Two

Hermione stuffed the last book on the already overflowing shelf before she collapsed into the armchair next to the window. For some reason, it had taken her a lot longer than she had anticipated to unpack her trunk and to get both her rooms and her office back into working order for the new term. At least Minerva had kept the pre-term staff meeting blissfully brief this morning. But then there hadn't been much to discuss really, even for someone as obsessed with details as Minerva.

As Hermione's gaze strayed out of the window and followed the graceful flight of an owl that was winging its way toward the Owlery, her thoughts returned to the raven. Where was it now? Was it all right? And what had it been looking for in her garden in the first place?

'Well, wherever you are, I hope you're OK,' she whispered, tearing her gaze away from the grounds and rose to get ready for dinner.

*****

All in all, term started rather uneventfully. There were a few student pranks and squabbles, a couple of new Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes products that had found their way into the school, some detentions assigned and the usual bunch of fifth and seventh years who were realising that now would be a good time to start working if they planned on passing their O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s.

After the first week, Hermione thought that one of the many advantages of the post-Voldemort era was that she could look forward to a quiet and fairly uneventful term. The second week would prove her very, very wrong.

It began on Monday morning when four unsuspecting Hufflepuffs returned to their common room after breakfast and found themselves in Trelawney's Divination classroom instead.

After Sybill had recovered from her surprise, she told the unexpected visitors that she had been expecting them all along, of course. Unfortunately, her crystal ball remained rather foggy when asked to reveal the location of the entrance to the Hufflepuff common room, so the Hufflepuffs had to resort to wandering at random through the castle. The entrance to the common room was later discovered to have moved to the back of Septima's classroom.

A thorough investigation turned up nothing. Whilst it was a bit inconvenient for the Hufflepuffs to have to negotiate the Arithmancy classroom every time they wanted to leave or enter their dormitory, no harm had been done; so everybody took it in stride and dismissed the whole incident as one of the castle's little quirks.

On Tuesday, all the greenhouses were filled with orchids. Another investigation failed to turn up anything. Neville shrugged, asked Minerva and Hermione to help him transfigure one of the tool sheds into a new greenhouse, adjusted the climatic conditions and moved his new treasures there. All his other plants were unharmed, residing happily in their former locations.

On Wednesday, the teachers found wine instead of their usual drinks in their goblets at dinner. To no one's surprise, the – by now almost routine – investigation didn't reveal anything; the wine proved to be not only not poisonous, but of very fine quality. As the goblets kept refilling themselves, a merry time was had by all, and Poppy wisely stocked up on Hangover potion for Thursday morning.

Lessons started on time on Thursday, though Neville, Bill and Angelina looked a little the worse for wear. Hermione had had the sense to stop drinking after a couple of goblets, mostly because a stack of essays was waiting for her back in her rooms. As a result, she didn't need any Hangover potion, but still wasn't in the best of moods. Something about the incidents ... as harmless as they seemed to be ... didn't sit quite right with her. She kept mulling them over as she spelled the instructions for the Aguamenti charm on the blackboard for her sixth years. After she had explained the theory and none of the students seemed to have any questions, she looked around the classroom. 'Who wants to have a go?'

To no one's surprise, the hand of a skinny Slytherin shot up.

'Very well, Mr Cavendish,' said Hermione.

The red-haired boy stood up and glanced at the blackboard again before he waved his wand in precisely the way Hermione had just demonstrated. 'Aguamenti!

A shower of bright pink roses erupted from the tip of his wand, accompanied by "ahs" and "ohs" from the two other Slytherins, both girls, and not-so-discreet sniggering from the Ravenclaws, who made up the majority of the N.E.W.T.–level Charms lesson.

'Very impressive, Mr Cavendish, but you seem to have confused Aguamenti with Orchideous,' Hermione remarked, her expression carefully neutral.

The boy turned nearly as pink as the roses still raining from his wand.

'Stop it. Now,' Hermione instructed him.

'I c-c-can't.' The surface of the desk was covered in roses, and yet more flowers were spilling from the wand's tip onto the floor.

'Finite Incantatem.' Hermione pointed her own wand towards the boy's desk.

Finally, the shower of roses stopped; the sniggering, however, didn't. Hermione fixed a beady eye on the row of Ravenclaw students, shutting them up without effort.

'Miss Tugwood, why don't you show us how it's done?' she addressed the girl whose derisive snorts had been the loudest.

The blonde rose with a smug expression. Without even looking at the blackboard, she waved her wand. Aguamenti!

For a second, nothing happened. Then, blue, green, red and golden stars shot out of her wand. This time, her fellow Ravenclaws made appreciative noises whilst sniggers were heard from the Slytherin contingent.

Hermione's eyes narrowed; she ended the spell with a quick wave of her wand.

Miss Tugwood's expression had changed from smug to contrite, but Hermione wasn't fooled by it. 'Right, you lot. No more practical exercises for you today. Instead, we'll be talking about the theory of conjuring spells.'

There was an audible groan from the students' benches. Hermione chose to ignore it.

'I suggest you pay attention as your homework is going to be an essay on the differences between at least three commonly known conjuring charms. Mr Cavendish, Miss Tugwood, please come and see me after the lesson.'

*****

Hermione made her way down to the staff room, mulling over the events of this morning. The rest of the lesson had passed without further incident. When she had interviewed Mr Cavendish and Miss Tugwood afterwards, both had claimed convincingly that they had tried for the water conjuring charm and had no idea what had gone wrong.

Prior Incantato had shown that yes, they had indeed attempted to cast Aguamenti. After some more questioning, Hermione had admonished them to concentrate more on the charm they were intending to do in future, reminded them of the essay and sent them off to their next lesson.

After they had shuffled off, Hermione had been about to clear her desk when a single black feather materialised out of thin air. She jumped nearly a foot backwards before she whipped out her wand and ran a series of Dark magic detection spells on it. It turned out to be nothing more than a genuine raven's feather: albeit a glossy, elegant looking one, the kind that made luxurious quills. In the end, she had put it on the shelf next to her desk where she kept all kinds of knick-knacks. As beautiful as the feather was, its appearance – together with the rest of the seemingly harmless incidents – had put her on edge.

She was still lost in thought when she reached the ground floor and walked along the corridor to the staff room. Turning around the corner, she found herself at the entrance to the kitchens. She stared at the painting with the fruit bowl. 'Must have taken a wrong turn,' she murmured retracing her steps.

This time, she made it to the staff room without detour. To her surprise, she found it almost empty. Odd. Usually, all the teachers congregated here between morning lessons to grab a quick cuppa and check their pigeonholes. Not today, apparently.

The only other person in the room was Horace Slughorn. Uncharacteristically for him, he wasn't occupying the most cosy armchair in front of the fire, but one of the rickety chairs at the careworn table in the middle of the room. He sat very still, his gaze fixed on some invisible spot in front of him.

As Hermione walked past him with her mug, she noticed that his usually ruddy complexion looked like a ghost's today – and a sick ghost at that. 'All right, Horace?'

An indistinct mumble was the answer.

'Sorry, I didn't catch that.' Hermione ventured closer.

''t'was terrible. Never seen anything like it,' Horace whispered, not turning to look at her.

Hermione poured another cup of tea, added three sugar lumps and stirred before she pushed it into Horace's hand.

'Drink,' she said in her best teacher's voice.

Horace took a sip from his tea. After a second, he slowly seemed to become aware of his surroundings. 'Hermione. Didn't see you come in.'

'Horace, what is the matter with you?' Hermione asked.

He took another sip from his tea, apparently fortifying himself for what must be a truly horrendous tale. 'I had my fifth years brew a Calming Draught today,' he began.

'As I'm sure you know, it's a fairly standard potion that's bound to come up in their O.W.L. exam. I've had them practising the more common potions for a few weeks now, and last time, almost everyone had the Calming Draught down,' he paused as if searching for the right words to continue.

A sense of foreboding crept through Hermione. 'But not this time, I take it?'

'No, not this time.' Horace kept staring at the table. 'Everyone's potion was perfectly fine when I checked.' He raised his head to look at Hermione, an almost pleading expression in his eyes. 'You know I would never have a student try a potion that I haven't checked before, don't you?'

'Of course, Horace,' Hermione answered, and she meant it. Slughorn was many things, but he wasn't careless when it came to his students. 'What happened?'

'I asked them to test the potion, and...'

Hermione gave him an encouraging nod.

'...and it had turned into Euphoria Elixir. A rather strong one. Do you have any idea what happens when a bunch of fifteen-year-olds ingest that potion? It was mayhem. Utter mayhem. I'm becoming too old for this.' Horace's hand was still shaking as he took another sip of tea.

'You know what the oddest thing is? By the time I had whipped up an antidote, the effects had passed.'

The wheels in Hermione's brain threatened to go into overdrive. 'That's not the only thing that's weird here,' she said and proceeded to tell him about her own morning.

*****

After Hermione had finished telling Horace about the events of that morning's Charms lesson, both continued to drink their tea in thoughtful silence.

'I wonder if these were the only strange occurrences this morning?' Hermione mused.

'No, it seems all lessons were disrupted,' Minerva's voice said from the doorway. 'Apparently, the crystal balls promised every single one of Sybill's third years long and exceedingly happy lives.'

Hermione turned around just in time to see a distinct glint of amusement on the Headmistress' usually stern face. 'Oh dear,' she murmured.

'I've called a staff meeting for this afternoon,' declared Minerva. 'Whatever this is, we had better get to the bottom of it before someone is harmed.'

*****

Hermione cast a last look through her office. Everything looked neat and just as it should be: her quills were aligned just so, two stacks of essays waited to be marked, her lesson plan next to them. For once, she had made the effort of actually tidying up her desk. She grabbed a quill and a piece of parchment, threw a pinch of Floo powder into the fireplace in her office and announced, 'Headmistress' office' before stepping into the green flames.

She reappeared with a "whoosh" on a patch of cold stone floor that clearly wasn't situated in Minerva's office. Hermione stood up and, without even thinking about it, used her wand to rid her person of any trace of soot before taking stock of her surroundings. She seemed to have appeared in another classroom. By the looks of it, it was one of the spare ones that were located all through the teaching floors of the castle.

'Now that is strange,' murmured Hermione, somehow less surprised than she should be. A glance out of the window showed that she was on the ground floor. Definitely not anywhere near the Headmistress' office.

She'd just stepped out into the corridor when a harassed-looking Neville turned round the corner. 'Hermione, what are you doing here?' he asked.

'That is an excellent question,' she replied. 'For some reason, my Floo didn't go to Minerva's office, but saw fit to dump me here.' She indicated the unused classroom with a tilt of her head. 'And you?'

'I seem to have got lost on my way to the staff meeting, too,' Neville admitted.

Hermione and Neville looked at each other. 'Weird,' they commented at the same time whilst Neville pulled out his wand.

Neville put his wand flat on the palm of his hand. 'Point Me.'

The wand spun a few times before it stopped. Hermione tilted her head. 'I don't think that's north.'

When she cast the spell, the result was exactly the same. 'Hm,' she said.

'What now?'

Hermione looked at the wands again. 'Let's follow the magic,' she said.

They found the staircase that should have led them up to the seventh-floor corridor and the entrance to Minerva's office. It didn't. Instead, they ended up in front of the statue of Boris the Bewildered.

'Hmph. Bewildered is about right,' muttered Hermione as they trooped back downstairs.

They tried again and found themselves in front of the door of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Hermione drew a deep breath.

The third attempt led them to an abandoned hallway on the second floor. 'I don't think I've ever been here before,' Hermione said.

'Me neither,' Neville replied.

When they turned around, the stairs had disappeared. 'Oh, bollocks,' Hermione exclaimed.

'Do you think someone has cursed the stairs? Maybe we'll be stuck here forever.' There was a distinct note of panic in Neville's voice.

'Honestly...' Hermione began before she saw Neville's face. He was staring at the walls enclosing them, his face ghastly pale. 'We aren't stuck here. We'll find a way out,' she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. 'We've been through worse.'

Neville nodded.

Hermione pointed her wand at a spot of blank wall, concentrated on what she wanted to see and drew the pattern all teachers learnt as part of the "Rules, Regulations and Procedures" part of their contract.

However, no floor plan of the castle materialised on the wall. Instead, a drawing appeared. It showed a naked man and a woman locked in a passionate embrace. As Hermione and Neville looked, the woman took the top position, her bushy curls bouncing in tune with the other activities that were going on.

'Erm,' said Neville, his face the colour of a very ripe strawberry. 'I don't think that's a map of the castle.'

'I can see that,' Hermione snapped. She squinted at the image again and felt hot embarrassment spread through her. True, she hadn't had sex in a while, but she simply wasn't interested in Neville in that way.

'It's just... I don't think Hannah would like that very much,' Neville said in a small voice.

'Look, Neville, I've no idea where that image came from, and Hannah is a very lucky woman.' Hermione glared at the offending image on the wall.

The drawing vanished, and the staircase reappeared where the blank wall had been. Hermione and Neville quickly descended the stairs back to the ground floor. Their next attempt brought them to the gargoyle guarding the entrance to the Headmistress' office.

'Dunbarton,' Hermione stated the password. She was almost surprised to see the gargoyle leap aside to reveal the revolving staircase. She tilted her head. 'Do you suppose this will lead us to where we want to go?'

'Only one way to find out,' Neville replied, still not quite looking at her.

Hermione suppressed a sigh and followed him onto the staircase. A wave of relief washed through her when they found themselves in front of Minerva's door.

Her relief didn't last long.

'You were supposed to be here half-an-hour ago,' Minerva snarled, ostentatiously pulling out her pocket watch and looking at it. 'But at least you are here. Which is more than I can say for your colleagues.'

'Sorry,' Hermione said. 'We got lost on the way.'

Minerva stared at her. 'You two have known this castle since you were eleven-years-old, so you'd better explain yourselves.'

When Hermione and Neville had finished their tale, Minerva looked thoughtful. 'It seems that so far no one has come to any serious harm,' she said. 'It it weren't for the scale of it, it could almost be a student prank.'

'I don't think it is, though.' Hermione ran over the events of the past day in her head again.

'I agree. It's too complicated for that.' Minerva sighed. 'We may as well make ourselves comfortable until the rest of my staff turns up.' She pointed to the chairs that were grouped around the conference table beneath one of the windows. Inviting the staff up to her office for meetings was another thing Minerva did differently from her predecessors. In fact, she was the first head of Hogwarts since Phineas Nigellus to hold regular staff meetings. Her predecessors had been more of the "drop the occasional note and deal with people individually" school.

'Did Bill find anything?' Neville asked.

Minerva shook her head. 'No. He searched the school again for traces of Dark magic or anything unusual this morning, but . He offered to stay, but since we don't seem to be in any immediate danger, I sent him home to be with Fleur instead.'

'When's the baby due again?'

'Tomorrow, so he'll be back next week, and Michael will do very well as a substitute defence teacher. In any case, I'd like to have this sorted as soon as possible before it becomes serious.' Minerva sighed. 'Until we know more, you might as well go back to work. I'll let you know if and when I find out anything.'

*****

Hermione made it back to her office without further detours. After she had made herself a cup of tea, she started to mark the third-year essays, but her mind kept wandering back to the incidents. She stared at the parchment in front of her for a couple of minutes without really seeing anything whilst the events of the last week kept replaying themselves in her head. Minerva was right; it all seemed fairly harmless, almost like a student prank. "Almost" being the operative word here. Hermione put the two stacks of essays – "marked" and "yet-to-read" – aside and took a scroll of new, crisp parchment out of her desk drawer. Dipping her quill into the inkpot, she made a list of everything that had happened. In another column, she wrote down possible explanations.

She read again what she had written, then she pulled out her wand. At first, she merely tried different combinations, hoping that randomly juxtaposing the items on her list would yield a clue. It didn't. Then she tried the whole procedure using a couple of Arithmantic formulae. Again, nothing. Clearly, she needed more data. Hermione rolled her two lists into a neat scroll and grabbed several sheets of blank parchment and a couple of quills. Thus armed, she was about to go to the library when she noticed the raven perched on her windowsill.