Disclaimer: I don't own HP or any of these characters. That belongs to JKR, Scholastic Books, Warner Brothers, etc.
Chapter Thirty Four : Duty
Hermione blinked her eyes, pondering if it was time to take a break. She hadn't been reading at the library for all that long – only for a couple of hours. Back when she was studying for her N.E.W.T.s, Hermione had marathon-long reading sessions that last entire days and then some. Those sessions hadn't taken place all that long ago, so it wasn't as though Hermione could complain of being too old to do those anymore. Sighing to herself, she set her quill down and stretched out her arms in front of her. The difference between now and then was that studying went faster than her current research. Even the research that she did while in school went faster than that.
This was undoubtedly because there wasn't that much written on the subject before her. Hermione knew that once she found a counter (she had to think that way, as it wouldn't do to think that she wouldn't), she would be able to write a veritable book on the entire charm. That might not be a bad idea, if she wanted to continue publishing at Hogwarts, for while professors were not required to publish their work, it was a good idea for them to do it. While Hermione personally would like to get something of her own published, she was very glad that it wasn't going to be required of her. And that was due to the simple fact that most of her time spent in the library wasn't spent researching the counter to that blasted charm. Not even a majority of her time there was spent on that. Instead, she used hours and hours of time each week, drawing her lesson plans for the next.
Hermione hated that. She hated only being a week ahead of everyone. She would have preferred to have had the entire semester planned before even starting to teach a single class. Though there probably would have been changes to said plan, at least she wouldn't have had to spend so much time each week in the library getting all of her material ready. While McGonagall had offered Hermione the lesson plans that she used, Hermione had soon learned that she couldn't really use them. Using her experience from the tutoring sessions she had held for Harry and Ron, she knew that the way those plans were laid out weren't the easiest to follow. Not to mention the fact that she wasn't known to be as strict a disciplinarian as McGonagall, and her classes tended to have more interruptions, though Hermione was working diligently to get that number down. However, as a consequence, she was not able to cover as much material as McGonagall or as much as she would have liked to. She had spoken about it to several people, but so far, the person who had came up with the best idea was Harry, strangely enough. He had told her to tell them that unless they could get so far by the winter holidays, she would have to assign them a rather hefty bit of homework so that they could catch up. She hadn't done so yet, as she was hoping that the class would start calming down soon and they could pick up their pace. Though if that happened, Hermione knew that she would be able to spend less time on her personal research, but there wasn't much she could do about it.
Deciding that she had had enough of a break, she picked up her quill once again and continued to map out the charm she had chosen as the most likely to work as a counter. Well, most likely to work after she made a few changes to it that were carefully calculated. Hermione didn't want to make the same mistake that she had done before, so she fully intended to ask Professor Flitwick to recheck her calculations once she was finished. If he thought that it might backfire on her, she would return to her list of alternatives.
That was a happy thought. It had taken her weeks of painstaking researching, but she had been able to draw up a short list of counters that she could perhaps modify to use as a counter to the charm on her. Her top pick was one that was used to remove all active spells on a person. The problem with that one was that it was primarily used to remove glamours a wizard had cast on himself, so one could see how the wizard really looked like.
She was positive that it wouldn't work on a spell like the one on her. That meant that she would have to change it, and to do that properly, she needed to map it out. She didn't know if she would change it so that it ended harmonization spells or transportation spells, but that was a task she would have to deal with in the coming weeks.
It was the whispers that was picking up in noise that distracted Hermione from her research next. Hermione usually sat where her students could see her, if she wasn't working on next week's lesson plans, so they could ask her any questions they might have about recent lectures. This had actually happened several times. More often than not, however, the student had some banal question to ask, such as what color she preferred in roses or if Harry would be visiting the class soon. Hermione gave out one warning to students asking her trivial things; if they did so again, she docked points and assigned a detention.
So it was she looked up in annoyance to see what could have excited the students so much that they started whispering loudly, despite the glares that Madam Pince must be shooting their way.
She gasped, then bit her lip.
Draco Malfoy had made an appearance and he was headed straight towards her.
She resisted the urge to get up and flee. That wouldn't be a very polite thing to do, and Hermione was determined to be polite to him until he was rude to her. Then she would give as good as she got. But she hated how he was stalking towards her at the moment. This wouldn't look good. Undoubtedly that was why the students were all so excited; maybe they were expecting the son of the Death Eater to try and kill the girlfriend of the Boy Who Lived. She hoped that they weren't expecting to see him try and woo her away from Harry. And she hoped against hope that he wasn't going to try anything like that, as she did not want to even think of how the Daily Prophet and all the other Wizarding newspapers would make that out.
"Hermione," he said, inclining his head towards her. Before she could cautiously reply to his greeting, he had taken the seat across from her and taken a quick glance at the research in front of her. "I had thought that you were to teach Transfiguration, not Charms," he said.
"I do. That is, I am teaching Transfiguration." She waved a lazy hand at the books and parchment in front of her and smiled. "This is for fun. I can't work all the time. And well, it does keep my research skills sharp too," she said bravely, hoping that he wouldn't be able to tell that she wasn't being completely truthful. Hermione didn't know why, but she didn't want to tell him about her little problem. Maybe it was because she didn't trust him that much, maybe it was because she was afraid that he might try and take advantage of her situation. It was probably a combination of both those reasons and more. She winced as she thought that he might have heard about her problem from Snape and resisted tapping against the wood of the table before her. If Snape didn't have the sense not to tell anyone, he would be hearing from both her and Harry, who didn't have any reason anymore to hold back.
Malfoy quirked an eyebrow at her. "Fun? You think this research is fun?"
Hermione nodded quickly. "Yes. It's time consuming, but fun. I like laying out spells and seeing how they work." That last bit was true, along with the fact that she was good at figuring out how everything fit together in any particular spell.
"If that's the case," he drawled, "then you wouldn't mind helping me do the same with an old spell I've been assigned to research, would you? Some bloody idiot up in Yorkshire decided that he could get rich quick, if only he could turn everything he touched to gold."
Hermione grimaced. You had to be stupid if you went around casting the Midas touch on yourself. She felt for the wizards assigned to clean up the mess and revert anyone who got caught in it back to their natural state. However, it wasn't as though she had the spare time to help Malfoy with his own work right now.
"I'm sorry," she said, "but I'm a bit too busy to do that."
"Not too busy to do your own research for fun," he shot back.
Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. She didn't know why he had chosen now to bother her. She hadn't seen him for weeks and had thought that he had moved on. "It might be for fun," she said. "But it's what I chose to do." She frowned. "And what are you doing here anyway?"
"Can't a former student visit his old haunts?" he asked in a too innocent voice. "Some of the books I need are only found here, and so I dropped by. Imagine my surprise when I found you sitting here."
"You weren't surprised at all." He couldn't have been. Everyone knew back when they were students how Hermione had tended to spend her days in the library working.
"No, I wasn't. Greece was lovely, by the way."
"I'm sure it was. Did you enjoy going there?"
"Not one single bit," he said sharply. "I spent the entire time working. Just got back last week, and I had this handed to me."
"Ouch. I'm sorry to hear that." Hermione turned her attention back to the book in front of her. "I wish you luck in mapping out that spell."
"That's it?" Malfoy said, his tone shocked. "That's all you're going to say. And you're not going to help me with this?"
"That isn't my job anymore, Malfoy," Hermione said with as little asperity in her voice as she could manage. "Teaching is. And it takes a lot of time to prepare for classes—"
"You still have time to read for fun," was his rejoinder.
"Not as much time as I'd like," she told him. "And I need to take what time I can for it. As I said before, I can't work all the time. I need time to relax and unwind."
"But if your idea of relaxing is mapping out spells, I don't see why you can't do this one little favor for me. Especially as my work has doubled since you left to teach here."
By now, Hermione was very frustrated. She did feel bad for Malfoy, for more reasons than one, but she had to complete her research. Besides, it wasn't as though Malfoy wasn't capable of doing the task on his own. In fact, it wouldn't take all that much time to map out the Midas spell, given how much had been written on it. Someone might have done it before and published it, in which case one would only have to check and make sure the calculations were correct. For a moment, she considered briefly checking on that for Malfoy before deciding against it. If she gave in to him now, he would come back again with the next assignment given to him and she didn't want that to happen. She had enjoyed the job while it had lasted, but she had teaching to focus on now. And she wouldn't be able to be any good at that if she tried to do two jobs at once.
"I'm sorry that your work has doubled and that they've not found anyone to replace me yet. I'm sure they're busy looking for someone," she said. "But I simply can't help you. I'm busy enough as it is teaching. I really don't have the time to help you on any major assignments."
"I see," he said. Lowering his voice, he added, "Once you got your boyfriend back, you had no use for me, did you? And it was a bit inconvenient to work with me, so it was time to get a new job, right?"
"It isn't like that, Malfoy." Hermione closed her eyes. It wasn't like that. She hadn't got her new job because of Harry, but rather because of the charm. Maybe after she found a counter she could tell Malfoy, but not before. "In case you had forgotten, I even invited you to spend some time with my friends and I."
"Please. I've been repressing Weasley's attempts to sing, and you've just had to bring that up again."
Hermione glared. "And I couldn't have used you to get Harry back as we were never dating before. I've no clue where you got that idea from."
He shrugged. "That was pointed out to me by a friend. I
had hoped he was wrong, but I guess not You're not willing to go
the same lengths for me as you would for your dear boyfriend." He
got up abruptly. "If you'll excuse me, I have some work to do.
Unlike others I could mention, I don't get much time these days for fun."
And with that parting shot, he headed towards the stacks, leaving her alone.
Author's note: That's it for this chapter. The next one shall be up on either next Friday or next Saturday. I hope you liked this chapter, and I would love to hear from you in a review. I'd also like to thank everyone who took the time to review the last chapter: Shawn Pickett, lillyjoe14, danielerin, l-xFaTaLx-l, liongirrl4eva (more than one ), Amynoelle, xxbabysparklesxx, ExcalibursZone (just because there's no immediate payoff, doesn't mean it doesn't move the story along ), Nixus, TheGreatFox2000, EuphoniumGurl0, LeslieGlady, Trinity144, PoTtErSPaYnE, hermione'sboyfriend, Star19, ace, aliceinwonderville, Gamali Howell (I was going to say something, but I can't as that would give too much away), lovesdan, CookiMonstr08, HyPPerBuBBleGum143, Jabbi1, Leah6, Sadistic Shadow (Ron's thought process isn't the most straightfoward, is it?), Jelly (thank you), juliet's rose, Redneck Horse lover, lee74, DcMxPxBnVr, jennymay (she really feels that way and they are too young), Dragonbait, Bulma Queen of Saiya-jin, cuttiepie17172, malu (yeah, people do go crazy if they are always together. Or if they're always confined, which is why Ron's worried for Hermione), wyndnfyr (have never seen the movie, and I guess I should be glad?), casey windsor, waterdance15, Joeh (there's only one of me, thankfully ), myman-harry526, Kiarah, silverbutterfly, hpluver456, and RogueBHS (but doesn't that make catching up more fun ). Thanks so much for leaving the reviews!