Note: this is an AU, set in sixth year and disregarding completely the HBP summer and events during the school year. Also, the first chapter has been rewritten a bit and a new scene added at the beginning to more fully fit the story. Sorry this chapter's been so long in coming; AP tests, the school musical, and various other concerts weren't really helping. Happy reading!
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Ron comes up to her where she is curled up and reading The Lost Language: Proto-Indo-European on a rather uncomfortable window seat in the very top dormitory, emptied of students for a few weeks. His face is somewhat flushed, probably from bounding up the countless flights of stairs, and his hair sticks out straight to the left.
"Um."
Hermione returns his gaze, which had suddenly turned subdued. "What?"
"What—I mean, how are you?" Ron says, blushing until his cheeks are the faintest red.
She hopes he hasn't resurrected his crush on her; that would be more than a bit discomforting in this situation. "I'm fine."
Knowing Ron's curiosity will not abate until she says more, she puts a piece of paper in her book to mark her place and lays it down next to her on the hard cushion. "More? How would you be, Ron, if you stepped on a dead elf's face and felt it crunch under your foot?"
It was, Hermione thinks, too harsh, but she's sick and tired of this. Ron's face has drawn up into a grimace with a hint of morbid interest hidden within. "Oh."
'Oh' is right. "But the food's all still there, and we can go get the stuff that hasn't rotted yet." Some light from the window behind her plays on the red cover of the book in her lap, illuminating the word 'Lost' in gleaming gold.
"That's good. You have no idea how hard it's been to live on those dry sandwiches after a summer of Mum's cooking and then all those feasts here. It's too bad we missed the Christmas Feast. Ours wasn't up to snuff at all."
Hermione wrinkles her nose as she remembers the House's failed attempt at making Christmas merry. "It wouldn't have been that bad if you hadn't gotten drunk."
A smile unexpectedly comes over Ron's face, like the sun peeking over the horizon on a foggy morning. "That was pretty crazy." He lapses into silence, the smile still in place, and Hermione is happy to leave him there and pick her book up again. After only a few seconds, however, of reading about how Russian linguists found the ancient root for 'pig' in 1973, Ron starts up again.
"And what about the Slytherins?"
"Didn't see any of them. Or any Hufflepuffs, or Ravenclaws, or any evidence of anyone. We talked to a portrait, though."
That was apparently not Ron's idea of an adventure. "D'you think Seamus'll be wanting another trip down there?"
She knows that he wants to go, perhaps desperately, hidden behind his friendly demeanor. "I think so. You could go ask him yourself. I think he's in his room, getting ready for the meeting."
His face falls. "Seamus doesn't want to see me."
The room is very quiet and Hermione can hear the sound of the wind blowing into the window behind her. "Why not?"
"I… I shouldn't tell you," Ron says tautly, and suddenly he seems more afraid, though not like his usual apathy. She knows he is hiding something but she is too lazy, or bored, or uninterested, and leaves it at that and shrugs. Ron, who looks as though he had steeled himself for a interrogation for which she is feared, is clearly relieved.
"I'll ask him, then, and I'll tell you."
"OK," says Ron, and then he goes back through the door and closes it behind him, leaving Hermione with the impression that their little conversation was five minutes that could have been better spent.
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The next few hours go by quickly. She doesn't have much to do; no one does. She knows she won't be missed up in this room, except perhaps by the Circle, if they ever did anything beside have secret meetings.
Sometime in the following hours, in the middle of Chapter Five, in the midst of a few pages about the movement of the 'o' vowel to the back of the palate, she grows tired of reading, or of doing anything, and puts the book down softly on the cushion. It makes the only other noise in the room besides the sound of her breathing and the turning of the pages and the occasional faint echo from below. It is satisfying, the little thump it makes.
Hermione turns to thinking instead of reading, perhaps because it is harder to think than just to absorb information, because real challenges are few and far between. She thinks of many things, like old vacations with her family on the smooth beaches of France, before her father had grown cold; of church services in the little, whitewashed church that awed Hermione when she was five years old and clutching her mother's hand.
It is almost real for a moment, the hard oaken pew beneath her instead of the stiff cushion of the window seat, and the sweet-smelling air swirling around her instead of the unmoving stillness of Hogwarts in winter.
Then, unbidden, an image of Harry overtakes the peaceful little church and she blinks to clear it from her memory, because reminiscing about some things is too painful. But Harry had made her other friends come to mind—from before, when it was easy to have friends.
Hermione twists a thin strand of hair around her left thumb and watches the tip of the finger turn red with blood. It isn't easy to have friends now, and though she remembers reading about how difficult situations bring people closer together the theory has been crushed in the past weeks. How often had she looked for Harry in his favorite chair by the fire, or Ron waiting to bait him with a joke. The Trio, as people had called them, had only existed because there were all three of them. She finds that out only now, in the nervous murmurs of the Common Room late at night, when she and Ron sit together and can't keep a conversation without an oppressive silence breaking in; when she sees that it's easier to talk with Ginny than to try to decipher Ron's new way of life.
She realizes she is crying, because a hot tear is making its way, meanderingly, down her cheek, and she wipes it away dreamily. It is nice to cry when not driven to it out of desperation, a sort of relief, and though she doesn't really hold it back she is surprised how calm she is.
There is a warm weight on her lap and she sees a hazy orange shape with a blur of a tail that is rocking back and forth like a pendulum.
"Where have you been?" she says teasingly, through the easy tears that don't want to stop because she cannot get memories of the old times out of her head and she must be extremely sentimental…
Crookshanks meows, as if to say that he hadn't been doing much of anything out of the ordinary, which Hermione thinks is true. She's been letting him roam, probably because it would be mean to make him stay cooped up all the time, and she suspects he's made a bed of dust in one of the empty classrooms; she is, however, still stymied on the issue of where he gets his food.
Her tears have suddenly stopped, sometime when Crookshanks was on her lap, and her hand begins to stroke the cat's back. He arches with pleasure—how nice it would be if everything in the world could be made better by just being petted.
Hermione snorts quietly and Crookshanks looks up at her innocently with big, brown eyes. She laughs, the corners of her mouth curling up in a little, reminiscent smile.
For a second she thinks she hears some loud rattling noise; for another second she knows she hears it, and then in the next second the heavy door squeaks open with a loud screech to reveal Seamus standing in it, hair disheveled as though he has run a hand through it about twenty times in the past few minutes.
"Ginny said you'd be up here," Seamus says, speaking quickly as though he doesn't want to miss a split second of talking time. Crookshanks leaps off her lap to go to greet Seamus' shoes and Hermione stretches her arms, narrowly avoiding hitting the window.
Seamus continues, scratching the side of his freckled nose. "There's no Circle tonight but we need extra help for the showers. Can you do it?"
"Do I have anything else to do?"
He shrugs. "Maybe you were planning something. Another excursion to the kitchen, perhaps, or to the library so you can find magical books that won't open?" he says, with only the slightest hint of sarcasm in his voice.
"I can help. When're we starting?"
Crookshanks apparently gets bored with the lack of attention and stalks out of the room, his bottlebrush tail raised high.
"In about a half-hour. The girls go first."
"Did you test the water?" She remembers last time when the heating charms weren't working and the first few people who didn't know were soaked with freezing water; one girl ran screaming, mostly naked, out of the room.
Seamus waves his hand in dismissal. "Of course. We wouldn't want a repeat of the Genevieve disaster, would we?" He laughs and his cold demeanor is gone. "And… maybe, I, or Dean and I, were thinking that we could go out around the Slytherin's Common Room and see if they're still—well, still there, or if they're gone like the Hufflepuffs."
There is a small noise as Seamus scratches his nose again. Hermione isn't sure what her reaction to the new news is: it is like a mixture of relief and fear, because she knows what will follow if something happens to Seamus and Dean…
"Did you talk it over with anyone else. Besides Dean, I mean."
He shakes his head, sandy hair flying in a little storm. "Nah. I was going to talk to Ginny about it, and then Neville and Colin."
She is relieved that she doesn't have to make up her mind right on the spot and says, "Fine. I'll think about it."
Seamus seems put out by her answer and his face looks just like Ron's a few hours earlier; Hermione laughs unexpectedly.
"What?"
"Oh, nothing. Just—nothing."
Seamus leaves. Hermione wants to get downstairs too, to help set up or whatever, but she'd rather not walk down with Seamus in a sort of awkward conversation-less silence. After a minute or so, then, of looking uninterestedly out the window at the bleak landscape below with no signs of life, she picks up the heavy book and, with it nestled in the crook of her arm, proceeds down the five flights of stairs to the Common Room.
The Common Room seems bright and cheerful, if only because of the impending showers, and Hermione grins spontaneously because it is hard to be depressed when hardly anyone else is. Stepping out through the portrait after having avoided a towel that was, for some reason, stretched across two chairs in an apparent effort to trip someone, she follows the sound of faint noise to the classroom where the showers are, bypassing a stack of desks that almost block the hallway right outside the door.
It was propitious that she had, in a rereading of Hogwarts: A History, found that there was a roof cistern built around eight hundred years ago to collect rainwater and that heating charms had been applied to it to serve as a source of water during the Middle Ages. Even in winter, like now, the snow melts up there into a bath of lukewarm water, waiting to be dropped through a few hundred feet of chutes to land in the classroom showers. Hermione has never known why there where a large bank of showers in this particular classroom and the only similarity she can draw is to Muggle science rooms, where acids and such need to be washed off immediately if they touch someone's skin. She hasn't ever, though, complained, and neither has anyone else, since the dormitory showers don't seem to be working, though the toilets are.
The room is now fairly empty and, like always, smells of dampness and gloom, if that can smell like anything. Only Seamus and Colin stand together over by the showers; the rest of the floor is clear and the walls stripped of everything. There are a few windows up right by the ceiling that let in some light, but mostly everything is bathed in a faded light that washes down from a clouded skylight in very middle of the roof.
Colin waves to her, his lanky arm threatening to rip out of his too-short robe. "Hermione!" he shouts, echoing strangely about the room.
She makes her way over to the expectant pair. "What can I do?"
Seamus shrugs and then points to the door. "Um, stand there and warn us when hoards of half-dressed girls are coming?"
"You sure you don't want to see them?"
Colin's face splits into a wide grin as he walks with Hermione over to the door. "Are you over it yet?"
She supposes it is like Colin to be rather insensitive and nods, seeing that it really isn't that bad. It was only the moment—
"So, planning on coming down to Slytherin with us?" Colin whispers it like it is part of a conspiracy and others could overhear, except there aren't others around. "I think I convinced him for tonight. You know, he's excited too."
She nods again, noncommittally, because she doesn't know what to say. Or, actually, she knows she could say something but she prefers not to.
"You've been quiet lately."
Hermione looks over at the unexpected comment. She hasn't thought that it was a big deal, her being rather reserved lately. In fact, she likes the change, because it gives her more time to think, although she's heard that the younger Years think she's some sort of eccentric genius because she never talks to them.
"There's not much to talk about. Or people to talk to."
"Ron? Ginny? Anyone? Did you just spend your time at Hogwarts studying?"
It's not true, she knows it, despite all evidence to the contrary now, because there was a lot of things to do then, a lot of people to talk to. "Stop being silly."
Colin shrugs, just like Seamus before, and Hermione hopes that it isn't becoming a habit. "Alright."
She decides not to help with the showers then, in a split-second decision, and turns to walk down the hallway towards more deserted rooms, and Colin doesn't say anything and closes the door behind her.
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It disturbs her, just a little bit, when she hears noises coming from what used to be a broom closet. She figures it's just some two Gryffindors, hopefully not doing anything too bad.
The door is open and she looks in, perhaps because there's nothing else to do; perhaps because she's curious; perhaps because she wants to be making those noises, though probably not. Hermione doesn't, however, want to see the sight that she sees. There are two people, squished tight in a checkered arm chair that is very oddly out of place in the cramped closet.
For a moment she isn't perturbed in the least because it's not in any way worse than what she saw with McLaggen and Richards, and then the presence of red hair tips her off. She's never considered herself a voyeur, in any form, and she's sure that anyone would scream if she confessed this to them. But she finds that it's truly moving, Ron and a blond Fifth Year she thinks is named Helene, curled around each other so that in the half-darkness she can't tell in some places where one body ends and the other begins.
It looks comforting, and she backs away, not feeling anything.
Perhaps, though, that's only because she doesn't want to feel at all.
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Hermione comes up with the idea rather suddenly. She's preparing for bed, after her shower, and is nicely clean—really clean, for the first time in a few days—and is trying not to get her pillow that wet from her damp hair. The draperies around her bed are mostly pulled shut, closing the little space lit by a flickering candle mostly off from the lonely room around her, and combined with the fact that she is snuggled in under layers of comfy covers it seems almost cozy.
The idea is so simple, so matter-of-fact, that she kicks herself for not thinking of it earlier. She could explain it away as a mere oversight of her Muggle upbringing, or as a consequence of the strain of the current situation, or she could just own up to the fact that she's being plain stupid for her.
Of course.
She jumps out of bed; or, rather, tries to jump, and gets half-tangled in the covers. The dormitory outside of her little drapery-enclosed bed is too large and empty and, with the candle firmly clutched in her right hand, Hermione shuffles into a pair of slippers after a few steps on the freezing stone floor and then quietly makes her way down a flight of stairs to Seamus' room. Pushing the door open, her mind fills with the possible ramifications.
Edwards, the small First Year, is talking to Seamus, though he stops abruptly as the door opens and looks over his shoulder, a mixture of fear and embarrassment on his face which relaxes into a guarded apprehension at the sight of her. She stands there with the door open and, leaning against the door frame, speaks softly.
"Is this a bad time?"
Seamus smiles at her, looking the most at ease he's been in a while. "I don't think so. Greg?"
The use of the boy's first name surprises her a bit and sounds strange coming from Seamus. Edwards, though, only shakes his head, newly-washed hair flying up and then settling down softly again. "No. Unless—"
"I'll take care of it, or Dean or Colin will."
Edwards fiddles with the cuff of his blue pajamas, which are too big for him and make him seem malnourished. "Don't make it look like I… you know."
Seamus nods reassuringly, looking almost fatherly, though he's much too young. "It'll be fine." He looks at Hermione then, who hurriedly moves out of the way so that Edwards can get through. The First Year smells faintly of soap as he moves quickly past, presumably back to his dormitory. After he has gone a ways, into the half-black of the corridors lit only by some candles placed here and there, Hermione steps into the room, her slippers clomping loudly on the floor.
The agreed-upon head of Gryffindor House is silhouetted with a faint halo of yellow haze from the two-candle candelabra he has on his bedside table. The heavy drapes have been pulled across the windows on the far side of the room, hiding the silent dark, but a sliver of white moonlight spills underneath them onto the leg of a chair. Seamus gets up off the bed and comes over to her.
"The other First Years were making fun of him. For the strapping, you know."
"I thought that this was done to give into public demand, wasn't it? So what's this?"
Seamus waves his hand, as if to quiet the situation; a button which had been half-done pulls open at the top of his shirt, revealing a thin triangle of pale skin. "Blame Colin for that, or Kohler for not showing up. Anyways, I'll go talk to them in the morning, say that I've heard them or something. So, why are you here?" he asks with a raised eyebrow.
"Weren't you going to be gone tonight with Dean off by Slytherin?"
He knows that she's leading somewhere and takes the bait. "Yes, but we vetoed it for now because I thought that it wouldn't work tonight, what with the showers and such. So, where're you going with that brain of yours?"
"Oh!"
Seamus looks at her with not-even-concealed amusement.
"I mean, I had an idea. About your little mission to Slytherin with Dean and Colin and whomever. Suppose you just asked a painting to go down there to check for you, or maybe they already know. They have to—"
She knows that Seamus is inspired when his eyes get a little glint. He doesn't seem sure how to respond, though she can tell he is excited. Finally, after a little wait, he grasps her hand.
"Perfect! That's perfect—wait till you tell the Circle, we'll have a meeting tomorrow morning or—actually, let's do it right now."
He strides over to the only painting in the room, bare feet slapping on the floor, and taps on the gilt frame as Hermione follows. The sole inhabitant is a young man in a rather revealing black outfit, reclining on a divan in a darkened salon, obviously aristocratic and possibly drunk. He waves a tiny painted finger in disgust. "What? Another message to the nigger?"
Seamus flushes. "Stop with your racial slurs. Do you know if there're people down in the dungeons?"
The young man yawns widely, not bothering to cover his mouth with his hand. "You never see me leave here, do you, only with my girls, and d'you think they'd be in the dungeons?"
"Maybe in Malfoy's room, yes."
"Well. For your information, I don't know. And don't expect me to go find out for you either, like you and the mudblood were talking about."
Hermione, who has grown accustomed over the past few months to not hearing the word, draws back a little and tugs her nightgown down past her knuckles, clutching the soft, warm cotton. The painted man looks at her for a moment with disgust before continuing.
"I was just about asleep, and I would have been if it wasn't for you. You'll get nothing more from me tonight."
Seamus growls with frustration. "I'll move your picture into storage!"
The man turns his head away and his little voice is muffled as he speaks into the yellow and white striped fabric of his divan. "That won't make any difference in my social habits at all—I'll simply move in with Ashley as I've been planning. Good night, then."
Hermione stifles a giggle—it is, after all, rather late—as she looks at Seamus' expression. "It's alright. Take a deep breath."
He looks ruefully at her, hair swept at a rakish angle across his forehead. "Let's go bother Dean and see if his painting is more cooperative."
They find, however, upon reaching his door, that it is locked securely from the inside. "Damn it," whispers Seamus. "I shouldn't knock, should I?"
"There're some paintings down in the Common Room."
Hermione goes first down the stairs and into the Common Room. It is completely empty and even the fire has almost gone out; she goes over to it quietly and taps the glowing embers with the poker. A little tongue of flame comes up and then dies back down again and she turns to see what Seamus is doing, finding he is simply walking towards the Fat Lady. Oh, duh. She hurries to catch up with him, almost slipping on a discarded sweater on the small part of the floor that is wood and not covered by a rug. Seamus looks at her for a moment and then they both go through the portrait hole together.
The Fat Lady, it transpires, is luckily in her frame and dozing loudly, her snores sounding much less ladylike than they probably should. The corridor is far enough away from the dormitories that Seamus apparently feels that he can wake her up in a far more usual fashion than merely tapping on her frame.
"Say, wake up, would you—please, I mean," he says, repressed manners coming to the surface at the very end of his sentence.
The portrait gives a muffled yawn and the snoring ceases as she opens one eye a bit. "It's… rather early, isn't it? What're you doing out of the Common Room?"
"It's late, actually," Hermione says, "but that doesn't really matter. Would you happen to know if there are still Slytherins and—oh, and Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs in the castle still?"
The Fat Lady hoists herself up in her chair, which looks like a most uncomfortable place to sleep, and lifts a small and dainty monocle to her eye, gold chain dangling in the unmoving oil paint. "Well, now, of course they are. Haven't you known about the disturbances around the Great Hall?"
"You mean—who? Slytherins, Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs? Great Hall?"
The picture looks down at Seamus with an aristocratic disregard. "Slytherins, yes, and Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs. What did you expect, what with them moving their whole House?"
Hermione's mind is, if not spinning, certainly ablaze. "The Hufflepuffs? Moved their House—where?"
"Oh, to the Ravenclaws, dear. Can you be telling me that you don't know what's been going on?"
"It's not our fault if we don't know painting gossip," Seamus says, rather grumpily. "But the Hufflepuffs are with the Ravenclaws, then, and the Slytherins—"
The Fat Lady sighs. "Would it be easier for me to tell you in the morning, perhaps, so that a lady could get her rest?"
Hermione bites her lip in excitement. "Fine, then, just one more thing—do you know about any people the Slytherins have, or what they're doing?"
"The Slytherins? Up to something, no doubt. It's strange, certainly, now that the castle's blocked off, or warded in, that they're suddenly turning—well, it's strange, that's all. I do think that Betty said that she had seen a few Gryffindors that looked in a bad way down by the dungeons, but she's gone now, left the dungeons for up in some office. But I'm afraid that there's really not that much else I know—now, if you'd be wanting more, you could ask the ghosts, maybe, if there's any left by now."
"You—don't know about Parvati Patil, then, or Susan White, or Emily—what's-her-name, with brown braids?" He looks to Hermione for help.
"Signate, or Signus or something like that, I think. You're sure that you don't know anything?'
The Fat Lady says, "I really am sorry, my dears, but I don't know anything else about prisoners, or the Slytherins. Go ask—oh, no, he's silent now, try Mother Remier, the old nun, still going in one of the House's dormitories. I can't say much for her religion but her brains are fabulous."
"Gone silent—a painting?" Seamus and her are both on edge, and she thinks she knows—
"It… has something to do with the lost magic." The portrait suddenly looks old and frazzled, and a small bit frightened. "I really don't know."
There is a long silence, as both try to figure out what to do, until Hermione feels cold. "Let's deal with this in the morning, and you can call a the Circle or have a House meeting or something."
Seamus nods, putting a definitive end to the conversation. "Thanks for your information, it was very—useful."
"Anytime. Pleased to help Gryffindor." With that, the Fat Lady lets her monocle fall to her chest and, closing her eyes, leans back in her chair. Hermione is glad that they had let the portrait open and, with the smallest movement possible, they step into the Common Room and head up to their respective dormitories in silence. As she is around halfway up the first staircase, though, she hears Seamus clearing his throat and looks down to seem him standing at the bottom of the stairs.
"Thanks—for your help."
She feels warm inside. "It's nothing."
Going up to bed is the most rewarding experience of the day, and the covers seem even more inviting than a half-hour ago. Grasping the tendril of a good memory, she floats off to sleep in a boat of dreams in a sea of stars.
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