Chapter 1: Pre-lude to detention.
Hermione Granger had been feeling different ever since her her seventeenth birthday. At first she had dismissed the feelings she felt around Ron as a silly infatuation, but every since starting back at school she had begun to feel strange in some of her lessons as well.
Ever since lessons began in September Hermione Granger had found potions lessons more difficult. For a reason that she couldn't explain she found herself distracted by Professor Snape. No matter how hard she tried to concentrate, every time he opened his mouth and started speaking she found herself hypnotised by his velvety voice.
From talking to Cassandra, she knew that somehow the unicorn magic had begun to have an effect on her, but Cassandra was unable to explain exactly what was happening.
In every lesson she had with professor Snape she found herself daydreaming and making silly mistakes and now, as it neared Christmas her grades were slipping!
"Miss Granger!" shouted Snape, "don't you realise you're about to blow half the castle to kingdom-come! What excuse do you have for this unforgivable lapse of concentration?"
Hermione looked guiltily down at her desk, she just didn't understand what her problem was around him. She didn't act like this in any of her other lessons. It was almost like he was causing her all this trouble.
Her conversations with Cassandra has been unenlightening. Like many of the conversations she had with the unicorns (or centaurs) the conversations were vague and dreamy. She often found herself going in circles with Cassandra and sometimes found herself so far off topic that she'd forgotten her original question. Every time she asked Cassandra for advice on how to do better in potions the unicorn had just given her a smirk and told her that all would become clear in time; and that her potions skills would greatly improve, eventually.
She could feel the eyes of every other student on her as Snape berated her for messing up the potion.
"It surprises me, Miss Granger, you find yourself unable to brew a simple Polyjuice potion, why I had thought you'd mastered such skills during your second year at Hogwarts. Well, to some extent, we must after all learn the art of distinguishing between the hair of an animal and that of a human, isn't that so?"
He drawled the last syllable and she felt her whole body tingle even as her ridiculed her in front of the whole class. What was wrong with her?! She needed desperately to pin Cassandra down and get to the bottom of all this. That unicorn was definitely hiding something.
The worst bit of all this was that she couldn't even talk to other people about this because no one knew about her animagus secret. But if she kept messing up in professor Snape's lessons people were going to talk. And she couldn't allow her grades to suffer for the sake of some silly unicorn nonsense.
"Nothing to say Miss Granger? How very out of character. Well I do hope you'll have plenty to say, Friday night in detention. And 10 points from Gryffindor for such carelessness."
With that he turned around and swept away in, his robes billowing behind him.
Hermione let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding as Harry put a consoling arm on her shoulder.
"I'm really sorry 'mione." He said. "The potion was as much my fault as yours."
"Don't worry Harry." She said.
The potion was as much his fault as it was hers but six months ago she would have carried them along and compensated for Harry, allowing them to both get a good grade. She sighed again to herself. This wasn't fair, she just didn't understand what had happened. Why did she feel this way when he was in the room?