Hermione longed to find out the outcome of the spider in Ron's bed on the very night it happened, but she knew that even if he managed to wake all of Gryffindor Tower in his terror, word of the incident wouldn't spread around the rest of the school until the following morning. So instead she'd settled for an evening with her friends, followed by a relaxing bubble bath and an hour's read before she snuggled into bed, looking forward to the gossip the following day.
It was fairly late when Hermione turned off the faint night light she'd been using to read, and it felt as though she'd only been settled down trying to get to sleep for a few minutes when there was a rough pounding on the door. The banging on the door woke all the girls up, and since Daphne was the one who slept closest to the door, she got up to answer it. Of course she fully expected it to be one of the boys, and her intention had been to tell them to get lost. However, when the door opened her harsh response died on her lips when she found Professors Dumbledore and Shackelbolt standing at the door.
"Is there a problem, Professor?" Daphne asked politely, making sure she opened the door wide enough for Hermione to see who was disturbing them.
"We need you all to go vacate the dorm room and wait down in the common room," Dumbledore replied, trying not to look directly at Daphne as she was wearing a very short pair of shorts and a flimsy vest top.
Not that it was much better when Hermione stepped out of bed as she was wearing a Slytherin quidditch top, which hung off one shoulder and skimmed the tops of her thighs. Dumbledore was not at all impressed by the skimpy outfits the girls were wearing for bed and he made a mental note to revise the school rules to include suitable night-time attire.
"What's going on?" Hermione demanded, joining Daphne at the doorway as behind them Millicent, Tracey and Pansy all got out of bed and pulled on their dressing gowns.
"There's been an incident and we're going to search your room," Dumbledore answered.
"Why my room?" Hermione demanded, knowing full well that she was the target of Dumbledore's illicit search of the dorm.
"Call it a hunch," Dumbledore said with a slight smirk. "Now put something decent on, and go and wait down in the common room."
"You can't search our room without proof of any wrong doing," Hermione argued, standing her ground while everyone but Pansy nodded their agreement.
"I think you'll find that as the headmaster, I can do exactly as I wish," Dumbledore spat. "Now vacate the room before I have to force you out."
"You won't get away with this," Hermione hissed. "We all know why you're doing this. You cannot persecute me because of who my father is."
"Watch me," Dumbledore returned in a low voice. "Now, get out."
"You're making a big mistake Professor," Hermione warned as she pushed past the Headmaster and Defence Professor and into the corridor outside of the dorm.
"Put some clothes on, Miss Granger," Dumbledore snapped, not at all surprised to find the name Malfoy blazoned over the back of the quidditch shirt Hermione was wearing.
"I'm quite comfortable as I am," Hermione retorted with a shrug. "Do let us know when you're finished, we do want to get some sleep tonight."
Turning on her heel, Hermione started down the stairs, with the other girls following behind her. She vaguely heard Dumbledore calling her a smug little cow before he headed into the dorm room with Shackelbolt at his heels.
"What do we do?" Daphne asked once the girls had reached the common room. Hermione and her friends gathered around the fire, while Pansy settled herself in a chair, well aware that no-one was interested in having her around.
"Send for Snape?" Millicent suggested.
"Yes, I think that could be a good idea," Hermione said with a nod of her head.
"I'll go," Millicent offered. Of all the girls she was the only one wearing long pyjamas, so therefore was more covered then the others, even though aside from Hermione they were all wearing dressing gowns over their skimpy nightwear.
However, Millicent found that she couldn't leave the common room as a spell prevented anyone from walking out of the door. Obviously Dumbledore had arrived down in the dungeons prepared, and he'd ensured that the girls couldn't go for help. Not that Hermione was going to let the fact they were trapped in the dungeons stop her from sending for Severus. Once it was clear that they were going nowhere, she found some parchment and wrote a quick note to Severus. She then folded the note into a bat shape and enchanted it to find the Potions Master.
"Now what?" Tracey asked as the paper bat fluttered out of the common room without a problem.
"Now we wait," Hermione remarked, returning to her place in front of the fire.
"Can they find anything?" Daphne whispered to Hermione, joining her beside the fire as Tracey and Millicent curled up on the sofa.
"No," Hermione answered with a shake of her head. "There was never anything in our rooms because of Pansy."
"What if they decide to search the boys dorms?" Daphne asked. "If they find nothing in our rooms, it'll be the next place to look."
"Let them search, they'll still find nothing," Hermione assured her friend with a smile.
In fact if the headmaster had conducted a search even a day earlier, he would have found enough to prove that the Slytherins were up to something. However, after placing the spider in Ron's bed, which had been the last of their schemes for the time being, Hermione had gotten Draco to gather up everything they'd been using and stash it in a locked box. They'd then hidden the box in a secret alcove outside of the dorms, where they could get to it if they needed it, but where no-one else could find it. If they needed it again, it would then be in easy reach, but for the moment the only other thing Hermione had planned was the potions accident, and for that they needed nothing more than some help from Severus.
Less than five minutes later Hermione's words were proved true as a scowling Dumbledore and Shackelbolt emerged from the girls dorms. Hermione knew that they'd found nothing and couldn't resist the smug smile she shot their way.
"Can we go back to bed, now?" she asked innocently. "After all, I take it whatever you wanted to find, you didn't manage it."
"We're not done yet," Dumbledore said shortly as his partner in crime headed towards the boys dorms. "Do not move from this common room," he ordered as he turned to follow his colleague.
A few minutes later the boys emerged grumbling from the stairway that led to their dorms. Like the girls, they'd all been in bed, but unlike the girls none of them had bothered with dressing gowns. Luckily for Vince and Greg they were both wearing a full set of pyjamas, but Theo and Draco were both only wearing pyjama bottoms and Blaise was just in a pair of black boxers.
"What is this?" Draco asked, wrapping his arms around Hermione and seeking warmth from the fire she was standing in front of. In bed he'd been rather toasty, but it was a bit nippy wandering around in just pyjama bottoms.
"There's been an incident," Hermione replied, repeating what Dumbledore had told her.
"I wonder what that could have been," Blaise chuckled from where he'd sat in front of the fire.
"So why are they searching our rooms?" Theo asked.
"They're searching your room because they couldn't find anything incriminating in mine," Hermione replied.
"That's not on," Draco said with a shake of his head. "Just wait until my father hears about this."
"I don't think mine will be too impressed either," Hermione chuckled. "But I say let's give Dumbledore all the rope he needs to hang himself. He won't find anything, so all he's achieving here is angering my father."
"Has no-one sent for Snape?" Theo asked. "As our head of house, he should have something to say about this."
"We can't actually leave the common room, but I've sent a note," Hermione explained. "In fact, I thought he would have been here by now."
As if summoned by the mere mention of his name, Severus chose that moment to stride into the common room, looking extremely annoyed at being disturbed so late.
"I do hope this was not an invitation to a slumber party," he drawled at Hermione, his dark eyes flicking over all his sixth year students gathered in the common room.
"We're not the ones having a party," Hermione replied. "Dumbledore and Shackelbolt are upstairs in the boys dorm, searching it. And they've already searched our room."
"Why are they conducting room searches in the middle of the night?" Severus asked.
"They wouldn't say," Hermione said with a shrug. "All they would say was that there had been an incident, and that they were going to search my room."
"In that case, they are going to search every room in the castle," Severus muttered, marching off towards the boys dorms.
Even though no-one dared follow Severus up to the boys dorms everyone but Pansy flocked over to the bottom of the stairs. From there they could hear the showdown between Severus and the headmaster, and they heard Severus take Dumbledore to task for persecuting Hermione. Severus reminded Dumbledore that he was searching the belongings of people with influential parents, and that there was no way that the Minister of Magic wasn't going to hear about the night's activities. As things stood, especially with Dumbledore not finding anything, it would be the headmaster in trouble and no-one else.
"So what do you suggest, Severus?" Dumbledore asked, sounding defeated to the sixth years who could hear everything.
"Either you apologise to my students and await whatever repercussions come your way, or you search every dorm room in the castle and act as though you merely started down in the dungeons," Severus replied. "Although we all know the truth, and very much doubt Hermione and Draco especially will refrain from telling their fathers about this."
"What do you think he's going to do?" Theo whispered as the conversation upstairs became harder to hear so they wandered back over to the warmth of the fire.
"I can't see him wanting to search the entire castle," Hermione remarked. "He'll either come back and act as though nothing happened, or he might apologise. Either way, he's going to get what's coming to him for snooping around in our rooms without just cause."
A couple of minutes later, Severus re-emerged from the boys dorms and took a seat beside the fire. It was another ten minutes before a sheepish looking Dumbledore emerged, with Shackelbolt trailing behind him with a scowl etched on his face.
"Well?" Hermione questioned with an arched eyebrow.
"You may all go back to bed," Dumbledore announced.
"Without an explanation, or even an apology?" Hermione spat, not making any move to return to bed.
"We had reason to believe you were involved in an incident that took place in Gryffindor Tower this evening," Dumbledore began.
"How can I have been involved in something that happened in Gryffindor Tower?" Hermione interrupted. "I haven't set foot in the tower since the end of fourth year. And even if I wanted to get up there, I don't know the password and even if I did, The Fat Lady wouldn't admit me as I'm no longer a Gryffindor."
"There are ways around such things," Shackelbolt said, shooting Hermione annoyed looks.
"And what, you were looking for proof that I've found a way around these obstacles?" Hermione chuckled. "Really Professors, you over estimate me and my interest in Gryffindor Tower. I am a Slytherin now, and I no longer have any interest in Gryffindor Tower and those who reside in it."
"Now why don't I believe you," Shackelbolt queried with a sneer.
"I don't know Professor, but you've got a very suspicious nature," Hermione returned, giving the Auror a sweet smile. "And since you clearly didn't find anything in our rooms, you can't prove I've done anything wrong."
"We will one day," Shackelbolt vowed. "You're a cocky little madam, and one day it's going to be your undoing."
"I guess we'll see," Hermione retorted with a shrug. "That is if you and Professor Dumbledore are still around after this evening's activities."
"What do you mean by that?" Dumbledore asked.
"Just that I plan to tell my father everything," Hermione said with a shrug. "And I'm sure he won't be at all happy to find out I've been dragged out of bed so late on a night and forced to stand around the cold common room in so few clothes, while you searched through my things for no good reason."
"I'm sure all of our fathers will be very interested to hear what's happened this evening," Draco added with a smirk.
"Go to bed, the lot of you," Dumbledore barked, trying to dismiss the troublesome batch of students.
"As you wish, Professor," Hermione replied sweetly. "Let's hope tonight's events don't bite you in the backside like a big juicy spider."
Laughing at the look on Dumbledore and Shackelbolt's faces, which showed that they now knew full what that she had been behind the spider in Ron's bed but couldn't prove it, Hermione headed back to bed. In the morning she would write to her father and inform him of the night's events, but for now she was satisfied that she was in the clear. Even her final remark to Dumbledore wasn't proof of anything. Of course it did mean that Dumbledore knew she was behind the spider incident, and logically the other incidents, but it didn't matter. It wasn't like he could prove anything. And before long he wouldn't even be around anyway as Christmas was creeping closer, which meant her father's plans were nearly ready to come to fruition and Hermione had no doubt that come the New Year, her father would be in charge and their enemies would be nothing more than dust.