A/N: Thank you all so much for your reviews, favorites and follows! Adrian sought out Hermione...now let's see how they get along. You can follow me on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates and answer questions.
Please let me know what you thought of chapter eight and be on the lookout for chapter nine soon.
If she was honest, before she had her talk with Pucey, Hermione had been feeling exceptionally bad for being so suspicious of Max. It was most likely the case that he was nothing more than a nice boy from Kenmare who was here to study at Hogwarts for a few weeks, exactly as McGonagall had said. The odd feeling that she got when she was around him was probably nothing more than an overactive imagination, looking for anything interesting to happen that year.
But, the fact that Pucey also felt that odd unease when he was with Max (especially enough that he was willing to seek her out)...well, that gave Hermione pause.
She had been nervous to walk with Pucey away from the Gryffindor common room, having never really spent time actually talking with him before, but willing to hear him out. She had been surprised to learn that he had followed Max into Hogsmeade to see what he was getting up to. Hermione was briefly annoyed that Pucey could come and go from the castle as he pleased, but kept that to herself. It obviously wasn't his fault that Headmistress McGonagall wouldn't give the eighth years more latitude.
Hermione waited with bated breath, staring up at Pucey's face while she waited to hear just what Max had been doing. Spending time with Pucey's friends was not something that she would have ever expected, but she could agree with him that it was troubling. She told him that their flimsy excuse about happening upon each other at the Hog's Head after a floo mishap didn't add up.
The tension that Pucey carried in his shoulders seemed to melt away when she made it clear that she agreed with him.
"It makes me a bit uncomfortable if I'm honest," he revealed to her, in a moment of vulnerability. "Almost as if he was trying to replace me. But it's not as if I have a monopoly on my friend's time."
Hermione was reaching out and giving his hand a squeeze before she'd even realized it. "I'm sure your friends aren't trying to replace you," she tried to reassure him. Then she blushed, worrying that she might have overstepped her bounds. She dropped his hand, feeling as if he'd burned her.
After their little heart-to-heart - that she was sure Pucey would deny if she ever mentioned it - he asked if she would agree to get to the bottom of who Max really was and what his real purpose at Hogwarts was. Hermione readily agreed, wondering just what was going to come out of the odd partnership that she had created with Pucey.
At the very least, certainly he'd be more lenient about her checking out books from the library, right?
Wishing him a good evening, Hermione and Pucey parted ways with plans to talk in the library should either of them find any interesting information. Hermione then turned to make the lonely walk back to Gryffindor on her own, her mind whirring with plans to seek out Max the next day.
The following morning, Hermione spent breakfast catching glances at the Slytherin table where Max had taken to eating. It appeared that he had befriended Draco Malfoy, which she supposed was probably mutually beneficial for the two wizards, seeing as they likely didn't have one or the other.
Unfortunately, it seemed that her glances were not as subtle as she thought because Ginny noticed immediately. "Uh oh, do we need to tell Pucey that you've moved on to other wizards?" she asked with a teasing tone in her voice. "I thought that you guys might have finally talked about your feelings last night."
"What?" Hermione asked, distracted and not really hearing Ginny's words. "I'm not interested in spending my time dating wizards, Gin. I want to focus on my NEWTs and do well. Then I can work on my love life."
"If you took your NEWTs today, you'd still get Outstandings on all of them," Ginny promised. "Besides, I don't think that having a cheeky snog or two this year would be that distracting. And Pucey is easy on the eyes."
Hermione returned her attention to her new reluctant partner, really looking at him for a moment. He did have the most wonderful jawline of any wizard in the school, and there was something about the slight smirk he always seemed to wear that made her heart skip when it was focused on her. "I suppose he's passable," she said, uncomfortable with this line of discussion. Did she find Pucey attractive?
"Passable?" Ginny asked with a snort. "The number of times you've talked about how strong he is, carrying off loads of books. I know you're into his arms at least."
She blushed, realizing that she rather did pay a lot of attention to the size of Pucey's biceps. "I just don't understand why..." she trailed off, clearing her throat guiltily. "He doesn't play Quidditch anymore and it just..."
Ginny couldn't hold back her laughter anymore. "Who would have guessed? Hermione Granger likes Quidditch players," she teased. "I should have guessed - Krum, Cormac, hell, even my brother."
Hermione was growing increasingly flustered. "I, I don't know what you are talking about," she stammered, though she could admit that she had something of a track record, now that it was brought to her attention. Was there really anything wrong with finding the build most Quidditch players had attractive?
Luckily, at that moment, Max was standing up from the Slytherin table and Hermione was able to pull herself out of the embarrassing conversation, though it would certainly require some introspection later when she was alone. "Sorry, Ginny, but I just remembered something that I have to take care of," she said as she popped up from the table, not wanting to lose him so quickly.
Ginny made some quip about taking care of her crush on Pucey, but Hermione didn't hear any of it, too focused on catching up to Max. She knew that she would have to stay several paces behind him so as not to alert him to her presence, but she wanted to stay close enough that she could see what he was up to.
If he did notice her following him, though, Hermione quickly decided to put on the air of just being friendly. He was new to Hogwarts, afterall, and he probably needed someone to show him around. She would just have to be that person for Max, and get more information out of him...like what he was up to in Hogsmeade with Pucey's friends.
She followed him down towards the dungeons and worried that he might be headed to the Slytherin Common Room, somewhere that she highly doubted she would be able to get in. Was that where he was staying, she wondered? Did he even have the password?
Turning a corner a bit too zealously, Hermione nearly ran into a suit of armor and her surprised little exhale of breath caught Max's attention. She barely had time to duck back into an alcove before he turned around and caught her red handed. Pressing her hand to her chest to calm her wildly beating heart, Hermione wished that she had the Invisibility Cloak to sneak around with.
Bitterly, she remembered that Harry had offered it to her when she returned to Hogwarts. But, she had to be so noble and told him that she wasn't going to be doing any sneaking around this year, so she wouldn't need it. Godric, how she wished that she had it to nip out to Hogsmeade occasionally. She shouldn't have been so proud and just taken her friend up on the offer.
Maybe she could write to him now and ask him to send it.
It probably wasn't worth the I-told-you-so's, though.
Besides, she was doing just fine on her own. Once she was sure that Max had returned to his walk, Hermione slipped out of the alcove and once again started following him. She had to walk fast to catch up with him, but eventually she did.
When they nearly made it to the Slytherin Common Room, Max abruptly switched course, turning instead for a secret staircase that even she had never known about before. That was a bit peculiar, she decided. How was Max, a supposed outsider, better able to navigate the castle than her? She'd been sneaking around for seven years at this point, and had read Hogwarts, A History more times than she could count. She thought she'd known every staircase to get from one class to another.
Biting her lower lip, she waited for him to get up a flight of stairs before following after him. With a silencing spell placed on her shoes, she hoped that he wouldn't be alerted to her footfalls as she followed him up the stairs, only to come out near the Charms classroom. Frowning, Hermione lamented how much time she could have saved if she'd known about the stairs sooner. Maybe someone from Slytherin had tipped him off to it, she mused.
But, it seemed that Charms was not Max's intended location either. He stood outside of Professor Flitwick's door for a few seconds, before doubling back the way that he came. Hermione was nearly caught once again before she ducked into an empty classroom, leaving the door ajar so that he wouldn't be able to hear her shut the door behind her.
He walked right past the staircase that he had recently emerged from, and this time his path was clear. Max was headed to the library.
Hermione let out a sigh, and wondered if perhaps she was being too suspicious about him. Maybe he really had just gotten lost on his way to the library and he was struggling to navigate the castle. Perhaps he just needed someone to show him around, and there was nothing nefarious going on at all.
Walking normally now - Hermione could excuse them running into one another as a trip to the library herself - she trailed him, wondering just where he would go once he got inside the library. Was he studying anything whilst at Hogwarts, she wondered? Did his school have a library like the one at Hogwarts? She doubted that.
As she was making the final turn towards her favorite room in the whole castle, though, she was shocked to not see hide nor hair of Max. It was as if he had just...disappeared.
Frowning, Hermione knew there was no way that he could have gotten into the library in the time it took her to make the turn. The hallway was too long. And there was nowhere else for him to go but into the library. There were no classrooms or broom cupboards in this stretch of the school, and none of the tapestries hid any secret passages.
"Max?" she called out cautiously, wondering where he could have gone to. She looked behind each set of armor that lined the hallway, but didn't see him. Max really had just disappeared.
Suddenly, all of her thoughts about him being innocent and turned around flew out of the window. It almost seemed like Max was apparating in and out of the castle, which anyone knew was impossible to do. But how else could she explain the way that he had popped into the library and popped out of the hallway right then.
Groaning, she couldn't believe that she'd lost him in less than an hour of following. Something told her that she wasn't going to cross paths with the wizard again that day. She very much suspected that he knew he was being followed, and he probably knew by who.
Hermione decided that there was nothing for her to do but head into the library and hope that Pucey was there. She could at least tell him about what she had seen, even if he was certain to be disappointed in her spying skills. Somehow, she was sure that a sneaky Slytherin would think that he could do much better than her.
But, even if she hadn't discovered what he was up to, she had collected a bit more evidence that there was something wrong with this Max Purney. And she was more determined than ever to get to the bottom of it.