"How does she do it," a girl whispered from behind Hermione. The girl was staring wide-eyed as Hermione chewed on a fingernail, stared out the window and took notes all at the same time.

"You should see her when she's doing homework," the girl's friend replied, shaking her head in awe.

It was a pretty day. The sun was shining, birds were chirping, and Hermione felt warm all over. Through the years she'd developed the skill of writing down what a professor was saying without really having to listen. She usually preferred to listen while she wrote, but the skill did certainly come in handy. Hermione regretted taking Muggle Studies now; what she thought would be fun turned out to be about as fun as her history class had been. The one difference was that this time the teacher wasn't a ghost.

"...so when dealing with a muggle in this situation one must remember that the obvious signs might hide..." Hermione let out a sigh. She looked down at the schedule still out on her desk, noting that next was Advanced Ancient Runes. She didn't really remember signing up for the class, but was very glad she had; a lesson from Professor Vector was what she was really looking forward to. Maybe she could still change her mind about her career choice- deciding she wanted to be in Muggle Studies her fifth year seemed like such a hasty decision.

Hermione started when somebody tapped her shoulder. Looking to the side, Hermione found Lavender smiling at her. "I didn't know you wanted to go into muggle relations," Lavender said. "Don't you live with muggles?"

"Yes, well..." Hermione replied, shrugging as she put away her notes.

"What do you have next?"

"Advanced ancient runes," Hermione replied with a smile. Lavender gave a giggle, and then realized Hermione wasn't joking.

"You actually like that class?" Lavender smiled again, and turned to Parvati, who was sitting on her other side.

'Wow, that was nice.'

"Seriously," Hermione mumbled, getting up with the rest of the class. She walked out the door and headed towards Professor Vector's class.

Inside the room, Hermione smiled towards the professor's desk, finding somebody else there instead. Sitting in Professor Vector's desk was a youngish man; Hermione's smile slowly faded into a look of confusion. The man gave her a puzzled look, but seemed to recognize her. He stood up, and at that moment Professor Vector walked in from her separate office. She nodded to the man, giving him a slight smile as he walked out the door. On his way out he glanced back at Hermione, still looking puzzled, then shook his head and walked out the door.

"Hello professor," Hermione said, smiling. "Who was that man?"

"Why, he's my second cousin," the professor replied. "How was your summer, Hermione?"

'Pretty freaking boring.'

"Not so," Hermione whispered. She then looked up at the professor that was giving her a strange look. "It was alright, but I'm so glad to be back in this class."

Hermione took a seat, looking up at Professor Vector with undivided attention. There'd be no half-attentive notes in this class. "Welcome back, students," the professor started with. "I should hope that all of you are in this class because you want to be, and are up for a challenge! It shall be fun, but a challenge nonetheless. And," she continued, "how better to break you in from the summer holidays than a translation assignment?"

Hermione looked down at the sheet of parchment she'd been given; there were different symbols on it, many if not most of which she'd never seen before. The professor passed by again, handing her another sheet with vague descriptions of what some of the symbols might mean.

"Now this is a challenge," the professor continued, "for there isn't really a strict meaning for each of the symbols. Have fun with it, though. There is hardly a wrong answer, and besides- even if you are wrong, it's highly unlikely that anybody's going to come back to correct you." At this the professor smiled, looking at all the students mulling over the information on the sheets.

Hermione was reading through the translations, then looking at the list of symbols, and reading through the translations again. When she was doing one of the assignments, nothing else mattered. It was like putting together a puzzle, but was more fun than any puzzle she'd put together.

"Is this...fertility?" she mumbled. "Wait...moon...celebration...fertility rites?" Hermione wrote a few notes on a piece of her own parchment, and then went back to staring at the symbols.

'Note the order of the second, third and fourth symbols...'

"What? Oh! Oh..." again Hermione scribbled on the parchment. "Wait? Possession?"

'Heh...your guess is as good as mine, Hermy darling.'

The class passed with Hermione touching up on her translation. She still wasn't finished, however, when Professor Vector passed by, and looked down at what Hermione had written. "Interesting, Ms.Granger. I don't believe any other students have related those symbols to each other yet." Professor Vector then bent in and whispered, "Nor have I seen any students get that close to what we believe is the truth."

Hermione beamed, and placed her translation in her bag, along with the other sheets of parchment she'd been given. A compliment on her first day back... Smiling, Hermione walked out into the hall and once again saw the man from Professor Vector's class. She gave him an unsure smile, but he just frowned and turned away.

'A mystery man?'

Hermione shrugged. She didn't understand why the man kept looking at her like he knew her. She'd certainly never seen him before. But then again...maybe...maybe he did seem a little familiar to her as well. Or maybe she was just imagining that he seemed familiar. Hermione shrugged and kept walking.

'You're doing it wrong.'

"Shut up."

'What? You're trying to give the potion a completely different purpose from that which Snape gave you.'

"Shut. Up."

There was a pause as Hermione made a slight change in her formula. 'You're still doing it wrong.'

"Gah! I just can't win, can I," she demanded. She stood up, planning to storm out, and then realized how stupid that would be. She sat back down, hearing laughter from somewhere. She looked over her potions work. "To obtain a separation between...oh...it's to obtain the essence of ginger root." Hermione sighed.

'You were making it sooo much harder than it had to be, Hermy darling.'

Hermione nodded, giving in to the remark, but stopped with a violent jerk when the room seemed to tilt. The jerk just made her head hurt even more. She closed her eyes, trying to will the slight pain in her temples away. It was usual for Hermione to experience quite a few headaches throughout the school year, but not so close to the beginning.

"Are you okay, Hermione?"

Hermione looked behind her to find Harry walking over. "I'm fine; just a small headache."

"Already? I wasn't expecting those to start for at least another week or two." Harry smiled to show he was joking. Hermione gave him a small smile in return, feeling a small blush on her cheeks.

'Oh, how cute…'

"Shut it," Hermione breathed.

"Ah, potions homework- no wonder you were developing a headache. Ron was fretting over it for so long, I thought he was going to start pulling at his hair..."

Hermione gave a small giggle, ever conscious of the headache like a wriggling throb near her temples. Standing up, she looked down at Harry. "I'm sorry, but I think I should go to sleep. This headache…" Once again, her meeting with Harry had been cut short. Hermione sighed as she lay in bed, falling almost instantly into a sleep. When she woke up, Hermione couldn't remember anything she'd dreamed about.


A/N: Professor Vector IS the professor of Ancient Runes, right? And she IS female, right? Or did I just completely make that all up?