Author's Note: So, this would have come sooner, but with Thanksgiving holidays, we really were slammed by surprise relatives. Surprise! Feed us! Oh no no no, you don't understand, I don't even like people a little bit. This is not something you can say to relatives, for the record. Well, you could, but suddenly you seem very churlish. So it's late! Don't blame me, blame my family. I certainly do. You may notice this chapter is heavy on the dialogue, less on the plot progression. I refuse to apologize for this. These things have been bouncing around in my head.

On a side note, aberlioness pointed out that I used Americanisms. Thank you for pointing this out, it's hard for me to notice these things. I'm sorry, guys. :C I promise to scour this fanfic and find every reference to the season fall and change it to autumn as soon as I have some free time. If you spot any others, let me know. I'm so painfully American… deep south American, too. Which, as any American can tell you, is ridiculously American. I'm rambling, I'm sorry. But seriously, I bleed sweet iced tea, and I'll tell y'all I reckon it's down yonder any day of the week. *gigglesnort*

Disclaimer: I'm so sorry I bastardize your work, Mrs. Rowling.

Act VIII

In which, Hermione Granger has no patience for black knights in white armor.

"No, absolutely not, you're daft, and I'm right, and you know it! Stop being so bloody petulant!"

"The sixteen year old ghost calls me petulant because he can't verify his own work beyond the realm of reasonable doubt? That's rich," came the sneering reply.

"Oh, dear. It's worse than I thought," came a sudden baritone.

Hermione blinked owlishly from where she lay on her bed, her parchment spelled to hover above her as if nailed to a board. Her quill paused, and a single droplet of ink dripped from its tip to where her face lay directly beneath.

"It's not enough I have to deal with a ghost invading my quarters and dismantling my wards if I even bother to waste the energy to put them up anymore, now Professor bleeding Snape barges into my quarters?"

The quivering mass of algorithms floating in a glowing multi-colored glory above her stopped swirling, slowly halting its' progress of making sense of her corrections and alterations of her work.

"Two points I need to make. One, you've not exited your room, sent any correspondence, or ordered from the house elves more than once a day in the past two weeks. Two, you left your study door open, and your bedroom door ajar after you were owled a death threat."

Hermione chortled, "Imagine a Death Eater barging in here, only to find me researching the probabilities of Transfiguration research in medicinal charms with ikkle Lord Voldemort-"

"- insufferable Mudblood, I have told you to stop calling me th-"

"-in pyjamas no less! Well worth the bathing Hogwarts in my blood, baptizing the Purebloods into a new era with a purifying storm of murder and mayhem, stringing my remains across the steps of the Ministry so that the new order may trampled my remains," she intoned in a monotonous drawl.

"Granger, do you really need to extrapolate on that blasted letter?" Severus pinched the bridge of his nose with a long suffering sigh.

"Oh, I'm not, I've gotten three more," she replied cheerfully, grabbing them from the stand beside her bed and waving them in the air.

"And you've told no one? Of all the ridiculous, childish-"

"-I feel we've had this conversation before-"

"-WHY ARE YOU SO BLOODY CHEERFUL?"

"Riddle has discovered that cheering charms on my bedspread have a residual contact effect, despite the magical polarities between our magic. Really fascinating, you should apply it to your research into this whole severing our entwined souls and what not. My notes are on my desk regarding the matter. Still not going to make me more agreeable on your shaky logic regarding your arguments to my research, Tom," she finished in a falsetto.

"That's enough. Give me those letters, I am taking them immediately to the other two thirds of your trio in law enforcement."

He cast a quick accio before she could argue.

"Abso-fucking-lutely not, you magnificent wanker. I'd sooner chop off Aphrodite's tits and risk an eternity besotted with lawn clippings than have Harry or Ron see me like this."

Severus Snape found how cheerfully she said this disturbing, and said as much rather colorfully as he cast a finite at her bedspread.

"You'd have me handle her without a cheering charm? She's absolutely barking without it," Riddle argued.

"I can not handle this. If you don't like it, go to the bloody study for all I care, but-" Biting off his words mid-sentence, Snape turned in a billowing of robes and stalked from the room, slamming both doors shut behind him and locking them.

Hermione was glad that Severus had not dragged Harry or Ron into this.

Hermione was fit to be tied at his second option.

"Granger," drawled a long since heard, but well remembered voice.

"Malfoy," she said in clipped, icy, but moderately polite tones.

"I understand you're receiving death threats?"

A well-manicured hand held up said death threats, rendering the question rather asinine, rhetorical, and therefore a pointless waste of her patience.

All she got was a raised, platinum eyebrow when she said as much.

Thirty minutes into his roster of his questioning, she lifted a shaking hand to her aching head and scowled Malfoy into silence.

"I don't see what bloody good it does to question me about an untraceable parchment, written by a dicto-quill, sent by an elusive owl," she snarled.

A blank stare greeted her in return.

"It's still protocol to ask, Granger. As you should well know by now. You received," here, he paused to check his black leather-bound notebook, "no less than four death threats within six months of the end of the war. Now, are you aware of any person, or persons, that may harbor a grudge towards you, whether recently or otherwise?"

"Megaera's warped cunt, stop being so bloody polite! Why on earth should I have to answer questions about a Pureblood agenda to a fucking Pureblood, much less a former Death Eater?"

"One, I know them better than anyone else in MLE. Two, for that very reason I am the squad leader of a team dedicated solely to rounding up my former… colleagues. Penance at first, but now I rather enjoy my job. Three, unless you want Potter and Weasely to find out about your… potion problem," he drawled slowly, but not unkindly, "I am the next best option."

Hermione let out an inarticulate screech, burying her hands in her hair.

"One more Gods damned list of points out of another fucking Slytherin-"

"Again, are you aware of any person, or persons, that may harbor a grudge towards you, whether recently or otherwise?"

"Bitch tits!"

"Granger, really," came a smirking otherworldly voice from nowhere.

"You should order some stew from the elves. Easy enough to keep down even with spider webs for nerves, and you could do with a meal."

Hermione looked up from penning her letter to Ginny and stared for a full minute at the apparition standing in the doorway to her study.

Finally, she responded with a curt, "Stop it."

"Pardon?" A silvery black eyebrow steadily climbed up a moon white brow.

"Stop that this instant."

"What, exactly, am I stopping?" Irritation crept into the wavering voice.

"Being polite to the Mudblood. I find it unnerving, and I will ward you thrice over from my quarters if you persist, to Hades with the students in the hallway!"

Rage crept into Riddle's translucent face, as he spat back, "Leave it to a Mudblood to be so uncouth as to tell me to stop deigning to speaking to her as a human being. Did it ever occur to you that if you die of starvation, I've no idea where that leaves me?"

"Much better," Hermione replied after a moment, with satisfaction. She went back to penning her letter.

Riddle deigned to ignore her in favor of levitating her more fragile knick knacks about her office haphazardly.

Said items only flew at a higher velocity when she told him it was uncouth to sulk.

"Would you care to explain to me why you're being so civil?"

"Who would you have me speak to? Students? That awful Potions Professor of yours? No one else will give me the time of day."

"You are eternally at the age of a student, Riddle," she replied drily.

"I never got along with students when I truly was a student. They were beneath me then, as well."

"And for the records, that awful Potions Professor is especially snarky around you because future you ruined a large portion of his life."

"Exactly. I've no one else to talk to. And you get snippy when I put you in your place."

"Put me in my place? I'd sooner be fucked ten way to Hades in ways that would make Persephone herself cringe than-"

"Exactly what I'm talking about."

Her mouth agape to respond, brow furrowed and fury blazing in her eyes, she was spared verbally lashing him when a rap at her window sounded. Espying yet another tiny black owl, she burrowed her face into her palms and let out a small scream.

When she lifted her head, her eyes were red and her cheeks were lividly pink in her pale face, but her mouth was set and there was no wetness on her skin.

"Let's get on with it, then."

Gripping her cane in a white knuckled fist, she stalked in a savage limp to the window and opened it jerkily, her hand slipping on the latch once, twice, before a grunt of frustration and she slammed it open so hard the panes rattled. The owl dropped the rolled parchment and beat a hasty retreat, but Hermione's wand was out quick as a flash and hexing the thing before it was five feet from the window.

She watched it dissipate into a black haze.

Interesting.

"Transfigured, or hexed to self-destruct?" She murmured to herself.

"Riddle, if you're still being ridiculously and inappropriately chivalrous for a young version of a tyrannical evil despot, could you pen a note to Malfoy for me? I'll send it tomorrow, but I'd like the reminder on my desk."

She began unrolling the dreaded parchment.

"I might consider it if you agree to take me somewhere out of this bloody castle for-"

A puff of powder, faint and with an acidic aroma, burst from the scroll when she broke its seal.

Hermione Granger fell unconscious to the floor.