At the sight of Snape's retreating form Hermione doubled over in laughter again.


""What was that all about?"" Ron and Harry ran up beside Hermione who was being supported by a glowing Albus Dumbledore. Hermione was still trying to catch her breath, every now and again letting another giggle slip.


""Oh it was a laughing gas, potion …… thing. Well you can take care of Hermione now boys."" Albus slipped off as quickly as he could before he was caught in the middle of something. Harry and Ron looked puzzled at his hasty retreat.

""Mione? What''s going on?"" Hermione straightened up as best she could and thought about telling them. Knowing that she had made a promise, in front of Dumbledore no less, kept her from spilling her news.

""Just what Professor Dumbledore said, A laughing potion was in the box when it was opened I guess Professor Snape recognized the scent or something."


""From all the way over at the Staff table?""

""I can believe it,"" Ron began sniggering ""with a nose like that it''s surprising he didn''t smell it when the person packed from ……"" here Ron looked at the address label, ""Hey Mione, this is from your mom."" Hermione blanched. She quickly reduces the box to minuscule and put it in her pocket.

""Um, well, It was made to look like that so that I would open it, old deatheater trick.""

""No it''s not."" Draco had walked up behind them and was listening to the conversation with some amount of interest.

""Admitting you''re a deatheater now ferret boy?""

""Shut-up weasel before someone de-magics your mom''s house. We all know about my previous deatheater connections, I thought we had moved past all this."" He gave Hermione a quick wink. She gasped and turned away from him as if she had been insulted. "Aww, come on Granger, you know you like me." He put his arm around her shoulder.

"Malfoy, you are taking this reform thing a bit too far." Ron stepped forward as Hermione's protector, but before he could advance any further ...

"AHH! AHH! My hand, My hand! What did you do to my hand!" Draco was holding his wrist that had been laying on Hermione's shoulder Where his fingers should be were five small green wriggling snakes, all hissing at Draco.

"It's just my personal space wards, keeps unwanted contact to a minimum." Hermione stealthily slid her wand into her sleeve, of course there was no such thing as personal space wards but Draco evidently didn't know that. That should teach him to keep his hands to himself. "It will wear off by tomorrow morning, I'd be careful sleeping though, one of those might be poisonous." right on cue one of the snaked bent forward and bit Draco's wrist. "Hope it wasn't that one." Draco ran screaming toward the hospital wing. "Where you going Drac! We were having such a good time!"

"Aren't you worried that you're going to get into trouble? That was quite a rash stunt Mione!"

"Ooo, rash, I'll have to keep that in mind. No the spell will where off about the time he gets to the infirmary. Madame Pomfrey will be keeping him for psychiatric observation before snake bites." Her grin was ear to ear.

"Hermione what has gotten into you? First you tell off Snape, you would never have done that before, then this box thing and now hexing people? You're beginning to scare me." Harry put his hand on her shoulder and her smile became a little less maniacal.

"I don't know guys, I just feel different, I want to have a little fun, this is my last year here and then I'm gonna be out looking for work or apprenticeship. Possibly college, and I feel like I haven't had much fun, unless of course you count being turned into a cat, almost dying, and traveling back in time as fun, and quite frankly, I don't! I want to do something for me, not for everyone else. I know it's selfish but I would like to ... I don't know, do my own thing for once."

Harry and Ron's face fell with the thought that their long time partner was tiring of them. They had come to think of their little trio as everlasting. Of course boys don't tend to think about the future, and the fact that they would all go different places after school had never dawned on them until this moment. "Hermione, we're sorry, we didn't mean to hold you back. All you had to do was let us know you needed more time to yourself." Both boys looked almost ready to breakdown.

"Now, I didn't say anything about not wanting to be with you guys, I never said you held me back. It's more about me. I just realized this summer that I have spent all my time at Hogwarts working toward getting out, and I'm not ready to leave. I want some really special memories, that don't involve saving the world from Voldemort or one of his embodiments. I still want you guys around." She put an arm around each of their shoulders and stood in the middle. "Hey we're the dream team, no one is breaking us up." The word 'yet' seemed to visibly hang before them as they started their way toward Gryffindor tower, not noticing the first and second years that they bumped into.



Severus Snape sat on his bench looking across the expanse of parke floor wishing he had some music, other than the awful wizard music that played on the wizard radios. He bent over and laced up his skates wrapping the extra long laces around his ankles. He stood and instantly felt better, he pushed off and closed his eyes, the breeze blew his lank hair away from his face and he remembered. He remembered why he loved it, why he had risked everything to participate in a muggle activity, and it hadn't been for a girl. It had been for him. He had told Albus that he needed something, something for him. He had done so many terrible things and he was trying to make amends by teaching and spying, putting his life at risk daily, but he never felt like he was doing enough. He had felt so guilty when he approached Albus with the idea that he needed something of his own, like he didn't deserve it, but albus disagreed.

"Of course you need something old boy, go out and find yourself a healthy hobby. It will make a world of difference." And it had! Severus was still the intimidating presence to his students no matter what, but to colleagues and adults he was, well still not friendly but congenial at least. Everyone could tell he was happier and healthier. No one knew why and they were so interested. He had let the picture for the yearbook be taken in a moment of weakness. Professor Love had introduced him to the art of roller disco before they started working together. They had gone to the same college and had even apprenticed close to each other. She was magical fine arts to his potions. She was a muggle and had gone to Beauxbatons, her talent for magical fine arts did not present itself until college. She had planned on being a professional Brancer, the artistic version of quidditch, dance on broomsticks. Unfortunately she was diagnosed with vertigo and soon found it impossible to continue. She fell into magical fine arts and found her true calling. Severus had been in one of her brance classes, modern brance. They had started talking and became friends. She took him to a roller disco one Saturday night, he lost a bet about whether Isadora Duncan was a witch or not, she was. Upon their arrival Severus was certain he would never last five minutes in the place full of noise and lights blinking on and off. He couldn't believe the entire room wasn't in seizures, but once he had his skates on JJ had to practically drag him out of there. They began going every weekend and soon they were the center of attention when they would skate.

JJ made the mistake of marrying the quidditch coach after only having known him for six days, it was after this that Severus began skating solo. The owners of the establishment he frequented came to him and asked if he would represent them in a competition. He wasn't to big on the idea until they told him he could skate every night for free if he wanted. He rocketed to fame, in the roller disco world at least, winning every competition and gaining worldly acclaim. He never understood how he lucked out and was never summoned by Voldemort during a competition, but in his sixteen months of professional skating Voldemort and the deatheaters never found out until Lucious showed up on his last night. He would never forgive him for that. Of course there were lots of things he was never going to forgive him for. Talking him into becoming a deatheater was a big one.