Well, it hadn't exactly soured her mood, honestly, but she was still not happy that her achievements were apparently only comparable to a bunch of idiots flying around on brooms. She tried not to be angry about that, even reminding herself that, without House Points and Quidditch Points being tied together, a lot fewer of the students would care about the former, since it would only mean a change of decoration at the leaving feast, and where a cup was for the next year.
However, the thing that truly bothered her was not the accolades the team was getting, earning…fifty points, which she'd done in just the last week, and showing that for all their bravado the Gryffindor team was simply not up to snuff right now. Given Harry Potter, the boy who lived, had indeed caught the snitch, the whole point of the silly game, they had literally been losing by one-hundred points at the time.
Still, what bothered her was what happened before Harry had caught the snitch. A jinx. In this school? A jinx was a fairly mundane version of a curse, the sort of thing you had to maintain the incantation and eye contact for. And one had been used on the broom of the young boy, nearly bucking him off according to what she'd heard, given she'd been in the library and not present for the match.
The only reason he'd not been bucked clean off was apparently because the boy had a huge amount of skill on a broom, natural talent for it in fact, which was why he was on the team in the first place. And yet, despite that, none of the staff, not even Madam Hooch the one who ran the games, had intervened in the obvious tampering. Heck, if there had been less eye witnesses she might have thought it to be an attempt on the boy's life, but with so many wands, including Dumbledore, there to catch him if he fell, that was an absurd notion.
So, some Slytherin or other had decided to try and rig the game. And not one teacher was doing anything about the obvious fixing at such a public event. It was…infuriating for Hermione. Even when she'd been in Fifth Form, almost able to test into Sixth, and so had been foisted the local sports team into her life for 'her school's honor' she'd been aware of a cheating scandal at her muggle school, one that had cancelled several games, and the evidence there had been far less obvious.
Sighing, rubbing the bridge of her nose, and trying to ignore 'what fools these wizards be', she focused on her studies. She'd determined that tomorrow would be the day she'd be able to do seven books at once, her mind expanding to fit it all in, and so a plan had formed. She'd gathered the official Ministry texts on each year for every primary subject, and even gotten the ones for the electives she'd be able to select in third year.
She'd even had to get the librarian to give her a second shelf, the woman tittering excitedly at her choices, even suggesting the order of her reading, as some, like Potions, Charms, and Transfiguration, were linked in many ways, and one expected you to know something in the other. Hermione thanked her for her assistance, and that day, she took in six more journals, and read the next of Lockhart's books, finding it to be less informative than she'd like, but written like a true adventure novel, with a hand at that craft that was second to none.
A few weeks would pass, and soon enough, it neared the Christmas Hols. She had intended, like most students, to head home to her parents, to enjoy the warmth and love of her family on Christmas. Her mission, to bring fairness to the wizarding world, wasn't going to be stopped by that. Besides, she would hate to lose her progress, as she was halfway certain her reading spell might go back to just five books a day if she let it slip for too long.
By now, she was up to eleven, and had filled out almost a third shelf with the books she'd 'read', and the librarian was suggesting all sorts of fun things for her to learn. That woman…Hermione had to wonder if she had a reading spell, as she seemed to know each and every tome within her domain. The library of Hogwarts contained thousands of books, many simply journals collected over the years. Reading them all should simply have not been in the capacity for anyone, without such a spell.
Dismissing that thought, she focused on her own expanding mind. She had realized, trying out some higher year spells, that the magicals were right not to advance her, much as she was loath to admit it. Her young body was exhausted with a dozen or so casts of basic fourth year magic, and trying to push herself to the years beyond had proven even more difficult, with her unable to even cast the sixth year's first spell in Charms.
It was galling to admit, but the teachers had a point. You could get BETTER at magic, as she'd shown time and again in class, but only with age could you get STRONGER at magic. She could now see the logic in not allowing advancement to the next year, but still, she was not going to allow herself to be held back, and after apologizing to her parents for staying, she made the castle her home for Christmas.
Not that she was completely alone. About a tenth of the students, and of course most of the staff, stayed. Surprisingly, that included Harry Potter and the Weasel. She would have expected the latter at least to return home to be with his family. Better, didn't 'The Boy Who Lived' have a loving home that missed him? The books on him were unclear on that point, but it only seemed logical to her.
She put them out of her mind after that first surprising day, and instead went to the library each day, eventually getting to twelve books a day in the middle of the Hols, and better, she found a book on Hogwarts traditions and rites mixed in with random other texts, immediately adding it to her reading for that day, and absorbing all the knowledge within greedily, to find out everything she could of the school.
What she learned were rites, rituals, and even a spell or two that could put the school at her command…if she were one of the staff. Most of them were even keyed specifically to the Headmaster, and for a moment, she was appalled that such information was just…laying there! For anyone to just pick up and read. It was a dangerous sort of knowledge, and one she felt should possibly reside only in the Headmaster's office.
Calming herself, she quickly came to understand that this was so freely thrown about simply because the Library was huge, and with no index, it was like looking for a needle in a stack of other needles. Worse, this information would ONLY be of use to the school staff in so many cases that it was practically useless to have for anyone else. That meant she could safely put this on her shelf, without anyone really looking into it.
Still, knowledge was always useful to someone in her position, and one of the rites inside that leather bound book was exactly what she'd been hoping to find. Filing it away, as it wasn't the right time for it, she spent the rest of the Christmas Hols in the library, much to not a single person's shock. Everyday saw her expanding her knowledge, as she greedily absorbed each tome in turn.
A week before class began once again, she started to lay out each and every spell and trick she knew, writing them on a sheet, trying to tie them together as she prepared for what the end of the Christmas Hols would bring with it. Her ascension, or at least, one of the larger steps on her road to making this world just a little more Good. It wouldn't do to be ill prepared for such things.
She took in an extra book that last day, going just a bit farther than she was really able to go yet, according to her calculations, but she needed to push herself to her limits, as what she was about to do had not been tried for over two hundred years, and then it had ended in failure so deep that the person who had attempted it had fled the magical world. She would not allow that to happen to her.
Still, she found her mind 'elastic' enough that it took in the whole of the book, a tristies on Transfiguration, the subject she was most afraid of in the coming days. She was still down with a headache, enough that she went to the nurse, who gave her a standard potion for such, and told her to have some chocolate at dinner that night, to help keep her spirits up as the second half of the school year loomed.
She woke quickly that next day, much to the shock of her dormmates, who were used to Hermione being the last on her feet, and then disappearing into the library for all the free hours she might have. They were even more shocked that she asked their opinions, twirling about in her robes, asking if they found a blemish or the like in the knitting, repairing a small fray in one of the seams before thanking them.
The whole of Gryffindor Tower took notice of Hermione's mood as she came down, and rather than having her nose buried in a book as one might have expected, she had her eyes on the clock, watching it with a gaze that was just short of an owl eyeing a field mouse. When she almost let out an excited squeal at the clock hands ticking over to the seventh hour, and thus breakfast in the Great Hall, they all followed her.
It brought even more eyes to her, as it turned out not a single member of her House had made their way to breakfast yet, nearly causing one of the teachers to come check on them. And when the whole of the House came into the Great Hall, led by Hermione, it drew all the attention in the school, and she walked up the space between the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables, the Slytherins snickering at her, thinking she had lost her mudblood mind.
She ignored the jeers, the stares, and everything else in the room as she came to the end of the tables, and with a slight cough, cleared her throat. Smiling, as she noticed she had the eyes of every faculty member from the teacher's table on her. She pulled from her robes a long rolled up piece of leather. Unrolling it proved the thing was enchanted, as it settled and items including candles, plates, and even a few sharper implements appeared on it as if they had been placed along its length, all at specific points.
The girl standing before the adults went over her long cloth, counting out something with her finger, before using her wand and lighting the candles that were setup at the corners of the leather display. She then cleared her throat again, ran her fingers through her curls, and with the air of one invoking the old rites, which she was given the static in the air, she spoke the words that shook the room to its foundations.
"Headmaster of Hogwarts, teachers esteemed, and students of the mystic arts, I come to challenge the Masters at their crafts, to show my skills, and gain to myself the time spent studying that which has been excelled at. I beseech all who hear to know that I enter into this challenge in fair body, strong spirit, and a mind sure in its course. Bring against me your tests, and I shall show you that I am beyond them," she said, not reading, but instead reciting a memorized passage.
For an instant, each item before her, of which there were more than a dozen, seemed to glow, with the colors of the Houses, their aura's growing brighter and brighter before they lifted from the items themselves, and hung in the air. Without a sound, the orbs of light then flew towards the candles at the corners of her display. The flames each took on a different hue, the four colors of the houses, red, yellow, blue, and green, showing the school had accepted, and awaited the teacher's reply.