Disclaimer: Harry Potter minus JK Rowling is undefined.

Chapter 9

"What happened to all my socks?"

Hermione Granger awoke on Halloween morning after a short and fitful night's sleep with her hair as unmanageable as ever, but brown again. She had slept late and missed breakfast, but plenty of people did that the morning after Astronomy class. But now, she was going to be late to Charms if she couldn't get dressed soon.

"What happened?" said a bleary-eyed Lavender Brown as she pulled herself out of bed.

"I can't find a single pair of socks that match! Where did they all go?"

"I don't know. Wendelin must have taken them."

Their roommate, Lily Moon's, deranged calico cat, Wendelin, was nowhere to be seen. And of course, Lily and Sally-Anne would have cheerfully got up and headed down to breakfast two hours ago.

"Mmm…try under Lily's bed," Parvati said with a yawn.

"Hmph." Hermione knelt down beside Lily's bed and lifted the sheets. Two yellow eyes peered out at her. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the outline of feline form sitting atop a bed of socks.

"Wendelin, give those back!" She reached under the bed to grab a handful of them, but suddenly, there was a loud hiss, as a multicoloured ball of fur flew out from under the bed and across the room.

"Oww! My hand!" she shouted, holding her arm up. A bright red scratch was visible across the back of her wand hand.

Parvati looked a bit squeamish at the sight of blood, and Lavender winced. "Ooh…" she said, "well, don't worry. Madam Pomfrey can fix that up in a jiffy."

"Lily really needs to do something about that cat," Hermione complained. She wrapped her hand with some tissues while she finished getting dressed, and then ran over to the hospital wing to get her hand healed. Madam Pomfrey was sympathetic, but she barely heard anything the mediwitch said because she was more worried about getting to Charms on time, and with that detour, she barely made it.

"Ah, good morning, Miss Granger," Professor Flitwick pleasantly said from atop his stack of books as she rushed in and took the only open seat. "And good morning class. Now that we're all here, I do believe that you are ready to begin making objects fly today." There were some excited murmurs from the class. "Levitation is one of a wizard's most rudimentary skills, but it is also one of the first serious challenges you will learn in this class. The Levitiation Charm requires a good deal more control that a simple Lumos or Fire-Lighting Spell that only releases energy, and it also requires more control than simple charms like the Softening Charm that are simply cast once and are done. The Levitation Charm requires continuous control for as long as the object you are levitating is in the air and can often take quite a bit of practice to produce any results."

Hermione hadn't really thought of that part. She was pretty far ahead in studying the Standard Book of Spells, and there were the spells they used in Arithmancy, but she hadn't tried anything yet in either that required continuous control.

Professor Flitwick spent quite a bit longer than usual, more than half the class, explaining just how the Levitation Charm worked and how to cast it, having them practice the wand movements at several points. At eight syllables, Wingardium Leviosa was one of the longest incantations they had learnt, and lining it up with the swish and flick motion was tricky. But by the time they moved on to the practicals, Hermione was pretty confident in her ability to cast the spell.

"We'll do this in pairs, so that one of you can act as a spotter," Flitwick said as he began to levitate feathers to the students' desks. "This charm can be temperamental to those who are first learning it. Now, then, Mr. Potter and Mr. Finnigan, I think."

Hermione looked to where the boys were sitting. Harry Potter looked relieved and Neville Longbottom, who had been looking in his direction, looked dismayed.

"And Mr. Longbottom with Mr. Thomas."

She wouldn't be paired with Dean? Her eyes swept over where everyone was sitting and made the connection. Oh no!

"And Mr. Weasley with Miss Granger."

Ron groaned loudly, and Hermione nearly did herself. This was just not her week.

Ron scooted his seat nearer to hers as Professor placed a feather on their desk.

"Um…hey…" he said.

"Hey," she replied wearily.

"Your, uh, your hair's back to normal, now," Ron told her.

"Thanks for noticing," Hermione grumbled.

"Hey, I know Fred and George can be annoying, but they never do anything really bad to anyone who doesn't deserve it."

She rolled her eyes at the boy. "Yeah, that's so reassuring."

"Now remember to put all the parts together," squeaked Professor Flitwick. "Be sure to use that nice wrist movement to let the magic flow freely—swish and flick, swish and flick. And saying the incantation correctly is just as important. Remember, the incantation triggers the specific action of the magic, and things can go very wrong if you don't say it just right. Don't forget the story of Juan Carlos Baruffio, who scored a knockout on himself in the 1957 World Duelling Championships when he said 's' instead of 'f' and dropped a buffalo on his own chest."

The class giggled and shuddered in equal amounts at one of Professor Flitwick's many humorous stories from his days on the duelling circuit. If that were really true, that had to say something bizarre about how magic worked, Hermione thought. After all, why would a slip of the tongue produce a spell so powerful that most wizards probably couldn't do it deliberately, even if it was very rare? It was something to investigate in Arithmancy later.

She watched around the room as people began trying to cast the Levitation Charm, without much success. At the next desk, Harry and Seamus both swished and flicked, but their feather didn't even twitch.

Hermione suppressed a yawn. "Why don't you go first," she said wearily.

"Sure, uh, thanks."

Ron tried to swish and flick, but he didn't produce any results either. She let him go on a few times, just watching to make sure he didn't do anything "temperamental". She wondered how she had got to this point. She'd barely spoken to the boy since the dog incident—or his friend, Harry, for that matter—and largely by choice. Percy was pretty good, and the Twins at least tried to be helpful in the own bizarre and, frankly, troublesome way, but she hadn't seen anything to improve her opinion of Ron all year.

But then again, she was starting to feel a little conflicted about thinking that. After all, she'd barely talked to Ron and Harry before that night, let alone after it. Sure, they were dumb and reckless—scratch that, they were boys. She mentally rolled her eyes. But those two objectively didn't get in anywhere near as much trouble as Fred and George, and their troublemaking was what had really rubbed her the wrong way in the first place…well, that, and Ron was pretty short with her when she'd tried to talk to him before. Still, she wasn't sure if the duo had got in any trouble since then. None that she'd heard about, anyway, and from the sounds of things, Harry was too busy with Quidditch practice for that.

No, her problem lately was that she didn't feel like dealing with people. Exactly why was hard to articulate—they were an extra element of uncertainty in her precariously balanced life. She thought back to the half-burnt letter her parents had sent her on Tuesday. They had sounded so concerned about her, even though she hadn't told them half of what was going on. She supposed they were right—it was so hard to find anyone to talk to—but she was worried about very different things, like getting her course work done.

And at the moment, she also had to worry about Ron, who was still waving his wand in a very unsteady pattern that certainly wouldn't get the spell to work.

"It's more of J-shape on the swish," Hermione said offhandedly.

Ron gave an annoyed-sounding grunt and started swinging his arm in a very wide arc.

"Y-you know…I guess that prank was kind of funny," she tried to make small talk. "I was just worried I was going to have to explain it to my parents."

"Uh huh," he said. She didn't think he was listening to her, not that it much mattered. He kept swinging his arm in a wide arc.

"You really shouldn't swing your arm that far. It's more of a wrist movement."

They were interrupted by a shout from Harry's and Seamus's desk. Seamus had hit their feather with his wand and set it on fire. Harry quickly put it out with his hat.

Ron turned back to his own feather.

"Wingar-di-um Leviso-sa!" He shouted it this time and flailed his long arms, nearly hitting Hermione in the face.

She forced his arm down by the wrist. "Ron! You're saying it wrong!" she snapped. "And you're going to put someone's eye out." Like mine. "It's Wing-gar-dium Levi-o-sa. You need to swish from your wrist, and make the 'gar' nice and long while you're doing it."

Ron turned to her and positively snarled, "If you're so clever, do it yourself, then."

"Fine." She rolled up her sleeve and held her wand aloft. Carefully feeling the magic flow through it, she swished it in front of her in a backwards-J shape and then quickly flicked it toward the feather. "Wingardium Leviosa," she pronounced.

The feather slowly rose off their desk, picking up speed as it went higher and finally coming to rest fluttering freely about four feet over her head.

Professor Flitwick clapped his hands. "Excellent, excellent!" he squeak. "Everyone see here, Miss Granger's got it working. That's it; now focus on holding it steady…"

Hermione smiled weakly at the praise, but Ron was still scowling.

"See, it's not that hard," she told him curtly. "Just be careful to follow the steps closely."

Ron just scoffed at her, but between her and Professor Flitwick, and later Harry, who was watching both of them closely and soon got the charm working himself, they got Ron through all the steps by the end of the class. But he still only made the feather hop and flip over, and Professor Flitwick recommended some more practise to get it just right.

Predictably, Ron was in a very bad mood by the time they left class to head down to lunch. Granted, Hermione wasn't in a very good mood, either, but at least she was quieter about it. As the two boys pushed their way into the crowded corridor, she started to follow in the gap behind them with the rest of the class. Ron was still going at it.

"'Make the "gar" nice and long…' Completely mental, I'm telling you. I don't get how anyone can stand her."

Well, you're not so friendly yourself, she thought. She pushed her way passed the pair in annoyance, nearly tripping over Harry's feet on the way.

Harry might have misread her a bit because he said, "I think she heard you."

"So?" Ron replied. "It's obvious she likes being alone all the time."

She very nearly whirled around with an indignant protest, but the words died on her lips in the very act of thinking them. Could she really deny it at this point? Could she, with as many times as she'd thought to herself that she didn't want to deal with people right now in the past few weeks?

And then, suddenly forced to confront things she had buried so deep, Hermione felt something crack. Something that had building up inside her all month—maybe all year—broke free, and her tears started flowing freely before she even knew what had happened. She didn't understand how it had come upon her so suddenly, but she felt like she'd just taken a hard blow to her chest, and she had to get someplace more private right now.

She started walking faster and then broke into a run. She could barely see to find the nearest girls' bathroom, but she remembered the layout of the castle pretty well by now. She found the door and dashed inside and back to the last stall. Safely away from the eyes of the world, she slumped against the wall and sank down to the floor, drawing her knees up to her chest and sobbing uncontrollably.

She didn't know how long she was in that state—just crying it out. She couldn't stop it—couldn't even think coherently for quite a while. She only knew that by the time she could breathe again and take stock of her surroundings, she was already exhausted from the tears and wanted nothing more than to go back to bed and not get up until Monday, but she couldn't even think about dragging herself all the way up to her dorm right now, and please, God, what was wrong with her?

It was quiet now, aside from her continued sniffling. There had been a couple of older girls she didn't recognise in the bathroom when she had run in, but they seemed to have left without questioning her, for which she was mostly relieved.

She stared up at the high ceiling, wondering what time it was. In her haste that morning, she had forgotten to wear her watch. She was surely missing lunch, but she didn't care right now. She wasn't hungry. She felt the tears coming on again as she finally thought back on what Ron had said, on her whole stupid week, on her whole year so far, really. Where had it all gone wrong?

What was wrong with her?

She couldn't do this anymore.

She lowered her head and covered her face with her arms. Maybe she should just stay here a while longer.

Septima Vector looked out over her third year class and saw, to her surprise, that her top pupil was not there. As far as she knew, Hermione Granger had never missed any class before, and she was pretty sure she would have heard of it if she had. It could be for any number of reasons, of course, but it did give her cause for concern.

"Miss Spinnet, where is Miss Granger?" she asked.

"I don't know, Professor," Alicia said, looking uncomfortable. "Um…Fred told me at lunch he thought his little brother said something that upset her, but I don't know where she went."

"Hmm…" she sighed. Children could be so cruel sometimes. She could tell the girl had been having difficulties already. Still, there was nothing she could do right now. "Well, the next time you see her, please tell her to come and see me so that she can pick up her assignments."

"Yes, Professor."

Hermione had barely moved from her spot slumped against the back wall of the loo. She'd sat atop the toilet lid, laid flat on the floor, and leaned with her forehead against the wall at times, shifting whenever her legs got too stiff. She ventured out of the stall only once, to wash her face, but she was discouraged by how dishevelled and puffy-eyed she looked in the mirror and quickly ducked back inside, alone with her thoughts.

"I'd know that ridiculous bushy hair anywhere."

"You'll pay for that, mudblood!"

"Somebody needs to show you your place."

She couldn't do this anymore.

She'd been called names before. Not outright slurs, but there were always a few people who would make fun of her unmanageable hair or her over-sized teeth, or, more recently, about how "plain" she was, and worse than that, too. Back in Year 3 of primary, a few of the boys started calling her a "freak" because she was getting maths tutoring and doing things like long division and multiplying large numbers. She'd broken down several times and barely made it through that year with a lot of support from her parents. It was the only time before now that they'd considered switching her to a different school, but the next year was when she skipped to Year 5, and everything was fine again, and she'd learnt to develop a thicker skin since then.

She ought to be able to handle bullies by now, even of Malfoy's calibre, and if that were the only problem, she easily could have done.

The hell-hound on the third floor.

Malfoy jinxing her in the corridors.

Anything involving the Weasley Twins.

She couldn't do this anymore.

Her parents had always been there for her, and they still gave her all the support they could, of course, but she felt like she couldn't fall back on them anymore. Not like before. It was more than just that she was away from home. She hadn't told them half of what was going on around here. There were so many things that she felt like she couldn't—that they wouldn't understand. She didn't understand herself. It was maybe for the same reasons that she wasn't completely comfortable talking to any of the professors, not to mention that parts of it could get her in trouble. But after week after week of this, it just felt so isolating, and she was having enough trouble with that as it was.

"You keep to yourself, and you are separate from all others."

"I do expect you to stay awake in my class."

"Must get lonely, though, don't it?"

"What do normal girls talk about, anyway?"

Chronic sleep deprivation.

"You don't seem to be all that close with your classmates."

Barely being able to keep up with her homework.

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

Not really even wanting to talk to anyone about it anyway.

She couldn't do this anymore.

It wasn't what Ron had said that had sent her over the edge. She'd been called a lot worse before.

No, what really got to her was how much of it was true, and what really ate her up inside was how much she had brought this on herself.

She'd promised her parents that she'd make some friends here. Sure, she was naturally shy, sometimes painfully so, but it wasn't anything she hadn't done before. She'd always managed to make a couple of friends, even through the worst of it. But how had she fared at Hogwarts in these past two months? Her roommates were kind of her friends, even though they had nothing in common. There was her Arithmancy study group—the same class she was missing right now! She almost leapt up and ran to the classroom right then, but she didn't. She couldn't bear the shame of walking in there like this—of facing Alicia, Cedric, and Roger dazed, red-eyed, and tearful—of facing Professor Vector like that. She shuddered and curled up tighter in the corner.

Still, objectively, she could reasonably call her study group her friends. Of course, she didn't have a lot else in common with them, either. Alicia, Cedric, and Roger were all Quidditch fiends, and she had little to no interest in sports of any kind. They were also two grades ahead of her. They were taking different classes, they could go to Hogsmeade, they were starting to think about dating, and, most of all, they had all been raised in the wizarding culture. As nice as they were, she felt like there was a gap she just couldn't cross. (Not to mention how Roger kept calling her the "human slide-rule".)

But why was she pushing them away so much lately? She'd got off to a good start and made some friends, and then everything fell apart. She closed herself off in her own little world that she loved and hated at the same time. She stopped talking to people, drowned her sorrows in books, and all but stopped sleeping. She was acutely aware that it wasn't academically or psychologically sustainable, but she'd gone so deep into it that she didn't know how to get out anymore.

She felt like she could barely say she had friends now, and it was her own stupid fault.

What was wrong with her?

She couldn't do this anymore.

She couldn't do this to herself anymore, and she had no idea how to fix it.

She kept sitting against the back wall, crying off and on.

"Hey, Brown, Patil," Alicia Spinnet said on her way back from checking the library. "You two are Hermione's roommates. Have you seen her lately?"

Lavender and Parvati turned around. "Not since Charms. Is something wrong?" Lavender said.

"I don't know. She wasn't in Arithmancy, and that's not like her. I didn't think she'd miss that class for anything."

"She missed Arithmancy?" Lavender said, surprised. "Wow, I know Ron was being a real git to her after Charms, but I didn't think she'd take it that bad."

"I don't know," Parvati countered. "She's been really distant lately. Maybe it's something else."

"Well, either way, if you see her, tell her Professor Vector wants to talk to her—and…just make sure she's alright," Alicia said, sounding concerned. "I've been getting worried about her, too."

"Sure thing. We'll keep an eye out."

It was by pure luck that Parvati noticed anything out of the ordinary when she wandered into the first floor girls' loo in the East Wing. It wasn't much—just a soft sound of sniffling coming from the back. She approached the last stall and saw someone sitting on the floor behind the door. Someone wearing trainers. Only a handful of girls in the school wore shoes like that.

"Hermione, is that you?"

A small, tortured squeak came from behind the door. "Go away!" a familiar voice whimpered.

"Hermione, it's me, Parvati." There was no response. "Are you okay? Alicia Spinnet said you missed class."

"Leave me alone!"

"Have you been here all afternoon? Is this about what Ron said? You shouldn't worry about him. You know he can be a right bloody git sometimes."

"Please, Parvati, I just need some time alone to think," Hermione said, her voice hitching with tears.

Parvati frowned. There didn't seem to be much more she could do from here. "Well, okay, Hermione. Just remember to come down for dinner. And if you want to talk to us girls—about anything—you can. We do worry about you. Oh, and Professor Vector wants to see you when you have a chance."

Hermione sniffed loudly. "Thanks, Parvati," she whined halfheartedly.

Parvati left the bathroom, feeling defeated.

As Professor Vector looked out over the Halloween Feast, she was one of the few people who was not celebrating. She scanned the Gryffindor table from end to end. That bushy brown hair was easy to spot, and she was certain Hermione Granger was not at the table. She did see the other first year Gryffindor girls talking to Alicia Spinnet in hushed tones. Perhaps someone had seen her, at least. Vector even looked at the other tables, but the girl was not to be seen in Cedric Diggory's circle of friends, nor in Roger Davies's.

"Everything alright, Professor?" Hagrid leaned over to ask her as the feast began.

"Oh, just worried about one of my students," she said. "I think—"

But she was cut off as Quirrell, of all people, burst through the doors of the Great Hall—she hadn't even noticed he was missing—and ran up to the High Table in front of the Headmaster, screaming, "Trooollllll in the dungeons! Troll in the dungeons! East Wing! Headed this way…" Then he gave a high-pitched squeak and muttered, "Thought you ought to know."

Quirrell toppled forwards and collapsed to the floor in a dead faint. So much for this year's Defence Professor, Vector thought.

The Great Hall was pandemonium. Many students leapt to their feet and started running around like headless chickens, trying to escape, but mostly colliding with each other. Dumbledore rose from his chair and, quick as lightning, fired off a loud purple firecracker from his wand. The Hall calmed somewhat, but only when the Headmaster fired off three more firecrackers did he obtain silence.

Albus Dumbledore was rarely seen angry. It was a terrifying sight.

"Prefects, lead your Houses back to your dormitories immediately!" he thundered in a magically amplified voice. "Teachers, proceed with me to the East Wing to contain the troll."

Many students were still panicking, running around the wrong way as the prefects desperately tried to round them up. About half of the teachers left the Hall at once, headed toward the bridges into the East Wing to prevent the troll from getting to the Slytherin and Hufflepuff dorms in the West Wing dungeons. The other half were slowed down helping to corral the students. Snape seemed to be running off in a different direction entirely—Dumbledore's little side project, Vector remembered, the one he had asked her to help set up. The troll would be a perfect distraction.

But Vector was already in motion as she took all of this in. She knew for a fact that there was one student in the school who was not in the Great Hall to hear Quirrell's warning.

She rushed over to the Gryffindor first years as Percy Weasley confidently led them up the Grand Staircase. Perhaps sensing the danger, the staircase had frozen in place for once to let them pass quickly. She caught two of the girls and asked, "Quickly, do any of you know where Miss Granger is?"

Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown blanched. "Oh, Merlin! Professor, she's been in the bathroom all afternoon!" Parvati exclaimed.

"Which one?"

"Uh, first floor, by the Charms Classroom."

"Stay with your prefects. I'll go find her." Vector rushed off toward the East Wing, hoping the troll was still in the dungeons. She hadn't noticed that two first year boys had already gone on ahead of her.

Hermione still sat against the back wall of the bathroom, her tears mostly spent, but still contemplating her situation bleakly. She thought she had dozed off for a little while, laying on the floor, but she couldn't even be sure of that, which she was sure was a bad sign. She'd probably missed Flying Class by now, at a guess. Was it dinnertime yet? She didn't know anymore and couldn't quite bring herself to care.

She kept sitting there and considered her options. Why had her mum and dad brought up transferring? She hadn't even told them everything that was going on here, and she hadn't been thinking about it at all, but now she couldn't get it out of her mind. French was the only other language she spoke well enough to get by in school, and Beauxbatons was the only other school she could go to without needing her whole family to move out of the country. If she were a pureblood, she could probably hire private tutors, but that wasn't an option in a muggle home. But all of that was moot, really. Her problem wasn't the school. It was her.

She remembered how her parents used to talk about her getting cranky when she didn't get enough sleep. It was a perfectly normal thing. It was always said half-jokingly, but she wasn't laughing now. She could see how much it was hurting her. Having nothing else to do all afternoon but stew in her own troubles, she was starting to realise how much her chronic sleep deprivation was causing it. She was always too tired to deal with things, whether it was people or homework or anything that happened that was unexpected. And the worst part was that her body was mis-adjusting to it. On the occasional night when she went to bed early, she would wake up early and couldn't get to sleep again. She might actually have to work at it to change it back.

The other problem, the one that she was aware of already, but far more acutely now, was that she had no one to confide in. Usually, she didn't want to, lately, but even someone as reserved as she was needed to actually talk to people, and she'd barely even been trying.

She couldn't get that thought out of her head. She'd barely been trying to maintain her friendships. She'd barely been trying (by her standards) to do her homework. She hadn't been trying to get a good night's sleep in weeks. And all that had to change. The problem was that she couldn't even think about that right now.

She felt spent in more ways than one. For all that she was beating herself up for not trying, she felt like she'd poured out everything she had, and there was just nothing left in her. Like she was just limping along, barely keeping pace where she was and not able to spare the mental energy for anything more—not because it was too hard—far from it—but because she'd already wasted too much of it to keep going.

She couldn't do this anymore.

She was jolted from her thoughts by a heavy shuffling sound followed by a door slamming, and then, a very, very foul odour filled Hermione's nostrils. It smelled, well, a lot like a toilet, actually, but one that had clogged and hadn't been cleaned all week. Thinking the only thing that came to mind—that someone had had a very unfortunate accident—she wearily opened the stall door and staggered out to see if she could help.

She stopped when she found herself face to face with a hulking wall of flesh. The creature stretched up taller than Hagrid and seemed to be all lumpy torso and big, swinging arms that dragged a wooden club as large as a man behind it. It had thick folds of granite grey skin like a rhinoceros that turned horny and knobby on its huge feet. High above, a small, bald, disturbingly ape-like head sat atop its lumbering body, betraying its tiny brains. The disgusting smell that was emanating from it told her it must have abominable hygiene for anything capable of wearing trousers.

Hermione recognised the creature at once from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

It was a mountain troll.

It was an extremely dangerous Class Four-X creature that required specialised knowledge to handle—or, in other words, to not get flattened by its giant club.

And it was coming toward her.

She screamed.

She was sure she screamed louder than she ever had in her life, and she flattened herself against the back wall, her mind a complete blank as to what to do, its proverbial gears skipping and skidding. There was nowhere to run, precious little to hide, and no weapons at hand of any kind…

Wait a minute; she was a witch, wasn't she? She whipped out her wand from her robes, forced as much magic as she could through it, and, hardly thinking about it, shouted, "Colloshoo!"

The Shoe-Sticking Jinx hit the troll in the knees, but it whether it was because the troll wasn't wearing shoes, or because it was just too big, it has no discernible effect.

"Tsimpima!" Hermione yelled. "Tarantallegra! Locomotor Wibbly! HELP!" Nothing worked. She just didn't have enough power; the troll was thirty times her size. It didn't react to any of her spells except to growl and advance on the source of the shouting.

Time seemed to move in slow motion as the the troll advanced on her. It groaned and raised its club in anger at the noise, smashing the sinks off the walls and spraying water all over the bathroom as it approached her, step by shambling step.

This was it, she thought. There was no escape this time, no door that she could fall backwards through and run away. She couldn't fight. She couldn't even accidental magic herself out because you couldn't apparate inside Hogwarts. She was completely cornered, and there was a Class Four-X creature coming to squash her flat.

With the hell-hound, she had turned hysterical. It wasn't really that hard to get out, and there had been no time to see her life flash before her eyes. Not so now. Her wonderful memory reminded her of everything—everything, that is, except for anything that would get her out of this alive.

She was going to die.

She was going to die!

She was going to die alone and as good as friendless in a bathroom, hundreds of miles from home, at the end of the worst week—maybe of her entire life. Her parents' last memory of her would be a letter telling them that after all of two months in the magical world, she just couldn't take it, and when they found out what had happened today—if they found out what had happened today—they would learn she was even more right that they thought—that it had actually killed her.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

For someone who couldn't stand to get a B on a test (or an Acceptable here at Hogwarts), there were no words to describe the feeling of facing certain death at age twelve and knowing in that moment that she had utterly failed at life. Actually, there were just no words to describe the feeling of facing certain death at age twelve in the first place. She was sure she was about to faint and was almost glad for it. It would be less painful that way—

"Hermione!"

Hermione was sure her brain had given out on her completely when she saw two people—two boys—run into the bathroom behind the troll—the last two people she ever expected to see: Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.

"Distract it!" Harry yelled. He started grabbing bits of debris from the destroyed sinks and throwing them as hard as he could at the troll's head. Ron followed suit, but the beast barely even noticed. It slowed down and looked about as if confused, then shambled forward again.

"Oy, pea brain, over here!" Ron shouted as he managed to bean the troll in the head with a broken tap. That actually did get its attention. It lumbered around, staring at Ron, making the connection in its tiny mind. Then it raised its club at him.

"Ron, watch out!" Harry yelled. Ron ducked under the club as it came down, tearing through the wooden walls of the nearest stall and knocking him to the ground under the debris.

Hermione held her breath and only let it out when she saw Ron starting to crawl out from under the debris. But that was the only coherent thought she could form before the gears of her mind jammed completely. The troll had moved away from her? What? How? How could she have been saved from imminent death by the two boys who least cared about her right now? (Well, besides Malfoy, if she had been in her right mind.)

But the troll raised its club again and—

"Ron, move!"

The troll's swing went wide as it was distracted by Harry's shouting. Harry ducked just in time to avoid having his ribcage bashed in, and the club went through what was left of the row of sinks.

"Hey!" Ron was throwing things again, standing by the stalls and desperately trying to get it away from Harry. It swung bulk around again, and Ron dove as it brought the entire row of stalls down on top of him.

But Harry used his small size to slip by behind it. "Come on, run, run!"

Hermione barely registered Harry yelling at her. Run? Run where? There was still a troll between the two of them and the door. She stayed flat against the wall and shouted an incoherent protest.

All three of them shouting at once seemed to drive the troll mad. It roared, something like a cross between a braying donkey and a howler monkey, and started swinging its club wildly—up, down, and all around it, demolishing the entire room in seconds. Splinters of wood and fragments of porcelain were hurled everywhere. Hermione's hands flew to her face to protect it. The troll lunged toward her again, and its club pounded a deep dent in the wall just over her head. Then, Ron was struggling to get out of the pile of wood chips, screaming as loud as she was as the troll made for him as if to step on him.

She was frozen in horror. She had to do something, but what? She couldn't just stand there and watch Ron die. That this was all his fault in the first place was the furthest thing from her mind right now. But her brain still wouldn't engage. Even she didn't know any spells to handle a creature that big.

Harry looked equally scared for his friend, she could see, but he did do something about it. Something incredibly stupid. He ran towards it. He took a running jump and started climbing up the troll's crudely-cut leather clothes. He was surprisingly good at climbing, but what in God's name was he doing! He grabbed it around the neck from behind, but it didn't even seem to notice. It lifted its foot over Ron's prone form.

Except the troll definitely did notice when its stomping about swung Harry around, and he accidentally jammed his wand up its nose. The massive foot missed Ron by inches.

There was a deafening roar as the troll howled in pain and spun around, flailing its arms. Hermione saw Harry clinging to its neck for dear life, but even more pressing was the fact that the beast was swinging its club wildly again. The bathroom was already nothing but rubble, but that didn't stop it from pounding it into even more rubble and bashing chunks off of the walls. It might catch any one of the three of them in a blink with that thing. Hermione squeezed herself back into the corner, praying it would just go away. Harry fell off its back, miraculously (and disgustingly) pulling his wand along with him. Then, she saw Ron free himself and stagger to his feet by the door. For a moment, she thought he would make a run for it—and she wouldn't blame him if he did—but instead, to her disbelief, he whirled around and drew his wand, even though he obviously had no idea what to do with it. He stood shaking, as if preparing to shout out the first spell that popped into his head, which would probably be completely useless. The troll lifted its club over its head again, preparing to pound the boy flat.

Then, Ron did the last thing she expected. He yelled out, "Wingardium Leviosa!" And to Hermione's amazement, the troll's brutal swing seemed to bounce clumsily and went about a foot over the boy's head.

For just a moment, Hermione felt like she had some kind of dissociative episode. It was as if her right brain was registering shock that Ron managed to cast the Levitation Charm correctly at all, let along on something that big, and at the same time, her left brain made about three logical leaps in half a second.

Then, time started again. As the troll staggered from its unbalanced swing, Hermione jumped to her feet and yelled, "Quick! Everyone cast the spell at once—one—two—three!"

Harry and Ron didn't have a clue what Hermione was driving at, but at least someone had an idea. Three voices yelled out "Wingardium Leviosa!" with as much power as they could muster.

But mingled with those three voices was a fourth. For in a flash of burgundy robes, all of Hermione's prayers were answered. Professor Vector charged into the bathroom, and, in a single, smooth motion, spun toward the troll, pointed her wand at it, and shouted, "Immobulus!"

The troll froze instantly just as it held its club above its head, and, under the combined force of three adrenaline-fuelled Levitation Charms, the club actually levitated out of its hand.

Of course, all three of them were so surprised by Professor Vector showing up out of nowhere and freezing the troll that they broke their concentration. The troll's club dropped down onto its own head with a sickening crack and clattered to the floor. Harry had to roll out of the way to avoid it. Ron later told Harry and Hermione how the troll's beady eyes had glazed over and then rolled back in its head.

"Everyone out, quickly!" Vector ordered.

Hermione's deeply ingrained habit of following teachers' instructions kicked in. She found her feet at last and leapt over the rubble as fast as her legs would carry her until she was hiding safely behind her professor's robes. Harry and Ron dashed around behind her. Then, Vector released her freezing charm, and the troll fell forward with a massive thud, unconscious.

A single roll of toilet paper rolled up to Harry's feet. He picked it up and used it to wipe the disgusting grey mucus off his wand.

Vector sighed with relief. "Are all three of you alright?"

"Y-y-yes, Professor," Hermione said. Truthfully, she still felt like her heart was going to jump out of her chest, but at least she was in one piece. Harry and Ron just nodded.

"Well, you're very lucky, all of you. I don't think I have to tell you at this point how dangerous mountain trolls can be," she said, surveying the destroyed lavatory. Water was still spraying everywhere, and there was barely one board or pipe standing upon another anymore. "I don't know how you pulled off that spell, but that's not a good way to stop a troll, if you can help it."

That much was obvious. They could all tell they were equally lucky that Vector had shown up when she did. They might have been able to aim the club if they'd tried, but not with the troll moving around. Harry and Ron grimaced at her words, suddenly aware that they could get in serious trouble for this, but Hermione spoke up sadly: "P-please don't punish them, Professor. They were only looking for me."

"I know, Miss Granger. I'm well aware of the situation—"

"Septima! What on earth happened here?"

In the chaos of their escape, they hadn't even noticed the bathroom door slam open a second time. The other professors had clearly heard the noise of battle all the way down in the dungeons. Professors McGonagall and Snape rushed into the room, wands drawn, only to stop in disbelief when they saw the troll out cold on the floor. Professor Quirrell stumbled in behind them, but with one look at the troll, he clutched at his chest and slumped down against the wall.

Professor McGonagall was angrier than Hermione had ever seen her—even angrier than after Harry's broomstick incident. Her lips were pressed until they turned white and she looked like she was could set something on fire with her eyes. Hermione was sure she was about to eviscerate all three of them, but Professor Vector stepped in front of them.

"Minerva, it appears that Miss Granger was indisposed and was not able to make it to the feast," she said calmly. "Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley came looking for her when the troll stumbled upon them."

"Oh, dear…" McGonagall seemed to deflate before her eyes.

"From what I could tell, Miss Granger came up with the idea to use coordinated Levitation Charms, coincidentally at the same moment that I froze the troll, resulting in it being knocked out by its own club."

McGonagall's look changed to one of shock. Snape was eyeing Harry suspiciously. The boys wisely didn't say anything about the rest of the fight.

Vector turned back to the children, who all seemed to be standing in a daze. "That was very brave of you to come to the aid of your fellow student…Ten points to each of you for helping to bring down that brute."

Ron's jaw dropped open. They were getting points for this mess?

But Hermione was on the verge of tears again. "Please, Professor, I don't deserve any points," she said. "It was my fault we got caught in here."

Harry's jaw dropped open alongside Ron's. Hermione Granger was turning down points?

"But you had no way of knowing a troll was on the loose, Miss Granger. And you came up with a successful way to stop it—even if, I must stress, it was ill-advised, as you would know if you'd ever seen anyone handle trolls before. That was an amazingly resourceful use of your as-yet-limited magical repertoire and power." Vector placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder and turned back to the other teachers. "Minerva, if you and Severus don't mind cleaning up here—" She didn't bother mentioning Quirrell. "—I'll see these three up to their Common Room."

McGonagall seemed to need a few moments to find her voice herself. "Ah, of course, Septima. And thank you so much for looking out for my students."

"My pleasure. Come along, you three."

The four of them started back toward the West Wing, with none of them really looking at each other. "Miss Granger, do please come see me tomorrow morning before classes," Vector said as they walked. "You can turn in your homework then and pick up the next assignment." She should have sounded cross, Hermione thought, but she didn't. In fact, her professor seemed surprisingly tender and understanding.

"Y-yes, ma'am—thank you." A normal person might have been angry at her for bringing up homework at a time like this, but for Hermione, it was comforting, like a return to normalcy, something she needed desperately, as her head was still spinning. She'd nearly been killed by a mountain troll, and she was saved by two boys whom she'd barely spoken to all year—whom she thought actively disliked her. She'd skipped class, and she didn't get in trouble. And Professor Vector knew she'd been in there crying all afternoon and hadn't embarrassed her by mentioning it.

And through all this, she couldn't get one image out of her mind: Professor Vector storming into the bathroom like some legendary heroine and stopping the monster with a single spell. The three of them had barely squeaked through that fight with their lives, and yet she made it look easy. And then, a minute later, she was just a teacher again. Hermione didn't really have a word to describe the transformation except that it was, well, like magic. But she knew at once that she wanted to be able to do that someday.

Then, just when she thought nothing else could surprise her, Ron spoke up. She couldn't have known, but Ron was looking even more uncomfortable than he had all afternoon. "Um…sorry, Professor Vector, is it? Listen, I don't really deserve any points, either. It was my fault Hermione was in there in the first place."

"I know that quite well, Mr. Weasley," Vector said, to the boy's surprise. She gave him an approving look. "Yet you also came back to help her."

"Well, yeah…but only 'cause Harry made me."

"Mr. Weasley," Vector said firmly, "a moment ago, I saw an eleven-year-old boy stand his ground and raise his wand to a fully-grown mountain troll to save his friends, even when he had an easy escape route. You are truly a credit to your house."

"Well, I couldn't just let Hermione and Harry get flattened like that," Ron said, looking as if he wasn't sure whether to turn red or green. "Look, I'm…really sorry…" He glanced at Hermione apologetically, but he mostly kept looking at the floor. "I shouldn't have said those things. I know you were just trying to help."

And her brain jammed again. Risking his life for her and now actually apologising to her? "It…it wasn't about that, really…" she started, shaking her head. "And I could have been nicer, too—"

"No, really, you weren't that bad," Ron insisted. "I couldn't've cast that charm right if you hadn't helped me. And I know there's plenty of people who like you here."

"Well…" Hermione bit her lip, unsure of how to respond. She didn't know that Ron had been hearing her friends loudly tell him just that all afternoon. But that was only half of her problem.

"And that, Mr. Weasley, is exactly why you do deserve those points," Vector saved her. "Not just anyone could have faced a mountain troll, and sadly not everyone can own up to their mistakes like that…Well, here we are—" She stopped in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady. "Try to stay out of trouble the rest of the evening."

"Yes, ma'am," Ron said.

"What happened to—" the Fat Lady began.

"Pig snout," Harry cut her off. The portrait swung open, and the two boys climbed inside.

Hermione turned back to Vector. "Thank you, Professor," she said.

"My pleasure, Miss Granger. I wouldn't want to lose my best student. You know if there is anything you need, you can come speak to me anytime. Now, off you go. I'm sure you're hungry—the feast's been moved into the Common Rooms."

"Yes, ma'am," Hermione said, realising for the first time that she hadn't eaten anything all day, and she was, in fact, starving. She climbed in through the portrait hole.