Heart racing, she rushed up the stairs, cold sweat prickling like thin crystals on her skin. Finally.
The note in a familiar neat handwriting had been short and non-committal as ever. Completely innocuous to a stranger's eye. Please come to the Headmaster's office at your earliest convenience for an update on our latest project. She had almost laughed at the understatement - the 'project' being perhaps Hogwart's greatest threat after the not-too-long ago battle on its grounds. But then, those events were far from laughable.

It had started slowly, unobtrusive, minor incidents that caught their teacher's attention only due to their frequency. Nearly all of them had witnessed, most of them participated in the fighting, almost every family mourned a brother, sister or parent, so when a bit more outburst of magic in the corridors occurred, prefects and teachers were perfectly willing to look the other way. And for the nastiness of their attacks, well, some had their impulses under a tighter leash than others, and since most of them still were Slytherins – what other outcome was to be expected?

Madam Pomfrey's report of students ravaging sleeplessness from all houses and years met the same denying reception. As for Snape's complaining, no one attributed anything to his claims that students were negligent with their tools, unfocused down to almost erratic. His dissatisfaction came along as the background sound of his teachings like the faint bubbling during classes.

But then, McGonagall, strict as ever, but strengthened and hardened from the war, had first responded to what must have been a lack of discipline unworthy of her students. Audacious had been a pretty strong word for a student in her seventh and last year, trying to charm their new Muggle Studies teacher into giving her an ‚O' in N.E.W.T.s by, well, serving very human needs. Being Head Girl had it's assets, Hermione had mused, if only for being allowed as an advisory voice on the teacher's council where Snape obviously struggled to keep his face straight. If only she had better Legilimency skills. His Occlumency quickly kicked in when he caught her listening to his thoughts as far as ‚The most consequent way to teach most basic psy-', and he had not neglected his guard ever since.

Hermione almost crashed into the gargoyle guarding the headmaster's office, her mind still occupied by the image of a fine, slim snout above a fizzy silhouette, unnaturally grey in front of the full moon. Most of her fellow students, she heard the morning after, had mistaken it for an extremely skinny dog, but she had recognized the shape of the head and slim tail. A werewolf, no doubt. And she knew, without any idea how she knew, that this particular werewolf had wandered the ground only a few years prior, and been formally addressed at daytime.

Well, those had been the least serious incidents. Not even Snape had smirked at the news of several Slytherins complaining they saw the older Creevey brother tampering with their brooms in the school's closet after dark, the very night before the match. What had sounded like a cowardly and tasteless excuse for a failed match turned to a more pressing issue when Parvati Patil winded up on McGonagalls doorstep the day after, complaining to have run into Lavender Brown rummaging through her wardrobe before hiding in her closet. When Parvati stepped up to skim through the clothes, fuming as much as she had been scared, her friend had apparently dissolved into nothing between them. Neither incident was remarkable as such, besides the solid fact that both students were supposed to be, well, dead as doornails.

These sightings – or, among students, hauntings - finally made it onto headmaster Slughorn's agenda after a fresh Ravenclaw Prefect, as popular as he was handsome, grabbed a plate from dinner table, cut the inner part with purple flames from his wand, bend the steaming brim to make a broad-rimmed circle and forced it onto his head, claiming to wear Ravenclaws diadem from now on. Several first years needed calming drought after fleeing from the scene, the young man laughing beneath velvet crimson stripes, slowly dripping from where the gold had cut deep into his forehead. Even Slughorn, careful not to 'exaggerate' minor concerns under his well-threaded leadership, recognized that they weren't dealing with a series of pranks gone a little too far.

Still, it had taken Slughorn several weeks to proceed from mouthful lectures over hushed conversations into real, tangible investment. One of the latter actions was including 'trustworthy' students, who could be relied on performing as eyes and ears to the teachers, and of course most seasoned wizard when it came to Dark Arts (next to Slughorn himself).

Her feet had carried her up the stairs, in front of the properly heavy door. Raising her hand, the bird sitting on its bronze doorhandle picked the even and polished surface behind it, sending a disproportionately loud echo into the room. She had never heard Harry tell about this pompous ritual, but Slughorn was several times into decorum and ceremony as Dumbledore had ever been.

"Ah, Miss Granger", the merry voice greeted her from the stairhead, "Join us, please. Professor Snape here insisted on your presence -", he waved loosely to the stern, slim teacher, who kept his face stiff as his limestone chop boards, "- before he allows me into his groundbreaking discovery." Eyebrows and voice raised at just the right time and none of it layed on too thick, Slughorn still made a great showmaster, she had to give him that. "So, tell us, Severus – who is behind those most unpleasant developments in my school?"

"As I said, Headmaster", Snape began, voice as flat as Slughorns was flamboyant, "I've not yet succeeded in figuring out who is responsible for these 'unpleasant developments'. I have, however, a well reasoned idea on how they were engineered." If he took offense from Slughorns choice of words, he did not allow his anger to show. Hermione, after years in his silent and a few months in talking company, read the lack of feelings as protective. Snape prepared to say something unpleasant, something he feared another's reactions to. "And it's imperative that Miss Granger attends, as she has a unique perspective into the matter."

"Go on, dear Severus, go on." Slughorn kept his gaze fixed on Snape's features, supporting his apparent thrill with overly shown mimics. He was acting now, but the effect still fit the scene. And prevented him from picking up on the tension Hermione felt at Snape's words entirely.

"As Professor McGonagall had to depart the castle for St Mungo's once more", Snape went on (she did not buy Slughorn's sympathetic face this time), "I'll have to settle for your statement on the matter so far, Miss Granger. I urge you to be frank and forward with anything you have to say to it, however childish or reckless it might seem from today's perspective." How, just how had he managed to make her feel like a second year again, almost caught stealing from his stockings for Polyjuice Potion? Her heartbeat quickened again.

"Na, na, Severus, no need to intimidate her like that, she's Head Girl, Merlin's beard -", Slughorn mumbled, as Snape reached deep into the pockets of his worn-out robes. Her heart gave a painful jolt when he pulled his enclosed fist from their dephts.

"I believe you are familiar", Snape said, a golden pendant dropping on a tiny chain dropping from his wrist, "With this particular device?"

Hermione barely suppressed a gasp. "I' ve had to hand my Time Turner back to Professor McGonagall after exams in third year", she answered, "And as far as I've heard, all of them got destroyed at – the end of my fifth."

Slughorn looked less surprised than shocked, and it was a credible expression this time.

"Well, that's true for all the Time Turners kept in the Department of Mysteries", Snape went on into the Headmaster's deadpan silence, "But a former employee apparently managed to smuggle at least one of them from its secure storage, and tampered with it."

"What do you mean by 'tampered', Professor?", Hermione asked, her mind racing. The possibilities for a Time Turner's use were endless – but how might they be connected to events at Hogwarts?
Her mind was racing already, far beyond what Snape was saying.

"If I tell you that for common Time Turners, its maker uses an Hour Reversal Charm on sand made from fragments of a goblin-manufactured glass-orb, as you smashed them countless in the Department -"

They had not experienced a common switch back in time, but rather had individual students alive in the past caught up to the present – in an incomplete, horrific, hollow way -

"And in the case at hand a the magic of it has been altered by messing with its components -"

She arrived at the conclusion just milliseconds before he voiced it out loud. Slughorn looked as if he had gotten lost along the way. "Are you telling me, Severus -", the Headmaster began, but Hermione couldn't stop herself.

"Someone milled the Resurrection Stone and put it in a Time Turner?", she whispered.

Snape nodded, calmly, expressionless, as if he had passed a potion in class and found nothing to criticize. "Precisely."

None of them worried too much about the Headmaster in their midst, who quietly retreated behind his desk, dropped into the armchair several sizes too big for him, where he sat nursing an expression as if hit by a Hippogriff.

"So what are we dealing with – these appearances -", she struggled to find a suitable word, as 'ghosts' made her think of Sir Nicholas and the other mostly benevolent entities in the castle, "If they're dead, how can we stop this – haunting?"

"I think it's indeed safe to speak of an infestation", Snape replied, still irritatingly calm, "Four months into the academic year, I guess most of the victims who decided to remain among us as ghosts have made an appearance somewhere in the castle, so those are the one's who're not bothering us. As for dealing with the entities, I think an appropriate name will be the first step to solving the problem."

"The Stone was a legend, Professor, so I doubt that there's anything in magic or muggle literature that could provide us with a term for -"

"Oh, quite on the contrary", Snape interrupted, tilting his head as if looking at a peculiar insect. "Muggle's have known these entities for ages, and so have wizards. Opinions differ mostly on how to deal with them."

"I've certainly never read about malevolent echoes of a person's soul -", she stopped, as Snape turned his head back to its usual uptight position, frowning on her now.

"Barely ten seconds ago I almost concurred with the widely spread rumor of you being the brightest witch of your age. As you've made an impression on your fellow wizards repeatedly … surely, Miss Granger, you must have heard about demons?"