A/N: This is my first Harry Potter fic, so if I make any mistakes please be kind

A/N 2: Sori it's taken me so long to update, I've just started a new job, and I've been kinda swamped. Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed!Please keep reading and reviewing, I find reviews tend to inspire my writing...strange that...grins...

Disclaimer: I own nothing. If ya really wanna sue me then you can have what I got...Student loans debts!


'Why did she have to suggest seeing Madam Pomfrey! If I go there she'll know I'm not ill, but if I don't then McGonagall will wonder why! Can't I get a break!' Hermione fairly growled as she hurried through the corridors. She ignored the little voice in the back of her head. It was whispering something about how she shouldn't have faked ill, and she really didn't want to hear that right now. Her mental rant stopped abruptly as she realised where she was.

She'd wound up at the infirmary after all! 'Damn!' Hermione huffed in annoyance. 'Oh well, she can't prove that I didn't feel ill earlier, can she? I could pass it off as…..hunger, or too much chocolate or something…..I don't know!' With that Hermione walked into the infirmary.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Madam Pomfrey was not having a good day. She'd been trying to re-organise her potions cabinet, and had knocked one of the potions over. It wouldn't have been so bad, but she had just had to try and catch it, hadn't she? Her arm had bumped the shelf – the one she had just re-filled – and sent about two dozen more potions flying up into the air. She'd jumped out of the way as they crashed to the ground, but that hadn't helped at all.

Certain potions had contained certain ingredients which should not be mixed with certain other ingredients in certain other potions. Not that gravity cared about that one jolt of course, as was evidenced by the numerous small explosions, and the clouds of odd smelling gases given off. One of these gases had reacted with her hair dye, and her hair was now a wonderful shade of blue. Another had decided that normally pitched voices were over-rated – Madam Pomfrey's now varied from piercingly high to ominously low, completely at random.

No, Madam Pomfrey was not having a good day at all…and it wasn't even afternoon yet!

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Hermione stifled a giggle at the sight which presented itself. She briefly wondered if maybe Lavender and Pavarti had tried to give Madame Pomfrey a makeover, but somehow that didn't seem very likely, despite the obviously new hair colour.

"Madame Pomfrey?"

"What is it Hermione?"

Hermione almost lost her composure. What had happened to her voice! 'Probably the same reason her hair is suddenly electric blue….' Hermione thought wryly.

"Umm, is everything okay, Madame Pomfrey?"

"I've had better mornings, but what brings you here Hermione? Shouldn't you be in class?" 'better mornings….now that's understating the whole thing a bit….' she thought gloomily. She didn't even know where to start with her voice, she could always just try re-dying her hair though. 'Good idea! Add some more chemicals, if you're lucky it might turn pink this time!'

"Professor McGonagall let me out early, I was feeling a bit unwell, and she suggested I come see you…" Hermione trailed off. The less details she gave, the less obvious her faking would be.

"Well, I'll have you right as rain again soon, I'm sure." Madame Pomfrey seemed to have forgotten about her problem a bit, despite the rather obvious signs, now that she had something to focus on. Hermione answered her many (many many) questions as vaguely as she could, and quickly began reassuring the woman that she felt fine now, honestly.

Finally Madame Pomfrey seemed convinced that Hermione was perfectly able to return to her lessons. A glance at her watch told Hermione that she was already late for her next class…Potions. She stifled a sigh, and quickly headed for the door.

"Hermione?"

She paused at the door, turning to see what the medi-witch wanted.

"You have potions now, don't you dear?"

"Yes, Madame Pomfrey." 'And Snape's gonna kill me for being late.' "Why?"

"Could you tell Professor Snape that I need to see him as soon as possible? It's not urgent, but straight after your class would be good, if he's got time." She gestured to her hair as she spoke, and Hermione realised what must've happened.

'She mixed some un-mixy potions…she's lucky it wasn't worse than that!'

"Of course." 'Unless….maybe…' "Could I help? I'm quite good at potions, you know," Hermione asked hopefully. If she missed the class entirely then Snape couldn't give her detention, and she'd have an excuse he couldn't really argue with if he asked her about it next lesson.

"You ought to get back to class, child."

"Of course." 'Damn! Think quick Granger!' "By the way, I'm pretty sure Professor Snape has classes all day today." 'Just a bit more, she's almost sold!' Hermione half mumbled what she said next, making sure Madame Pomfrey would hear it, but making it seem unintentional. "Damn damp dungeons, I'll catch my death down there!"

"Hermione?" She'd actually been through the door this time, the response took that long coming. "Would it put you behind at all if you missed this lesson?"

Madame Pomfrey felt quite guilty, asking Hermione to skip class, but the longer she waited to sort out her mishap, the worse the side-effects could become. Her voice was already becoming quite strained, and Merlin only knew what that stuff was doing to her hair! 'Besides,' she thought, 'if the child is ill, the dungeons are the last place she should be.'

Having justified her actions, she quickly filled in Hermione - who had already come back in and put her bag safely on the desk out of the way - on what had happened.

"Do you have a list of every potion that broke?"

She was immediately handed the list which Madame Pomfrey had finished writing only moments before Hermione's arrival.

"This is everything. Do you need anything else?"

"Some paper to write on, please," Hermione replied as she reached into her bag for her potions encyclopedia – she always took it to potions lessons with her, so that she could sneak a peek at any extra info on the potions they were studying if she had chance. It was best to be over-prepared, in Hermione's opinion – and her quill.

Hermione quickly sat down, and began listing all the ingredients of the potions. She then went through her encyclopedia, flipping expertly through the now well-known pages, and listed every potion which could account for what Madame Pomfrey was experiencing.

Within an hour she was calling Madame Pomfrey – who had been tending to a first-year Huffle-puff with a broken leg who'd fallen down the stairs the day before – to ask her a few more questions.

"I need to know how many vials of dreamless sleep potion were in the cupboard?"

"Umm, I think there were five, why?"

"I've narrowed it down to two possibilities for what is affecting your voice. The only difference in the two is the amount of Mandrake root used, and since the dreamless sleep potion is the only one containing Mandrake root…" Hermione trailed off as she began figuring the amount in five vials into her workings, and a moment later she smiled up at the medi-witch.

"Could you get these ingredients for me?" She handed over a quickly scrawled list. "It'll take me about an hour to brew the potion to fix your voice."

"Of course, dear. Thank you, I'm starting to drive myself to distraction everytime I speak!" She hurried off to collect up everything on Hermione's list, and Hermione began working on a fix for her hair.

Within two hours Madame Pomfrey was back to normal, and Hermione was headed back to her room. Professor Dumbledore had paid a visit just as the hair de-colourant was finishing brewing, and had commended Hermione on a job well-done as it quickly performed it's appointed task. She had immediately been awarded 100 house points, and told by the Headmaster that she was excused from classes for the remainder of the day. He had quickly silenced her protestations by saying that she had worked hard enough already, and deserved a small break.

As she walked out, Professor Dumbledore gathered up her abandoned workings and put them safely in his pocket. 'Severus will be interested in these, no doubt,' he thought, as he bid Madame Pomfrey good day.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Hermione went straight to her bathroom and retrieved a vial of headache potion from her cabinet. She hadn't concentrated that hard since before it had happened. Everytime she thought at all her thoughts ultimately turned in that direction, and to keep them from doing so at all this morning had been impossible. She had managed to ignore it for the most part, but doing so had given her one hell of a headache. She was relieved that Dumbledore had given her the rest of the day off. The headache potion worked quickly enough, but she felt drained, and wanted nothing more than to sleep.

She reached for a vial ofdreamless sleep potion – she should have done the same yesterday, but it had not occurred to her, as tired as she'd been – and then withdrew her hand, cursing softly. She didn't dare take the two so close together, they had been key contributers to Madame Pomfrey's mess, and she hadn't actually ingested them…

She decided to wait a half hour, and then take the other. She fixed herself a cup of tea and picked curled up on an arm-chair to wait.


I've said it before, I'll say it again, if ya wanna know more then Review Review Review! I'm looking for someone to beta this story for me, so if anyone's interested then let me know. I'll give a virtual cookie to the first person to guess what's actually going on with Hermione...grins...