The days turned into weeks. Hermione found that she was so busy she hardly had time to breathe, let alone worry. Which was a good thing. She might have worried herself sick with everything going on if she let herself feel the stress.
D.A. meetings came and went, and the inquisitorial squad was formed. No surprise that Malfoy was on it. He always seemed to find ways to annoy Harry. Hermione probably would have found that amusing if she'd had the time to think about it properly.
As it was, she sometimes felt like she was slipping down a path to insanity. She had come up with fake galleons so that they could get word out to people. But that didn't stop anyone from being followed. She was still glad that the jinx she had put on the list of members seemed to be doing its job.
"You doing okay?" Neville asked her at breakfast.
She shook her head. Part of her didn't even know how she was still functioning. The other part of her knew that most of it had to do with her daily talks with Viktor. She managed to shed a little of her stress with each conversation.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Not really," Hermione said. "I feel slightly silly for being so stressed when Harry's got so much more on his plate."
"Just because Harry has some unnatural ability to get himself into the worst situation possible doesn't mean that your problems aren't valid," Neville said.
"When did you get to be so wise?"
"I learnt from the best."
Hermione rolled her eyes. She figured Neville was talking about Dumbledore or something, but he could be teasing her. And the way he seemed to smile at her certainly hinted at it.
"Morning guys," Harry said.
"Morning Harry," they chorused.
"How'd you sleep?" Hermione asked. She might have been stressed, but she still cared.
"Better than I have in a while. Cho agreed to meet me for a date at Hogsmeade next weekend," he said.
While Harry and Cho had sort of been dating, they had both sort of fallen out of each other's fancy. But neither of them had the guts to say much about it. So Harry was hoping that this date would bring either the attraction back, or the gumption to end things.
It did help a tad that it was getting close to Valentine's day. That holiday tended to bring out emotions in people that usually lay dormant.
Hermione was a little upset that Viktor wouldn't be around, but she understood. jAnd there was a greater part of her that was relieved that she wouldn't have to deal with fangirls while she was just trying to spend time with her boyfriend.
"That sounds great. Are you still going to help me find that book?" Hermione asked.
She was talking about a tome that they'd been looking for in the library that concerned defense against the dark arts. Professor McGonagall had written a note to Madame Pince, giving them access to the restricted section.
"Absolutely. We're planning on having lunch, so there should be plenty of time in the afternoon to find it," Harry said.
"Right then," Hermione said and turned back to her food.
The morning of the Hogsmeade weekend came a little faster than anyone expected. Neville and Ron headed off to Zonko's joke shop and the quidditch store. Hermione headed into the bookstore.
She was looking for something, though she wasn't quite sure what. But she knew that she needed to find something on magical runes. She had swirled a protective symbol onto her leg absentmindedly one evening prior, and it had vanished.
She was looking through practically every tome on runes when Draco Malfoy came in. She could almost feel his presence. But it was his footsteps, strangely distinctive, that indicated it was him and not just some other student.
"Looking for something Granger?" Malfoy asked. It was always so strange how he could make something so simple as a surname sound like an insult.
"Of course," Hermione said as civilly as she could manage. "What else does one do in a bookstore?"
He nodded at that, though his face screwed up as if she smelt awful. At least there weren't a ton of people. Malfoy was always worse with an audience.
She turned back to the books. She picked about six of them out. Those were ones about runes. And then she took a whim, and picked up a book on pureblood marriage customs. She was glad that the cover didn't have anything incriminating on it. She would never have lived that down.
She headed back to the castle, determined to get a head start on looking for that book. She'd been there for a few hours when Harry came in to the library. He was frowning, determination written all over his face.
He pulled a book out and started thumbing through the pages. Thankfully he did so with care, in spite of his obviously high strung emotions.
"I guess it didn't go well," Hermione said, looking at his face.
"That's definitely one way to put it," Harry said. "I'm just glad it's over."
"Want to talk about it?" Hermione offered.
Harry shook his head. "Cho's really interested in Marietta Edgecomb."
Hermione managed to keep her jaw from dropping open. Marietta Edgecomb was probably the person that Hermione trusted the least. At least the D.A. member that she trusted the least. Though she could usually count on the Slytherins to be frustrating obstacles.
"I guess that's better than you making her cry because you had to spend time with me," she said.
"That's certainly true."
Hermione was hunched over notes, furiously annotating, when Padma caught up to her. She slid into the chair next to Hermione, and pulled out her own book.
"I'm guessing that you found it," she said.
"Yep," Hermione said without looking up.
"And how was your trip to Hogsmeade?"
Hermione looked up, a wistful look in her eyes. "So many books. I got seven, and I'm hoping that Professor Babbling will give me a text on protection runes."
"Professor Babbling would probably give you anything you wanted," Padma said.
Hermione smirked a little. "She probably would."
They returned to their books for a moment before Hermione groaned and shut the book she had been annotating. She had been staring at it for way too long, and needed a break.
"Need a break?" Padma asked. She already knew the answer, but confirmation was hardly ever a bad thing.
"Very much so. And preferably a conversation about something before I go try to understand it in a language that's not English," Hermione said.
They headed out of the Gryffindor common room and towards the kitchen. It was once they were in the hallways that Hermione noticed something unusual.
"How did you get into Gryffindor tower?" she asked.
Padma smiled coyly. "You really wouldn't think that with a ton of Gryffindor friends, not to mention a twin sister, you could keep me out?"
"Point taken," Hermione said.
They reached the kitchens, and had some snacks laid out for them. They were munching and chatting softly when Padma asked what Hermione had wanted to talk about.
"It's this." She drew a symbol on a spare piece of parchment that she had in one of the pockets of her robes. That was one advantage for the wizarding world. Unlike the muggle world, her wizarding clothes actually had enough space in her pockets for things.
It was a swirling symbol, with a few jagged spikes in it. It was incredibly detailed and beautiful. But it was also smaller than Padma had been expecting when she had heard the words protection runes. And she was sure that it had something to do with the pen that Hermione was using.
"It's beautiful." Anyone could see that. "But what does it have to do with anything?"
Hermione sighed. It was going to be hard to explain what had happened. And she wasn't even sure what had happened. She knew that she needed to talk to Viktor about it, but she wasn't sure he'd know. And she wanted to have a clearer idea of what was going on before she brought it up.
"I drew this on my leg last night, and it vanished."
Padma rotated her gaze between Hermione, the rune, and the wall for about six minutes. She had her thinking face on, which meant that Hermione wasn't about to disturb her. She would come out of it soon enough.
"Have you considered that this is more to do with your bond than the rune itself?" Padma asked.
"Of course I have. But exactly how am I supposed to find a book on that? The one Neville gave me only had one small section on soulmates, and that wasn't comprehensive by anyone's standards."
She placed her head on the table. Sometimes it was difficult to find what one was looking for. Hermione knew that. But she hadn't expected it to be nearly as difficult as it was proving to be.
"You know who you should talk to about this," Padma said. "Viktor."
"I know," Hermione said, but she hadn't picked her head up. She stayed there for a few minutes before taking her pen out and writing on her arm in the familiar Cyrillic letters.
Viktor, are you busy?
Not at the moment, he wrote back just a minute later. And nothing in this world could make me too busy for you.
Hermione fought the impulse to roll her eyes. He couldn't see it anyway, and Padma couldn't read Bulgarian. It would have been a futile exercise.
Viktor, we live in different countries. And I'm still dating you. You don't have to try so hard, she wrote.
I know. But I like to tease you.
I have a question. You didn't happen to notice anything on your leg recently?
Which leg?
The right.
Hermione was anxious as she waited for him to check. It was obvious that he hadn't paid much attention. It wasn't as if the writing felt any different than normal. It just sort of appeared. But if it had vanished from her skin, it might have vanished from his.
Why is there a protection spell on me?
Apparently not.
A/N: Don't worry. I might have cut off in a slightly odd spot, but there will be answers soon. I already have some of them planned. It's just a matter of writing them. Which is a bit harder than it sounds.