The Hat was in on the conspiracy too. She'd barely sat down before it had proclaimed 'Slytherin'. Malfoy had been Sorted faster but only just. Hermione had marched to the green table with a straight back, ignoring the whispering her name had spawned. She had sat next to Parkinson as the First Year girls were all on the same bench with the boys opposite.

No one had said much beyond introductions during the meal. The Prefects escorted them to the dungeon to begin the induction of the new Snakes in privacy. It looked like the entire House had gathered for show and tell. Hermione wasn't sure if everyone was present as there were significantly fewer Slytherins than Gryffindors so the throng looked small. The Common Room was larger, adding to the impression of a select elite.

Gemma Farley had started lightly, talking of House pride and the respect due their traditions. She handed over to the Seventh Year Prefects Harlan Travers and Philida Bletchley, who took a much harder line. They informed the ten firsties that if they brought shame to Slytherin they would be dealt with unofficially with such thoroughness they would be posted home to their parents in a bucket.

Sitting on the bed nearest the door in the First Year dorm, Hermione couldn't help but contrast the welcome she had enjoyed her first night in Gryffindor. The Tower was much cosier and the company, well, considering her rough start during her first term, the company was about the same. The other Slytherin witches all knew each other so they chatted and jockeyed about who would get which bed. Interestingly, none of them challenged her for the one she'd picked.

Hermione took off her new pinchy shoes, setting them neatly on top of the trunk Narcissa Malfoy had bought her. She'd find an out of the way place to stow her scavenged supplies. Having a bolt-hole would be useful as she didn't want to overuse the Room of Requirement. She might have to spend summers in there depending on the attentions of the Malfoys.

Pulling out the Occlumency primer, Hermione reviewed the mental exercises and estimated how much time she would have to allot to be very, very good at not giving away her secrets. A year to be practised, she guessed, and several more to be proficient. Shielding the mind was not something learned in an afternoon. She recalled Harry's struggles with Snape as an instructor and not for the first time wondered at Dumbledore's motives for pairing the two. Had he set up Harry to fail?

That worry was the crux of the reason she had not gone to the Headmaster. Hermione had immense respect for Dumbledore's achievements. She couldn't though shake the impression he had feet of clay. The difficulty with being so adept was that without peers of your own power you have nothing to measure yourself against. No check or balance to prevent your focus from narrowing until you were blinkered. Dumbledore was too certain he was right, and Harry had suffered for it.

Perhaps she could help. She knew what Harry needed to know. She could just walk up to him and tell him. That would change everything. They had against all odds destroyed the Horcruxes and defeated Voldemort. Probably. Something had happened at the end of the battle. Had it been a contingency ritual? Had Riddle found some other way to ensure he survived?

Without knowing what had gone wrong, Hermione was loathe to mess up anything. If she changed something, who knew the effects at the other end of the thread? Trelawney might. The Seer had been right after all. Dropping back onto the bed, she groaned. Taking Divination in Third Year was not going to be fun.

"Something wrong, Rosier?" Parkinson demanded when the quiet girl made a noise.

"No." Hermione replied, staring at the canopy above her. "I'm going for a walk."

She left the dormitory without further comment, heading into the dungeons to find a deserted room. There were a great many. Most were kitted out as study halls or brewing labs for older students trusted to work without supervision. She paused at an intersection unsure which direction to take when a light flared under a door tucked into a flying buttress. Hermione knocked first, having walked in on her share of personal private moments during patrols as a Prefect.

When no one answered, she opened the door and stepped into a small sitting room with a cheery hearth. Taking one of the overstuffed chairs, Hermione put her feet on the tuffet and kicked off her shoes again. She regretted putting them back on but only the daft padded about a stone castle in their socks.

"Miss missed the train." Moppet appeared with a tea tray, setting it down on a low table before putting her feet up too. "Miss isn't going to be allowed out without Moppet if Miss starts pub brawls."

"You heard about that?" Hermione poured tea for the both of them. "Lemon or milk?"

"Moppet has never taken tea before. Put everything in the cup and Moppet will decide what she likes." The house elf watched the witch mix her brew fascinated as the lemon juice made the milk curdle. "Professor the Deputy Headmistress was talking with the Headmaster about Miss. Moppet heard them. Then Moppet read the letter Robards the Auror sent to the Headmaster."

"Do you often read other people's correspondence?" She handed Moppet the porcelain cup of ick before making her own tea white, no lumps. Without astonishment Hermione got a shrug from the house elf. "Well, for the sake of courtesy, you have permission to read mine. What did they say?"

"The Headmaster said many children did not want to go to school and that he hoped you would find your place at Hogwarts." Moppet sipped, made a face and sipped again. She snapped her fingers, removing the milk from her tea. "Deputy Headmistress made a cat noise and said Evan your father was stubborn and vicious."

"Lovely." Hermione sighed. She trusted Professor McGonagall wouldn't tar the child like the father, unlike Snape, but as a Snake she couldn't rely on the Head of Gryffindor to think well of her. "Did you know Cathal's father? How long have you been at Hogwarts?"

"Moppet was born at Hogwarts. Moppet has always been of Hogwarts." Moppet shuffled forward in her chair so her legs would reach the tuffet. She was having tea like proper tea having people. "Moppet knew Evan. Evan worked hard. Evan had trouble with Charms so he practised and practised. Evan was Professor Snape's friend."

"Professor Snape is going to be a problem." If she was in two minds about Dumbledore, she was in two dozen minds about Severus Snape. They'd seen him die and then Harry had gone to the Pensieve. They hadn't had a chance to discuss the memories in detail, busy fighting a battle, but Harry had been badly shaken. Snape had loved his mother. Snape had been ordered by Voldemort and Dumbledore to kill the Headmaster. Snape was a hero. Snape was also a snide arse who had been cruel to her for years. Spy or not, making little girls cry was not laudable.

"Moppet can poison his drinks on Samhain." The house elf offered helpfully. "Professor Snape shuts himself in his room and drinks all the bottles on that night."

"We're not going to poison people." Hermione stated firmly. "Yet." She had to concede that strategically dosing someone might be necessary at some point. "And not fatally. I came back to help save people." Memories ambushed her. Ranks of the dead in the Great Hall. "Fred and George have the Marauders' Map. It'd be handy if I could copy it."

"Miss will need special paper and ink. Moppet can tell you what to get but Moppet can't make the special things." Moppet's ears drooped. Hogwarts didn't keep a stock of the paper the four Lions had used and the ink had come all the way from the Rising Sun islands. "If Miss doesn't have the special things, the map won't move."

"A static copy would still be useful. I can start familiarising myself with the underground parts of the school." And avoiding anywhere near the Chamber of Secrets until Harry killed the basilisk. Hermione frowned at her tea. "If there are pipes big enough for a ruddy great snake, why don't they show up on the Marauder's Map?"

"Because wizards think when they flush poo just vanishes?" Moppet shrugged. Witches and wizards could be very clever but they overlooked small things. Small things like house elves.

"Well said." Hermione leaned back, rolling her shoulders to try to relax. She had a lot to do and only so much time in which to do it. She needed to pace herself or she'd be a nervous wreck by the Battle of Hogwarts. Her Dad would say to use her Ps; Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. On that note, Hermione went to bed early to be ready for Potions with the Gryffindors.

It was as excruciating as she had anticipated. The work itself was fine, being introductory theory and how not to set yourself on fire. She sat between Theodore Nott, who didn't talk, and Daphne Greengrass, who spent the class writing down everything Snape said. As Cathal Rosier didn't give a damn about Harry Potter, Hermione refused to react when Snape had a go at him or to laugh or to look at herself. God, she had been so keen. And the bastard took five points from Gryffindor!

Slytherin had History of Magic with Ravenclaw. Hermione read her Occlumency primer as Professor Binns droned while her classmates learned it was not possible to die of boredom but you could certainly wish for it. Even the enthusiastic scholarship of the Eagles couldn't keep them from flagging under the unremitting reedy recitation.

Lunch happened. Hermione sat on the girls' bench at the end and tried to commit to memory the exact image of her plate of sandwiches. One of the Occlumency exercises was conscious sight, refining your awareness of your surroundings to such a point that the mind could form detailed memories. Rich mental imagery helped create diversions to foil a Legilimens.

"I'll eat that if you don't want it, Rosier." Vincent Crabbe reached for her plate when the witch had been staring at it for several minutes. She jabbed his hand with a fork.

"Don't touch what isn't yours." Hermione snapped, losing concentration abruptly as the plate moved. She eased her grip on her cutlery as Crabbe glared at her, massaging his hand. He leaned forward using his bulk to loom and intimidate. That might have worked on Cathal. It didn't work on Hermione. She met his piggy little eyes, staring him down until he resumed his seat and pretended nothing had happened. She ate her sandwiches.

Charms was more introductory theory and Flitwick showing off. He was a Master Duellist, Hermione recalled. After the Duelling Club had folded in Second Year, there hadn't been any formalised training until the DA, to which Cathal would almost certainly not be invited. It might be possible to persuade Professor Flitwick to give private lessons, which would necessitate staying on his good side. Which meant not reading off topic books in his class or skiving off making notes about spell modification.

Hermione as Cathal tucked herself as far away from Hermione Hermione as she could. She couldn't excel past her other self obviously in class or in submitted work. Given her youthful over-achieving that wouldn't be too difficult. Handing in work only as long as specified would help. She'd keep her extra credit work strictly private.

Her desk in Defence Against the Dark Arts class was fascinating. The textbook was also fascinating. Her notes ditto. Hermione did not once lift her gaze to Quirrell's face or look at the ridiculous purple turban. As he stuttered his way through the lesson, she wrote. What she wrote was a French translation of the first chapter of the Dark Forces: a Guide to Self-Protection, which was sufficiently challenging her mind was entirely occupied. No daydreaming in DADA.

After class, Hermione headed outside to the courtyard where everything had ended. She sat on a bench with her eyes shut and let herself remember. The destruction. The corpses. The fear almost tangible. Then the rumble of the earth and the force of the unknown something crashing over her like a tsunami. It felt like yesterday and a thousand years ago.

"Excuse me." A boy cleared his throat.

"Yes?" Hermione opened her eyes. A Hufflepuff stood in front of her with shoulders squared. That was never a good sign. The Badgers were laissez-faire right up until they bit your face off.

"Are you Cathal Rosier?" He asked, his voice cracking a little so a Third or Fourth Year depending on his birthday. She nodded and he drew his wand. "Your father killed my dad." His fingers tightened. "What do you have to say about that?"

"If you are calling me out for a duel, you will need a second." She said calmly. "I'll wait here for you to find someone as I can see it's important."

"You're not going to say you're sorry or that he deserved it?" The boy demanded, off put by the girl's demeanour but unwilling to back down.

"I never met your father. Offering my condolences seems crass, considering, and if you care enough for his memory to want to avenge him then he was probably a good man." Hermione tried to hide her sympathy. She wanted to hug him and say that she was indeed sorry. Except Cathal wasn't.

"He was. I can sort of remember him and my mum told me about him. He worked in a shop just ordinary and your father came to burn it down because the owner was a Muggle-born. My dad died because he had the wrong job." His words came out in a rush, stumbling over each other until he clamped his mouth shut and stood there shaking waiting for her to say something. To mock him for being the son of a Mudblood's assistant.

"What was his name?" She couldn't not ask.

"Robert Preece. I'm Malcolm." He took a breath, not sure why he had told her that.

"An Auror called Alastor Moody killed my father. Moody is retired now but I'm sure if you write to him, he'll tell you about it." Hermione suggested, aware of how little information the Ministry gave anyone. Knowing more about the death of his dad's murderer might help Malcolm get some closure. She glanced over his shoulder. "Gemma Farley is heading this way, and she has her wand out."

Malcolm turned, saw the Prefect and decided not to hex a firstie. He crossed the courtyard without looking back. Seeing him go, Farley slowed her pace to an amble, taking a seat on the bench as though she happened to be passing. Definitely not going to the aid of a First Year being menaced by an older student from another House.

"Settling in?" Gemma asked, assessing the lack of tears, wobbling lip or angry flush. She wasn't very good at mopping up hurt feelings but the Prefects kept an eye on the firsties until they found their footing.

"Yes, thank you." Hermione appreciated the back-up. Malcolm might have been hot-tempered enough to curse her regardless of their chat. The presence of the Prefect had given him a face-saving excuse to leave.

"If anyone gives you grief, tell one of us and we'll sort them out." Although a pure-blood family, the Farleys were not in the same league as the Rosiers. Gemma was happy about that. She didn't want to spend her school days with a target on her back.

She probably should have taken Farley's advice, Hermione admitted to herself a fortnight later. If she had gone to a Prefect she might have looked like a sook but she wouldn't now be standing in Snape's office having to explain how she had got into a fight with two Fifth Years. And won. Your problem, she told herself as she stared at her shoes, was that you hate to back down even when you plausibly could.

"It is seldom I have to scold a student for being too adept at their work." The Head of Slytherin had been informed by the Head of Gryffindor that the Meadowes sisters had been given detention for fighting with a Slytherin. This was not a novel occurrence as the twin witches often targeted members of his House for harassment. Nor were they subtle so there had been witnesses. "I have been reliably informed by several students not given to exaggeration that you cast a Stupefying Charm successfully twice with sufficient force you knocked both your opponents unconscious."

"Yes, Professor." Hermione had Stunned the girls automatically after the first Stinging Hex had hit her. An overreaction but seeing herself outnumbered had triggered her instincts. She had fired off so many Stunners during the course of the war it was the first thing she'd thought of after being struck. Had the strain of casting not made Cathal dizzy enough to nearly faint she might have made a discreet exit too.

"Dare I ask who taught you that spell, Miss Rosier?" Snape had made note of Evan's daughter in his House. She had not attracted his attention unlike Draco, who seemed determined to get up everyone's nose. The heirs of the Sacred Twenty-Eight families were always trouble in some way. Mostly arrogant little shites.

"My mother, sir." She lied, eyes firmly on feet.

"I met your mother on several occasions. She was not given to duelling in hallways." The last time he had seen Derica Rosier she had been walking a toddler around the garden of Rosier Hall reciting the Latin names of the plants. Severus could believe the studious widow obsessively cramming her daughter with spells.

"She preferred cellars." Hermione didn't stop herself in time to prevent the venom dripping. Derica had used the Killing Curse on her only child and might well have deliberately set fire to their home.

"Would you care to explain that remark, Miss Rosier?" The Potions Professor inquisited. The girl shook her head not lifting her gaze. Of course she knew. Derica would have warned her to guard her mind. "Three weeks detention for fighting in the halls. You may go."

Hermione walked into the Slytherin Common Room and was greeted by a slow round of applause. The Meadowes had not endeared themselves to Salazar's Own. To see them taken down by a First Year was the sweetest justice. Pausing only a moment to acknowledge the adulation, she made a bee-line for the girls' dormitory and her bed.

She drew the curtains then hit herself over the head with her pillow. Stupid! All that work revising the basic spells, she should have used one of them. A second year spell wouldn't have been too out of the ordinary. Hermione buried herself in her blankets and called herself all the names she could think of then tried to remember some nasty ones in French or German.

She ended up falling asleep in her clothes drained from spell casting. Waking very early, Hermione tiptoed to the bathroom for a nice long hot shower. Emerging pink with Cathal's fine hair plastered down on her head, she got dressed and slipped out of the dungeons. She climbed up to the Turris Magnus to the Lost Wands room.

Cathal's wand was a rare enough combination that it wouldn't be easy to replace. If she were disarmed or Snatched, she would have to make do with what she could find. Using Bellatrix's wand had been horrible. Every spell had felt filthy. To keep her magic flexible, she practised with the misplaced wands. Mostly it was Lumos and Levitation as Cathal didn't have the potency yet to force a connection.

Hermione had started a game she played with herself, sequentially casting Wingardium Leviosa moving from wand to wand to see how long she could maintain the spell. Her best thus far was four wands floating at the same time. This morning she barely managed two. She picked up the fallen lengths of ash and put them back in the appropriate drawer. Pulling open the beech drawer, Hermione frowned. She inspected the wand.

It was Neville's or rather it was Frank Longbottom's. When had Neville lost his wand? She couldn't remember. Thinking back seven years, she had no idea. He can't have misplaced it for long. He might not have noticed its absence over the weekend. Feeling sorry for her unfortunate friend, Hermione tucked his wand into a pocket and headed for Gryffindor Tower.

It was too early to be considered late at night. No one stirred, not even Filch and Mrs Norris. Hermione climbed the stairs puffing. Cathal had long legs but she didn't have to scale the heights multiple times a day. When she got to the portrait of the Fat Lady she didn't have breath to speak, simply nodding to the painted woman, who swung open obligingly.

Hermione was a pace inside the Gryffindor Common Room when she realised that should not have happened. She pitched Neville's wand into the room and exited hastily. Finding a handy empty room nearby, she spent a couple of minutes taking deep breaths before calling for Moppet. The house elf looked freshly scrubbed and censorious.

"Miss should be in bed. Miss is all red on the face." Moppet summoned a glass of water from the kitchen, handing it insistently to Hermione.

"The Fat Lady opened the portrait hole for me without a password." She said in between gulps. Cathal was alright running on the flat but she was no good going uphill. She'd have to make time for some aerobic exercise. "Does she think of me as a Gryffindor?"

"Miss is a servitor of Hogwarts. All doors open for Miss." This was so self-evident it didn't even merit a shrug.

"I wish the Castle had mentioned that. I was panicking thinking the portrait could see me as my other self." Hermione wiped her face with her sleeve. "We need a better way to communicate than charades. Can Howgarts talk to me through the statues now I'm corporeal?"

"Hogwarts is shouting at Miss." Moppet tugged her ears. "It's Miss who isn't hearing."

"Cut Miss some slack. I've not been reincarnated before." She gave herself a mental slap. Whine later, work now. "If I use the Protean charm to link an object between myself and the school, could the Castle talk to me that way?" Moppet's shrug was more lack of experience in advanced enchantment than fatalism. "I'll get right on that."

"Miss needs to go back to bed. Get more sleep." The house elf nagged.

"I can sleep in History of Magic." Hermione said wryly. "Everyone else does."