{Hogwarts Express}
{29th June 1991}
{Hermione's POV}
Hermione ignored Harry's quizzical stare and sat down. Her heart was still stammering against her chest as conflicting emotions threatened to overwhelm her. She wasn't a prude, okay, she shared a dorm with Lavender and Parvati, she had caught those two fooling around plenty of times in this last year.
'But this was...' she thought, but there were no words to describe what she saw. The warm feeling and fuzzy emotions buzzing through here made it a jumbled mess to decipher. Logically, she knew what she saw, even if it was a degree or two rougher than she had imagined, the act itself wasn't strange knowledge. What caught her off guard was her own physical reaction. She wasn't able to move, and even her hand was crawling down to her nether region.
"...Hermione!"
She looked up and saw Harry staring at her with an odd look on his face, even Ron, now calmer than before, was looking at her.
"Are you okay? You are glowing red right now." Harry joked, but there was a hint of concern on his face.
"Yeah, I-ii..." Hermione stopped herself as her voice failed her. Ignoring the shared glance between the two boys, she calmed herself down by taking a deep breath. "I'm okay, just heatstroke, nothing more. A couple of seniors were practicing spells, and the blast of hot air caused me to feel a little wheezy." She fired off a random excuse.
"Yeah, you're sweating a bit as well. Must have been quite a charm for it to linger on you." Ron joked, getting out of the funk he was in earlier.
"Yeah... charm..." She muttered as she leaned back and closed her eyes. The scene flashed once again in her mind. The picture, like a still, was firmly imprinted on her mind. Her lips struggled to take it all in, yet Rigel kept pushing.
'For someone who normally tasks so smoothly, he has a wild side hidden away.' The rumors of him having a harem of Slytherin upper years did seem a little fake, but there must be some truth to those rumors.
...
The compartment door slid open, and she caught a glimpse of Rigel walking in, his hair perfectly styled once again, with not a crease out of place on his clothes. Before she could look into his eyes, she closed them, avoiding eye contact because she knew he would know.
The silence lasted for a bit before Harry asked. "Did you not get hit by the heat spell as well? You seem fine."
Hermione suppressed a wince as her hastily told lie was already crumbling. When she looked at the smiling dark-haired boy, he shared an amused look with her and then shook his head.
"No, Hermione was in a hurry to come back, so she took one for the team. I was barely able to catch up with her." He gave a thumbs up to her, to which she could only nod with an embarrassed smile.
'He knows.' It was a fact that was unavoidable, and as she settled down beside her, she tried her hardest not to squirm. Her eyes travelled down to his hands, as they settled quite close to her thighs.
"So did you ask him?" Ron asked, a little bit of stress leaking into his voice, his earlier facade breaking slightly.
"Ask him-" Hermione switched her questioning tone to one of exclamation forcefully and then turned to Rigel, his blue eyes shining with amusement at her attempt to salvage the situation.
"Yes, according to the book, Mana and You by Martina Gibra, while mana exhaustion is not a harmful condition to suffer from, continuous over-exertion on your mana core could lead to it shrinking, hurting your long-term growth. You mentioned that you do this kind of intensive practice daily, so isn't that harmful?" She asked if the familiar topics helped bring back her jumbled emotions and made her calmer.
"Hmm, I did do some research about it. I don't remember reading the book that you mentioned, but I found a book on the basics of mana. It was less of a book and more of a training journal for Ararctus Black the Third. He wasn't really a scholar, so he didn't do any experiments to justify his results, but he was a member of the army that fought against Gellert Grindelwald." Rigel spoke, the teasing expression fading from his face as he thought about it for a little bit.
"Basically, I'll summarize it for you. You can use as much mana as you naturally have. But once it is exhausted, trying to use spells afterward would result in your vitality being squeezed. It was a common practice during the war to limit one's future potential to save one's own life or someone else's, but he warned against trying it until it was a last resort. So you can practice as long as you are out of mana, which would be signified by you feeling a little dizzy and then getting a headache. If you continue to cast magic after it, you would start to feel weak, which, when further explored, would begin with constant pain in your fingertips, then further..." Rigel summarized. She shares a look with Harry, and then she looks at Ron, who has a relieved expression on his face.
'Thankfully, he didn't overdo it. He doesn't look like he deals with constant pain, so whatever it shouldn't be so bad.'
"The more severe the vitality overexertion, the more malnourished someone would look, and that would include having to deal with constant pain all over the body. His accounts for this are all from the war, with a food shortage and other necessities. Maybe if we take a healthy dose of vitamins, then we can even deal with those severe symptoms as well." Rigel shrugged, then nodded toward Ron and said, "Don't worry too much about it. I would rather advise you to do some work during the summer, even working throughout the summer in the Muggle world would probably earn you enough to buy yourself a wand. It is a sacrifice, but it's worth it."
'Wait, that's it, why didn't I think of it. Ron could work as a waiter or something else... or maybe do something else that doesn't involve talking to Muggles. I'm sure there must be some work he, and maybe all of us, could do to pass the time.' Already, plans were forming in her mind as various jobs were being considered and discarded at a rapid pace.
"You know, entering a private compartment without knocking isn't really a good habit," Rigel whispered beside her, breaking the calm chaos in her mind, freezing her in place. After a good five to ten seconds, she forced herself to look toward him, noticing that he didn't look angry or mad, she retorted, "Well, I didn't have a choice, I knocked several times, and there wasn't really a sock on the door, was there?"
Her words did draw a scoff from him as he looked away with a smirk.
'Tch-' Hermione decided to ignore him, which was quite hard considering her body was unconsciously hyperaware of his actions.
'This is going to be a long trip...'
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AN: 50+ chapters of P.atreon.