A/N: Well, looking back at the Chapter 8 file on my computer, I found that it decided to name the different pages. I was like, o.O? but apparently it took the liberty of taking the italics I had written and making those titles for the various pages. Like pages 1-3 were "What time is it?" and page 4 was "Where did she get that?" and pages 5-7 were "Two?" even though that thought was on page 4. I am so confused, but strangely amused.

I went to the Mae concert on Sunday. Most fun! I purchased a t-shirt and when we were looking at all the merchandise, we discovered that Mae is an acronym. It apparently stands for "Multisensory Aesthetic Experience", but we had just never known. And now we do.

Oh, yes, thank you for the warm wishes of good health! I am mostly recovered except for a stupid cough that will last forever, I'm sure. I shall develop the black lung or some other such nonsense.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: The title of this story shall soon be changing to "Musings on the Past" sometime following the posting of this chapter, and shall remain thus until I feel like changing it again.

And that's all. On with the chapter!

I was there again, sitting on that cold steel floor. The freezing winds kept tearing at me as I huddled into a tight ball. Tears still poured from my eyes, stinging my face as they froze, but I was powerless to stop them.

Darkness was everywhere. All-encompassing, all-pervasive. There was no escape. Reaching out my hand would be pointless, for I wouldn't find anything, no matter how far I stretched.

An emptiness rose up from the depths of my soul - a hollow feeling inside of me. An ache of real proportions - a physical hurt, a void in my chest.

I sat there wishing it would end – the freezing winds, the isolation, the aching longing inside of me for some kind of contact, some kind of touch. But I was alone.

Completely and utterly alone.

And then, the wind changed.

The wind that had tortured me, flayed my skin, attacked me anywhere it could, abated. It had calmed 'til it was no more than a breeze gently moving my hair. At the sudden difference, I looked up.

There was a dim light, bobbing up and down. I stretched out my hand, but it was too far in the distance, unreachable.

After sitting, staring at the new light, wondering what it could be, I got up, and began to walk towards it.

But I never got any closer. And I was too tired from sitting in the cold to go chasing it much longer. Exhausted, I stumbled and fell.

I awoke on the floor. My head throbbed and my back ached from the impact of falling from my bed – which was quite far from the floor. Muttering curses under my breath, I attempted to reclaim the bed in a dignified fashion, but failed. I somehow missed the fact that my feet were entangled in the sheets. Thus, when I tried to stand up, all I managed to do was flop against the mattresses and fall to the floor again with a resounding thump.

I am so glad no one else is awake.

But I looked up and found that there was, in fact, someone awake. Someones.

Crabbe was snoring uproariously, oblivious to all around him. But Goyle and Blaise were both sitting up, watching me with blinking, sleepy eyes.

This had better be a dream.

Goyle gave a grunt and lay down again, rolling over so as to face the wall. But Blaise was a different story.

"What's with all the yelling?" he asked, groggily.

"What?" I responded, oh-so-intelligently.

"You yelled, and immediately following was a loud crashing sound." He looked like he was going to enjoy lording that over me.

A mumbled whatever seemed to appease him. Either that or he was just too tired to say anything else. In any case, he plopped his well-groomed head onto his pillow and promptly went to sleep.

I envied his ability to do that – fall asleep so quickly, that is. He seemed to be able to sleep on command, for as long as he wanted, and could wake up whenever he chose.

All this time I had been peering at the room over the edge of my mattress. Disentangling myself angrily from my sheets, I crawled up onto my bed, dragging my blankets with me and arranging them in an orderly fashion.

But I couldn't sleep. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, thinking about the dreams.

This is the second time this has happened.

The light - what was it? And where did it come from?

Pondering these and other unanswerable questions, sleep eventually overtook me, and I was able to rest without interruption until morning. Upon what seemed like the crack of dawn, I again received a most rude awakening by way of poking.

Goyle was there again. I didn't know why – it was the holidays. But apparently he felt the need to jab me out of bed and prod me into going down to breakfast with them. I knew I hadn't been seeing them much – in fact not at all aside from a passing glance in the common room and dormitory – but this was going a little far.

It's too early.

Grumbling as we shuffled down the corridors, I made my way slowly, following closely behind them. We shuffled on into the Dining Hall, shuffled our way over to the Slytherin table, and shuffled onto the bench. Overall, a whole lot of shuffling.

Breakfast included slices of fried ham with side dishes of eggs and roasted potatoes. And, of course, toast, but that was always a dish at breakfast. The steamy smell was enticing and, as I heaped the various foods onto my plate, my stomach began to growl.

We didn't say much as we ate, which was typical unless something big was going on. They weren't generally very talkative people, and I didn't feel like having a conversation with myself again that morning. I certainly wasn't going to speak with Blaise.

The morning post came, and with it, a letter from my father.

Crud.

Normally, I enjoyed getting letters from my father. Messages from my mother were okay, though she tended to go on about the strangest things. But my father's writing was usually the highlight of the day.

My father was the archetype of wizard-kind. I had always tried to live up to my father's expectations of me. He was such an awe-inspiring wizard. I wanted to be everything he was. Even if I became only half of the wizard he was…

But he wanted perfection. As much as I liked to pretend that I was perfect, I failed him often. Not that I let anyone else know that I had imperfections, but he always saw through what I did.

No matter how well I did, it was always: you could've done better. I was never quite good enough. But I tried anyway. After all, he was my hero.

Which is why I didn't open the letter. I didn't want to face him at that time. I couldn't. I already felt guilty about hiding it all from him, and – as I didn't want to know if he had found out – I decided that ignorance would be bliss. He would never be undignified enough to send me a Howler, if he had found out, so I didn't have to worry about others like Pansy discovering the truth – he really didn't approve of Granger.

Discreetly putting the letter away, I didn't say anything about it. The boorish people with whom I was eating seemed more unobservant than usual, continuing to stuff their faces without looking up.

Why do I like these people, again?

It was ridiculous, really, how abhorrently disgusting they appeared just then. Goyle had bits of egg stuck to his chin, and Crabbe was picking through the sausages with his fingers to find one he wanted. Other people were going to eat those. I shuddered to think when the last time he had washed his hands had been.

I was utterly repulsed and wished for nothing more than an excuse – any excuse – to get me away from them at that particular moment.

And an excuse came, in the form of a note from Granger, delivered by one of the school owls.

Just to be sure, one more day on the ice? Meet at the same time and all that.

Hermione

Again? I had thought that we might be done with the outdoors for a while.

But apparently not.

Eyes on the prize.

So I muttered I have to go to those two great lumps-that-pass-for-wizards, and left the castle as quickly as possible. Really, I didn't have to be at the pond for a while yet, but I needed out. Inside, people were just so much more irritating than usual.

Wandering about on the open plane of white, I looked up at the sky. From where I stood it looked like a great grey bowl placed over the world, too bright to really look at, but too big to avoid seeing.

I meandered for a while – shuffling around to keep warm. I strayed to just underneath the trees on the very edges of the forest, not really going in. Looking into its depths, I remembered what a terrifying place it was – vast, closed-in, and dark.

I wondered what it would be like, if I just went in and never came out.

Would it affect anything if I were gone?

Maybe.

It was just one of those strong but passing urges to do something that makes no sense. Something that wouldn't really bring good per se. Just variation on an otherwise monotonous existence.

But it was just a passing fancy, nothing more.

Amidst all of my wanderings and musings, I lost track of where I was going, and soon found myself on the edge of the pond, underneath those trees again.

I didn't realize it until I rounded the bend, but I wasn't alone. Indeed, I wasn't separated from humanity by the stillness of nature.

There was Granger. Always interrupting my reveries, my peaceful moments. Granted, she had, in a way, given me this moment to me, but that didn't change the fact that she was spoiling my solitude.

She looked up at the sound of the snow crunching under my boots.

"Oh…you're early…" She trailed off blearily. Oh, don't give me your depressing emotional baggage junk right now.

But apparently, this was a passing thought of her own, and she soon became…more aware. Not cheerful, but aware. I was glad it was just that - I don't think I could've endured a cheery mood, not from her.

I wondered if my limbs and backside would ever feel normal again, after all the beatings they had undergone over the past days. Falling on the ice and out of bed, along with sore muscles, had made walking around the castle quite the experience. My shins had decided they no longer wished to be attached to me, and were attempting to separate from the rest of each leg– quite a painful sensation.

We stood around in awkward silence for a few minutes. Minutes are quite long, if one thinks about it. At least, when nothing's going on.

I decided that if we weren't going to practice just then, I certainly wasn't going to stand around there with her. I started to meander again.

But she followed.

Well, not really so much followed as walked alongside me. I felt like I should be irritated, but after having to deal with Crabbe and Goyle's wretched manners and crudeness, her relative silence was refreshing.

"It's so beautiful out," she said at length.

A murmur of assent from me. Really, that was downplaying it incredibly, but the beauty of nature was beyond capturing within the vocabulary of small talk.

We paused by the lakeside as we reached the shores. Silence again took hold and we stood there numbly looking on, over the ice and the distant hills we both so admired.

She was the first to move on, and I followed, for some odd reason. Another one of those passing whims, I suppose.

She was passing under a few large pines when a large chunk of snow dislodged itself and fell smack on her head.

That was hilarious!

I started to laugh, but was sharply cut off by a rather large snowball hitting me on my left cheek and exploding over my face. Those things sting like crazy.

"What was that for!" I demanded, after I realized what had happened.

She threw a snowball at me! How dare she!

The only response was another snowball.

Being the victim of an unprovoked attack, I saw that the only course of action was to defend myself. Arming myself, I returned fire. No time for any little charms, just make the snowball and throw.

Apparently – ridiculously - the two of us each had abominable aim without the aid of magic, as many of our missiles fell dismally short or simply askew of their intended targets. This, in and of itself, was funny, but coupled with the fact that we both looked ridiculous, standing knee-deep in the snow, chucking chunks of snow pell-mell, made each of us break down in fits of laughter before we managed to hit each other more than a handful of times.

I made my way to where she had toppled over backward after her latest attempt at a well-aimed throw. She really did look ridiculous, with her hair all messy and covered in snow. She got up and dusted herself off as thoroughly as possible.

I was suddenly tempted to help her brush the snow out of her long, brown hair. I almost reached out my hand to do so, but caught myself before I had gotten very far.

What am I doing? I shook myself to break out of the odd feeling.

After she finished, we decided we had better go practice, so we made our way back to the little pond.

More awkward shuffling, dancing, and falling ensued, much to my muscles' great protestation. After a short time, we decided we were done with the ice. We really just came to a silent agreement that we were each too sore to continue in that fashion.

We shuffled back into that too-hot Castle entryway and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

On the way, I noticed how flushed her face was from being outside. …Was it from being outside, or had I just never noticed? The look became her.

Not that she was becoming…

No, of course not.

She was still Granger, after all.

I shook these thoughts from my mind and followed her down the corridors to the empty classroom we had previously used. The door didn't make a sound as she unlocked it and swung it open.

Why does she know how to unlock it, but when I tried last time, it didn't work?

The classroom wasn't dusty, as I thought it might have been after a few days of not being used. The house elves must have been working hard, for there was not a speck of dust to be found.

The phonograph was already there.

Just how does she do that kind of thing?

Something had been bothering me about the phonograph for a while, but I hadn't been able to quite identify what. At that moment, it finally occurred to me.

"How does that work, when the effects of Hogwarts usually make all muggle contraptions go haywire?" I asked, as she looked up from putting a vinyl record on the wheel.

"It doesn't really operate like the muggle phonographs. I replaced the working features with charms to play the records."

Oh.

"Why?" It seemed rather pointless, as it would have been simpler to use the music charm that McGonagall had introduced during dance classes.

"For the charm." It took me a moment to figure out that she didn't mean charms; she meant quaint, homey, charm. As in charming.

"Seems rather silly to me," I stated. Stupid seemed a more apt description, really.

"It would," she replied.

What's that supposed to mean?

After another one of those awkward silences that seemed all too abundant that day, the music started playing and we stepped up to position. Or I did, and she stood there, unmoving.

"What?" I asked, still frustrated over her last comment.

"Your boots." She looked pointedly at my feet.

"You're kidding." Even after all of that practice on the ice. It was preposterous. I had improved, and yet she still didn't trust me not to bruise her poor, dainty toes.

"Just in case." She raised her hands in a placating gesture.

I hate placating gestures.

Grumbling inwardly, I kicked off my large boots and then we finally stepped into position.

It was amazing how much I had improved. It seemed more interesting, having the music, since we had been dancing without it for so long. Although, thinking about it then, I wondered why we hadn't just used the music charm from class.

I'm so observant. Why didn't I notice this before?

Another thing surprised me, as well. I kept getting distracted, but I didn't lose the beat. Little things, like the cold flagstone floor under my sock-covered feet, or the warmth of her hands in to mine.

The room started to feel too warm again, like we had just come in from outside. But clearly we hadn't. Maybe I'm getting a fever.

The dance went on with only one bout of toe-bashing – a new personal best. And though my foot didn't appreciate my mistake, it was still less painful than falling on the ice.

The dance became one of those things that separates one from the rest of the world – like flying or being alone outside in the quiet. No more problems performing the steps, no more anything. Just the dance. Like a hypnotist, the music played on and on, regardless of time. It controlled time, became time, and everything else was meaningless.

But after an indeterminable amount of time, it stopped and we took a break. I retreated to the window, standing on the edge of a large area rug. My feet were starting to go numb from the cool floor, so I tried to warm them up by shuffling them around on the carpet – but, along with the desired warmth, I was greeted with an electric shock as my hand came into contact with the metal window frame.

Gah! Another annoyance or distraction. It happened again, though I wasn't shuffling my feet anymore.

And then a strange impulse presented itself to me. Another of those ridiculous, spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment ideas. And it was too good to pass up.

Careful not to touch anything metal, I shuffled my feet quickly on the rug. Granger stood by the dais, unsuspectingly. I shuffled closer…closer…

When I was within a few feet, I reached out. The shock hit both of us, but I had been prepared for it. With a triumphant haHa! I rushed back to my rug as she gave me a startled, wide-eyed stare, followed closely by a small, somewhat confused smile.

A strange feeling in my stomach - like all of my insides twisting up in knots - took over, and I felt determinedly silly. My heart was pounding for no apparent reason.

It wasn't until I began to shuffle my feet again, preparing for my next strike, when she finally realized what was going on.

And then the war was on.

Throwing off her shoes, she made a dash for another area of carpet, but she was too late, I had already charged up enough electricity and made my way over, intercepting her as she was just reaching the edge.

Another point for me!

But then she retaliated, forcing me to retreat to the dais. I was cut off from my power source! Cornered like an animal, I fell back on another tactic. As she came up to deliver another blow, I feinted left and got around her, receiving only a minor shock as she made contact.

She turned, but now I had the upper hand, and I was going to make full use of it. No time to charge up electricity, I simply did the first thing I thought of.

It turned out, she was ticklish. Very.

Her frantic escape attempts were cut off as she vainly dashed to and fro. She ended up scrambling up onto the dais, attempting to fend me off, all the while laughing madly. I found I was, also. The bizarre twisting in my stomach increased. It created this soaring feeling. Or maybe falling.

All was insane chaos, ecstatically hilarious. A rushing madhouse of action that was fueled purely by impulse, not built on any real thought. Hard to remember.

Finally she managed to squeak out I surrender! in between giggles, and I relented, victorious. She sat there, gasping for breath as she tried to regain control of herself. I leaned back on my heels and sat there, also heaving, out of breath.

I didn't notice that I was grinning ridiculously until she suddenly paused and said:

"You look different when you smile."

The previously-unnoticed, natural-feeling smile that had spread over my face shrank into nothingness. Gone in an instant. The feeling inside of my stomach made it feel like I was dropping from the sky. What was I doing?

I couldn't stay there. I had to get out. I had to get away – anywhere, just far, far away.

A pit – an emptiness - grew inside of me as I bolted for the door, stopping only to put on my boots.

Her alarmed questions fell on deaf ears as I rushed down the corridor and through the castle to the common room. Taking the steps to the dormitory two at a time, I grabbed my broom when I reached the top. Forget the front hall. I took the nearest window as my exit.

Soaring, rushing wind enveloped me as I tried to sweep it all away. But the hollow feeling didn't leave.

A/N: So, I didn't want to write on this for a while, but this was the eventual product. Review so I can gauge your reaction! If you don't I'll…I'll…I'll do something! Oh-ho! Now cower in fear and let your imagination run wild with terrible thoughts of what that something will be!