Fourteen

September, 1998

"We can do it. We can stop the shifting between reality and the Muggle fantasy world," Bill announced to the pair in the Headmistress' office.

Hermione's eyes grew wide, and she clasped her hands to her mouth. Snape turned to the window, avoiding the curious stares of the Headmasters who were awake (Albus and Phineas). Hermione watched him, wondering why such good news would produce such a reaction.

"Really?" she whispered, setting aside her proposal to Minerva for a comprehensive assessment of house-elf rights in wizarding Britain as part of her NEWT project for History of Magic.

Bill smiled gently. "Really. It's all there." He sat across from them, pushing the documents towards the pair.

"Are you certain, Bill?" Minerva asked, toying with the edges of the parchment.

"Yes, of course we're certain," interrupted Snape, turning abruptly from the window. The equinoctial storm was whipping around the turrets of the castle, sending sheets of rain into the windows. In the courtyard below, sodden students raced for shelter.

High atop the tower in the Headmistress' office, the portraits and a contented Crookshanks snoozed to the sound of the wind and rain. On the table littered with papers, four mugs sat, sending their fragrant steam into the air.

"I'm just asking, Severus," chided Minerva. "We've gone through so much already, it would seem a shame to have made it this far and..."

"I assure you, Minerva," Snape said acidly, moving towards the door preparatory to leaving, "Bill and I have examined every angle. If you would be so kind as to read through the proposal we have prepared, most of your questions will be answered."

Hermione eagerly reached for the sheaf of parchment Bill placed carefully on the worn conference table.

"We thought it best if you and Minerva had something on parchment," Bill explained.

"So if you had any impertinent questions," Snape commented from the doorway, "you could write them in the margins, consider them carefully, and then ask them."

Hermione exchanged a long look with Minerva.

"It is good to see your sense of humor returning, Severus," commented Minerva.

Both Bill and Hermione hastily reached for their tea mugs. Phineas Nigellus coughed.

Snape shot a poisonous glare at the trio in the office and stumped out. Hermione was reminded unaccountably of Mad-Eye Moody on a day when his Eye was acting up.

"Excuse me," she murmured, rising and pushing away her chair.

"Severus, wait!" Her voice rang out down the stairwell.

"Professor Snape," he corrected, pausing nonetheless. "I trust, Miss Granger, that you have something important to reveal? Or do you enjoy flaunting the privileges of a seventh-year plus in front of your school mates by daring to address me by my given name?"

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Really, Severus," she chided, "it isn't as if there are that many students here. Furthermore, none of them seem to be hanging about this particular stairwell. Therefore, none of them could have possibly heard me 'flaunting' the privilege of calling you by your given name." She finished, looking satisfied.

Snape grunted and shifted his weight to his other foot. His neck and shoulder, and entire right side, for that matter, never felt quite right during rainstorms.

"What do you want?" he asked acidly. "Now that you've finished trying out your unconvincing Gryffindor-style rhetoric?"

"Is that really your worst insult?" Hermione asked, smiling. "I wanted to thank you."

"Thank me?"

"Yes, to thank you. Bill's a brilliant curse-breaker, but only you have the knack of putting together a solution so that one can truly understand it."

"And you believe that I..."

"I'll know who wrote which parts of your proposal," Hermione insisted. "And thank you. I hope that when you publish it, it will be successful."

"Miss Granger, I hardly think that this is the time or place for you to be considering my academic aspirations. Have you even read the document in question?"

Hermione laughed, a burbling, trickling cascade. "Not yet," she admitted, "but it's still a brilliant idea – I reached the end of the introduction, recognized your style and wanted to make sure... to make sure you knew."

"Well, now that you have done that, why don't you return to the tower and read your assignment?" he growled.

Hermione made an exasperated moue and leaned up on her toes.

"Just let me thank you, sir," she said, grinning impudently, and kissed him on the cheek.

Snape drifted through the rest of that Saturday in the eerily empty castle with his cheek tingling as if it had been burned.

The candles burned low in their sconces as Hermione curled up in Minerva's tartan-covered chair by the crackling fire. Around her, portraits (and Crookshanks) still snoozed the evening away. Outside, the wind and rain howled around the towers and turrets.

Hermione, however, did not notice the differences between outdoors and in. Her focus was entirely on the parchment before her, her quill scratching furiously.

She had read the section on the effects of the Unde Orieris on the mind and body with satisfaction – Bill had done his work well. But it was with a growing sense of unease that she read about the effects of the Refracto Legilimentis when combined with the Reparo Legilimentis. Unease turned to horror as she read of the full effects of Reparo and Refracto Legimentilis upon the unoccluded and unprepared mind.

When she reached the end of the page, her quill fell from her hands and she sat, staring into the fire.

"Just what the hell have you done, Hermione?" she murmured.

Crookshanks jumped from his perch on the bookshelves next to the fireplace and stretched.

"Mrrow?" he asked, squashed face inquisitive.

Absently, she reached down to pet him, but the dinner bell sounded, and he darted away. Far below her, the clattering of books and students arose as the denizens of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry filed to their evening meal.

"No," she whispered, "it was supposed to be safe. I double-checked it. I read the books! I did the research! This wasn't supposed to happen!"

On the mantle, Minerva's ormolu clock (with appreciation from the Malfoy Family) chimed the hour.

"No, no, no, no, no." Galvanized to action, Hermione sprung from her chair, scattering parchment, quills and a Gryffindor throw.

"Well, now!" huffed a startled portrait.

"Where's the fire?" jeered another one.

From his corner, Dumbledore looked up in interest.

"Miss Granger, wait," he called out from his frame.

Hermione heard none of them as she tore from the room, letting the heavy oak door slam behind her.

Down, down, down the stairs she hurtled, almost concussing herself on the guardian griffin at the bottom. It was the dinner hour; nobody would be in the library. She could prove that Bill was wrong.

She had to prove that Bill was wrong.

Anxiety made her swift as she raced through the corridors, into the darkened library. She banged her knee on a chair, carelessly left out, and screamed at the shadow of a monster looming before her.

"Lumos!" she cried, and the darkness sprang back. The monster was Madam Pince's return stack and Silence! sign.

Growing panic made her clumsy as she stumbled through the stacks back into the Restricted Section (being a post-seventh-year had its privileges) and grabbed for the books she had pulled so long ago, just in case. They had to be right, she thought, They would've said if something like this could happen. Bill has to be wrong.

"Accio proposal!" she cried, waving her wand with one hand and grasping at the stack of books with the other. The parchment zoomed through the library and settled on the desk.

"Come on, Granger, come on..." she muttered to herself, frantically flipping through the volumes before her. "You can find it..."

The dinner hour wore on, and Hermione knew she had little time before Madam Pince and the few students who would be studying on a Saturday night returned.

"Please," she murmured as Ancient Magic of the Mind fell open to the page she had marked what seemed like ages ago (had it only been a year and a half?). "Please," she begged, "no."

Sweating and gasping for breath, Hermione sat up in bed, entangled in damp and clinging sheets.

"Oh, God," she whispered. The luminescent numbers of her bedside clock read 2.10.

Relief flooded through her and she sank back onto her pillow.

"Thank God," she said aloud. "A dream. Just a dream."

Something niggled at her, an insect bite in her consciousness. She disentangled herself from her sheets and rose from her bed.

"Try it," she said to herself, "it can't hurt. You've never actually made an attempt here."

Hermione took a deep breath and waved her hand.

"Lumos!"

Nothing happened. Relief flooded through her as she reached over and clicked on her bedside light. Straightening, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above her dresser.

"Hello, Hermione," she said to her reflection.

The girl in the mirror merely reflected her, as she hoped: mouse-brown, bushy hair, finally growing out, brown eyes, slightly protruding teeth.

"Hello, Hermione," she said again.

"Hermione?" her father stood in her doorway, clad in purple pajamas and a robe.

"Sorry, Dad," Hermione said. "I had... I had a nightmare and I just needed a moment to reorient myself."

The relief on her father's face was plain.

"Okay," he replied, "I just heard something and..."

"I'm fine, Dad. Go back to bed."

Her father smiled and walked into her room. Wrapping her in a tight embrace, he kissed the top of her head.

"Never apologize, pet," he whispered, "as long as you're here, with us, you can wake me any time you like."

Hermione hugged him back, blinking back the tears.

"Now, missy, go back to bed. You have a big day tomorrow."

"Yes, Dad," Hermione said dutifully, biting back a smile. Her father had always said that, even when a "big day" involved weeding the back garden. This time, her big day involved an interview with the college of further education. Hermione was excited – it was the first step, her first step back.

Back to the real world. The world where she belonged. Where her parents were safe. Where her sister was real.

"Sleep well, pet." Her father turned to leave.

"G'night, Dad."

Hermione climbed back into bed. Outside the wind and rain of the equinoctial storm murmured around the snug suburban house. Inside, Hermione snuggled between her sheets and turned out her light. Oh, it's nice to be me again, was her last thought as she fell asleep.

Peeves swooped through the Great Hall, ignoring the shouts of irritation and screams of disgust as the dungbomb he'd planned to set off in the Hufflepuff dormitory fell from his ghostly robes and dropped into the Gryffindor soup tureen.

The Great Hall flew into chaos, and order was not restored until very late that evening. It was not until the next morning that Madam Pince found the still form of Hermione, quill gripped in stiff fingers and the tracks of tears on her cheeks.

On the parchment Madam Pince showed to a very concerned Minerva were scratched frantic notes in Hermione's writing. The last words, however, caught the Headmistress' attention: I never meant to. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. The books weren't supposed to be wrong.

Minerva's first mistake was summoning Snape to her office to show him the parchment. Her second mistake was showing him the parchment. Her third produced the most spectacular results.

Colin Creevey, apprentice to the Messers Blogs and Blotters (painters of Hogwarts Headmasters for centuries), assured Minerva and the rest of the portraits that Albus Dumbledore's portrait would be able to be restored, but that the process could take at least six months, more likely a year.

Phineas Black observed, after everybody else had left, that Eileen Prince's boy had always had the propensity to hex first and ask questions later, declaring that if he'd been in Minerva's position, he'd have had the good sense to disarm the man before she showed him where the Granger girl had gone wrong. Then, he stated, maybe the one being in the castle who had an inkling of what had happened to her and why wouldn't be trapped in the Blogs and Blotters workshop for the foreseeable future.

Minerva restrained the urge to expand the outer limits of her vocabulary and went to the cupboard where Albus stored his collections of Pensieves.

She did not ask Snape to join her.

AN: Special thanks to Subversa, Bluestocking79, and SavineSnape for hand-holding, beta-ing, and Brit Picking!