The only other time any parts of Sophia had been changing and covered in fur was when she'd been forcibly turned into a werewolf. Hermione had thought that they'd explained adequately to her that this was different, but it appeared that such was not the case, nor had the transformation of the other children made her feel any better; they were still werewolves, Hermione supposed.
Now the little girl was seeing herself covered in fur, was witnessing her arms begin to lengthen, and was feeling that she had a bit of a muzzle when she buried her face in her hands. Now, therefore, it was time for a full-blown tantrum complete with crying, screaming, and kicking of her little feet.
Hermione held on to Sophia throughout this storm, wanting to make sure that she knew that she wasn't being rejected. The Gryffindor was greatly relieved that she'd cast silencing charms between her children and the adults; Sophia's tantrum would almost definitely have broken everyone else's concentration.
Either Harry had the most uncanny timing ever or Hermione's alarm over the event had been broadcasted more widely than she had realized.
Everything all right?
Not exactly. She explained about Sophia's upset. I need a clever way to get her to accept the spell, and right now, we're more at 'upset all the other children so that they won't be able to transform'.
Give me a sec.
Since Hermione was holding a kicking, screaming child, she wasn't exactly going anywhere.
She felt him before she saw him, and she realized that this was a solution she should have been able to come up with on her own. She hoped it hadn't escaped her solely because it was an ability which Harry possessed and she did not. Still, that's what friends were for, getting one out of tight spots.
The worst of Sophia's reaction tapered right off in Harry's presence, and the visible alarm of the rest of the children diminished also. Hermione could feel her own worry ebbing away—in a much more natural-feeling manner than had happened when he had found her in the Highlands, so it appeared that he had been practicing.
Now that Sophia was calmer, she was able to realize that she was completely human-looking once more, which also improved her morale.
Hermione was pretty sure that Harry could keep up this emotional transfer, but she wasn't sure if they should attempt the spell again while Sophia was under the influence of it. Would she be able to transform on her own in the future, or would she depend on Harry's presence and develop some sort of a mental block? Would it interfere with Hermione's plans for the rest of the transformation?
Only it turned out that Harry had thought of that, too, because a moment later, Tonks appeared, looking worried when she saw the trembling Sophia.
"Wotcher," Tonks said mildly enough, seeming to know enough about children that sometimes the whole point was not to notice that they had been upset.
"Sophia's got a few concerns about this part of the transformation," Harry said with equal composure. "It reminds her a little too much of when she turned into a werewolf before on the full moon, doesn't it, sweetheart?"
Sophia nodded, still scrunched up in Hermione's lap, thumb in her mouth. She had yet to look up.
"But you know that Tonks isn't a werewolf, right?" Harry asked. "She didn't change even once, did she?"
The little girl shook her head.
"That's right," the Gryffindor continued cheerfully. "Because she's completely human. But she can transform so that she looks just like you do when you get to see what a pretty little wolf you're going to be."
This actually got Sophia to turn round and stare at Tonks, tears completely forgotten. She pulled her thumb out of her mouth.
"Can't," she said firmly.
Harry grinned, pleased at having fully regained the child's attention.
"If we cast the spell one more time, all you have to do is look at Tonks. Think you can do that?"
Sophia looked torn between burrowing back into Hermione and seeing if Tonks could really do what Harry was saying she could. Finally, she gave a hesitant nod.
"Good girl," Harry said, smiling at her.
Hermione cast the spell again, and as golden fur sprouted on Sophia's face and her mouth elongated into a snout, Sophia watched in astonishment as Tonks mimicked these exact changes.
"They're nothing to be afraid of," Hermione said softly.
The little girl climbed out of Hermione's lap and into Tonks's. The Auror looked a little startled by this and was quite awkward at first, as though worried she were going to have some sort of accident even sitting here on the floor and cause injury to the small child in her arms.
But Sophia grinned up at her, reaching out to pet the snout-like nose that matched her own. She seemed so delighted by the whole turn of events that Tonks really didn't have a chance of resisting her charms.
You're a life-saver, Harry.
Saviour of the Wizarding World and all that, Harry pointed out glibly.
Mentally, she stuck out her tongue at him, and he grinned widely at her before heading back to the adults.
Sophia didn't want Tonks to leave, so the woman settled in with them. The tiny blonde curled up and fell asleep on the Auror, and that was how Remus found them as Hermione was explaining to the other three children about Metamorphmagi even as she wondered how it was something they hadn't covered in all the time Tonks and the children had been at the safe house. But she supposed that Tonks often came during the busiest times when her brand of transformation was not the one which they were all concentrating on.
One glance told Hermione that Remus was completely enamoured of the picture Tonks and Sophia made, and Hermione suspected that her plan to find Sophia a home had just been jumpstarted without her needing to intervene any further at all.
Remus couldn't stay with them because he had his own charges tonight, but he spoke softly with Tonks for a few minutes and brushed Sophia's hair tenderly off her face. When it was time for him to return, he rose with obvious reluctance, bid them all farewell, and marched back to the other side of the room.
Tonks was staring after him with a very thoughtful look on her face.
"Do you think—?"
"Yes," Hermione said firmly without even letting her finish the sentence.
Tonks looked back at her in surprise.
"Yes," Hermione repeated with certainty, smiling at the other woman. "There's no question."
Tonks looked down at the little girl in her arms, smiled to herself, and nodded slightly.
The children were all able to experience the senses of the transformation without much trouble; unlike the adults, they had no qualms about running around on all fours even though they were still in human form. They had a riot sniffing and peering at all the objects that seemed so different now that they were appreciating them with a wolf's senses.
Hermione summoned them back, gave them snacks, and convinced them that they needed to rest again in the last hour and a half before the final transformation took place. Now that they'd gotten Sophia over her initial fear, she was very excited, and it had taken Tonks actually volunteering to lie down and rest with her for a few minutes to get the child to close her eyes. Fortunately, the little girl had fallen right to sleep. Tonks had nodded off as well, and since Hermione figured the Auror needed to rest, she left the older woman sleeping there until Remus came to find out what had happened to her.
Once Hermione had woken up all the children and given them the chance to drink some juice and perk up a bit, it was less than a quarter of an hour until the moment of the new moon. Since she was transforming the children one at a time, Hermione thought this was the best time she could start so that they were staggered quite close to the event.
She began with Lou, as she wanted Sophia to see what was happening and see how non-threatening it was before she was put under the spell herself. Hermione knew she wouldn't have to have the slightest worry about the little girl's reaction when she giggled like mad as Lou pranced around them, wagging his tail in a remarkably dog-like manner, tongue lolling out of his mouth, acting just like the other wolves had done and nothing like a werewolf.
The little girl's transformation occurred without a hitch, and Hermione let Sophia and Lou roll around together as she turned her attention to Damian and Alissa. They, too, changed with little trouble since Hermione was the one performing the spell; she simply put a good deal more power behind it than she had needed to with the adults.
Lou was a very dark grey and one of the rare wolves who retained the blue eye colouring which was normally lost within a few months of birth. The other three children all had yellow-gold eyes, and Sophia's fur was a similar golden brown to Remus's. Damian and Alissa transformed into wolves with identical reddish colouring.
Once all four children were transformed, they took off like four cannon balls, heading for the adults pell-mell, yipping their excitement. Hermione had to throw up a cushy barrier to prevent the children from barrelling into the adults, the majority of whom were still trying to achieve their own transformation; happy as the children were, now was not the perfect time for them to be sharing that news, especially since Remus, Harry, Draco, and Minerva were all assisting in the spell-casting that would allow the adults to transform for the first time.
Bounding into what amounted to fluffy air fortunately proved to be entertaining to the wolf cubs, and they all scrambled back onto all fours, bounded into it a few more times for good measure, and finally turned back to look at her with whines of query.
She explained that the adults were still trying to turn into wolves and that they couldn't be interrupted in the middle of that process. With a sympathetic smile for their impatience, she promised that once everyone knew how to turn into wolves under their own power, then they could mingle.
The little wolves all loped back to her, and she turned them back into little humans. Convincing them to rest now for even a few minutes was difficult, but Hermione was adamant. This next part required them to transform themselves, and that was going to take energy and concentration, neither of which would be achievable if the children were ready to keel over from fatigue.
This next part was the process that Hermione wasn't going to tell very many other people about. Possibly not anyone else. Because what she was about to do was perilously close to the Imperius Curse—or at least it could be used as such, and since Hermione wasn't going to be using her wand when she did it, it was also untraceable.
Children didn't have the mental skills or magical discipline to become Animagi. Even precocious children who'd exhibited symptoms of magic at a young age did so because of the opposite problem: they couldn't yet control their magic and this resulted in unpredictable outbursts.
It had now become necessary for seven young children to become Animagi. Since Hermione was determined to make this happen, she was going to assist them. During the previous moons, she'd been there to watch the most talented adults and to assist those who needed help, but she had done so externally. Even when she'd connected with Mary's mind, it had only been to put more force behind the spell and give the woman a boost.
When Hermione had helped the children gain their animal for the first time tonight, she'd been applying the spell. It had worked with their magic, but it had been her doing. That was why it was so important for the werewolves to subsequently practice making the transformation themselves until they could do it smoothly for the full moon, where it was crucial that the performance was a natural one done by them with their magic.
In essence now, however, Hermione was going to be the children when they transformed. Or perhaps more accurately, the children were going to be her. She was going to be fully immersed in their minds, and she was going to be making them do what she wanted. It was a type of possession, she supposed, though the word made her squirm a little, and since she was an adult and non-virgin—albeit also a Pure Adult—it was possibly what was going to prevent the children from becoming Pure Adults—but also enabling them, she hoped, to become Animagi.
This was the only way she had worked out to allow them to be able to perform a transformation which children of that age would normally have no hope of achieving. It was what they wanted to do anyway, so she wasn't compelling them to do anything which they might object to, but it hadn't taken a genius to work out the horrible uses to which this sort of skill could be put by an unscrupulous someone. The Ministry, she had no doubt, would have a collective panic attack and throw her into Azkaban quicker than she could blink if her ability were to become known.
Hermione was going to be fully immersed in each child's mind and using his or her body and magic to turn into a wolf. The child would therefore be doing it, only while she was in there at the helm, as it were, literally demonstrating how it was done in the only truly effective way.
Since it was safest for everyone if no one knew what she was doing, she simply explained to the children that she would be there with them, ensuring that they were able to transform. They accepted this gratefully, as even Sophia was now hugely enthusiastic about being able to turn into a wolf at will and gallivant around with Remus and Tonks.
This time around, Hermione decided to start with Sophia. It would mean her transformation under her own power was happening closest to the precise new moon, and it seemed wisest to act while Sophia's enthusiasm was greatest.
Hermione had decided to start the children straight at the point of not needing to hold their wands; they would only need them sheathed and with them. Although it would mean that this change was that little bit closer to the werewolf transformation where they didn't need a wand either, Hermione thought this was balanced out by the fact that using the wand was not something that was second-nature to them yet; for their safety, the children had been admonished frequently not to use their wands outside of class time, and they were a long way away from having the necessary skills to use the wands for everyday activities.
She believed the focus would still be essential however, and she'd drilled into them as frequently as she possibly could the fact that they always needed to have their wands with them before they transformed. The transformation could hardly be counted a success if the children remained wolf pups forever, and she suspected this danger would linger longer for the less mentally disciplined children than it did for the adults who had all had years of magical training.
Hermione needed this transformation to become intuitive very quickly, so she'd come to the best compromise that she could, wands an important part of the process but other factors playing a part as well.
She settled Sophia into a comfortable position in front of Hermione and asked her to stare into Hermione's eyes. A moment later, Hermione had entered the girl's mind. It reminded her of what had happened when she had joined Harry in his vision; she had been fully immersed and outside of her own body, only then they had both been dragged to Voldemort's location, rather than her resting in Harry's mind.
Hermione had never tried to settle so fully into someone before, and she realized as she got oriented that it was really disconcerting to be looking out of someone else's eyes and seeing herself. She was still peripherally aware of her own body, but she was mostly Sophia, and Sophia, just as she'd been instructed, was staring unblinkingly at Hermione—or at least at the part of Hermione that was sitting across from them.
Hermione sternly admonished herself to get a grip. Although the Gryffindor had the upper hand in this mentality, Sophia was also conscious and aware, too. She was delighted by Hermione's arrival, thinking, Hermione could feel quite clearly, that Hermione was just doing what she'd said she would. She was here and she was ensuring that Sophia could turn into Remus's and 'Dora's pup.
Hermione's mental eyebrows rose a little at this. She hadn't realized just how much Sophia had connected to the two of them, and she hoped that the Ministry didn't kick up any sort of fuss when the two of them petitioned to adopt her. At least she'd seen tonight that Remus and Tonks were on the same wavelength, even if they hadn't discussed it with one another yet…. But she supposed that was really a problem for another time.
Concentrating on getting a feel for the little girl's magic, she found that her core hadn't grown to its full potential yet; this wouldn't occur until she turned seventeen. The problem in their current situation was that Sophia couldn't normally access any of the magic that was there. This was natural in magical children, protecting them and their parents; if children could use magic all the time to fulfill childish whims, there would be absolute chaos.
While Hermione was here, she had one specific task that she was enabling, and she made sure to restrict the connection to the core that she was forging accordingly. She then spent several more minutes ensuring to the best of her abilities that this wouldn't stunt the child's naturally increasing access to her core as she got older. It felt a bit like building wards inside Sophia, and since Hermione was quite talented with wards, she was as certain as she could be under the circumstances that this would work.
She'd have a few years, she supposed, before she found out how successful her attempt was. The wards were designed to dissolve with age, as wards tended to do naturally anyway, so within a few years, they would no longer exist; even if Hermione had miscalculated, nothing should impede the child's progress at that point. In theory.
Hermione had been given permission to move ahead with this attempt at a cure by all of the children's parents or guardians, and she only hoped that she would be able to live up to the trust which had been placed in her, be able to give them what they wanted so badly for their children.
She had always managed a great many things when she was determined.
Now that Hermione/Sophia had access to the girl's magical core for this transformation, it was easy for them to think the spell in unison, and Hermione was right there with Sophia as they transformed into a little golden wolf.
Here was another strange experience to add to all her strange experiences. Hermione hadn't really thought through the implications on her end of the transformation; she might be the only wizard who'd ever transformed as an Animagus into two different forms. If she'd thought about it more, she might have inadvertently tried to transform Sophia into a unicorn; it was just as well, then, that she'd been concentrating solely on what Sophia would feel.
Especially as a wolf pup, Hermione was a lot lower to the ground than she was used to. Both her eyes were still on the front of her head, and while her sense of smell was acute, it was very different from a unicorn's; smells that immediately intrigued the little wolf were ones which Hermione would barely remark upon in unicorn form, and she'd never, not once as a unicorn had the urge to pounce on someone, which was what Sophia wanted to do right now when she ran off to find Remus and 'Dora. Gently, Hermione restrained her.
Not just yet, love. We need to make sure that you can do this whenever you want first.
Sophia pouted a little but did want to be able to transform whenever she and Remus and 'Dora could spend time together, so she tried to concentrate again. When Hermione was sure that Sophia was paying close attention, she transformed them back into human, waited a few minutes, and then turned into a wolf once more before turning quickly back into a human.
Let's turn into a wolf one more time, Hermione suggested, and then we can go see Remus.
This time, Hermione didn't make any attempt to perform the transformation, and Sophia was so excited that she didn't even notice, just transformed as she and Hermione had already done and immediately bounded over to see Remus.
Hermione quietly lurked through Remus's praise, impressed when he asked if he could give Sophia a congratulatory hug when she was in human form as well as wolf. Sophia eagerly transformed back into human and gave Remus a great big hug. Sophia had now managed both parts of the Animagus transformation on her own, and Hermione felt as though her work was done.
Having debated with herself ever since she'd come up with this plan, she stuck with her resolution and performed the equivalent of a gentle Memory Charm. As Voldemort had proved when he'd broken Bertha Jorkins's mind, memories were never fully erased when they were Obliviated. They were blocked, and a strong enough wizard could break through that block, although it could destroy the mind that was being so attacked.
Hermione's primary concern was the children's safety, so she wasn't trying to put up any big blocks that screamed "Memory Charm here! Figure out what I'm hiding!". Instead, she relegated the clear memories of Hermione being in Sophia's mind to that place where hard-to-remember memories went. It was now one of those memories that was fuzzy and couldn't be easily recollected. If she ever needed to, Hermione could probably retrieve it, but she expected that this memory could be permanently forgotten.
Now, Sophia only had the memories of performing the transformation on her own, which was bound to be beneficial when she continued to try to transform in that capacity. These memories would stand her in good stead for the all-important transformation on the full moon. It did protect Hermione from being accused of futzing about in someone's brain, but it also protected Sophia. The Gryffindor hadn't believed it was fair to try to force the children to hide a big secret; they couldn't be aware of all the ramifications of what Hermione had done, and they were safest not possessing knowledge that others could want to gain.
Now, even should anyone find out enough details of what had happened to want to search the girl's mind—which Hermione hoped was unlikely—there would be nothing concrete for them to find. The fewer people who knew what Hermione had done, the safer everyone would be. She removed herself completely from Sophia's mind and returned her attention to the other three children she had in her care.
With minimal fuss, she once again repeated her efforts with the other three children, and soon Damian, Alissa, and Lou could all transform at will. The older two were markedly better at concentrating, and Alissa continued to help her brother, making less work for Hermione.
By the time the moon set, it was a quarter to eight in the evening, and the children weren't the only ones who were ready for bed. The mood was sleepy but ebullient as they headed upstairs, all the adults fiercely determined to be able to perform their Animagus transformation flawlessly in short order. They had two weeks to work at it, and given the focus that the group had displayed thus far, Hermione wasn't concerned.
She knew that some of them found it odd that the four children were able to transform more quickly and smoothly than some of the adults, but they all knew that the four of them had worked with her, and so far as Hermione had overheard, they seemed to be attributing the success to superior technique on her part. At some point, she was going to have to apologize to Harry, Draco, Remus, and Minerva.
They ate as light a meal as one made by Molly Weasley could be, the children looking in danger of nodding off into their plates, and then went their separate ways, the inhabitants of the house able to get to their beds more quickly than the Hogwarts contingent.
It was the evening, at least, when they returned to Hogwarts, so it wasn't unnatural for them to desire sleep, although most of them didn't usually make a habit of going to bed at all of nine o'clock in the evening. But it had been a satisfying and draining day, and even Hermione decided that she would call it a night.
Despite the fact that she was well rested by Monday morning, Potions class was not pleasant. It was a boon that the transformation had been so successful the night before; Hermione was still buoyed by the praise of the others who were so impressed that she'd been able to get the children to transform. The solid hours of revision she'd had when she'd woken in the early morning had helped, too, as she always felt more in control of her school life when she'd had the chance to get more N.E.W.T. preparation under her belt.
By the end of the three hour class, those accolades had withered and nearly died. Severus had spent the entirety of the time glaring, and she didn't think she was imagining that the particular special brand of venom was directed at her. As far as she could recollect, she hadn't done anything to deserve it. She'd been very busy brewing this past week, though, so she hadn't seen a lot of him in order to gauge his mood. She had noticed, however, that he and Viktor continued to maintain the dark and irascible area of the High Table.
If anything, she'd have thought that today Severus would be pleased—if not with her, precisely, then with the fact that her detentions started today. There was no reason for him to be this angry. Not, she admitted irritably, that that had ever stopped him in the past.
There was no doubt that he was angry. Seething, even, she would have said, because he sneered, snarled, glared, and demanded answers with minute details that weren't even in the Potions text, as though he were determined to find fault with everyone, but she was pretty sure that he was only really determined to find fault with her. He criticized her perfect potion, got in several digs about her absence the week before, and actually told her that her presentation of the potion to him at the end of class was shoddy.
She wasn't the slightest bit surprised when she didn't get her homework back at the end of class like everyone else did. She took what meagre comfort she could from the fact that he'd merely given her a scathing glare of disgust rather than announcing to the entire class why it wasn't being returned. The more time she spent in his company, however, the happier she was that she hadn't been in last week's class, when she would have felt less equipped to deal with his behaviour.
By the end of the third hour, she was tempted to ask the castle if it would ensure that Severus got lost all day, and that told her that she needed to leave before she unleashed her inner Slytherin, because then the snarky man would be in a great deal of trouble. She also didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he'd gotten to her.
She didn't have that level of control over her friends, however. By the end of class, Harry looked as though he'd dug permanent half moons into his palms with how hard he'd been clenching his hands into fists.
"What's up with him?" Ron asked, the direction of his nod indicating that he meant Severus and not Harry.
Hermione sighed. This meant that everyone had noticed.
"I swear," Harry snarled darkly, "I just want to—"
Draco tugged on his arm to get him moving further away from the classroom and prudently cut off the flow of insults that it would not be beneficial for the Head of Slytherin to overhear.
"That was the sort of behaviour that I expected a few years ago when he was facing you, Harry," Draco conceded. "It seemed a bit over the top today, really."
Harry spluttered, clearly finding it more egregious than the Slytherin's description.
It's only going to get worse if you make a big deal out of it, Hermione pointed out mildly. If the students overhear you, it'll get back to Severus, and he'll keep doing it because he knows it upsets you.
Does it not upset you? Harry demanded.
There's nothing I can do about it if it does, she answered evenly, knowing that if she lost her temper, Harry would surely follow.
The truth of the matter was that it upset her more than it upset anyone else, and for all she knew, that was precisely Severus's point. If, on the other hand, he wasn't aware of just how much his behaviour could hurt her, then she didn't want to hand him a weapon. If he was trying to draw blood (figuratively speaking, she hoped), then her decision to not to show a reaction would only make him push harder, but at this point, she didn't care. If she spent all her time trying to work out what he was thinking, she had no doubt that she'd go stark raving mad.
Charms, thankfully, was the exact opposite of Potions. Filius appeared as happy as always to hear her responses and wasn't quizzing her as though determined to catch her out. She got her holiday work back with a quietly murmured compliment, and she wasn't left feeling as though she'd done something unforgivable. She was becoming convinced that every single one of her actions fell under that category when it came to Severus.
This second three hour period where she wasn't attacked in any way also had the salutary effect of giving Harry plenty of time to calm down. At dinner, even the fact that Severus was still glaring didn't make Harry too upset. In this environment, Severus was at a distance, and vitriolic as his look could be, it was harder to say it was directed largely at her.
After dinner, she spent several minutes convincing Harry that she'd be all right and then headed for Severus's office. He'd left dinner earlier than they had, and the wards had told her that this was his destination.
She knocked on the door and waited a solid thirty seconds before he answered, wrenching the door open and looming in front of her. His office was not that large, and she was entirely certain that he'd heard her straightaway.
"You're late," he pronounced immediately, displeasure etched in harsh lines across his face.
He had not, in point of fact, picked a time for the detention, but as it wasn't yet five and she'd come straight from dinner, his claim seemed even more spurious than usual. She'd actually come in the hope of ascertaining exactly when her detention would start, as she'd had the sense not to try to speak to him after class. As far as she was concerned, it would even have been logical for her to assume that she didn't have to be there until nine, because that was when the detention would have begun had it been possible for it to take place the previous week.
She thought all of these things but wasn't so foolish as to say any of them.
"I had no intention of being so, sir," she answered instead, keeping her voice carefully neutral. Saying that she was sorry would have been a bit more of a stretch than she could manage under the circumstances. "Where do you want me?"
His eyes flashed, and for a moment, she could have sworn that he was going to answer that question with every bit of the innuendo with which she had suddenly become aware her question had been inadvertently laden; she had only intended to hopefully skip over a whole bunch of insults and get straight to the business of the detention itself.
"You will be serving your detention in the classroom," he sneered, enunciating carefully, as though to be certain that she couldn't possibly misinterpret his response.
She'd gathered that he wasn't interested in her in any other way but sharply reminded herself that snappily announcing that right now would do her more harm than good.
"You may wait for me there," he said, staring down his nose at her, "since I now need to finish what I started while waiting for you."
"Of course, sir," she responded, knowing that this was designed to make her feel uncomfortable and refusing to be so. She offered him a bland smile. "You know where to find me."
Arriving at the classroom, she found that the door was warded. She contemplated the ignominy of sitting in the hallway, and then, smirking to herself, she bypassed the wards and entered the room. If Severus wanted a fight, then it was a fight that he could have.
In the classroom, she found ingredients that needed to be sorted, including a large quantity of rat spleens. She considered getting started but was willing to bet that if she did, he would announce upon his arrival that they were actually for his classes or other detentions and she was thus interfering and impertinent and other even less salutary adjectives.
Instead, she therefore took her customary seat in the front row and slipped into a light meditation, accessing as many of the wards as she could from here, seeing where everyone was. She thus had plenty of notice when Severus finally deigned to return his attention to her—forty-three minutes after he had sent her here.
She saw him hesitate for a moment outside of the classroom, un-ward the door, and then bang it closed with true ferocity. She didn't so much as flinch.
"There were wards on this door," he snarled at her as he came stalking all the way into the room. He stopped in front of her, arms crossed, looming again, making as imposing a figure as possible.
"Yes, there were," she agreed.
"You had no business breaking through them," he snapped.
"To the contrary, sir," she said coolly. "You told me to wait in the classroom, so that's what I've done."
There was a moment of very stilted silence as he no doubt recalled exactly what he'd said to her. His lips tightened, and she knew that she'd caught him out on it—not that he would ever admit it out loud, of course.
He gestured at the ingredients that were sitting out.
"You might have done something productive with your time."
She nearly laughed but was careful to keep her voice expressionless. "I was waiting for instructions, sir. I'd hate to do anything you disapproved of."
He was regarding her through sharply narrowed eyes, no doubt sensing the sarcasm that she was very carefully not allowing into her tone.
"You will mince all the rat spleens and sort through that crate of ingredients, disposing of any that are no longer active."
"Yes, sir," she said simply.
Rat spleens were quite difficult to cut; they were small and slippery, and mincing them evenly was no easy task. It wasn't one of her favourite chores, but if Severus thought to disturb her by assigning it, he'd gone wrong. She had an entirely well-stocked lab of her own, and she was quite familiar with a vast array of ingredients which were used in potions. She could handle the distasteful ones whenever it became necessary.
She Summoned one of her own knives, quite glad that she had learnt the trick—a combination of Summoning and Conjuring, more or less—that adult wizards had which allowed objects to appear without their having to actually come flying through all the intervening space, something it was always wiser to avoid when knives were involved.
Her own knives were very carefully sharpened and in tip-top condition, which could not always be said for the knives in the classroom; Severus had excellent equipment, but the students could hardly be trusted to take perfect care of what they used.
Without another word to her professor, she cleaned her hands, set out the containers into which she would be putting the spleens, cleaned them with a wordless charm—since he hadn't actually said anything about not using magic, she figured what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him in this case—and set to the task of mincing.
Making potions was an activity which soothed her, and it was easy to sink into that routine and forget that she was being punished in the Potions classroom while Severus was on the other side of the room glaring at her. In shorter order than rat spleens had likely ever been minced by a student in detention before, she had them all neatly bottled. Unlike the students who normally slunk desultorily into this room for their detentions, she didn't waste time complaining even in her own mind, and she knew the most efficient method to get this particular job done.
Looking at her work, she reflected that whoever got to use these would be quite lucky; pre-prepared ingredients were normally a good deal shoddier in her experiences. It had been a positive mound of spleens, and she couldn't help but wonder just what they were going to be used for or if Severus was trying to stock them for a very long time to come. Since the bottles she'd packaged them in had been completely sterile, and she'd sealed them once the spleens were inside, they would last for at least twelve months if properly stored. She wanted to ask but held her tongue.
She cleaned up after herself, aware of his eyes on her, but he didn't say anything, so neither did she. Instead, she wordlessly moved on to the next task, finding a very bizarre array of containers in the box which she had been asked to sort through. Most of these, she discovered, were full of very noxious, rotting ingredients. She had a heightened sense of smell from her unicorn side, so there was no need for her to investigate more closely before she knew exactly what she was dealing with and the necessity of its destruction—preferably as soon as possible.
Setting aside the ones which needed to be got rid of, she went through the whole box once more. There were a handful of bottles, it turned out, containing ingredients which hadn't turned or were usable in their new form, such as the newts' eyes, which had pickled. Staring at the mess in front of her, she realized that she could combine the outdated Darmon's Dust with the strong solution of ammonium hydroxide; the resultant solution could be distilled and used in potions which required both ingredients.
Making any other alterations that would save ingredients from being binned, she began to catalogue in her head, wondering if certain potions she usually made could be adapted to incorporate the imperfect ingredients she had here. Unfortunately, this was idle speculation, as the ingredients weren't for her, and such experimentation definitely did not fall within the scope of Severus's detention.
The man in question was currently glaring at her with particular sharpness, so she Vanished the ingredients that were beyond salvation and left the salvaged and new-made ingredients in neat piles next to all the rat spleens.
By the time she looked over at Severus, he was, of course, pretending to be busy doing heaven knew what at his desk. She waited until she saw his quill pause.
"I've finished, sir," she said deferentially.
"In your six and a half years at Hogwarts," he drawled coldly without looking up, "have you ever known ingredients to be stored on the students' desks?"
She suppressed a sigh. She'd walked right into that one. "No, sir."
"Then you are hardly finished, Miss Granger."
She spent a brief moment really loudly thinking all the imprecations that she could never actually say to him and then moved all the ingredients into the students' storeroom. This room was also warded since it was after hours and none of the students should be using it, but since Severus had not mentioned this fact, she assumed that he'd decided that if she could remove the wards for the classroom, she was capable of doing the same for the door here.
This was perfectly true, of course, but not particularly polite of him. She was tempted to rip the wards into shreds and see how he liked it, but as the most likely outcome would be his forcing her to mend them before he announced a dozen more detentions, she saved herself the work and did the job properly.
Once she had the wards down, it was another task to find room for all the ingredients that she had just bottled. She knew without question that he would never consent to her just putting them away haphazardly, and given that they were sorted alphabetically, she had to completely rearrange shelves when her giant influx of rat spleens displaced a whole slew of ingredients.
It took her nearly two hours to get through the sorting. The more she moved the ingredients, the more ingredients she found out of the proper order, and she could hardly pretend that she hadn't seen them when she was moving them all so carefully in order to get her own ingredients put away. She set to work without complaint beyond thinking that all the rest of the students needed to be given a sharp reminder on how to follow the alphabet and store ingredients.
When she finally emerged from the storeroom, she was tired and thirsty, and Severus was still at his desk.
"Has Gryffindor incompetence risen to new heights?" he asked. She assumed this question was rhetorical. "Not even my first-years take so long to shelve a couple of ingredients."
"I was taking a great deal of care, sir," she answered, still maintaining that even tone, "to ensure that they were in the proper place. Especially with the rat spleens, I'm afraid it took a little bit of rearranging to make sure that everything had the proper room and nothing was out of order."
He said nothing, which she took to mean that she'd chosen wisely but he didn't want to admit it. As he never wanted to admit it. She wondered if they'd speak more if she screwed up with more frequency.
Chilly silence descended for several long minutes during which time she contemplated all the other tasks that he could potentially assign her.
"You may go," he finally said, tone that of a lord dismissing his lowliest servant. "You will return here tomorrow evening at five o'clock."
"Yes, sir," she agreed. "Goodnight."
As expected, no pleasantry was returned, and she slipped out the door without another word. No doubt the detention could have been worse, but she wondered what other people's detentions with the Potions master were like. Did he really stare at them all the time unless they looked over at him, at which point, he appeared to be doing his work? Did he really make them work for five hours?
Sighing, she made her way back to her quarters, craving a shower to truly eliminate the dust and grime from the potions, not to mention the remains of the rat spleens.
On the plus side, Severus hadn't brought up Harry even once; perhaps she should be very grateful for the silence that had dogged the detention. If he'd spent the whole time needling her about the other Gryffindor, she wasn't sure that she would have been able to keep her temper.
Without conversation of some kind, the detentions would be rather boring, but that was probably the point. Plus she wouldn't have to worry about saying anything that Severus might get angry about. Silence was probably a good protection for both of them.
If all else failed, she could use the tried and true method that Harry and Ron attested had got them through years of detentions with Severus: imagining that Severus was the potion ingredient they were chopping up or that it was his face they were scouring as they cleaned cauldrons.
Harry was waiting in the common room, not as surprised as she might have hoped, given that this was her mate who was responsible, that five hours had passed and she looked as though she'd lost an encounter with a giant dust bunny.
If she and Severus had been on speaking terms, she would have wanted to know just where the ingredients that she'd sorted through had come from and why they suddenly had pounds upon pounds of rat spleens. Maybe he'd finally decided to put her natural curiosity to good use and torture her with unanswered questions.
There was also the chance that as the week progressed and she did more and more detentions, they would be able to strike up at least minimal conversation. He'd had clear "talk to me and die" signs up today. Perhaps he was daring her to try something so that he could assign her more detentions. Albus might have intervened if she'd been given weeks of detention at once, but if Severus kept assigning more as each week ended, there was very little that anyone could do to stop him. She smiled wryly to herself. Something for her to look forward to.
Harry took in her appearance with a raised eyebrow.
"Went that well, did it?"
She shrugged. "Sorted through ingredients and minced rat spleens, that's all."
He made a face of disgust. "I'd say better you than me, but that doesn't seem very supportive."
She laughed softly. "Not to worry. I deal with plenty of unpleasant ingredients in my own lab, and I can handle a few rough ones in his. He picked the wrong person if he thinks I'll be squeamish."
Harry shook his head. "I guess so."
"I'm for a shower. And then I think I'll call it a night. Revise in private and mentally prepare for tomorrow."
He smiled at her. "As you say. You're in for the same tomorrow evening, then?"
She shrugged. "Don't have the specifics yet, but I imagine so. He's no doubt wracking his brains for the most horrible task possible as we speak."
"You should sound more worried about that," Harry declared solemnly.
She snorted. "There's no point in being worried. He'll come up with what he comes up with, and I've weathered some horrors already."
The most recent of which was Severus's badly mangled body, and if he thought he could come up with anything worse than those memories, all of which could still assail her when she closed her eyes, then he was much mistaken. She wasn't about to be overcome by anything he could think up for the Potions classroom.
"You realize you're a little scary sometimes?" Harry asked, as though he were just checking in with her offhand.
"I thought you knew me by now," she said, shaking her head at him. "Goodnight."
Harry offered a half-shrug, half nod, smiling at her. "In the best possible way, of course. 'Night."
She showered quickly, feeling much better once she watched the accumulated dirt swirl down the drain. The hot spray also beat out the aches in her taut muscles. By the time she emerged from the bathroom, she felt entirely human again and much more equipped to continue on with her evening and put the detention behind her.
As she'd told Harry she would, she did some revision. She worked in her lab so that Harry and Draco could have some private time in the common room if they desired it. They always had his bedroom, of course, but she knew that they enjoyed sprawling out on the couch together.
Since she wasn't hugely desirous of starting her own potion after the evening she'd just had, revision with her books spread out the length of one of the countertops seemed a very valid option. She didn't often get pestered while in her lab, and this meant she could work quietly and efficiently. Harry was closest to the door if there were any problems that they needed to address as Head Boy or Head Girl, so she was hopefully done for the night.
Hermione slept for almost six hours, which told her that she was still recovering from the new moon and her night of labour. A night of relaxation would have been very beneficial, but instead, she got a week of detention, and then it was practically time to start the next batch of Weresbane and Wolfsbane.
Her life was currently a never-ending cycle of potions, really. She suppressed a sigh, reminding herself that she loved potions and that she wouldn't be Severus's student for very much longer. A few more weeks, and then, much as he might want to, he couldn't force her to mince or chop or sort or organize. She would be free to do as she wished.
Revising in the morning, she spent breakfast not looking at the glowering men at the front of the room before heading off to the next set of classes. Fortunately, since she wasn't being taught by Severus today or Viktor at all, there was very little actual antagonism directed at her, which she hoped would stand her in good stead for what was to come.
She showed up at the dungeon classroom after dinner, as instructed, making sure to be there a few minutes before five because there was no way she was going to be accused of being late for two nights in a row. This way, even if Severus's clock was faster than all the other clocks in Hogwarts, she'd still be on time.
Of course, this didn't mean he'd comment upon her timely arrival; with Severus, it was more a case of "if you don't have anything nasty to say, don't say anything at all". In another life, she might even have been able to make a joke out of it, but right now, it would only be inviting more detentions, so she once again kept her mouth firmly shut.
The classroom looked neat and orderly, so she looked at Severus curiously, wondering what task she would be assigned.
"It has been brought to my attention that the storeroom is in some disarray. All the ingredients have been removed from the shelves, which you will clean—by hand—before you put all the ingredients back in the proper order."
She nodded with a polite, "Yes, sir," knowing what she'd find before she entered. Her assumption was confirmed when she opened the door to the enclosed space. All the work she'd done yesterday had been completely destroyed; all the ingredients were now piled haphazardly on the floor.
Since the ingredients had been piled in the area on which she'd need to walk to be able to get to the shelves to clean them, she would have to pull everything out first and stack it along the walls of the classroom before she could even start her assigned task.
Looking at the complete mess in front of her, she wondered how long it had taken him to arrange it so that it was this much trouble for her. When had he found the time? The ingredients couldn't have been dumped on the floor because she could see that they were intact rather than badly jumbled or broken. Yet if they'd been taken down methodically, there would have been a great deal more order than was currently displayed. It looked as though small children had pulled them off the shelves. Or perhaps house-elves, who'd been told to arrange them decoratively on the floor….
She reminded herself that she wasn't going to let Severus see that he was getting to her.
Deciding that the only way she was going to finish before tomorrow morning was if she sorted as she went, she arranged the ingredients alphabetically as she stacked them in the classroom. If the man was feeling truly malicious, he could come by and destroy those piles, but there was nothing for it; he was going to make this as much work as he wanted no matter what precautions she took. For all she knew, tomorrow she could come back and find that the ingredients were in complete disarray once more. That was, unfortunately, his prerogative.
Frowning, she admitted to herself that it would annoy her more than working on different unpleasant jobs each night; with the rat spleens, she knew she'd done good work that someone would find useful at some point. She could say the same once the storeroom was clean. If she had to perform the same task over and over, no one would benefit, and she would feel that her labour was useless. Smiling grimly to herself, she figured she'd better put her very best face on and not let him know what she was thinking, lest he get more bright ideas on how to torture her.
The more containers she arranged in orderly rows in the classroom, the more she realized that there was work that needed to be done on that end, too; she set about cleaning the containers themselves as she removed them from the storeroom. The ones which she imagined had originally been at the very back of the shelves often had no labels, or at least none that were legible, so she had to open a fair few to ascertain what was inside. Some of the bottles and vials were so grimy it was impossible to see the contents, so she rectified that as well.
She set aside all the ingredients which had outlived their useful shelf-life or no longer working properly; he hadn't asked her to, but she couldn't bring herself to simply put them back. If he yelled at her later, she could always return them to the shelves at that point. Since she could similarly act out her obsessive nature and he could destroy it if he wished, she began a list of ingredients that they were growing short on or gaps that she found in the ingredients which she didn't believe were caused by their being stored elsewhere due to danger or expense.
In less than an hour, she'd determined that whatever work Ron and Harry had done on the storeroom back at the beginning of the year, they hadn't done a terribly careful job. Given how they'd been roped into reluctantly assisting, this didn't really come as a surprise, but she wondered if she could nevertheless give them a smack up the side of the head for the additional work that she had to do now.
The shelves were dusty and dirty, the degree of grime increasing exponentially the higher up and further back she went. Quite apart from the orders she had received for this detention, she couldn't imagine putting the clean and organized ingredients back on such shelves; she wanted the containers to be displayed as advantageously as possible, and she wanted to minimise the chances of contamination from dirt and other spilt ingredients.
She knew that most of the students wouldn't care, of course, but it was now a matter of pride for her. And while she might not have had Harry's home life, she had still had years of cleaning the Muggle way to ensure that she knew exactly what she was doing.
The ingredients went back shelf by shelf, and as she arranged them, she realized that they had been really quite disorganized before. There were vials, bottles, and bags that must have been stuffed in corners because she'd never seen them before. She also confirmed what she'd suspected when she was taking all the ingredients off the floor: all the rat spleens she'd minced last night were gone. She suppressed a sigh and hoped that he hadn't just binned the lot of them; she'd done good work.
She was still a bit puzzled by the fact that Severus had decided to leave the students' store cupboard organized alphabetically. It was certainly the easiest method for the students to remember, but she knew firsthand that it wasn't the way he organized his own stores. Had he actually decided to make it easier for them?
Despite the dismal state of affairs she had found this evening, she knew that an alphabetical organization had the best chance of staying organized for the longest period of time without needing to be completely overhauled.
Severus's normal modus operandi under those sorts of circumstances, however, would be to make the students fix it in detention or in whatever other manner he wished. On the other hand, having students constantly cleaning it out would afford them the opportunity to break or steal more of the stock than was perhaps wise.
The Potions master might like to watch and gloat during detention, but he was unlikely to relish the task of scrutinizing each movement for theft. There were also the detentions, like hers tonight, where he pretended the student didn't exist, and for students who weren't her, that might present an irresistible opportunity. It was mildly annoying that even in the midst of his insane punishment of her he knew she wouldn't try to steal any of the ingredients, but she couldn't bring herself to do it even to prove him wrong—and she supposed that he could always have an Accio Potions ingredients! ready in case he suspected that students had taken any liberties.
Disastrous accidents would be exponentially more likely, too, she supposed, if a first-year, for example, were put in the storeroom; although the most dangerous and expensive of the ingredients weren't kept in this cupboard, certain combinations of these ingredients could have explosive results, and some sort of whole scale mixing of ingredients was bound to be unpredictable. The same sorts of risks weren't involved if the student were obliged to scrub out some disgusting cauldrons. All in all, leaving the ingredients sorted alphabetically was probably the least likely to cause Severus severe headaches.
As she finally got the last of the vials back on the shelves and began to scrub the floor that she'd trekked across all evening, she reflected that he really should have had her performing a task like cleaning bedpans, as he had made Ron do for that memorable detention in second year which still made the redhead's ears burn. As unpleasant as this could be at times, a potion-oriented task was going to be one which she'd performed before—and probably in her spare time.
As she reached the door on her hands and knees, reflecting that if the choice were hers, this bit would have been done with magic even if it would be inadvisable to try to clean potion ingredients the same way, she found herself in the shadow of her looming professor, who'd been standing outside the door for the last ten minutes or so, if the wards were being as reliable as usual.
"Finally finished, have you?" he demanded.
"Just about, sir," she answered calmly, despite the ignominy of her position. "I need to clean my equipment."
She saw Severus's spell light wash over her as the scrub brush she'd been holding disappeared along with the bucket that she'd be dipping it in. So much for her equipment, apparently. She rose to her feet, not relishing having any sort of conversation with him while she was on her hands and knees.
Sadly, she didn't suppose he'd be likely to let a wordless, wandless cleaning charm on her person go unremarked upon, so she stood there in her grimy glory and waited to discover if she was going to make it out of a second detention unscathed.
He stepped all the way into the room, and she tried not to fidget as he surveyed it with a critical eye. She had no doubt that he would find things to criticize if he were looking into the Mirror of Erised, so she wasn't holding out much hope.
He caught her gaze with his own dark stare.
"What would you do, Miss Granger," he inquired silkily, "if you came back tomorrow night and found this storeroom in the same condition in which it began this evening?"
She offered the barest of shrugs, thinking this a particularly stupid question. His eyes narrowed, so she verbalized her reply. "I would do whatever you assigned for detention, sir; if that included cleaning the stores again, that is, of course, what I would do."
"Without complaint?" he pursued.
"I'm entirely certain, sir," she responded with a hint of incredulity, "that the point of detention is not for students to complain."
Whatever she was thinking, he would never hear it.
"You'd really start over from scratch."
"I really would," she confirmed, not rolling her eyes with an effort as she thought this had surely been established several sentences ago.
"I see you've left out some ingredients and a list," he said, changing tactics and moving out of the room to gesture towards the bottles and scroll on the desk.
"Outdated ingredients," she explained, following him, "and a list of what the storeroom looked to be growing short on or didn't seem to stock at all." He was staring at her very fixedly, and she shrugged. "Now seemed the most sensible time to do it."
"I didn't ask it of you," he pointed out.
A little bit of a sigh escaped before she could prevent it. "No, you didn't, sir, but I daresay you can burn the list and tell me to put the ingredients back with very little trouble on your part."
He was frowning at her, and pronounced suddenly, "I hadn't anticipated your being quite so Hufflepuff about this."
Her eyebrows rose. "I'm sure I can burn the list, if it's too much trouble for you, sir."
"Bugger the list," he snarled. "You've just told me you'll do it all over again tomorrow."
"If that's what you tell me to do, sir," she answered carefully. It wasn't as though she wanted to do it all over again.
He looked frustrated. "Just as you would have stayed in detention all year in February, is that it?"
She nodded, his comment finally making her wonder if he'd intended her to complete this task. She would have thought that he'd learnt, after that original fiasco, that she knew better than to contradict him when he assigned detention. In case he hadn't noticed, assuming he was joking when he was not was rather disastrous. Nobody would be stupid enough to assume he was joking when he was glaring AI want you to die a slow and painful death" all the time.
"Sit," he said, gesturing at a desk and stool.
She faced him squarely, ignoring the order.
"It's late," she said as firmly as she dared. "I believe I've fulfilled the task you assigned for this detention, have I not?"
"This is not a task for your detention," he answered impatiently. "We need to talk."
Crossing her arms, she didn't move. "If I've finished my detention, sir, then I'd like to go."
"I've just said we need to talk," he said dangerously.
"And I heard you," she answered, no longer caring if she was treading a very fine line. "But you also just said it had nothing to do with my detention. If my detention is over, then I should be free to go."
"Not before we talk," he said through clenched teeth, and she knew he was trying to keep his temper.
"I don't want to talk," she answered steadily.
It was, in fact, pretty high up on the list of tasks she did not want to perform. She'd just spent too many hours two evenings in a row completing tasks that he apparently didn't even care about.
If he'd bloody well wanted to talk, he should have asked straightaway. She would still have refused, but at least she wouldn't have been thoroughly pissed off—and kind of embarrassed, if it turned out that she'd just been had for the second time.
He was looming once more, his eyes glittering, the grating edge in his voice impossible to miss. "You can't possibly expect me to simply forget all the issues raised at that little meeting in Albus's office. There is a great deal that we need to discuss."
She spoke very slowly and clearly to be sure that he couldn't misunderstand her: "No."