The Hogwarts Murders – Vol. 3
Rumours - a nasty pastime. And they circulated Hogwarts like energetic, annoying little Cornish pixies high on crack; nobody escaped them. Hermione Granger hated them, and she hated anyone who would stoop to spread them further. Naturally she heard it from Ron - who heard it from Angelina Johnson, who heard it from Dean, who heard it from Seamus, who heard it from Lee Jordan, who heard it from Neville, who accidentally overheard Malfoy and his cronies laugh at it all while being leg-locked for the zillionth time to date.
"Have you heard what they're saying?" he exclaimed when returning from Quidditch practice one night.
Hermione and Harry looked up from their Transfiguration notes. Harry still could not play, and was mighty bitter about it. Neither of them bothered to ask, because both of them knew that Ron would blurt it out anyway.
"There are rumours that it was McGonagall that killed Professor Trelawny!" he continued in the same sickly excited and fascinated tone of voice.
Hermione simply muttered, "Good for her," and went back to her studying. OWLs were coming up.
She could feel Ron's stare burn into her frizzy fringe. "Wha'? That's all you got to say?"
She forced herself to look at him again. "Well, it can't be true, can it? I mean, why would Professor McGonagall do anything like that? And say that she did, why haven't the Ministry stepped in to take her away from the school? They can't want her to keep teaching if she's murdered someone, can they?"
Ron was a perfect image of disbelief. "You sound as if you don't believe it," he said.
"You're right, I don't. It's only a rumour, right?"
"Probably just something that Malfoy made up," Harry agreed.
"No, no, no, this isn't something that the Slytherins have made up!" Ron objected. "There are practically proof! Snape witnessed everything, and he agreed to keep quiet about it because McGonagall had some kind of catch on him. Honestly, Hermione, haven't you noticed how he's always thriving on every opportunity to mock McGonagall in public? He must know that her little scam is about to blow up in her face."
"Ron!" Hermione warned him. She did not like the way he spoke of their teacher.
"What?" Ron seemed to be utterly oblivious of her fury. "It's what they say. If you don't believe me, go ask them yourself. Go ask Snape, I bet he'll tell you all the details more than happily. He's gloating about it - in a silent way."
Hermione left the boys to their dull imaginations and went to bed early that night - she just could not stand the gossipping for another second. She did not believe a word of what Ron had implied. McGonagall a cold-blooded murderer? It was impossible. She was a teacher, for crying out loud! She was way too smart to use the Avada Kedavra curse at school - she could not just go about scattering corpses around her anywhere she went.
Could she?
No matter how much she tried, Hermione could not just forget about it. Suddenly she started to notice that Professor Snape was indeed gloating about the new situation between him and McGonagall, and McGonagall always seemed so nervous and jittery nowadays... Could it really be that she...?
Were the rumours true?
There was only one way to find out. Hermione did not like the plan that was taking form within her mind, but she could not ignore it either. One Saturday she locked herself in a cubicle in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and took out her Time Turner. She had lied to Harry when she told him that she had returned it to Professor McGonagall two years ago; it had been too convenient to get rid of. Imagine, all the things she could do with it...
And now she was going to use it against McGonagall.
The irony of it.
The nerve of it!
But it had to be done. Had to be done. For the welfare of the school, Hermione would clear Professor McGonagall's name once and for all.
Carefully counting the turns - one for each hour she was going to go back in time - she calculated the exact number that would take her back to the night that Professor Trelawny was killed.
It was really tricky to avoid being seen by any of her school mates since so many of them were out and about at this hour, but shortly thereafter she arrived at the doors to the Great Hall. Carefully, very carefully, she opened the big doors and left it one inch ajar. They would not notice her if she only kept quiet.
Inside the Great Hall, McGonagall and Trelawny were discussing something in low voices. Hermione was just about to utter a spell that would enhance her hearing when a noice caught her attention. Footsteps. Coming this way.
Instinctively, she hid behind a coat of armour and waited. No other than Snape himself came stalking out of the shadows, his long black robes billowing in his wake. He went straight to the Great Hall and opened the doors wide. Almost immediately his drawling voice broke the silence. "Minerva, what on Earth are you doing?"
Not thinking straight, just compelled to learn the truth, Hermione sprinted forward and halted in the doorway, just in time to see the remains of a strong, smoggy green light evaporate from the air around the stern McGonagall; her wand was pointed at the limp, shocked figure of Professor Trelawny that was sprawled on the floor.
A cry of fear escaped Hermione's throat. Both teachers turned in her direction. Terrified at what she had witnessed - and of being spotted - she turned on her heel and sprinted up the stairs to the first floor, not sure where she was going but aware of the urgency to go somewhere. She ran and ran - it felt as if she was running for days - until finally stopping in the fourth-floor corridor, panting, bent double. It was true. McGonagall did murder Professor Trelawny! And Snape had witnessed it all... and he never told anyone about it either!
What should she do?
Shattered by her discovery, she reacted very strongly to the shape that rounded the corner in front of her without making any kind of noise to announce its arrival. Before she could even think about what she was doing - or even what she was seeing or feeling at the time - she acted solely on impulse and instinctive reflexes and uttered the one curse that killed: "Avada Kedavra!" When she realised what she had done it was already too late; the green smoggy light shot out of the tip of her wand and flew through the air towards the shape, almost as in slow motion. And when the shape stepped out into the candle light in the corridor and revealed herself, Hermione understood what was going to happen.
The face that she stared into was her own.
And in a fraction of a second she had time to think a lot of things; how she had totally forgotten that she had spent four hours in the library the day of Professor Trelawny's death, and that she had headed back through this very corridor at this very time, and how utterly pathetic it was that she had used the Time Turner to go back to that night only to kill herself to find out a truth that she did not even want to believe in. She also had time to project perfect, angelic, ethereal pictures of all her loved ones before the green light hit her past self; her parents, Harry, Ron, Neville, Ginny, Mrs. Weasley, Viktor Krum... Ron. She never got to tell him how incredibly cute she thought he was when he got all hysterical about her nagging. And the last thing that she thought was: How can this be happening? If I died that night two weeks ago, how can I remember living all those days? How can I be coming back here now? And what about Harry, Ron - the others? Will they remember me from these two weeks, or will they just remember me dying tonight, here, like this? Will they have any memory at all of what I did during this fortnight? And will I remember them once I'm dead? Will they remember me?
And when the green light finally struck the rightfully shocked and bewildered Hermione-of-the-past, the present Hermione - the killer - knew exactly what would happen, even as it actually happened. Since she had been killed two weeks ago, she could not live now; her future self died with her past self. One second there was candlelit corridors, cold marble floors and the fear that her shocking discovery had imprinted on her - the next second it all ended, and there was nothing.
Nothing.