Ok lets see: I'm not even going bother apologizing. I'm an asshole, understood. :D That said, those of you still following this story are the true MVPs.
If you got notified of an update a couple days ago, whoops sorry, as I told another reviewer, I removed an Author's note I had posted as a chapter a while back. So sorry for the tease. :P
Those of you who commented on editing errors and whatnot: Lmao I know. There are probably even more here.
And to Gindjurra on Ao3: Your comments made my day, I hope you keep reading.
Not long after Halloween some Gryffindor boys landed themselves in the Hospital Wing, after an encounter with whatever violent death awaited in the third floor corridor. They lived, but the rumor was they'd been sworn to a magically binding oath by the Headmaster not to tell, to prevent any repeats of the accident. Hermione doubted it, more likely they were scared absolutely shitless. One of them was Ron Weasley, so she felt it was safe to assume that no intelligent person could repeat that incident, but that didn't stop her curiosity from being peaked, so she determined she'd endeavor to find out.
"The Lady Stark graces us with her presence!"
"How may we serve her Bossiness?"
With a scowl Hermione sent a Stinging hex at the twin she knew to be Fred, but he dodged out of the way with ease.
"Stop being so ridiculous," she chastised, giving a scrutinizing glance to the Great Hall around them. No one seemed to be listening, but that didn't mean they couldn't be overheard.
"Muffliato," she muttered, flicking her wand.
"I just wanted to ask if you two could help me find some information."
"About?" They asked together.
She rolled her eyes at their oddness, but pressed on.
"I want to know what's in the third floor corridor."
The twins shared devilish grins.
"Easy, it's a Cerberus. But that's not the interesting part. It's guarding something."
Interested, she gestured for them to continue.
"Hey, we don't have that kind of access. We're crazy and all, but Hellhounds are kind of beyond us."
She scowled, and moved to cancel the spell.
"Oh, Minnie, you have such little faith in us."
"And?"
"A beastie that dangerous at Hogwarts? Definitely belongs to Hagrid. He doesn't like us much-"
"An understatement if I ever heard one."
"But he'll love to share his wisdom with a cute lil' firstie like you. And he can't keep a secret to save his life.
She smiled innocently.
"I owe you guys," she promised, dropping the privacy spell and sauntering off.
"Harry," her voice sing-songy as she approached her friend on the opposite side of the room.
"I need a favor."
~TSE~
"Where's Harry?" she asked, not even looking up from her textbook. She honestly should've finished this essay a while ago, but she'd been busy with her experimenting, and well, it wasn't due for another thirty minutes.
"With Dumbledore," the Malfoy heir sneered, sitting down across from her.
She rolled her eyes. Typical. Why the Headmaster felt the need to have meetings with Harry almost monthly, she'd never know. Perks of being the Boy-Who-Lived she guessed.
"Dumbledore isn't out to get us just because we're Slytherins," she said despite this, just like she did every time Draco seemed ready to rant about the "Nutty Old Bastard."
"Of course you think that, you're muggleborn. You're basically an honorary Gryffindor anyways. Potter too. We might know you're just as much a Snake as the rest of us, but that doesn't really matter outside this common room, does it?"
She huffed at his stubbornness, but didn't press.
"I suppose he'll meet us in class then. Did you bring me the ingredients?"
He passed her a package wrapped in brown paper, the apothecary's label was stamped on one side.
She grinned, and Draco's face paled slightly. That was never a good sign.
"Why are we making Nullifying Draught anyways?"
"My Dad's idea. I want to come up with a variation that doesn't cause lasting damage. A bit weaker too. If I can create a potion that temporarily negates magic without harming people, maybe I can apply that to objects that would normally be magic sensitive. I may need your help on the Arithmancy. We'll see."
"Honestly, Stark, between you and Potter I never get to feel properly superior anymore," he complained, before gathering up her things.
"Come on. You're not making me late to class."
She laughed.
~TSE~
"Stark, do us all a favor, and do not talk," the rather slimy man said with a scowl, moving past her to another student. Hermione's eyes narrowed at his tone, but lowered her hand. She glanced over at Harry, who'd been staring blankly at his potion, counting his stirs.
Suddenly there was a loud bubbling sound, followed by a bang.
Harry's formerly neutral expression was suddenly turned up in the smallest of smirks, but no one but her would see it.
Behind them, Ronald Weasley's potion had overheated and exploded, covering Snape's entire front just has he moved to judge the work.
The surly professor cursed loudly and cancelled the class, but no one but Hermione would know.
It'd been happening all term. Snape just couldn't seem to avoid antagonizing them. He absolutely hated Harry, that much was clear, and Minnie just pressed all his buttons, or at least, that was the best guess they could make. Even Draco seemed to be getting a bit of a cold shoulder from his Godfather, but the Malfoy shrugged it off.
"We're Slytherins, it's not like I'm expecting him to pat my head and say he's proud of me. Besides, apparently not even family can outweigh his hatred for Potter over here," he said, rolling his eyes.
Harry didn't have much to say on the matter personally, except sometimes to smirk. To tell the truth, compared to the dramatic Draco and exuberant Minnie, he rarely did much else.
When something finally did break through Snape's disdain of Harry, it caught them all by surprise.
"Quidditch? Well, I read a bit about it when I first started, it is a big part of the culture and all. Why, did you want to know something specific?"
Harry snickered, and held up a placating hand.
"Spare me the trivia please, I was only asking because-"
Draco suddenly stormed into the common room looking like he'd just seen a ghost for the first time all over again.
"You're on the Quidditch team?!" He said, his voice sort of shrill.
"Yeah what he said."
The Boy Who Lived had a smile on his face that spoke of mischief, and only grew wider when his friends' faces told him exactly what they thought of this news. Hermione looked thoroughly unimpressed, Draco looked aghast.
"Um, Draco? Are you okay?" Minnie asked, reaching to touch her friend's shoulder.
"Harry," he bit out between clenched teeth.
"I desperately need for you to NOT be so damn good at everything! Bloody hell!" He said, throwing up his hands in the air, and storming out the way he came.
His friends snickered at his dramatics.
Draco of course, quickly got over it, but most surprising was the suddenly subdued behavior of their Head of House. Suddenly Harry was able to get higher than an A, and the snarky remarks lessened. Slowly but surely, the strange accidents eased up as well, but if Snape noticed the correlation, he didn't mention it. Who would've known that Quidditch would be the way into the bitter man's heart? Sort of?
~TSE~
"Minnie! My precious cinnamon roll! I've missed you so much!" The image of her Dad was strangely unclear, and she realized he was in motion.
"You're not driving, are you?" She asked, eyes narrowing. She thought he'd agreed not to accept her "calls" when distracted.
Wanda had sent her a scrying mirror. It was enchanted to be able not only to view whoever she wanted, but also to speak to them. Tony described it like getting a "cute little hallucination", so with that in mind, she'd gotten Professor Flitwick's assistance (and Wanda's permission) to alter it, so that if she tried to "call" someone, they'd have to verbally agree before it manifested. The last thing she needed was to enable her father's recklessness any more.
" Happy's driving. We're heading out to the airport. I have a military demonstration tomorrow."
If possible, her scowl deepened.
"Why you have to go into an active warzone just to show off your projects is beyond me. They have test sites for a reason. You could probably blow up your fancy fireworks in Nebraska or something, and the only terrorists you'd have to worry about would be redneck militias," she said offhandedly. It aggravated her, but she was still 12. There were only so many things she could bully him out of doing.
Tony stuck his tongue out at her, and she thought she could hear Happy snort.
"No worries Baby Bear, we're presenting the Honey Badger tomorrow.
I'll be snug as a bug in a rug."
Hermione grimaced.
"I can't tell if it's the loneliness or the old age that's causing this insanity of yours," she deadpanned.
Her dad clutched at his chest dramatically.
"Anyways," she ignored him.
"I suppose that's acceptable. But just let it be known that if you get blown up by extremists I'll Frankenstein you back together, and then I'll turn you into a toad just for the giggles.
Despite his grin his eyes were sober.
"I know Minnie, I'll be on a plane back to the States by tomorrow night.
She nodded.
"And I'll be calling you."
"Now, what did you need? Genius advice from your dear old Dad? Could this be about a boy perhaps?" he asked, wriggling his eyebrows outrageously.
"I mean I was going to ask you about the potential for anti-magic casings on electronics, but now that you mentioned it-"
"Minnie!" he gasped, only half-outraged.
"Then don't ask Daddy, honestly," she teased, smiling softly.
He pouted, but pulled his phone into view; he tapped furiously for a few moments before he answered.
"Ok, so I attempted something similar back when you were still my little Cuddlebug-"
"Daddy! Oh my God," she sighed.
Tony snorted.
"Teenagers. Anyways I tried a few different elements, and the most promising was Palladium. I actually cased a lot of Stark tech in that stuff , even tried making our tracker bracelets out of it, and it worked all right, but long term exposure started causing you headaches, so obviously it didn't work out.
The way Wanda explained it, the metal is magical itself somehow, and it was binding your magical core any time it touched you. So it's possible sure, but it was just safer to make everything out of sturdier materials and just hope your magic wouldn't eat through it.
"I'll send you a print out of my notes since your witchy nonsense doesn't exactly connect to the cloud, he said, tone half-complaining.
She rolled her eyes but grinned anyways.
Thanks Daddy. I'll be looking into it."
"No problem. Anything else?"
She bit her lip, and after glancing around the seemingly empty room, sighed. Lifting a privacy ward she gave Tony her best "This is Serious" look.
"I need you to look into Harry. He's hiding something, and I'm worried."
Her dad nodded.
"Way ahead of you. I've only got into public record so far, but I see what you mean. Barely any school records, no doctor visits, no online presence. You sure the kid's name isn't Bond?"
Hermione's eye twitched.
As far as her Dad was concerned, "Public Record" was apparently anything that didn't require access to a secret government database.
Whatever.
"I'll keep looking and get back to you, alright?"
"Yes sir. Thanks Daddy."
"Any time cupcake."
Hermione closed the connection, and Tony went back to playing with his phone, only to make Happy jump with a loud gasp a minute later.
"It was about a boy! Holy shit!"
~TSE~
Harry slid into the space between Draco and Minnie at the Slytherin table for Lunch looking for all the world like the cat who ate the canary.
"Draco, if you would," Hermione muttered. Without a word, he cast the privacy spells, and the students on either side of their little trio turned their attention away, Confunded.
"You were right, Hagrid did know, but he wasn't going to tell me outright. He did tell me how to put a Cerberus to sleep, but no way was he going to give up what exactly was down there," he explained.
Minnie sighed.
"That's good I guess. If worst comes to worst we can go down there ourselves."
"I'm not done you know," Harry stopped her mind from slipping into planning mode.
"He didn't tell me exactly what was down there, but that doesn't mean I don't know."
"Well? You can't possibly mean to keep us in suspense Potter! Tell us!" Draco sneered.
Giving them a glimpse of what McGonagall sullenly called the "James Potter" grin, he calmly took a sip of pumpkin juice, and sat back.
"Hagrid told me whatever's down there belongs to Nicholas Flamel, and it's being hidden so that Dark Wizards won't be able to steal it, which means-"
"It's the Philosopher's Stone," Minnie gasped.
"And the Dark Lord wants it," Draco said.
The three of them shared a grim look.
"Well damn, I suppose we're actually involved now then."
~TSE~
Draco let out a horrified sound as he looked down at his ruined clothes. Cerberus slobber, feathers from those damned keys, and Merlin forbid he ever find out what kind of residue that damn troll might have left on him.
And don't even get him started on the Chess set! There was dust all over him, and the bloody thing had tried to kill him! If he didn't think his father would punish him for acting like a "foolish Gryffindor" he'd be planning his letter of complaint right now. Unfortunately, he had walked into a death trap, and he wasn't supposed to even know about the Philosopher's stone. But what could he do? It'd been frightfully easy to learn exactly what was hidden on the third floor corridor, and not much harder to learn exactly who would want it.
The blood traitors could say what they wanted about the Malfoy family, but his parents weren't stupid or insane, and those were the only type of people who'd possibly want the Dark Lord to return.
That didn't mean his parents wouldn't kill him (or ground him at least) when they found out about him running around adventuring with the Boy Who Lived.
He shuddered slightly at the thought, then flinched when Minnie elbowed him in the stomach.
"Hey!"
"Draco! This is not the time! Stop whining and help me!" She shouted, gesturing wildly to where she was trying to transfigure some of the junk around them into a ladder.
With a huff, he pulled out his wand.
"Levicorpus," he incanted, and with a shrill squeak she began to rise somewhat shakily, into the air.
With a blush Minnie realized she was lucky to have put her jeans on before coming down here, especially when his concentration wavered for second, and she found herself upside down.
"Malfoy!" she shouted, only barely restraining herself from cursing.
With a quick apology she was righted again, and shortly she was lifting the trap door.
Fluffy was thankfully still asleep, but she wasn't about to tempt fate. As soon as she had both feet on the ground she was levitating Draco up, and soon they had left the room and it's guardian behind.
In the quiet of the hallway it was like the truth of the situation finally hit them.
They'd escaped the traps, made it to the next to final room, and even now Harry was trying to retrieve the Philosopher's Stone. But this wasn't an adventure anymore. Most likely Quirrell was on his way, and if they didn't bring help for Harry back before the Defense Professor got there then...
Minnie sprinted faster, Draco pushing himself to keep up.
They reached the Headmaster's Office only to realize they had no way to alert Dumbledore and get inside. They quickly gave up trying to find the candy that might be the password, instead just making as much commotion as possible, screaming and throwing a few spells as the gargoyle for good measure.
"What in Morgana's name is going on here?!" A sneering voice asked.
And there was Professor Snape, stalking towards them looking like some kind of Vampire Lord.
Hermione froze, unsure.
He'd been better lately. They'd ruled him out as the suspect. But she still remembered that Severus Snape was no saint, and even Draco couldn't be sure if he were loyal to the Dark Lord or not. Did she want to make the gamble that he wasn't working with Quirrell?
She couldn't be sure what he saw in her expression, but his face rapidly drained of fury, and he stepped in front of the gargoyle.
"Cauldron Cakes," he said gruffly, and with the sound of stone scraping together the door slid open, revealing the staircase to the Headmaster's office.
The two first years didn't bother questioning it, simply scurrying up the steps.
Neither did they question why the Headmaster was in his office at this time of night, clad in the loudest pajamas either of them had ever seen, but assuredly waiting for them.
"Harry's attempting to get the Philosopher's Stone before Professor Quirrell can steal it," she said, her voice steadier than she felt. In fact, as she said it, her mind was working more clearly than it had before, free of some of the adrenaline that had been driving her since they'd been forced to leave Harry back at the last room.
Suddenly she was making connections that had evaded her earlier, and a feeling of sick dread settled in her stomach.
'How could some of the most intelligent, powerful, adult wizards fail to protect such an object from the first thief who endeavored to steal it? From First years?'
'Why would anyone arrange a series of puzzles for an item that wasn't meant to be reached, when wards and even a simple lock and key apparently would've proved more effective?'
'How did we manage to get so far without so much as an alarm being set off?'
'Hell, why tell us where to look in the first place? A notice me not spell would be plenty enough to ensure no student even ventured to that hallway.'
"Thank you for informing me of this," Dumbledore was saying but blood was roaring in Minnie's ears.
She didn't hear the Headmaster instruct Professor Snape to take them to the hospital wing, and it didn't register when Snape raged at them the whole way there. They'd been suspicious of Snape, unimpressed with Flitwick. McGonnagall hadn't listened to them, and they'd frankly forgotten about Sprout.
But then Quirrell turned out to be the thief. Or worse.
And now…Dumbledore?
She could almost hear Draco's "I told you so", but she cold fear was mixing with her adrenaline and tiredness. Draco pulled her down to sit on a hospital bed, and silently they waited
It wasn't until an hour later when Dumbledore brought Harry to the Hospital Wing, mostly unharmed, that Minnie felt the tension leave her body.
Ok some things I didn't get to explain too well in the story:
This chapter has clarity issues and I'm sorry, but whatever.
One of the biggest deviations is something I didn't even elaborate on but it'll be noticeable next chapter, but just so I don't get the concerned reviews- they acted quickly enough to get there before Quirrell, so they had to do everything first including take out the troll
I also thought I'd be finishing First year and the summer but apparently not.
But I posted a chapter. So close enough.
Draco never explicitly tells them this, but in my mind he admitted pretty early on that he knew the Dark Lord would eventually return because his parents always told him so. So finding out him or his agents is after the stone is an obvious conclusion for them. I plan on actually writing this scene later, because an upcoming chapter is ALL about Harry basically, but we haven't quite got there.
Oh, and the Honey Badger is a tank that I made up. It's more or less indestructible, but in my mind it ended up getting decommissioned because the US got cocky with them and the terrorists found a fatal flaw, or even stole enough that they became more harmful than helpful. But mostly it was just a fun name and setting up for the first movie :/ Same with the Palladium name drop.
And if anyone is twitchy about how good they are at magic at this point let me just say that this is literally going to shift into a Super!AU eventually (if it doesn't classify already) these brats are going to be powerful. And they're all above average if not genius in at least one area. It's also fun :D
And finally, no fandom references (on purpose anyways), unless you count Game of Thrones (I'm doing my best to find a way to justify her saying "Winter is Coming" at some point lol). So instead, I give you memes.