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It was kind of funny, Hermione thought, the way Malfoy shrank back into his robes and tried to hide whenever she entered a room. She'd taken to flicking her eyes over to him in the Great Hall, just to see him flinch.
The downside to this though, was that her dorm-mates had noticed; and attempted to corner and question her about it at every opportunity. She refused to answer them, concentrating instead on the curious detentions with Professor Moody.
That first night she had entered the Professor's office uncomfortable and unsure of what it would entail. He'd sat her at a desk in the corner of the room, and just watched her for a moment in his usual intense and disconcerting way.
"This'll show you what you're really doing when you cast a dark curse." He had growled out as he dropped a thick old book in front of her. "See how you like it after reading that."
With a faint shrug she had opened the book and proceeded to read, but soon understood how her favourite pastime could be turned against her. She thought that she should be glad she'd eaten before detention, as she certainly wouldn't have been able to after. On the other hand, keeping her dinner down had proven difficult.
The book was bound in old dark leather, it had no title, nor any sign of who had written it. Inside it was full of sketches and diagrams, even the occasional photo, all showing in explicit detail the results of someone being hit with numerous dark curses. It was the text that really turned her stomach though, she really didn't need to read precisely what happened when a person was struck by a blood boiling curse. Somehow the Professor knew if she tried to skip ahead though, and so she found herself thoroughly reading and absorbing every detail; if only to prevent herself from having to start the book from the beginning, and reread the details of being slowly skinned alive.
The second night had been similar, though she'd been handed several new books to go through. With them she had to read the history, etymology, and in some cases the development - from mostly harmless jinxes - of each curse from the previous day. Then on the third night she covered the casting theory of them, emotion, intent, and the numerological significance of the wand movements.
Between the stomach turning details of the physical effects book, and the amount of work she was putting in on the other two nights, it wasn't until the third time through the now regular three day cycle that she realised something odd; it was almost like he was teaching her the curses.
After a week of Hermione refusing to answer their interrogations, her dorm-mates had unfortunately taken to filling in the details for themselves. It had started out amusing, but when she heard Lavender and Parvati mentioning to Fay that Draco and her must be secretly dating, it quickly lost its entertainment value. The resulting confrontation - and near cursing - was witnessed, or at least heard, by most of Gryffindor. As a result, Hermione now had even more time to herself; her dorm-mates did their best to avoid her, and she'd never been particularly close to the rest of her house anyway.
After that she'd taken to not returning to Gryffindor tower until just before curfew, as the whispers that had started whenever she tried to study in the common room were getting on her nerves. While she'd spent some time exploring the castle, mostly in search of a quiet little place to herself, most of her spare time was still spent in the library. However as the curses in Defense were more than covered in her detentions with Professor Moody, and his practical teaching style made for little homework, she found she had more time to study extra topics. So she was gradually teaching herself various charms, a little history, and even taking a more in-depth look at some of the potions in the book she'd bought over the summer.
The odd Dark Arts detentions continued, and while the effects book still seriously grossed her out, she found it wasn't as bad as when she'd first started reading it. She was still watched like a hawk by Professor Moody, but as she buried herself in the books she hardly noticed.
"Merlin, that's disgusting!" Hermione shuddered as she watched the spider in one of her Unseen Urns peel open.
On one of her now semi-regular walks about the castle, she'd found a quiet little room halfway up one of the disused towers. With a charm on the door at the bottom to give her some warning if anyone came up, she now had a nice little place to herself. In the couple of weeks she'd been using the room, no one had come up the tower at all; which made it the perfect place to try out some of the things she was reading about in detention.
She winced as she looked back at the now skinless spider, and decided to put it out of its misery. She flicked her wand at it, and watched as it dropped to a sudden peaceful stillness with a couple of quiet yet strongly spoken words: "Avada Kedavra."
Hermione paused as she was running her eyes over the various potion books in the library one afternoon, a curious little book on love potions had caught her eye. It wasn't the sort of thing that would normally interest her - the boys in the school were far from anything she'd want hanging all over her; though Viktor had been nice. When he payed less attention to his headmaster, anyway. But she pulled the little book out and ran her finger over the embossed name of the author.
"Hector Dagworth-Granger," she muttered quietly to herself. Flicking to the back cover she read a little about the author: Founder of the Most Extraordinary Society of Potioneers, and arguably the first to theorise that it was not possible to brew a potion that could genuinely create love - only infatuation. She tucked the book into her bag to look at later, then wandered over to the genealogy area of the library, curious.
Crookshanks nudged against her leg as Hermione was getting ready for bed one night, she bent down to pet him and saw something wriggling in his mouth. Fetching one of her Unseen Urns, she held it as he spit the upset spider into it. He seemed quite proud of his conquest, and curled up in Hermione's arms when she picked him up.
He'd taken it upon himself to keep her Urns occupied, seeming to thoroughly enjoy the hunt. Fortunately it didn't matter to her if the spiders, frogs, mice, or - on one occasion - a first year Hufflepuff's toad, were missing a leg or two; Crookshanks liked to play with his prey. Unfortunately, her cat wasn't interested in digesting what he caught after she'd finished practicing on them. She soon learned there were some useful potions ingredients to be found though, and anything that was left became owl treats; Hermione was becoming quite popular with the school owls this year.
Which, considering the only human she spent any real amount of time around was Professor Moody, didn't really help much to counter her growing isolation; though she sometimes told her cat otherwise.
After several weeks, Hermione's genealogy research into Dagworth-Granger had lead her to a dead end. Hector had had two great grand children, but the family had apparently died out with them; or had all been squibs. Either way she couldn't find any magical records for the family from the past two hundred years.
Flopping back in her chair, she looked up at the ceiling. "Urgh, doesn't anyone keep records of muggles in a dead line?" She asked her empty tower room.
"Miss, the goblins does miss!" Was the unexpected reply; which quickly had Hermione out of her chair, and towering over the floppy eared little creature in the corner of the room, wand drawn. At the sight of the wand, the elf had curled itself down into a ball while trying to hide behind its own arm, and apologised in a flurry of indecipherably panicked words.
Lowering her wand, Hermione tried to calm the little elf down. It took a few minutes, but after reassuring her that she wasn't in trouble, but really shouldn't sneak up on people like that, Hermione finally managed to ask the most important question: "Now what's this about the goblins?"
The elf's large eyes opened wide with joy at being able to help, "The goblin's has records for everything miss! Wizards and muggles and elfs, and who's bound and who's married, and everyone so they knows who's vault is who's, and who can't go where miss!"
"And they share this with anyone?" Hermione asked, as the possibilities sprang up in her mind.
The little elf's ears drooped back down as she answered in a sad voice, "Fipsy doesn't know that miss, only that there's records."
Tucking her wand away, Hermione thanked the elf with a pat on the head, "Fipsy's your name?" At the elf's nod she continued, "well thankyou Fipsy, you've been a big help. Now, I don't want you spying on me, but I don't mind if you come up here, as long as you don't hide."
A few minutes later, when she'd pried the over excited elf from her leg, Hermione scribbled a short letter and headed out to the owlery.
Later that week, Hermione was making her way to detention as usual when it suddenly occurred to her, she was only meant to have a month's detention, so why was she still going after six weeks? Or more interestingly, why hadn't Professor Moody said anything? She no longer even read the graphically detailed effects book, so clearly it wasn't punishment, or shock treatment, or whatever it was he'd been aiming for. It was now more like a special tutoring session, only it was all of a decidedly dark nature. Just why was an ex-Auror teaching her dark magic anyway?
She decided to keep attending in the hope of working out just what was going on. Besides, she wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to read about things that - she was quite sure - she wouldn't be able to find in the library.