Disclaimer: JK Rowling to the power of Harry Potter is somewhere on the order of one billion galleons.

A/N: If anyone thinks Hermione seems out of character in this chapter, I can personally attest that prolonged stress and sleep deprivation can do that to a person. This will come to a head in the next chapter.

Many thanks to Pahan for providing great feedback and encouraging and challenging me to be bolder in writing this and upcoming chapters, which I think has made them much better than my original version.

Chapter 8

Hermione was on edge from the minute the Potions class started, when she and Dean found themselves at a table adjacent to Draco Malfoy and his crony, Goyle. Just what she needed, she thought. It was hard enough just dealing with Professor Snape every week. Malfoy had more or less left her alone since their confrontation in the dungeons, but he had been in an increasingly bad mood in the last two Potions classes.

"Padma heard from Mandy Brocklehurst who heard from Daphne Greengrass that Malfoy's been complaining because a muggle-born is getting better grades than he is," was Parvati's breathless explanation, and Hermione had to conclude that it was depressingly plausible, from what she had heard about pureblood politics. Hermione just continued to ignore him. After all, there had been people around who were jealous of her intelligence since she was five. She had no intention of letting anything the little git said interfere with her studies.

But Malfoy didn't say anything to her. He only sneered at her a few times. Actually, he sneered at her fairly often, as he kept glancing suspiciously in her direction, but she didn't think much of it. It was only when she and Dean were both bent over the Potions book, checking the next step, and Snape was at the far corner of the room making waspish comments at Harry and Ron, that Malfoy made his move.

Hermione saw the movement out of the corner of her eye and looked up just in time to see Malfoy toss a handful of something into her cauldron. She didn't quite get a good look at it, but she didn't need to, as the potion's reaction made it obvious, almost instantly boiling over in exactly the same way that Neville and Seamus had botched their potion last week.

It was only by reflexes faster than Hermione knew she had that catastrophe was averted. She reached under the cauldron and flipped the burner off before the now-explosive liquid touched it—the blast last week had been enough to send Seamus to the Hospital Wing. As it was, she got a scalded hand for her efforts, but that was the least of her problems, and Snape had turned toward the shouts and was approaching with a wicked grin.

"Tut tut," he said, casually vanishing the spilt potion with his wand. "Pine nuts again. Thought you'd try to experiment without permission, Granger? Or did you actually manage to read the wrong page?"

"N-neither, Professor," she stammered. "Malfoy threw them in."

"I did not," Malfoy said indignantly. "I can't help it if you don't know how to brew a simple potion."

"But I saw you throw them!"

"Prove it!"

Hermione turned a hair paler and looked at Dean pleadingly, but he shook his head slightly. He hadn't been looking that direction, and, Gryffindor though he was, he wasn't about to lie to Snape.

"Well, I'd say this work rates a Poor," Snape said. Hermione's eyes grew to the size of saucers in horror. "No use trying to salvage what's here, and I'm afraid you won't have time to start over." He vanished the contents of their cauldron without another word.

"Professor," she tried again, "We don't even have any pine nuts set out here. The potion doesn't call for them. We didn't put them in."

"I still see no proof," Snape said viciously. "You should not make unfounded accusations, Miss Granger."

"But I—"

"And five points from Gryffindor for talking back."

Hermione let out a small squeak and clenched her fists tightly under the table. She wanted very much to walk out right now, but she knew that would just make things worse. Lavender and Parvati gave her a sympathetic look.

"I'm sorry about that," Dean whispered when Snape moved on. "I wasn't paying attention, and—"

"Just forget it," Hermione said. She turned away from him and sat down and read the textbook for the rest of the period.

Unfortunately, she couldn't even get off that easily. As she left the classroom, not looking up from her feet, she'd only made it a short way down the corridor when she heard a voice call out, "Running off crying to McGonagall, are you, Granger?"

She whirled around. "I am not crying!" she shouted, which was quite true. She was far too angry. "Can't we just stay out of each other's ways, Malfoy?"

"Like I'm going to do what you say, mudblood. Somebody needs to show you your place."

"I'm only trying to do well in my classes—"

Malfoy just talked over her. "Your sort don't really belong here in the first place. I don't know how you pulled one over on Professor Vector—"

"I didn't—!"

"—but I think you can see Professor Snape knows how to handle people like you properly."

Malfoy drew his wand and, almost faster than she could follow, cast, "Tsimpima!"

She tried to dodge, but the spell hit her left shoulder, and she could attest then that the Stinging Jinx lived up to its name.

"Ouch! Please, I don't want any trouble." Hermione raised her own wand defensively and backed away.

All three of them took a step toward her, grinning evilly. "No prefects around to save you now," Malfoy said. She yelped as he hit her with another Stinging Jinx, evidently unafraid of retaliation.

She needed to get away from them, and fast. She needed to keep them from following and hexing her, which meant she needed a way to slow them down reliably without using too much power. One of the very few jinxes they'd learnt so far in Defence Class was the obvious solution. She raised her wand, still vaguely horrified at the blatant rule-breaking of it, and uttered, "Colloshoo."

Crabbe, who was nearest to her, toppled forward, his shoes stuck firmly to the floor. She turned her wand on a surprised Malfoy, but before she could cast again, she heard a gruff voice say, "Vermillious, and she got a face full of red sparks from Goyle. Then, as she blinked them away, Malfoy yelled, "Mordeodigiti!"

The Toe-Biting Jinx hit her in the stomach, but that didn't matter. She felt her trainers constrict painfully around her toes, so much that she stumbled and collapsed onto her bum, struggling to scoot away from them. Crabbe unstuck himself, and the three boys started advancing on her again. She raised her wand to defend herself, desperately trying to think of a spell that could even the odds. With a cry of "Verdimillious!" she created a cloud of green sparks large enough to cover all three of them, but even as she uttered the spell, the boys were lowering their wands.

"Magic in the halls? I'm sure you know that's against the rules, Granger." Out of nowhere, Professor Snape was looming over her.

She managed to scramble to her feet, though she still couldn't feel her toes. "But, Professor, they—"

"Ten more points from Gryffindor, and be thankful it's not more. Now, get a move on!" he snapped. The boys smirked at her silently.

Hermione stood stock still for an instant, every muscle on a hair trigger, and then spun on her heel and ran down the corridor—not so much because she was upset, though she was, but because she knew instinctively that if she opened her mouth again, she would say something she would regret. It was a pure fight-or-flight response, she thought afterwards, and that was definitely not a fight she could win. She spent most of that afternoon in her dorm room. After losing fifteen points in one morning—all of them completely unfair—she could be forgiven for not wanting to face her house-mates any more than necessary. She never thought she'd be so glad to see the weekend.

Hermione sat in the library on Sunday, trying to fight off one of those afternoon attacks of sleepiness that seemed to be hitting her more and more often. It was her own fault, of course, for staying up past midnight so often. She almost felt like she'd been bewitched, it was so hard to break the habit.

She'd spent the weekend, like the last couple, off by herself, reading—the time she didn't need for homework, anyway. She felt vaguely like she ought to be hanging out with her roommates or something, but anymore, it felt like by the time she got to the weekend, she needed the time alone to rest up mentally. Besides, she enjoyed taking some time out to read what she wanted to, whether it was about the Second Derivative Test or Animal Ghosts of Britain or just taking a closer look at One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi—when she could stay awake, anyway.

She might well have dozed off for a few minutes, her head hanging low over the table. At a sharp sound, she snapped awake—it was only an older Ravenclaw slamming a book shut, but at least she was reasonably alert again. She reread the page she was on so she could actually remember it and kept going.

With a start, she soon noticed the light through the windows was fading. She checked her watch and started fuming. She was late for dinner! This was happening far too often lately; she couldn't understand where the hours went. She would barely have time after dinner to scribble out a letter to her parents and send it before curfew, and while her homework for tomorrow was done, she still had a Charms essay that she'd somehow managed to put off for the whole weekend. Again.

Hermione Granger never thought she would have trouble getting her homework done. And no, she certainly hadn't missed an assignment, nor had her marks fallen. But it felt like it was getting harder to keep up, even though the work objectively wasn't any harder, and that worried her to no end.

Hermione was by no means incompetent at managing her own studies. The obvious thing to do in a situation like this was to draw up a homework schedule, which she did. Unfortunately, and uncharacteristically, she couldn't seem to predict how long her homework would take anymore. She was having a harder time focusing than she used to. Not that she was slacking off by any means—if she thought about it, she was reading more voraciously than she ever had in her life, since she was usually more engrossed in numbers. Even she had a hard time believing how fast she was getting through books, but there was no useful order to it. She just grabbed whatever book caught her eye off the library shelves—there were so many of them—and most of them were of little practical import to her classes. Even a detailed history of Grindelwald's War, for example, contained little to nothing in the way of magical instruction, wizarding culture, or even duelling tactics, which were likely to be useful in day-to-day life. But Merlin, it was fascinating—wow, she really was starting to talk like them.

Anyway, she wasn't used to being this easily distracted, and it disturbed her not knowing where it was coming from. It disturbed even more her that she was barely motivated enough to finish her homework on time, and she really didn't know where to turn. It would be hard enough to tell her parents in person, let alone in a letter, and this just wasn't the sort of thing she could tell a teacher. Not with her reputation. And there was nothing academically wrong with her—well, besides Snape—so why bring it up?

Hermione ate dinner quickly, paying little attention to what was on her plate and speaking only a few curt words to anyone who spoke to her. She felt exhausted, and the day wasn't over yet—plus, she still didn't really feel like dealing with people right now. When she was done eating, she then trudged up to the owlery. It was actually starting to feel like a chore writing these letters home every Sunday, which was probably another bad sign. She didn't dislike it—in fact, she would have liked to spend more time on it, but the problem was that time was something she never seemed to have enough of, even when she thought she ought to. And, more to the point, she never really knew what to say anymore.

But her mum and dad were expecting her to write, so she went up and hesitatingly wrote out a short note, just putting down whatever came to mind. Oddly, most of the unpleasant things that had been going on literally didn't come to mind, not until she was sitting up in the Common Room wondering why not, and if she really would have written them anyway.

She tried to get started on her Charms essay and managed to write about a foot—that she would probably have to rewrite tomorrow, since she kept dozing off in her chair, rendering it far more disjointed than her usual work. In an unusually clear moment of self-awareness, she decided that she must be even more sleep-deprived than she thought. Normally, if she was behind on her work (and this was behind for her), she would stay up late to finish it, but that wasn't working anymore, since she just couldn't stay awake to do it. She'd have to finish the essay up tomorrow. She wearily climbed the seven flights to her bedroom and, like Sally-Anne had their first night, fell asleep on her bed without even changing out of her robes.

Daniel and Emma Granger waited in the kitchen at breakfast on the Monday before Halloween for her daughter's weekly letter to arrive. Sure enough, right on time, a short-eared owl flew up to house and tapped on the window with its beak. Emma opened the window, took the letter from the bird, and fed it a piece of bacon. It hooted happily and flew up into the tree, where it would wait for them to write a reply. The Grangers were still amazed at how intelligent the post owls were.

Emma opened the envelope and sighed. Hermione's letters had been getting progressively darker over the past few weeks. It wasn't anything major. It just seemed like the mentions of her classmates were growing fewer, or when she did mention them, it was more often to complain about them. And while she was doing well in her classes, it was becoming clear that History, Defence, and Potions all frustrated her endlessly. The letters had grown a bit shorter and sparser, too. She could tell her daughter wasn't sure what to write anymore. It was hard for any parent to see their child begin to grow up and grow apart from them, but a it was lot harder when she was living in an entirely different world and apparently not adjusting well.

So Emma was more than a little concerned when her daughter's latest letter came out a good deal less neatly written than usual.

"Oh, dear, it looks Hermione's really got trouble now," she said sadly.

"Oh, what happened?" Dan said.

Emma read the letter aloud.

Dear Mum and Dad,

I just don't know what to do anymore! Professor Snape gave Dean and me a Poor on our potion on Friday. A Poor! And he knew that we were doing just fine until that git Draco Malfoy sabotaged us. He managed to slip pine nuts into our cauldron, and it boiled over. (Pine cones are opened by fire, so they have a strong reaction to the heat—it's not important.) We tried to tell Professor Snape, but we couldn't prove Malfoy did it.

I asked Professor McGonagall if there was anything we could do, but she just said to file a complaint, and I asked around, and people say Professor Snape has complaints filed against him all the time, and no one ever does anything because he has friends on the Board of Governors! Including Malfoy's father! I filed a complaint against him and Malfoy, but there's not much she can do because Professor Snape is in charge of the Potions grades.

Parvati said she thought Malfoy was mad because I'm getting higher grades than he is, and he's one of those purebloods who think they're better than everybody else. And then Harry Potter and Ron Weasley said to just let it go. Actually so did Lavender and Parvati. And Neville Longbottom said he thinks Snape and Dumbledore worked together during that civil war or something, and that's why Dumbledore never does anything about him. It's like everyone just accepts how awful Professor Snape is because they can't do anything about it, and the worst part is I can't think of anything to do either.

Arithmancy this week was weather forecasting. I don't think it's up to muggle standards, though. In fact, I'm not even convinced it's really magic like before when we used numerology for probability manipulation, but it seems to work well enough for wizards. I'm really excited for Charms this week, though. Professor Flitwick says we're finally going to learn levitation.

Love from Hermione

"I can't believe they let that man get away with that," Dan groused.

"Well, we know the magical world is behind the times," Emma said dejectedly. "I just wish we could do more for her. It's like Year 3 in primary school all over again, except we're not there to hold her when she cries."

"God, I was hoping I could wait a couple more years before seeing our little girl have her heart broken," Dan said. "I don't know what we can do, though. They're going to make her go to a magical school somewhere, and it's really only going to be Hogwarts or that one in France."

"Just keep encouraging her, Dan. That's all we can do.

Dear Hermione,

That sounds pretty awful about Professor Snape. He shouldn't be allowed to behave like that, no matter whose friend he is. Out here, if something like that happened, someone would write a letter to the paper and complain, but I don't know if you can get away with that there, especially while you're still in his class. Are there some older students or former students who aren't taking Potions anymore who could do something? We wish we could do more for you, but the magical world is so isolated from the "muggle" world that we don't have much access to anything, really.

We do hope your year isn't going too badly for you. You were so excited to start learning magic this summer, but now it sounds like a lot of your classes are causing trouble. And you don't seem to be all that close with your classmates. We're sure it's hard adjusting to what's basically a completely different culture, but we do worry about you. We want you to do your best, yes, but we also want you to enjoy yourself. If you have any kind of problems, please try to at least find a teacher you can talk to. We know you haven't had much luck with Professor McGonagall, but Professor Vector and Professor Flitwick both sound pretty helpful.

Please try to stick it out, at least for this year. If you really think it would help, we can look into having you transfer somewhere else, but, honestly, there aren't that many options. Just remember that we love you and support you here at home.

Love from Mum and Dad

Hermione read over the letter with a frown when she took it from the owl the next day. She was all too aware that she wasn't that close to her classmates, and her classes certainly weren't all she had hoped they would be. But transfer? She hadn't even considered that, and she hadn't even told her parents the worst. She wasn't the first person Malfoy had sabotaged in class, not to mention the hexing incidents. But leaving Hogwarts would feel like failing—like giving up. There had to be some way to make things better here, if only she could understand how things worked in the magical world. If only she could understand why she was having so much trouble independent of everything else. She felt like she was on the verge of failing a test that could have passed with flying colours if she'd tried…if she only knew where to even start.

Well, her parents had given her one idea. And she happened to be sitting right by one person who might be able to help.

"Percy," she said, turning to the red-haired prefect on her left.

"Yes, Miss Granger?"

"Isn't there anything anyone can do about Professor Snape?"

Percy glanced up at the High Table, where Snape was grimly reading the morning paper and taking a sip of tea. He leaned a bit closer to Hermione. "What do you mean? What did he do?"

"Well, he gave Dean Thomas and me a Poor on our potion when we were sabotaged by Draco Malfoy, and he…took he took fifteen points from me for things Malfoy started." She sniffled slightly. "And he's a really unfair teacher in general."

"Oh, sorry, that's too bad." Percy said sympathetically. "Draco Malfoy's been a bigger troublemaker than most of the Slytherins all year."

"Malfoy, you say?" She turned to see Fred and George sitting a couple of seats down between Alicia and another Quidditch player, Angelina Johnson. "If you're having trouble with Malfoy," one of them said—George, she thought, "you might appreciate what's going to happen to him this morning."

"Alright, what did you two do?" Percy asked warningly.

"We will not confirm or deny any involvement," George replied.

"You've got nothing on us," Fred confirmed. "Why, maybe it was Lee who did it."

"But it should be pretty entertaining, right Fred?"

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea, guys," Hermione said nervously. "What if he tries to get you back?"

"Oh, don't worry, Malfoy's smart enough not to try anything in the Hall."

"Besides, we've got two years' experience on him and those two lumps he calls his friends."

"It's not you I'm wor—"

"Oww! Augh! Let go! Get this—stupid thing—off of me!" Hermione was cut off by a very nasally-sounding Draco Malfoy leaping from the Slytherin Table and shouting loudly. He pulled something that looked like a teacup off his face and smashed it against the wall. With half the school laughing at his now unusually-red nose, he glared across the Hall at the Weasley Twins, who were laughing the most hysterically of all. Most of the Professors looked quite displeased by the incident, and Snape had swooped down to make a show of taking care of things at the Slytherin Table, but Malfoy had already sat down, since he really couldn't try anything with so many eyes on him, and started muttering angrily to Crabbe and Goyle.

"A nose-biting teacup!" Percy exploded. "And in the middle of the Great Hall! Really?"

"Brilliantly simple!" George exclaimed.

"I didn't think it would work," said Fred.

"Professor McGonagall will hear about this," Percy grumbled.

"Ah ah ah, brother, you still have no proof we did anything," Fred countered.

"Especially since Malfoy smashed the thing."

Percy pinched the bridge of his nose. "One of these days, these pranks are going to come back to bite you two," he said.

"Bite you! Ha!" George said.

"Maybe he does have a sense of humour."

"He does have a point," Hermione suggested. "If nothing else, Professor Snape can find an excuse to take points from you in class."

"Yeah, but he does that anyway," said George.

She and Percy both rolled their eyes. "Percy, I know a lot of the sixth and seventh year students don't take Potions anymore," she said. "Couldn't they write letters to the Daily Prophet or something about Professor Snape?"

"Well, they could," Percy said with a sigh. "Unfortunately, it probably wouldn't help all that much. There actually was a letter-writing campaign a few years ago, when my brother, Bill, was starting here. A lot of people complained about him, but Professor Dumbledore didn't want to fire him, and Lucius Malfoy convinced the Board of Governors to let him off with what amounted to a slap on the wrist. But you shouldn't worry too much. Snape usually won't give you too much trouble if you keep your head down and are respectful to him."

Hermione sighed and wearily went back to her breakfast. Apparently, there was no getting rid of Professor Snape. For supposedly being the best school of magic in the world, Hogwarts had some serious issues. A Potions teacher who hated children, and yet nobody could seem to get rid of him was only part of it. History? Binns had seniority on everybody, including Dumbledore. Defence? Supposedly cursed, and, given the small size of the wizarding world, they were lucky to get anyone to teach it at all. And bullying? For Gryffindor and Slytherin alike, apparently, the number one rule at Hogwarts was, "Don't get caught."

She left breakfast wishing she could go back to bed, and not just because she hadn't got enough sleep. But no, she had Charms this morning. Percy went on ahead to…wherever he went all the time—he seemed to just appear and disappear at random, juggling his twelve classes. So she followed Alicia, with half the Quidditch team close beside, when she heard a voice call out, "Alright, Weasels, I know it was you!"

She looked over her shoulder to see Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle storming toward them, wands already drawn.

"Why, Mr. Malfoy, I have no idea what you're talking about," George said, obviously holding back a laugh, since Malfoy's nose was still bright red.

"You think almost taking my nose off is funny, do you?" Malfoy fumed. "Did you put them up to this, Granger? I didn't think you had the guts to go out for revenge."

"No!" she cried in horror as Crabbe moved toward her. "I didn't—"

"I know Miss Granger wasn't involved," Fred said, stepping in front of her. "She's far too much of a killjoy for following the rules."

"You should not make unfounded accusations, Mr. Malfoy," George added, mimicking Snape's voice. "After all, can you prove that any of us was involved?"

"And besides," George continued, "if, hypothetically, we were in some way involved with planting that little teacup on your table…"

"We wouldn't need an excuse," they said in unison.

By now, Alicia and Angelina had backed away behind Hermione. Hermione had started backing away, too, but not fast enough because Malfoy and his friends and Fred and George all started casting spells.

Several things happened very fast. First, spells started flying—she didn't even know who cast what, but she distinctly heard "Tarantellegra," "Furnunculus," and "Vermillious." Then, there was a loud bang as the spells collided and interacted unpredictably, and a whirlwind of red sparks exploded through the corridor. Hermione was thrown to the floor, and she felt a painful heat on her skin as the sparks danced dizzyingly around her eyes. When she came to her senses, she smelt something smoldering. She looked and saw the letter her parents sent her, which, being written on paper rather than less flammable parchment, had been set on fire by those overpowered sparks.

"My letter!" she screamed. She scrambled over and quickly beat the little flames out with the sleeve of her robes, but the damage was done. The letter was barely still in one piece and barely readable.

"My father will hear about this!" She looked over and saw the primary participants in the battle all had boils on their faces and were wobbling on dancing legs. From the blistering sensation on her face, she was sure she had a few boils herself. The hem of Goyle's robe was on fire. Malfoy looked apoplectic, but he didn't try anything else and instead staggered away, presumably to the Hospital Wing.

Fred and George quelled their dancing feet with a simple Finite Incantatem and helped Hermione to her feet.

"Phew, things can get a little crazy if you mix too many spells," George said. "If you don't still have that Boil-Curing Cream from your first week, we have extra. You don't really need the Hospital Wing for it."

"We are sorry about that," Fred told her. "We didn't think he'd try to start something."

"Well, not with anyone but us, anyway," George corrected.

"See, we've been told on plenty of times before, and—"

"Thanks," Hermione muttered as she pushed past them, averting her eyes.

"Are you okay?" Alicia asked as she ran past.

"I'm fine," she lied. Right now, she just wanted to get away where they wouldn't see her crying, but she could probably compose herself in time for class. The way she figured it, she had just enough time to run back up to her dorm—Thank God she actually had saved some of that Boil-Curing Cream to show her parents. And thank God Snape had actually let her when she asked. (He claimed he appreciated people "showing some actual interest".) It was about the one sensible thing he'd done in his class.

"Well, I feel kind of sorry for her, now," Fred mused as he watched Hermione go. "That was mostly our fault."

"She seems to be having a hard enough time," George agreed. "And I've seen that same look she has on Percy. She's obviously working too hard."

"Mm-hmm. I wish we could do something to get her to come out of her shell a bit," Fred replied with a grin.

"Oh, no you don't," Alicia Spinnet came back and scolded them. "She's got enough problems without you two messing things up for her."

"Oh, we wouldn't do anything bad to her. Just a bit of fun," he replied.

"Like maybe prank her slide rule to crack a few jokes," George suggested. "Do you know where she keeps it?"

"Prank her slide rule?" Alicia said incredulously. "She's Hermione Granger. She doesn't use a slide rule."

"Well, we just thought it would help if she could laugh at herself a little," Fred told her. "Besides, it might convince Malfoy she didn't have anything to do with his little incident."

"You two just lay off her, will you? She's having a hard enough time adjusting to the magical world as a muggle-born. She never had any magical friends before, and she's been having a hard time opening up to people here."

"It can't be that bad. You guys are her friends, aren't you?" asked George. "And we've seen her hanging around with some others in her year."

"You know what," Fred interrupted, "if you feel that strongly about it, we won't prank her. She's probably too smart for us, anyway."

George snapped his head to look at his twin in surprise.

"Thank you," Alicia said. "It's good to see you have a sympathetic side." She walked off.

"Why did you do that?" George whispered.

"Because I just had an idea."

"I thought that was my job."

"Not today, brother. Besides we can't have Alicia tipping little Hermione off. She's too smart to just slip something by her, like Malfoy."

"But you just said—"

"I said we wouldn't prank Hermione Granger. Have you noticed where she usually sits at mealtimes?"

"Ohh…" He remembered quite well, now.

"Exactly. Now all we need is some kind of light-hearted area-effect prank to nail the both of them at once."

"Well, now that you've brought him up, I did have an idea for combining a Comb-a-Chameleon with a Springloaded Switching Siphon."

"Oh? Do tell…"

"So an exponent…means…" Cedric Diggory checked his notes. "Multiplying a number by itself over and over."

"That's right," Hermione said. "It's a lot like how multiplying is adding a number to itself over and over."

The Wednesday afternoon study group was probably the high point of Hermione's week so far, although she was looking forward to Halloween, too. But what with the mess with Snape and Malfoy, plus little annoyances like Ron Weasley being in an even worse mood than normal for no apparent reason, the study group was a definite improvement. It was also some refreshing intellectual stimulation coming off of History.

"Okay, so, like, ten times ten is a hundred," Cedric continued. "Ten times ten times ten is a thousand…ten to the fourth power is ten thousand?"

"That's right."

"Wow, those are going to be some big numbers pretty fast," Alicia said. "That means ten to the tenth power is…"

"Ten billion," Hermione said idly.

Alicia laughed. "Just as fast with those, huh? What eight to the seventh power, then?"

"2,097,152."

"How about seven to the eighth power?" Roger challenged her.

"5,764,801, but I memorised them up to ten to the tenth, just like the multiplication tables," she said, staving off any further queries. "I doubt we'll do much in class beyond the fourth power this year, and usually only squares."

"I don't know," said Roger. "I think spellcrafting might use higher powers."

"Huh…well, that might get complicated, then. Hmm…I wonder…Can you hold on a minute? I want to take a quick look at the library's copy of Principles of Analytic Spellcrafting."

"Um…sure." Alicia said.

Hermione eagerly rose to head off to the library's textbook reserves.

The older girl giggled after she left: "She's so cute."

"Never stops, that one," Roger added with a chuckle.

"I know. I love how she just runs all over the place like that."

"Okay, she's not a cat, Alicia," Cedric said.

"I don't know," Roger joked. "I'm not completely convinced she's human."

"Alright, cool it, you two. She's a first year girl who just happens to be better at Arithmancy than…anyone Professor Vector has ever seen."

"Yeah, but that's the thing. Think what she'll be capable of by her seventh year. She'll probably be the youngest duelling champion ever or something."

"Hey, maybe she can finally get rid of Snape," Alicia added. All three of them laughed.

"Yeah, like anyone could get rid of Snape," Cedric finally joined in. "Maybe if McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout all chased him out an upstairs window, he'd go away."

Hermione stood very still by the reserve stacks. It must be something about the acoustics of the library, she thought. They must not realise she could still hear them. She tried to shake it off. After all, it was just good-natured ribbing. But still, as nice as her Arithmancy classmates were, she couldn't entirely shake the feeling that they really did think of her as their little pet firstie—or else something exotic to be put on display—like she didn't quite fit with them.

And getting rid of Snape? If only.

As for the book, well, she only needed to flip through a few pages to find her answer: she should have known that spellcrafting would involve taking a lot of seventh powers and seventh roots. She even saw things as high as twenty-first powers in some places. She put the book back and returned to the study table, trying her best to smile as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. After all, why should she let it worry her? If the others noticed anything amiss, they didn't say it.

It happened at dinner that night. Hermione ate in her usual spot, mostly in silence aside from an occasional comment to Percy Weasley beside her. Between the main course and dessert, an impressionable second-year Gryffindor named Katie Bell came up to Percy from his other side and spoke to him.

"Excuse me, Percy," she said, holding up a small box. "Could you take a look at this please?" She stepped to the side slightly, so that she could see both Percy and Hermione.

"What is it?" he asked, taking the box.

"I'm not really sure," she said. "I was hoping you could tell me."

"Well, let's just take a look, then," he said importantly. He opened the box, and, suddenly, something sprung out of it in a cloud of colourful smoke, hitting both Percy and Hermione square in the face. Hermione was momentarily blinded by the smoke and felt something like cobwebs brushing through her hair, which she tried to swat away, coughing.

When the smoke cleared, she immediately noticed two things. First, everyone around her, including Katie Bell, was laughing and pointing at her and Percy—but mostly at her. Second, Percy's normally red hair was now light brown.

"Percy—your hair—" she started.

But when Percy turned to her, his eyes went wide. "Miss Granger…" he said, pointing at her own head.

Hermione quickly pulled a handful of her hair in front of her face. "Eek!" she squealed in protest upon seeing that her frizzy brown hair had taken on the colour of Percy's usual flaming orange.

"Fred! George! What did you do?" Percy shouted rising to his feet and rushing over to where the twins were sitting. Hermione followed him.

"We're sorry, do we know you?" one of them said.

"The face looks familiar, but I just can't match it with that hair," the other added.

"Alright, you two, cut it out. What did you do to our hair?"

"They switched the colours, Percy," Hermione whined.

"Oh, look, Fred, it's our long-lost sister."

"Kind of creepy how much she looks like Mum."

"Ooh, she's even got the death glare down," George said upon seeing her face.

"Does anyone have a mirror?" Percy demanded, looking around at the girls at the table. One of the older girls pulled one out of her robes whilst smirking loudly. He took a look. "Oh, come on! Change it back right now!"

"Lighten up, Perce, it'll change back on its own in a few hours," said George.

"Yeah, a few hours—overnight, tops."

Hermione looked in the mirror after Percy put it down. She wasn't exactly fashion-savvy, but she could tell that that was not her colour.

"But why'd you have to involve me in this?" she complained.

"Well, you're the one who decided to sit next to our brother."

"That's a dangerous endeavour, that."

"And, besides, we thought you could afford to lighten up a bit, too, Miss Granger."

"Augh! I'm plenty enlightened already, thank you very much." She spun on her heel and stalked away, though she was secretly relieved that she wouldn't have to explain to her parents how she became a redhead.

That evening was not particularly pleasant, however. She had to take quite a bit of ribbing from her roommates, and she didn't dare go down to the Common Room. Tomorrow was Halloween, after all, and the jokes were coming fast and furious, on top of the obvious "Weasley sister" jokes. She also didn't get any sleep before midnight, again, when she had to go out to Astronomy class. At least it was too dark to see her hair properly there. Good God, why couldn't the magical world be more…normal?

But she was glad to see that her hair was, indeed, back to normal by morning. Having flaming orange hair for Halloween would have just been too much.

Unfortunately, it seemed like that was the only thing that would go right that entire day.

A/N: Tsimpima: based on the Greek for "sting".

Mordeodigiti: based on the Latin for "bite toes".