Clues
The good news was that the love potion only lasted three hours. The bad news was during those three hours, Ron and Harry acted like complete idiots. They were always drooling over the girls and waving like crazy and blushed so much they resembled tomatoes. Then it all stopped as the potion wore off. They were right in the middle of talking to the girls when they realized, "What are we doing?". They both departed and went back to the Great Hall for lunch. They sank into chairs across from Hermione.
"Where are your girlfriends?" Hermione asked with narrowed eyes.
Ron sighed and Harry blushed.
"Sorry," Harry muttered. "We shouldn't have ignored you like that. We don't know what came over us."
Hermione was burning up, but just continued to eat with shaking hands.
"You know what, Harry?" Ron asked with bright eyes. "I reckon we might have been... you know... under a love potion or something."
"That's crazy!" Harry said. Then he thought, "Actually, you could be right! The symptoms are all there. It wore off so suddenly, and-"
"OH, SHUT UP! BOTH OF YOU!" Hermione burst out. "YOU'RE SUCH IDIOTS! I CAN'T STAND YOU! YOU DRIVE ME CRAZY!"
She shook with rage, then threw the contents of her goblet at the two of them. Why did they drive her nuts? Unable to stay with them any longer, she ran out of the Great Hall.
She ran across the halls, past classrooms, up flights of stairs- just kept running, running, running. But what was she running from? Harry and Ron? Her best friends? Why was she so mad at them?
When Hermione found the need to catch her breath and wipe her tears, she realized that she had no idea where she was. No pictures or passages or doors looked familiar, so she wandered around looking for some sign of anything that would lead her back to the Common Room. The last thing she expected was to bump into- thin air?
Rubbing her head, Hermione looked around for a solid object that was apparently in her way. Puzzled by seeing nothing, she resorted to waving her arms, trying to hit that... whatever it was... again. At last she felt a smooth verticle surface, and at last a knob.
What in the name of... Hermione turned the invisible knob, not really knowing what to expect. Well, whatever it was, it wasn't a giant room with an abandoned cauldron in the middle, but that was exactly what was in there.
She felt the cauldron, not being stupid enough to stick her hand in an unidentified magical liquid. It was stone cold. How odd...
Hermione looked around (though who would be spying on her in a completely transparent room?), then took an emtly bottle of ink out of her bag. After using a quick cleaning potion to get rid of the last of the ink, she filled it up halfway with the potion and slipped it back into her bag. Now what? Well, I guess I won't find many more clues here. Time to go back to my friends... oh what, I DON'T HAVE ANY, Hermione thought angrily.
·~··~··~·
No one saw Hermione for the remainder of the day. After drying off, Harry and Ron thought it was best to not search for her, not unless they wanted dinner thrown at themselves as well. What would happen, they predicted, was that she would return after cooling off and everything would be sorted out one way or another. Hopefully.
Hermione immediately knew she had to analyze the substance. Being the genius, top-grade student she was, she knew exactly what books she would need from the library and the tools. So in a matter of hours, Hermione's own personal 'lab' was set up in the invisible room, ready to detect what sort of potion she stumbled upon.
"Now all I need is that last spell," Hermione whispered to herself while leafing through a heavy textbook. "Found it!" Her finger scanned down the worn paper and tapped the printed words she was looking for. "Spellarumbia!" she said while the tip of her wand pointed to the tiny bottle of potion. Like a vacuum, her wand sucked up the liquid without leaving a drop. For a minute her wand felt warm and it squirmed slightly. For once, Hermione wasn't sure if her spell would actually work. Then out of the tip of her wand popped a tiny slip of paper. In the smallest writing was written the name of the potion. It had worked! Now to find out what sort of potion 'Temporary Allurement Serum' was.
Probably some illegal substance, she thought while looking through a large book of potions. Dumbledore should be informed of this promptly. As soon as I find it, I'll go straight up to- it was then she found it;
Temporary Allurement Serum, The- a simple love potion composed of mainly dutch-grown lily stems, apple tree root, pig sweat, and feces of the leopard gecko. When consumed in its traditional clear liquid form, the drinker will experience unexpected attractions towards a member of the opposite sex. However, the potion will not reveal a person's true love for someone and has a reputation of disrupting a person's true emotional thoughts.
So this wasn't some dangerous potion that could possibly control the minds of everyone at Hogwarts, as Hermione was half expecting. Instead some airhead secretly made a love potion and was more than likely doing more harm than good. It didn't occur to her that this particular airhead was harming her until after she cleared the room and was heading down the hall. Hermione stopped in her tracks as her mind clicked. Ron and Harry both thought Ron's goblet of orange juice tasted funny this morning, though Hermione's was fine. Then the two boys became obsessed with two girls they barely knew. Just as suddenly, they came to their sensed. Stupid Hermione! Ron and Harry really had been under a love potion the whole time!
Hermione turned 180 degrees and ran back to the room. Just maybe she could find a few clues which would lead her to find the maker of the potion. Unfortunately, finding an invisible room for the third time in an incredibly vast castle with changing rooms and passages wasn't all that easy. The only way Hermione was going to find out who was playing cupid was to pick up hints elsewhere.
I know I haven't been updating in a while, and I'm sorry. I'll try to finish the story soon now that it's going somewhere. Suggestions welcome, as always. Now it will just be another 4 months for me to upload chapter nine (just kidding).
-QA