[AN: Hey there. Long time, no see. This chapter is dedicated to unmedicatedadhd for leaving the kindest comment I've ever received and in the process remotivating me to finish this chapter, which had been sitting at like 80% complete for an embarrassingly long time.
I'll probably never forget about this stupid dumb silly little fun writing project, but I can't promise updates because that feels like lying at this point. However, I will still try :) love you all.]
Something that Harry had noticed recently was that something was up with Hermione. She seemed to always be coming or going, and although she still spent plenty of time with Harry and Ron, there were large chunks of time that Hermione was unaccounted for. Harry thought it a bit strange, but Ron didn't seem concerned.
"I dunno, maybe she's been writing a treatise on the castle sewage system as a way to unwind. Myrtle mentioned that she's been in the bathroom a lot."
Harry had no idea who Myrtle was, nor how toilet habits were in any way relevant, and wisely elected to drop the matter altogether.
—O—
In the darkness of the Scottish midnight winter, a predator was afoot. Or, perhaps, a-wing, considering that it was a snowy owl. But not exactly, considering that this snowy owl was, in fact, Hedwig. From her perch on a tall pine tree, the gorgeous bird surveyed the woods around her. It might've been the Forbidden Forest, but one can't really be sure, and it doesn't matter at the moment anyway.
"Hoot." Hedwig sounded suspiciously akin to a human voice, but nobody was around to take note and inquire further into the matter, so it was a moot point (Or perhaps a hoot point?).
Releasing her grasp on her perch, Hedwig floated into the air, and– wings still folded tightly to her sides– the majestic snowy owl zipped away, rapidly accelerating into the sky. A couple of moments later, there was a loud BANG! as she broke the sound barrier.
Harry Potter woke up with that beautifully rare feeling of being completely rested. This should have been his first clue that something was not right. He shoved on his glasses and gave his dorm a bleary-eyed once over.
The window curtains were drawn back, and sunlight was streaming in. The dorm had sheets and clothes strewn across the floor, as usual, but for some reason, there was no one else there.
The world slowed around Harry as he began to feel as though something was deeply, horribly wrong.
There was no one there.
Harry checked his clock. It was the last Friday before the end of term. And his last exam started 5 minutes ago.
The boy swore. Loudly.
After a mad scramble for robes that remotely appeared to fit him, Harry brandished his trusty screwdriver and frantically set to work on opening the vent in his dormitory. He had only ever explored this ventilation duct one other time – and for good reason, but this was an emergency, and the vent was perhaps his only way to make it to McGonagall's exam fast enough to avoid serious trouble.
Steeling his nerves, Harry jumped. As he fell, his screams echoing up into the dormitory quickly faded into nothingness.
Squat on the open window sill, Hedwig ruffled her plumage. "Hoot," spoketh the bird.
It was a close call but just a couple minutes later Harry sighed in two parts exhaustion and relief, still buzzing off of a massive adrenaline rush. His saving grace was that McGonagall was doing practicals one student at a time before the written test, and hadn't gotten to him yet. However the pursed lips told Harry that he was on thin ice, and his magic was decidedly uncooperative this morning. He did some remarkable transfiguration, but the teacup he had been aiming for remained unaltered.
In unrelated news, that evening Hufflepuff House was presented with an oddly smooth and hollow-sounding badger, that had a proclivity for tomatoes and bacon.
— —
'The Christmas' had come around again for another bat of mystical and capitalistic fun, and Harry was pleasantly surprised that both of his friends had decided to stay at Hogwarts for the holidays, although he wasn't entirely sure why. When queried, Hermione said that she was working on a project. Ron's reasoning, however, was somehow worse.
"Oh yeah, we gotta help Hermione with her thing, remember?"
"Ron you don't even know what I've been doing, you prat."
"So what?"
Harry sighed loudly at his friends
"So what?" Hermione retorted indignantly. "Ron, how would you even know about my secret project - um, assuming I am working on, you know, a secret project…" Hermione trailed off, her hand subconsciously touching the base of her throat.
Harry's sharp seeker eye caught a glint of gold before Hermione shifted her robes again. His eyes narrowed suspiciously as his curiosity skyrocketed.
"You just said you were working on a project though!" Exclaimed an exasperated Ron.
"Yes, but that doesn't mean that it's secret—"
Harry clapped his hands "Okay, that's enough." He stood, grabbed a wrist of each of his friends, and dragged the two out of the common room.
"Hermione, you need to tell us what's going on, or at least explain why you can't tell us what you're up to. This isn't like you."
Hermione let out a resigned sigh. "Fine, follow me. I know somewhere a little more private and it'll help me explain anyway."
"Does this, perchance, have anything to do with that weird gold thing that you've started wearing around your neck?" Harry asked.
Hermione didn't look back, striding quickly through the halls of Hogwarts. "Yes, but let me just get there and I'll explain. We're nearly there."
The boys fell quiet, allowing Hermione to lead them down several flights of stairs as she continued to mumble to herself and fidget with something under her robes.
"Ah, here we are."
Ron furrowed his brow. "Hermione, why is 'here' a girl's bathroom?"
"Oh, just come in. Nobody's going to disturb us, you have nothing to worry about." She barged in and then finally turned to face her two best friends. The three stood in silence for a long moment, looking at one another.
Finally, Harry sighed, breaking the silence. "Do you want to start with what the necklace is?"
Hermione dug out her new choice of jewelry. It was a long, thin loop of gold chain with an intricate pendant on the end. The pendant was gold as well and appeared to be a suspended hourglass. Hermione fidgeted with the end of the chain, then looked back up to the boys. "It's um, well, it's a time turner."
Hermione dove into a rapid-fire explanation of using the time turner to make time for stealing restricted books, potion ingredients, and brewing a highly advanced potion. "It was all so we could sneak into the Slytherin common rooms under disguises, so we could question Malfoy without anyone being the wiser."
There was a lot to process in all that information, and so Harry decided to focus on his feelings of mild outrage.
"You mean to tell me you've been completely ignoring the laws of linear time and you HAVEN'T included me in the fun?" Harry asked incredulously.
"That's what you decided to fixate on?" Ron laughed.
"Oh, I don't know, I think the revelation that my best friend can warp space-time is a bit weightier than a potion that can disguise you." Harry retorted sarcastically.
Hermione considered that. "Fair enough I suppose. Oh, and one more thing–"
At that very moment, the bathroom door flung open, and in walked Neville Longbottom. "Oh hi, Hermione, are you finally bringing them up to speed?" He asked casually.
Ron froze. Oblivious to the other two boys' shock, Neville made his way over to the last stall and started pulling miscellaneous ingredients out of his robes.
"YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT YOU DECIDED TO USE NEVILLES HELP INSTEAD OF OURS?!"
"WELL NEVILLE FIGURED OUT WHAT WAS GOING ON LONG BEFORE YOU TWO, AND I COULDN'T EXACTLY OBLIVIATE HIM! I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT YET!"
Neville looked up from the corner. "I'm sorry, what?"
Hermione waved him off impatiently. "Oh, Nev, you're a great help now, I know, but in the beginning when you first figured it out, a memory wipe would've been the smartest option."
The boy shrugged in acknowledgment. "You've got a point, I suppose."
Trevor croaked. Normally when he croaked, it was for a reason, usually containing untold depths of meaning arising from his toady throat that would sadly go largely unnoticed by these mostly incompetent child magicians. However, this time it was just a normal croak because Trevor felt like being a part of the conversation.
"Okay so now," Hermione tried to move on and regain her usual brisk, matter-of-fact tone, "if we all drink this with a little...unique additions, we'll be able to sneak into the Slytherin common room. It's polyjuice potion, so we're going to need…" Hermione thrust a hand into her bag and withdrew four vials, "...these."
Harry and Ron leaned in.
"Those are hairs…" said Harry, squinting at vials.
"Were the two of you paying attention at all?" Hermione huffed. "These are the last ingredient, so we can turn into Slytherins. In a few days, the potion will be ready and we can finally get some answers about who this Heir of Slytherin is."
\-0-/
Harry, Ron, and Neville stumbled into the girl's second-floor bathroom, each of them wrestling with too-big robes and ungainly shoes.
"Oh, Merlin, that was such a disaster" moaned Neville, his face in his hands.
"What was so bad about it?" Hermione's voice floated out from the stall that she was apparently still hiding in.
"Well we almost got caught several times, just because of how oddly we were acting," Neville said. "The way Percy Weasley looked at me when I complimented his freckles! Ugh!"
"That wasn't even the worst of it!" exclaimed a strung-out Harry. "About halfway through, our potion effects all ran out, and we weren't even close to getting Malfoy to spill yet. Neville had to hide behind a newspaper with a hole cut out for his eyes, I put on a pair of those fake glasses with the big nose and mustache attached, and Ron barely was able to get the paper bag on his head before Malfoy saw."
Hermione flung open the stall door. "And he didn't notice?" she asked incredulously.
"Yeah! And he didn't – holy crap what happened to you, Hermione?"
Every visible inch of her skin was covered in a fine, dark brown coat of fur. Hermione was also sporting a pair of twitching cat ears on top of her head and very possibly a tail if the weird lump in her robes was any indication.
The poor girl sighed dejectedly. "I suppose Milicent Bulstrode has a cat… I guess a visit to Madame Pomphrey's is in order soon. But first, did Draco confess to being the heir?"
Neville morosely shook his head. "No, Malfoy isn't the cause of the white-chocolate petrifications. We did learn that his father, Malfoy Senior, somehow knew that this was coming, but I don't know how useful that really is to end this bloody mess."
Ron chucked an oversized shoe across the bathroom. "At least we got that super secret code word. What was it, van-i-tation?"
"Ventilation," put in Harry, "and it's not really much of a code word. I'm not sure about the wizarding world, but ventilation systems are super common in the Muggle world, getting hot or cool air through buildings you know."
"Well, I guess we should check out this 'ventilation' then, right?
"Slytherin's monster can't be in the vents because I've been in the vents and I've never seen anything there."
"Harry, Hogwarts doesn't HAVE a physical ventilation system like Muggle buildings do," Hermione said authoritatively. "It's in Hogwarts: A History, you know."
"Shut up Hermione, you're a cat."
"WHY YOU LITTLE–"
(Later, much later, the group concluded that Draco had somehow misremembered "pipes" as "vents." Additionally, ever since learning of their nonexistence, Harry found himself unable to access the ventilation system that he so loved to explore. He lamented about this loss for years to come, to the great confusion of pretty much everyone else.)
—O—
Ron leaned over to Harry. His eyes flicked to where Hermione was lying in the hospital bed, then back to his bespeckled friend.
Harry took a deep breath in anticipation of whatever nightmare phrase his friend was about to unleash. Their eyes met, orbs of concerned green and calm, serious blue.
Ron opened his mouth, "I told you Hermione wouldn't be able to pull off the catgirl look."
Hermione looked up from her reading. "Ron, what in the actual, ever living, fuck?"
Ron's gaze snapped back to his female friend. "How can you tell me not to swear and then go and say that? Bloody-"
"I had every right to respond the way I did, Ronald," Hermione shot back. "Why, wha- how do you come up with these…"
Harry Potter had never been more done in his life.
–=0=–
Harry forlonely prodded a wall with his screwdriver, looking extremely dejected about the lack of existing ventilation for him to explore.
[AN:
Omake: Ron after learning about the time turner: "This is great! Now I can construct a 5D chess board!"
If you're curious about the cat girl joke… it was set up in chapter 2, right after the troll incident.
I'm so sorry that this chapter took so long for me to publish. There was a lot going on in my life and I literally went 6 months without even opening my WIP document. Thankfully, the infamous 'AO3 Curse' did NOT strike me down, but in the time since I last posted a lot happened. (Here we go). I was accepted into several universities, graduated from high school, decided I wasn't ready for college yet, became a gym rat, went to South America and climbed mountains for 3 months, and spent the last month on a snowboarding road trip.
So yeah, TLDR: life happened. It was pretty epic, and I don't regret it, but it did bring me away from this project.
I want to thank anyone who thought about this fic, especially unmedicatedadhd who, as I said, left a comment that motivated and inspired me to finally get this chapter published. I know this fic doesn't have anywhere close to the insanity numbers that top AO3 fics have, but I want to let y'all know that I see and appreciate every kudo, comment, and hit that gets left here.
I'm hoping to get another couple chapters out in the next two months, in order to finally wrap up 2nd year. Those remaining chapters are both between 50-80% complete, so it's technically possible, but I still have a lot of 'real life' responsibilities going on. We shall see what happens. In the meantime, Happy New Year I guess (lol) :D ]