Previously: Viktor offered to walk her back to Gryffindor tower, but she declined. She wanted to be alone, just now. And to Hermione, the place to be alone was the library, not where she'd be expected to gossip with Lavender and Pavarti.
It was odd, she used to scoff at their frivolities and downright shun them, but something made her change her tune this year. Intuition, perhaps? A whim? But they were almost at a point she would consider friends, albeit not very close ones, and she couldn't figure out just how it happened. Her mind was quite muddled, and as she walked back to the castle, she analyzed the gaps in her memory as much as one could when they had a terrible headache. She only wished she could remember.
Hermione's hours in the library were unfortunately ineffective, and she returned to her room unsatisfied. On the plus side, her headache had receded somewhat, so she was thinking more clearly. Or as clearly as one could with apparently tons of memory loss.
She said goodnight to Pavarti and Lavender, who were very sympathetic to her earlier fight with Ron – and now that she thought about it, she was much angrier than she had been just hours ago. It finally set in how rude he had been! The girls let her be for the night, which suited Hermione just fine. She wasn't in a mood to deal with their silliness tonight.
Her mind raced with thoughts of the year, Harry's upcoming challenge for the next task, the conversations he had with Sirius about someone trying to get to him through the tournament. Sirius was another fuzzy spot in her memory, but she brushed that off in favor of thinking about Harry. It was all very worrisome, and Hermione realized she hadn't given it enough thought recently. Where had her mind been? She should be researching old death eaters that got away, the enchantments on the goblet. Find suspects who could've put his name in the goblet. And at that, she needed to make sure Harry was working on his egg.
She still had a few days of holiday left, and that would give her a chance to catch up on all these pesky problems. But first, she had one more book to check.
She finally remembered where she had read the word "occlumency" – it was in Unfogging the Future, the Divination textbook from Hermione's previous year at Hogwarts. She thought they mentioned it being a dark skill that could severely limit the Inner Eye. Hermione had read the whole textbook before getting to school, of course, or she would've seen that as more of a challenge than a warning.
She had to fiddle with her trunk for a moment. The lock didn't seem to be opening for her. She was almost about to give it up as a bad job, when it clicked open, seeming laughably easy. She saw the most peculiar array of items. The books, she was mostly expecting (although she had somehow acquired a copy of Most Potente Potions, the book she used to brew Polyjuice two years ago). It was the number of potions vials, parchments, runic arrays, and magical knickknacks she didn't recognize.
What had she been doing? Whatever memories "she" had hidden – and she was starting to refer to the memories of her lost self as "Other-Hermione" – must have been very damning indeed! She looked in a small wooden box, only to find neatly labeled hairs, listing names such as, "Draco Malfoy," "Albus Dumbledore," and "Severus Snape." The vials, which were more littered about than the organized hairs, included helpful tags naming them as, "Memory-Locker," "Polyjuice," and "Thanalos." That last one was a Class A restricted potion, with side-effects that reminded her of cocaine withdrawal. Other-Hermione had gotten into something far messier than was morally sound, or more importantly, legal.
She picked up the bottle labeled Memory-Locker, idly wondering what it was used for. It was the only thing in the trunk she had no reference for. Even the books, however obscure they could be, had recognizable titles. She was disappointed to find that Unfogging the Future hadn't been one of them, but she did find a text titled, Mastering the Mind, by Leonardo Oppulo, and decided to spend the rest of her evening reading it cover-to-cover.
But she had barely gotten through the first chapter when she realized she was reading the same sentence over and over again. For it had been a very long day, and her eyes had grown very heavy…
Hermione was in her parents car, riding over a bridge. She looked eagerly over the sides of the bridge, like she had when she was younger, and saw a sparkling, bubbling brook. It was beautiful, and she was transfixed watching it.
Her parents were in the front seat, looking very old indeed. Gray had taken over their hair, and Hermione could see stress wrinkles where there had been smooth skin before. She looked down at her own hands, which sported nicely trimmed nails and lacked their usual ink splotches. It must have been summer, then. Her hands looked bigger, though. Like her mum's hands. An adults hands. And she realized that she was holding her wand, fiddling with it nervously.
Hermione didn't speak to her parents the entire car ride. They seemed a bit strained, too, like they weren't looking forward to getting wherever they were going.
She continued looking at the brook, which oddly seemed to follow the road very closely. When she looked back up, they were at home in the outskirts of London.
Hermione was standing behind her parents, who were waiting for her to take tea with them in the living room. But instead of going to her favorite chair, as she normally would, Hermione continued to fiddle with her wand, passing it back and forth between her hands. And then, almost as if it wasn't her doing it, she heard herself say:
"Obliviate." She said, and the blood rushed through her ears at the strength of the spell.
Hermione woke up sweating, panting, and altogether panicked. What a horrible dream! She had been older, just home from school, and she had obliviated her parents. It was the stuff of nightmares. She drank from the glass of water beside her bed, and the glass shook in her hand.
It was a dream, that was all. A bad dream, but a dream nonetheless. Hermione glanced at the book that had now fallen on the floor. The words Mastering the Mind glinted at her in the morning light. It had been a dream… she hoped.
Hermione forced herself to get up and get ready for the day, and resolved to put the thought out of her mind. She didn't have any reason to believe she had obliviated her parents, so she wouldn't dwell on it. Instead, she went to the bathroom to shower away the thought. Showering was something that brought her peace. She had a lot of ah-ha moments in the shower before, especially since Hogwarts had an unlimited supply of hot water.
But as she undressed, she noticed a long, mottled thing resting on her skin. She moved toward the mirror, staring in abject horror at whatever had stuck itself to her stomach. It looked like a rope, or a barbed whip, that had been fused with skin. She touched it very tentatively, and it stung.
Shaking her head and feeling slightly disturbed, she cast a freshening charm and forwent the shower. There was no way she was going to mess with that. Maybe a trip to Madam Pomfrey was in order, for Other-Hermione led a much more exciting life than she expected. How had she gotten this injury? Why did she have such a hard time remembering over half of her fourth year? What were the potions, the hairs, and the odd books doing in her trunk?
If she didn't know any better, she would've thought someone had obliviated her and taken her place, like Lockheart had with his books. But no, if she was being replaced, she wouldn't have any memories of the events, and she could remember bits and pieces just fine.
Plus, Krum had said she must've been trying to hide a secret. What secrets did she have, apart from the time turner? She liked to think of herself as an open book, if anyone actually cared to ask her about herself.
She was so busy thinking of the strange happenings of her life in the last twelve hours, that she had forgotten about how rude Ron had been to her yesterday. So when the entire common room turned to look at her, she shrunk in on herself. Had they seen her scar? What were they thinking? She stood in the doorway to the girl's dormitory, immobile. Finally, Harry caught her eye, and he waved her over. Thank Merlin he did, for she was certain she would've stayed there forever.
She walked over to Harry jerkily, and sat down in the plush seat next to him. "Hey Hermione," Harry said gently. "Are you okay?" He was talking about Ron insulting her, of course, but her mind immediately went to the strange mysteries she had been uncovering from Other-Hermione.
Hermione didn't know how to answer him, so she just nodded.
"Look," Harry ruffled his hair. "Ron's my best mate, and all, but he's being a right git right now."
She snorted. "You don't say?"
"Yeah, well, I told him that he should apologize for treating a friend that way, and he said you should apologize too." He looked uncomfortable. Hermione was touched by his thoughtfulness, however, for it had taken a lot of growth for him to even start a conversation about something so sensitive. "I- erm, I disagreed. I don't really think you did anything worth apologizing for."
Hermione forced herself to smile back at him, although it was a brittle smile. "Ron's not really known for his tact, Harry. Don't worry about it. You really should be worrying about the second task, instead."
Harry's head snapped up at that. "But it's not for two months!"
"Regardless, you're going to need time to figure out the egg, and after that you'll have to plan! What have you done so far?" Hermione jumped in, tackling the new problem. She tried not to think that it stank of escapism, dealing with someone else's problems instead of her own.
"Hermione, it's the holidays. We just got done with the Yule Ball. Can't we just take a break?"
Something in his expression kept her from fighting him on this, so she let it drop. "How's Si- er, Snuffles?" She asked instead.
"He's good, I've been keeping him up to date about everything about Hogwarts. He still doesn't trust Karkaroff, or Krum. Actually, he said he wants to talk to you about Krum, see if you learned anything about him during the ball."
Hermione frowned hard. She knew she had a way to contact Sirius, but for the life of her she couldn't remember. Something to do with reflections? Mirrors? Not wanting to share her memory loss with Harry, who she was certain would blame Viktor, she nodded absently at him. "I'll talk to him later. I've got to go-"
"-To the library?" Harry asked, laughing. "Go ahead."
She smiled that false, brittle smile once more, and practically ran out the portrait-hole. That had convinced her to seek help. She didn't want whatever experimental methods Viktor was planning. He was a nice boy, but she didn't exactly trust his judgement. No, she had to choose: Madam Pomfrey, or Professor Snape? She could try finding Professor Dumbledore, but she had never talked to the man one-on-one since first year. It would be intimidating, to say the least. The fact that Professor Snape had been a Death Eater, well that was enough to push her towards Madam Pomfrey.
She took her time getting there, realizing that because of the early hour, Madam Pomfrey might be sleeping. But her concerns were unfounded: the healer was already up and attending to another student – a fifth year who had contracted Dragon Pox. "What seems to be the trouble, dear?" Madam Pomfrey bustled over, already casting a few charms to diagnose her.
"I- well, I'm having some memory problems." She said. "And I've got this big scar, but I haven't an idea of what it could be from."
"Memory problems, you say? What kind of memory problems?"
Hermione hesitated. She didn't want to get Viktor in trouble. He didn't intend for her to get stuck without half her memories of the year, after all. He had been trying to help her.
She must've hesitated too long, for Pomfrey spoke again, "I want to assure you that I have taken a Healer's Oath to keep anything to myself so long as it doesn't threaten you or others. Whatever has happened, I am duty-bound to keep it secret."
At that, she couldn't help but spill the entire story to a sympathetic Madam Pomfrey. She knew she was blubbering, but it had all become too much to handle. The matron ended up taking her into her office, pouring her a strong cup of tea, and listening very sympathetically to her tale.