Antilitigation Charm:
All cannon characters, places, and concepts are the property of the divine J.K. Rowling.
I'm just borrowing them for a bit of a romp, and I promise to give them back when I'm done.
I'm not making any money off of this. Please don't sue me, because it really wouldn't be
worth your time.
FYI, Hermione is 18 in this story (time turners, late birthday, whatever); I am NOT into
lemons.
Once Upon A Dream

Chpt. 1

Hermione closed her eyes and tiredly rested her head on the library table. The candles
were burning low, and most of the rest of Hogwarts was already asleep. If not for the
necessity of finishing her honours project before Christmas break (after all, she was
going to need some time to go to Christmas parties between studying for the next term and
working on the five potions projects that she had planned), Hermoine would have long
before retired for the night. With her cheek resting on the soft leather cover of a thick
book, she took a moment to savour the rich aromas of the ancient library around her - a
delicious combination of wax and dust, old leather and polished wood. Her senses seemed
to slow to match the silent library, and she absently began to concentrate on picking out
the different scents. Easily, she became aware of the light lavender that had been added
to the wax of her smouldering candle and the soft woody smell of the Red Oak in the table
beneath her. The leather book had the tangy smell of cow, but the pages in-between had
the lighter odour of expensive vellum. Stretching her awareness farther out, she tracked
the library shelves around her. To her left was a rack of parchment made from Egyptian
reeds. Next to them, an entire set of volumes covered in gryphon-skin. The Care of
Dragons volumes smelt strongly of their dragon-scale encasements (how better to keep them
from catching fire?). A few muggle books provided a harsh contrast with their strong
odour of manufacturing.

Hermione felt a small burst of pride as she realized how much her scent perception had
improved in the last several months, when she had consciously begun to work on improving
it. In order to someday have the chance of obtaining the illustrious title of Potions
Mistress, she would have to have the keenest awareness of the components with which she
worked. A single particle of contamination could drastically alter delicate potions.
Consequently, one of the typical entrance exams for programs of advanced potions studies
involved being enclosed in a fully stocked room of unmarked substances (typically over
five hundred, only a few of which would be found in a standard potions laboratory). In
order to successfully pass, the applicant would have to identify all of them within a
twenty-four hour period. Most aspiring students were in their mid-thirties by the time
that they were prepared to pass the rigorous entrance exams. Hermoine intended to be
ready by her nineteenth birthday, the same age as the youngest-ever successful student,
Severus Snape.

Hermione had come across that little tidbit of information while researching the entrance
exams for Magus Maximus's potions program, the most respected advanced studies program in
Europe. Professor Snape had graduated as a prodigy at twenty-two, and Hermione intended
to use the record of his success as a measuring stick for her own.

Porions had tied with transfigurations as Hermione's favourite lesson for most of her
time at Hogwarts. However, in the last six months or so, potions had begun to absorb more
and more of her attention. Watching Professor Snape's intense manner as he stooped over a
student's cauldron, his eyes dreamy and his hands precise as he added ingredients to his
own in the advanced potions classes, had inflamed her interest for the subject. The
deciding factor, however, had come when she had suddenly realized something – Transfiguring
one object into another could be an interesting challenge, but, at some point, it boiled
down to just one thing: turning one thing into another. Over and over and over again,
always the same thing.

With potions, though, there was the constant challenge of finding new ways to apply
components. Even the tried-and-true components could, with a bit of luck and creativity,
be used to create quite surprising results. That too, actually, was one of the two
elements of gaining recognition as a Potions Master: to create a truly revolutionary
potion out of the one hundred and fifty ingredients listed in the Standard Book of
Potions, and to discover and catalogue the uses of a previously unknown substance.

She grinned to herself; the second requirement was often quite difficult. She,
however, was certain that some research into muggle chemistry would yield amazing
results. Even the cursory tests that she had performed in her all-too-uncommon spare time
had indicated that the introduction of some of the muggle high-conductance alloys into
potions commonly used to enchant magical 'storage' devices could have a marked increase
on their effectiveness. More extensive testing would be required to figure out which of
the chemical interactions in the potion was causing the effect. Best, though, was the
fact that, to the best of her knowledge, no Potions Master had yet done any research into
this subject. At least, not according to any of the journal articles that she had seen,
and she had gone back as far as twenty years in all of the potions journals available in
Hogwart's library.

Hermione yawned again, startled to realize that she had nearly drifted off. A glance at
her watch revealed that she had wasted nearly fifteen minutes in pointless
wool-gathering.

'It is definitely time', she thought, 'to go to bed.'

Sleepily, she collected her notes and books. Her candle had burned down almost to a stub,
and the torches in their wall-scones were nearly guttered. Weird shadows danced on
the walls with the drafts of the old castle.
............................................
Ok y'all, you know the drill -- tell me what you think of the story, and I'll tell you what
happens next. If nobody seems to want to know, I'll probably just try to think up
another plot to inflict on you! *evil laughter*
Oh, and Please Be Nice. This is the first bit of fiction that I've written in a really,
really long time. Constructive comments are more than welcome, though.