It was still dark outside when Hermione got out of bed and dressed. She breathed deeply trying to calm her nerves. She kept telling herself that this was going to be a piece of cake and then she could just go on about her classes like nothing had happened. She packed her wand securely in her backpack and stood in the middle of the room.

"Don't be nervous. Everything will be fine," Ron said, crossing the room to her. He was shirtless, wearing only his pajama bottoms. Hermione lingered for a moment, running her fingers over his chest. He gathered her in his arms and gave her a deep kiss. "Okay, off with you," he said with a smile, stepping out of her space.

Apparating onto a muggle campus was probably not the safest thing she'd ever done, but there was no other way. She couldn't walk; it was too far. There were no buses at this hour and they didn't have a car or a bicycle, so all muggle forms of transportation were out. There were no fireplaces in professors' offices like there were at Hogwarts, so floo powder was useless. And she couldn't very well go sneaking around campus dragging a flying broom with her. And that left apparating. There was a heavily wooded area near the physics building that would do nicely. Even if someone was on campus, they shouldn't be able to see her unless they were actually weeding that particular spot, and 4am hardly seemed like an appropriate gardening hour. She had considered apparating directly into Professor Fleinhardt's office, but the chances of someone being there seemed much higher. And she couldn't picture the room without thinking of that research assistant. She didn't want the spell to get messed up and land right in the middle of the poor girl's bedroom.

Ron gave her a smile and a wink and Hermione was off. With a pop she arrived, completely whole on the campus grounds. Apparating could be tricky. If not done properly, one could leave behind an arm or leg. Hermione double-checked that all appendages were present and accounted for and stole to the front door.

The building was dark inside. The only light came from red Exit signs illuminated at either end of the hallway. She made a careful check to make sure no one was approaching and pulled out her wand. "Lumos," she whispered, and the tip glowed. What I wouldn't give for a Maurader's Map of this place right now, she thought glumly. The Maurader's Map was a special map of Hogwarts that showed, not only the location of everything within the castle, but also the location of every person, allowing the user to avoid nasty confrontations.

Hermione made her way down the hall towards Dr. Fleinhardt's office, listening carefully for any muggles lurking nearby. When she got there, she found the door locked. "Alohomora," she whispered, touching it with her wand. The lock came undone and she slipped inside, leaving the door slightly ajar. She turned on the desk lamp in his office, extinguished her wand and laid it on his desk. A moment later, she thought the better of it and stowed the wand back in her bag.

She sighed as she examined the contents of Dr. Fleinhardt's desk. Papers and books were stacked precariously with no thought to organization. One particularly thick folder had a sticky note attached reading, "For Charlie." They appeared to be page after page of numbers. Most likely it was data from an experiment. She put it aside and pulled out a sheet that had a list of printed names next to signatures. It was an attendance sign-in for her fluid dynamics seminar. She recognized her own name about halfway down the page. What she needed was a sign-in sheet for his nuclear physics seminar. But finding anything in this disorganized mess seemed almost impossible.

She began looking at the pages one at a time, but the papers spilled on to the floor between the desk and the door. Hermione cursed mildly under her breath and slipped around to pick them up. She crouched on the floor with her back to the door and began gathering up the pages, checking each one.

POP! Hermione froze. Had she just heard something? She held perfectly still for a moment, listening as hard as she could. What she wouldn't give for one of Ron's brothers' extendable ears right now to allow her to hear into the hallway. Moving slowly, she reached up and turned off the desk lamp. She was now in almost total darkness.

After a few moments, Hermione was satisfied that no one was out there. She hadn't heard any footsteps; no one had turned on any lights. The sound must have been her imagination. She reached up to flip back on the light but as soon as her hand touched the metal, she suddenly felt her body seize up.

She was completely rigid from head to foot. She felt herself falling backwards with no way to adjust her balance. The fall seemed endless. She was watching the ceiling rush over her and with a loud crack her head collided with the linoleum. If she had been able to speak, she would have let out a grunt or a scream, but her mouth was frozen shut. She knew what had happened. This was Petrificus Totalis. She, herself, had used the curse on a fellow classmate, Neville Longbottom, during her first year at Hogwarts.

But she had seen something, she was sure of it. As she fell backwards she had gotten a brief glimpse of the door. Someone with long hair was leaving the office. Could it have been Nikka Fowling? She couldn't see much of anything, just a flick of hair as they exited. In the dim light it had been impossible to tell what color it was. It could have been black, or dark brown, or even a particularly deep shade of auburn. It would be no help at all in identifying her.

She could see the clock on the wall from where she was lying. It was 4:15 am. She would just have to wait until someone found her. She hoped that Dr. Fleinhardt wouldn't decide to call in sick that day. As the hours slipped by, Hermione drifted off to sleep.

--

Charlie and Larry were strolling down the long arcades of CalSci, Charlie wheeling his bike beside him. The wisteria hanging above the arches of the arcade had just started to bloom, and the purple flowers cascading over the pale tan stucco were a lovely contrast. He wondered briefly if he's ever seen Amita wearing purple, and then shook his head. Ever since she'd become Larry's student instead of his, he'd found himself thinking about her more and more often. Nothing had come of it yet, but he was starting to get tired of his father's hint-dropping. Even Don was getting in on it now, which was driving him nuts. They didn't understand that it wasn't any more appropriate for him to ask Amita out now than it had been a few months ago. The same kind of rumors about her academic ability would spring up if people thought they had only been hiding a relationship while she was under his authority. He had to wait until she had been on her own for a little while longer.

"Did you just hear me, Charles?"

"Sorry, Larry." Charlie lifted the bicycle up a couple of steps. "What did you say?"

"I was asking if you could stop by and pick up the data for those equations I asked you to work for me."

"Yeah, sure. I just wrapped up a case with Don, so I should be able to work on them later today."

"Good, good. I think Amita's free if you think you could use a little help."

"Larry, not you, too," Charlie groaned.

"Me too, what?" Larry's brow momentarily crinkled in puzzlement, then cleared. "Oh, I see. No, in this instance I'm not attempting any matchmaking, my friend. I trust that things will work out in their own time as they are meant to."

"That's refreshing." They paused so Charlie could lock his bike outside the physics building, and then went inside. "Unlike everyone else I know."

"If I might make an observation, though, Ms. Ramanujan hasn't been asking about you as much as she was over the summer. Have you been seeing her with greater frequency now that the term is in session?"

"No, actually I haven't." Charlie's stomach dropped. Was she giving up on him?

"Well, it's just an observation. She has a whole new set of classes to work through, after all. I wouldn't pay it any mind."

"Then why did you say anything?" Charlie muttered under his breath as they climbed the stairs.

They walked down the hall, and Larry slid his key in the lock of his office door. Larry turned the knob and opened the door. "Now the file is inside my – Oh my goodness!"

Larry was completely blocking the doorway, and Charlie had to stand on his toes to see over his head. There was someone laying on the floor in an odd position, with her hands flat against the sides of her body. Larry dashed forward, kneeling down by the figure's head. "It's one of my students," he said, puzzled. "Hermione Granger, the English girl."

"Don't touch her," Charlie said, coming inside and shutting the door behind him. "She might have some kind of injury to her back or neck."

"Yes, yes, I know that. Laurel made me take a basic first-aid class for our overnight hiking trips."

Charlie was looking down at the young woman, whose eyes were closed. He felt a shiver run down his spine. "What do you suppose happened?" he asked, looking around nervously.

"I don't know." Larry sat back on his heels. "What's she doing in my office?"

"What happened to her? She looks like she's catatonic."

Larry had pressed two fingers to her neck. "Her pulse is strong, and her breathing is regular. Could she have seen something that frightened her?"

"Did you leave a copy of your midterm laying around?" Charlie joked weakly.

Larry jumped to his feet more quickly than Charlie would have thought he could, and strode over to his desk. He pulled a small key from his pocket and opened one of the drawers. After rifling through the papers there, he gave a relieved sigh.

"What is it?"

Larry shook his head. "I wasn't too concerned, but if someone could get into a locked room, a locked desk drawer shouldn't be any more difficult. Although…" he trailed off. "Manipulating a wormhole might be easier if one's entire body is traveling through, rather than just a part."

"What are you talking about?" Charlie cast a nervous glance at the unconscious, no, incapacitated person on the floor. "I'm calling 911. And Don."

"That's probably not a bad idea." Larry lifted the phone and dialed the three digits. "Considering what I've got in here, the FBI's assistance is not unwarranted."

Charlie opened his mouth to ask him, once again, what he meant, but Larry held up a hand as his call connected. After giving a terse explanation of the situation and their location, he hung up the phone. Then he pushed the desk drawer shut and carefully locked it. He beckoned for Charlie to come closer.

Charlie refrained from rolling his eyes, but followed Larry's instructions. "What is in your desk drawer?"

Larry lowered his voice. "You're not the only one who does consulting around here, Charles. I've been asked to review the blueprints for the proposed nuclear reactor at Sand Point."

"You shouldn't be telling me things like that!"

He waved his hand. "You have higher security clearance than me and you know it. It's just a final review, but it's obviously a very sensitive document."

Charlie looked down at Hermione again. "What would a graduate student want with blueprints to a nuclear reactor?"

"And what happened to her?" They stood in silence for a moment until there was a knock at the door, and it swung open to reveal two paramedics with a stretcher.

A few minutes later, Hermione had been loaded onto the stretcher, and Larry had insisted on going with her to Huntington Memorial Hospital. "Charles, the emergency contact information for all of my students is in the class file in my computer. I think she has a fiancé here who should be notified."

"I'll do that after I talk to Don," Charlie said, sitting down at Larry's desk. "And I'll be sure to lock up when I leave."

Larry gave him a grateful look, and then followed the paramedics out the door.

Charlie waited until the door was closed again before pulling out his cell and pressing 1 on the speed dial. "Eppes here," came the terse response.

"Hey Don, it's me. Are you busy?"

"No, I'm just loafing around like I always do when I'm at work." The sound of traffic in the background told him that Don was on the road. "What's up?"

"Can you come over to CalSci? We have a bit of a situation here."

"Are you all right?" Don asked sharply.

"Yes, I'm fine, but one of Larry's students isn't." Charlie sketched out the situation, including the blueprints in Larry's desk. "That's all I know, but I was wondering if you could come by and take a look, maybe have a forensic team dust for fingerprints."

"Yeah, sure. It'll have to wait till afternoon, because I've got a suspect to talk to this morning, but I'll send someone over there to secure Larry's office. Don't touch anything, okay?"

Charlie jerked his hand back from the keyboard. "I need to use Larry's computer. Is that all right?"

Don's sigh was a burst of static in his ear. "Just don't touch anything you don't have to, Charlie."

"Okay. I'll see you this afternoon." Charlie hung up and clicked his way through Larry's files, looking for the emergency contact information he had mentioned. There it was. Hermione Granger from London, England. Undergrad at Oxford, but she was missing a couple of years in her CV after that. And her degree was in…He blinked, confused. Why would someone with a degree in physics from one of the top institutions in the world be taking Larry's basic introductory graduate course? Surely she could have tested out of it. He shook his head. There would be time for that later, but he was definitely showing this to Don.

The emergency number was the same as her home number, with a Ronald Weasley listed as the contact person. He wrote down the number and closed out the computer file. Then he picked up the phone and dialed the Pasadena number, waiting as it rang four times. Then a recording of a male voice came on the phone, with a British accent and a hint of uncertainty. "Um, hi, this is Ron and Hermione. Uh, leave a message at the beep." Then there was a faint "Now what?" followed by a faint, "Honestly, Ron!" and then a beep.

He cleared his throat. "This is Professor Charles Eppes at CalSci, calling for Ronald Weasley. Um, you're listed as the contact information for a Hermione Granger. I'm sorry to have to tell you like this, but she's been taken to the hospital. It's Huntington Memorial on California Avenue. Her physics professor is with her right now, Larry Fleinhardt. Um, if you have any questions, my number is 626-555-7196. I'm sure she'll be fine, but don't hesitate to call if you need anything."

He hung up the phone, not wanting to think about the young man's reaction when he got home and got the news from his answering machine that his fiancée had been hospitalized, with no further explanation. But what else could he have said that wouldn't induce more worry? "Hi, your fiancée has gone catatonic after breaking into a professor's office; the FBI will be here later this afternoon to see if she was trying to steal blueprints for a nuclear reactor."

Charlie shook his head and tugged on the desk drawer to make sure it was locked. Then he made his way to the door, double-checking that it was locked behind him. He started down the hall, then went back to triple-check. Larry insisted he had locked his door last night, but you could never be sure that his mind was firmly in the here and now. Thinking that someone had used wormholes to break into his office, for example.

Charlie walked off down the hall, ignoring the voice in the back of his head that said the far-fetched explanation was often right where Larry was concerned. \