The planning of it was easy. Most of the doing was easy too. Once she had identified the brooch as the passkey, it was simple for Moppet to borrow it without asking. They met in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom after Cathal had confirmed on her Map that the ghost was elsewhere. Moppet used elf magic to shield the area from the undead, an abjuration that would last until sunrise. So they had the means and the opportunity.

"Fuck, I do not want to do this." Hermione let the words out with a gust of breath. She stood at the sink marked with the snake. Her hesitation now was a melange of memory and the lingering touch of the repelling wards, and probably a fair dollop of common sense.

"Moppet could go down once Miss opens the drain." Moppet volunteered with as much enthusiasm as her friend.

"Slytherin warded the Chamber against house elves. No, I'll do this and you stay up here in case of emergencies." She gave herself a mental slap. "I just need to check nothing ominous is happening and maybe have a poke about."

"And not get et." Moppet added. "Or 'sploded."

Hermione laughed in spite of her tension. She touched Madam Pomfrey's brooch to the tap. There was no pause for drama's sake. The sink swung back immediately. She pinned the passkey on securely, adding a sticking charm for good measure as losing it might leave her stuck in the Chamber. Down the sluice she went.

The great snake door proved more resistant. It unlocked but rolled barely a handspan. She changed into her Animagus form to squirm through the gap. Damn quickly in case the door rolled back and crushed her. To her stoat nose the watery chamber beyond smelled overpoweringly of reptile. Her fur stood on end. Too bad she wasn't a mongoose. That would've been nicely symbolic, Hermione thought as she changed back to human.

The room didn't smell noticeably better. She got undertones of dank and mould as well as vintage basilisk. She cast a spell she'd translated from Cornish, used by miners to see in the pitch black. Using Lumos seemed too like painting a target on herself. Hermione tapped her gold wire, checking the connection.

"I'm in." She murmured.

"Moppet hears Miss." Came the reply. "Moppet thinks Miss shouldn't hang about."

Hermione took her friend's advice. She made a circuit of the serpentine room with the overcompensating statue and the basilisk corpse. Magic kept the carcass intact, which was a relief as she did not want to encounter anything that could eat giant poisonous snake. Scribing a locus for her Map, she stepped into the centre of the chalk sigil to scan for any concentrations of energy.

There were two doors in the back, each recessed into the circular tunnels either side of the carved wall. Nothing else glowed or even rippled. It was possible that someone did something down here during the battle but when Granger and Ron had come down here for a fang, there'd been nothing going on. Had the death of the cup horcrux destabilised Slytherin's wards?

It wasn't impossible that the release of that much Dark magic could tip the balance of a fragile lattice. But the Founder's concealment matrix had lasted centuries. Hogwarts had a lot of downstairs. There were dozens of places a coven could conduct ritual magic without anyone stumbling across them. The Chamber of Secrets had been an easy pick. Too easy for her luck.

She chose the door on the right to try first, climbing up into the broad pipe. There were bits of shed scale and fragments of bone sharp enough Hermione was thankful she'd worn gloves. Knee and elbow guards would've been handy. When she had money, she'd buy herself a set from a sports store. Or mould some out of that potion that set like concrete.

The door didn't open when she touched it with the brooch.

She touched it again, gave it a push, kicked it, tried an unlocking charm then studied the damn thing. Why didn't the passkey work? It should open everything that didn't respond to her bond with the Castle. She could get into the other Houses' Common Rooms. There wasn't a ward that she could sense. Was there?

She went stoat again and pressed her nose close to the stone. What did thousand year old magic smell like? What did thousand year old anything smell like? Hermione sniffed, waiting for her hair to stand on end or her whiskers twitch. Something to indicate she wasn't trying to open a decorative groove in the wall.

There was something. She stretched up on her toes to scent the edge of the door. A whiff of something. Hermione concentrated. Humans were nose-blind compared to other mammals. She was trying to use olfactory nerves she didn't have ordinarily. The mental connections were new and unfamiliar. Something like old meat.

A blood ward.

An old, possibly decaying blood ward. 'Live' magic like blood magic didn't hold well under stasis effects. You could sustain an animal in magical sleep but keeping the magic of flesh or of growing things dormant was counter to what the magic itself wanted to do. Hermione reverted to her human body and grimaced at the dark stone.

Tom Riddle had used a blood ward to conceal the cave where he'd hidden Slytherin's amulet. She didn't think this was his work. She hoped he'd been unaware of the doors. Basilisks were territorial. Parselmouth or not, the giant snake probably wouldn't have liked a wizard crawling around her nesting tunnels.

She hadn't come down here to sightsee. Hermione cut her hand with a slicing hex and pressed her bleeding palm to the door. There was a dusty flash like vintage photography. That would be the ward expiring. She healed her hand, careful to clean it thoroughly first because the microbes found down here would probably put y. pestis to shame.

The door rocked back with a grinding clunk, shifting about a centimetre. Was it counterweighted? The Founders would've had access to examples of Roman engineering. Hydraulics maybe? Slytherin had come from fen country. He was a water mage as Malfoy had remarked. The pools down here might not be entirely decorative.

"Aguamenti." Hermione shot a jet of water at the door, the strongest she could hold steady. The stone swelled as it absorbed the liquid. Gradually it sank under its augmented weight into the floor. She edged forward cautiously. Nothing lethal happened. Stepping over a grate, she traversed a short corridor into a room lined with shelves stacked with books and scrolls.

Hermione licked her lips.

It was theft. She had to admit that to herself as she packed up the contents of the study with wincing care. She knew how to handle old books, what charms to use, how to stabilise and protect them. She wasn't going to leave them down here. But neither was she going to hand them over to the Headmaster. Hermione didn't trust him to share the scholarship Salazar Slytherin had left behind. He'd already winnowed the Hogwarts Library of 'suspect' books. This trove she would keep until she could entrust it to Professor McGonagall.

So temporary theft.

Even with magic, it took her hours to clear the room. She kept in communication with Moppet, who hopped back and forth to the Hospital Wing to check Madam Pomfrey was still asleep. Hermione opened the second door with reluctance, knowing that if it was also filled with books she wouldn't have time to take them too.

The second room wasn't full of books. It was full of potion supplies, all meticulously labelled in Old English. Hermione stared wide-eyed at the ranked bottles and jars. She heard herself make a sound somewhere between a sigh of contentment and a moan of lust. Yep, she was going to take all this too.

Working frenetically, she transfigured more boxes from bones, turned scraps of snake skin into packing peanuts and cleared the shelves. Hurrying back to Moppet, she levitated the loot up to the house elf, who whisked it away to one of their caches. She shut all the doors, scrambled up after the last container, shoved the sink back into position, Scourgified herself, and punctiliously cleaned her magical residue off the brooch.

Moppet took the passkey back to the Hospital Wing. Hermione hastened to the dungeons at a nonchalant walk. As she moseyed, she cast a few more cleaning charms to make sure she didn't smell of eau de chambre de serpent. She wasn't sure what her next move should be. She could, assuming Madam Pomfrey hadn't noticed the absence of her brooch, purloin it again and do a more thorough investigation of the Chamber.

She'd check her Map to see what the locus had added, assuming a single reference point could integrate the hidden area. If it didn't, she would have to go down again to chart the snake tunnels. Or she could chart around them and flag areas where old magic made access difficult. All she'd sensed before the unravelling had been a tremor in the courtyard.

"Good morning, Miss Rosier." The sardonic greeting jarred her out of her abstraction. Hermione turned to face Professor Snape's buttons. He was dressed for class; cuffs starched and shoes polished. She wondered if he thought of his clothes, his uniform, as armour. She couldn't recall seeing him in anything else not counting Neville's boggart. To keep her mind busy, she tried to imagine him in pyjamas. It was a struggle.

"Good morning, sir." Hermione kept her stance open but suspected the veteran spy already knew she'd been up to something. After nearly two decades of teaching, he probably assumed all students were skulking troublemakers.

"I have noticed you have not yet put down your name for leaving over the upcoming holidays." He remarked blandly. She blinked at him. The lists had gone up yesterday. "Do not bother. You will be required to assist me in remedial Defence Against the Dark Arts classes for the younger members of our House."

"I was anticipating staying with Nott." Hermione ventured. She didn't want to use a Muffliato, one of Snape's own spells, to enable a more discreet conversation. He'd demand to know how she had learned it, which would bring his attention to Harry's use of the old textbook. "I left behind something there I value and I want to check on it."

"I am sure it is fine." The Professor said, a heavy pause on 'it'. "I feel confident that anything you left behind can tend to itself while you remain here."

"Is Theo going home?" She asked slowly, unsure whether the request she stay came from her grandmother or Voldemort.

"Yes." Snape clipped the word, turning it into a command. Her chin jerked up. Her eyes got as far as his nose before she caught herself. She relaxed her clenched hands. First time around, Nott wasn't Marked in his Sixth Year. She wasn't sure if he had been initiated at all. The masks hadn't helped but frankly during the fighting all her attention had been on not dying. There'd been no time to identify her foes.

"May I have the lesson plans for the remedial classes to read up on them?" Hermione said, stuffing her agitation into the recesses of her psyche. Occlumency made her feel numb, a floating sort of otherness like going under anaesthetic. Snape's affirmative sounded like he was speaking underwater. He waited for her to enter the dormitory before he left.

Hermione relaxed once she was lying on her bed with the curtains drawn. She'd had that reaction before sporadically. She suspected it was from having her shields actively probed. Reactions to Legilimency attempts were very personal. Some subjects felt dizzy, others interpreted the contact as pain or itching. The disassociation she experienced wasn't anything concrete enough she could trust as definitive. Being Cathal was easier than it had been but if she dwelled on it, she still felt alien.

Snape had been testing her. Possibly. What had he been looking for? Had he found it? Hermione rolled onto her stomach and thumped her face into her pillow so she could swear without having to bother Silencing her bed. Sometimes magic was a pain in the arse. Marvellous, fantastic, astonishing, beautiful... and bloody awkward.

She got a chance for a private moment with Nott after lunch. It probably wasn't Slytherin credo to bluntly tell someone something confidential but if Snape had been hinting that Nott was going to be Marked, Hermione wasn't going to hedge that information. They slipped away into a classroom, she cast Muffliato, and she told him baldly that she had been instructed not to go to Nott Manor over Easter.

"This could be done on Madam Malfoy's insistence." Theo observed after considering the news through several filters. His father was still in Azkaban. While the Dark Lord was not best pleased with the Head of the House of Nott, they weren't held in the same disdain as the Malfoys. When he was Marked, his father would certainly have the honour of attending. "Snape is Draco's godfather. He and your guardian could have arranged this between themselves."

"I hadn't thought of that." The stupid concord between her and Malfoy was so irrelevant it'd slipped her mind as a factor in her immurement. "The Professor was a friend of my father. I thought he and my grandmother might've conspired."

"Your grandmother might want you away from my... house guests." It took quite a bit of effort to put a polite polish on the people infesting his home. They weren't mannerless, which was damning with faint praise, but Theo couldn't shake the feeling he would be sleeping in a bear pit. "I have to go home. I am the Head. Staying away would be a pointed snub."

"Do you think it's worth me defying the order?" Hermione would happily sneak off to Nott Manor if this was a ploy cooked up by Narcissa Malfoy. If Snape was transmitting instructions from Voldemort, she was less enthused about rebellion. Nott's contemplative silence lengthened into prevarication. "What's bothering you about this?"

"I am abashed to admit I would rather you not stay here with Draco." Theo weighed the frankness Cathal preferred against his own reluctance to leave himself vulnerable. She was vengeful and kind. He thought she would much rather be offended than have him stand on his dignity. He wished fondness didn't make him feel so flayed. "Or Montague."

"Oh." She bit her lip before she could laugh. Nott would not take that well. Teenage boys were ridiculously sensitive. Teenage girls too. She did not miss being sixteen and thin-skinned. "I have no romantic yearnings for either Malfoy or Montague. I like Graham but we have little in common, and he's not Sacred Twenty-Eight." Hermione added that last bit of snobbery to bolster her disinterest. "I'm doing Malfoy's homework to keep him from a nervous breakdown. He has a task to complete."

"So he wasn't just peacocking?" He'd known Draco since they were in nappies. The blond had been arrogant from the cradle.

"Not this time, no." Hermione said grimly. "He's pushing himself to the brink. I stepped in to keep him from being expelled." That sounded too compassionate. "If he fails, we may be press-ganged. I want to finish my schooling before joining the war."

"So do I." Theo replied, dour and pensive. He didn't like this. He particularly did not like they could do little about it. He didn't delude himself to think he was the Captain of his fate but he would like to believe he was at least sitting near the tiller. "Write to Esne for confirmation from your grandmother. I rather fear we will have to be seen to be compliant."

Hermione wrote, and received a short reply assuring her that the books she requested would be sent to Hogwarts so she could study over the holidays. She showed the note to Nott and they both glumly contemplated the looming break. He took Malfoy's Charms essay as well as one for Defence, mostly as something extra to do in between playing Lord of the Manor.

For her part, Hermione didn't have any time for extracurricular activities. Snape kept her busy with the First, Second, and Third Year Slytherins while he tutored the Fourth and Fifth Years. No one had learned much during Umbridge's tenure and while Professor Lupin was a good teacher he hadn't made up for Lockhart or Quirrell.

Hermione took a page out of the Dumbledore's Army manual and began with a group casting of jinxes. The Third Years thought this beneath their dignity until she put Pritchard on the floor with a quick combo of Sneezing and Tripping Jinxes. She pointed out that there was a broad array of spells that did not trigger the standard Shield Charm as they were either cosmetic or medical and thus considered non-violent. The children were sufficiently leery of her that when she asked for volunteers she got none, whence she pointed out she had cowed them with two jinxes.

That got Baddock to step forward. She asked him to maintain a Lumos spell while she used a Charm on him. He gripped his wand confidently, lit it, then nodded. He was focussed and ready. Hermione cast wandlessly and voicelessly. The glow on his wand winked out as the Third Year yelped. He shoved up his sleeve to see a pink stripe running up his arm.

"It's a rare wizard who can hold a spell when their hair is being ripped out by the root." She demonstrated the Depilatory Charm on a transfigured mouse. The little animal squeaked in objection as she 'waxed' off a section of hair on its back. "You've been taught that magic is intent. That's true. But many spells have the intent built in. Usually it's part of the matrix as a nursemaid and it's hard to remove without unpicking the entire spell. So most people just ignore them as no threat."

Hermione pressed her wand against her forearm, casting the charm with much more than necessary vigour. The fine hair vanished leaving little dots of blood at the follicles. She looked around the gathering and saw understanding in the eyes of more than one student. Any spell that drew blood could be used to anchor a curse.

The Snakelets paid much more attention after that. They worked through the First Year syllabus until everyone could cast any colour of sparks they wished and control the Smokescreen Charm. The combination of the two spells turned the classroom into a discotheque, wherein Hermione had the Third Years duel. Which resulted in an impromptu lecture on first aid when the teenagers got overenthusiastic.

Ten days of revision and praxis couldn't make up for years of erratic teaching but it did give the younger Years something to show if the examiners asked them anything outside the standard questions. A bit of creativity could turn a Poor into an Acceptable. Professor Snape did no more than nod in commendation at the end of the holidays.

Theo came back wearing a glamour to hide the smudges under his eyes. He shook his head when she asked. Nothing dramatic. Just grinding anxiety enough to curdle his stomach and give him insomnia. Her grandmother had shut herself in her suite refusing to acknowledge anyone except her host and the house elves. She was brewing, that much he knew but she wouldn't say what.

Malfoy came back wearing a glamour to hide the smudges under his eyes too. It couldn't hide the tremor in his hands from the Cruciatus or the thousand yard stare of constant Occlumency. He accepted the homework she and Nott had done without blinking. When she asked how much Pepper-Up he'd drunk that day, he'd snarled something barely intelligible and stormed out of the Common Room.

April staggered along. The Slytherin Duelling Club meetings helped Hermione blow off steam, a badly needed pressure valve as the school year drew to a close. Knowing the future was not nearly as much of a burden as doing nothing about it. When she couldn't sleep, she roamed the dungeons charting forgotten corners for the Map. And making lists.

She turned seventeen on the 3rd of August, which gave her three weeks to get everything she needed done before Seventh Year. Hermione made contingency plans with Moppet and together they chose a binding ritual, an old one witch-to-elf that didn't use blood magic. The rite was more like a familiar link than the servitude geas currently used. Moppet would be Cathal's elf not one of her House's, the shared magic freeing her from all other bonds; a wonderful and terrifying trust.

An unfortunate side-effect of her Easter seminar on the application of jinxes was an uptick in the harassment of the other Houses. The Prefects stepped in when they were aware however the little Snakes had taken her lessons to heart. There wasn't a Gryffindor under thirteen with eyebrows and there was an epidemic of minor bad luck among the opposing Quidditch teams. Hermione weathered pointed questions from Snape but she had not actually taught any blood magic to the younger students.

The misfortunes had become so frustrating to the players they had complained to their Heads. They couldn't touch a quill without it breaking, soap failed to lather, there were no pairs of socks to be had, and more little irritations than could be shrugged off as random mischance. Professor Flitwick investigated, discovering his team were under a weak voodoo curse. Professors McGonagall and Sprout joined him in insisting the Slytherin dormitory be searched for poppets.

Hermione stood in as advocate while the Professors searched the girls' dorms to ensure the younger students didn't feel unfairly targeted by the not-quite impartial witches. She thought none of the teachers expected to find anything but the rummage would ensure the quick disposal of any foci. As the only suspect items found were candy, her supposition seemed correct.

Dismissed once her own dorm had been searched, Hermione hurried upstairs to grab something to eat before heading to the library. She left just as Professor Snape found Crabbe's stash of pornography. Apparently there were some very niche publications in the wizarding world of which she had been previously thankfully unaware.

Her mind was on the defensive possibilities of obeah when someone barged into her as she was entering the Great Hall. She stepped back to remonstrate about the rudeness when she saw it was Harry hurrying past. Avoiding him had become second nature. She turned away to get her meal and was about to sit down at the green table when she noticed Katie Bell returned from hospital.

Hermione was up and out of the Great Hall as fast as false nonchalance could take her. She didn't run. Stopping Harry would mean he kept the book. He needed to be shot of it. So she had to let him and Malfoy fight. But Snape was in the dungeons not on luncheon duty ready to be found to give immediate medical attention to a badly wounded boy. Snape was in the dungeons because she had taught children a vicious trick.

She'd meant to show woefully under-taught pre-teens how use what they did know creatively. Next year was going to be horrendous and everyone needed to be ready to defend themselves. Except next year wasn't happening yet. In her anticipation of the worst to come, she'd forgotten to mind the now. Right now it was petty squabbles in the corridors. And grievous bodily harm in the toilets.

"Sectumsempra!"

Hermione heard Harry cast the curse. He stood there staring as she walked into the bathroom and knelt beside Malfoy. He didn't say a word as she snapped an order to fetch Madam Pomfrey though he did leave at a run. She ripped the blond's shirt open wanting to see what she was healing. He whimpered as his blood stained the water pink.

"Vulnera Sanentur." Hermione chanted over and over, grimacing at the draw of the magic. She'd imagined it would be less of a fight to undo the spell with the proper counter. She'd been wrong. Healing the razor slashes criss-crossing Malfoy's chest felt like yanking out handfuls of herself. He sobbed, clutching her hand as she worked. The physical connection seemed to help so she squeezed his fingers to reassure him and kept chanting.