Miraculously, things continued to go downhill from there. Harry's (entirely unjust) loss of Quidditch privileges propelled him from a state of conflict to full-out war with Umbridge and the Ministry. His fury seemed constant and never-ending, and Hermione quickly stopped trying to confront him about anything at all, knowing that he would blow up more spectacularly than a Blast-Ended Skrewt. Hagrid's return did surprisingly little to ease their concerns and spending their classes looking after Thestrals hardly put Hermione's mind at rest; the fact that she could not see the creatures was disturbing, but not nearly as much as learning which of her classmates could.
The broader conflict within the wizarding world had truly reached Hogwarts, visible in Hagrid's wounds from his liaison with the giants, the creases in their teachers' expressions, and Umbridge's blasted Educational Decrees. It wasn't even Christmas yet and Hermione had come to begrudge Hogwarts. She hated to admit it. This was meant to be her place, her sanctuary, but she resented it more and more each day. She'd thought it couldn't get worse than the Triwizard Tournament last year, but Fate seemed eager to prove her wrong in increasingly alarming ways.
And as if Umbridge's interference wasn't bad enough, the woman's presence seemed to be encouraging Malfoy and the other Slytherins in his clan. It was horribly unfair that Harry got penalised left and right (and she wouldn't even start on Umbridge's medieval disciplinary tactics!) while Malfoy got a free pass to be a bully and a bigot. Hermione wasn't totally sure what Umbridge and Malfoy had in common, as Umbridge seemed more fixated on tyranny than blood purity, but it wouldn't surprise Hermione if their animosity towards Harry was the common denominator. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
When she made her way down to the dungeons that evening, she thought of Lupin's gratefulness and reminded herself that she was doing a good thing, that it was worth all this. On her way to Ancient Runes, Headmaster Dumbledore had appeared in the corridor and told her in his cryptic, wise way that Lupin appreciated her work and that they were all very proud. It was only a small token of motivation, but she would take what she could get.
"Evening, Granger. We're looking particularly morose tonight. Perhaps we should be making a monthly potion foryou, instead."
Hermione resisted the urge to remark that Malfoy seemed to exist in a perpetual state of premenstrual volatility himself and dropped her bag to the floor instead. When Snape emerged, her gloves were on, and her head safely ensconced in a magic bubble. Malfoy hurried to do the same, and Snape disappeared again to fetch their cauldron.
"What, no greeting? Very rude, Granger. I'm quite disappointed. Although I suppose I shouldn't expect better." Malfoy gave a long-suffering sigh as Snape silently walked to them and placed the simmering cauldron on the workbench.
The potion was a little over halfway finished. Peering inside, Hermione found it to be a milky purple colour. It would darken considerably by the end of the process.
"Today, you will be splitting the stems and adding precisely three drops of oil from each; one drop every seventeen-and-a-half minutes followed by four-and-one-third minutes of anti-clockwise demi-stirs. For the sake of efficiency, I advise one of you do the slicing and the other the stirring. Switch each time to ensure equal experience."
Snape waved his wand and the familiar wooden box containing the remains of the wolfsbane flowers appeared, as did a leather roll of various tools and a stirring rod. Hermione reached for the box and the roll. She sensed Malfoy bristling beside her, but he didn't dare protest, probably knowing he would look pathetic if he did.
Hermione slid open the box and pulled out a stem. It was long, almost as long as her forearm, but nearly two weeks of fermenting in that box and without the flower on top had caused it to decompose. It was a darker green and much softer than it had been when they'd severed the petals.
Plucking the appropriate knife from the leather sheath, Hermione carefully laid out the stem. She could feel Snape and Malfoy's eyes pinning her there like a butterfly to a board.
"Like slicing vanilla, sir?"
"An apt comparison, yes."
Hermione took a deep breath of magically clean air and slowly pierced the stem with the blade. She felt the skin give and split and she slowly dragged her knife down in a steady line. When she finished, the thing lay open and oozing. The cut was clean and neat, and Hermione allowed herself a proud quirk of her lips.
"Now, exactly one drop in the centre of the cauldron. Mr Malfoy, ready yourself."
Malfoy raised the metal rod and Hermione gently lifted the weeping stem with her gloved hands. Once a single drop bled into the potion, Hermione snatched the stem away and Malfoy set to work, dragging the rod from twelve to six o'clock and then back again.
Professor Snape advised him when to stop, and then they waited another twelve-and-two-third minutes until it was time for the next drop.
Three stems, three drops from each, seventeen minutes between each drop. Over two hours of this tedious, repetitive process. And during this first session, Snape didn't allow any "distractions," meaning their only option was to sit there and stare at the simmering cauldron.
Or talk.
Two drops later, when it was Malfoy's turn to stir again, he spoke.
"If silver is meant to make the potion more potent, then why use a steel stirring rod?"
Hermione opened her mouth to answer, then immediately shut it.
But Snape was silent and merely raised his eyebrows at her in what Hermione took as invitation to speak.
"Well, there is a point where potent becomes too potent," she said softly. "Too much silver can lead to poisoning known as Argyria. It causes the skin to turn a silvery blue colour."
Malfoy remained silent for so long that Hermione thought he would ignore her, but then he snorted and said, "What, so they'd be blue as well as a wolf?"
"Well, yes. And then they would die of silver poisoning."
Malfoy muttered something under his breath so low that Hermione didn't hear, but before she could question it, Snape informed him his time was finished, and Malfoy pulled the rod from the potion. A long silence stretched out as they settled back into waiting.
"Personally, I think I'd rather poisoning over lycanthropy."
It was funny — for a moment, Hermione had actually thought they'd successfully had a peaceful exchange of words. Polite, even. But how could she ever think Malfoy would let slip an opportunity to insult or offend? She wanted to laugh at herself.
When she trudged back to the Gryffindor common room two hours later, she found Harry sitting alone in an equally sour mood. He gave her a pained smile when he saw her, and Hermione went to sit beside him on the squashed sofa. She stared into the fire until purple shadows danced across her vision.
"Where's Ron?" she asked.
"Upstairs with Fred and George, I think."
"Oh."
Silence, save for the shuffling of older students still awake in the common room.
"How was Snape?" asked Harry after a while.
"Charming as ever," Hermione replied. Harry chuckled.
"I dunno how you do it. I can barely stand to have just one lesson with him, and you essentially have two."
Hermione shrugged. "Moony needs it, so I'm happy to help."
"Yeah, I guess you're right… You're a better person than me. I don't think I could take it."
Hermione laughed. "I'm better than Harry Potter! And all I had to do was brew a potion."
Harry cracked a smile at that.
"How are you doing, Harry?" She knew the answer to this, of course: He was bitter; depressed, perhaps clinically; isolated and afraid. But she wanted to hear it in his own words.
What he said was, "I wish I had Quidditch. It was my way of venting, you know? Now I feel so… stuck."
"You could take a broom to the Room of Requirement," Hermione offered after a moment's thought. "I'm sure you could fly around in there."
Harry shook his head. "It's not the same. Besides, it isn't really worth it if I get caught. I mean, we're in enough danger as it is with the D.A. That's helpful, at least…"
She looked at him then. "You're doing really well, Harry."
He met her eyes with a kind smile. "So are you." He frowned again. "It will get better, right? I mean, it can't be like this forever."
Hermione looked back to the flames. "No, it won't be like this forever."
It will get worse.
Hermione didn't think she'd ever seen Malfoy look so anxious. Then again, she didn't think she'd ever really seen Malfoy anxious at all, so it was hard to tell.
Truthfully, she felt the same way, but she'd be damned if he knew it.
"Is there a way to test it?" Malfoy asked, in a voice Hermione assumed was as timid as he ever got.
"If you are so doubtful of your skills, then I will excuse you from the rest of the sessions if that is what you wish, Mr Malfoy."
Malfoy shook his head.
"There is no way to 'test it' as you propose, unless you have a werewolf in your possession that you have not yet announced."
Hermione and Malfoy looked at their finished potion together, its deep indigo shade and thick bubbling. It had an odd smell, now that it was no longer poisonous to breathe. Hermione expected a floral aroma, but instead found it to be rather musky and almost sour.
Lupin had been the reason she had come here to do all this, but now she didn't want to give this to him. It was such a complicated recipe and they'd done it largely on their own; Snape had only intervened when it seemed they were about to make a truly ghastly mistake. Merlin, what if they accidentally killed Remus? It wasn't hard to overdose on aconite. Just a little too much and he'd be dead within hours, if not instantly. Not to mention Argyria. Slow death by silver poisoning sounded like an awful way to go.
Snape finally took pity on them and their self-doubt. "Rest assured, your potion is adequate. I would not permit it to be ingested were it not." He gestured to the syrupy mixture. "It is perhaps a shade dark, but I believe that is due to your accidental addition of three powdered seeds which somehow made it into the mortar. It will not affect the potency, nor cause injury."
Snape conjured a large flask with an intricate brass carving of a wolf curled around the top. Hermione and Malfoy held their breaths as he ladled the cauldron's worth of potion into the bottle and snapped it shut, sealing it with a charm. He had told them about the flask during their first session when he had merely demonstrated and they observed: It was lined with silver to keep its contents pure and enchanted to preserve the potion in stasis. Lupin had to drink this daily for a week; it wouldn't do to have the stuff expire or ferment before the dose was finished.
Hermione understood now why only well-off werewolves were able to come by Wolfsbane. It was a bloody nuisance to brew and distribute.
With a flick of Professor Snape's wand, the cauldron vanished, and the workbench was bare.
"That is all for tonight. You will return in a week's time, after dinner, to begin next month's batch. Good evening." With a curt nod to each of them, he was gone.
Hermione frowned as she collected her things. The pride, the sense of accomplishment she had expected to feel at finishing the potion, wasn't there. Instead, she felt vaguely empty and half certain that she had just poisoned one of her favourite teachers.
"Well, Granger. One month down. How many werewolves do you suppose we just turned blue?" She knew better than to expect this to be a friendly exchange. "I, personally, can't bring myself to care, but I imagine that as a half-breed yourself, you have a lot of sympathy for the lycanthropes. It would be a greater kindness to just give them a bit too much monkshood, I think."
Hermione slung her bag over her shoulder and moved to the door. Professor Snape had gone already, so she lingered in the threshold and turned back to Malfoy.
"Yes, I do have quite a lot of sympathy for half-breeds," she said in a tone reminiscent of Luna Lovegood. She looked him directly in the eye. "But not as much as I do pity for the inbred. If only there were a potion for you, too."
And she strode out the door feeling lighter than she had in weeks.