Hermione entered the great hall and cheered up almost immediately. Yes, she was still mad that she had been caught, but seeing that Gryffindor had lost five times as many points as she had certainly cheered her up as did seeing Potter, Weasley, and Longbottom being completely shunned at the Gryffindor table.
She had expected some blow back from her house seeing as one of the major tenants of Slytherin was don't get caught, but all she received was congratulations on a "Positive trade." She also could not have been more relieved that her detention was coming from Snape, she had heard from a second year that McGonagall would occasionally send her particularly bad troublemakers into the forbidden forest for detention, something she had done to the Weasley twins the year before.
Glancing up the head table she saw that both Snape and Quirrell were missing bringing her back to the discussion she and Aurelia had a few nights before, which teacher had been cursing Potter's broom. The issue was they were just so bloody suspicious. Snape seemed to have an irrational hate for Potter and had been coming after him since day one, but also looked out for the Slytherins to the best of his abilities. Quirrell on the other hand was just mysterious, everything about him seemed to be fake and there was no discernable reason why.
Snape appearing behind her in the silent way he always did "Detention tonight Ms. Granger, seven o'clock in the dungeons."
Well, he certainly didn't believe in wasting time.
When 6:50 rolled around, Hermione extracted herself from Daphne and Aurelia who were both studying for their finals, barely three weeks away at this point and exited the common room, descending deeper into the dungeons towards Snape's classroom.
Arriving in the dim room, Snape was sitting behind his desk and on top of the table closest to the front of the room was a cutting board and a large pile of ingredients. Sitting down at the table, Hermione also found a list of specifications, Bitter root quarter inch cubes, mandrake root sliced wafer thin… the list went on.
She started the intensive ingredient prep, truly her detention could be much worse. This was annoying, tiring, and mind-numbingly boring, but at least it was easy and she didn't need to clean the interior of the clock or sweep out the fireplaces, all previous detentions she had heard about.
Two hours later she had finished with the ingredients but instead of dismissing her Snape instead still without saying a word, nodded towards a teetering pile of cauldrons next to one of the large sinks in the walls.
Reaching up on the tips of her toes, Hermione grabbed the cauldron of the top of the stack and wearing the thick dragon hide gloves meant for cleaning she poured out the small layer of viscous green goo out of the bottom and started scrubbing.
She quickly fell into a rhythm; scrubbing was oddly therapeutic the action required no thought just effort and Hermione lost herself in it scrubbing until one cauldron was clean of its impossibly sticky goo and then moving on to the next one. So lost in fact that Hermione all but forgot about her silent companion that was until he spoke from directly behind her causing her to literally jump in the air, a flailing arm crashing into the stack of cauldrons causing it to teetering and fall down. Luckily it was saved by Snape who neatly levitated the cauldrons back into their stack.
"Sorry Professor" Hermione said, turning to face Snape.
"It's fine Ms. Granger, I asked how your classes were going." Hermione's brain stalled for a second, why did Snape care? "As a head of house, I am usually entitled to reports on how my students perform, something that I have not received due to your circumstances Ms. Granger." Snape said, correctly interpreting her silence.
"Well astronomy and herbology are pretty easy, Flitwick is practicing dueling with me now that I'm done with all of the second year material" Snape nodded at that, "History of magic is just an exercise in not falling asleep, Quirrell is a joke of a teacher, all he has me do is read from the text book and he sits there and answers questions with his annoying stutter," the corners of Snape's mouth turned up at that, almost a smile "And Dumbledore just has all of these exercises for control that he has me do, we don't do that much of the actual curriculum but I suppose his method works, I guess transfiguration is mostly just control." Hermione thought back over her lessons, "He has also been talking a lot more during our recent lessons."
Snape looked more intent, "what has he been talking about now."
Hermione recollected what he had been saying soon, she knew he said them because of the wandless magic he had seen her do, but honestly, he had just come off as an overinflated self-important old man. She knew he was a powerful wizard, but she could tell that he saw anyone who viewed the world differently than him as wrong, so she just nodded and smiled as he talked. She was not however going to say any of that to Snape, not good form to talk ill about someone's boss in front of them, or maybe that was the best place to do it. "Just a lot of stuff about love and morality"
Snape looked at her for a second before saying "just be careful with the lessons you learn, not finish washing the cauldrons." If anything, he looked approving.
Hermione stalked back to the common room. She had just spent a week and a half taking exams nonstop. Because the year-end exams were administered by the Ministry and not the school, she had to take the exams for both first and second year despite all her teachers knowing she was fully capable of all the material. In order to fit her double exams into the week where there were ministry proctors to officiate, she had to take her exams back-to-back and on Saturday. So many tests in such a short stretch had her very annoyed and wanting to hit something. In absence of a preferably human punching bag, she was taking the next best option, twenty strait hours of sleep. Because of studying she hadn't gotten more than five hours of sleep a night for the past week and a half. She stormed through the common room and collapsed onto her bed falling asleep instantly.
Hermione awoke to a faint buzzing. Grabbing her wand, she gave it a quick spin and muttered "tempus," 10:30, it was after curfew she could have really used a quick snack from the kitchens, she had missed dinner after all. Hermione tried to pinpoint the source of the buzzing, but it seemed to be coming from everywhere. Focusing and drowning out everything else, Hermione felt a connection leading through the castle, to the third-floor corridor. She shot upright, her ward was being broken down.
She practically vaulted out of bed. She had just been challenged; someone was breaking through her ward in order to steal something clearly valuable. Hermione forced down her knee jerk reaction, that ambitious part of her that sometimes acted too gryffindorish in her haste to prove herself as the best and fought to think logically. It was clearly an illicit access attempt as if it were Dumbledore he would go during the day. Having established that, the question was should she go try to stop it or not. Upsides: possible glory, whatever was being guarded by the Cerberus. Downsides: Death or dismemberment. When she considered it that way it just simplified down to whether she trusted herself to survive, she made it a habit to never doubt herself.
Shaking Aurelia awake Hermione practically pulled her out of bed "Third floor corridor. Come on get up we are going." Rubbing the sleep out of her very surprised eyes, Aurelia complied, pulling on her shoes, Hermione was still wearing hers from the day which she had neglected to take off before falling asleep.
As Aurelia did that Hermione hurried across the first-year girls' common room and as quietly as possible opened the door to Daphne and Tracey's room. Casting a muffling charm on Tracey she shook Daphne awake.
She and Aurelia had not told Daphne about the corridor, but Daphne was top ten in their year, she would be helpful on something like this, and Hermione knew that despite her self-confidence she needed all the help she could get for this. Daphne woke up looking extremely confused as Hermione pulled her out of bed. "Daphne there is a Cerberus guarding something in the third-floor corridor and we are going to try to get past it to stop someone else and maybe steal something. You should come with."
To her credit, Daphne took it surprisingly well, getting out of bed and putting her shoes on quietly and sneaking out into the common room before she demanded more details.
They filled her in as they ran through the dungeons towards the third floor, the buzzing in her head had stopped around when they exited the common room, meaning that the ward had lasted around five minutes, pretty good for her first ward on such a weak door all things considered. It took them about four minutes to reach the corridor, merlin it took a long time to get around the castle. The door to the corridor was hanging broken off its hinges, splinters of wood scattered around the hallway.
Stepping through the door, the girls were greeted by a sight they did not expect. Rather than being dead, the massive Cerberus was instead asleep and snoring quite vigorously as a harp next to the door played soft music. Before they had taken more than two steps into the room however the music cut out and the snoring abruptly ceased.
Daphne, the closest to the harp dove for it as the Cerberus rose to its fearsome height and started to growl. Luckily for them, Daphne was actually a pretty good harp player and Hermione was thanking Merlin for thinking to bring her as the beast settled back down.
She continued to play, and Hermione and Aurelia moved over and opened the trap door. Descending down into blackness the shaft seemed to fall forever, it was the only way forward however, so Hermione gave Daphne a short nod. Daphne stopped playing and sprinted towards them, all of them jumping into the abyss with the bark of the dog following behind them.
They landed in a tangle of limbs and bodies on a soft patch of ground. They started trying to move apart, but someone was clearly holding onto the others. Lighting up her wand Hermione saw that it was not one of them restraining the others, but a particularly large devil's snare that had already started pulling them down. Flicking out her hand, Hermione sent a small burst of fire at a different part of the plant causing it to retract from their legs, allowing them to walk to the stone path that edged the room and progress into the corridor.
Dumbledore might be a great wizard, but he was clearly a fool if he thought these were good defenses, they hadn't even had to use a wand! They entered the next room. Just a door and many birds flying around above them. Crossing to the door, Hermione tried an Alohamora, it had worked before, might as well try. But unfortunately, the door remained locked. Noticing the brooms piled in the corner, Hermione looked up at the birds she had only glanced at before. They were not birds but instead a mass of glittering winged keys of all shapes, sizes, and materials.
The girls looked between themselves, although each of them had been able to fly in the flying lessons, none of them had the skill to catch one of those keys while it was flying around. While it was flying around, that was the key. Hermione handed the other two girls brooms, and inspecting the keyhole told them "We should be looking for a large old looking silver key."
Aurelia and Daphne took to the air while Hermione prepared herself. Mustering her power, she pushed her power into her spell shouting "immobulus" the rapidly fluttering keys all froze. Hermione concentrated, staying focused as the other two rapidly flew through the frozen keys searching.
It felt like hours that she had to stand there holding the keys, she could feel a bead of sweat slowly tracing its trail down the side of her face before she heard Aurelia's triumphant shout and seeing her coming down with a key with bright blue wings held firmly in her hand, Hermione released the spell, the ensuing wave of motion almost knocking Daphne off of her broom. Shoving the key into the keyhole and turning it, the door swung open allowing them to move into the next room. A room where they were greeted with a view of a massive board, currently in the middle of an especially brutal match of wizarding chess, a game led by a familiar turban clad man.
