I'm really sorry about all of the mistakes in the first posting of this chapter. I have fixed them, and I hope it is better.



Deliver me 10- oops

Things had been going rather well. Hermione was finally settling into something of a life, she didn't spend much time with the group. Everyone had lives and she was very afraid of what might happen. So she distanced herself somewhat.

It was time to let the students know hoe they were doing so far in the year. Hermione had to get her grades in , she had a week left and felt certain there would be no problem. This was the beginning of a very trying week. Mr. And Mrs Granger made the announcement on Friday night that they would be leaving for a week on Saturday. Hermione went into shock. She hadn't been by herself with no help ... ever. There was always someone close by, within floo distance. Now her support system was leaving for the weeks going somewhere flooless, and Hermione couldn't apparate with the kids. Not to mention they all had school. 'Breathe Hermione, you can do this, it's not that bad. One week with limited funds and no help. Yeah, you can do this.' Hermione smiled at her parents and told them to have a good time but really she was screaming at them wanting to know why they would leave her so soon. She felt like such a child. 'This is the exact thing I was worried about. The feeling that I can not take care of myself and my family. This is why I was so reluctant to come back here.' So she pushed all those fears back down swallowed hard and readied herself for the week ahead.

Saturday was calm, no one did anything. The kids were too afraid to go outside the flowers were beginning to bloom and there were bees everywhere. They watched TV all day, played games and Hermione broke down and called Julie. Julie was the one muggle friend that she had and she had not talked to her in almost as long as Draco hadn't shown. They talked for hours, mainly about Draco, some about Hermione's mom and Julie talked about their mutual friends, that weren't so mutual anymore. Hermione went to bed feeling better than she had in a while and thought that maybe this week would be OK.

Sunday was pretty much the same except it rained all day. She and the kids decided to go to Hogsmead to get away from the rain. They flooed into The three Broomsticks like they did every Monday thru Friday only this time it was full of people. She held the girls hands and Miki was in front. She looked up from the girls just in time to see Miki run straight into Filch. He stopped him, but not as harshly as she had expected him to. She stepped up and tried to be as civil as possible.

"Hello Ms. Granger, are all of these yours?" He looked at the small herd of children and seemed to smile. Hermione stood with her mouth open for a minute.

"Yes, these are my kid, kids this is Mr. Filch." The kids all gave their trademarked greetings, Willow hid her face in her blankie, Kessie grinned and wrinkled her nose and Miki stepped forward and stuck out his hand.

"I'm Miki Granger." Filch shook Miki's hand and seemed pleasant for a second. 'Maybe he'll stop giving me a hard time when I send kids to him for detention.'

"I guess I know why you can't do detention now. I'm also guessing this is why you don't live here. You know you should talk to Albus, he could possibly arrange something for you."

"Yeah, thanks, Argus. I 'll see about that. We're gonna go walk around, see you at work." Filch nodded again and walked away. Hermione couldn't believe she had just had a conversation with filch that was pleasant and helpful. Hell had surely froze over. 'No wait, that would be the day Snape willingly babysat all three kids so that I could go out on a date.' Hermione giggled to herself which won her an appraising look from her son.

Monday rolled around and of course they were almost late. Hermione felt slightly sick, 'just a little tired or something that's all. I'll be ok.' She started her students on their big project that would, hopefully, help bring up their grade for the reports coming up. 'It is amazing how little these children grasp even when they have the instructions written write in front of them.' She made it through the day but was feeling pretty bad by the end. Everyone ate dinner which Hermione was chalking up to the fact that they knew they're grandfather wasn't there to be sneaking them candy and snacks. Hermione went to bed with the worst headache yet.

She woke up Tuesday with the same headache. Willow had been up and down all night. Fussy and complaining. Life was having fun at Hermione's expense, of and the day was April first. Hermione's least favorite holiday. People were always taking advantage of her trusting nature for the fun of an April fools joke. The students didn't seem to be getting anywhere with their projects and Hermione's head hurt too much to grade papers. 'You would think, with all the magic that they have they could come up with something to help you grade papers. Even muggles have computer systems that help them. We don't have anything,' "and I hate bloody quills!" Her inner monolog had, unawares to herself, become an outer monolog.

"You can use muggle pens if it helps you at all." Minerva stood in her doorway looking very worried.

"It just seems like there should be an easier way to do this. Not marking the papers, but the averaging and such. You know something that could take all your grades and do all the work from that point on."

"Oh dear, how long have you been here?"

"Seven weeks."

"Someone should have been by here to talk to you about this by now. I blame myself, Albus is so busy. We do have a system as you call it. It is a quill system but it works well." Minerva set about showing Hermione what she had to do and Hermione felt absolutely stupid for not figuring it out on her own. She had seen the bizarre feather in her drawer and had avoided it. Thinking it might belong to someone else. Soon she was doing much better grade wise but she was still behind.

Tuesday night Willow was restless again. She seemed to be coughing more and Hermione tried to make her feel better. Wednesday morning she didn't eat anything but Hermione didn't notice. It wasn't until after her room was a mess from all of the beginners trying to levitate everything in the room, that she received and urgent owl. Willow was sick with a high fever, and she couldn't stay at the daycare. Hermione flipped. She had no where to take Willow except work. Her parents were gone, she didn't know any of her parents neighbors and she had no way of getting to them even if she did know them. She had a short break coming up, she would wait until then.

"Minerva?"

"Yeas Dear."

"Willow is sick, I have to pick her up from the daycare but I don't have anywhere to take her. Mom and Dad are out of town."

"Go talk to Poppy dear. She would probably love to take care of a little girl. She was just complaining the other day that since the drean team graduated the only person she see's any more is Severus."

" I guess she probably would like different company then. Um ... I mean."

"Don't worry about it Hermione. You are not a student anymore, you can have opinions. Trust me we all have opinions on Severus." Hermione smiled sheepishly. He had scolded her for her teaching abilities the other day. She hadn't known how to react. She just listened and nodded politely and then went into her office and cried. She hated when she was sensitive. He as just so damn cruel. 'I guess he's making up for the nice things he said.' So Hermione missed only one class and was back to teaching, with her daughter safe in the hospital wing under Poppy's close watch. She had been overjoyed to take care of her. Hermione felt like the worlds worst mom for leaving her. She didn't want anyone at work to think she was weak. She wanted them all, especially Snape, to know she could do her job and take care of her family and she didn't any help, well not to much.

She walked into the hospital wing and found Poppy and Willow putting on muggle nail polish. So far Willows nail were silver, purple and pink and Poppy's were a multitude of colors that ran past her nails onto her hands.

"Where did you two get nail polish?"

"Mommeeeeeeeeee" typical Willow greeting for someone she knew. Hermione picked her up and placed her on her hip.

"You have such pretty nails." Hermione looked over at Poppy who had a slight blush. "Something you want to tell me Poppy?"

"I have no secrets, I like muggle things, there is nothing wrong with that."

"Poppy, I live in the muggle world, your preaching to the choir here." Poppy gave her a confused look. "I mean that I understand, evidently someone around here doesn't. I wonder who that could be." Hermione had a knowing look on her face. "What did he find your stash and give you hard time about it?"

"Said it was unsafe, had all kind of chemicals. You know potions master stuff." Hermione nodded her head. Snape seemed to think he was the everything master, oh how she wanted to prove him wrong on something.

"Well, thank you for taking care of her Poppy. I'm gonna try to take her back to school tomorrow."

"Hermione, there is no point in taking her to school. You will just have to go pick her up again. This fever is not going away that quickly. It took mine and Severus's full arsenal to get her temp down to 99. You can bring her here again, I don't mind."

"If you're sure you don't mind. I'll make it up to you somehow."

"Don't worry about it ... yet." Hermione walked away feeling very grateful. 'Wait, Severus's arsenal?'

Thursday came and Hermione's voice was leaving. It cracked an broke like a young boy's. Her students were still working on their projects and it was obvious they would need more time. Their final test was the next day, so they wouldn't be able to finish the projects until the following week. Hermione hated to get behind. She wanted everything on track. To top it all off. She had just found out that Dumbledore and a student teacher would be watching her next week. 'Great' When it was lunch time Hermione went up and had lunch with Willow and Poppy. They were like two girlfriends spending the day together. Hermione was slightly jealous. She had always wanted to be one of the girls but it never happened. She began coughing and was constantly pinching the bridge of her nose from the headache, Poppy looked at her.

"Your sick."

"No I'm not, I'm a mom and a teacher, I can't get sick. I believe there is a law or something."

"You are sick and you shouldn't be here."

"I have to be here, I work here."

"Well at least let me give you something."

"Poppy, I have tried everything, it's ridiculous how much medicine, magical and muggle, that I have taken."

"Trust me this will work." She handed her a small ominous looking vial with SS marked on the label in a familiar looking handwriting.

"Do I want to know?"

"Probably not, I never asked. All I know is get plenty of sleep tonight and take this first thing tomorrow morning. Oh and it must taste really bad."

"One more thing to brighten up this week." Hermione went on with her day with the worst headache she had ever felt. Poppy had bullied her into taking a headache potion, one of the regular kind, but it hadn't done anything. She went back to her classes and muddled through. Willow still had the fever when she picked her up and Poppy informed her that another day in the hospital wing would be the best. Hermione was beginning to feel like she was taking advantage of Poppy, but she didn't know what else to do. She made it a point to get home and put everyone to bed early. She went to bed early as well.

She woke up the next day and immediately went to take her medicine. She didn't think she could take another day of headaches. She poured out the yellow-orange liquid into a cup. She prepared herself to drink it. She downed it back while holding her nose only to realize that she recognized the taste. 'That son of a bitch, it's Dayquil.' She was going to be sure to give him hell over this one. Of course the fact that she hadn't run out to the market and bought some made her feel pretty stupid. She got ready and went to wake the kids. When she opened the door to their room and called them, nothing came out. Her voice was completely gone. She wasn't sure if it was the potion or if she had just lost her voice in the night, but she could not speak at all. She got the kids ready and ran off to Poppy as fast as she could.

"Say AHH"

" ...."

"Again"

" ....."

"It should come back in time, a couple of hours. You are just going to have to handle things until then, the best that you can. Don't try to use sonorus, it'll only make it worse. I'm afraid time is the only thing that will work. Hermione put her head in her hands for a second. Then she got up and kissed Willow goodbye and made her way down to her class. The first few students were already in there. She picked one of her louder students and had him stand beside her, She told him what to say, he said it and the class did it. Maybe they felt sorry for her, or maybe they were afraid of what she would do, but no one acted up, everyone was behaved and they all took their test without complaint.

'Amazing, they are better behaved when I am sick. Wonderful' The day went along fine and Hermione was engrossed in her students scores. When the last class left she still had a lot of work left, plus all the tests that they had just taken. She worked relentlessly and was completely undisturbed, which was strange for Hogwarts. It wasn't until she heard quidditch buzzer ring that she realized how extremely late she was. She rushed out the door to the gates and down to the daycare. There was no one there. They had left a note on the door which told her they had contacted her magical emergency contact. She ran back to Hogwarts, wishing for the first time in her life that she had a broom. To say that she was freaking out would be an understatement. Every scenario in the world had gone through her head in the short trip back to Hogwarts. She ran up the stairs to the hospital wing only to find another note. 'See Albus, gumdrops' She sprinted across the castle using every short cut she knew only to encounter the gargoyle.

"Gumdrop"

"Ahh Professor Granger, Professor Dumbledore said that there was only one person not going to the quidditch match, go find Severus, he has your children."

Hermione would have fainted if she hadn't been frozen in shock