When Hermione finally managed to make herself visible once more and drifted morosely into the library, Harry and Ron were already there, waiting. The two young men were slumped in their respective chairs, picking absently at the covers of their schoolbooks and giving the appearance that they were at least thinking about studying.
"Hi," she said softly, and they both looked up.
"Where have you been?" demanded Ron. "We've been waiting for ages."
"Sorry," she apologized. "I was having a problem." She sniffled for a moment, determined to resist the urge to burst into tears. The possible comparison with Moaning Myrtle was too horrible to contemplate.
"We heard about what happened," Harry told her. "Everyone in the common room was acting really weird. I don't know why they were so bothered. You'd think they'd be happy to have their friend back."
Hermione hunched her shoulders. "I may have been Head Girl, but I don't think they were ever my friends."
"It doesn't really matter how much they liked you," Ron said baldly. "They're just thinking about themselves, now. You being a ghost just reminds them that they could have ended up dead, too."
"Don't worry about it, Hermione. We're glad to see you," Harry said firmly. "And I don't care what the others think. We'll always be your friends."
Hermione sighed and managed a tremulous smile. "Thank you, Harry. You don't know what that means to me."
"Yes I do, actually," he replied, pushing up his glasses. "Now, what did you want us to look up? We're supposed to be studying this afternoon, but I think we spare the time to research some ghosts."
Ron groaned, but obligingly fetched books and turned pages and argued with Harry over the significance and differences of ghosts throughout the ages. Unfortunately, none of the books they pored through had any relevant information for Hermione. Most seemed to concentrate on the history of various hauntings, or else spells to contain or banish ghosts. Several of the latter made Hermione quite uneasy, but were sufficiently complex enough to be beyond the abilities of most witches or wizards. She vaguely remembered that Moaning Myrtle had harassed Olive Hornby, the bane of her living existence and the object of her haunting after her death, until the ministry had cast some sort of exorcism spell, confining the teenage spirit to the lavatory where she'd died.
As for Harry and Ron, their amicable conversation with each other and with her was the same as it had been on a hundred other afternoons in the library, despite her changed status. Hermione enjoyed their company immensely, especially their refusal to treat her any differently. Never before had she appreciated their exasperation as she nagged the two of them into some studying, although Ron complained about the unfairness that Hermione would never have to study again. Harry pointed out that, for Hermione, it was the equivalent of the two of them never playing Quidditch again, which caused Ron to shudder and shut him up most effectively.
&&&&&
As the next few weeks passed quickly, Hermione found that the Gray Lady was correct in telling her that she would gain a different perspective on time. She did not exactly sleep as such, but often found her attention wandering and her mental state quite passive as the sun rose and climbed towards its zenith. Little drew her attention until the sun set later in the evening, and the setting rays glowing through the diamond panes of glass caused her to react much as the sunrise had before her death. More than once she came back from her daytime reverie to discover she'd drifted back to the Potions classroom, hovering over the table where she and Neville Longbottom had brewed the fatal potion.
The other ghosts observed roughly the same hours as Hermione did, and she soon began to learn the roles, duties, and occasional perks of being a Hogwarts ghost. In her opinion, it was very similar to being a First Year again, although she did not attend formal classes. Instead, she had endless lectures from the Gray Lady and the Bloody Baron as to what a proper ghost did and did not do. Apparently they had very firm ideas on the proper deportment of a Hogwarts ghost, and despite her numerous attempts to track down other details, the two mascot ghosts stuck gamely to their instructional plan.
One did not pass through a human's body, as it was unpleasant for both the human and the ghost. The living quarters of all four houses were off limits, scotching Hermione's burgeoning temptation to annoy the living hell out of Draco Malfoy. It was also the duty of every ghost to report Peeves the Poltergeist's truly horrid behavior to the Bloody Baron. As all of Peeves' behavior was reprehensible, in practice hardly any of the specters haunting the castle bothered.
A ghost was also forbidden to interact with the students or professors during the regular classes. In truth, Hermione would rather have been attending the normal curriculum, and she did continue to sit in on some of her favorites, floating high in the rafters of the classrooms as her peers continued their education without her.
By strict interpretation of the rules, she was supposed to remain invisible and silent during the school day, but the skill of turning invisible and more importantly returning to a visible state at first caused her some difficulty. Sir Nicholas was especially helpful in this respect, and although his attentions were a trifle proprietary for Hermione's taste, she was grateful for his advice and instructions. She chalked Nick's behavior up to the fact that he was the official Gryffindor mascot ghost and she, as another Gryffindor, was essentially his immediate family.
A few weeks after her death, the ghosts of Hogwarts held a debut of sorts for Hermione, inviting all the local spirits for miles around to meet her. The Headless Horsemen sent a lovely arrangement of dead roses in her honor, much to Nick's annoyance, and begged off attending her celebration as they were competing in an international headless polo match that evening. Every other ghost in the county, and some from even further afield, showed up to inspect the new member of the ranks, pass on unnecessary advice, and generally bore each other to death, if they hadn't already been dead to begin with.
Moaning Myrtle was among the attendees, but had been at the party for no more than a half-hour before she realized she was no longer the youngest ghost in the castle. Hermione tried to point out that Myrtle had in fact died when she was sixteen, and Hermione herself was already eighteen, but the adolescent ghost was too upset to listen to reason. She fled the dungeon in tears, her distraught wails waking up several Slytherins, and Filch grumbled for two days about the water all over the floors outside Mytle's bathroom.
&&&&&
The door to the Potions classroom flew open with less vigor than Severus Snape's usual entrance, but as it was late in the evening he expected his classroom to be empty, without a complement of students to jump guiltily. He was somewhat surprised, therefore, to find the room was not as deserted as it should have been. A pale form floated in mid-air above the silent ranks of worktables.
"Why are you here, Miss Granger?" he called as he identified the intruder. "Shouldn't you be out haunting someone?"
Hermione shook herself out of her early evening reverie. "I died here, Professor. You're rather stuck with me."
"Go chase the owls," he told her. "Chase Mrs. Norris, for all I care. I have work to do."
Hermione wafted through the air and considered a rude reply, but she wasn't by nature vindictive and it seemed a bit too much effort to get into a verbal spat with the unpleasant professor when she'd just woken up.
Instead, she watched as the Potions Master set up a series of cauldrons, each with a similar set of ingredients beside it. He shrugged off the heavy formal robes and his frock coat, leaving him in shirtsleeves and a black vest. The white linen of his shirt was something of a visual shock, almost as unexpected as the wand he produced from the long pocket sewn into the seam of his trousers. It was a pale gray, rather than the black she and the other Gryffindors had speculated about. They had also presumed he was less than proficient with a wand, a notion dispelled when he quickly and easily cast a shielding charm that swirled around his hands and face.
She recognized the protective spell at the same moment she noticed the jar of small Knightcap blossoms. A label on the jar in Snape's unmistakable heavy scrawl declared the contents contaminated and not to be used under any circumstances.
"You're working on the potion that killed me," she guessed. "Why?"
Snape did not bother to glance at her, but did answer the question. "Because it wasn't supposed to kill you, idiot girl. It should have simply sent you to sleep."
"It killed me because it had an extra ingredient in it. The fungus."
"Brilliant deduction," he said absently as he divided up the dried flowers among several trays. "The controversy is why this parasite turned a rather innocuous potion deadly."
Hermione floated down to stand next to the workbench and inspected the tiny blossoms that had ended her life. The pale blue petals were crinkled and folded tightly against their stems. She could detect no difference between the plant on the table and the one pictured in the color plate in the herbal Snape had laid open on the desktop.
"There is a class of fungus called ergot which infects grasses," she said, more thinking out loud than telling Snape something he probably learned while she was learning to read and write. "The alkaloids in the fungus cause vascular constriction, and can lead to frostbite and gangrene in the extremities and convulsions, hallucinations, and irreparable damage in the brain."
"And?" Snape prompted, his hands still busily preparing the ingredients. It appeared as though he were prepared to make several versions of the potion.
"If these plants were infected with a similar fungus, the alkaloids of that combined with the soporific effect of the potion could paralyze the autonomic nervous system. The body would simply quit breathing."
"Either stop breathing, or else constrict the blood vessels in the lungs to the point that they no longer exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen efficiently," Snape said. "The latter is my theory, and I'll be attempting to recreate this potion as you and Mr. Longbottom made it. Fortunately, Mr. Filch managed to round up some of the rats in the castle to test the potion on."
He nodded towards a crate in the corner of the room, the source of disgruntled scratching noises.
Hermione made a 'hmmm' of interest, and reached for the parchment with the potion recipe written on it. As usual, her hand went through the document without stopping.
"Damn."
Snape looked down his long nose at her, one lip curling slightly. "If you're quite finished wasting my time, Miss Granger, I have work to do, and your presence is of no help whatsoever. Go. Away."
"Yes, sir," she replied with a subdued sigh. "Thank you, by the way."
"Whatever for?" Snape asked impatiently as he worked, his voice betraying no curiosity at all.
"For talking to me like I'm real."
One of Snape's eyebrows rose. "You are real, ghost or student." A real pain in the arse, his tone implied.
"The live ones - the students, I mean, are usually too uncomfortable to speak to me. And the other teachers, especially Professor McGonagall, call me 'the ghost of Hermione Granger,' like I'm some bootleg issue of the real thing." She heaved a sigh. "Which begs the question - am I just a copy? Is the real Hermione Granger in Heaven or Valhalla or whatever, and I'm just an after-image?"
"I think, therefore I am," Snape quoted. "You exist. You have a thought process. That is all that is required to be intrinsically 'real,' Miss Granger. I refused to discuss the existence or disposition of anyone's soul, yours included."
"I'm sorry. I don't mean to whine," Hermione said quickly glancing down at her hands. "It's just that... before I died, I thought I'd finally fit into the wizarding world at last. Now, my favorite teacher won't even speak to me."
"Minerva McGonagall views you as one of her failures," he told her brusquely. "Unfortunately, she has never been good at dealing with failure."
"Do you?"
"I on the other hand have had ample opportunity to deal with my failings."
"No, I meant, am I one of your failures? You didn't do anything wrong. It's not your fault I died."
"You died while in my care, Miss Granger. That automatically makes me at fault."
He might have been speaking of the weather or the condition of the Quidditch pitch for all the concern he showed, and Hermione felt decidedly ruffled by his nonchalance.
"You certainly take it well."
"What should I do? Rend my clothes, throw myself from the Astronomy tower? Shriek and run mad? You're simply another one of my victims, Miss Granger. Certainly not the first and most likely not the last."
She stared at him, mouth open, and this seemed to bring an icy disdain to Snape's attitude. His busy hands stilled in their tasks. "The fact of the matter, Miss Granger, is your death was not the tragedy of the decade. Not even of the year. However much that sanctimonious, iron-corseted old cat wants to sit in the staff lounge tutting about the loss of your potential, your death was not the end of life as we know it."
The only betrayal of the Potion Master's composure was those same hands, which stilled on the worksurface before him, loosening their grip on the dried flowers until the small bits of leaves and petals sifted between his long fingers to the polished black wood. "Do you have any idea how much potential I've seen wasted over the years? How many lives I've seen ended before their time? Cedric Diggory, or the Longbottoms; the list is endless, and yet life as we know it goes on. Inexorably. Unceasingly. Inescapably. Why should your passing cause so much as a flicker in the order of the universe?"
He inhaled sharply through his nose and let the breath out as if by willpower alone. "Good night, Miss Granger," he said pointedly, and went back to his preparations.
Hermione took his words for the dismissal they were and disappeared.
&&&&&
"It's not as if I were expecting anything from him," Hermione fumed for perhaps the forth time.
Harry and Ron nodded in silent agreement, not daring to say anything. The two of them had commandeered the Seventh Year boys' dormitory and evicted their fellow Gryffindors when Hermione had appeared, understandably upset.
Even deceased, Hermione Granger's temper was nothing to dismiss. She was pacing back and forth between the beds, but pacing was another of those activities that had lost their emphatic impact without a corporeal body. "Well?" she snapped, turning on them, not aware of the fact that her hair had gone extra bushy as she'd paced out her rage and she was not just a little bit scary looking at the moment.
"Well what?" Ron replied. "Snape's been yelling at you since the first time you raised your hand in his class."
"Me and every other Gryffindor. And for years I've defended him, telling you two to be more respectful, that he's really not that bad. Well, he is that bad. He's a cold hearted bastard!" she finished emphatically.
"Not really," Harry said in a colorless voice.
Hermione gaped at him. "Are you completely insane? What happened to the pair of you who always said Snape was so terrible? I'm surprised you haven't accused him of poisoning me."
"Well..." Ron hesitated. "There was a really nasty rumor going around that Snape poisoned you for being a Muggle-born and an annoying know-it-all."
"Like we've never heard that before," Hermione said impatiently. "You didn't believe it, did you?"
"Not - not really," Ron stuttered. He and Harry exchanged a look that their friend did not catch.
"He tried to save you," Ron admitted reluctantly. "He told us to go get Madame Pomfrey, and he was pushing on your chest to get your heart beating. For a second there we thought he was kissing you, but he was trying to get your lungs to work again. I forget what that's called."
"Mouth to mouth, I think, " Hermione supplied, stunned. She sat down and struggled to reconcile the two images; a teacher who tried to revive her and the one who'd just told her that her death was meaningless.
What she did not realize was that Harry and Ron were both staring. Since she no longer required a solid object to support her, she was currently seated several feet in the air, perched on the edge of nothing at all as she swung her feet back and forth, thinking.
"So he tried to save my life," Hermione grudgingly allowed. "That doesn't mean he's not a rude, insensitive git."
Again, Ron and Harry exchanged a look, and Hermione groaned. "Please, don't tell me."
"The night before your parents came to get you, we were going to sneak down and cut a lock of your hair, for memory's sake," Ron began.
The young men explained how they'd donned Harry's invisibility cloak and snuck down to the small chapel where her body was laid out. She could easily imagine them breathlessly pushing the chapel door open.
"But when we got inside, Snape was already there."
Hermione sat up straight. "What on earth for?"
Harry answered this time. "He was kneeling at the foot of your casket. He had his face against his hands, but he was either praying or crying." He shoved up his glasses. "I don't really think Snape's the religious sort."
"He was crying," Ron said, shuffling slightly in embarrassment. "I ought to know. Done a bit of it myself the last few weeks."
"What did you do?" she asked, stunned.
"We went back to Gryffindor tower-" Harry answered.
"Ginny was there," Ron interjected.
"And then we all three sat down and had a good bawl," Harry finished. "We were heartbroken when you died, Hermione," he told her. "We still are."
The utter desolation in Harry's voice made Hermione long to give him a hug, but she could only stand there while frosty ghost tears formed in her eyes and trailed down her transparent cheeks.
"What are you sniveling about?" Ron demanded, with a hint of his old humor even as he sniffed heavily and wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. "We're the ones who've lost our best friend!"
"I've lost you, too," Hermione sniffed. Fumbling absently in one of her pockets, she found a hanky and put it to good use. "I'm going to miss you two so much when you graduate."
"Us, too. Maybe we could owl you or something," Harry offered. "There must be a way to send you a letter or something." Normally, post owls could not find a person once they died, and although Hedwig was an extraordinary owl, it was a bit too much to ask of even that talented bird.
"Nearly Headless Nick gets mail sometimes," Ron said. "Maybe we could ask him how he gets it."
"Why not?" Hermione responded, thrusting the hanky into her pocket. "He should be in the kitchen this time of night. For some reason he likes to watch the house elves."
"I've noticed he likes to watch you, too," Ron said. Both he and Harry snorted with laughter.
"Do shut up, Ron," she told him impatiently. "Boys," she muttered, leading the way to the kitchens. Harry and Ron took a few moments to join her on the stairs, but then again they were forced to actually open the door before leaving the room.