Chapter 3
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Her hair lied still upon her shoulders as she relaxed her body slowly and concentrated on keeping her eyes closed. Hermione took slow breaths in and out while trying to clear her mind of all thought.
The past few days had been overwhelming to an incomprehensible extent. Researching Harry's case, above all, had been stressful due to the extreme lack of results she kept getting whenever she tried to find a de-tracing spell counter curse. Not to mention both McGonagall and Flitwick had been on her back about her missing assignments and lack of attention in class. Trying to shed light on the fact that their boring lectures might have something to do with it didn't help her case one bit.
Hermione's muscles compressed, then relaxed and she straightened her back and exhaled slowly, letting out all the worries that'd be relentlessly plaguing her mind for the past 72 hours. Let it all out.
Hermione also hoped that this technique of meditating would help her somehow remember a piece of Harry's puzzle that her frazzled mind might have overlooked during sleepless nights before.
Muscles relaxed, Hermione waited.
A pounding on her door broke her thought.
"Hermione!" Parvarti's voice rang clearly through the wooden barrier, as the brunette's eyes snapped open in irritation. "Hermione, I know you're in there. I need to use your badge to get into the Prefect bathroom. Let me borrow it?"
Letting her cross-legged position dissolve into outstretched legs, she fell back against her bed.
"Go. Away."
"Hermione, please?" Parvarti whined. "I'd ask Ginny but she's already left for Hogsmeade. And it's not like you use it or anything… Please?"
Seeing that she wasn't going to get any peace staying cooped up in her room, Hermione rolled her eyes and lifted herself from her bed.
Uncaring of what she grabbed from her nightstand, Hermione snatched a dark brown bottle of nail lacquer and dropped it to the grassy grounds of Hogwarts from her open window. Muttering an incantation quickly, she didn't wait to see the spell take effect before grabbing her notebook full of notes and lifting herself onto the windowsill. She knew that when she stuck her foot out that window, there'd be a substantially long ladder waiting to support her weight.
Climbing all the way down, Hermione got rid of obvious evidence, placing the nail polish inside her robe pocket, and padded to a tree by the lake. She stooped, leaned on her arm, then collapsed on her ass. Pushing her notebook aside, Hermione lied back on the ground beneath the shade and took in a deep breath of fresh, soothing air. Maybe this would clear her mind.
Relaxing her muscles once more, Hermione tried desperately to convince herself that it was just a matter of time before it all came together. Perhaps she could visit Hagrid later on. He was old and wise, after all, and probably knew about all kinds of things he didn't let onto.
" 'Vein of eucalyptus, juice of pomegranate, and… blank are speculated ingredients of the counter curse for the oldest recorded de-tracing spell and potion combination,'" read off Draco with amusement before tilting his head down towards the face of the now-alert Hermione. "You still at this, Granger?"
Getting up in lighting speed, Hermione scrambled to snatch her notebook out of Draco's hands, with him providing no resistance in trying to keep it.
"What is it with you and going through my shit?" she asked angrily through gritted teeth, eyes flashing dangerously as she self-consciously brushed off her bottom from grass stains. Draco laughed at the out-of-place action in her angry tirade. This only egged her on. "And—and what is it with the showing up wherever I am all of a sudden? What are we—some kind of friends now?"
"Blimey," Draco muttered, resisting the urge to roll his eyes over Hermione's pointless hysterics. "Down, kitty. I was sent here on a mission, if you must know," he attempted, trying to spark her interest.
Hermione's eyes read otherwise. Her urge to hex him into a stampede of very wild, poorly trained, Muggle animals was the only thing sparked.
Draco grinned at her stubbornness.
"Prefect's meeting, Granger. You haven't attended the last… six, I believe, and the professors are getting a little…" Draco rubbed his hands together and looked up to the sky in thought while Hermione watched him with expired interest, "…angry as hell? That the right phrase?"
Hermione spread her arms in defeat, looking at him with disinterested eyes.
"Who gives a bloody shit?" she asked rhetorically. Draco inhaled sharply, knowing this very well may be a beginning to a lengthy, dramatic speech. "I figured they'd drop the get-Hermione-involved campaign when I stopped buying school supplies after the initial batch ran out."
Draco ran an irritated hand through his hair. He did not have the time for Hermione's PMS: Every Hour on the Hour demonstration while he still had his youth and good looks.
"Surprisingly," Draco uttered, faking shock, "this isn't the get-anyone-involved campaign. You applied for the position of Prefect, pet, and it's your duty to pay some kind of time to the cause." He paused. "Merlin knows I do entirely too much for this thankless pile of Hogwarts bricks."
Hermione narrowed her eyes at the blond dictating directions to her, running a hand through her own hair as a nervous tactic.
"And why'd they send you to get me?" she asked irritably as her legs finally decided to move toward the castle. "Wasn't there anyone else less skilled in the asshole department that was up for the job?"
Draco was soon in-stride with Hermione, entering the castle through a pair of wooden double doors.
"Evidently, no one—in any House—was up for the job, all mumbling something about never approaching the crazy psycho bitch without a wand and professor ever again," Draco recounted with amusement, loving the way Hermione's cheeks heated up at the newly-acquired information.
"Fucking pansies, all of them," Hermione mumbled bitterly, as she sped up down the halls to the meeting, leaving Draco trailing behind at a leisurely pace.
He grinned.
"Finally, you see it my way, kitty."
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Hermione pushed open the door loudly, allowing it to bang the wall beside it before slowly reeling back into place. Every head in the room turned to Hermione, all five currently present, plus the two professors leading the meeting.
Steadily, she walked over to an empty chair around the nearly-full table and plopped down on it. Immediately, she pulled her legs up, her knees resting against the table's edge.
Aware that the heads were still observing her, pretending to be nonchalant as ever, Hermione resisted the urge to flip all of them off, given the new information she received of them being afraid of her. The only thing holding her back was Severus Snape's steely glare leveled at the back of her neck, his body ready to rise momentarily out of his chair to shout in a booming voice that she had detention for eternity and then some.
Compared to Snape's hostility, Flitwick's tense demeanor didn't even occur to Hermione as strange.
"Back to the issue of—"
Draco's belated entrance caused another head-turning motion, Hermione unable to believe that every single person in that room was incapable of ignoring the door whenever someone came in.
The blond, unsurprisingly, seemed to adore the attention, wearing on his face a glorious smirk he fashioned specially for moderate-sized crowds. Slowly, he plopped into the only other open seat—next to Hermione.
"Now that everyone who will ever need to be here is in attendance," Flitwick began with a strained bout of annoyance, "I'd prefer to get back to the issue at hand. I'm sure most of you have heard about Harold Spinstern's critical condition after that unfortunate brawl Thursday evening…"
Hermione took Flitwick's steady, get-ready-to-hear-an-encouraging-speech tone as a cue to take out a half sheet of ripped parchment from her notebook and let it rest on the cover as some sort of hard surface. Continuing her previous design on the page, she left herself drift from the professor's concerned words to a world where just she, her pictures, and her charcoal existed.
Aside from some essential meditating techniques, sketching was one of the few activities that kept Hermione sane. When she was in a situation she couldn't handle, when everything got too overwhelming and she felt like uttering Avada Kedavra with her wand aimed at the entire world, her parchment and strokes of charcoal calmed her nerves. It helped keep her grounded while she focused on the important things. While she focused on Harry's death.
"Miss Granger?"
Hermione's eyes lazily left her paper in effort to look like she cared when addressed by her teachers.
"Yes?" she responded solemnly. Flitwick's eyes flashed irritably.
"Have you been paying any mind to my announcement?" he asked dangerously close to snapping with impatience. Hermione shrugged, looking up at the ceiling as if assessing her answer carefully.
"I can't say I've paid any mind to anything you've said for the most part of the year, Professor," Hermione answered calmly; truthfully. She quickly determined that her current conversation partner did not appreciate her blunt tactlessness. "But that's just me… paying some honesty."
Flitwick looked to Snape, in the corner of the room, for assistance. For some reason, turning to the Slytherin Head of House to deal with his hardly favorite Gryffindor seemed more appropriate than to take action himself at this particular moment.
Snape seemed bored to tears with the occurrence. Though he still watched Hermione like a hawk, this wasn't the sort of slip-up he'd hoped to catch her with. Oh, to hell with waiting; this opportunity would do.
"Well," Snape said, attempting to masquerade his bored tone with an interested one, as he sat up from his previously reclined position, "it seems as though we've reached a stalemate, Professor. You have requested Miss Granger's opinion of how to improve House unity and Miss Granger, neglecting to realize her Prefect duties, failed to provide a valid suggestion." He looked at the somber-looking Hermione coldly. "Perhaps the position of Prefect is too much of a burden for you, Miss Granger. Perhaps it should be revoked to lessen the workload for you, in turn giving a most… interested candidate an opportunity to be involved with the student body." Hermione's stance tensed as she Draco's eyebrow raise in interest at her side. "Hm?"
The room stilled with firm silence.
Only taking a moment to regard her decision with any real thought, Hermione tucked her drawing supplies into her notebook, and push off the table with her knees, creating a loud scraping sound with her chair.
"Sounds good to me," she remarked coolly as she stood and caught Snape's eye, refusing to surrender any sort of vulnerable feeling with her gaze. Her glance clearly said, 'You didn't even skim the surface, you old fool.' Advancing toward the door, Hermione heard some shuffling and what sounded like Flitwick getting ready to talk to the group once more. Abruptly, she turned around, with her hand on the doorknob.
"About that House unity thing," she said, choosing her words carefully, eyes first on Professor Flitwick, her classmates, then eventually Draco, "no amount of suggestion will help it. The whole school will be bound their respective color and name until someone changes the minds of those who want to be separated." Pausing Hermione lifted an eyebrow at Draco's amused look. "In a sea of five thousand united, the five that disagree will separate the rest."
The door slamming was the next audible sound to grace the classroom, with the exception of Snape's unrestricted snores in his corner of the room.
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"Granger!" a voice tugged at Hermione's responsive tactic to turn around as she walked leisurely down the hall, kicking her feet at the stone floor once in a while.
Shortly after her exit from the meeting, her mind began plaguing her with the inquiry of how smart it was to lose the title of Prefect so close to matriculation. At least the credit would have helped her in getting some sort of career, or job to support her after Hogwarts. She really didn't think her lack of work this year would help get any into any sort of university, and she knew her parents didn't have the money to fully support her tuition. That left her with the option of finding.
Luckily, her entire Hogwarts career, weighed as a whole, proved Hermione to be a hard, worthy worker, capable of nearly any job, save sports-related areas. Her Seventh Year still stuck out like a sore thumb, though. Her laziness, her lack of care for her schoolwork, and generally doing nothing academically. And the loss of her Perfect position this late in the year would still read as though she never had the position at all.
Part of having a privileged position at Hogwarts: you were expected to keep it.
"Hermione!"
The girl in question glanced behind her, momentarily snapped out of her thoughts. Seeing who it was, she rolled her eyes and brought her gaze back forward.
"They send you to get me again?" she asked in monotone. "Because I highly doubt it."
"As do I," Draco agreed. Masking his inevitably interested look at the object within his grasp, he stretched out his hand toward her. "You dropped your drawing."
Hermione's eyes looked down to the picture of a hooded eye beneath thick eyelashes, reflecting the scenery of stormy mountains and valleys. When she looked up, Draco was gone.
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"Shouldn't someone like you be in class right now?" Hagrid asked skeptically as Hermione took it upon herself to boil a kettle of water. "Getting educated for the real world and all that malarkey?"
Hermione shrugged, turning the stove dial up to the strongest flame.
"Someone like me, yes," she agreed, sitting down across from him, well aware of his cautious attitude toward her. "Me? I'm right where I want to be. I need to talk to you, Hagrid, and you're the only person right now that I know I could trust to keep this sort of… request quiet."
Hagrid looked at one of his most prized pupils uneasily, trying to figure out what—as a responsible adult—he should do in a situation like this. He was well aware of Hermione's denial and refusal to move on from her best friend's death. And Hagrid understood her grief. He, more than most people, he'd wager, loved Harry as a son and understood the immense pain that came with the news that Harry had killed himself.
But as much as it caused him pain to admit, Harry was gone. That was something Hermione had yet to accept. Hence, the brunette's visit, undoubtedly related to Harry's death.
"Hagrid?" Hermione called him out of his thoughts, accentuated by the whistling of the kettle. Diluting the chopped, dry tea leaves with hot water, Hermione brought two cups with her on the way back to the table.
"I'm not sure how much help I can offer, Hermione," Hagrid said carefully, squinting as he sipped his hot tea. The girl across from him simply enveloped her mug with her hands and shook her head for him not to continue.
"I think I'm correct when I say you know I'm here about Harry," she said bluntly, unflinching and expressionless. Down to business.
Hagrid sighed and put his teacup down.
"Quite what I thought," he admitted, rubbing a hand over his face, "but I don't know if I can help you with what you might ask; might request—"
"Hagrid," Hermione said firmly, abandoning her teacup as well, "I've waited for you to return from France for a two days shy of a week now. You might have some idea of how much my… cause means to me. Please?"
Hermione's tone had softened, melting from its firm and icy exterior to a vulnerable, almost scared voice. Hagrid heaved a deep sigh.
"Fire away," he said with a small grin, taking another sip of the tea that burned his tongue.
Hermione nearly smiled as she leaned forward.
"I was just wondering…" she started slowly, eyes boring into giant's, "exactly how buried and forgotten is Conquiesco Vestigium?"
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And finally chapter three is up! Hope you all enjoyed because I really did. I'm really excited about what's going to happen with this story. You kids aren't even close, if you any speculation about what Hermione's deal is, where Draco ties in, and exactly how Harry died. You're in for a sweet ride.
For now, tell me what you think of the set-up chapters. These clearly make up the base from which the plot springs. Hermione just set the plot off to unravel. How? Well, you're going to have wait for the next chapter, won't you?
Have fun guessing what the title means.
Muahahaha.
Inappropriately loving you all,
Beach.