Two

Hermione's second clue that not all was well was when she tried to take a bath and ended up with a bathroom full of mud.

Her private room, usually reserved for the Head Girl (this year a Ravenclaw), came equipped with a private bath and shower.

After a soothing cup of tea and an hour's perusal of her Advanced Charm Making book, she ventured to the bathroom to soak the tension from her neck and shoulders.

"Aguamenti, " she murmured and went back to her room to undress.

When she returned to the bathroom, the tub was overflowing with mud.

"Finite Incantatem!" she cried, waving her wand at the tub, to no avail. Mud seeped and bubbled from the tap, dripped onto the floor and splattered everywhere.

"Finite! Finite! Finite!" she cried, voice ascending the scale as her panic increased. There was no effect.

Hermione Granger was not, by and large, a witch prone to bad language. Ron and Harry had sworn plenty for the three of them over the years. But at that particular moment, she deemed it necessary to let fly. "What the fucking hell is wrong with this fucking castle?" she wailed in despair. "First my feather, and nowthis!

Moaning Myrtle popped up through the slimy gunk and goggled at her. "Are you supposed to be using language like that? I'm telling if you're not," she cackled.

Hermione clutched her dressing gown to her and sank to the rapidly muddying floor in dismay. "Fuck off," she muttered.

Myrtle loosed a surprised gurgle and disappeared up the tap again.

Hermione sighed and waved her wand half-heartedly at the pile of mud that had been her bathroom. "Finite Incantatem," she tried again.

The fountain of mud hiccupped and stopped.

Hermione stared. "Evanesco?" she ventured.

The mud disappeared.

"Aguamenti!" she insisted. And from the tap poured crystal clear water.

Hermione scrambled to her feet and looked around. "Something," she said to herself, "is wrong."

Bathed, changed, and with her hair knotted and secured with her wand, Hermione spent the quiet hours after dinner and before curfew in the library, frantically researching topics on magic gone awry.

"It could be," she reflected aloud, "that I was hit by a spell during the battle. But I'd have felt it by now, and Madam Pomfrey checked me very carefully for Dark Magic. So that's out." She ruffled through her notes.

"Some disease affecting the entire wizarding world?" she wondered. "Surely there would be reports of it elsewhere. I wonder if…"

"What I wonder, Granger," Professor Snape cut in, "is why you cannot manage to do your work without the constant chatter. Some of us are trying to do serious research."

Hermione squeaked, jumped, and banged her knee on the bottom of the carrel. "Oh, bollocks!" she muttered, rubbing the injured part.

"Ten points for language," Snape snapped.

"What are you doing here, Professor?" Hermione gasped. "Nobody comes to this portion of the library!"

"Closest to the Restricted Section but not actually in it?" Snape leered at her.

Hermione blushed. "It's quiet," she said, "and nobody comes here. So I can do my research and, well, Madam Pince won't give me a pass yet. She said that I had, er, caused too much trouble in the past to warrant the privilege of access to the Restricted Section."

"I see."

"And anyway, I didn't know anybody was here."

"Well, I am. And you, Granger, should be abed. I do believe that the curfew bell is going to ring momentarily. Or do you feel that as such a decorated heroine of the War, you are somehow exempt from the rules?"

"No!"

"No, what?"

"Sir, no, sir."

"Do you need to be told again? Clean up your area and go to bed."

"Yes, sir," Hermione replied, not bothering to hide her petulant pout.

"Would you prefer Gryffindor to lose more points for your attitude this evening?"

"Sir, no, sir." Hermione straightened her area briskly and prepared to leave.

Suddenly, the torches in the library snuffed themselves out.

"What… what's happening, sir?" Hermione couldn't keep the panicky edge out of her voice. She might have been a War heroine, as Snape had called her (albeit derisively), but after the past year, the dark made her jumpy.

"The torches have gone out," Snape's familiar tones shot at her from the darkness. "I would think that much would be obvious, Granger. Even to you."

"I know that, sir. What I meant, sir, was why have the torches gone out?"

In the darkness, Snape sighed. "There was a great deal of damage done to the castle," he said, "and even the most basic of maintenance spells are difficult to sustain. Have you noticed, for instance, Granger, that the staircases do not currently move?"

Hermione opened her mouth to say that of course she'd noticed that the staircases were stationary, but closed it again. She hadn't.

"No, sir," she admitted, "I hadn't noticed. I'd been so wrapped up in preparing for my NEWTs this December – Professors Flitwick and McGonagall have arranged a special dispensation for me to take them early – that I'd just… missed it."

"Well, you know now," Snape replied. Hermione paused. Was that regret she heard in his voice?

"What… what else doesn't work?" she asked.

"Open your eyes, Granger," Snape snapped at her. "Look at the world around you for once, you insufferable swot."

Hermione gasped. "How dare you!" she demanded, whirling in the darkness to where she thought he was. "How dare you speak to me like that! I've been…" she trailed off. "Professor?"

There was no reply.

"Professor Snape?"

Silence greeted her.

Pushing down her rising panic, remembering that she was Hermione Bloody Granger, a heroine, the brightest witch of her age, the woman who aided Harry Potter, Hermione fished her wand from the knot of hair atop her head and held it out.

"Focus, Granger," she muttered. "Lumos."

The tip of her wand glowed. It was a weak, sputtery Lumos, but it was light. Hermione felt the panic subside.

"You can do this," she told herself. "Lumos." The tip grew brighter. Finding her bearings, Hermione stepped carefully through the stacks as the curfew bell sounded. "You can do this, Granger," she told herself again, striding past the now empty desk of Madam Pince.

Disaster struck. Behind her, a floor board creaked, and a ghost (she never discovered which one) moaned. Hermione's Lumos flickered and died.

"Oh, bollocks," she squeaked. Her nerve broke as the ghost moaned again, and she dashed to the dim light of the entrance, not quite sobbing in terror.

Behind her, Professor Snape lurked, cloaked in the shadows, watching her. Beside him floated the ghost of Vincent Crabbe.

"Lumos." Snape turned to Crabbe and raised an eyebrow at his former student.

"What's wrong with her?" the ghost asked.

"I do not know, Crabbe," Snape replied. "Why are you in the library? You couldn't find this place with a map when you were alive."

Crabbe shrugged incorporeal shoulders. "It's pleasant here," he said. "Nobody bothers me, and I can catch up on my reading if students leave books open. Madam Pince doesn’t yell at me and lets me read, as long as I don't frighten the ickle firsties."

Snape did not reply.

"Times change, Professor," Crabbe said. "Not all of us were able to survive, but some of us managed to learn from our pasts. And anyway," the ghost said as he began to float back into the stacks, "I think if I'd known this place was so nice when I was a boy, I might have spent more time here. It's amazing what you can learn about yourself, Professor, if you stop to reflect for a moment."

AN: See Chapter One. These characters still do not belong to me.