From the Author: To anyone who may be following this story, I apologise profusely for the large period of time that has elapsed since the completion of Chapter Three.
To anyone who is not currently following this story but may be contemplating doing so in the future, I apologize in advance for any forthcoming update lapses. I will, from this point forward, make an attempt at bimonthly updates at the very least.
In my defence, I was struck down by a particularly virulent cold virus, then had to deal with the ensuing amount of work that piled up during the attack of the aforementioned virus, then had to write Chapter Four, and then had to send it to…
My beta.
Thank you to fadingfaze for volunteering to deal with my attempts at grammar and plot, and thank you to the rest of you for the reviews.
Wonk: Thank you. Additionally, to yourself and the others who speculated on the inevitable Hermione nudity, she will find herself lacking in the clothing department. Magic is finicky; an intangibility spell directed at one's body does not include one's clothes. The aforementioned spell, however, also involves invisibility.
Tevkins: bows in return My thanks – and apologies for taking such liberties with the concept of writing more "soon." I'm, incidentally, going to provide word translations at chapter conclusions. Out of curiosity, what did you think Snape was trying to drink originally?
Chapter 4: Learning Concepts
Gravity, Hermione thought, didn't seem to be working very well.
No, on second thought, it seemed to have stopped working altogether.
And she seemed to have lost the capacity to move. In every respect.
And then there was the intensive cold. And the fact that there seemed to be nothing between her and the cold. Her sense of touch - although it too had jumped on the Let's Act Oddly bandwagon - was letting her know, loud and clear, that she was sitting on a cold stone floor entirely au natural.
More to the point, the cold actually seemed to be inside of her body.
Hermione frowned; her mind was making a momentous effort to engender a certain fact, but that fact was stubbornly refusing to make itself known, and was still hovering in the realm of mental inaccessibility. She'd worry about it later.
She felt as though she'd been sleeping for a very long time, and that it was taking her an extraordinarily long time to wake up. Everything was hazy. Her eyes were refusing to register anything except a mass of colourful blurs, blobs, smears, and smudges.
She grabbed at the counter to hoist herself unstably upwards.
Or, rather, she made an attempt to.
Air, at least, didn't change. Its texture was, excluding the effects of a breeze, agreeably invariable. The feeling of a potions counter permeating the entirety of her hand, however, brought her present circumstances from the realm of Abnormality to that of Mind-Numbing Terror.
It also sped up the awakening process considerably.
Hermione shrieked, wrenched herself backwards, and then realised that she'd forgotten how to wrench. Her violent shove at the counter should have sent her flying towards the ground, limbs at anomalous angles to the rest of her. Instead, the counter had merely allowed her to sink her arm into its depth à nouveau - up to the elbow this time - and instead of hurtling towards the floor, her body had merely wafted a few inches back. In an irritatingly complacent manner.
Damn, thought Hermione, and then froze in shock as the wave of temporarily abated memory finally cascaded over her.
She decided, upon reconsideration, that profanity didn't quite cover it.
And she immediately devoted all her attention to forcing her eyes to function normally. Time would be devoted to the movement aspect of things when she could See What Was Going On.
Oh my god, oh my god, oh m-
Christ. Shut up.
I'm in Snape's dungeon. Naked.
I cannot believe that, at the moment, that's your most pressing concern.
For all I know, he could be standing two feet from me!
Right, because Snape obviously has nothing better to do with his time than watch sixth-year, Gryffindor prefects attempt to manoeuvre themselves around his dungeon in a state of dishabille.
Oh god, o-
Hermione, what was the last spell you cast?
Plene latito - oh, right…he can't see me.
Would you please calm down?
Naked…
C'mon. Deep breaths now.
Hermione, for lack of a better alternative, proceeded to blink rapidly until the last traces of whatever it was that the Koritsu infusion and Snape's potion had combined to form dissipated from her internal systems and the dungeon gradually made its consequent way into focus.
Whereupon four things made themselves readily apparent.
One, the invisibility cloak was no longer on the dungeon floor.
Two, the potion that Snape had been about to drink, however, still was. The portion of it that hadn't drenched her had formed an incongruous splash of a puddle across the dungeon's stones.
Three, Snape looked as though he would be furious with her for the rest of his life
And four, her wand was gone.
Snape's desk was sparkling in her peripheral vision.
Hermione focused on it, and her heart leapt into her throat as her eyes registered thirteen and a half inches of previously fawn-coloured pine twinkling at her.
What the hell did he do to it?!
She took a furious step towards his desk, when she was arrested both by the sight of Snape's blackboard, and the fact that she'd also forgotten how to step furiously.
He'd left her a message.
Miss Granger,
When you regain consciousness you are not, under any circumstances, to leave this room. When you are able to, proceed to my desk and collect your wand. You will practise plene latito's counter spell on the items on my desk, and, if I am convinced that you are capable of performing the charm, you may do so upon yourself.
Hermione's features arranged themselves into a scowl. She didn't exactly care for the options that that course of action left her with, but while her wand remained that telltale shade of grey, there was no way she could get at it without Snape noticing.
Unless she could deduce the spell he'd used on her wand and its silvery companions, reverse it's effects, and then plene latito her wand into invisible rather than smoky intangibility.
And manage it all before Snape has the chance to interfere?
Well then you come up with something. I, for one, don't particularly want to be stuck in a dungeon with one irate and, at the moment, palpably unbalanced professor, who I technically just attacked.
You have yourself a point. Not the first time you've attacked him, either, is it?
That was under completely different circumstances! Besides, I wasn't the only one-
Well, considering the situation this time round, he may well be grateful.
Does he look grateful to you?!
Of course not. He looks like he's about to savage the next living creature who comes within two meters of him and breathes incorrectly. But this is Snape we're talking about. That could be what he looks like when he's gratified.
You're insane. It doesn't matter what sort of substances he was planning to imbibe or inflict upon his system, I had and have no right to stop him from doing so.
Honestly, I think any human being with a conscience has the right to attempt to save a life if they're placed in a position to do so.
It wasn't his life that he was putting in danger, it was his mind-
A fine line, particularly for him-
And I am not going to waste my time debating the ethics of self-destruction and other related topics right now. Do you have a better plan, or not?
…not.
Fine. Then shut up and let me research.
Hermione stepped towards Snape's desk.
And failed move. Again.
Occasionally, complete imperceptibility has its uses, such as when one is faced with such tasks as spying, or thieving.
Or when one is extremely frustrated or infuriated.
And… as there was no possibility that anyone would catch her in such a moment of uncharacteristic, emotional lack of control, Hermione proceeded to succumb to a brief but virile apoplectic fit.
There was, she decided, something downright satisfactory about screaming and yelling two meters from Snape, in his dungeons, without him knowing about it. And it also served to abate her anger – at Snape and at herself – and relieve most of the feelings of pent-up stress and panic.
She exhaled, shot her perpetually petulant potions professor a wicked smile and then set herself down to the serious business of learning to move again.
After a brief episode of experimentation, during which she came to the conclusion that ghosts thought rather than propelled themselves in motion, she made her way unsteadily over to the books on the edge of Snape's desk...
And proceeded to stare at their spines for the next two minutes, wondering how the hell she was supposed to open the damn things.
After the fourth time she'd unconsciously extended a hand to turn the cover of the top volume and ended up with her fingers plunged into paper, Hermione gave up.
She'd never heard of the spell Snape had used, the books' titles were illuminating absolutely nothing. She was just going to have to grab the damn wand, plene latito it the second she had it in her hand, and book it before Snape could establish where she was.
Hermione wafted herself towards Snape's desk, glanced at him edgily and positioned herself directly in front of her wand.
She lowered her fingers to it at a snail's pace, to be sure it wouldn't move an iota when she touched it.
Her fingers settled on top of it without passing through and she exhaled, relieved; she wouldn't have put it past Snape to leave her a deceptive message about the effects of the spell he'd used.
After letting her eyes dart over him one final time to ascertain that he hadn't noticed anything, she swallowed and focused her attention on her wand, keeping her voice clear.
"Plene Latito, mei wand."
The wand turned back into it's normal self - to her eyes. Not waiting to ascertain whether it had disappeared to Snape's, she snatched it up and shot herself towards the middle of the classroom with a thought, shuddering as Snape's desk glided through her insides.
"Miss Granger."
Her wand had apparently vanished from sight.
How he managed to convey such a potent impression of lethal anger and threat by means of lowering his voice rather than raising it was beyond her.
She watched in disbelief as he actually managed to loom to his feet.
Ignore him, ignore him, ignore him. Don't look at him. Just go.
But, Harry's cloak-
MOVE.
It's-
Did you, or did you not see him Draw. His. Wand? Get your stuff and run.
Hermione decided that the cloak could bloody well wait.
A plene latito and an accio later she stood with her previously solid belongings in one hand and her wand in the other.
She took one terrified look at Snape, who was eyeing the dungeon with a calculating sort of ferocity, shut her eyes, and shot herself through the dungeon ceiling.
Latin (from 1st four chapters):
plene: completely, wholly, fully.
latito: to lie hidden, be concealed.
mei: my.
corpus: body, corpse.
occludo (spell used by Snape to lock the door): to close, shut up, close off.
Japanese (from 1st four chapters):
Koritsu (name of the potion stolen by Hermione – accidentally): isolation, helplessness.
Italian (from the 1st four chapters):
Autorizzare (name of the potion that Hermione meant to steal): to give permission for, authorize.
