The brown clouds rolled fitfully in the wind outside the domed window. Hermione sighed. It wasn't like her to drift off in class like that. She redirected her attention to Professor Binns' incessant droning.

"The Goblin wars of 1526 were momentous due to the fact that the chief Goblin Ugg the Irritable..."

Hermione found her hand taking the notes down independently of her brain, which was thinking hard. She was trying to sort out her thoughts concerning her actions over the past week and a half.

She hadn't spoken to Draco since the morning he'd kissed her, but she hadn't forgotten that morning very quickly. It lay over her mind like a stifling sheet. She felt like he was up to something, perhaps it was the added curl to his lip when their eyes met in the hall, or a deliberate brush to her shoulder as they passed each other on the way to dinner.

Professor Snape is a different thing entirely.

She put her pen down, her face turned towards the window, eyes focused in the distance, following the movement of the sky.

And Sirius.

What happened over the summer? It's so blurry, all I seem to remember is that evening. The note. And feeling like something horrible had gone completely askew.

---

Luna waited for the other girl to finish peeing. She couldn't bring herself to pee when anyone else was in the loo with her.

She sighed.

Hurry the fuck up! You've been pissing for -

She checked her wrist.

23 seconds!

After what seemed like an eternity, the toilet flushed and the other girl went to wash her hands. As soon as Luna heard the door close, she relaxed.

A minute or two later, standing at the chipped marble tap to wash her hands, Luna looked at herself in the mirror. She turned to the left, then to the right, letting the hot water run over her palms.

She scrunched up her nose. Then she opened her mouth and folded her tongue in half. Pouting her lips, she flexed her nostrils.

She shook her hands dry before wiping the excess moisture on her simple black robes. Standing back from the mirror, she took herself in.

A hopeless case, she thought, sighing. Mother always said so, for I could care less about the antics of women's vanity.

Wrinkling her nose again, she shook her hair free from her face. It ran all the way down to the hollow at the base of her spine, undulating in waves of milk and honey. She was very proud of her hair. It had taken her hair three years to get that long after she'd cropped it close to her skull the summer before coming to Hogwarts.

Mother was so horribly angry with me!

She'd sheared it all off with a severing charm - coming nigh close to taking off her own neck as well - as part of a purification ritual of her own design, a preparation for a new era of her life.

One more year here... Then I can do my research on the rarer species of the world, and show people that they do exist. And then I can study mythology and folklore... And open an itinerant pastry shop...

Sighing, she stood on her tip toes.

Maybe people would take me seriously if I were taller... more imposing.

But she wasn't tall, nor was she short. However, her petite frame gave her the illusion of possessing more stature than she actually had. And far from imposing, her physical form happened to be utterly feminine. She wouldn't have scared away a lame gnat.

Her eyes were two almondine orbs wreathed with dark lashes, and her aquiline nose led the eye down to round red lips, what Thomas Hardy would have called, 'a rose filled with snow.' Her top lip had a habit of separating itself from its counterpart, which lent her a blank sort of look, especially when in conjunction with her eyes, which habitually went out of focus.

They had just started to do so, when she turned and left the bathroom, trudging back to her dorm, which was mercifully empty from the other giggling Ravenclaw girls. Pulling a slightly squashed chocolate éclair from her trunk (snitched that afternoon from the kitchens), she gave it a sniff. Inhaling the scent of chocolate glaze and vanilla cream, she took a bite.

Everyone thinks I'm so damn weird for smelling my food before I eat it. But honestly, it's quite practical. It ensures that it really is what it is, for one thing, rather than something nasty. If everyone smelled their food before taking a bite, Fred and George Weasley wouldn't have gotten away with fooling so many people with their enchanted candy. Those Canary Creams had a definitive odour!

Alastor understood, mused the dreamy witch. He smelled everything that passed his lips to check for poison. He understood me quite well in fact. But he never talked to me again after I kissed him after class that one day.

Stuffing the rest of the éclair in her mouth, she gathered up her pajamas and tucked them under her cloak. Everyone else was at dinner and it was the perfect time for her to bathe – Luna's favorite time, in fact, for then there would be no one to interrupt her.

Luna never used the dorm showers, not after she'd discovered the password to the Slytherins' prefects' bathroom in her second year, while eavesdropping on two lovers in the library.

She found the large bathtub more accommodating to daydreaming than the open shower stalls in the common bathroom. Making her way down to this private sanctuary, her mind drifted back to one of the only really happy times in her school-life.

It's a pity we don't have those D.A. meetings anymore. Though I guess we don't need them, now that we have Professor Loki to teach us Defense against the Dark Arts. I suppose she's a good teacher, but not half as interesting as Remus. He was a real biscuit!. But he wouldn't really speak to me either, after I caught him alone in his study . . .

Her mind drifted back to the memory.

It had been a cold winter's evening she'd seen his office door open and drifted in.

"Hello Miss Lovegood," he'd said, arranging some folders on the shelf behind his desk. "To what do I owe the pleasurer of this visit?"

She'd inclined her head to the side, looking at him, then approached the unprepared teacher and on tip toes, given him a feathery kiss before exiting sans un mot.

After she'd left, Professor Lupin had touched his fingers to his mouth gently. It was in slow, absent-minded way that he sat down slowly, looking out the door after her. Perhaps she had reminded him of someone. But of course, Luna hadn't seen any of that.

Thank goodness Professor Loki is a girl, I don't know what Dumbledore would do if I got rid of another Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, she thought smugly. Even the girl herself wasn't sure if whether or not she was joking half the time.

She reached the bathroom. In three years, the password had never changed, perhaps because it was so unconventional.

"Blue Balls," she said clearly, and the grinning painting of Pan bid her enter.

---

"Hey Harry," said Ron, as his best friend slipped through the door of the common room. Ron was sprawled on floor searching for something in his bag, its contents spread around him.

"Where's Hermione?" asked Harry.

"Last detention with Snape,"a Ron answered grudgingly. "Honestly, she's had them all last week and all this week, just for being late to class one day." He shook his head. "It's ridiculous!"

"A whole fornight's detention?," asked Harry, perturbed. That was rather drastic, even for Snape. "Hmm…" While Harry was lost in thought, Ron finally found the document he'd been searing for.

"Ah ha!" he exclaimed, "I found it!"

"Found what?"

"My Divination homework. I couldn't seem to find it anywhere."

"I wish Hermione was still in that class, she could help us with our assignments!" laughed Harry. Neither he, nor Ron were very happy about still having to take the class, but the requirements for Aurors had changed, increasing their course-load by two long-hated classes – Divination and History of Magic.

"Yeah," replied Ron. "I bet she'd like it better now that we have Firenze teaching us, though. But I pity anyone who still has to endure Professor Trelawney."
"Ha, me too." Said Harry. "I almost feel like I'm learning stuff with Firenze."
"Hmph. Almost," conceded Ron. "I still stand by the idea that divination is a load of rubbish."

Harry couldn't help thinking about the two predictions Professor Trelawney had made that had come true. It might be a rubbish subject... (And Harry wouldn't have been thinking it if he hadn't witnessed the truth behind them...) but Divination did seem to have its redeeming points as a useful art. Dumbledore at least, believed in them, thought Harry, leaning against the mantelpiece. So did Lord Voldemort for that matter.

"Hey Harry, d'you wanna grab us some food from the kitchens? I bet Hermione'll be hungry by the time she gets back, and I'm already feeling peckish," Ron called from the floor.

"Alright, but I'll have to run up and get my invisibility cloak first. It's 11:55, I won't have time to go all the way down to the kitchens and back in five minutes."

"Ok. Hopefully...I'll have found...my Transfiguration homework...by then..." Ron's voice was muffled as his head was jammed inside his book bag.

"Be right back then," Harry said, slipping into the corridor.

He raced up the stairs to the Gryffindor dorm. It was strangely lonely up there without Ron... He'd sort of hoped his friend wouldn't get Head Boy... He, Harry, didn't expect to get it, anyway. After all, Dumbledore had admitted his reasons to not making Harry a prefect... But he had strongly wished that Ron would get to stay with him and keep him company in the Gryffindor tower.

It's damn selfish of me. But I do miss him. He is my best friend, after all.

He passed Professor Loki and Peeves having a chalk fight in the corridor, and then narrowly missed colliding with Professor McGonagall while turning the corner.

"You should be in bed Potter. It's midnight." She peered up at him through her reading glasses, a book held open in one hand and a violet night cap perched on her head.

When Harry had first come to Hogwarts, she had towered over him, making an imposing figure. But now that he had grown some, the 5'7" woman had to incline her neck slightly to look him in the eye.

"I was just going back to my room, Professor," he said.

"Alright then, off with you," she returned, giving him a nod. "Good night."

"Good night Professor," he replied.

He scrambled up to his room, waving at Dean and Seamus, who were bent over a textbook. Back in his dorm, he quickly grabbed the invisibility cloak, and then, for fear of running into any other teachers, he snatched up the Marauder's Map. Making sure there was no one in the hall outside the portrait, he leapt down the stairs, headed for the kitchens.

Checking the map under his cloak, he affirmed that his path was clear, only having to slip past a yawning Professor Flitwick in front of his destination. The teacher had both arms piled with food, his gaping mouth uncovered.

He has a bloody big mouth for such a tiny guy, shuddered Harry. Sort of like a snake.

After obtaining a platter of cold cuts, fruit, three bottles of butterbeer, and quickly escaping the altogether too helpful house elves ("Dobby is so glad Harry Potter has come to visit him, Dobby will get Harry Potter anything he wants to eat, what is Harry Potter hungry for? Oh, Harry Potter should like some treacle tart, wouldn't he?) Harry checked the map with his free hand.

Ron in his room... Dumbledore in his office... Filch in the Great Hall... Hermione in the dungeons...

Harry's eyes flicked back to the dot labeled 'Hermione.'

Shouldn't her detention be over by now?

There was a smudge of ink under the script detailing her name. Harry peered over his map to look closer at it.

Hermione's dot moved over slightly, revealing the 'smudge' - another dot, directly underneath hers.

Severus Snape.