Completed: 12/31/04 5:03 PM
Posted: 12/31/04 8:01 PM
A/N: Woah buddy, kinda took me a while. But what better to do on New Year's Eve?
--
She only lasted four of the seven days before the warm and cozy Infirmary became claustrophobic and her forced restfulness turned to unquenchable restlessness; it reminded her too much of the stone confines of her prison. And so it was, that after an hour of anxious wakefulness on the fifth day, Hermione decided to leave the Hospital Wing.
Leaving a note on her unmade bed, she moved to transfigure the hospital pajamas into robes before she remembered that her wand was gone. She hadn't needed it before now and the sudden realization of its absence made her chest ache.
They'd snapped her wand.
She knew it as surely as if one of her limbs had been severed. It was one of the worst consequences that could befall a witch a wizard. Her fingers curled and uncurled as she stared at her right hand. It sat limply on her lap, looking pale and naked without the comforting vine wood to grasp.
There was nothing for it. She'd have to go to Gryffindor Tower.
Sitting down at the edge of her bed, she pulled from her deep pajama bottoms a worn piece of parchment. She unfolded it to watch the footsteps and curling labels moving down hallways and climbing the moving staircases. She understood now why Harry and Ron had kept it encharmed. It wasn't that they "trusted her to keep it safe" as they'd said. Without a wand, Hermione had no way of activating the Marauder's Map.
Harry and Ron had brought it the first day, hoping that it would stimulate a memory flood. And it had produced a tiny trickle of remembrance; though, of the most obscure kind.
She remembered Filch, the Whomping Willow, and a third floor broom closet in which she'd hidden from a patrolling Snape during their fourth year. Her surfacing memories were random and odd at best, with a disjointed pattern that was mind boggling at times.
She found the bare foot markings labeled 'Hermione Granger' and navigated a path with her finger through the inked hallways to the circle marked 'Gryffindor Tower'. There was no possible way for her to get lost if she knew exactly where she was and exactly where she was going, and everything in between.
Her thoughts wandered as she shuffled out into the empty hallway.
She remembered Harry and Ron expressing concerns over her "selective amnesia" to Dumbledore on one of his visits. He'd explained that it wasn't uncommon for a person who's been placed under a great deal of trauma and stress at a single point to sustain any number of mental complications. Honestly, it sounded a lot worse than it was.
She just couldn't recall things quite as well as she'd used to, that's all. It wasn't so much that she'd forgotten; no, it was more as if the knowledge was simply out of reach. Like an ornery cat it scurried under the bed and snapped at her when she tried to grab at it.
She'd pushed all conscious thought and memory to the back of her mind in Azkaban because that was the only way to survive. The farther back she let them recede, the less the Dementors could have accessed easily. A shadow passed through her at the thought of the haunting guards and she stumbled in her steps. She mustn't think of such things. There were things far better...Harry and Ron, for example.
Harry. Ron. She'd recalled them most clearly, because she'd simply refused to forget them.
She stopped within an empty intersection when her choices were to carry on straight a head or take either path on the sides. She consulted the map and it guided her left before she replaced it in her deep pajama pockets.
She trailed a hand along the stone wall and it slid in the dust and over portraits; once causing an old wizard to giggle like a school girl as her fingers dragged ticklingly over his legs. The walls were smooth, and dry, and warm – they were walls she remembered and her hand caressed it distantly, as a lover would.
She hated not remembering things, but Dumbledore had promised her that it would pass in time, especially with such friends as she had. He'd said it in such a way that Hermione had thought he'd meant more than just Harry and Ron and that puzzled her. Did she have other friends? She knew names...they were all there. It was the putting them to faces that gave her trouble, and being simply names she knew not what sort of person they belonged to. Frustrating to say the least.
What she ached for most though, was a wand. Unlike the rest of her memories, every spell, every charm she'd ever learned was still rooted stubbornly in her mind as clear as the day she'd learned them. Her hands veritably itched to cast just one, but without a wand it was fruitless. There were so many that came to her mind now as she thought on it, and surely one of them must be able to cure this awful mess.
"Hermione, dear! I didn't know you were out of bed!"
Hermione looked up in surprise at a fat lady in a bright pink dress goggling at her from a large portrait frame. Pulling the map free once more, she found her own footprints standing just outside Gryffindor Tower.
"Uh...hello," she said lamely.
"Hello, yourself!" The plump woman replied. "Walking round the castle in your bloomers at this early hour. Come now, let's hear the password and we can get you inside and dressed properly."
Hermione paled. "Password?" she said flabbergasted. "I don't know any password."
The portrait looked torn. "I'm sorry, dear," she apologized. "But I can't let anyone in without the password. It's against school rules."
Hermione groaned and sagged against the wall. At least she wasn't stuck in the Hospital Wing anymore.
"Why don't you ask this young fellow?"
Hermione opened her eyes as she looked up. A blond boy, third year by the looks of him, was standing rigidly at the entrance of the corridor. He was staring at her with eyes as wide as tea saucers, and for a moment Hermione felt like saying 'I have no idea who the hell you are'.
"Hello," she said, and she was surprised to find her voice rather skittish. Maybe she wasn't as comfortable around people as she'd thought this morning. Almost wishing that he wouldn't come any closer, she went on. "I seem to have forgotten the password."
She must have looked a sight: back pressed against the wall, hair frizzed, and in rumpled, too-big pajamas. She knew she was too thin – starvation would do that to you – and the mere thought of food made her stomach rumble. The Infirmary meals hadn't been kind.
"Can you, um, help?" As soon as she moved to lift herself off the wall, the young boy squeaked and tore off back down the hallway.
"Don't mind him, dear," the portrait drew her attention back. "Most of the students don't know what to think."
With that cryptic comment making her brow cinch, Hermione studied the map a moment in the half-silence of the fidgeting fat lady before starting down the corridor the boy had gone down.
"Where are you going?" The woman of Gryffindor Tower called.
"The Great Hall," she answered, clutching her pained stomach as she walked. "I'm hungry."
"Hermione! I don't think that's wise—" But Hermione had already started down the stairs, bony hands clutching the banister and bare feet slapping on the stone.
She'd had no wand to give herself robes and the trip to the Tower had proved wholly unrewarding. She did, however, sport an awfully terrible hunger that had seen fit to stir itself again at the slightest thought of food. And so it found her that she was navigating her way down to the Great Hall where it seemed they were engaging in a meal. By the looks of the misty grounds she caught in the high windows she assumed it was breakfast.
When she got closer, she checked the map again and found Harry and Ron at the far end of the table labeled 'Gryffindor' within the long rectangle of the Great Hall. Peering at the inked spot as she walked she got this strange sense of 'knowing'. With surety the feeling told her that was her place – there, at the end of the table.
She found she rather liked the feeling.
The rest of her journey was uneventful, meeting no one in the bright halls but an assortment of intriguing paintings, and when she stood at last in front of the great oak doors, feeling a little less sure and a great deal more tired, she entertained the briefest moments of doubt before pushing one of the doors open enough so that she could slip through.
Silence spread through the vast hall like a wave until it sounded as if no one was daring to breathe.
So many people were staring at her and she felt their gazes as if they were a solid, tangible weight pressing down on her shoulders. Just the sight of so many unrecognizable faces made her own breath come short. She'd recovered from her initial habit of maniacally fleeing at every sudden sound, sight, or face since that first day, but standing there in a vortex of unfamiliarity, her crème colored pajamas with their childish teddy bears standing out in stark contrast to the dreary black and gray costumes of the other students, she felt faint.
Dumbledore was standing – she hadn't seen him get up. "Attention," he called as if anyone's mind was anywhere else. "Let us all welcome back Miss Hermione Granger, who, it seems, has stubbornly refused to remain abed when there's schoolwork to be done."
A few weak chuckles at this.
"I expect you all to treat her with kindness and understanding in this difficult transition," he warned. "The mistrial was a terrible thing and you should all do your very best to ensure her successful readjustment to our fine school."
Harry and Ron were both already on the feet and practically running to the petrified Hermione as Dumbledore finished his speech by insisting "let's not sit here with our tummies rumbling. A good breakfast is just the thing for a day of learning." The pair converged on their third member, swooping protectively to either side and with arms around her shoulders and hands holding hers they led her to the Gryffindor table.
The silence hadn't let up, and Hermione's legs felt like lead. Dumbledore alone was the only one to be eating his eggs and it seemed in a forced desperation as if shoveling his breakfast could encourage his students to do so as well. She felt suddenly as if all the hunger in the world couldn't be worth this emotional stress.
Barely aware that she was shaking like a leaf, she allowed Harry to sit her on the bench between him and Ron like a pose-able doll. Ron transfigured her into a fresh set of uniforms and the outer robe he conjured seemed a bit heavier to that odd 'knowing' sense, though she couldn't honestly remember what the ensemble had felt like. He must have noticed her trembling.
"Jesus, Hermione," Harry was talking in a hushed voice. "You shouldn't have wandered."
She wanted to cry and hated it. Even if she couldn't exactly recall, she'd have liked to think of herself as someone who wasn't so weepy. "I had the map," she whimpered feebly, hand convulsing on the worn parchment.
"Oh, 'Mione, he didn't mean it like that," Ron insisted lowly, rubbing her back. "We just worry."
"Don't call me that," she whispered suddenly, and when looked at her eyes were oddly glazed. "You know I hate it so."
For the briefest of moments...she sounded exactly like her old self.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU ALL GOGGLING AT!?"
Hermione nearly jumped straight out of her skin at the shout from across the table, but was only more surprised by the sudden roar of conversation that arose in the great hall immediately preceding it. The boy who had shouted, she noted, had long black hair that looked, quite honestly, a marvel to touch and deep blue eyes.
"Hermione..." Harry was looking at her, emerald eyes filled with meaning. It was the same old question that now brought a sigh to her lips. Do you remember?
"Give me a moment," she asked quietly.
"A moment for what?" Questioned a boy beside the first that looked so much like Harry she couldn't help staring for a moment.
Ron opened his mouth and she knew he was going to try and explain, so she furiously shook her head. Heeding her command, he closed it again and silently turned to his pancakes now soggy in their syrup from neglect. If these truly were friends of hers, she didn't want them to be insulted that she had no idea who they were.
The flame-haired girl looked at her kindly, and beside her was a rather pale, brunette boy. "The boy from the Infirmary..." she murmured on a breath of air. The boy cocked his head and stared at her oddly, and she feared he might have heard.
Harry and Ron both pressed themselves tightly against her sides and they almost succeeded in quelling the tremors she couldn't seem to shake. Clearing her throat, she lowered her head and looked down at the crumpled map spread out in the lap of her pleated skirt. Sirius. James. Lily. Remus. She repeated the names to herself, but nothing about them seemed to stick.
Folding the map up in a crinkle of parchment she shoved it into her robe pocket and gingerly lifted her fork. It was an odd thing indeed and one far from her use the past two and half weeks. She twirled it slowly, testing the dexterity of her fingers, and finding the apt concentration it required adequate enough to calm her nerves.
One of the boys was muttering something about "not being allowed to visit her" and she found herself nodding dumbly, setting the fork back down in its place.
"You should eat, Hermione. You're all skin and bones," the redhead – Lily – insisted, pushing a plate of sausage towards her.
And all of Hermione's ravenous hunger came rushing back to her. With a ferocity that made her friends drop their own forks in surprise, Hermione grabbed every sort of food in sight, scarcely waiting for them to touch the golden plate before shoving it into her mouth. She ate as if she'd never have food again.
They stared at her; jaws dropped, and wondered how she was able to breathe. Hermione wasn't sure half of what she was eating, but being so accessible she wasn't about to let it go to waste. Even when she thought her stomach was going to burst, she ate; remembering the taste of hot bacon and toast.
"Are you going to eat that?" She asked through a mouthful of biscuit and jabbed at one of the black haired boys' plates. Wide-eyed he wordlessly handed over the last half of his omelet and Hermione finished it in two large bites.
"Hermione...maybe you should slow down," Ron suggested, patting her shoulder awkwardly, as she was hunched over her plate.
She shook her bushy head furiously. "Sirius, pass the gravy?"
The brunette gave her an odd look, but complied with her request. Snatching up the small pewter pitcher, Hermione didn't hesitate to douse her entire plate with the rich smelling gravy. She missed the looks exchanged by the boys and girl across from her.
"Mmm," she moaned after a particularly syrupy bite of waffle. "Do you have any idea how good food is?"
Harry raised an eyebrow. "I can see that." He actually reached around to hold her frizzy hair back from her face as she devoured half the Gryffindor table.
"Thanks," she burped into her napkin.
"Ron's right, eating so much probably isn't good for you," the boy directly opposite her said gently – the one who looked like Harry.
"Nonsense...Remus," she added confidently after a moment's hesitation. His brow immediately furrowed and she knew. She'd gotten it wrong. Shit.
She swallowed slowly, aware of the sudden silence that, though not particularly threatening, wasn't one of amiable comfort. Frantically trying to think of an excuse, she opened her mouth to lamely blow it off as tiredness when a twisting sensation crawled up her throat.
Her fork dropped with a clatter onto the edge of her plate and the prongs slid into her syrup and gravy.
"Hermione?" Harry touched the back of her hand in concern, but the other flew to her mouth.
"Oh god," she choked, gagging. "I think I'm gonna be sick."
Jumping to her feet, she stumbled over the bench and sprinted out of the Great Hall. Harry and Ron were both on their feet to follow after when a voice stopped them.
"She doesn't remember us...does she?"
Harry stared right into Remus' deep gray eyes and knew there wasn't a lie that would fool him. And what was the point, when the lycan already knew truth?
"She doesn't know where she's going," he murmured excusing himself; and under the watchful eyes of the other diners he and Ron hurried after their best friend.
--
They found Hermione in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.
"Oh, it's just awful," the bespectacled specter trilled gleefully when they entered. "Just wait 'til you see!"
Ignoring the ghost, Harry and Ron both dodged quickly around her – much to the dead girl's disappointment. The third cubicle door was ajar, and Ron slowly pushed it open. Hermione was hunched over the porcelain bowl choking, sputtering, gagging, and choking again.
"How inconsiderate, don't you think, Harry?" Myrtle crowed, floating over them. "She's just lucky that wasn't my toilet."
Trusting Harry to deal with his persistently crushing ghost, Ron conjured a cool towel and pressed it to Hermione's sweating face. Recalling his own bouts of flu when he was younger, he rubbed her back comfortingly as his mother had done to him and murmured nonsensical words. Their content wasn't as important, so much as the soothing tone.
After a moment another solid presence was crouched down beside him, hands going up to hold Hermione's hair back from the risk of hanging into the toilet bowl. Harry murmured to Ron something about telling Myrtle to "shove off" and then their attentions were back to focusing on Hermione.
They waited patiently for her to finish her retching and when there was nothing left in her but dry heaves, Harry reached over her head to flush the bowl and Ron guided her away from her hunched position and leaned her back against the cubicle wall. Her eyes were closed and her wild hair was covering the most explicit of the wall's graffiti while Ron ran a corner of the washcloth over her flushed face.
"That feels good," she mumbled, tilting her head towards him unconsciously.
He blushed. "Just what my mum always did for me."
"I'm sorry." She groaned suddenly and rubbed at her head. "I'm such a bother. You're both being terribly nice to me even though I'm acting a total ponce."
Harry laughed and she opened her eyes. "Well, I wouldn't go that far," he teased lightly. She smiled faintly. "Besides – it's about time we took care of you, no?"
Hermione took the rag from Ron and used it wipe her mouth before she smiled again. "Could either of you conjure me a glass of water?"
Harry complied readily, adding that her breath was pretty "rank". Swishing the water around in her mouth she spit several times into the toilet bowl then swallowed the last gulp of water from the glass. Letting them help her to her feet, Hermione let herself lean heavily on their supporting arms.
"You know the food was coming back in five hours, right?" Ron jokingly reminded her.
She shared with them a wane smile. "It was worth it," she said definitively as they walked out into the hall.
The expressions each boy wore both darkened at this, and Hermione noticing, sought to turn the subject to something less anger-filled and saddening. "So..." she started. "What class do we have first?"
"We have double potions," Harry corrected. "You are going back to bed."
"No."
"This isn't debatable," Harry told her, doing quite a good McGonagall impression by looking down his glasses at her.
"You're right, I'm going with you and that's that." Fumbling the map out of her pocket, she glanced down at it and started off towards the dungeons.
"Why does she have to be so stubborn?" Ron groaned before the two jogged after their friend. They seemed to always be chasing her lately.
"She gets it from you," Harry grumbled from Hermione's left.
"Me?! Hardly!" Ron exclaimed from her right. "If anything I'm the good influence."
"Tsk," Hermione interrupted. "You'd both have been expelled long ago if it weren't for me."
"And you'd be buried under a mound of books without us," Ron shot back, descending into the cold, drafty halls of Hogwarts' lower levels.
They entered the Potion's classroom together, mindful of the murmuring whispers that followed, and moved to their customary table at the back of the room. Hermione couldn't help the slight jittery-ness that encompassed her at the flood of unrecognizable faces around her. Harry's hand on her elbow was a small comfort. They'd just begun to sit, when, in his customary billow of black robes, Professor Snape stalked up to their table.
"What is the meaning of this, Potter? Weasley?"
Hermione glanced at her scowling friends with something akin to surprise. Fidgeting with the hem of her thick outer robes she turned back to the Potion's Master who was leaning over their desk with an unattractive sneer.
She smiled, a bit too brightly for the circumstances, and greeted the surly man in front of her. "Good morning, Professor..."
"Snape," Harry supplied darkly.
"...Snape," she finished warmly. Harry groaned, Ron ran a hand over his face, and Professor Snape looked quite appalled.
"I will not tolerate some hospital patient who is unable to remember names, much less how to properly brew a potion," he spat.
Snape. Hermione closed an ear to the outraged protests of her friends beside her, and tried to think back. Snape...Lily...Lily had said something...about Snape. Damnit! Why couldn't she remember?!
"Excuse yourself from my class, Miss Granger, or it will be ten points from Gryf—"
"Please, sir!" Her next words came rapidly, before the startled look upon his face could be replaced by another sneer. "Potions is the only class I'm able to do without a wand. Please, let me stay. If I had a phoenix feather I could finish it faster and be out of your way – but I'll just do it and be done with it. I won't say a word or anything, I promise!"
Snape's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "How do you know about the effects of a phoenix feather on an Illusionment Potion?"
She didn't.
She just...knew. It was that odd sense of 'knowing' again, like already seeing the ending of a book just by reading the first page. Knowing that Evan and Katharine would eventually get together, despite their stubbornness; that the most important scenes wouldn't come until the sequel; or that the bad guy would get caught by a little old lady in tartan slippers and a red handbag. Hermione's mouth opened, but dry lips could not form the sentences to explain the red handbag or the 'knowing' feeling.
Words failed her.
"I-I...I don't – I just..."
"Miss Granger. What would happen if I added armadillo bile to an Aging Potion?"
"The drinker would regress in age, rather than progress," she answered automatically. Then she frowned, wondering where the words had come from.
From behind her, Ron whispered "I didn't know that."
"Shut up, she's remembering." That was Harry.
She was just about to tell them 'no, she wasn't' when Snape asked another question.
"What are the ingredients to a Reanimation Potion?"
"One Unicorn Horn, a talon of Chinese Fireball claws, a pinch of common table salt, and thirteen leaves of deadly nightshade. When picked at exactly midnight, the body has a greater chance of remaining animated for over the original forty eight hour allotment."
The class was staring at her now, and some of the students still stood in the doorway. "Bodies?" they murmured in hushed voices. Several seats up a blonde haired Gryffindor girl looked like she was about to be sick.
Snape gripped her arm tightly, leaning so far over the desk their faces were only inches apart. "That is no simple Potion, Granger. It is of the most illegal and Unforgivable kind – how do you know of it?" He demanded, voice too low for others to hear.
Hermione blinked back tears. "I-I don't know," she whimpered, his spindly fingers tightening around her upper arm.
"No one is to leave this class until I have returned," Snape bellowed. Hermione was dragged from behind the desk despite Harry and Ron's attempts to hold on to her.
Chairs were knocked over as she struggled to keep up with Snape's long strides and Gryffindors and Slytherins alike jumped out of the way of the odd procession. "Dumbledore must be informed," he hissed, and yanked Hermione out the door.
--
Next chapter: Meeting with Dumbledore, something else – try to get a bit of romance in it.
Chapter after: Definite romance – hold on to your shorts.
HAPPY NEW YEARS!!
