1951

Morning comes. Time passes. She gets better.

It is Halloween half-term before she knows it. She wool-gathers through her lessons, barely feeling anything, daydreaming of apple-crisp eyes. Her classes get better, more used to her routines. She still gives Charlus Potter a weekly detention without fail. She sits with May and Jasper and Ramesh during her meals and they feed her like fussing bird-like parents, scraps of shortcrust and mashed potatoes, sips of orange juice. It feels good to be taken care of.

Ramesh teaches her Punjabi and Sanskrit - "it's a dead language" isn't an excuse. Jasper is more the strong and silent type, but he pops his head into her Sixth-Year NEWT class to glare at Potter for her. She thinks she might love all three of them. She should've given them space, stayed away to protect them. She can't bring herself to do it. Their tenderness is a drug. Real people. Friends. It's amazing how quickly she starts to think of them as her people.

She stops drinking so much Dreamless Sleep Potion, her dreams are silent now, bereft of him. It's an empty black hole. She's still afraid to go to sleep though, she worries she'll never hear from him again. May keeps her in supply of Pepper-Up leaves and she places them underneath her tongue during her lessons to keep her cognisant. She's grateful for her, more than she knows.

She has noticed that there is more coffee now, sweetened with milk and honey, her favourite vanilla pastries at breakfast, her sweet lemon tarts at pudding. How did he do it? She remembers that he loves her and says nothing.

She comes down harder on the Death Adder acolytes, as she has dubbed them, and she receives an owl one night to tell her that she has been invited to a meeting of the Order of the Phoenix. She is inducted and reports back. He was right about Grindelwald, Dumbledore wants to keep him close. She notices that they barely discuss Tom in her presence. She reports that back too. She doesn't care, not really, she just watches and notices. That's what she's paid for. She rides on apathy's wings.

She writes in the diary twice a week, terse notes of progress. He doesn't reply but she knows he receives them because the ink continues to sink into the page. She stops carrying it around so much and feels better, lighter. She meets Black in Hogsmeade on her monthly excursions now. She doesn't care, she likes that better. It gives her an excuse to shout at him for his reckless behaviour involving his nephew. He orders her Firewhisky and gets her drunk on more than one occasion. He keeps disguising himself as the shaved-head Muggle from the first time and she starts to think of this as his real face - she struggles to remember what he looks like without it.

Tiny little garter snakes begin to follow her around whenever she walks outside. They wait at the entrances for her and report back to him. Is she eating enough? Is she sleeping enough? She wants to learn the Parseltongue for Piss Off.

On the anniversary of Oliver's murder she wanders the third-floor like a zombie, she finds Mariella Weasley crying in the corridor. A group of Slytherin boys three years older than her had hexed her, stolen her things. She takes her to Oscar for him to fix the damage, feeling more motherly than she ever has. Oscar is kindly to the little girl. He pushes the hair from Mariella's eyes and makes her giggle. She turns away, unable to look.

Her fury is terrible to behold. She sentences the boys to manual labour in the Forest with Jasper for the next month. He is less than pleased, but it's her own guilt pushing her forward. The Slytherins renew accusations of her bias against them. She scoffs and ups their punishment for daring to question her. Dirty squib. She dreams of Oliver Weasley's matted hair and her hands shake as she reaches for more chamomile. It's harder to resist the potions on these days.

It is May's birthday on All Saint's Day and they celebrate with lots of Elvish wine in her rooms. Almost all of the students have gone home so the castle is deserted. Jasper and Ramesh and Oscar join them. Jasper has baked his sister a cake, a sloppy Victoria's Sponge, Haps Baps May painted messily on the top. He reveals, drunkenly, that he and his sister are Muggleborn. It feels like a slur when he says it and Hermione itches to wrap her arms around him and hug him. Tears catch May's eyes, the first time she has ever seen her cry.

She had seen Oscar in the halls occasionally, never stopping for a chat, but it is different now he is beside her. He smells like parchment and carbolic soap and the sweet burn of healing magic. He catches her eyes throughout the evening, his eyes their own smile. He seems different, less familiar, more familiar. She isn't sure which one it is. She resolves to keep an eye on him. Apparently there is a flu going around the students. She nods in agreement. She is barely there.

He walks her to her rooms and she thinks this is how rumours begin, but it turns out his rooms are adjacent to hers, that's why he had heard her scream on the very first night. She asks him why he isn't near the Hufflepuff common room.

"The rooms were all already taken, I'm not the Head of Hufflepuff, remember." He says with a sad, self-deprecating smile. Why is he sad? She thinks at once, and then realises she has said this aloud.

His eyes flicker to her, their mischievous light dulled. She wants to put it back. She likes it when he's playful. This new, morose, drunk side of him was no fun. She hasn't tried to get into his mind since their interview. She wonders if she should try.

"You're barely there." He whispers sadly, echoing her thoughts, tucking a hair behind her ears. He is pressed against her and she is pressed against the door. Weeks seem to pass in a drug-like haze. "You're barely there, P." He walks away, disappears through a door of his own. She slides down her own door, a drunken mess. God forbid any students walk past.

She fumbles with her fingers. He doesn't ask anything of her. That's why she likes him.

Before she goes to bed she writes in the diary: I miss you. The ink sinks into the page and then returns. Hermione... It is a firm telling-off, a confession, a love-letter, all in one. She stares at it for twenty minutes and does not wipe the tears that drip down her cheeks. The diary returns to its place under her pillow.

She has another nightmare, Augustin is being buried alive. She is the one shovelling the dirt on top of him and he begs her to stop it, to listen to reason. The dirt fills his mouth and makes him choke. It's not him. It's not him. It's Tom Riddle she is burying. Their faces shift and change until they are barely distinguishable from one another. She wakes up screaming. Thank God she charmed her room this time.

She doesn't catch it until morning, the evening lost to a fog of alcohol. P. P. P. The letter swirls around her brain, her thoughts a swarm of stinging bees that all make the sound of one solitary letter. Pz. Pz. Pz.

Her thoughts sharpen back into focus, the light too bright, the air clearer. She is back, off the horse. He called her P.

She storms through his door at 7:30am. He doesn't lock it, idiot.

"We need to talk."

He is lounging on a squashy armchair, blanket thrown roughly over his body. He hadn't slept in his bed then. His hair is pushed back away from his forehead, his face expectant. "Go ahead." He gestures towards the adjacent armchair.

He doesn't remember her, doesn't remember anything. She shouts and screams at him, asks him why he called her that name. He says he doesn't know, he was drunk, he doesn't even remember it. "You look like him!" She screams. He reverts to a teenage boy, hangdog and denying.

He shouts back, says "I don't even know who him is. God, you're so ridiculous!"

She invades his mind roughly, her mind hysterical. She needs him, needs her Augustin. He would fix her. His mind is a series of blank walls. She can tell it hurts him, tell it's uncomfortable, but she's desperate. He doesn't fight back, he doesn't hit her, curse her. He just looks at her with a sad lost look in her eyes. He's a puppy and she's kicked him. How did it all get so messy?

She resigns herself that she must've been wrong, must've gotten it wrong. It was the alcohol. She imagined it. She erases his mind with a silent flick of her wand. It's easy. She doesn't even think twice.

It doesn't matter now, she is awake. She is Hermione again. She makes contingency plans, finds out through reconnaissance that Dumbledore keeps a shiny golden Time-Turner in his office. She fantasises about breaking in and stealing it, of going back to Nos and seeing Augustin again. Fulfilling her oath to Malachi. It's no longer a dream. She formulates a plan.

May tells her at dinner that she caught Charlus and Dorea snogging behind Greenhouse 4.

"Actually," Hermione says. "I need help with something."

She explains it all in hypotheticals. She needs help with the mgwan, she needs to fulfill the ritual to return a mgwan back to his tree. How could she do it? What would she need?

May's eyes alight with challenge. She explains that they need Jasper: mgwan are magical creatures. He is the Professor for the Care of Magical Creatures. Hermione brings him into the fold in a solitary afternoon. He isn't much help, he explains that they need books, they need research. It would take ages probably, they weren't well-researched creatures. However would she get hold of such books?

Hermione knows a man.

She gets May to send an owl to Abraxas Malfoy. It's indubitably risky, she barely believes she's doing it. She tells him she's sorry. She needs some good reading material. She wanted Faerytales of the Mgwan. There's no need to tell Tom.

His silver screech returns with a book wrapped in fine green paper by daybreak.

She reads it cover to cover and finds out that the ritual comes from a runic tablet. She can't decipher it, it's basically gibberish, so one more is brought into the fold. Kumar tells her that it's written in Runic Old Norse, it will take months to decode. She asks him "can you do it?"

His mouth is set. Of course he can. Hermione could've wept she was so grateful.

More books from Malfoy. Translations, Norse Mythology, Ancient Runes. Arithmancy for Little Bitches. She throws in a few red herrings to make it a little less obvious what they are doing. Ramesh's mouth waters every morning, and it has nothing to do with breakfast.

Her evenings are consumed with research and lesson-planning. She's so busy she forgets to have nightmares. I'm coming for you, Augustin. She thinks determinedly.

Grey November disappears into the horizon and slips into cold December before she knows it.