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The snow crunched under her feet and Hermione pulled her scarf up higher around her mouth to keep out the chill. Perhaps it was silly to be outside on a freezing Sunday like this one, but she thought the grounds always looked beautiful like this, and she'd found herself longing for solitude lately. With Umbridge's influence encroaching upon Hogwarts like a wicked shadow and the increasing concern she felt for Harry, winter weather seemed an easy adversary for a little while.
At least Dumbledore's Army was going well, in her opinion. She certainly found it cathartic to let loose a good Stupefy! after a long day of classes. It was obvious that Harry had really taken to his role as mentor, too, and part of her wondered if he would ever consider teaching properly. If he learned just a bit more discipline, he could be a truly transformative teacher. At least, she thought so.
The snow by the Black Lake felt extra brittle beneath her boots. The surface of the water itself looked nearly frozen; she wondered how the Giant Squid passed the time it was stuck under the ice. Sitting herself on a small boulder, chin in her hands, she thought she might like to be trapped alone for the next few months, with nothing to do but swim around, uncaring of upcoming end-of-term exams, or the O.W.L.s which awaited her in the spring, or an increasingly unstable political climate, or all the finicky steps of Wolfsbane…
"Have you got any good ideas for nasty things I can call Malfoy?" she asked the lake and any of its listening residents. "I've nearly run out of ideas, I think. I did say he looked like a bleached troll last week, though. I was quite proud of that one…"
He'd rebutted by saying her hair looked like a first-year's ill attempt at the Engorgement Charm. She found that rather predictable, as far as insults go, and therefore counted the exchange as a win in her favour.
After so many weeks of their petty arguments, his paltry bullying had lost its sting. And though she enjoyed the opportunity to sharpen her wit and had taken to brainstorming increasingly creative insults during duller lessons, she could honestly say the whole thing was starting to get a bit boring.
Besides, with their somewhat improvement in preparing the Wolfsbane, Professor Snape had taken to giving them more autonomy in the brewing process, and both she and Malfoy were sufficiently overwhelmed with that to bother with offending each other quite as much.
Not that she wouldn't get him when she could, of course.
The early December air played with her hair and she shivered. With a regretful sigh, she stood to begin the long trudge back to the castle; it wouldn't do to get sick before brewing tonight. To her knowledge, she hadn't killed Remus yet, and she certainly wasn't going to start now by infecting his potion.
As she walked, her thoughts wandered to Remus and Sirius and the Order members who were out there in the real world, seeing the rising Darkness from outside Hogwarts. It scared her. Really, it did, and she had no trouble admitting to herself that she had no idea what to do to halt this sinister power which seemed to be circling the wizarding world, waiting to strike. Did they have a plan? Did Dumbledore? Surely, they must. She just wished she knew what it was or could understand all the complex variables at play in this world which she still couldn't truly comprehend.
Malfoy was right about that, though she'd never admit it to him. It was his fault, anyway. Or at least his family's and others like it. They thought keeping Muggle-borns ignorant of their culture until the age of eleven was wise.
Idiots. Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it…
"Out and about, are we?"
"Oh! Good afternoon, Mr Filch, Mrs Norris. Just went for a walk around the grounds. Goodness, that isn't against a new Educational Decree, is it?"
Filch's beady eyes scanned her up and down. "Not for the moment…"
"Oh, good. I'll be off to my common room, then. Have a lovely day!" she cheerfully called over her shoulder with a roll of her eyes.
Hermione took to the moving stairs with vigour and genuine enthusiasm, finding that her walk had indeed recharged her spirits enough that she felt equipped to handle the pair of moody boys that surely awaited her in the tower. She doubted that either of them would feel invigorated by a walk like hers, and sincerely hoped that Harry's Quidditch privileges would be restored soon. The matches were terribly boring without a friend to cheer for (not that she found Quidditch that interesting to begin with), and she missed the way his eyes shone when he would land on the pitch, Snitch in hand.
"Password?"
"Nimbus."
The Fat Lady swung open and, sure enough, Hermione found Harry and Ron moping on one of the sofas by a deliciously warm fire.
"Good afternoon!"
"Hey," answered Harry without energy.
"Haven't you got a potion thing today?"
"Bit later, yeah. Why?"
Ron shrugged. "You've done your History essay, right?"
"Yes…"
"Right, um, so, what did you think of the, er, goblin rebellion of… fourteen… no, fifteen… eighty… seven?"
"You mean the Goblin Revolution of 1536?"
"Right, 'course."
"Well, I thought it was a remarkable instance of creature rights being once again trampled by wizarding society, though the parallel uprising of the centaurs offered a unique demonstration of the contrasting needs of different magical communities."
Ron blinked. "Yeah. Absolutely."
"Ron, if you want help, I can talk it through with you at dinner tonight before I go down to the dungeons."
"Really? That'd be excellent, Hermione, thanks."
Hermione looked over to Harry who sat staring into the fire, uncharacteristically unamused by Ron's lack of tact.
"What about you, Harry? If you haven't finished it, I can talk it through with you as well."
Harry stood and Hermione saw the redness around his scar. He'd been rubbing it. "Don't need help with every bloody thing, thanks," he muttered and stomped past her up to the boys' dormitory.
Hermione watched him go with a sinking feeling.
"Hey, don't mind him," Ron told her gently. "Had a bad dream last night, I think."
Looking at Ron with alarm, she demanded, "Really? How do you know?"
Ron shrugged. "He moves around a lot, mutters, you know, that sort of thing. Sometimes I can make out actual words. Not last night though, but he was definitely seeing something. Woke up in a foul mood."
"It's got worse lately, hasn't it?"
Ron shrugged again.
Hermione looked at the empty staircase where her friend had disappeared. "I wonder if we spoke to a teacher… McGonagall, maybe, or Dumbledore… do you think they might be able to do something to help him?"
"I dunno…" answered Ron cautiously. "Honestly, I don't think he'd take it well. He just wants to be left alone, I think. I wouldn't push it."
Hermione couldn't deny that logic; Harry seemed to be just one prod away from a full explosion. She just wished she knew a way to ease some of his burdens. "Alright," she conceded.
A moment of pensive silence passed between them.
"So… I know you said you'd help me at dinner, and all, but do you think you might be able to now? It's just, the essay is due tomorrow and it's eighteen inches and…"
"…and you haven't started it?"
Ron's bashful expression spoke for itself.
"Ron!" she scolded, but it was with a laugh, and she dropped herself into Harry's now vacated spot and summoned her textbook. "Alright, fine."
"Thanks, Hermione," he sighed, "you're a lifesaver."
With her belly full of shepherd's pie, the trek down to the dungeons didn't feel quite so cold. Though she was still early, Professor Snape and Malfoy were already present when she entered the laboratory. She politely greeted them both, though she only got curt nods in return, and hastily set out her things onto the unusually bare workbench.
"As the objective of this exercise is for you to autonomously and independently brew this potion without need of any assistance, tonight you will be retrieving your own ingredients." With a swift wave of his wand, a parchment list materialised before them. "Here is what you will need. You will be taking from my private storeroom tonight, which you will find adjacent to this room. The wards have been disabled only for the hour. I need not remind you to take care when handling substances which are both valuable and dangerous. I will be verifying whether you have taken correct measurements of correct ingredients; however, do not take that as an excuse to be careless. Begin."
Hermione snatched the list and trotted off to the storeroom with Malfoy at her side. She counted thirteen ingredients, each with precise masses and volumes listed adjacently in Professor Snape's spiky handwriting. She hoped this wouldn't take ages to finish, or that Malfoy wouldn't throw a jar of pickled eyeballs at her hair —
"Wow."
Hermione had been in the classroom's pantry more times than she could count. It was absolutely nothing compared to this. There must have been hundreds of unique ingredients, all of them carefully preserved and organised in the deep cupboard which reached a dozen shelves high.
"Merlin, how are we going to find anything in this?" murmured Malfoy.
Curious, Hermione squinted at the nearest shelf and tried to make out the labels. "I think it's alphabetical… except — no, hang on…" Glancing between one shelf and another, she tried to figure out the categorisation process at work. "Do you think if we asked him, he'd tell us?" she wondered to herself.
Malfoy scoffed. "Sure, he'd tell us we're a bunch of dunderheads."
"Fair enough…" Squinting between the list in her hand and the little jars, Hermione cursed her professor's tiny script. "I think we should start looking for what we need," she decided, "then hopefully we'll figure out his system along the way."
"Fine. What's first?"
"Erm…" Hermione wrinkled her nose as she read, "'Blood of hare. Seventeen millilitres.'"
"Right, so I suppose we look for a red liquid…"
"Or black, if it's oxidized…"
"Probably in some kind of bottle…"
Their voices faded, replaced by the delicate clinking of jars and whispered recitations of the complicated, inky scribbles on the labels. Hermione tentatively reached for a jar of a dark, fluid-looking substance; yet holding it in the light revealed it to be green instead of red, and the label informed her she was holding raven's bile.
Revolting.
She put it back with care and moved on down the shelf, plucking and replacing likely candidates for a mammal's blood…
"Found it!"
"What?" Hermione whirled to where Malfoy stood a few feet to her left, victoriously holding a glass bottle from a spot three shelves out of Hermione's reach. "You're sure?"
"Read it yourself, Granger." He passed it to her without looking. "What's the next thing on the list? I've figured it out. This" — he gestured to the shelves directly in front of them — "is all animal parts. Alphabetical by animal, then by component."
Hermione scanned a handful of jars, taken aback that Malfoy had deduced the system so quickly. Blood of Raven… Claw of Raven… Feather of Raven… and then, one shelf down, Eye of Tortoise… Foot of Tortoise… Hide of Tortoise…
"You're right," she realised aloud, and she heard Malfoy scoff.
"Of course I am. So, what's the next one?"
"Er… 'Crushed lavender seed.'"
"Merlin's fucking… Great, alright, so where are the plants?"
With a sigh, Hermione crouched down to investigate a new area of shelf that looked like it might have plant-like residents. Snape had told them the wards on the storeroom would only be deactivated for an hour, but it seemed more and more likely that they would need to ask him to extend that period; the prospect made Hermione wish she was one of the pickled things which surrounded her.
Gurdyroot… Bouncing Bulb… Ginger (Raw)… Ginger (Pickled)…
"There are plants here, Malfoy."
"Oh, good, because all I've got over here is every single kind of stone you can think of."
"They're not alphabetical, though."
Hermione felt Draco come up beside her as she squinted between the jars and their seemingly unrelated neighbours.
"How many bloody ways do you need to organise one cupboard?" Draco swore as he picked through the specimens at the height of his shoulders.
Could it be by function? But Gurdyroot and Bouncing Bulb don't do anything remotely similar!
"Dittany… Nettle… Asphodel… Merlin, he's got a whole bouquet up here…"
Hermione wrinkled her nose as she prodded at the various jars of slimy trunks and bulbs, wishing that she could at least have the prettier specimens to sort through. All of these were —
"It's sorted by family!"
"What?"
"Plant family! Everything you've got up there is a vine or something that flowers. Everything down here is a root!"
Malfoy glanced between the delicate plants in front of him and the chunkier, earthier things a few shelves below, and asked, "Okay, so then where's the lavender?"
Standing, Hermione's gaze darted up the shelves — it all seemed so obvious now! There were the weeds, the vines, the summer flowers, the winter flowers, the trees, the grains…
"Up there!" she pointed to a cluster of lilac-coloured jars several feet above either of their heads.
"Accio ladder!"
Hermione jumped out of the way as the ladder slid along its track to their position. "Are you insane? Using magic in here?"
"Relax, Granger, these things are designed not to fly out of control when summoned. Now, am I fetching this one, too?"
"You're taller!"
Draco rolled his eyes even as he stepped onto the lowest rung. "That's why there's a ladder. So you can reach even if you're not Hagrid." Up he climbed. "Besides," he mumbled under his breath, "I'm not sure I trust you not to castrate me while I'm up here."
Oh, she was definitely not supposed to have heard that, but she couldn't help herself as she called, "Don't give me a reason to and I won't."
She saw him startle as he scanned the collection of lavender derivatives. Her hand itched for her wand to make good on her promise, but the potential for general destruction of Snape's private stores stayed her hand.
"It's lavender seeds, right? Not crushed stems, or pollen, or —"
"Seeds, Malfoy."
"Got them." Malfoy hopped down to the ground, jar of purple seeds in hand. He held it out to her expectantly, and she placed them on the measuring table alongside the hare's blood.
"That's two done in… seventeen minutes."
"God, we'll be here all night," muttered Hermione.
Draco took the list from Hermione's hand. "Come on, Granger. Time to crack the code of his mineral collection."
Hermione groaned and followed him to the neat arrangements of stones and metals, resigned. Never would she have thought to find herself picking through hundreds of ingredients with naught but Malfoy for company. But then his chuckle echoed off the jars of pickled things, and she was surprised to find herself thinking — maybe it wouldn't be quite so bad.