When Harry finally slunk into the common room late that night, it was to witness a strange scene. Hermione stood with her arms crossed and lips pursed, which meant she was either furious or amused and trying to hide it. Neville was also watching awkwardly. The twins were fake-gagging in the background, eyes laughing. Several Gryffindors from various years were standing around observing. In the center of it all sat Ron, the ankle of one leg propped up on the knee of the other. He was turning the ankle this way and that, examining it with an anxiously pale face.
"...and they don't have cures for everything, you know," he was saying.
Harry drew to a halt a few feet away, eyebrows coming together. "Uh… what's going on?"
Hermione began, "Ronald is worried that–"
"You might need a new best friend, Harry," Ron interrupted her loudly with an overdramatic moan. "I think I'm a goner."
"You're not going to die," Hermione sighed, lips compressing further. Harry was beginning to think she was both mad and amused in equal measure.
Ron ignored her and answered Harry's questioning look.
"Crabbe BIT me! Look!" Harry obligingly leaned forward and looked at Ron's freckled ankle. It was free of blemish. "Madame Pomfrey healed it but wouldn't give me a—what'd you call it, 'Mione? Rabies shot? Anyway, who knows what kind of diseases that one's got! I could be incurbating—"
"Incubating, Ron—"
"—something as we speak!"
"You're overreacting."
"She could have at least given me the tetanus thing you mentioned," Ron said stubbornly.
"I was joking!"
"I'm not!"
"She cast about four different disinfectant charms on you. Madame Pomfrey is a highly qualified Mediwitch–"
"Everyone makes mistakes, and not realising that slimy snake was going to BITE ME was probably my last."
Hermione looked imploringly at Harry, clearly hoping he would be able to knock some sense into Ron, but the Dursleys' closest thing to real medical care had probably been letting him eat dirt as a kid for his immune system so he didn't feel qualified to speak on the matter.
"Er," he began, reaching out and patting Ron's shoulder a couple of times. "There, there."
Ron rolled his eyes. "Great comfort you are."
"What did McGonagall tell you, Harry?
"She said I was stuck spending all of tomorrow in her office serving detention."
"Same for the rest of us Gryffindors. It'll probably be something boring but not too rank," Ron said, finally letting his ankle go.
Everyone else began milling away, those who knew more about the situation the only ones to remain. Neville and the twins drew closer as the conversation turned more serious.
"What happened at Snape's?"
Harry didn't immediately respond, thinking back to that evening's conversations. When they were first caught fighting, his fear had caused him to actively occlude the Professor Snape track. Getting dragged down to the dungeons, he'd been firmly under the impression that the dungeon bat was going to expel him for sure. Then the man had looked at him with more sternness than rage and asked for his side of things. That was when he realised he was occluding the wrong Snape and switched it to the village one instead.
"Harry?"
He snapped out of his wandering thoughts and returned his attention to his expectant friends. "He shouted, took points, the expected. He actually yelled at Malfoy, too. He wanted us to try to 'see past our differences' or something."
"Right," Ron snorted.
"I don't expect Malfoy took well to that either?" Hermione asked.
"No, I don't expect he did," Harry grinned back. "Anyway, he also assigned me two weeks of further detention with McGonagall."
"That's all?" Neville asked in disbelief, unable to imagine the dreaded Snape giving anyone—especially Harry, with whom he still had a very contentious relationship in public—that light of a sentence.
"That's all." He'd also given Harry a warning, which he decided to bring up now. "I was thinking, though. Getting in a fight with the Squad is going to make it even easier for Umbridge to get to us."
"There's nothing to be done about it now, though, is there? She… hey, Hermione, where are you going?"
Sure enough, their bushy-haired friend was tossing her enchanted satchel over her shoulder. She had a suddenly wild, intense look on her face and was headed for the girls' dorms.
"To do something about this," she said ominously.
The rest of them all looked at one another, taken aback and somewhat alarmed at this total attitude shift. One minute she was laughing with them about Ron's melodrama, the next she was storming off to… "What is she doing?" Harry wondered aloud.
"I'm not sure I want to know," Ron muttered under his breath.
Early the next morning, a note popped into the fifth year boys dormitory. It was from McGonagall, instructing Neville, Ron, Hermione, and Harry to come to her office as soon as they were ready to begin their all-day detention. It said that she would be providing them breakfast.
Ron started complaining about it, but consolation came from an unexpected quarter when Seamus suddenly spoke up.
"She's probably trying to keep you away from Umbridge for as long as possible. I bet the toad's waiting for you to show up in the Great Hall for breakfast so she can pounce."
"You make a good point, Finnegan," Ron said, still not entirely forgiving of their dorm mate for his initial hostility to Harry.
"Yeah, well, it's just putting off the inevitable," Seamus said grumpily before disappearing to hide in the bathroom, probably embarrassed.
Resignedly, the three boys got dressed and went down to the common room to meet Hermione. To their surprise, however, she wasn't there.
"She's always up before us." Ron sounded shaky, as if a central dogma of his life had been challenged.
"You think she got the note and went straight down there?"
"She wouldn't leave without us."
Lavender came down the dormitory stairs and Ron hurried over to stop her. "You haven't seen Hermione, have you?"
"No, actually," the blond replied, her eyebrows going up at the subject. "She didn't spend the night in our dorm."
"What?!" Ron gaped, oblivious to the suggestive look Lavender had given him at her last statement. She sighed and rolled her eyes.
"If you don't know where she is, I certainly wouldn't." Then she flounced off as Ron returned to Harry in shock.
"Hermi–"
"I heard, Ron. I was standing right here."
"Where is she?"
"I'm gonna find Ginny and see if she knows," Neville said, sprinting off.
Harry turned to Ron. "Let's check the map."
They ran back up to their dorm. Harry pulled out the Marauder's Map. Starting to get really worried, he pressed the tip of his wand to the parchment and hastily whispered, "I solemnly swear I am up to no good." Ink bloomed across the parchment, revealing everything from rooms and corridors to people and pets. They scanned Gryffindor tower first, but were unsurprised by now to see she wasn't there. Alarmed, their next spot to check was Umbridge's classroom and office, but she wasn't there either.
"Look," Ron murmured, pointing at a dot standing just inside the doors to the Great Hall. Umbridge, apparently waiting for someone to come through.
"Ten galleons says she's there for us."
"No way, I can't afford to lose that."
They then turned their attention to the library, another common haunt of their friend. She wasn't there either. Really starting to panic now, they looked over the entire castle. Twice.
"She snuck out," Harry whispered in disbelief, no longer seeing the map in his hands. "She's completely off grounds."
"We've never snuck out in the middle of term," Ron agreed, equally perplexed.
"Hermione snuck out. She snuck out, and she's even missing a detention with a teacher."
"And she didn't tell us." Shaking his head with admiration (tinged with betrayal), Ron turned away. Harry cleared the map and stuffed it back in its spot. They then stared at each other, feeling lost.
"I guess we just go to McGonagall's," Harry suggested helplessly.
"What do we tell her about Hermione?"
"What can we tell her? We don't know anything either."
The two of them met Neville at the foot of the stairs, who shook his head silently.
"We'd better just go," Ron said dejectedly.
The three boys were greeted at McGonagall's office door by the witch's stern look and pursed lips. She asked where "the fourth member of their intrepid troupe" was, and didn't seem pleased at their answer. She took them through her office to her classroom, where three desks well spaced apart each bore a plain brown quill and a roll of parchment. A long roll of parchment, much to Harry's dismay. Ron sighed audibly from several feet away. Neville's shoulders slumped.
A long sentence about controlling their tempers and applying their Gryffindor courage more judiciously was written in McGonagall's traditional and slanted hand up on the board. Harry did what he had become so good at: lower his head and get to work. McGonagall stood at the front of the room and lectured at them endlessly about the stupidity of their actions, the shadow it cast upon Gryffindor house, and pointedly said not a word about respecting the Slytherins' position as member of the Inquisitorial Squad.
After they had all finished—Ron took an extra twenty minutes than Harry or Neville, and seemed to be dragging it out—she softened slightly and called a house elf to bring them a simple breakfast. Harry considered that it might not be such a bad thing that Hermione wasn't there. When they were finished eating, she set them onto grading first year essays.
It was then that a knock came at the office door. Harry looked up from Melissa Conneley's atrocious penmanship curiously as McGonagall strode purposefully over and cracked it open.
The person on the other side of the door cleared their throat. Harry, Ron, and Neville all simultaneously sank further into their seats with silent groans. They could recognize that hem, hem anywhere.
"Delores. Is there something you require?"
"Why, yes, Minerva." Harry couldn't see Umbridge; McGonagall was rather obviously using her own body to block the doorway. Still, he could hear the false simper in her voice and scrunched up his nose. Neville looked like he was regretting their breakfast. "I believe you have Mr. Potter in there with you?"
"He is serving a detention with me, yes."
"Wonderful. I will take him off your hands."
"That won't be necessary."
A weighty pause.
"I beg your pardon?"
"My pardon is given." McGonagall's accent seemed to thicken somewhat, but her tone was steady. "I cannot excuse him early, it would be a harmful inconsistency for an attempt at discipline. Wouldn't you agree?"
Ron was mouthing some kind of cheer, pumping his fist in the air like he was at a Slytherin-Gryffindor quidditch game. Harry kicked his shin so he wouldn't burst out laughing.
"I simply must speak with him. He has flaunted my authority by challenging the Inquisitorial Squad. The Minister–"
"Will no doubt be pleased to hear all about it after you see him in class on Tuesday. For today, however, Mr. Potter is under my authority."
Harry had never thought he'd hear "authority" used as such a blatant synonym for "protection" before. He'd never really seen McGonagall as the outright protector and defender that Snape had recently become, but every now and again something would remind him that the Gryffindor mascot was a lion and she was one of them.
The two women sniped at each other for several more minutes until Umbridge finally got the hint and flounced off with bad grace and thinly-veiled threats. McGonagall shut the door with just enough force to show her displeasure before sucking in a forced calming breath and returning to her marking.
The boys exchanged grins and did the same.
Their first class of the day on Monday was Potions. Through the none-too-subtle maneuvering of many members of the Hogwarts staff, Harry (and by extension his friends) were constantly kept just out of Umbridge's reach. He appreciated the effort, but wasn't quite sure what the point was when she was going to have inevitable unrestricted access to him in their afternoon class on Tuesday. After the second evasion of the morning—a quiet invitation from Professor Flitwick to step into his office just as Harry was quickly rounding the bend, the sound of quicker high heels behind him—he couldn't decide if was happy to stall it or not. On the one hand, he couldn't help but remember the sound of metal clanking in a bag as Umbridge walked up from the dungeons late at night with a shiver. On the other hand, pain deferred was pain dreaded, and years at the Dursleys' had taught him that the sooner a punishment begins, the sooner it is over. A deep instinct, however, told him that Umbridge and her vendetta against him were not something that would pass away so easily. She'd been waiting for him to slip up since Snape first busted the blood quills.
He both hoped and feared that Snape would do something again to get her off his back. If Harry had a chance to talk to him, he would figure out if he wanted to ask for help or beg his mentor to stay out of it.
Before that chance could possibly arrive, Harry had to survive another class of Potions with Professor Snape. He was sure to be extra harsh in class today after the confrontation with some of his Slytherins.
He was just finally filing into the classroom with Ron when Hermione slipped in behind them.
"What the hell, 'Mione!" Ron blurted, uncaring of where they were or who might hear. "Where have–"
She shot him her fiercest glare, the one that always made her hair seem twice as big. He stammered to halt before glancing around at the many curious stares of their classmates. Seeing that he had realised their situation, she said, "Later, okay?" and he nodded.
The door banged open again and Professor Snape stormed a few feet inside before being stopped by the presence of the three of them in his way. They nervously scattered to their desks as he followed their movements with cold, dark eyes. When they were settled in their usual seats, he stalked to the front of the room.
"If we are all settled in," he began with a pointed glare, "we have an entire subcategory of Accompanied Potions to cover if any of you hope to pass your OWLs, as unlikely as that may be regardless…"
The class was boring as usual, although he made an effort because he knew village Snape would expect him to do well in all of his classes. It was hard to focus with Ron constantly trying to make eye contact with Hermione, though, who was steadfastly working as if nothing were amiss.
Class finally ended. Harry and Ron's potion wasn't spectacular, but it wasn't unspeakable either, which was more than Crabbe and Goyle could say. As everyone was leaving the room, Professor Snape's (wait, no, he looked relaxed now. Was this the other Snape?) sharp voice cut through the air.
"Miss Granger, a moment."
Ron looked mutinous as Hermione serenely nodded and walked up to the desk. Seeing that Snape was obviously waiting for them to leave, Harry grabbed his friend's arm and tugged him out of the classroom.
"But Herm–"
"She'll tell us, mate." In saying it, Harry felt again his own curiosity of just where she had gotten to yesterday.
Ron sighed and leaned against the dungeons wall in the hallway outside the class. "Honestly, Harry," he said in a confessional tone of voice, "if she says she knows how to apparate, I don't think I'll be able to stomach lunch."
Harry's face cracked into a grin. Ron sounded extremely jealous and appalled at the notion of Hermione learning a new way to break the rules and not even telling them. "That'd be a first."