A/N: Oh shit, we're back! Sorry for the delay, guys, gals and non-binary pals. I was planning to get this posted last week, but Miss Rona came a knockin'.

Just a bite-sized chapter to ease us back in, but I have a couple whoppers planned in the nearish future to make up for it.

For the sake of transparency: I recently got a big-girl promotion at work, complete with a little more demand for my time and a lot more responsibility. That in mind, I will need to space updates out just a *touch* more going forward, but I swear that barring death or dismemberment, I will never abandon you lovely people.

Let's keep the bar on the floor this January and just say that I hope everyone had a not completely awful holiday season!

oOoOoOo

2 September 1996

"C'mon, Harry, let's go sit down." Ron shot Ernie MacMillan a look of unconcealed distaste as they found their seats in the Potions classroom. He'd been pontificating about the DA and Hermione herself had been resisting the urge to tell him off. The bloody DA… The DA was done. The DA had very nearly gotten her killed. The DA was in the past and she'd very much like for it to stay there.

As they unpacked their belongings, she noticed Ron looking sideways at her and the annoyance in her gut turned to churning unease.

The fact of the matter was that Ron had been looking at her a lot since they'd returned to school. A lot, a lot. And she was beginning to think that her telling him and Harry about her relationship with Fred was going to be a more…. complicated conversation than originally planned.

Oblivious to their adolescent angsts, Professor Slughorn, a portly man with a rotund belly, instructed Harry and Ron to retrieve second-hand books from the storage cupboard and then began the lesson. Hermione, paying her usual rapt attention to the cauldrons around the room, listened with interest.

He walked toward the first one and motioned for the congregated students to stand and join him.

"Now, can anyone tell me what this brew is?" He asked. It took Hermione hardly a fraction of a second to identify the potion, which looked and smelled like plain, boiling water.

"It's Veritaserum," she answered easily. "A colorless, odorless potion that forces the drinker to tell the truth."

"Very good, very good!" He chortled, moving along and removing the stasis charm from the next one.

"That one is Polyjuice Potion, sir," Hermione replied when called upon again, looking a bit spitefully at the slow-bubbling, mudlike goop. Unlikely to ever forget it, the consistency of that particular draught would haunt her until the end times.

"Excellent, excellent, now this one here…" Slughorn walked to the table at the front of the room, which held the next cauldron. He raised his wand and intoned, "Finite."

All at once, Hermione was hit with a barrage of heady scents.

"Oh," she breathed quietly. Then a soft, breathless smile tugged the corners of her lips upward as, one by one, she began to recognise them. It was said that one's sense of smell was the strongest scent associated with memory, something about olfactory signals and the limbic system, and Godric help her if she wasn't getting lost in those memories now.

"Miss Granger?" Slughorn turned, appearing entertained by her streak thus far. "Care to wager a guess?"

"Uh – well I —" Hermione started to speak but, finding her throat a bit tight, she finally offered a blithe smile and said, for the very first time in a classroom setting, "No. No, thank you."

Slughorn shrugged and moved on, Michael Corner piping up to answer the question while Ron and Harry both turn and gaped at her, jaws unhinged and brows pulled together like two pairs of caterpillars.

"Since when do you not know the answer to a question?" Ron demanded under his breath, like he was insulted on her behalf.

Hermione pressed her lips into a thin line. "Since now," she hissed. "Pay attention."

She shooed the boys back toward the action and, ever-so-subtly, edged closer to the cauldron, pale pink steam curling above it in perfect, shimmering spirals. Checking to make sure nobody was looking, she leaned in as near as she dared and took another slow, deep breath.

Warm spices hit her first; cinnamon and nutmeg and the barest trace of cloves. It reminded her of chai tea and crisp autumn nights tucked beneath a blanket under the stars.

She stifled a laugh, picking out the next scent and identifying it with ease. Only someone irrevocably in love with Fred Weasley would find the smell of gunpowder agreeable.

It took her longer to place the next fragrance. She'd always found the smell of rain, fresh and clean, to be pleasant, but not necessarily attractive. Then she recalled an afternoon months ago, on a balcony at 93 Diagon Alley. A conversation and a recommitment. The sky had opened up moments later and all at once she remembered the scent distinctly.

Finally, there was the smell of… books. Aged parchment and worn leather and, gross though it may be, dust. It was nondescript, Hermione recalling any number of a thousand moments and events that had happened while reading or sitting in a library, but it was a calming and familiar aroma, nevertheless. Homey.

Something deep in her chest ached and smarted but, unable to do anything to ease that feeling short of hijacking a floo and traveling to London, she closed her eyes, took another deep breath, and pictured copper hair, a freckled nose, and eyes that were her very favorite shade of blue.