Year One, Part Two
She goes home for Christmas that year. Logically she knows this would not have changed, that she would have gone home regardless of whether she were in Gryffindor or Slytherin or even Ravenclaw, but as she steps off into King's Cross Station she can't help but feel relieved to be back.
She's grateful that her parents are Muggles; grateful she doesn't have to explain the hierarchy of the school to them, explain nothing about Hogwarts besides answering a few perfunctory questions about how her classes are going.
She sits beside her mother on the tube and leans into her, breathing in the comforting scent of her perfume. With a jolt, she suddenly wonders what Malfoy is doing for Christmas, how he came home. She hadn't seen him on the train, and surely he wouldn't be caught doing something so mundane, so Muggle as taking the tube. She cannot picture him leaning into his mother for comfort, either.
Her mother strokes her hair and Hermione finds herself falling asleep, ready to spend the break reading, studying, and not giving one thought as to how she does not belong at Hogwarts, because she belongs here and right now, that's what matters.
It doesn't last.
It is easy, almost too easy, to get Harry and Ron to tell her their plans. The part of her that is still eleven and desperate for friendship, for belonging, quickly latches onto them, their easy acceptance of her.
Well. Harry's easy acceptance. Ron still eyes her warily, but he eyes all Slytherins that way, and she can't tell if it means anything yet.
She does not eat lunch with them; they do not cross House lines. But they'll join her in the library sometimes and she realizes quickly that they cannot keep from telling her about their plans, their schemes revolving around the third-floor corridor.
She feels a small flame of excitement burning in her chest when they do. This is belonging, then, isn't it?
But she still catches Ron looking at her like he doesn't trust her some days, so she doesn't know. She sees the looks he sends Harry when Harry's about to tell her something, that look that says don't trust her .
So she doesn't trust him in return, and that flame dims, just a little.
It's almost the middle of spring term when she finally gets some information from them, something halfway useful. She stumbles on it by accident, the boys talking in the library before she's due to meet them, unaware she can hear.
"You have to see it, Ron, I saw my parents–" Harry says, his voice filled with excitement, and Hermione strains to hear. "I'll show you tonight–"
She steps up to them loudly so they know she's there, so they don't think she's spying. Both boys look guilty as she rounds the corner, but they don't bring it up again.
So she follows them. How can she not? Malfoy hasn't asked her for information but she can sense he's getting restless. She doesn't know how he did it but true to his word the other Slytherins have, for the most part, left her alone. But Pansy and the girls that follow her around tried to slip something in her Potions cauldron the other day, so she knows her time is running short.
It's easy to follow the boys even when they're under Harry's invisibility cloak; it doesn't muffle any noise they make.
(If she felt generous, she could teach them the Muffliato charm. It was easy enough to master her first week, casting it around her own bed so the other girls didn't hear her crying.)
She hides behind a column once they've found the mirror, watches as Harry tries to show Ron his parents, as Ron exclaims about winning the Quidditch World Cup. She figures it out almost instantly; that the mirror shows someone what they desire.
She waits until the boys have left and then hurries up to the mirror herself, eager to see what it shows.
She does not see herself in Gryffindor like she thought she would. Instead, she is decked in silver and green, the Head Girl badge affixed to her robes. She is older, almost pretty, she thinks. Pansy Parkinson's arm is slung around her shoulders, and she is laughing at something. Other Slytherins flit in and out of view and she watches as all of them send friendly looks her way–well. Looks that aren't sneers.
She belongs. Not only that, she's Head Girl, best friends with Pansy Parkinson. She doesn't just belong, she's better , and the want of it is a sharp ache in her chest she thought she'd buried.
She comes back the next night, and the next, because she cannot resist it, that fantasy. The harassment has started to get worse; when she'd put on her robes that morning she found they'd been transfigured to be several sizes too small, the word Mudblood emblazoned across the chest in brilliant Gryffindor red.
She'd fixed them, of course, but now as she stares in the mirror her fingers reach out toward the glass, the Head Girl badge blazing where the word had been just that morning.
As she watches, another arm drapes across her shoulders in the mirror, and with a start she recognizes Draco Malfoy, watches as his hand slides down and intertwines with hers, a Head Boy badge on his own robes. Her heart hammers in her chest, and she reaches out to the mirror, fingers brushing the glass, when Malfoy's face–the younger Malfoy, the real one–appears in the mirror behind her.
She whips around. His arms are crossed, his face younger, meaner than his mirror-self.
"When were you going to tell me about this?" he asks. She bristles.
"I didn't think it was important."
"Potter comes here every night."
"He wants to see his parents," she says, feeling a small bit of guilt as she does so, at betraying Harry's secret like that, a secret she isn't even supposed to know. Malfoy smirks.
"And what do you see?" he asks, his eyes flitting to her robes, to where Mudlbood was embroidered only hours before.
"None of your business," she says. "They're close to figuring out what's in the corridor, anyway; I'll let you know soon. If you would ask Pansy to please stop transfiguring my robes."
But her voice shakes as she says it, and she pushes past him before another taunt can reach her ears.
She does not go back to the mirror again.
It takes her less than a week to figure it out. The Philosopher's Stone. That's what's in the third-floor corridor, what the dog is guarding. She tells Harry and Ron immediately and, like the Gryffindors they are, they begin making plans to reach it.
She's surprised when they include her. She thought they would abandon her once they'd gotten what they needed.
But that is a Slytherin mindset, and her face burns when she realizes it. Looking for the usefulness in someone before anything else.
"Well yeah," Harry says when the question spills from her lips before she can stop it. Why me ? "Wouldn't want to do it without you, 'mione."
Ron nods, but there's something in his eyes she can't place.
She shoves it down.
She does not tell Malfoy about the stone, not yet. She's told him at least about Fluffy, knowing he'll spend his time trying to figure out how to get past it, that that can keep him occupied for a bit.
They invite her down to Hagrid's that weekend; apparently he'd been eager to talk after the last Quidditch match.
"I bet you can get 'im to talk ," Ron says as they make their way down. Hermione eyes him.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just, y'know," he mumbles, the tips of his ears turning red, "you're cunning. Clever."
You're clever, Granger .
"Cunning?" she says, but they've arrived at Hagrid's door before she can ask Ron further.
Hagrid's hut is cozy enough, and she finds herself seated next to him, across from Harry and Ron. But she tuts when Harry asks about Snape again.
"I still don't think–" she begins, but Ron cuts her off.
"Well of course you wouldn't, he's your Head of House," he says.
"I dislike him just as much as you," she says hotly, and Harry looks between them, pleading. Hagrid doesn't notice, too busy with the dragon's egg.
She remembers the warm look he gave her after the Sorting, the only one who did so, and feels her face burn.
And then she sees him. Malfoy's pale face at the window. Ron and Harry have spotted him, too, and both push out of their seats.
"I'll sort this," she says to them, surprising herself, Ron's hands already curled into fists. She runs out the door before they can stop her, hurrying to catch up to Malfoy.
"Malfoy!" she calls, her voice ringing across the lawn, and she's surprised when he turns to face her.
"Are you spying now?" she says, once she's caught up. "I have this under control."
"Wanted to make sure you weren't getting too close to Weaselby and the Golden Boy, Granger," he drawls. He smooths his hair back, his grey eyes boring into hers.
But that's not it, she knows it isn't, she can see it in his face.
"You don't think I can do it," she says, and he frowns, but she presses on. "No, that's not it either, is it? You just want the glory for yourself. I thought you wouldn't want to get your hands dirty."
"You're going too slow for me," he says. "At this rate it'll be the end of the year before I get any sort of useful information from you."
She bristles. "I'm trying ."
"Try harder," he says. "Trying to keep the glory all to yourself?" He smirks. "No, that's not it," he says, parroting her. "You don't want glory. I think you want to fit in."
He leans in, so close she can see the flecks of blue in his irises. Something cold crosses over his face. "Friends with Pansy Parkinson and Head Girl of Slytherin, am I right?"
It's like someone has poured ice water through her veins. He can't know. There's no way he can know; it's not like he sees what she does in the mirror.
"And what did you see in that mirror, Draco?" she spits. "What do you want? Daddy's approval? You think that'll happen if you find the Philosopher's Stone?"
For one wild moment she's afraid she'll slap him; her hands twitching at her sides. His face hardens and he abruptly turns on his heel, stalking back up to the castle. She waits one minute, then follows him. She doesn't wait for Ron, or Harry, trusting them to get back on their own.
She hears about their detention from a pair of gossiping Gryffindor girls, and thinks nothing of it until Harry stops her in the hallway a few days later.
"I need to talk to you," he says, catching her by the sleeve after Transfiguration. "I saw something in the forest when Ron and I had detention."
He tells her about the unicorn. About how he's sure now Snape wants the stone for Voldemort, not for himself.
"I think Malfoy's helping him," he says seriously. "I think that's why he was spying on us."
"Why would a teacher enlist an eleven year old boy to help him?" she says.
"Hermione, you have to admit it makes sense–"
"No, I don't, Harry," she says. She takes a deep breath. "I know you don't like Malfoy, and neither do I, but you can't seriously think he and Snape are actually involved –"
"And what do you think the explanation is, then?" he asks. She frowns.
"I don't know , but–"
"Forget it, Hermione," he says, and for the first time his eyes flick to the silver and green scarf around her throat, eyeing her with the same distrust Ron does.
It hurts more than anything, and that night for the first time in a long time, she casts Muffliato around her curtains.
Exams are not nearly as difficult as she believed them to be, and she feels that soaring feeling in her chest. She knows she aced every one of them; knows she achieved top marks. And exams have afforded her some reprieve; the Slytherins have all been too busy studying to bother her.
She hasn't seen Ron and Harry in weeks, not since Hagrid's hut. She tries to write it off as them being busy with exams, but she knows they didn't care about them as nearly as much as she did.
She watches them from the Slytherin table over dinner the night after exams end. Their heads are bent together, and they leave far before anyone else, Ron barely having touched his jacket potato.
They're going to try tonight, she realizes as she watches them leave. Dumbledore's seat at the grand table is empty, so is Snape's.
So is Quirrell's, but she doesn't think to dwell on that.
So again, she finds herself following them, not that she needs to, she knows how to get into the third-floor corridor easier than any of them.
(It occurs to her as she's sneaking down the hallway that perhaps she should tell Malfoy, give him the chance to join her. But she remembers what he'd said about her own help being too slow; remembers Harry's insistence that he was involved, and she doesn't want to prove him right.)
They aren't there when she enters the corridor, and for one wild moment she thinks that perhaps they had gone back to get her, to invite her. But then the door opens and Ron and Harry enter, and behind them–
Behind them is Neville.
Her heart sinks. For all the time she spent with them, for whatever their brief friendship meant, at the end of the day she is in Slytherin and they do not trust her.
She's grateful, then, that Malfoy didn't want to get his hands dirty, that she hadn't gone and said anything to him. Showing up here, with him, would have been nothing short of betrayal.
"Hermione," Ron says as he spots her. He swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing. "We didn't…"
They didn't think she would come. Bravery and rushing into things is a Gryffindor trait, after all.
She searches their faces. No. They didn't want her to come. They have been nice to her and she has helped them but they brought Neville instead of asking her, and she knows their House loyalties run deeper than whatever pale excuse for a friendship they had conjured up.
"You didn't think I was going to let you get the Philosopher's Stone alone," she says, and her voice does not waver. If they want her to be a Slytherin, then that is what she will be. None of this bothers her.
"Hermione, go back to bed," Harry says gently, and her gaze snaps to his. Harry, who has only once looked at her with suspicion; who knows what it's like to be gawked at by everyone around him.
Who has never believed her about Snape or Malfoy because he's so convinced that anyone in Slytherin is evil.
She looks at him, and Ron, and Neville, and knows that she could help them; knows that this would be far easier if she were to join them. If she were to help. If they were to be friends.
"Fine," she says. "I'm going."
She doesn't look back at them. And when she enters the common room and Malfoy is still there, he doesn't say a word.
She hears the story, after. Hears about Neville recovering in the hospital wing for injuries from Devil's Snare; Ron with a concussion from falling off a giant chess piece. Harry, too, recovering; having found the stone, having faced Voldemort.
She doesn't go to visit any of them, but she does congratulate them about it on the last day of term. Softly, and she knows none of them hear her. They're too busy celebrating, faces split with grins from the change in the Hall decorations.
She hurries away, avoiding the Slytherins at all costs, Pansy especially. Word has somehow gotten around that she befriended the boys, however briefly, and she can only guess that something unpleasant will be waiting for her back at the dorms, especially with how angry the Slytherins are at the loss of the House Cup.
Several of them whisper that it's her fault, and she knows she'll have bruises by the end of the day from the amount of times someone has bumped into her in the halls.
Only Draco is oddly silent. He still sneers when he sees her but it's no different than his normal expression whenever she appears.
She wonders. Why he hadn't tried to come and get the stone with Crabbe and Goyle. Why when she had entered the common room, he hadn't said anything to her.
She resists the temptation to ask him.
She sits alone on the train, her legs tucked up under her, already back in her Muggle clothes. There is a rip in her robes she will have to fix.
The compartment door slides open and she's about to tell whoever it is to go away, she doesn't feel like being hexed right before she goes home, but a pair of green eyes meet hers, scrawny body and jet black hair.
Harry.
"How're you feeling?" he asks her, and she realizes he's the first person this whole year to have done so.
"I should be asking you that," she says, avoiding his question. He polishes his glasses on his shirt, and she notices that they're crooked again, one of the nosepieces broken off.
She doesn't try to repair them this time.
(She wants to ask him. It's on the tip of her tongue –why didn't you let me help you? Not when it mattered?)
But she realizes his answer wouldn't make a difference, the damage has already been done.
Harry opens his mouth like he wants to say something, then closes it again. After a long moment, he speaks.
"Slytherin changed you," he says.
"Gryffindor changed you," she replies, and he nods, but from her it's a compliment and from him it's a curse.
They do not speak again for the rest of the ride back to King's Cross.
She wonders if next year, he'll try to befriend her again.
She wonders, too, if she'll let him.
Her parents pick her up at the station again, like at Christmas; like at Christmas she spends the ride home with her head on her mother's shoulder.
No one writes her, over the summer. She sends an owl to Harry but it goes unanswered. Thinks about sending one to Ron, but ultimately decides against it.
Her parents remark on the change, her mother looking at her over the breakfast table one morning. They haven't asked about school, and for one moment she wonders what it would be like to tell her everything that happened this year.
But she doesn't. She can't.
She tries to read. Her mother takes her to the library but the books don't whisper secrets to her like they used to.
Something has to change, she knows. She cannot spend another year like this; waiting to be tripped or hexed in corridors and shunned by everyone she knows.
She thinks back to Malfoy's offer, to the vision she saw in the mirror of Erised. Her true desire–to belong. To be better.
There's one person who can help her do that, one person who knows what power is like, and she thinks perhaps she'd like a taste of it herself.
She'll ask him in the fall.