A/N: Took me a while, didn't it? I'm sorry. Have fun. And happy chocolate week.
***
About an hour after the train had left Kings' Cross, the thunder stopped and the sun came out—very briefly. Barely a minute later it closed back over with clouds and another ominous rumble of thunder shook their teeth in the back compartment.
"I really am sorry for the first-years," said Harry reflectively. "We never had to deal with rain or any of the rest of it."
"Just dark and cold and being scared out of our wits," agreed Ron.
Hermione said, "Well, if there are any more like Dennis Creevey they'll all be trying to fall out and get saved by the squid."
The thunder stopped being ominous and threatening then and decided to make a nice massive clap directly over their heads. All three jumped and then laughed nervously as the downpour started anew, but this time in thin needles rather than the heavy hot drops of the morning.
"I've got a feeling kids like Dennis Creevey only show up once a decade or so," Harry said.
"Only because the rest were all dropped on their heads as small children," Ron added.
They were interrupted, mid-laughter, by a very cold voice from the corridor, "Isn't that sweet—the inseparable three sharing genuine laughter…who feels like destroying the moment?"
Malfoy. Of course.
"Last moment for a while, wouldn't you say?" said the Slytherin, glancing casually between Crabbe, Goyle, and Harry. "Especially with the events of the past June. But famous Potter can't be bothered with saving the world right now, he's too busy laughing with the weasel and the Mudblood."
All three of them stood up; only Hermione had the presence of mind to take out her wand. If only she'd gotten him saying that on a magical record…that way, when it elevated to fists, only Malfoy could get in any real trouble…Just in advance, she whispered to her wand, "Prescribus": a Recording Charm.
"Say that again, Malfoy," Harry said sharply.
Malfoy smirked. "Why? So you can defend your pitiful little Mudblood girlfriend—"
Hermione winced. Some idiots never learn, she reflected, as Harry and Ron both lunged at Malfoy. As an added safeguard, Hermione shot a few streams of sparks in the general directions of Crabbe and Goyle—with luck, the sparks would go into smoke, but that smoke would be thick enough to obscure their vision so Harry and Ron could give Malfoy a few good punches.
The sparks worked—twin clouds of white smoke formed around the two gorillas, while—
—the three people who could actually see were suddenly thrown rather violently apart, Ron and Harry against one side of the corridor and Malfoy against the other. Standing between them, holding a wand, was Professor O'Malley.
"Boys!" she said sharply. "What in the name of all that is good and holy is going on?"
Immediately Ron and Harry started speaking loudly, while Malfoy interjected his own excuses in a low, strangled whimper—he was bleeding from the nose, had a black eye, and seemed to be nursing his knuckles.
"He started it—"
"—always does—"
"They hit me first!"
"But you provoked us!"
"I didn't! I was just standing here talking!"
"You called Hermione a Mudblood!" Ron said furiously.
Hermione's heart skipped a beat.
Professor O'Malley whipped around and stared at her. The professor's eyes were narrow and oddly tip-tilted, glittering at her over a long nose. "Is this true, Miss Granger?"
"Yes," Hermione answered, around a lump in her throat that was there for no real reason that she could see.
"Mr. Malfoy?" the professor demanded.
Malfoy just stared at her—down at her, he'd grown several inches over the summer—and nodded exactly once.
"Right," Professor O'Malley said slowly, after scrutinizing him. "No points can be taken off, or you'd be in the negatives, sir—and so would you," she shot at Harry and Ron. "There's no excuse for that kind of discriminatory language—but there's none for fistfights either. I'll be speaking to both your Heads of Houses about this."
She gave Malfoy another look. "Better get a handkerchief, boy. Come with me." Professor O'Malley pivoted on her heel and strode away, and Malfoy followed her, giving the three of them as poisonous a look as possible—which was considerable, as a black-eyed, bloody-nosed face does have a bit more shock value than his usual ferrety sneer.
Hermione would have grinned at the thought, but it didn't seem the time to do so. With a sigh of regret, she banished the smoke clouds around Crabbe and Goyle's heads. The two of them looked entirely bemused, but saw Malfoy—she supposed—and hurried after him, not sparing them even a glance.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked at each other solemnly, then filed back into the compartment and sat down. Ron, she noticed suddenly, had a bruise forming on his cheekbone, and Harry was favoring his left arm a bit.
"That—" Hermione started, but Ron interrupted.
"I said this before," he said angrily. "I'm not taking any more crap from Malfoy this year—"
Harry said, almost wearily, "Ron. Give it a rest."
Ron stared.
"What? If Voldemort's back—that's what we should be worrying about, right?" Harry explained patiently. "Malfoy can't do anything to anyone unless if he wants to disgrace the family name. He'd never."
After wincing at the name of the Dark Lord, Ron had actually listened. "Yeah," he said skeptically. "Remember, the last time he saw us before just now, we'd just cursed the hell out of him and his apes. He's not going to live that down easily."
Harry was about to make another argument to the Malfoy-as-a-mosquito theorem, but dropped it with a sigh.
Happily, the food cart appeared with the smiling lady behind it, who took their Galleons in exchange for piles of charmed sugar.
***
Three hours and a book later, the train pulled to a stop in the middle of an exceedingly horrible thunderstorm.
"Ah, home sweet Hogwarts," Harry said offhandedly as lightning illuminated the sky, silhouetting the mountains in sharp relief.
"Right—let's just try not to drown before we get to the castle, shall we?" Hermione ventured, shivering slightly as the three of them jumped off the train and were immediately drenched. Rain came down in sheets of sharp, cold, needle-like drops that stung, especially when there was a gust of wind behind them.
As quickly as they could, they forced their way through the milling crowd of students and managed to find the carriages. The three claimed one immediately, and shortly were joined by Neville. After that, the carriage door slammed shut, and two minutes later it started moving towards the castle.
When it deposited them at the steps, it was to find a mass of people just standing there, along the steps and at the doors, and not going in. No one cared that they were quickly getting saturated. "Look!" Ron said, and pointed up at the top, next to one of the doors. "Something's going on—"
"No, really?" Harry muttered, bouncing on his toes so he could see over the crowds. "Looks like a fight, or something—not a duel, a fistfight—but I can't tell who—"
"Well, we're at school, we should be allowed to do magic!" Hermione burst out. Without checking to see if they were coming, she started worming through gaps in the press, searching for her wand and avoiding all the cats that were winding around various ankles. The owls, smart creatures, had flown off to the Owlery (carefully, to avoid getting rain in their nostrils), and the toads had all managed to hop off somewhere (Neville had lost Trevor already and was in a state of resigned concern for his toad's safety), which left the cats to be bedraggled and mad enough to spit. Most of them, actually, did.
After nearly a minute of excusing herself to people as she slid by them, wand in hand, she reached the front of the tumult and found the source of the problem. As well as McGonagall standing over the problem, holding two sixth-years, a Gryffindor and a Slytherin, apart. Both boys had their hands balled into fists and were giving each other looks of pure, undiluted hatred.
Of course, this happened every other day in Hogwarts. Hermione, a bit disappointed—and really starting to be hungry; it seemed the enchanted sweets on the train had been ages ago—waited by the door as McGonagall hauled the two offending students off and the crowd flooded through the doors. When she spotted Harry and Ron, near the end, she slipped into the queue and muttered to them, "It wasn't anything important—a Slytherin and a Gryffindor got into a fight."
"They held us up for that?" Ron spat irritatedly. "I'm starving!"
"And they intentionally got at each other's throats, just to extend your discomfort," said Hermione, in about the same tone. "The universe is against you, what can we say?"
"Shut it, would you?" Harry implored as they stepped—finally—out of the cold rain and into a slightly warmer and much dryer entrance hall. The cats had decided to congregate there, and lay in heaps of sodden fur next to the walls. Hermione found Crookshanks—who looked rather like a drowned weasel, come to think of it, but uglier—but when he hissed at her for looking at him, she hurried after Harry and Ron into the Great Hall.
Hundreds of rain-drenched students swarmed around the tables, robes steaming in the warm, bright air. Forcing their way through the mass of bodies, Harry, Ron, and Hermione managed—eventually—to fight their way to the Gryffindor table, where they claimed seats along the middle section and were quickly joined by hordes of jabbering wizards.
Professor Dumbledore stood after a few minutes and twinkled a smile around at everyone; silence fell in a shroud. He sat down again and looked towards the side door of the Great Hall, which opened at that moment and admitted a long line of small, scared-looking first-years.
"Ever notice that they seem littler every year?" Ron muttered suddenly into Hermione's ear. She stiffened, then relaxed and nodded.
"Not really—but you're right, it's odd—"
Suddenly, Professor McGonagall hurried from the side chamber, up to the high table, and bent to whisper something to Professor Dumbledore. His expression remained calm as he turned and whispered back; the Transfiguration Professor nodded and marched back to the line of first-years, to the place where Professor Flitwick had just placed the stool and the Sorting Hat.
The teachers at the high table all craned their necks and leaned around each other, staring curiously at Dumbledore. The headmaster shook his head very slightly, and they all settled back into their seats.
"What was that about?" Harry asked, in a barely-audible murmur. Hermione shook her head and she saw Ron shrug a little. "Looked serious—"
Interrupting him, the Hat burst into song.
"Oh, you may not think I'm pretty,
But don't judge on what you see,
I'll eat myself if you can find
A smarter hat than me.
You can keep your bowlers black,
Your top hats sleek and tall,
For I'm the Hogwarts Sorting Hat
and I can cap them all…"
The three simultaneously straightened in their chairs. Harry and Ron exchanged puzzled looks. "But this is the song from…" Ron started to say.
"Maybe the Hat had writer's block?" Harry suggested.
Ron looked even more confused. "What's writer's block?"
Harry shook his head. "Never mind."
"The Hat has four songs, actually," Hermione muttered. "It alternates through them over a cycle." At Ron's rather frightened look, she added, "It's in A History of Magic. You don't actually read the texts, do you?"
"Not religiously like some people."
Hermione gave Ron her best glare, which only intensified at a shiver going down her spine when he smiled teasingly.
The Hat's song ended; Hermione saw Fred mouthing the lines of the last verse in a strange sort of lip-synching routine.
Professor McGonagall stepped forward and shot a severe look at all the first-years—if possible, they shrank away even more—before saying, "I will call your names. When your name is called, you will put on the Hat and sit on the stool to be sorted."
Several first-years nodded fervently, and one said loudly, "Yes, ma'am!"
Snickering broke out all over the Hall like a sudden outburst of small fires. They died quickly, though, and McGonagall called, "Adams, Jeffrey!"
One of the taller boys was pushed forward by a friend. He hurried to the stool, pulled the hat over his ears, and waited for about ten seconds while the Hat deliberated and then yelled, "RAVENCLAW!"
Some of the Ravenclaws looked a bit dubious as Jeffrey replaced the Hat on the stool and promptly tripped over his own feet, then raced to his designated table with a cherry-red face.
Professor McGonagall stared after him, lips twitching. "I trust you're all right, Jeffrey?" she asked finally.
The first-year nodded furiously, looking more and more like his head was about to explode.
"Good. Bird, Samantha!"
A tiny girl with dusty brown braids hurried up to the stool and sat squirming for nearly a minute, then slumped in relief as the Hat roared, "GRYFFINDOR!"
Hermione applauded loudly with the rest of her House, giving the small girl a grin as Samantha sat down a few seats away.
"Bradley, Evan!"
"HUFFLEPUFF!"
"Brown, Kylie!"
"RAVENCLAW!"
"Oh, no," Lavender said sadly. "That's my little sister—she so wanted to be in Gryffindor…"
Parvati replied soothingly, "It'll be all right. I'll tell Padma to look out for her."
Looking at the tall blond girl who'd just claimed a seat next to Jeffrey Adams at the Ravenclaw table, Hermione had a feeling that Kylie wouldn't need that much looking after.
"Carson, Daniel!"
"SLYTHERIN!"
And so it went.
By the time the D's passed, the three of them had, for the most part, stopped paying attention as firstie after firstie filed up to the stool, jammed the Hat on their heads, and left, looking entirely embarrassed.
"Gregory, Hans!"
"Get a move on, already," Ron muttered. "I'm hungry."
"And I feel like I've just finished a five-course dinner, of course," whispered Harry, a little acerbically. "Shut up, Ron."
Ron shot Harry a black look, but stayed quiet.
Nothing interesting happened for another fifteen minutes or so. Then McGonagall called, "Thomas, Elizabeth!"
And Lizzie Thomas stepped out of line.
Hermione was bewildered for several seconds. A fifth-year among the group to be Sorted—it was amazing how she had blended in with them—
Lizzie pulled the Hat over her ears and sat for nearly half a minute. The Hat screamed, "GRYFFINDOR!" Intensely relieved—like a drowning person catching a float from the benevolent rowboat—Lizzie set the Hat down and scurried to the Gryffindor table, where she sat immediately next to Hermione.
"Hi, Hermione," she said in a breathless undertone, as the Hat sorted Jamie Underwood. "Oh my God, that's so nerve-wracking! I didn't think it'd be so hard…but there's the entire school just sitting there and looking at you…"
Grudgingly, Hermione felt sorry for Lizzie instead of vaguely annoyed. Well, she was new, and she was genuinely trying to be friendly. "At least you got into Gryffindor."
"I know, I was just praying that I'd be in this—"
And she suddenly fell silent, and tucked her hair behind her ears, and quaveringly, nervously smiled at Harry.
Oh—no—oh—no…Hermione thought hopelessly, biting her lip to keep herself from bursting into giggles. Then Ron glanced at her sidelong, and she lost it.
Fortunately, the Hat had just yelled that Vickersen, Julie was a Slytherin, and so all those on the right side of the Hall were applauding thunderously, while Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs clapped politely and Gryffindors shook their heads. No one heard her laughing, and by the time the noise had died down she'd managed to compose herself.
Five minutes later, after the Sorting Hat placed Madeline Ziemba into Hufflepuff, Professor Flitwick rose and quietly carried the stool and Hat back to the side chamber.
Dumbledore stood and looked around at everyone, smiling again. "Welcome to the beginning of another year! We have a new addition to the staff—Professor Miranda O'Malley, our new Defense teacher. We do go through them rather quickly, it seems…"
He paused as the applause from the students took over.
"Hang on…" Harry muttered under the cover of the noise. "Snape's missing!"
Hermione ran her eyes along the staff table, and for the first time realized that the greasy Potions teacher was actually gone. "I don't believe it," she said blankly.
Ron stared at Snape's empty seat with something approaching reverence. "We're saved," he said in a hushed voice. The moment was spoiled by Harry giving him a good hard shove on the back.
As soon as the applause died, Dumbledore went on, "I also regret to inform you that our much-loved Potions teacher, Professor Snape—"
He had the grace to ignore the loud, obvious snort from the general direction of everywhere-besides-the-Slytherin-table.
"—is away on personal business for several months," the Headmaster went on smoothly, as if nothing had happened. "He should be back by Christmas."
Here the Slytherin table burst into cheers.
"God, bloody wonderful Christmas present," Ron whispered.
"As his stand-in," Dumbledore continued loudly, "as I'm sure no one could fully replace him—"
Down the table, Hermione saw Fred nodding solemnly as George wiped away a tear, sniffling exaggeratedly.
"—we have Professor Arabella Figg, who at the time is caring for her considerably aged mother, who lives in Surrey. Until she returns, Potions classes will be canceled."
"Oh, no, not that!" several people said, gasping in mock-horror.
Hermione suddenly felt quite fed up with those people. "But—we need all the learning we can get—O.W.L.s are this year and we haven't done half the things on the practice papers—"
"Hermione," Ron said quietly, "do us a favor and shut up."
She stared at him with her mouth open for several seconds, ready to tell him off, then shut her mouth and glared at her plate, wishing her vocabulary would stop disappearing at the times when she most needed it.
"However," Dumbledore went on, "when Professor Figg does appear, classes will be held twice a week until the number missed is made up. She will make sure you don't fall behind."
Hermione, looking around, decided that she was the only person happy about this.
"I believe that's everything of importance—dig in!" Dumbledore finished, finally, smiling benevolently.
In less than a second, the tables were laden with food and the air was laden with scents. For perhaps a minute all that was said was "Pass that," and "Hand me the salt, please?"
"So what about it?" Ron asked, once he'd filled a plate with a three-inch pile of various types of food. "Snape being off—what business?"
Harry shook his head, lips pressed together in a way that didn't so much say "I don't know" as "I'll tell you later."
To cover the silence, Hermione said, "He might actually have a family—you know, a mother and a father. Perhaps they're ill."
"Snape with a mother? Somehow I always envisioned him as taking shape from one of the devil's nastier nightmares," said Ron rather meditatively.
Hermione, Harry, Ginny (sitting with the girls of her year a few seats down), Dean, and Seamus snorted in unison.
After the last bit of dessert had melted off the plates, two hours later, and after Dumbledore warned the new students about staying out of the Forbidden Forest on pain of detention, the school trundled off up to their Houses, moving more slowly than normal. Harry, Ron, and Hermione claimed three chairs around a table at Harry's look.
"What's up?" Ron asked quietly, watching the other students file by on their way to the dormitories. "I'm tired, make it quick…"
Harry interrupted, "Snape's business, the reason he's not here now—he's spying."
"What—" Hermione started to ask, then it dawned. "Oh! He's pretending he's still loyal to You-Know—"
"Call him his name," Harry said through gritted teeth.
"Yes sir," she replied irritably. "Fine. Snape is pretending he's still a Death Eater, but he's really collecting information for our side."
Harry added, "Dumbledore asked him to."
Ron looked stunned for a second, eyebrows raised so high they disappeared into his hair. "Didn't think he'd—no, scratch that. I knew he'd probably pull something like that—Dumbledore, and Snape too." He stood and stretched. "That's it?"
"Yeah," Harry said.
"Okay—I'm off to bed then."
"Same here."
"Goodnight."
"You too."
About two minutes later, the Gryffindor common room was completely empty, except for Hermione. She looked around and grinned.
"Good to be home," she said softly, and went up the stairs to her dorm.
***
A/N: Done. After all too long. Hope you liked it.