Hello again everyone, I hope you're not too angry with me for how long this took. New jobs can really kill your free time for writing. Also, I apologize for the update before, I was uploading the chapter 9 edit and removing my AN chapter. I hope you enjoy this chapter and hopefully it won't take too long for the next one.
The Girl who Lived
Chapter 11
The day after the declaration of the prank war between the Weasley twins and Hermione dawned too early for Hermione. She groaned as she pulled the covers off and started her morning routine.
Less than an hour later she pushed the door open and walked down the staircase, keeping her hand on her wand reached the staircase entrance. Upon reaching the landing, she started casting a series of revealing spells and smiled as she saw a set of traps to turn her clothes a vividly bright green and remove her hair. Hermione's smile widened to a grin; the twins really were geniuses, but they were also dealing with a genius themselves.
Hermione considered what to do for a few moments before raising her wand and transferring the traps to the boys' staircase. She changed the charms from recognizing her own magical core as the trigger to recognize the twins' instead. Hermione added a few simple flashing charms to distract and throw the twins off. Satisfied with her work, she moved to a chair in front of the fireplace to wait for her friends to come down and the show to start.
Hermione reached into her bag and once again pulled out the book on Alchemical Artifacts, a roll of parchment that she was writing notes on, and a quill. She fliped through the pages to where she left off; running her finger down the page slowly, the artifacts in the book were frightening in their power. She shuddered, remembering some of the other artifacts she'd found in the book.
Before she could get too far down the page from where she was, she heard the vocies of the twins coming down the staircase and, with a smile, Hermione quickly put the book away and leaned back in her seat to wait. Her jaw dropped as seems the twins were a little too confident in their abiliteis. Not only did they trip their own trap, but her flashing charms went of as well, blinding them and causing them both to fall through the traps of their own prank.
She stared at the twins as they rubbed at their eyes, trying to restore their vision. Her silence lasted only a few seconds before she started laughing hysterically. Her only wish was that she had a camera that would work in Hogwarts at that moment; the sight of the twins laying on each other, bald, wearing vivd grean robes, and blind from her flash charms was one she would never tire of.
Her laughter and the twins' vocies brought several people rushing down the stairs; Harry, Neville, and the twins' brothers, Ron and Percy amongst them. Half of their house had gathered, all of them except Percy, clutching their sides from laughter as the twins fought to untangle themselves from each other and stand now that their sight had returned to them.
Through all of the chaos, Hermione simply sat with a proud smile on her face as she watched the twins stand, both grinning widely at her as they approached. Unable to resist another barb, Hermione's comment drove everyone further into laughter.
"Well, don't you two look so fashionable today? You guys really pull off the bald look, and those robes! So flattering on you both!"
Even Fred and George were laughing as they approached her. Fred looked at George before speaking through his laughter.
"Well, George. It seems as though we'll have…"
"..To step our game up. Making us trip our own trap like that was…."
"…Rather brilliant."
Their smiles returned as they bowed to Hermione, happy to concede the first round to her.
The following month was torturous for a good deal of people in the castle. Pranks were almost mercelious and given the intelligence of the three involved, extremely clever and well thought out. Having learned from their mistakes, the twins were both a lot more cautious after that day, but that did not stop them from walking around in varrying states of distress. Both were happy to say they'd caught Hermione in a few pranks as well; having her walking around unable to speak for a whole day because instead of words she barked like a dog, was one they were especially proud of.
The rest of the castle watched in a mix of abject horror, amusement, and amazement at the creativity of the pranks. It wasn't until halfway through the month other people were targeted in addition to the previous parties. The unfortunate catalyst for that was Neville, who walked onto a tile that had an etched rune stone layed over it that was charmed to look like a regular tile that was ment for Hermione. Instead of Hermione walking around with fur, it was Neville and he ended up allying Hermione in a prank to help get revenge on the twins. It was a rousing success for Hermione and Neville, as the twins were stuck walking around the common room as lizards for the rest of the night.
As the month ended and exams started closing in, Hermione and the twins called an end to the pranking so that they could both focus on their exams; to a collective sigh of relief from the whole school, Madam Pomfrey in particular.
The twins became an integral part of Hermione's group of friends, not only helping the group with spell work, techniques and theory, but teaching them things from the twins' classes. While there was a groan from Parvati at the overload of information, from not only Hermione but Fred and George as well, it didn't stop her from improving with the rest of her friends. Their teachers were all impressed at the improvements the group was showing; watching as they easily grasped the lesson content and worked the help their classmates improve as well.
As the exams approached, Hermione found her ability to focus compromised from pain, her head aching almost constantly as she worked. She had noticed the pain increasing when she was close to Quirell but she couldn't see the connection. After a particularly stressful day, Hermione found herself knocking on Minerva's door and rubbing her forehead as she waited. When the door opened, Hermione almost felt bad for showing up, with as bad as she felt, Minerva looked worse.
"Hermione? Is something wrong dear? Come in, it looks like we could both use a little break, would you like something to drink?"
Walking into the room, Hermione sat down in the chair she normally sat in when she was in Minerva's rooms.
"Yes please Minerva, if you have some Pumpkin Juice I'd love some, I've grown rather attached to it since I've been introduced to it. Something I have Harry to thank for."
With a chuckle, Minerva joined her, a cup of Tea for herself and a glass of Pumpkin Juice for Hermione. Leaning back in her own chair, Minerva sighed and looked over to Hermione.
"Are you alright dear? You've been rubbing your forehead since I opened my door, do you need to go to the Hospital Wing?"
Sighing, Hermione took a drink before answering Minerva, sighing softly as she placed the glass down.
"I don't know Minerva. I've had constant headaches for a few weeks now; I didn't think anything about it, I thought it was just stress but a couple days ago I noticed when Professor Quirrell walked past my desk the pain got more intense and lessened when he walked away."
Minerva frowned as she sipped her Tea and sighed as she rubbed her own forehead.
"It seems like no matter your questions, I just don't have answers for you Hermione. I'm not sure what the connection could be, if there is one. It could've just been a coincidence that you described Hermione, but I think after we finish our drinks we should have Madam Pomfrey look you over to make sure there's nothing wrong."
Nodding softly, Hermione took another drink and sank into less consiquential conversation with Minerva. As she got about half way through her drink, Hermione decided to bring up something that happened during her detention.
"Minerva, you remember the detention I had because of Lavender and Pansy?"
Minerva frowned and nodded softly, leaning back into her chair, wondering what happened during Hermione's detention. She heard from Albus that something had gone wrong but he kept any details to himself as he usually did. Minerva watched as Hermione gathered her thoughts and waited patiently, even though she was eager to hear what happened. When Hermione sighed Minerva knew she was ready to speak and let her do so without interruption.
"You know that Hagrid took the three of us into the forest to find the injured Unicorn, but when we found the Unicorn we found something else as well. It hadn't noticed us because we were above it, until Pansy screamed and ran off. She screamed so loud it startled me and I fell down the hill we were on and landed almost right next to the thing that killed the Unicorn. It looked at me and when I looked back at it, this searing pain ran through my chest and scar but from what Hagrid said, whatever it was looked like it was in pain as well when it started to run off."
Minerva sat, stunned by the story Hermione just related to her. It took a few moments before she could think straight and several more before she could answer Hermione.
"Did Hagrid take you to see Madam Pomfrey when you returned to the castle?"
Hermione's answer was just a simple shake of her head that left Minerva resting her fingers against her forehead and sighing before she stood, indicating that Hermione should follow.
"We'll go to see Madam Pomfrey now, and I'll be speaking to Hagrid about this. He should have taken you to make sure everything was okay. You could just be feeling residual pain from the creature in the forest and the professor's proximity could just be a coincidence but I doubt it."
Hermione nodded and followed Minerva out of her office and to the Hospital Wing. Upon arriving, Hermione and Minerva found Madam Pomfrey looking through a cupboard and turning to face them as the door to the Hospital Wing opened.
"Hello Professor, Miss Granger, what can I do for you?"
"Miss Granger has been feeling some strange pains, concentrated on her scar Madam Pomfrey, would you check her over for me, I need to go see Hagrid."
With a small sigh, Madam Pomfrey waved Hermione over to the nearest bed and stood to one side while Hermione pulled the book on Alchemy from her bag to read while Madam Pomfrey checked her over. It had become something of a ritual for Hermione to have a book while being examined by the matron. That started during the prank war when some of the pranks had either malfunctioned and caused harm or the effects did not expire as they should have.
"What are you reading this time dear? I don't believe I've seen you reading that before."
"Oh it's just something I saw Professor Quirrel reading in the library one day so I checked it out because it was interesting. It's on different artifacts created using alchemy."
Hermione smiled as she saw the matron's raised eyebrow from the corner of her eye while her scans wrote out their findings on a piece of parchment next to the bed.
"Isn't that more than just a little advanced for you to be looking into?"
"Well, it's not like I'm going to try and make any of these things. I wouldn't want any of them anyway."
At Madam Pomfrey's look of curiosity, Hermione smiled and turned to one of the previous pages, detailing one of the artifacts that had caught her eye.
"This one here for example, the Heart of Fire. When you combine the ingredients, and use a Philosopher's Stone as a catalyst, it creates a stone that can be used to imbue a human with several different traits from a Phoenix, like their ability to be reborn and their flame transportation ability. I'll admit the flame transportation would be useful but I'm quite content to live only one lifetime."
Hermione smiled up at Madam Pomfrey and laughed as the matron shook her head and turned to pick up the parchment from the bedside table and started reading. The door opened revealing Hagrid and Minerva at the threshold before Hermione could start reading again. Closing her book and putting it back into her bag, Hermione waited for them to approach her bed, smiling warmly at them both.
"Hagrid, it's good to see you again."
"It's good to see yeh again too Hermione. I jus' wanted to come up and apologize fer not bringin' yeh up here meself."
Hermione smiled and patted his hand softly before answering.
"It's okay Hagrid, I think we were all too shocked to think straight after what happened."
Hagrid smiled and nodded before turning and walking out of the Ward, leaving Hermione and Minerva to smile at each other when they heard him blowing his nose from outside and quite likely more than halfway down the hall.
"Well, now that's taken care of, how is she Madam Pomfrey?"
Hermione and Minerva both looked at the matron and saw her frowning at the parchment in her hands, making both of their hearts skip a beat in worry.
"Poppy? What is it?"
Hermione knew that Minerva was worried when she referred to the matron by her first name and couldn't help the small smile that slipped past her worry at Minerva's affection for her, it was the only thing that could make her act so unprofessional.
"I'm not sure Minerva, the results are rather strange. She's physically fine, but there's some strange results when my spell examined her magical core. There's some very minor cracks that are healing, but where her core isn't cracked, it's fluctuating."
"I don't understand Madam Pomfrey, isn't that normal?"
Hermione watched as the healer shook her head softly.
"No dear, slight fluctuations are normal considering you're still reaching your core's maturity cycle. The fluctuations are much more erratic than normal and if they don't stabilize it could be disastrous for not just you but everyone around you."
Hermione turned to face Minerva to see her eyes wide, and her skin pale before turning back to Madam Pomfrey.
"Why? What is it? What could happen?"
"With the intensity of the bursts of magic your healed sections are giving off, if your core doesn't stabilize the result would be a magical explosion that could tear your body apart and cause enough damage that if it were to happen here, could destroy the castle."