Authors Note: Thank you to those of you who took the time to review. I have now changed my settings so anyone can leave a review - this being my first attempt at Fanfiction, I didn't realise you couldn't leave reviews unless you were signed in. Please refer to the Prologue for the disclaimer.
Chapter Two
The sound of the bell startled Hermione and she jumped, causing an inkblot to appear on her neatly written notes. Around her, students were hastily packing up their notes and exiting the classroom for a well-earned break. Gathering up her notes, Hermione stuffed them into her bag, heading for the teeming corridor of students with Ron and Harry right behind her.
"You'd think," Ron grumbled, "that Transfiguration would get easier after seven years, but no, it's as hard as ever. Sometimes I wonder why I took it!"
"Yeah," agreed an equally dispirited Harry, "Transfiguration and Potions, why did we ever carry them on?"
"Oh come on," Hermione said pushing her way through the throng of students, "you know full well why you took both subjects so stop whining. After all, no one forced you to take them, now did they? You both know that Aura training requires you to take both subjects so stop moaning!"
Behind her back, Ron rolled his eyes at Harry and they both scowled. They reached the Great Hall as Hermione finished talking. Making their way over to the still fairly empty Gryffindor table, they sat down, helping themselves to Mexican bean curry and rice. Hermione began eating very fast, earning quizzical looks from both Ron and Harry.
"Er, are you trying to choke yourself?" Ron asked warily.
"No, I just want to do some stuff, and as I have a lot to get through, I need all the time I can get. You know, with all the homework we've got at the moment. Plus head girl duties." She explained distractedly.
"You don't mean you're going to work tonight?" Harry spluttered looking incredulous. "Hermione, it's Friday evening, give yourself a break and relax. God only knows we all deserve to do so. That Potions lesson was nothing less than torture today, so I think we are all in need of some serious relaxation."
This statement was met with a hearty nod from Ron, and a shrug from Hermione who finished with her meal, got to her feet and swung her bag onto her shoulder.
"I'll see you two later. If you want me, I'll probably be in my room." She left before either of the other two could object. Going out of the Great Hall, she crossed the entrance hall and went swiftly up the marble staircase and in the direction of Gryffindor tower. She wanted to be alone to start work on her latest and definitely forbidden project - making an invisibility potion. She had got the recipe from 'Best Invisibility Potions of the Age', and intended to start the lengthy process of making it that evening, when hopefully, she would not be disturbed.
Reaching the portrait of the Fat Lady, she gave the password 'ant eggs', and entered the large comfortable circular room. Crossing it, she headed up the staircase to the girls' dormitories, and at last reached her own room. Screwing up all her remaining strength, she pointed her wand at the door, and undid the wards protecting the room. Going in, she kicked off her shoes before collapsing on the softness of her four-poster bed, which was draped in satin, with scarlet velvet hangings.
It had been a very long week, and Hermione was glad to have reached the end of it. At the start of the year, Hermione had been made head girl, thereby getting her own room and privacy. Although she sometimes missed the chatter of Lavender and Parvati, her fellow Gryffindors with whom she had shared a room for six years, it was lovely to have her own room in which she could do as she pleased. Stretching, she allowed her gaze to wander over the room, in all its red and gold glory. It was a large room, with a huge picture window dominating the wall beside her bed. Heavy red curtains fringed in gold hung at the window, blocking out any unwanted light. A huge marble fireplace gleamed opposite the bed, currently giving off a wonderfully relaxing heat. On the other side of the room stood a huge mahogany desk flanked by bookshelves. The large mahogany wardrobe and dressing table took up the last wall of the room, giving it an air of opulence and luxury that Hermione never failed to appreciate. The floor was covered with a thick Persian carpet, consisting of red and gold patterns. The bed itself was swathed in a red satin quilt, with small flowers picked out in gold thread. In the corner opposite the bed was a portrait of the Gryffindor lion, behind which was concealed a passageway, connecting her room to that of the head boy, Anthony Goldstein, and allowing easy access to each House's common room in case of emergencies.
Shutting her eyes, Hermione allowed the exhaustion she had been feeling to catch up with her, lulling her to sleep.
An hour and a half later, Hermione awoke from her nap, feeling slightly better. She lay on the bed, going over the last few weeks in her mind. It was now the end of the second week of the term, but it felt as though she had been in school forever. The problems Hermione had been experiencing with her wand had not gone away, and she was finding it harder and harder to maintain the ease with which she normally got through her lessons. She found Transfiguration, Charms, and Defence Against the Dark Arts the hardest to get through, due to all the 'foolish wand-waving', as Snape had put it, that was required. The wand just did not want to seem to work, no matter what she did to encourage it. She had tried talking to Professor McGonagall about going to Diagon Alley to purchase another one, but the older witch had said that she would have to wait until she went home at Easter, as none of the teachers had the time to accompany her during the weekends. Hermione supposed that this had something to do with the Order of the Phoenix of which Professor Dumbledore was head, and did not like to press the point. This left her in the same position as before - she would just have to go to Diagon Alley alone, and ensure she was not caught.
It was for this reason that she had decided to brew an invisibility potion. After a lot of thinking, she had decided this would be a useful safety precaution, just in case she got into trouble in Diagon Alley. She had also decided not to tell Harry and Ron of her excursion, so borrowing Harry's invisibility cloak was out of the question. Naturally, both boys would want to accompany her, but as she well knew, they were very impulsive, and Harry especially ran a much higher risk of being recognised than she did.
Heaving herself off the bed, Hermione made her way over to the bookshelves, and taking down 'Best Invisible Potions of the Age', began leafing through it. There were a wide variety of invisibility potions to choose from, but most required the use of ingredients she could not obtain, unless she raided Snape's stores as she had done during her second year – an experience in which she had no wish to repeat. Besides, some of these took over two weeks to brew. She had therefore chosen to brew one of the simpler, but rarely used potions, one drop of which would allow her to be invisible for half an hour – enough time to get away, in case things didn't work out as planned. This potion, although requiring very few ingredients, was very hard to brew, due to the accuracy needed when measuring each ingredient. One slip or wrong measurement, and the potion would be rendered useless.
Swiftly, Hermione gathered the ingredients she would need, and dragged her cauldron into the bathroom. This room was large as well, and had a huge marble bathtub situated in one corner. Beside the bathtub was a large shower stall, facing a vanity mirror, sink and toilet. Each piece of the suite was fitted with gold fixtures. The middle of the bathroom was completely free of obstacles, and therefore, an ideal place in which to brew an illicit potion. Hermione set up a makeshift worktable beside the cauldron, on which she could chop and measure ingredients. She started by chopping some barley roots into long equally sized pieces. Putting these into the cauldron, she lit it with a flick of her reluctant wand, and set about adding the rest of the ingredients: whale bile, rat's intestines, beetle juice and a unicorn tail hair, all of which had to be measured into precise amounts or the potion would be worse than useless. Stirring the sludgy mixture in the cauldron clockwise, Hermione looked down at it with distaste. She would be required to drink this if an emergency arose, a thought that was not very appealing.
Finally, after two hours of backbreaking stirring, sifting, chopping and measuring, Hermione straightened up with the finished product sitting in the bottom of her cauldron. She was exhausted, but triumphant. Smiling, she squared her shoulders, before dipping a small spoon in to the mixture and ladling up a drop of the purple liquid. It was time to try the potion out. Opening her mouth, she let the drop of liquid fall from the spoon onto her tongue, and waited. Nothing happened. She began to wonder if she had done something wrong, and grabbed up the book to once again to read the instructions. The potion looked like the illustration in the book, so why was it not working?
Distractedly, she wandered back in to her bedroom. She went over to the dressing-table mirror, with the intention of doing something about her hair, which was currently clinging to her face and neck in sticky strands. Glancing in to the mirror, she had to stifle a scream, for there was no image looking back. She could see the reflection of the room, but not herself. Closing her eyes tight, she opened them again, willing herself to remain calm and then it struck her! She could not see her own reflection because she was invisible; the potion must have worked. With a yell of "Yes!" she danced around her room, grinning like a cat. She spent what was left of her remaining half-hour of invisibility cleaning up the bathroom, and bottling the potion. On second thoughts, she decided to add a drop of potion to each of some chocolates, residing in her cloak pocket. This way, she need only put a chocolate into her mouth to become invisible, rather than have to mess around with potion bottles, which could result in wasting valuable time.
Having finished cleaning up the bathroom, Hermione glanced in to the vanity mirror to see herself grinning back. Stripping off, she filled the large bath with hot water mixed with sandalwood bubble bath and sank in to its relaxing depths. Washing her long hair, she contemplated the next day's plans. It was a Hogsmeade weekend; therefore, the other students would be less likely to notice her absence. She would tell Ron and Harry that due to her workload, she could not come in to Hogsmeade with them. At the same time, she needed to ensure that Filch, the horrid caretaker, saw her leaving the castle, presumably to visit Hogsmeade. She would Apparate to Diagon Alley. She had passed her apparation test soon after she had turned seventeen at the start of her sixth year. So far, she had rarely needed to use this skill, but was now very glad she had learnt it.
Her mind drifted back over the last week or so, and she frowned as another of her worries surfaced in her brain. On the first day of term, she had caught Draco Malfoy looking towards their table at breakfast. Was it her imagination, or did she, Ron and Harry keep running into Malfoy in the most innocuous of places? This was not much to worry about on its own – after all, you could go wherever you wanted in the castle. But she had once overheard Malfoy asking one of the Gryffindor first years where the entrance to the Gryffindor common room was located, and that had worried her.
It had been exactly a week ago when Hermione and Ernie McMillan, a seventh year Hufflepuff prefect, took their turns for patrol duty. This involved walking around the corridors just before curfew, ensuring no students were out of their Houses. It was a dark night, with storm clouds obscuring the moon. The torches illuminating the corridors flickered, making the shadows look sinister in the semi-darkness. Hermione and Ernie had just finished their rounds and were preparing to head back to their respective common rooms, when the sound of low voices coming from the top of the marble staircase caught their attention.
Ascending the stairs, they heard an unmistakable drawling voice say, "So where is it? You surely aren't going to back out of our deal now are you? Remember our agreement – I'm asking you a simple question, and I expect an answer!"
Then a small voice answered, "Well, no, but you know that's supposed to be secret. Remember what Dumbledore said at the start of the year? Everyone else will kill me if they find out I've told you. Anyway, why do you want to know?"
Peering round a suit of armour standing conveniently at the top of the stairs, Hermione could make out the shadowy outlines of two figures standing a little further along the corridor. A shaft of torchlight lit up their faces, giving them an eerie glow. One figure was tall, with telltale silver blond hair and an arrogant bearing, while the other was small, with dark curly hair that fell in disarray over his forehead. Hermione recognised him as being a first year Gryffindor, whose name she could not remember.
Malfoy's voice now came back to her saying, "You agreed to tell me if I paid you, remember? Here is the money as we agreed, so it is time you delivered your end of the bargain. Where is the entrance to your common room?"
"Well, I'm having second thoughts, and I don't think it is any of your business where it is. You can keep your money, I'm off!"
"Oh no you don't! We have an agreement, and you will jolly well tell me what I want to know, even if it means I have to beat the information out of your puny body..."
At this point, Ernie stepped swiftly forward into the two protagonists' line of vision, with Hermione right behind him. "That's enough!" he interrupted. "Firstly, what are you both doing out of your houses at this time? And secondly, I might remind you Malfoy, that blackmail and threats are against the rules, and may cost you your prefect's badge!"
"What do you want?" Malfoy sneered, giving Ernie, who was as tall as him although not as well built, his trademark sneer, causing Ernie to step back on to Hermione's foot. She let out a yell of pain drawing the attention of the small group onto her. "Well, well, well, if it isn't Granger! What are you doing here? Oh I forgot, it's your duty is it not? Tell me, how can you bear being away from Potty and the Weasel?"
Hermione choked back her rage to answer, "Malfoy, we've just caught you blackmailing and threatening a student, so if I were you, I'd keep my mouth shut, unless you want this bought to Professor McGonagall's attention! As things stand, this is the first time you've been caught doing this, so we'll say nothing. Now get back to your common room before I change my mind and pay a visit to professor McGonagall. As for you!" she said, turning to the boy standing beside Malfoy, "you can accompany me back to Gryffindor." Turning to Ernie, she said, "Well, good night, I'll see you around."
Malfoy stormed past them, giving them all a filthy look, but said nothing. Sweeping up the corridor, Hermione could hear the unfortunate younger boy following her at a trot. When she judged it to be safe, she rounded on him. "What an earth do you think you were doing agreeing to tell Malfoy where our common room entrance is? Do you know nothing about him? He isn't nice and I can't believe you agreed to this ludicrous bargain. You're not a Slytherin; so cunning is not one of your strong points. I can tell you for a fact, that Malfoy would've had no hesitation in beating you in to a pulp, if you had stalled any longer."
"Well, you don't understand!" he defended himself, "Malfoy's been asking me since the start of term. At first I just ignored him, but he kept cornering me when I was alone. Just to make things worse, my parents are acquainted with them, and my mother wrote to me saying that she thinks it a good idea if I went out of my way to be nice to him. So I thought if I was going to do this, I may as well do it on my own terms and get him to pay me for the information. When I told him this, hoping he'd refuse, he agreed instead, and said I could name my price as long as it was below ten galleons. I agreed and tonight he was to give me the money - ten galleons in exchange for the information. But when it came to it, something stopped me from telling him. I don't like him and his ways, but desperately needed the money to help pay for things at home. I see now that I was very wrong to agree to giving him the information and can promise you it won't happen again." He looked down at his feet as he finished speaking.
"I won't say that what you did wasn't wrong, but this time I'll let you off. I believe you when you say you won't do it again, but'll be keeping an eye on you all the same. Tell me, did he say why he wanted to know where the entrance to our common room is?" Hermione asked.
"He refused to tell me, saying it was no concern of mine. He did seem very determined to find out, but why? I don't know!"
"Well, don't let it worry you. Now off to bed and remember, if any of the Slytherins or anyone from another House approaches you asking where our common room is, or some other such dubious questions, don't tell them. These are hard times and we can not be too careful in whom we place our trust."
By this time, they had reached the Fat Lady's portrait. Giving the password, Hermione had ushered the boy in before her and proceeded straight to her room. It was only later that she had remembered the boy's name, David Wendum. The Wendums were an old pureblood family who, like the Weasleys, were not very well off.
Hermione was pulled from her musings in the water by a scratching at her bedroom door. Clambering out of the bath, she wrapped herself in her bathrobe, padded over to open the Door, allowing her cat Crookshanks into the room. Sitting down on the bed, she pulled Crookshanks on to her lap, idly stroking his fur. Her thoughts were in a jumbled mess; why did Draco Malfoy want to know where the Gryffindor common room was? Whatever the reason, she had the feeling that his intentions were not honourable. She had alerted all the Gryffindor prefects the day after the incident in the corridor, so everyone was aware of what he was trying to do. But this did not make Hermione feel any better. She had the niggling suspicion that Malfoy's plans had something to do with Harry, Ron and herself, but could not pinpoint the reason for this. She knew that there were only four ways into the Gryffindor common room; from Professor McGonagall's private rooms, through the portrait hole guarded by the Fat Lady, the emergency exit which only allowed the students to leave the room and could therefore not be used as an entrance, and the prefect's entrance. The latter was the one that he could have access to, but as it was guarded by another portrait of the Gryffindor lion that was notoriously stubborn, she doubted that he would think of using this route. The lion hated letting anyone apart from Gryffindor prefects into the room and had a positive aversion to Slytherins, whom it did not trust one bit.
Hermione was reminded of an altercation at the start of the year, when a Slytherin Fifth year prefect had needed to get in to the Gryffindor common room to fetch a student for Professor Dumbledore. The lion had refused to let the girl in, maintaining that she was "Slytherin filth who was not to be trusted". In the end, the girl had been forced to traipse round the school, looking for a Gryffindor prefect to carry out Professor Dumbledore's instructions.
Grinning at the memory, Hermione put Crookshanks on to her bed, changed from her bathrobe into comfortable pyjamas, and donned a cotton robe over them. As she picked up her hair brush with the intention of combing out her wet hair, a loud and peremptory knock sounded on her door.
"Mione, we know you're in there, so let us in!" Ron's voice could be heard loudly declaring. "We've bought you some nice stuff, as you didn't eat much for dinner, so unless you want me to eat this cream cake, which looks particularly tempting, we suggest you open up before it's gone."
"I'm coming," Hermione put down the brush and hurried over to the door, pulling it wide open.
Harry and Ron stood grinning on the threshold, their arms loaded with food.
"We thought we'd come and rescue you from your books," said Harry, stepping around her into the room.
"Hang on!" Ron frowned following Harry in and glancing around. "I thought you said you were going to do some work. You look as though you have just come out of the bath. What's in that bottle?" he pointed to the bottle containing the remainder of the invisibility potion, sitting on the desk. "If we'd known you weren't going to work, we would've taken you down to the kitchen with us, so you could meet the house-elves." This pronouncement was accompanied with a wicked grin from Ron, who still teased Hermione about her S.P.E.W Campaign that she had tried to carry out in their fourth and fifth years, but which had been firmly rebuffed by the Hogwarts house-elves, apart from Dobby.
"Oh by the way, Dobby and Winky say Hello. They asked where "the young miss" was and seemed disappointed not to see you. Well we may as well get started on this lot!" Harry grinned indicating the mound of cakes now residing on Hermione's bedside table.
Relieved that Ron's attention had been distracted from the bottle of invisibility potion, Hermione started combing out her hair and leaving it to dry naturally. She went over and sat down beside Harry on the bed. Ron was reclining on the pillows, already half way through a chocolate éclair. Glancing down, Hermione noticed an envelope lying beside Ron.
"Ron, I think you've dropped something," she began but was interrupted by another knock on the door. Getting up, she went to open it, to find Ginny standing outside.
"Can I come in?" she asked, smiling.
"No!" Ron shouted through a mouthful of pastry, cream and chocolate.
"Yes, of course you can," Hermione said, ushering Ginny into the room and closing the door. "Come and join us, there's more than enough food, help yourself."
"We were trying to eat in peace," Ron objected, eyeing Ginny suspiciously. "We didn't want to be disturbed, so why don't you run along and play, now there's a good girl!"
"Shut up Ron," Ginny snapped. "I actually came for a reason. I've just received a letter from mum in which she tells me that Aunt Emma has had another baby, who was born with Kurbs-blood. She wrote to you as well, but I don't suppose you've opened yours, have you?"
Ron flushed and picked up the envelope Hermione had spotted lying beside him. Opening it, he scanned the letter, before sighing deeply and folding it.
"Merlin, I didn't realise," he muttered. "That was her third kid, and all of them were born with Kurbs-blood. That disease is a killer, and according to Mum, is on the increase. The strange thing is, only all wizarding families seem to be effected by it, and people can't understand why."
"I think I once read an article about it - something to do with the fact that there's a lot of inter-marriage between people from all wizarding families, and Kurbs-blood is a result of some genetic defect that happens when one, excuse the term, "pureblood" marries another," Hermione explained thoughtfully.
"Yeah, but how?" Ron looked perplexed. "Mum says that it's affected every wizarding family we know of, at some point or another. The medi-witch with mum when Percy was born thought that Percy had it and had to slap him quite a few times before the git decided to breathe. I sometimes think that she probably slapped all the humour and life out of him!"
"That isn't funny Ron!" Hermione chided. "I think that at heart, Percy cares very deeply for all his family. Remember when he saw you in the lake during the second task of the Triwizard tournament? He nearly went berserk with worry! He didn't think twice about jumping into rescue you then, now did he?"
"No, but remember our fifth year, and what he did then? I for one've never forgiven him for that betrayal, even if he did come crawling back last year, all apologies!" Ron gave a derisive snort, before biting in to another cake.
Hermione thought back to their fifth year, when Percy had publicly renounced his family in favour of keeping on good terms with Fudge and the Ministry of Magic. At the time the Weasleys' had cut all ties with him and had only accepted him back into the family once he had apologised and even that had only been forthcoming after Voldemort's return to the wizarding world had been publicly announced by Fudge.
Ron's voice snapped her attention back to him, "You know, I don't think mum and dad have truly forgiven him either; oh they are nice to him on the surface but they don't trust him – who would, the git! Anyway, why are we talking about Percy? I'm sure we can think of more interesting things to discuss! Have you heard anything more about why Malfoy wanted to find the Gryffindor Common room?"
"No, I told all the prefects to be watchful, but it seems he has decided to leave the matter alone."
"The day that Malfoy leaves anything alone just because you tell him to will be the day Snape decides to be nice to us in Potions! You know, I'm surprised Malfoy didn't get the position of head boy this year – I mean we know he always wanted it…" Harry started but was cut off with a snigger from Ron.
"Well, Dumbledore obviously didn't want to give it to him – Lucius Malfoy may've bought his way out of prison, but no amount of gold would ever persuade Dumbledore to do anything he didn't feel was right," Ron explained, grinning.
"Yeah, maybe so, but it is still odd though," Harry mused.
"Not really," Ginny put in, "Anthony and Hermione work well together and both have clean records as well. The whole point of the head boy and girl is to act as role models for the rest of the school. Dumbledore wouldn't want students copying Malfoy's tendencies now, would he?"
"He must've had a real fight on his hands when Lucius found out his golden boy wasn't going to get the position of head boy! The day the Malfoys'll take what Dumbledore says lying down will be the day that Voldemort stops torturing Muggles as sport!"
This statement from Harry was met with a shudder from Ron, who complained, "Can't you say 'You Know Who?' I hate his name being mentioned."
"No, I won't!" Harry retorted emphatically. "As Professor Dumbledore once said, fear of a name increases fear of the actual thing! Anyway," he said, trying to steer the subject onto safer ground, "When shall we leave for Hogsmeade tomorrow?"
Hermione looked up at this and explained, "I don't think I can go to Hogsmeade after all. I desperately need to do some work and before you say anything Ron, I've been feeling pretty tired this week, so I've fallen behind. If you don't mind, I will give you a list of things I would like from Honeydukes in case I can't make it to get them myself."
"You know, if I didn't know you so well Hermione, I'd say you were trying to hide something from us. You always seem tired these days, and remember that day when you fell asleep in the common room? You're not coming down with something are you?" Harry looked worried, causing a pang of guilt to shoot through Hermione for deliberately lying to him.
"No, I'm just a bit tired. I didn't rest enough during the holidays, and came back to school feeling drained. I want a lie-in tomorrow to try and catch up on my sleep before we get too much extra work. I don't want to end up like I did in our third year."
"No, I suppose not." Harry muttered. No more was said on the subject, as Ginny knew nothing of the time-turner Hermione had been required to use to get to all her classes during the trio's third year.
The evening was growing late, and all around them the sounds of people going to their dormitories could be heard. "Well, you'd better be off," Hermione said getting off her bed, watching while the other three wished her good night and left, leaving her alone. She smiled in relief – the first part of her plan had succeeded.
She started to prepare for bed, hoping for a long night's sleep. She would need all her wits about her the next day, as she was probably going to break more rules in a few hours than Harry and Ron had throughout the whole of their time at Hogwarts.