Chapter 11 - Year 3, part 1

September 1st, 1993

The clock said 10:30 and she was standing with William on Platform 9 ¾ waiting for all of her friends to arrive.

"Calm down already Nene, it's not like you weren't going to see them again." William said exasperated.

She had been with him for all of two hours, and she was ready to send him off to his friend again.

"Hey, look! It's Ellinor!" Hermione suddenly blurted excitedly, looking at the platform-entrance where no one was currently entering.

"What?! Where?!" He exclaimed frantically, patting down his robes and hair while looking all around them for another one of his… 'Friends'.

Hermione found herself laughing so hard at his reaction that she had to bend over so as to not fall over completely. She was heaving for breaths between laughs while tears were streaming down her cheeks.

William was shooting daggers at her, but she had missed having fun so much that she couldn't find it in herself to feel sorry.

"Now, Hermione. That was uncalled for." Grandma chastised with a disapproving look.

"Sorry." She said between laughs as she finally got it a bit under control.

"Like you mean it." Wills muttered sourly beside her, standing there with his arms crossed and doing everything he could to not look like he was not looking for someone.

"I really didn't." She sighed and removed one last tear, while she straightened up slightly again. she was just about to turn around towards the entry point when a familiar voice spoke behind her: "What's so funny?"

"HARRY!" she was flying across the platform in a second, and into the arms of her best friend. "I missed you so much!"

"I missed you too, Hermione." He said and gave her a small hug before letting her step back. "What was so funny? I haven't heard you laughing like that for like…"

"Two months?" She asked bitterly, suddenly realizing that she had to look up further than normally, to look him in the eye. Merlin, that boy had grown taller in that short amount of time… "Wills has a crush on Ellinor, but he doesn't want to admit it."

"Ehh, nooo. No, I do not have a crush on… On Ellinor. Absolutely not. That's ridiculous." William sputtered and did his very best to look disinterested. It wasn't working that well for him.

"Sure thing, mate. Are you guys ready to board the train?" Em asked after giving her a quick hug, before doing the same to William. Choruses all around her acknowledged that they were in fact ready. "William, you all set for your OWLS?"

"Do dogs bark?" William asked with a smirk.

Emmeline laughed and high-fives William, "That's the spirit." William just laughed before turning around to say goodbye to Grandma and make his way for the train.

"Are you bringing Crookshanks with you to school? Did your mum and dad actually agree to that?" Daniel asked as he closed in on her trunk and the carrier that obviously contained a large orange cat, sticking a couple of fingers through the grit in the crate to greet his cat.

Hermione had completely forgotten about him and whirled around, starting to apologize for bringing their cat to school. "I'm sorry - I really didn't mean to!"

"It's alright for me really. Can she bring him, mum? Can she?" Daniel asked, directed to his mum who was watching the cat with a weird mixture of confusion and grievance.

Em crossed her arms and looked at the cat for a while, while she tapped her lip with her forefinger. She looked to be deep in thought. "He wouldn't let you leave without him... Would he?" Her piercing gaze suddenly shifted to Hermione.

"Noo, not really. This morning we found him sleeping on my trunk, and he refused to move before we got his carrier. Once, when we succeeded to get him off, he just jumped right back on. Actually, now that I think about it… He's been sort of clingy these last couple of weeks or so."

"Well, it's settled then." She said with a sort of finality, like she had just closed a case at work. "He obviously has something to do at Hogwarts, so, he can go! You got everything you need for him, Hermione?"

She quickly confirmed that she had, and the three of them gave their last hugs and kisses for Aunt Em and Grandma, before boarding the train.

…

"I can't believe he actually chose to stay in the student's carriages. Why didn't he just apparate or floo? Can't he do that as a teacher?" Harry asked no one in particular. He, Daniel and Neville were sitting on the floor of their carriage playing cards.

"Well, he can't apparate directly into the school, but why not to the gates? I don't know, you're the one who's spent the entire summer with him." Hermione muttered as she sat by the window staring out into the nothingness of passing roads and fields, while petting Crookshanks in her lap. She didn't know if she was more upset by the fact that they hadn't talked for two damn months, or that none of them acknowledged it. "Anyway, the full moon was last night… We better just let him sleep."

"Maybe it's to keep us safe from the mass-murderer; Black!" Harry joked and laughed after a couple of minutes' solemn quietness, making Hermione suddenly snicker without having to think much about it.

"Yeah, I bet he's in the doghouse." Daniel answered, and Harry answered with a howl and a laugh.

"Oh, come on Daniel, I'm sure he was having a Rough time escaping Azkaban back then." Neville retaliated, resulting in Harry violently snorting out the juice he had just drunk from his juice brick.

"Uugh, damn! You win! You win!" He laughed and Neville once again collected his winnings, in more sense than the card game in front of them.

Nothing was said after that for a long while, as the rain roared on its way northbound. Just after passing Manchester, it started pouring.

"What did you guys do in your holidays anyway? I feel like I haven't heard from you in forever." Neville piped up, while collecting his win of the round.

"Nothing." Hermione, Daniel and Harry muttered at the same time. Hermione looked at the others in question, urging them to finally explain.

Harry looked over his shoulder at the door and after making sure that it was locked properly, he continued in a hushed voice: "Well we've been camping around most of England while Sirius was leaving to fix up his old house. You know, the one he used to live in before he lived with my grandparents? Yeah, apparently it was filled with loans of illegal dark artifacts. Em had to get it all out of the way with her team without raising too much attention and all that. I wonder what her boss would say if he knew…"

"If he knew that she was hiding her mass murderer of a husband in his own house that the government has full knowledge about?" Hermione interjected. "Yeah, I wonder what they would do this time."

"I just can't believe they're doing this." Daniel suddenly exclaimed, clearly frustrated, "He was cleared! What new sort of evidence can they find after TWELVE YEARS. It's been twelve years Harry, why can't they just let it go already?"

Hermione was suddenly brought back to the reaction that Ron had had when he found out back in first year that Sirius was Daniel's dad… It also mirrored perfectly, the kind of looks they had all received through the class in their sliding door, since arriving in the carriage.

She wondered if being stared at like that was how animals felt in the zoo.

"I don't know, Daniel…" She sighed and sat up a bit more comfortably. Apparently Crookshanks wasn't happy with the new position as he chose to jump from her lap and almost directly into Harry's, where crooks made himself comfortable and started purring loudly.

"Well, that's my cue - I'm going to find the loo." She said in a low voice and stood up, grabbing her bag on the way out of the door. She had just barely shut the door before she nearly rammed into someone.

"Oh, I'm sorr-" She gushed and took a small step back against the shut door, so as to not be further in the way.

"Yeah, you'd better be." Someone hissed at her, and she looked up into the clear, blue eyes of Ronald Weasley. Instantaneously, she went from sorry, to annoyed.

"The day that you learn to talk politely to other people, is going to be a good day." She replied disinterested, which then turned to suspicion when she noticed how close he had been standing to the door when she'd gone through it. Her eyes narrowed and she could feel the low buzzing of magic in her fingertips. "What are you doing here anyway? Don't you usually sit at the other end of the train?"

"That's none of your business, you stupid-"

"Alright there, Granger?" His voice caught her completely off guard and she found her focus whipping to him instantly. It was like shock moving through her veins at the speed of light.

Her eyes met his, and it was like everything fell into place - yet fell apart, all at the same time.

Because he had ignored her. She had written so many notes to him and he had ignored each and every damn one of them. She had been alone all summer, with no one to talk to. No one to swim with, or play in the fields, or read with or- or- or…

She had been alone… And he hadn't been there, because he had been ignoring her.

And just like that, her shock turned to red, hot anger.

"Mind your own business, Malfoy." She shot at him with as much venom as she could muster. Meanwhile she pushed forward to get past Weasley. She did her best to move as far away and around him while doing it, but seeing as the halls on the train were quite narrow, it wasn't necessarily the easiest. She didn't physically touch him, but her bag must have graced him or something, because he turned rapidly on her, and with his hands on her shoulders, slammed her back against the window.

"What the hell?!" Malfoy exclaimed instantly, as Ron aggressively seethed at her; "Don't you fucking touch me."

It was like she could sense Draco closing in to their location as she felt pain shoot up her spine from hitting the window.

Ron had barely finished his hissing-fit before she had her wand out and stuck hard into the bottom of his throat; "Don't you come anywhere near me, or you're going to regret it."

He was staring down at her with hard, narrowed eyes, but the only real sign of nervousness was his throat bobbing a couple of times against the tip of her wand. "What are you going to do? Curse me? HA!"

The door into her carriage opened up and out came three heads; Harry's, Daniel's and Neville's. "I'd much rather know what you are going to do, because I for one will not be cleaning up the blood when she's done with you." Harry said in such a voice that he might as well have been talking about his cat coughing up hairballs.

Weasley suddenly looked horrified and stepped back and out of reach of her wand, before hurrying down the halls. She pointed her wand towards him, and threw a jellylegs-jinx after him and watched him fall as it took into effect.

"What happened?" Daniel asked slowly, yet he wasn't looking at her… He was looking at the floor.

She knew that he was hurt about her breaking up with him, but she also knew that he was ignoring almost all signs of her damn existence. And just like that, her anger was flaring right up again.

Yet another person ignoring her. Great.

"Nothing." She simply said, and turned away to walk in the opposite direction from where Weasley had stumbled. The door slid shut behind her, as she once again came face to face with someone she hadn't expected.

She quickly made to walk right past Draco when he softly put his hand on her shoulder to stop her. As she turned towards him with a hiss on her lips, she found that she didn't even care if there had been a hundred people in the hallway to watch their first interaction in a year.

"Don't you fucking touch me." She stepped out of his grasp without any trouble, just to see him frown at her. "You don't get to ignore me for an entire year - including summer break - just to act like nothing happened. You weren't alone with your own thoughts for a year, you weren't ignored. I didn't exist for a whole damn year and you-, you-," She sniffed involuntarily and suddenly and horrifyingly, noticed her eyes stinging. "Don't you dare."

She kept her eyes on Draco's as she stepped away and hiked her bag further up on her shoulder - all while a single tear made its way down her cheek. "Don't you dare." She whispered, and walked away to do what she had intended to do when she left the boys in the first place.

…

"I wanted to speak to you in person about your selectives this year." Professor McGonagall said as she sat down behind the table in her office. She motioned for Hermione to sit down across from her. "Am I correct in assuming that it was not a mistake, that you ticked off all the classes?" Her professor said, as she stared at her with such focus that it made Hermione want to look away.

She suddenly felt naked.

"You are correct - it was not a mistake." She said quickly, knowing that their time this night was a bit limited. After all, all of the other students were currently arriving or already sitting in the Great Hall, waiting for this year's Welcoming Feast to begin.

"As your professor and Head of House, I must strongly advise against doing all of the classes, Ms. Granger. It will be hard work, but if you are confident that this is something you want to achieve, I'm afraid there is only one opportunity." McGonagall sighed hard, and bent down to the side of her desk where she shuffled around what sounded like papers in a drawer.

"Afraid, Professor?" She asked slowly, hoping and praying that her voice wouldn't betray her terrified thoughts.

The woman in front of her, lifted up a long silver chain with a beautiful pendant on it. It kind of looked like Saturn with the sphere and the surrounding rings. It turned softly around itself as Professor McGonagall held it up in front of her.

"I'm sure your grandmother will be able to tell you much more about this than I ever would. This Ms. Granger, is a-"

"Time-Turner." Hermione whispered, slightly dazed from the pendant that was glittering in the light of the torches and candles scattered across the room. When she finally managed to draw her eyes away from it, she found her professor watching her with a smirk and a smug look in her eyes. If she wasn't mistaken, she also looked slightly proud.

"So you do know what this is then?"

"Only vaguely, Professor. It's a rare item that takes the user back in time for a couple of hours at a time. It's also heavily… Regulated…" She looked up from her involuntary focus on a knot in the desk, and looked her professor directly in the eyes. "Professor, how am I allowed to use that? It's dangerous."

McGonagall softly put the Time-turner down on the table in front of Hermione, collected her hands in front of her, and softly spoke: "When I received your class-wishes I made a request with the Ministry of Magic. Once they saw your grades, they had no doubts in mind that it would be put to good use, and I must say that I fully agree. Also, your family history certainly helped your case." The elderly woman smiled at her. "This is yours for as long as you need it."

My family history?

What the hell did they know about her family history that she didn't already know herself? Beyond the 'my-dad's-a-squib'-thingy, there was nothing extraordinary or abnormal about anyone in her family.

They were just… Normal.

She liked being normal.

Her head of house continued to tell her how to use it and what rules were in place. "A fair warning Ms. Granger. Using it for extended periods of time will exhaust you. You must listen to your body and rest when it needs you to. Should you wish to return it, you can do so at any given time and I will think nothing less of you for doing so." McGonagall eyed her knowingly. "Do you understand me, Hermione?"

Hermione's eyes whipped to her professors by the use of her first name. This was unusual to say the least.

"Yes… Minerva." The name tasted strange on her tongue, and she didn't know if she liked it. Being so casual with a teacher was… Weird.

"Also, no one can know." McGonagall said, giving her a sad, knowing look.

"No one?"

"No one." She repeated with a small shake of her head.

"Oh."

"Yes. Now, hurry along for the Feast - I shall go see to our new students." McGonagall finished with an excited clap, and opened the door so that they could leave her office.

…

Hermione arrived in the Great Hall a few minutes later, to Neville, Harry and Daniel talking angrily and gesticulating all over the place. Their voices were hushed but their thoughts were deafening, and Hermione already knew what they were talking about.

She sat down quietly, and watched their conversation while the itty bitty firsties walked into the hall.

"But why?" Daniel moaned in a low voice. "He's supposed to be free."

"I heard him and Em talking about some sort of plot against him, before we left." Harry suggested.

"But… Why? It's not like he's ever done anything to anyone." Daniel whined.

Not bloody likely, Hermione thought to herself. Sirius had a tendency to put his snout where it didn't belong, and had trouble getting it back out of trouble.

"Well, he was on one side of a war. Maybe someone has some bad blood against him." Neville added quietly.

"Hmpf." Daniel snorted lowly and turned his attention and angrily crossed arms to the first years that were to be sorted.

…

September 2nd, 1993

Hermione sat down awkwardly at the breakfast table the following morning. She had slept wonderfully the night before but had woken up kind of queasy - hopefully she hadn't caught a bug or something. Starting the new school year out with getting sick, wasn't something she was looking particularly forward to. She had gone to the loo as always and started putting on her school robes just as Lavender and Parvati were waking up.

Apparently, they had spent most of their summer together and had gotten really interested in makeup and magazines.

Hermione wasn't feeling it.

She was feeling it even less as they started commenting on her lack of it. On how she should maybe have stayed some more outside instead of using a tanning bed. 'It's really not that good for your skin!' They'd said, and refused to listen to her replies about never having used one in her life.

Their comments had kept on relentlessly as she stood in her underwear trying to get dressed, because, apparently, 'it's weird that your boobies are so small.'.

Her eyes had been moving from their faces and to the large mirror behind them, taking in her petite body as they showered her with what they might have believed to be preferable and suggestable improvements.

Hermione pulled her robes closer around her small frame as people started slowly arriving at breakfast.

Until that moment, she had thought her breasts to be… fine. They were fine! Right? Maybe they just couldn't see it because theirs were bigger than hers?

She had never really thought that anything about her - except for her hair of course - was to be considered too big or too small. In fact, her mum had complained the entire summer about how she wasn't eating enough.

The entire concept of other people having an opinion about how she was supposed to look, was very odd to her.

Maybe she could do her morning runs here as well. Maybe that would stop them from criticising her.

Yes, she would definitely do that.

Around her, the other students started arriving at breakfast, finding their friends and starting conversations of the day. She could see Harry and Neville in the back of a group walking in through the doors.

As they sat down across from her, Harry eyed her and her plate suspiciously.

"What?" She asked with her head tilted to the side in confusion.

"Well… You look like… Not you." Harry tried but seemed to have some issues finding the right words. "Are you… Throwing plates?"

An imaginary lightbulb lit above her head at the question. It would certainly make sense of some of her mood.

She turned her head slightly and eyed the chocolate-spread down the table. Did she want some? Did she need it to function?

No.

She sighed hard and shook her head in resignation. "Naah… I guess I'm just having a bad day or something."

Someone sat down hard next to her. "Happens to the best of us, apparently. Did you guys get your schedules yet?" The long red hair and Harry's sudden ability to not talk, told her that it was Ginny.

"No, not yet. We're still waiting for McGonagall to arrive." Hermione said as she made herself some porridge with blueberries.

"Oh. I wanted to see when I was having the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. Apparently, he's a right badass for having handled those dementors on the train." She sighed even harder than she had when she sat down and Hermione found herself wondering if this was yet another "my teacher is a heartbreaker"-thing.

She couldn't deal with another Lockhart situation even if Remus was nothing like him.

"I mean… Sure." Harry started, looking a bit confused by the prospect. He looked at Hermione in confusion. Maybe he was thinking the same as her?

"I mean… Remus is cool and all, but he's not exactly your common girl-crush… material." Hermione answered while eyeing her cup of tea.

"What do you mean?" Ginny sounded like she literally had no idea of what she was talking about. She sounded sort of like Hermione when she had heard of Pythagoras for the first time.

"Oh, you'll see soon enough. Don't worry, Ginny." Hermione smiled into her tea and took a large sip, feeling the warmth seeping through her body.

Beside her, Ginny shrugged carelessly and started preparing her breakfast. A fellow Gryffindor from Ginny's year joined them soon after, only to be followed instantly by McGonagall delivering their schedules.

The older woman gave Hermione a small secretive smirk, when she handed over her schedule.

This was going to bite her in the arse, Hermione could already feel it.

Her entire day was filled with double lessons. Not as in; 'double length classes', but more like; she would have to spend the entire day being in two places at once. And to make matters any more exciting, her first period was a triple lesson.

She was still making sense of her schedule when Neville quibbed in. "So, it's Divination first?"

"I guess." Harry muttered and he, Neville, Daniel and Hermione all collected their stuff to head to their new classroom.

But how do I do this? How do I remove myself from them without them noticing?

Her mind was all over the place as they made their way through the castle with the rest of the students. They were Halfway to their divination classroom and she would soon have to 'split up' to go in two other directions.

Talk about a fork in the road.

"Oh, Come on, Draco - it's a great excuse for a nap!" Theo exclaimed as he passed her with Draco and walked to the right. Draco's eyes lingered too long on her and she found that she didn't know whether she wanted to cry more than punching him…

"I'll see you up there - I just need the loo." She said suddenly, and turned off in the direction of the loo (and muggle studies).

Hopefully they weren't going to muggle studies, because let's be honest here; dealing with Draco Malfoy this early in the morning, after having verbally bitten his head off the day prior, wasn't exactly on her list of things she wanted to do right now.

She wasn't that stupid.

"I'll save you a seat!" Harry called after her and the boys made their way up the stairs ahead, while she solemnly followed the two Slytherins. Luckily, she didn't have to use the time turner until the lesson had ended.

Draco and Theo went in through a door, and she somehow found herself a bit sad that they wouldn't be sharing this class - Muggle studies was the next classroom. Soon after, she entered her designated classroom and found an empty seat at the front of the class. She wasn't surprised to find the room filled with mainly Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs - and not a single Gryffindor apart from herself, seeing as they would be having Divination at the moment.

Right in front of the class stood a witch who introduced herself as Professor Burbage - and then they were starting on their first assignments.

Never in her life had she been so happy to have grown up partially in the muggleworld. Who would have known that knowing what electricity was, would give her such a grand advantage?

…

After the end of class, she hurried into the nearest empty classroom and pulled out her Time turner from around her neck.

With her thumb and index-finger she found the little turner on the side, and carefully drew it back to match the two hours that she needed to make it to Divination. She slid it back in at the designated hour, and spun it forward to begin the mechanism.

The world instantly started spinning uncomfortably fast and she found herself getting really dizzy.

As the world stopped spinning around, she found herself leaning against the side of the wall for balance while gasping hard for air.

"Wow." She gasped as her dizziness slowly disappeared.

She looked at her wristwatch and noticed that it somehow matched the time of what 'timezone' she was in. Awfully convenient.

10 minutes till class starts, better get going, Hermione.

She opened the door to the hallway and was about to step out when she saw Theo and Draco walking around the corner in her direction. She quickly dashed back into the room and closed the door, breathing heavily.

Phew, that was close. She should have realized that of course every other person would also exist in their own normal timeline - including herself. When would she pass the classroom?

Hermione slowly opened the door ajar and watched as her fellow students passed the bathroom in a hurry to get to their classrooms. A short while later, she saw herself hurrying in the same direction.

She slowly counted to ten hoping that it would be enough for the other Hermione to round the next corner before she peeked out of the door to check if the coast was clear…

Confirmation was quick, and Hermione dashed in the opposite direction, hoping that she would make it before class started.

…

Arriving in the classroom, she found that Harry had in fact saved her a seat at his table. On the other side of him, she found Daniel and Neville sitting at their own table.

"We'll be starting today off with tea leaves, my dears!" A dreamy voice that made her want to turn around and leave, called from the front of the class.

…

For the first time in her history as a student of Hogwarts, she had found a class that she didn't like. No, actually, she didn't just not like it - she HATED it.

"I don't care what anyone says; that woman has to be a fraud." Hermione moaned loudly after making their way down the stairs and into the hallway.

"Yeah, she was so weird. Sure, it looked like a dog in my cup… But an omen of death? And a skull? 'You have an deadly enemy.'" Harry repeated the words of their professor in a mocking tone.

Hermione snorted loudly, making Daniel, Neville and Harry look at her in question; "Come on! Everyone knows you've got a deadly enemy! It's more common knowledge than how to read the periodic table properly, for God's sake!"

The boys nodded acknowledging while trying (and failing) to hide their knowing smiles, and the four of them trudged on for their Transfiguration class.

…

Hermione could feel her hair falling out of her braids as she dug the pestle harder down into the mortar, trying to powder the graphorn horn properly. She still wasn't getting the right consistency, though, and she was getting impatient. She had about five minutes before she had to add it to her antidote, or she would be starting over, but at the rate she was doing things at the moment she knew that she wouldn't succeed.

She could feel her irritation starting to bubble over, and as if on cue, a kettle somewhere to her left started fizzing and bubbling heavily before exploding.

"Angle, Ms. Granger, you need a different angle." Her professor's voice whispered slowly from behind her - much closer than she had anticipated - before he raised his voice to the normal; "Finnigan! Get your potion under control, or I will have to deduct points!" He warned.

Hermione turned her wrist slightly to get a different angle against the side of the bowl and started grounding again. Within seconds she saw the powder getting finer and her eyes widened in surprise. She looked up towards the blackboard to see if there was an instruction she had overlooked, and found that there wasn't.

She couldn't figure it out. She had read their potion's books on multiple occasions through the summer. She had even read Williams! what had she missed?!

"Class is up for today!" Snape's voice called from the front of the class. "Leave you potions and you'll continue them next week - Ms. Granger, please stay after class."

It was like all eyes in the class zoned in on her, as she did her best to remain unseen. Somewhere behind her, Zabini whispered too loudly about 'Gryffindork in trouble'.

Had she done something wrong? Was it her graphorn horn? It had to be. What else could it possibly be?

"Now, or your recess will be much shorter than you'd like." Snape said with a heavy eye roll.

That seemed to get most of her fellow students out of their trances. Many people still looked at her in confusion as they left. "What's going on?" Harry asked as he packed up beside her, to which she just shrugged.

As some of the last students in class, Theo passed her while giving her a small sympathetic smile - and then Draco.

She didn't think anyone else would have noticed since they didn't talk, and hadn't done in a long time.

No one had even seen her sneering at him on the train yesterday. Not that she knew of, at least, and if they had, it hadn't been acknowledged in any way.

As Draco slowly walked past her, right behind Theo and so close to him and they might as well have been one, he slid a piece of paper under her open book.

She was in shock.

He hadn't given her a note in more than a year.

They hadn't talked.

They hadn't…

Draco Malfoy just gave her a note.

She was still processing what had happened when Draco and Theo exited the room, and the door closed behind them.

"Ms. Granger." Snape said, and suddenly he was in front of her, leaning against a table, and Hermione starlet from being ripped so suddenly from her own thoughts. "My apologies, Ms. Granger, I didn't mean to frighten you." He said, stood from the table and took a couple of steps back and raised a questioning eyebrow at her.

She breathed out as she started to instantly relax. Why she was reacting in such a way towards people who meant her no harm, was so far beyond her. "It's okay, Professor. I'm sorry, I don't do well with… surprises, anymore." She shrugged apologetically.

"Please don't apologize - that's what he should be doing." Snape sneered lightly, hinting at her DADA professor from their previous year, who was still considered a fugitive. "But that isn't why I asked you to stay. Why were you struggling so much with the horn?"

"Because it wasn't powdered finely enough." Hermione answered with her brows furrowed in thought. "But then I thought that I might have missed something in the instructions, or in the books, or in Williams books."

"You read your brother's potion's books?" Her professor asked with a smirk.

"I was bored! Okay?!" Hermione exclaimed, trying to defend herself after having read books that were way above her academic level.

Hermione looked at him in exasperation as he looked back at her. They hadn't been standing there for very long when he suddenly broke the silence: "Your powder was perfect, Ms. Granger. Perfect."

Perfect? No, it wasn't anywhere near perfect. This person in front of her should know better than her, because it was most definitely not perfect.

"To the naked eye, that is. Somehow you were able to look at the powder, and notice that it could be better, and so you strove for that. Seeing that, and then wanting to perfect that… That is a skill, that for some is hard to learn - yet comes easily to others." She looked at him completely dumbstruck as he took up his wrist to look at his watch, "I'm afraid you're running out of time so I will make this as short as I can: Should you ever want to learn beyond our ordinary curriculum or want to work in the world of potions, please, do let me know. I will do what I can, to help you in doing so."

He looked at her, but when she didn't immediately say anything, he instead went and opened the door to the hallway for her to leave for her next class. Somehow, that was what brought her back to what he had just said. She rushed to collect all of her stuff - including that stupid note from Draco - and made her way to the now open door, where she faced her professor with a happy smile.

"Thank you, Professor. Thank you so much! I promise to let you know."

"Very well, Ms. Granger. Now, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day." He smiled pleasantly down at her while she heard voices from the hallway and shoes hitting the stone floor as people were rushing to get to the classroom that she was currently leaving.

"You too, Professor. Thank you." She smiled, and exited the room, hurrying past other students and up the stairs towards Care for Magical Creatures.

I can't believe Professor Snape of all people, suggested an advanced curriculum and a Masters in Potions! This day is insane!

…

The rest of the day flew by after that. Care for magical Creatures was… Magical. There was no other way of saying it.

Hagrid had brought a Hippogriff for his very first lesson as a teacher. Of course, Hermione had her reservation about him because of the Dragon and the three-headed-dog-thing, but she might be able to move beyond that.

Everyone knew that Hippogriffs were proud animals, especially if one chose to read their textbooks. But she would have never in her wildest dream, thought that Hagrid would let a student - let alone fucking Harry Potter - ride on the very first day.

It was both incredibly stupid, and so exciting.

Though, Crabbe getting tackled by the creature for pissing it off, was pretty stupid. She wouldn't say she felt bad for him in any way, but it must have hurt. That idiot.

So, the first day back at school was all in all… nothing really out of the ordinary.

She snorted involuntarily at the obvious lie. Nothing at Hogwarts was ever not out of the ordinary.

She had just finished dinner and was sitting in the common room, relaxing for the first time that day when she pulled up her bag into her lap.

Let's see what the hell Draco wants. She thought to herself as she fished up his note, and was having issues figuring out with herself, whether she was excited about him finally contacting her, or if she wanted to throw it into the flames in front of her.

Lavender laughed loudly as she made her way past the couch, sending her a sweet smile only to turn away from her and whisper something to Parvati.

Bitch.

The note from Draco wasn't a big one. Just a small piece of parchment folded up a single time, with a hurried scribble on one side. It was obviously written in a hurry.

Meet me tonight in the library?

Hermione frowned at the parchment. She had actually thought about going there, simply because no one went on the first day of school, and she liked the quiet. But now, she didn't feel like going anyway…

But what if he wants to talk?

Apparently, that's exactly what he wants.

But you wanted that too!

Not when it has to be on his terms.

But, you-

Nope. I'm not going.

But, he-

-Is an asshole who treated me badly.

But, you-

Shut up, I'm going to bed.

Discussing such a manner with yourself wasn't exactly at the top of her list of things she wanted to do tonight. Instead, she went up, grabbed her night clothes and toiletries, showered and went to bed - all without having a single conversation with herself or Lavender and Parvati.