7. Named

A/N: As always, a huge pile of thanks goes to potionsmistress23; she is the one who makes it readable. I would also like to thank all my reviewers, especially those who care to leave their thoughts repeatedly. You guys, all of you, are amazing! My muse feels loved. And I'm sorry for lagging behind with posting on TPP. Hopefully, you forgive me.

The world was muzzy and sad; she was blind and completely desensitized to it. There were voices out there, muffled, like someone was speaking through wads of candy floss.

"...in blazes did you do?!"

"Nothing! Only that what I had..."

The voices faded back out. Timeless, deaf blackness and nothingness again. Next time she came to, she thought she could twitch her fingers and perform a pathetic half a blink. There was now a difference between light and dark when she blinked. Good, at least she wasn't blind.

"Oh, she wakes! She okay!" a cheerful voice exclaimed, though there was a little shrill note in it. Venla.

"She better be. Or else." Clipped tones, oozing malicious warning. Her mentor. Everything was right in the world.

When Hermione's head felt a little more like itself and a little less like a bucket full of moldy moss, she gave opening her eyes another try. Warm light flooded her vision. Venla was pacing the room with a small thatch of dried flowers in her hand. Professor Snape was sitting in a small rocking chair. Said chair was much more fitting for hosting plump grandmothers with their knitting than surly men, what with its flowery, hand-made quilt and all. He was peering at her intently with what she thought was a Severus Snape expression of concern (on anyone else, she would take it for a royal sulk).

"Do you feel anything?" he asked.

"What am I supposed to feel?" she replied, confused.

"Do you feel anything different? Any shift in your magic?"

"I... don't think I would know the difference, since I don't think I know how it feels to feel one's magic, pardon the tautology," Hermione answered tartly.

The professor pinched the bridge of his substantial nose and sighed in utter frustration. Hermione felt an evil little lump of warped satisfaction coiling and recoiling somewhere in the pit of her stomach. So much for your elliptic assumptions, Professor, she thought.

"Miss... Venla!" her mentor called out to the Midwife with irritation. "How did the procedure go?"

"Oh... I..." Venla clamped her mouth shut, and suddenly, her cherubic face was crumpling a bit.

"You what?" Hermione croaked forlornly. She thought she was seriously ready to argue the case of who was the most ridiculous Mage, there in front of her professor.

"You old! I tell you it! Adult magic differ. It work. A little." Venla shrugged and looked wounded.

"She's not that old. Still technically a child!" Snape's indignation was capable of withering flowers with its force if there were any around.

Hermione felt her anger flare up at being referred to as a child, but when she took a deep breath to yell back something she would regret later (of that she was de facto sure), the anger shot straight to her head as an impulse of pain. Then it settled to tingling, which was still very unpleasant, like a wet, slimy tentacle gliding across the back of her skull, on the inside.

"I think I feel something..." she muttered to no one in particular and tried to concentrate on extricating the tentacle out of her head. It felt so alien; she wanted to shake it off like a bad dream.

Venla's and Professor Snape's eyes immediately shot to her.

"What do you feel?" Snape asked cautiously. He got up from his chair and moved to crouch beside the piece of furniture Hermione occupied. It had seen much better days and could only be identified as 'horizontal'.

"A tentacle," she answered in a daze, almost talking to herself, the realization that she must have sounded ridiculous lagging behind her efforts to place the unusual feeling.

"Where?" the professor asked with such seriousness as if he had completely understood the tentacle thing.

"In the back of my head." She sounded panicky to herself, but the damn thing, or whatever it was, was making her very existence very, very uncomfortable at the moment.

The foreign feeling of tingling and writhing was increasing by the second, and she screwed her eyes shut and pressed her palms over her ears with force.

Through the red fuzz of pain, she heard Venla clap her hands in glee that even her pain-addled brain thought was completely out of place.

"Her magic come through!" Venla chirped.

"It looks like her magic is eating her from the inside! This is not supposed to be painful." Professor Snape sure sounded agitated. That meant something was really off.

"But she old. It is why!" Venla sat next to Hermione and put her arms about her trembling shoulders.

Somehow, it made the pain even worse. That or Hermione just needed to lay blame on someone for what she was experiencing, and poor Venla happened to be that unfortunate someone. Just when Venla started rubbing soothing circles on her back, offering her the thatch of dried, unknown flowers to sniff at, and speaking something sweet and nothing-y in Finnish or, maybe, Estonian...Hermione's linguistic capacity wasn't large enough to discern...she jumped out of her embrace like a spooked animal and landed on the floor in a heap of rippling pain.

The tentacle in the back of her head grew spikes and thorns and was wreaking havoc in her entire upper body. She balled her hands into fists tight enough to draw blood where her nails broke into the skin of her palms. Considering how short and trim her nails were, that was very tight.

An idea the origin of which she couldn't place...like so many other ideas and facts...popped into her brain: she should control the breathing. It should ease the pain somewhat or at least make it less incapacitating. She started blowing out loud puffs of breath, but the pain only mounted. For a moment, there was a feel of a cool hand on the back of her neck, and it was so heavenly soothing she wanted to scream when it was gone, just as suddenly as it appeared.

"No, let her do herself!" Venla said in a raised voice. Apparently, the professor tried to help her out, Hermione realized through the haze of blinding ache. Ah, but that was so sweet! She made a note to tell him so and immediately giggled at her own silliness.

The malignant tentacle of pain or magic or whatever it was that was currently ripping her apart definitely fed on giggling. It felt like a dozen metastases were spreading downwards to her back and shoulders, and there was a strong compulsion to give in, to let the pain overtake the rest of her being.

One part of her, the one she quickly came to label as 'old', fought tooth and claw for the vestiges of what seemed to her to be the entire existence as she knew it. The other, quite the opposite half, was cooing and coercing and threatening and seducing her to just let it go and embrace the change. It was like being split in two, like watching two halves of her own self come against each other in a deadly sparring match, and it was up to her to flip the thumb up or down for one of her selves. She couldn't decide which one. Both seemed crucial to her integrity, and letting go of one of them seemed like chopping of a leg and an arm. And half her head, maybe. She ridiculously tried to recall a silly test she'd done over the summer, something from a psychology magazine her mother had lying around at home, which told you what hemisphere of your brain was the leading one. Hermione could not remember whether she had scored left or right, and which half she could let be chopped.

I can't decide between you, she said to the two identical girls with excess hair problems, who were staring back at her expectantly from a ring. Complete with blurry spectators, which her imagination didn't care to give more shape to, and boxing gear. She couldn't even pinpoint the moment in time when she started hallucinating from the pain.

The two hers in front of her were beating each other into pulp and, apart from feeling a very real pain from the god-awful tentacle, she felt another kind of ache, watching her identical copies literally go for each other's throats.

I can't decide! she screamed in her mind. I'm keeping you both! With all her being, she willed the fight to stop and watched the two girls pull each other into a bloody embrace. The pain inside her reached its peak and exploded in a flash of blinding light.

When she came to for the second time in the last half hour, it was to the mingled feeling of relief and utter misery. Her very marrow seemed to be aching, and every single problem, every single desire or aim she had in life gave way to an overwhelming wish to curl up into a ball and not move for a week.

Professor Snape was pacing the room. Three steps forward, turn, billow, three steps back, turn, billow. After a few repeats, the monotony of it seemed like Chinese water drop torture to her.

"Please stop," she croaked, not caring that it was not exactly Ron to whom she was talking.

He whipped around to face her. And he was in a marvelous strop. Not that she really cared, at that exact moment.

"What happened to me? And please just tell. No games." Words were like barbed wire coming through her sore throat.

"Our scatterbrained friend with a dislike for auxiliary verbs here would tell you that you have just been born as a Mage," Snape drawled sarcastically, and his fingers curled and uncurled elegantly to add quotation marks to 'born'.

"And what would you say?" Hermione asked weakly.

"I would say something has gone wrong, and we will not know the extent of this... travesty," he gestured to the pot with the strange potion and the cup and, well, the entire room and even included Venla, "until something or other goes awry, which, may I assure you, it will. Sooner than later."

Okay, it was a royal strop, alright. Hermione sighed exasperatedly and let her head fall back into the pillow, covered by a knit-work pillow case.

"What was supposed to happen?" she asked, resigned.

"It was supposed to be painless, and it was supposed to be quick. And you were supposed to feel your magic right away and differently."

"How do you know I didn't feel it?"

"You wouldn't have doubted if you did."

Snape was quite spot on, as usual.

"Can we go now?"

"Can you refrain from asking questions? Not even your addled state keeps your mouth shut?" Snape's usually non-existent patience was already stretched too thin.

Hermione, surprisingly even to herself, let out a short laugh, which made her wince with sudden pain.

"Quite on the contrary, sir," she said quietly. "I'd rather blame my addled state for the loss of inhibition and nick a few questions in, now that I don't feel compelled by decorum to remain silent."

He gave her a suspicious look from under furrowed brows, but it was not glaringly unkind.

"Your addled state appears to be a lot more of a mental handicap than I would have originally thought, Miss Granger," Snape said with an ugly, saccharine smile, which adorned the corners of his mouth with little crow feet.

She cringed a little, hurt, and turned her face away.

Venla chose this moment to bustle into the room with a battered-looking book, a quill, and a piece of parchment. Judging by the way the book was completely silent to Hermione, it had to be Muggle. Upon closer observation, it appeared to be some kind of a dictionary.

"What is going on?" she asked.

"I look for good word for you, Hermione," Venla said with the air of businesslike satisfaction of someone who had performed an important task successfully.

"Oh, you mean you found out my kind?" Hermione immediately went from weak and resigned to excited and frantic. It was not exactly pleasant, pain-wise.

"I did, but I need find good English word." She started rummaging through the dictionary and scribbling.

Hermione felt that her mentor's eyes were rolling up to the ceiling without even having to look at him.

"But don't you have something like... a register?" Hermione was more than intrigued.

"It not like this."

That Venla. Her elliptical answers were even more infuriating than Snape's. And they were grammatically horrible, on top of that.

"What our multi-talented Midwife means is that she has found out your kind, but it does not correspond with the ones known to her, so she has to give it a name and finds her English skills lacking. So, where others," Snape paused dramatically, "would have recourse to decorous circumlocution, she resorts to blunt dismissal."

The Potions master's unnecessary sarcasm was rubbing Hermione against the hair.

"You'd resort to not deigning to answer at all," she muttered.

"And you'd do well not to forget yourself with me." Snape looked at her, and there was something eerily dangerous in his eyes.

Hermione started to say 'as if I could' but swallowed it up quickly, taking in the scary glint of his look.

At that moment, Venla looked up from her task with a smile which would turn every boy in Hogwarts into a puddle of want in a snapshot.

"I find it!"

The young Midwife paused, sizing the faces of her visitors for readiness, and announced solemnly, "Hermione, you are Middler!"

Well, at least I'm not a Cher or a Barbra Streisand, Hermione thought and dissolved in peals of laughter, despite the pain and the strain of the night.

The other two people in the room stood dumbfounded, though, when she finally was able to take two breaths without them ending with absolutely unladylike snorts, Hermione thought she saw the corner of Snape's mouth quirk a bit. Wow, hidden depth there, Professor. She wondered if Snape had a disturbing fancy for Bette Midler, or that strange fondness of Muggle cinema some wizards seemed to have, or simply was more in the know of all things Muggle than merely the name of the current Prime Minister.

"Any... elaboration of that... term?" Snape asked the golden-headed witch, who looked, for all she was worth, sad as a child whose favourite toy had been taken away.

"Oh, yes. Some. It the case when I know meaning first and then give name," Venla said and handed Hermione her parchment.

At the top of it, there was a word in an unfamiliar tongue with many vowels and umlauted letters, probably Venla's native. Below were a few... translations? Suggestions?

Translate

Golden Means

"What is it?" Hermione asked, baffled.

"It what you can be. Your kind. Middler best word for you. You someone in middle. You connect things."

Hermione practically saw Professor Snape's ears prick to attention.

"But I don't understand... how does it even start to describe whatever special powers I might have?" she asked, desperate to have come to yet more ambiguity.

"You should be grateful she's given any explanation at all. You could have been treated with long stretches of rubbish which would have put Trelawney to shame. Or you could have been given nothing but that single word," her mentor noted with a smarmy leer, looking at Venla down his magnificent nose.

Great. This was just great. Hermione huffed her frustration.

"Hermione, no worry. You find them, your talents. It always like this. When you know who you be, you look for them. Like Loki, Finders, Walkers, Healers, they common. They know what to search in them. Some Mages not common. Some mysterious," Venla said and winked at Hermione after darting her eyes quickly to Professor Snape. "You not common. I only help birth. You grow up by your own."

She came up and held Hermione's hands in both of her own, looking up at her with clear, blue eyes.

Overcome by an unexpected wave of warmth towards the beaming Midwife, Hermione hugged the girl tightly, if only to catch a glimpse of the same kinship and unconditional acceptance she had felt with the Weasley twins. The fact that Venla was clumsy and a bit on the barmy side, and not everything went smoothly for her was endearing to her in the comfortable way imperfections of dear people could be sometimes.

"Thank you, Venla," Hermione said with feeling.

"Oh, not thank me. Not everything go okay." Venla looked disappointed with herself. "If only you came young. Nine or eight years ago. Now I not know where your magic. You born, but it strange. I worry. Come see me soon. Maybe, after Yule?"

"Oh, I'd love to!" Hermione gushed and immediately realized that she really, really would love to visit with Venla again. "You must be lonely out here."

"Oh, no, not at all. I love here! And I can Apparate to see family all times." Venla's smile was like a tiny sun.

"Isn't this solitary life frightening a bit? Don't you miss friends... family? Is it something Midwives do, living alone?"

Venla responded with a peal of silvery laughter, like a little crystal bell.

"Not. I like alone. I a hermit. And I have friends. Like Cinderella!" Venla made a cute face.

"Cinderella?" Hermione thought that maybe, just maybe, the Saint Mungo's Most Warded Ward for the Barmy was missing a patient.

"Yes! My grandmother a Muggle. I watched Cinderella. So lovely!" For a moment, Venla's heart-shaped face was lit up with the dreamy expression angels on vintage Christmas cards wore, but she broke the illusion by emitting a sudden, loud whistle, a thumb and an index finger stuck at the corners of her mouth.

At that moment, a beautiful, snow-white ermine weaseled out from under the sofa somewhere and whirled around Venla's feet. Cinderella, indeed. Hermione snickered and dared a sideways glance in Snape's direction. Yep, definitely some knowledge of Muggle pop culture there. Judging by the flare of his nostrils and his posture, which was becoming more rigid by the minute, it would really have been nice that all comparisons with Cinderella ended right there.

"Miss Granger, we're leaving this madhouse now," her mentor snapped and threw her cloak at her very unceremoniously. Still wobbly from her foray into second birth, Hermione's reflexes refused to surface, and the cloak landed on her face clumsily. She fumed under it for a second and dragged it off, almost a second too late to notice a hint of regret flicker through Snape's face like a twenty-fifth frame. But it was there. Had been there. And it was the sole reason for her not to blow her top then and there.

"Venla, it has been a pleasure." Hermione turned to the young Midwife and kissed her cheek with cultured politeness. "I hope to see you again around New Year."

"Oh, I be delighted to receive you!" Venla clapped her hands. "Just ask the Council for Portkey!"

"The council?" Hermione's mind received another painful nip as something she should have known but didn't popped up again.

"You really need educate her better." Venla was speaking with all the goodwill of an advice columnist.

"You really need to mind your own business. Not that you seem to have enough mind to mind it well, so to say," the Potions master retaliated, quite bursting at the seams.

"Oh, I not one who keep a Mage up to seventeen years and expect she not act like newborn," the sunny creature answered with such sublime sarcasm there was really no telling whether she was being sarcastic or completely contrite. Merlin bless Venla and her utter lack of reserve (and obvious utter lack of knowledge where Professor Snape's reputation was concerned).

Snape was positively seething because he took hold of Hermione's arm and, without saying a word, started for the door of the little hut.

"Bye, Hermione! Bye, Professor!" Venla shone upon them with an indefinitely warm smile. "Hermione, wait see you again! Professor, think what I tell you before. I can try!"

Hermione's natural curiosity reared its head and had to suck it up immediately. Well, maybe later there would be a time and a place to find out what Venla was happily chattering on about.

As soon as they closed the door behind them (or rather slammed, more like it), Professor Snape stuck something in Hermione's hand, and after a few very painful, very unpleasant moments, she found herself on her knees at the gates of Hogwarts, slow sheets of late autumn rain falling down on her and an old Guardian in her hands. And her dinner was insistently curious if it was okay to come out now.

She clamped her hand over her mouth to keep it down and smelled the metallic, icky scent of drying blood. Just great. She remembered, vaguely, balling her fists with inhuman effort to fight the pain, and suddenly, it all became too much. An ugly, murky wave of self-pity washed over her. It wasn't her fault, after all. She hadn't asked to be in this situation, and she hadn't, most of all, asked to be in it with Snape. She could parry with the best of them if needs be. Pulling her pride like a cloak about her, she stood up and started moving. Right now, she wanted to be in her bed and draw her bed curtains around her like a 'fuck you' to the world outside.

"I don't remember dismissing you," a cold voice behind her said.

Hermione turned around slowly, as if any jolty movement would crumple her resolve.

"I dismissed myself, obviously," she replied with equal coldness, which contradicted her state immensely.

"Do not use that tone with me if you are not up to facing the consequences," he hissed, moving his face closer to hers.

She quickly discovered she was past caring. Really, what consequences would those be? He would what, put her in detention scrubbing cauldrons for a month? Sneer and glare at her with coals burning in his eyes? Oh, let him. As if that would change anything.

"I'm not up to facing your methods of teaching, that's what I'm not! Some mentor you are!" she spat, not bothering to cover the liquid hurt in her eyes anymore.

"I'm not here to educate you. I've only been called to clean up yet one more of Dumbledore's messes and to prevent you from being a danger to yourself and to the students and the staff in this school." There was so much unguarded bitterness in his words that Hermione felt like she'd swallowed a mouthful of wormwood. "And that is the only end of the bargain I intend to keep," he added, cold and collected again.

He grabbed her hands then and, with a few swishes of his wand, healed the half-moon indentations her nails had left. The considerate gesture almost belied the passion with which he so apparently hated their situation and her, by extension. Almost.

A thought suddenly flashed through her mind and made her eyes open wide with realization.

"You are not angry at me, are you... You're angry because... something happened which didn't look safe, and you couldn't do a thing," she stated slowly, feeling her own anger dissipating.

He didn't answer, didn't deny anything, which was a miracle in and of itself. After an eternity of an uncomfortable and yet connecting moment, he said, still bitterly, but with a resigned exhaustion that made its way into his voice, "Go to your dormitory, Miss Granger. Sleep. I will have you excused from your first morning class. Come to my office after dinner tomorrow."

She was so startled by his words that her 'you will most certainly not (have me excused, that is)' died a quick and easy death in her throat and went to heaven with her exhaled breath.

She nodded curtly in acknowledgement and made a beeline for her dorm. It was already past curfew.

As she took the turn towards Gryffindor Tower, she became aware of a presence nearby. For some reason, her gut feeling insisted that the presence was hostile or even alien. In any case, not something one would run into in Gryffindor domain. Turning around the corner, she saw Draco Malfoy leaning against the flagstone wall with a casual elegance that was known to charm lesser witches right out of their knickers. Fortunately, Hermione was no lesser witch. She paused for a second, on the lookout for a sudden strike or any other snaky move she knew the Malfoy heir was perfectly capable of, but Draco didn't as much as lift a finger or speak a word. It looked like he was merely making some sort of a statement with his presence. She passed him by, and he still remained as he was. And in a way of something you would never expect from an enemy, this was even creepier than his regular outright aggression.

Hermione rarely felt so relieved and happy to see the Fat Lady as she was a few seconds later.