they were so far under the surface of the lake, but she could just make out the sweeping of a mermaid's tail as one passed close by.

Two beds of solid mahogany lined either side, serpentine carvings etched into the posts of each. Thick velvet comforters covered each bed, luxurious in their quality and masterful in design. Embroidered into the center of each was a snake's head, fangs exposed and buried in a woven garden of silver flowers. Alongside each bed was a nightstand and wardrobe.

But far more peculiar than the intricate carvings, overtly royal bedding, or roaring onyx flames, was a pool of vapor—the source of the unearthly blue light. She stepped further into the room, tiptoeing until she reached the edge of the pool. The stone of the floor gave way to steps that led to shallow depths, the bottom visible through the ethereal smokiness of its contents. Argent whisps swirled in its basin, their movement causing the vapors to lap against the pool's edges as a liquid would.

A pensieve.

How curious. Hermione was tempted to reach down and run her hand through the beautiful substance, though the hairs on the back of her arms stood on end, a silent warning. She intertwined her fingers and tucked her hands into her chest, examining each bed to find her own. Their trunks were already emptied and placed at the end of the beds. Finding her own things, she began to toe off her shoes, ready to drop from exhaustion.

Ron's disappointed face swirled behind her eyelids, taunting her. "This was supposed to be our year!" She groaned as she pulled the blankets back and slipped within. For all of the ostentatious decorum, it irritated her just that much more that the sheets in her new bed were far more cozy than the worn blankets of Gryffindor Tower.

Pulling the blanket up to her chin, she closed her eyes and tried to fight off the abject horror on her friends' faces from her mind. They'd fought—and won—a war to prevent prejudices from prevailing. And yet, being sorted into Slytherin was sure to make her a pariah.

Pressing her palms into her eyes until stars exploded behind her lids, she was startled when the door to the dormitory snapped open. Parkinson and the older Greengrass sister stumbled in through the open doorway, locked at their lips as their hands explored and roamed over every inch of one another.

Hermione caught rushed utterances of "...missed you…" and "...don't give a fuck what your mum thinks…" as they fell onto the bed nearest the door. Feeling her own eyes widen in surprise, Hermione yanked at the drawstrings of her bed's curtains. The last thing she saw before they fell closed was Greengrass tugging Parkinson's shirt up and over her head as she kissed along her bare chest.

Hermione's cheeks flushed with embarrassment at having witnessed such an unabashed scene of sexual gratification.

Something heavier than embarrassment burned in her throat. An emotion that made her windpipe constrict and her chest ache. Envy. Not at either girl in particular. No. She was envious of them both. They had one another while she was left to ponder stitching up the unravelling seams of an unwanted relationship.

Hermione had always assumed that the pug-nosed little bint was Malfoy's play thing. And despite the jealousy she felt toward the girls, a small measure of smug gratification was had that Malfoy's witch was canoodling with her best friend behind his back.

o~O~o

The light coming from the windows was only slightly less murky when Hermione's eyes opened the next morning. The dreariness of it matched her mood perfectly and she began to wonder if the ambience is what made the Slytherin House collectively pissy. The last thing she wanted was to pull herself out from between the covers, but a quick Tempus told her she was going to have to skip breakfast altogether and go straight into first period double Herbology with the Gryffindors.

After rushing through a morning routine and throwing her unruly hair into a ponytail, she climbed her way up to the common room. She stuffed her wand into the knot on her head as she skipped into the room, pulling on one shoe and stumbling under the weight of her bag.

She froze, her finger tucked into the heel of her shoe as she looked up to four pairs of eyes on her. Pansy's nose wrinkled and she raised a disgusted brow. "Granger, what are you doing?"

Hermione could feel the heat licking up her collar. Whether it was from embarrassment over this moment or from overhearing the Slytherin girls' display the evening prior, she couldn't be certain. "I-I woke up late."

Daphne gave her a once over, pausing on her mess of curls and the rumpled hem of her skirt. "The house elves make wake up visits, if you need one."

Theo Nott scoffed and led them through the iron door. "Granger calling on a house elf. That'll be the day!"

Hermione bit back a retort and her eyes met Malfoy's. A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth though he didn't smile. He took an apple from a nearby basket and tossed it in her direction. She fumbled, nearly dropping it. "Might want to skip the tryouts for Seeker," he told her, doing a far less subtle once over than Daphne had given her. "Nice hair."

She stared after him, dropping the apple into her bag as she stomped her shoe on the rest of the way. Though he hadn't said much, Malfoy had a way of making her feel like an utter dunce. With a groan, she ambled through the doorway, waving her wand for it to disappear after her.

The day was already warming up, the last throes of summer in full swing, as she ran to the greenhouses. The others were a pace ahead of her and she could hear scuffling behind her. "Hermione, wait up!"

Ever the last ones to arrive, Ron and Harry fell in to flank her on either side. Ron was notably quiet after their row the night prior, though Hermione could hear his jaw click as he ground his teeth. Harry looked between his two best friends. "So, how was the first night in the snake pit?"

Lonely. "Different," Hermione settled on, taking her bottom lip between her teeth. "I'll have to bring you to my dorm some time. Everything is so luxurious." She tried to sound upbeat, as though she were completely thrilled with the idea of having a new identity.

Ron huffed and adjusted his bag on his shoulder. He was stiff and stared into the distance and she could immediately tell he was still miffed from their spat. "Luxurious? You mean way over the top?"

Hermione chose to ignore his envious tone. Harry bristled next to her. "Did anyone give you any trouble?"

"Not at all. They ignored me for the most part."

"I just don't understand—"

"Ron, we've been through this," Hermione cut him off as they reached the door to the seventh greenhouse. "I just needed a change."

"But, Slytherin, Hermione?" Harry interjected, withering under the look she shot his way.

Hermione sniffed, raising her chin with a confidence she didn't truly feel. "Well, it's not like I could have foreseen the hat choosing Slytherin. I would have thought Ravenclaw, but the Sorting Hat is never wrong. It sees into our psyche and examines our innermost workings. I suppose," she swung her bag off her shoulder and onto a worktop, rolling her shoulder to ease its pain, "it can't be too far off. No one's ever accused me of lacking an abundance of ambition and I've done my fair share of cunning in my time here."

Ron grunted in resentful acknowledgement as Harry laughed. "That you have, 'Mione. That you have."

Pomona Sprout shuffled into the greenhouse, wearing dragonhide gloves that climbed up to her shoulders. She huffed out a breath that ruffled a curl on her forehead. "My apologies for being tardy, class. Been tending to a particularly volatile bush of Dragon's dittany." She held up her gloved fingers to expose a shiny burn peeking through a hole in the hide by way of explanation.

"Dragon's dittany?" Hermione questioned aloud, wrinkling her brow. She'd read of such a plant, but never come across it in person. It was believed to have been snuffed out by foragers nearly three centuries before.

Professor Sprout nodded, piddling about to gather her teaching materials for the day. "Indeed, Miss Granger. And if you are able to tell me what it's used for, I'll award you ten House points."

"It's used to treat magical burns."

"Aye. But what kind?"

Hermione's eyes slid sideways to where her fellow Housemates sat. They all looked as though they could not be bothered to care about what her next words were. All except for Malfoy, who seemed to know its precise purpose and was steadfastly staring a hole into the worktop before him. "It's mainly used to heal...to heal magical brands."

The professor's smile widened, as though they weren't discussing the only known cure to removing a Dark Mark, as though they were merely talking about a crop of sunflowers. "That's right. Ten points to Gryffindor!"

"She's no Gryffindor," came a seething hiss from over her left shoulder. "Not since she decided we aren't good enough for her."

Professor Sprout looked up from her collection of roots at the culprit, a sour-faced Ginny Weasley. Hermione glanced back at her and was met with a look that could wilt the very plant Professor Sprout had been grappling before class. "Oh, so silly of me—habit! Ten points to Slytherin," Professor Sprout corrected.

Hermione's lips parted, an offended retort on her tongue when a member of her illustrious new house took the moment of silence to intervene. "At least she's useful for that much." With her cheeks aflame, Hermione tucked her chin into her chest as her Housemates snickered at Pansy's quip.

"Leave her alone, Pans," Malfoy drawled. "She's our golden ticket to House victory."

o~O~o