And the story continues...
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Harry woke up to the sounds of "You got it Neville? You got it?" He sat up and looked groggily around the dorm.
"Good morning, guys," he said.
"Oh, hey, Harry!" Neville called out from under the bed. He tried to pull out, but a bit too fast, and banged his head on the bed. "We were wondering when you'd wake up," he added.
His hands were empty, and so his quest for the sock continued, his bottom once again stuck up in the air.
"Harry, you'd better hurry, breakfast ends in ten minutes."
Harry looked at the clock and groaned: he wasn't even dressed yet. "Go on without me, I'll be along...soon..."
There was a squeal of triumph, a loud bang, and then a sad little "owwwww", and then Neville emerged, holding a neon yellow sock.
"Er...Neville?" Harry asked.
"Yes?"
"Your other sock is gray. Why is that one...like that?"
Neville squinted at him weirdly. "This is my lucky sock," he said, in a this-is-completely-obvious tone of voice.
There was a moment during which no one said anything. Then Harry's shoulders started to shake uncontrollably, and soon he and Ron were laughing their heads off.
"It's not funny," Neville said. "It really is lucky, you know."
"What, exactly, makes it lucky?"
"My gran soaked it with Felix Felicis when I was a kid," Neville said proudly.
Harry narrowed his eyes in confusion. "And you've...never washed it since?"
"Ew!" Neville exclaimed. "No, I have! Many times!"
"Then isn't the Felix all gone by now?"
"Oh, yes," Neville said. "It's still lucky, though."
"Er...Okay, Neville. Whatever you say."
"Pass the knife, Ron," Hermione said.
"Hermione..." Ron said warily. "How are you doing that?"
"What?"
"You've gotten way ahead of everybody else. Your beans are all but juicing themselves."
"Oh!" Hermione exclaimed. "Well, I guess I do need to slow down," she said quietly, and gradually, her progress slowed.
"Today we will be reviewing the Summoning Spell, as I've noticed many of you using it...improperly."
Hermione blushed and looked over at Harry, thinking of the time he'd practically "crammed" 'accio' for the Triwizard Tournament.
Ron and Harry paired up, as usual, but Hermione sat off to the side, trying to avoid making eye contact with Neville.
Soon the air was full of zooming objects, and Hemione sat there, holding her wand arm carefully out, muttering to herself for some reason.
"No, wand arm like that...a kind of a pulling motion, yes..." She demonstrated the 'pulling motion', paused two seconds, and continued. "Now...accio!"
A chocolate frog flew in through the window and landed on her desk. She broke it in half and started chewing on the head, leaving the butt and legs on the table.
"Excellent, Miss Granger!" Flitwick exclaimed. "Ten points to Gryffindor."
Ron groaned: his last attempt to summon something had resulted with the Charms book crashing into his face.
"Oi, Hermione, can I have the rest of your Chocolate Frog?"
"Sure!" Hermione said, and reached to take it, but it was not there. "Oops! Sorry, I must have eaten that."
Ron looked at her questioningly."Must have?"
"Yes," she said, and stared directly into his eyes until he looked away, at which point, if one listened closely, one could hear her mutter "Dammit, I wanted that."
"Okay, so next's Transfiguration, I checked up on the schedule, I think we might be doing faces..."
"Hermione!" Ron yelled.
"What?"
"Look, we've got our own schedules, we don't need you to tell us everything."
"I'm not talking to you, Ron!"
"Hermione, talking to yourself is not a good sign. Do you need to see Madam Pomfrey?" Harry inquired.
"No, I don't need to see Madam Pomfrey." Hermione said angrily.
"Are you sure about that, Granger?" A cold voice drawled. "I hear she's been trying out the old bleeding out method... Although in your case, I suppose she wouldn't do that - wouldn't want the dishes all muddy."
"Go away, Malfoy," Ron snarled. Hermione heard a little gasp beside her.
"Aw, how cute. The Weasel protecting his little Mudblood girlfriend. I'm touched." He walked up to them. "But you should really save it all for...later."
"Okay, Malfoy, what the hell are you talking about?" Harry asked.
"And hello there, Potty. When d'you get to be such a potty-mouth?"
"Really, Malfoy, that's getting old. I mean...potty? Really?"
"If I were you, Potter, I wouldn't talk about things getting old," an approaching Snape said, "Because while you'd think you'd get sick of me...you just never do."
I'm already sick of you! Harry wanted to scream. Relax...calm down...
"What do you mean?"
"Detention, Potter. With me. Tonight."
"For what?"
Snape paused for a moment. "For insulting Mr. Malfoy here and trying to provoke a fight."
"Harry trying to provoke a fight?" Ron fumed. "Malfoy's the one who started it, are you mental - ?"
"Silence, Weasley. And as delightful as your endless blabbering is, I think Potter enjoys it rather more than me, which is why you'll be joining him in detention tonight."
And, as upset as she was at Snape's endless discrimination, Hermione couldn't help but feel relieved.
Hermione collapsed into the chair.
"I'm sorry. I really can't do this."
"But why, Miss Granger?"
Nothing had been said that could have thrown anyone into a panic attack, especially since Hermione Granger was known for her calm, rational mind. Now, however, her rationality failed her.
"Why?" she asked, her tone dangerously low. "Why?" It was almost a screech now, and if you listened closely, you could hear someone taking a hurried step away. "Because I'm terrified, that's why. I mean Harry, okay, he's always suspicious, but if Ron's noticed something's up, then it won't be long before a teacher will!" She was up now, pacing the room. "And besides, now Malfoy knows something's going on, and he hates me! Oh, this is it. He's going to track me down and find out and tell on me and I'll be expelled, all because of you."
There was a silence as Tom, as he'd asked to be called, absorbed this.
"Most likely no one's noticed. It's not important to them."
"Of course it's important! 'Hermione Granger, top of her class, hosts an alien invader' or whatever it is you are. Won't everyone just love to know all about that."
"Will you please - just - listen?" Tom said through invisibly gritted teeth.
"No, I won't - mrgh!"
"Sit," Tom said, "and calm down."
He kept his hand on her mouth for a few minutes, letting her calm down.
"Now listen to me. Of course you think we're being obvious - it's obvious to you, you know about. And of course you expect everyone to start thinking about it and brooding and brooding and eventually figure it out - it's all you can think about. But they have no reason to think about it. And even if they start brooding, there's no way they can guess the truth.
Hermione just sat there, shocked. Just a bit more, she thought. Please, yell some more - I'll know who you are...
"Miss Granger? I'm sorry I touched you. Please say something?"
Oh, goddammit all.
"Miss Granger, believe me, I know this from experience. When someone's built a room with no exits, they'll worry about anything but the person in it escaping."
Hermione's brain gave a little shriek of realization. She got up and went to the shelves. I need the recent Azkaban records...Azkaban files...Azkaban news...
To her surprise, the Room of Requirement did not come up with what she needed. She was about to shrug it off as a glitch in the spell when she noticed a little gray book on the floor.
She picked it up, examined it, and looked up in horror to where she assumed Tom was. She looked back to the book, hoping she had misread it, but Hermione Granger never misread...
"Dealing with Child Abuse," by Devon Moses, Healer 1st Class.
"He gave us detention! Again!"
Harry rolled his eyes. "Ron, you've been saying that for the past two hours."
"But he gave us detention!"
Harry frowned at the Marauders' Map in his lap. There was no sign of anyone who wasn't supposed to be there - and he'd been so sure...
"Harry, what are you doing?" Ron asked, finally noticing that Harry wasn't paying much attention to his ranting.
"Do you see anything extra on the map?"
"No..." Ron peered at it. "Well, not exactly..."
"What?"
"Well...Hermione's missing."
"They kept you locked up?" Hermione asked, tears in her eyes.
Tom was silent.
"Tom! Answer me, please..."
"Not they..." his voice was barely a whisper.
"What?"
"Not they...he."
"Your father?"
"yes"
"For...how long?"
"Since I was about a year old."
"But why?" Hermione asked, then regretted it - there was rarely any real "why" behind the actions of a madman, and if you looked for it, you found only madness.
"C-can we talk about this later?"
"Okay," Hermione said. "Let's see, we stopped at 'The Standard Book of Spells, Level 1', page eight. Oh, this one's good..."
Tom proved to be an excellent student, and come December he had mastered three grades' worth of "Standard Book"s. He was probably the only student at Hogwarts who didn't laugh at Hermione when she started spouting information (and definitely the only one who thanked her and asked her for more).
As time went on, Hermione got used to her new, slightly complicated way of life. The prefects were a bit confused as to why she now needed the special bathroom every other day (instead of the usual, once a week) and the house elves were more tired of her campaigns than ever before (since she visited the kitchen everyday, smuggling out food) but, for the most part, nobody batted an eyelash.
The only people who noticed anything were Harry, Ron, and Ernie (who had all but taken Hermione's place in the process of trying to get her back as a study partner). The more she was gonem the more annoying they got - to the point where they purposely got detention all together so that the "Hermione-Hunting Society" (as she thought of it) could convene without their schoolmates' attention.
It was strange - she was almost never on the map. Once they tracked her across and discovered that she had gone into the Room of Requirement ("How did we not guess?"), but when they rushed to the Room and burst in, they found her sitting there, along, reading.
"Hermione, what are you doing?" Ron had asked.
"Studying, what does it look like I'm doing?"
"Alone?" This was Ernie, who couldn't believe she'd ditched studying with him for studying alone.
"Do you see anyone?"
"Well...no."
"Then the question is settled isn't it?"
"Why do you have a bed in here?" Ron blurted out.
"I don't know, maybe one of you is tired," Hermione said, keeping her eyes on her book. "Incidentally...are you guys staying for Christmas?"
"No...Harry's going to my house. Aren't you going too?"
"Well, I don't know. Probably..."
"Good."
They left, and Hermione sighed.
"You can talk now."
The HHS relaxed a little after that , but Hermione was more tense than ever - they'd always come back. She could hardly blame them - she was gone almost all the time now, and she saw them only in class, at mealtimes, and right before she went to bed in the dorms. Still, how on Earth was she supposed to sneak Tom into the Burrow? Leaving him here was absolutely out of the question.
"Granger!"
Hermione didn't even bother to turn around - only one person had the nerve to address her like that.
"Get lost, Malfoy..." she muttered under her breath. Not only was she simply not in the mood, Tom was with her, and already she felt guilty that his studying time was constantly being taken away by her personal conversations.
"I heard that, Granger," Malfoy drawled. "God, it's just such a disgrace. A mudblood walking the hallowed halls of Hogwarts..."
Hermione shook her head and left in a hurry.
"Why is...Malfoy...so mean to you, Miss Granger?"
Hermione sighed. "He believes in so-called 'pure wizarding blood', and I'm a muggle-born. That's basically the worst thing possible, for him..."
"But why?"
"Because he was raised by racists."
"Is that all it takes to turn a person evil, then? The wrong kind of upbringing?"
"Hey, Malfoy's not evil...well, not yet anyway. But I know Voldemort spent his childhood in an orphanage, and Grindelwald was just really messed up."
"But I'm not evil!" Tom protested. "And you can't say my childhood was normal."
"Maybe it's not the kind of traumatic experience that breaks you. Maybe it was the kind that makes you stronger."
"Maybe..." Tom trailed off.
"...you never did tell me what actually happened to you," Hermione pointed out.
"Come now, Miss Granger," Tom said in a terrifying attempt to sound cheerful and upbeat, "it's almost Christmas. It's no time for scary stories like that!"
"But after Christmas, you'll tell me right?"
"Yes, Miss Granger. After Christmas."
xxx
I love doing this. So much. You have no idea. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE review. The button's right there. You know you want to... I will post the next chapter once I reach 11 reviews.