Hermione begged off early on New Year's Eve, claiming a headache from too much eggnog. Her parents had been mildly concerned, but they let her retire early. Hermione knew they were likely to fall asleep on the couch just after 10pm themselves, so she wasn't worried about them noticing she was gone.

At quarter to 11, Hermione carefully dressed herself. She put on her new casual robes, stashing bluebell flames all over in the pockets, and put on her coat and new cape as well. She suspected learning to fly would be done outside, and it was freezing out.

She held herself perfectly still, wand in one hand, the coin in the other, and waited, mentally counting the down the last five minutes in her head.

At exactly 11 o'clock, there was a powerful jerk behind her navel, and Hermione was abruptly spinning through the air, spiraling through multicolored nothingness, until she abruptly crashed into the ground. Her stomach roiled, and Hermione fought to keep her supper down.

"Happy Christmas, Miss Granger."

Hermione looked up to see Professor Snape standing there, looking at her expectantly, a hand extended. Hermione smiled shakily and took his hand, pulling herself up.

"Happy Christmas, Professor."

Now that she was standing, Hermione shivered in the cold. They were outside, and they were on top of a cliff, it seemed. She could hear waves crashing below them, and the grass beneath her feet blew in the chilly winds.

Abruptly, there was a ball of light floating above them, illuminating the area in faint white light, but casting oddly-shaped shadows. Snape's eyes seemed to glow in the dark, and Hermione shivered.

"Flying, Miss Granger, is a very difficult practice," he told her quietly. "It is also not widely known. As far as I know, there is only one way that has been discovered, and it was discovered by the Dark Lord."

Hermione bit her lip. "Is it dark magic?"

Snape scoffed. "No." He paused. "But… it is grey, one might say."

Hermione nodded slowly. She'd read about "grey" magic, the raw, elemental magic that did not have strict purpose. Using it was very hard, and generally, only Dark wizards and witches used it. It was the kind of power that fueled spells like Fiendfyre, which summoned a cursed fire as if from Hell.

She shivered. She'd never done grey magic before.

"We are going to summon an air elemental," Snape told her. "Summoning is not something widely done anymore, and it is not to be spoken of to anyone else. Do you understand?"

"Very rare, not to be spoken of. Got it," Hermione said, nodding. "Summoning was covered in the book you loaned me. People consider it largely dark nowadays, don't they?"

Snape scowled. "Close-minded morons. Summoning isn't bad, just as it isn't good. It just is. It depends what you do with it, what your purpose is, that makes it light or dark. Come here."

He gestured, and Hermione walked to him, seeing that he'd scratched in a rough circle in the ground.

"We will summon an air elemental," he told her. "We will then bind it to you. This will give you the potential to fly. Your will will have to subdue and control the air spirit. This will give you mastery over the air."

"Bind it to me?" Hermione's eyes went wide. "I- I don't want to- Professor, I don't want to kill anything-!"

"An elemental, Miss Granger, is not alive," he told her, sprinkling something white and glowing around the circle. "It is a nature spirit. It alive in the same way a tree is alive, or a flower, or the grass. There is a spirit of sorts in it, but not a soul. There is no consciousness." Snape dusted his hands off, returning to her. "I understand the sentiment behind your objection – you feel as if you will kill something, doing this." He paused, and his eyes glinted in the darkness. "…And yet, you pick flowers without thought, do you not?"

Hermione felt uneasy. "But… Professor, this feels different…"

"Hermione." Snape gave her a sharp look. "Do you trust me?"

That was an easy one. "Yes, sir," she answered truthfully.

"Then trust me when I sat that this is not evil. You will not even 'kill' the air elemental. You are binding its power and nature to your own. It will 'live' and grow alongside you."

Hermione gnawed on her lip. "…I have to subdue it?"

"Even a spirit has a will, Hermione," he told her. "It is not strong, compared to a person, but it exists, though without aim, without consciousness. Once you subdue it, it will assimilate to your power."

Hermione nodded. "I understand."

Snape gave her a pleased look, and began to explain how the ritual would work.

The ritual was incredibly simple, when it came down to it. There were moonstones to encourage the air elemental to emerge, and doing it at the moment of the New Year would help, when hopes and dreams were the freest, and people did not feel as tied down to the earth and reality.

Hermione moved to stand at the top point of the triangle within the circle. Snape straddled the triangle to stand on the two other points. The moonstone was in the center of the triangle. Just before midnight, Snape closed his eyes and began to chant, drawing patterns through the air with his hands.

Hermione did her best to stand still and remain firm and determined. Snape had assured her that he would do the actual summoning, but that the battle for control would be up to her and her alone.

He didn't say what would happen if the air elemental's spirit managed to be stronger and took over her own.

Gradually, a light began to manifest in the middle of the triangle. Hermione recognized it as a will-o'-the-wisp. Snape began chanting louder and louder, and abruptly, there was a crack of lightning across the sky, and the light disappeared – into her.

AAAAAAAHHHHHHhhhhhhhh!

There was immediate, skull-crushing pain, agonizing, and Hermione clutched her head as the screaming in her head went on and on. She could feel the will-o'-the-wisp inside of her, and it wanted out. There was a strong foreign urge to jump off the cliff, to dance along the water's top, to not stay here, to go out and dance. It was overwhelming, this presence without any words, and it was demanding things of her, things that Hermione didn't want to do.

Hermione could feel wind rushing in her ears, and she felt like she was spinning around in a vortex. Her eyes were clamped closed, the wind tearing tears from them, and she grit her teeth hard, the physical pain grounding her.

I – am – Hermione.

Slowly, slowly, she could feel herself forcing the spirit back. She was a person, and she had a body, and she was standing right there, and Professor Snape had faith in her. She was a witch, and she was not going to give in to some stupid glowing ball, and she would make the stupid glowing ball go right there and then–

Abruptly, Hermione took in a huge breath of air, her eyes snapping open, and she nearly fell backward, but Snape was there to catch her and keep her upright.

"Well done, Miss Granger." Snape's voice was soft, but there was an undercurrent of pride in his tone. "Breathe, now. Just breathe."

Hermione continued gasping for air, her head dizzy. She got the sense that she'd been hyperventilating when she was fighting against the air elemental – her chest and throat were heaving and rattling around in weird ways. She forced herself to calm down, taking slow, deep breaths, and her lungs relaxed.

"You were fighting that spirit for a long time, Miss Granger," Snape told her. "I was prepared to exorcise it from you the second it dominated you, but you did well."

Hermione looked up at his sideways. "Exorcise it?"

"Would you have preferred a mindless spirit have control of your body?" Snape smirked at her. "I didn't expect you to succeed. I expected it would take at least two more tries for you to have the strength of will to dominate it."

"I had more than one chance?" Hermione felt a flash of indignation, and Snape gave her an oily smile.

"If you knew you could try again, would you have fought as hard as you did?"

The anger faded as Hermione grudgingly acknowledged his point.

"So… it's inside of me, now?" Hermione asked, looking down at herself.

"It's part of you," Snape corrected. "Reach down to your power. You should be able to feel it."

Reach down to her power?

Hermione bit her lip, closed her eyes, and concentrated. She tried to follow the feeling she felt in her arms just before levitating something, tracing it back through her arms until she felt something.

Her power felt like a liquid, almost, but like a large cauldron of energy, of just unbound potential. Hermione felt overwhelmed for a moment, just finding this part of herself. She carefully started to explore it, only to feel light, airy bits flowing around inside of it with her own energy. Her eyes snapped open and met Professor Snape's.

"I- I can feel it," she told him. Her eyes widened. "I can feel it!"

"It is this power, Miss Granger," Snape said, with a small smile, "that you must draw on in order to fly."

Hermione frowned. "How?"

"The air elemental inside of you already knows how to fly," Snape told her. "Seize hold of that part of yourself. It should be able to guide you. Then, it's a matter of mixing your own power to fuel the flight with the direction of the air elemental."

Hermione bit her lip and tried. She reached out internally for the new part of her, the airy part of her, and was surprised to feel it immediately rise to her command. Her unexpressed desire to fly was immediately seized upon, and she could feel herself lift to her tip-toes without really realizing it. Carefully, Hermione fed her power to the air elemental inside of her to help get her off the ground.

Immediately, it was too much – she'd lurched into the air maybe a foot, and crashed back down to the ground a moment later. Snape smirked at her and helped her to her feet, eyes gleaming.

"You have more potential than I thought," he told her. "Practice this where no one can see. And remember-"

"Tell no one," Hermione said, nodding. "I won't."

"There will be dire consequences if you do."

Hermione bit her lip, before throwing her arms around Snape in an impromptu hug. Snape stumbled backward, before awkwardly patting her head.

"Thank you so much, Professor!" Hermione told him. "This is… I'll figure it out! I'll make you proud – really, I will!"

Snape's expression softened, and he patted her head again, gently.

"Miss Granger, you are already single-handedly assuring that Slytherin will win the House Cup with all the points you earn, and you are doing so in the face of immense prejudice and discrimination. You are at the top of your class in every subject. You are more powerful than any first-year has a right to be, and you have just achieved something that most people will never be able to do."

He tipped her chin up to look at him, and his eyes met hers.

"Hermione," he said quietly, "I am already proud of you."

Her parents had always told her that they were proud of her. They had always been very supportive. A teacher, though – her teachers had always tolerated her questions and grudgingly helped her in her advanced studies. It was something new to have a teacher tell her they were proud of her – especially her Head of House, who she respected so highly (and feared just a little).

Hermione felt her eyes start to swim, to her mortification, with the wave of strong emotion that had come at his words. She blinked rapidly, determined to make the tears go away.

"Thank you, sir," she said, sniffing slightly as she stepped back. She smiled up at him. "This has been the greatest Christmas present ever."

Snape scoffed at that. "I doubt it. I see your new cape," he said eyeing her sideways. "You'll cause drama, showing up with that in the new semester."

Hermione grinned and flounced with it. "I know."

"Thank you for your gift, as well," he said. "It is more appreciated than you know."

Hermione had given him black Muggle sweaters to wear under his robes, as well as dark long johns. She'd explained about the chill of the dungeon in her note to him, and she knew he'd appreciate something practical, pureblood gift-giving rules be damned.

"Happy New Year, sir," she told him, smiling up at him as she withdrew the coin he'd given her.

He took the coin from her and tapped his wand to it, before handing it back.

"Happy New Year, Hermione," he returned, before surprising her by kissing her forehead. "Be careful."

A moment later, Hermione was sucked by her navel into a whirlwind storm once again, landing back in her room a minute later, unsteady on her feet. This time, she didn't feel as sick, and she hadn't crashed to the ground, either.

As Hermione undressed for bed, she gave her tummy a look in the mirror. She wondered if the air elemental she'd joined with had something to do with it.

Deep inside of her, she could feel something glow.