Disclaimer: Stir seven times clockwise for each JK Rowling added to the solution. Do not forget to include her copyright to Harry Potter.

A/N: I would like to remind the reader that nearly all of Professor Trelawney's predictions in canon came true, but almost never in the way anyone expected. Take from that what you will. Yes, Hermione's ruling planet really is Mercury, which is associated with intelligence and quick thinking, whether that matters in practice or not.

Chapter 6

Hermione went down to breakfast the next morning tired and, if she were honest, more than a little cranky. How could she sleep after coming face to faces with that dog? The only good thing about the whole ordeal was the look on Draco Malfoy's face when he saw that Harry and Ron were still there, and even that was tempered by the fact that those two now seemed to think it had been a great adventure.

Harry tried to tell Hermione about a little package that Hagrid had moved from Gringotts to Hogwarts and that he thought that's what the dog was guarding, but she didn't want to hear it. In fact, she picked up her plate and moved a few seats down. She was going to stay far away from those two nutters from now on, as they were sure to cause more trouble sooner or later.

At least Dean Thomas was more or less normal. He even liked normal sports, like football. They had Potions again this morning, and Hermione hoped she could still keep her head in that class after last night.

Today's Potions "lesson" was to brew the simplest of the various kinds of Awakening Potions, something she could use some of herself to start with. She was a little distracted, and she knew it, which didn't bode well either. She wanted to keep an eye on Neville and Seamus in case they blew something up again, and keep an eye on Harry and Ron in case they tried something, all while doing a good job with her own potion.

"Awakening Potion, huh?" Dean said as Hermione started the burner. "I thought we already had that. It's called coffee." Fortunately, Snape either didn't hear him, or chose to ignore it.

"Boil one small, greened potato for fifteen minutes," Lavender read the first instruction. (Because the greened potato had sprouted eyes, of course.) "Why are we cooking lunch here?"

"Because greened potatoes are poisonous, and the heat neutralises the poison," Hermione explained, happy to see there were a few things muggles knew better than wizards about potioning.

Potions wasn't all that difficult in practical terms, Hermione decided, but she was quickly finding that it was her most conceptually challenging class, and the essays Snape assigned for homework bore that out. She had a pretty good idea of why each ingredient was included and some idea of the reasons for the order and the manner of preparation, but most of the stirring patterns still mystified her.

There were a few obvious reasons for the stirring patterns. In practical terms, stirring the potion more would result in more even heating of the liquid. Alternating clockwise and anticlockwise stirs would create turbulence and mix the ingredients faster, while keeping in the same direction would mix them slower. The number of stirs was harder, although there were clear numerological elements to it: many of the instructions said to stir seven times, or for seven minutes, or a multiple of seven. She could even understand the general principle of clockwise versus anticlockwise. In the old days, anticlockwise—that is, anti-sun-wise—was considered "unlucky". So it made sense that one usually needed to stir clockwise for "positive" effects and anticlockwise for "negative" effects.

But that didn't explain all of the switching off between the two, like alternating three times clockwise with once anticlockwise. Or the straight back-and-forth stirs that they needed to do at one step. Or some of the more advanced potions in the book that required stirring in more complicated figure-eights or trefoils or star shapes. Hermione didn't have a clue what the arithmantic foundations of those were, if they were arithmantic at all, though she wondered whether even fancier patterns like Lissajous curves and hypotrochoids would have any interesting effects.

Still, just following the instructions shouldn't be that hard. They had just got done adding the sunflower petals (which, predictably, made the potion briefly glow the colour of sunlight) and moved on to the dwarf bamboo leaves when they started to notice their potion was a little off.

"Hold on, is that supposed to happen?" Hermione said after adding the leaves. The potion was much more faintly, but distinctly, glowing like sunlight.

Dean checked the book. "It doesn't say anything about glowing at this step."

"Then I wonder why—"

She was interrupted by a blinding flash followed by the sounds of people stumbling and a lot of cursing. She looked around for the source of the trouble, but she could only see spots in front of her eyes. When she could see again, she looked around to find Neville and Seamus, looking very embarrassed in front of a cauldron whose contents seemed to have caught fire.

"Imbeciles!" Snape snapped at them as he drew his wand and dispelled the flames. "The instructions clearly state to add two preparations of sunflower petals, not three. You could have blinded someone with a stunt like that. Two points from Gryffindor."

"The sunflower petals!" Hermione whispered to Dean. "But we only added two preparations, didn't we?"

"Yeah, just the two. What do you think happened?"

"I'm not sure. Just a moment…" Hermione pulled out One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi to look up the ingredients. She hummed to herself as she found the correct page. "There. Dwarf bamboo can grow in very low light and is extremely sensitive to sunlight. Of course, did you see how bright that flash was? The potion must be a lot more sensitive to the sunflower petals after adding the dwarf bamboo leaves. And that means…" She grabbed a scraper from the preparation kit and scraped it across the cutting board. Sure enough, when she pulled it away, there was a bit of yellow residue on the blade.

"Oh," Dean made the connection. "The leaves were contaminated with residue from the sunflowers."

"Exactly. We saw it doesn't take much. We should have cleaned off the cutting board," she said with annoyance. "Now, we'll only get an E at best."

"Is there any way to fix it?" he asked.

She thought for a moment. She was sure there would be—another dash of dwarf bamboo or an extra stir somewhere—but even the simplest modifications to potions were third year material, and most were higher than that. She wasn't about to risk trying to guess it. "Not that we could do now. We'll have to finish it as is and be more careful about cleaning everything next time." And she wrote in her notes to do just that. They added the blueberries to seal the potion and turned in their sample along with the rest of the class.

The weekend passed quickly for Hermione. She started expanding her map, with her first priority being to pace off the whole non-forbidden part of the third floor so that she could be sure not to run into that awful dog again. She also took the time to pace off some of the classrooms and was annoyed, though unsurprised, to find that their combined length was slightly longer than the length of the corridor they ran alongside.

Between that, working on her homework, trying to avoid Harry Potter and all of the Weasleys, and venting her frustrations in a letter to her parents (mostly definitely not mentioning that dog—she'd rather not deliberately keep it from them, but you couldn't just go and say something like that), it took up most of her time that weekend, and before she knew it, she was back in her Monday classes—not that she minded, of course. She was Hermione Granger, after all.

The following Thursday was her birthday, but she wasn't expecting any special recognition, mostly because she hadn't got around to telling anybody about it. It seemed like a terribly awkward thing to slip into a conversation if one wasn't directly asked. It didn't improve her mood when she saw a team of six owls drop a large, suspiciously-broomstick-shaped package in front of Harry Potter, but, of course, she was happy to see an owl head toward her that morning with a package from her parents.

"Oh, today's your birthday?" Parvati said when she saw the colourfully-wrapped parcel. Hermione had been trying to stick close to Parvati and Lavender to avoid the boys, even though they rarely had much to talk about.

"Uh huh."

"Hermione, why didn't you tell us? Happy birthday!"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Thanks—It just never came up." She unwrapped her package to find it was actually two presents. The first was a surprisingly large box of biscuits, and the second was a round, thick piece of plastic marked over with constellations. "Oh, wow, that's a really nice planisphere," she said.

"A what?" asked Lavender.

"A plainsphere. Muggle astronomers use it. It's like a cross between an astrolabe and a star chart—for Astronomy Class," Hermione answered. "You see, you set the time and date like this…and it shows you the right star chart."

"Wow, that's really cool. I didn't know they'd come up with something like that."

Hermione nodded and opened the attached letter:

Happy Birthday Hermione,

We don't know if this will get to you on Monday or Thursday. We addressed it to be delivered on Thursday, but we don't know if Hogwarts will hold packages like that. Either way, have a great birthday. We thought your classmates might like to try a sample of our muggle desserts, so we sent enough biscuits for you to share, and we know you were complaining about having to use astrolabes, so your father found a nice planisphere to help with your studies.

We're sorry to hear some of your classmates are causing trouble. We're a little surprised about that Harry Potter. You wrote before that he didn't seem to let his fame go to his head. Anyway, it's probably best if you avoid those two when you can. And we're glad you didn't get in trouble, but you need to be more careful about getting locked out of your dorm.

We hope your study group and your roommates will make better friends, though. You haven't told us much about them. Can you tell us what they're like? How they grew up? You probably know a lot more than we do about wizard families by now.

Most everything's the same as always down here. We miss you, of course. Everyone asks us what you're up to, and we have to get a little creative with the answers. But we're so proud that you're doing just as well at magic as in muggle classes. Keep up the good work.

Love,

Mum and Dad

She put the letter down, a little ashamed that she hadn't got to know the people around her better. Between schoolwork and trying to avoid certain people, she hadn't put much effort into getting close to any others. Plus, small talk had never been her strong suit, and being raised in a different culture didn't make things any easier. Although for that day, she learnt, sharing the muggle biscuits did help some.

The following Saturday, she went back to pacing off the West Wing, spending the morning heading down from the part she had explored before: third floor, second floor, first floor, ground floor. She paced off the Great Hall and the Entrance Hall before finding the door that lead down to the dungeons. And that's when the trouble started.

The above-ground part of the castle was straightforward enough, if a bit peculiar, but the below-ground part was a labyrinth. Dark, old corridors cut through the cold stone seemingly at random, lined with storage rooms and unused classrooms and apartments and actual dungeon cells that probably hadn't been occupied in centuries. The place seemed to be constantly lit as if it were late at night and carried such a heavy air of creepiness that she wondered if it might have been intended to scare off non-Slytherins.

She wasn't too worried about the labyrinth itself. She was making a map, after all. And if she did get lost, she could always brute force it by only turning right until she got back to where she came in. No, the corridors weren't the problem. It was the people. She knew the dungeons were mostly the Slytherins' domain. She had been hoping to not meet any more people on her explorations so that she wouldn't have to explain what she was doing—again—but it was not to be. As she went deeper and deeper into the bowels of the school, she heard a voice call out behind her—quite possibly the voice she was least hoping to hear.

"Granger! What are you doing here?" It was Draco Malfoy. She kept pacing. "I know it's you! I'd know that ridiculous bushy hair anywhere. Look at me when I'm talking to you, Granger."

Hermione slowly turned around, clutching her sketchbook tight to her chest, trying to reach for her wand without being too conspicuous about it. She hadn't forgotten the rumours about Malfoy being practised with a few choice curses. He was not someone she wanted to meet in a dark corridor—which was exactly what she was doing.

"So that's what you're up to," he said triumphantly. "Snooping around trying to find our Common Room?"

She tried to keep her voice even: "No, Malfoy, I was just—"

"Oh, I know what you say you're doing," he sneered. "Everyone's laughing about it. The little buck-toothed muggle-born girl thinks she's going to make a map of the castle. As if anyone can do that."

"I c-can," she defended herself. "It's not quite to scale, b-but—" Everyone was laughing about it?

Malfoy slowly stalked closer to her. She started backing away. "You'd better learn your place, Granger. Bad things happen to people who don't."

"P-please," she stammered. "This is a p-public area. I'm just trying to learn m-my way around."

He came right up to her, now. "Well, then, let's see what you've been working on, if you're not causing any trouble." He grabbed the top of her notebook and tried to pry it from her grasp.

"No!" She pulled it back affording him only a glimpse of the map she was making of the dungeon. He grabbed it again.

"Give—it—here!" Malfoy spat. He yanked it out of her hands and inspected it. "A-ha!" he gloated. "I think I'll just take care of this for you." He ripped the map of the dungeon off the pad and started to crumple it up in one hand.

"No!" she yelled again, lunging to try to get it back. There was a flurry of swinging arms as Malfoy tried to smack her away and Hermione tried to block him. By accident, she happened to land a decent slap on his face, which distracted him long enough for her to grab both her notebook and the loose page and run away.

Unfortunately, Malfoy didn't take kindly to that. "You'll pay for that, mudblood!" he shouted. "Locomotor Wibbly!"

At instant later, Hermione felt her legs collapse out from under her, and she went sprawling painfully on the floor.

Malfoy strolled up to her, smirking to himself, undoubtedly with his wand at the ready. Hermione Granger wasn't a fighter. She'd dealt with a few bullies in her time, but it was mostly by ignoring them. She certainly wasn't used to them hexing her in the back. She wasn't one to break rules in general, much less get into an actual fight, but the sound of the boy standing over her, laughing almost leeringly at her prone form, awoke something new in her—a visceral anger mingled with a desperate need for escape. If this boy was going to start breaking the rules and hexing her in the corridor, then maybe it was time she fought back. She didn't know many strong spells yet that she was certain she could cast just now, but she could at least shoot sparks at him. She got hold of her wand and clutched it tight in her hand. She'd only get one shot, but if she could hit him in the face…

"Hey! What's going on down here?"

Hermione looked up to see an older boy heading toward them from around the corner ahead, and thanked God when she saw he wore yellow-trimmed robes and a prefect's badge. Her thoughts of hexing Malfoy back were completely forgotten.

Malfoy stopped. "What are you doing here, Truman?" he said with unmasked annoyance.

"Hufflepuffs use this level, too," the prefect said. "Now what's going on here, Mr. Malfoy?"

The younger boy grumbled a bit and then answered, "Miss Granger tripped. I was just helping her."

She staggered to her feet and spun around to face him. "You were not! You—" But she stopped when she saw the hatred in his eyes. And she remembered her mother's advice: "Just ignore them, and they'll move on." She hung her head and turned around. "Thank you," she muttered to the prefect.

"I'll help you find your way out of here, Miss Granger," Truman said. "Stay out of trouble, Mr. Malfoy."

The prefect led her out by way of the corridors near the Hufflepuff dorms, eventually coming out at the below-ground part of the Grand Staircase. Even in her dejected state, Hermione kept count of her footsteps so that she could recreate this path on her map afterwards. She would consider whether to risk the dungeons again some other time. She wished things wouldn't be so divisive around here, especially around lines of blood status, but she supposed there were prejudices and rivalries in every school.

The one thing that confused her in this, though, was what Malfoy had called her—"mudblood". She'd heard people talking about purebloods and half-bloods, so it wasn't hard to guess the meaning, but she'd never heard that word before. And somehow, it didn't seem like the kind of thing to bring up just now with the prefect. She filed it away to look up in the library later. It was bad enough that Malfoy had just taken her down like that. She at least wanted to know how offended she should be.

To round out the morning (and to get her mind off the dungeons), she decided to start in on the other towers in the West Wing. She couldn't get into Ravenclaw Tower, and the Grand Staircase would be a whole morning to try to navigate by itself, so she found herself climbing up higher and higher in the North Tower, wondering what was even up there if it wasn't dorms, since most of the staff apartments were either in the main part of the West Wing or off the Grand Staircase.

She was glad she'd already mapped out the rest of the West Wing. Even in something as simple as a rectangle, all the hidden doors and moving staircases made it tricky to find her way to the North Tower, and the tower itself climbed all backwards-like, like Cirith Ungol, with no real rhyme or reason. And then a painting of a little knight who couldn't swing a sword straight started shouting challenges at her until she explained that she was on a "quest" to explore the entire castle.

Finally, she came to a landing that from the count of the stairs was probably two floors below the top of the tower, and the staircase ended. At first, she thought there was nothing up here, but she happened to look at the ceiling. There was a circular trapdoor there with a brass plaque on it like the ones the rest of the professors had on their office doors. It read, "Sybill Trelawney, Divination teacher."

"This is an office?" Hermione mused. "I wonder how you get up there."

The trapdoor swung open, and a silver ladder descended to the floor.

"You ask it. Of course you do." She shrugged her shoulders, tucked her sketchbook under her arm, and climbed up the ladder.

She arrived at the top and found not an office, but what had to be a classroom, though it looked more like an abandoned tea shop. It was stiflingly hot, the air was thick with perfume and incense, and the entire room was dim and lit with red. Twenty-three little tables were squeezed into the room with twice as many chintz armchairs and matching pouf ottomans, so that there was barely room to turn around.

"Oh my…hello, what are you doing up here," said a soft, ethereal-sounding, thickly-accented voice. A tall, spindly woman climbed down another ladder from above. Hermione thought the woman looked and sounded like a stereotypical eastern European fortune teller—crossed with a dressed-up praying mantis. She had frizzy dirty-blond hair that stuck out everywhere even more than Hermione's own. She wore a spangled shawl and excessive amounts of costume jewelry and glasses so thick that you could start a fire with them. She smelled distinctly of sherry under all the perfume.

"Um, I was just exploring the castle," she said nervously. "Are—are you Professor Trelawney?"

"Yes, dear, I am. And who might you be?"

"I'm Hermione Granger…" She couldn't resist. She'd heard some about this teacher from Alicia. "If you teach Divination, didn't you see me coming?"

"I see many things," Trelawney said, with an eerie wave of her hands, "but not all may be interpreted. But come in, now. Let me see…precocious and inquisitive of mind, a wanderer far from the common path—were you perhaps born under Mercury?"

"Erm, I don't know, Professor. My birthday was on Thursday."

"Yes, Virgo, a child of Mercury, indeed." The off-kilter way Trelawney stared at her through those magnifying glasses made Hermione rather uncomfortable.

"Do—do you live up here, Professor?"

"But of course, my apartment is just upstairs. Like you, I find that descending into the crowds of the main school clouds the Inner Eye."

"I'm…not sure I have the 'Inner Eye'…" Hermione started.

"But you keep to yourself, and you are separate from all others," Trelawney continued.

"Not really…" Hermione said self-consciously.

But the Divination teacher kept going: "Oh, I sense great changes coming for you, dear. You will find the prize you are seeking in November—"

"What? I'm not seeking a prize—"

"But in the spring, one of your number will be sacrificed—"

"What number? I don't have a 'number'. I…I think you must be mistaken, Professor." She said nervously, backing toward the ladder.

"Oh, those who have the Sight will know it." Trelawney said.

"Yeah, uh…I think I'll stick with arithmantic projections, ma'am."

"Numbers cannot convey the full experience of the Inner Eye, child."

"Well…maybe not, but…um, at least we know what we're talking about—Goodbye, professor, I have to go." Hermione reached the trap door and scrambled down the silver ladder, her heart pounding, Had she really just talked back to a teacher like that? Yes, yes she had. Professor Trelawney did not seem like the kind of teacher she would get along with, and she didn't need the Sight to see that. She barely noticed that she hadn't had a chance to pace off the classroom. Then again, it was too crowded with furniture to do it, anyway.

Still, she was a bit troubled as she returned to the more travelled parts of the castle. The woman may have been little better than a muggle fortune teller, but her words, "you are separate from all others" hit a little too close to home. It wasn't just maths that set her apart around here. The culture gap alone put her in a small minority, and she was more of a natural loner than she really liked to admit. It was so hard to relate to most of the people in the castle.

She decided to call it a day after that and head back to the Common Room. She started wondering what she was going to write to her parents tomorrow. As much as it pained her, she felt like most of today's events were once again things that were probably best left out of her letters. Getting hexed in the back by a rich, privileged bigot wouldn't play too well with her parents, and Professor Trelawney was just too weird to bring up.

Her roommates' advice—just stay away from the Slytherins—was decidedly unhelpful. It certainly didn't address the root problem. But she had to admit she didn't have anything better to work with at the moment.