Chapter the First

Moaning Myrtle's bathroom was hardly a popular locale. It was cold, the walls perpetually clammy, and the floor more often flooded than not. There was also a decided aroma of decay. The damp was a perfectly hospitable clime for mould, and it mottled the corners and recesses. The paint had flecked off of the stall doors in many places, and where rust had failed to accomplished this, vandals had.

Had Hermione been in the mood for introspection, she could have searched out prophetic patterns in the grey and black fungal blooms. Or she might have contemplated the nature of being while gazing at her reflection in the cracked mirror. Perhaps she could even have dwelt upon the injustices and prejudices of the Wizarding World whilst meditating upon the ever-illustrative 'Mudbloods Suck Cock' that someone had scratched into the fourth door.

Hermione was not, however, in the mood for deep introspection.

'Mudbloods Suck Cock'. Maybe it was advice: find a place for yourself in the world, get ahead through the only avenues available. That seemed a Slytherin ethos, though, and Slytherins didn't give unsolicited, helpful advice to obvious inferiors, did they?

That was bordering too close to thinking, which was edging onto the no-man's land of introspection. She'd come down here with the express purpose of not-thinking. She'd done alright in the carriage ride up from the Hogsmeade Apparition point: she'd carefully watched the elegant thestrals, memorizing the play of light from the dying sun, which threw their twisting vertebrae into sharp relief. And when that palled, she'd concentrated hard on the hem of Professor McGonagall's russet travelling cloak, which she kept in her field of view all the way up to Gryffindor Tower. There'd been a bad moment when she'd been changing back into her school robes, and Lavender and Parvati had burst in, all rapid-fire questions, wide eyes, and gasps. But she'd pushed past them, clattered down the stairs, and finally fetched up here, huddled beneath the cracked sink.

She was very definitely in the mood for a spot of hiding.

It was cowardice, pure and simple, and admitting to it never bothered her. It was easy, she'd found, to work yourself up to bravery when surrounded by the garish, almost violently cheerful reds and golds of the Gryffindor common room. Easy to cast aside cares and consequences when you could convince yourself that you were special. She was a Best Friend of the Boy Who Lived, wasn't she? It was easy, too, to be brave if there was someone around to be disappointed, or worse - laugh - if you were craven.

On the other hand, it wasn't actually that difficult to be cowardly, either. Perhaps it would be worse if there were witnesses. But here and now, sitting in Myrtle's dank domain, cowardice seemed a nice, safe alternative to facing the other students in Gryffindor Tower.

Besides, look where heroism had landed her. Maybe she could have her own entry in Hogwarts, A History. 'Hermione Granger, A Cautionary Tale'. This line of thought was trending rather perilously in the direction of Courtroom 7.

She refocussed her attention on the door of the fourth stall.

'Mudbloods'.

She'd thought they could have spared a bucket of paint or two while they were busy tidying away all evidence Voldemort's Second Rising. Why just lop the vegetation off and leave the roots of the problem behind? Surely once, in the entire year Hogwarts had been shuttered after the battle, someone had come into this room and seen the state of it? 'Mudbloods Suck Cock' had been there back when she was brewing Polyjuice, for godssake.

'Mudbloods'. She still wasn't really offended by the term itself. Dirty blood, because the few genes linked to a propensity for magic had been laundered through Muggles for a few generations? Alright then, moving on. She reckoned the other Muggle-born students had about the same reaction, the first time they'd encountered the slur. It was the sort of thing that just didn't have teeth if you lacked insight into the cultural context.

Even now, she'd still rather be called a Mudblood than a cunt, a whore, a bitch... Her blood status wasn't her, personally, was it? Anyone with a reasonably healthy sense of their own value wasn't likely to be brought low by reference of mere genetics. In fact, she rather doubted Harry's mother – by all accounts a clever, well-liked witch - could've had such a violent reaction to the term itself. Harry-filters were dangerous things to view reality through.

Ron-filters weren't all that much better if she were completely honest with herself. At the crux of it, 'Mudblood', whether used as a slur or the Pureblood tendency to use it as a casual category, was a word that imposed second-class personhood on someone. Ron would hurl himself, teeth gnashing, hexes flying, at anyone who called her a Mudblood, but even the night of the Hogwarts battle, it had been all 'Here, Hermione, you're not that good at defensive spells; why don't you run off and deliver the diadem to McGonagall whilst Harry and I sort out these pesky Death Eaters'. In the year since, through St Mungo's, through mourning, through the press, through Rita Fucking Skeeter, through countless attempts to bully them into actually showing up for their last year of schooling prepared for once, now that they were Heroes... through all that, it had only gotten worse. To the boys, now that the Wizarding World no longer hung in the balance, she was just Good Old Hermione, source of answers, source of nagging. Second-Class Citizen, least of the triumvirate, even less valuable than Mighty Neville Snakeslayer, who still practically wet himself in Potions.

Too much thinking. She scraped the tip of her tongue over her chipped tooth. She'd considered fixing it, but in the end, the combination of Dente-Gro and spellwork seemed more effort than it was worth. Besides, she wasn't exactly a model daughter. Why look like a model patient? In all the ways she'd failed her parents, surely a chipped tooth was the least of them. And then, deep down in the well of 'things better left alone', there was a little spark of pleasure in the knowledge that Professor Snape thought she was worth something, worth protecting at least. Granted, Snape hadn't done it heroically...he'd just flung her to the floor, out and away from the blast of heat and light that swelled as McGonagall destroyed the Horcrux. But still, mere pragmatism or not, she'd ended up half-under his sprawling body and undamaged unless you counted the tooth. It was pretty much the nicest thing that had happened that night. That entire week.

The bathroom door creaked open, mercifully interrupting that line of thought.

"Hermione! There you are, we were wondering. Y'see, someone's gone and let a troll into the castle." Harry offered her a tentative smile and a hand up.

"I, uh... I needed some time alone. A lot to think about, you know?"

"A lot to sulk about, you mean." Ron was scowling.

She straightened her skirt and picked her bag off the floor. "That's not fair."

She watched Harry glance between her and Ron, and could have almost pinpointed the instant when he concluded that it wasn't his affair. "Well, I'm sure there are comfier places to think, 'Mione. Besides, it's nearly dinner. I think I heard that it was veal cutlets tonight."

"No, it's shepherd's pie; we had veal last Thursday," Ron corrected.

Harry laughed and chuffed the back of Ron's head. "You and Hermione are a pair, alright. You've got the meal schedule memorized, and she's got lists of potions ingredients floating around in her head." He seemed to have appointed himself Chief Arbiter of the foundering relationship she and Ron had stumbled into over the last year. Ron laughed dutifully, and she managed a lukewarm smile. Harry's summary was apt, but she wondered if she was the only one who thought that he wasn't describing a matching pair at all.

The Great Hall was warm and cozy, and as the warmth flooded over her, she realized that she'd been chilled to the bone. Acclimatization was a funny process, she mused as she slid in between Lavender and Parvati. Take the boys, for instance. For years, she'd blithely traipsed along behind them, convinced that being their friend was the most important thing she could ever do. She had been quite thoroughly acclimatized. And now? She shook her head slightly, trying, again, to dislodge inconvenient thoughts.

"Where were you, earlier? I had a question about the homework Flitwick set." Lavender pouted out her lower lip. Hermione blinked. Why on earth was Lavender using that come-on pout on her? Maybe her face had finally frozen that way.

"And you missed Potions, too," Parvati's shrill voice managed to carry down the table, and the younger forms glanced up, "Didn't think you could stand being separated from your One True Greasy Love".

Hermione bit back a sharp retort. You were supposed to make allowances for Parvati, these days. And maybe from an outside perspective it did look a bit questionable: anytime a reporter had chased after her with a Dicto-Quill, she'd gone to great pains to refocus the interview on the travesty of Snape's indictment. She usually got written off as a 'bad interview', though. She rather thought she'd ultimately garnered less cumulative attention than one of Harry and Ginny's date nights.

"Oh, get your head out of the incense, Parvati. Doesn't take Divination to guess she was out in the broomshed; we were experimenting as to whether it's possible to touch the ceiling with your heels!" Ron Weasley, saviour of every witch's reputation. His proclamation was met with a roar of laughter, and Hermione waited patiently for the floor to open and engulf her. At least the prattling socialites on either side of her stuck to insults that were unlikely to be believed by the rest of the table. Oh well, perhaps it was for the best – if they were diverted by considering her potential as a trollop, she might not have to explain about her afternoon in Courtroom 7.

The table had begun to fill with serving platters, and Hermione breathed easier until she noted the contents of the casserole dish in front of her. Ron had been right after all, it was shepherd's pie. She lifted out a small, unappetizing portion, and proceeded to poke at it with the back of her fork. Even if despair wasn't settled cold and hard in her stomach, shepherd's pie nights took moral fortitude to get through. She glanced up the table. Ron had gravy on his chin. Eeew.

She pushed her plate back and rummaged in her bag for a book. It really wouldn't pay to draw attention to herself by being the first person out of the hall. Altamont on Concealment Draughts was interesting the first time she'd read it, but she found Breckinridge, Burbank, and Karr to be a more authoritative source. She drummed her fingers idly on the tabletop and wished she'd taken the time - perhaps in between bouts of last night's panic - to find some new reading material in the library. That was the problem, though. There just wasn't anything new in the library. Oh, that wasn't to say she'd read every single tome – such a claim would have been arrogant, preposterous, and moreover, a lie. But she had read far and wide, and deep, too, in the fields that interested her. It was difficult, now, to wander through the dusty stacks and find a new friend between some mouldy covers.

Books really were like people, and better substitutes too, in most ways. Unlike people, they kept their opinions about you to themselves. Just like their authorial counterparts, however, books had opinions. And the more you read of them, the more quickly you realized that you couldn't be friends with absolutely every book – they didn't all get along with each other, after all. And some of them, Hermione would be hard-pressed to want to spend time with. De Laure's Treatise was utterly pompous. She idly wished she could hear Professor Snape's opinion of De Laure; it was sure to be wonderfully vitriolic.

She glanced up at the high table, but once again, the Potions master hadn't condescended to join them. Maybe he didn't care for shepherd's pie, either. She wondered if professors could request meals in their rooms. If so, that was surely what he'd been doing. She'd only seen him in the Great Hall a handful of times since term had started, and somehow she couldn't see him raiding the kitchen after hours. It would be undignified. Hopefully he had some method of procuring nourishment; she'd have to go and see him about the missed class and his temper was not likely to be improved by low blood sugar.

Even if his person were absent from the hall, his name, it seemed, wasn't. She could hear the first and second years complaining about his class. She gritted her teeth and vowed to keep her opinions to herself. Professor Snape didn't need her defending his teaching methods, too. Besides, they weren't really worthy of defense. He was callous and mean. On the other hand, he did know what was best, and if the puling brats couldn't listen to an authority figure, they deserved to be insulted. Better to have their feelings hurt than to lose a limb.

She drew in a deep breath and tried to force her concentration away from their conversation. She was almost successful.

"... that's what I heard, anyway. You know he's tight in with the Malfoys, and nothing ever sticks to them long."

"Must've been traumatic for the git, Azkaban. I hear they sluice 'em down once a week whether they need it or not."

"Shite, then Old Snapey must've had more baths in gaol than any other time his entire life!"

"They can't have used soap – the bugger didn't melt, did he?"

"What? Oh, Muggle joke? Speaking of, did you read Rita's latest?"

"Blllrrrg. Projectus vomitus, eh?"

"Angst-ridden Snape in luuuuuurve, forever pining for poor Harry's dead mum? I'll say!"

Hermione put her book down, sick of pretending, and sick of being surrounded by ingrates, morons, and simpering fools – students, in a word. She shoved Altamont roughly into her bag and stood up, ready to give the little brats what-for.

Harry beat her to it: "Wish you lot would just shut up about my mother! She didn't have a damn thing to do with Snape outside of Slughorn's class. Who the fuck knows why he turned? You can take his so-called testimony or leave it, but the upshot of it is, he made an Unbreakable Vow to Dumbledore. And that's got nothing at all to do with me or mine – he hated my parents! So I'll thank you to keep your grubby noses out of my life, and my history!" He was gripping his fork too hard, and there was a slightly manic gleam in his eyes. It wasn't the principled defense Hermione would have mounted, but at least they'd shut up. It was the result that mattered, she told herself, and like hell was she going to say anything that would get Harry even more wound up.

She realised she was still standing. Excellent going, Granger, way to keep your head down and not call attention to yourself today. She swung her bag to her shoulder; she supposed she might as well head up to the common room and fetch her Potions journal.

"Oi, 'Mione! Aren't you staying for pudding?" Ginny looked up from the whispered conversation she and Harry had resumed. She seemed to be petting his leg beneath the table, which certainly explained some things.

Hermione shook her head and turned away. She had taken two full steps before she gave in to the impulse to say something. "You're Head Girl, you know. It's your job to stop things like that," she told the redhead.

Ginny screwed up her face, affronted. "People talk, Hermione. And it was Harry's place, not mine."

"It's your responsibility to ensure that students are behaving! You can't just let people slander Hogwarts Staff. Perhaps if you paid more attention to your job than your boyfriend..."

"Don't be a cow, Hermione. First off, no one likes Snape anyway, and second, it's not my bloody fault you're not Head Girl; I'm not the one who told you to go and get yourself a criminal record!"

And there it was. Her face flaming, Hermione collected the tatters of her dignity and strode out of the Hall. Her heart was pounding in her ears, in contrapuntal rhythm with the furious click of her shoes against the flagstone of the hall. Her anger carried her all the way back into Myrtle's toilet where she collapsed against the sink. There was a sharp ache beneath her ribs; could guilt and sorrow physically hurt?

"Stupid, useless thug, idiot! Why, why the bloody hell did you ever think you belonged here? Cleverness! Cleverness got you into this mess, and you just couldn't keep your mouth shut, worthless dunderhead!" She stuffed a fist up against her mouth and bit down on a knuckle as tears flooded her eyes. "Oh shut up. Just shut up, you self-pitying fool. You're being so ridiculous."

"That's right, why don't you shut up?" Myrtle's hollow voice echoed from the porcelain. "You haven't got anything to be gloomy about. After all, you're not dead." The ghost gave a loud, artificial sniffle.

Once Myrtle got started, it took her a very long time to stop. Hermione gasped in a breath and scrubbed hard at her eyes. Stop it, she told herself, try for some maturity. You can't run off and cry in the jakes every time you embarrass yourself. In through the nose, out through the mouth, get a grip on yourself.

"Bye, Myrtle. I'm sorry to bother you."

"That's right! Run away. No one ever, ever has time for Myrtle. Just their own stupid pr-prob-problems!" The ghost had progressed into full-scale sobs. Hermione bit her lip and wracked her brain for something to say. There wasn't anything, so she quietly worked the doorknob, ducked out, and smacked flat up against a masculine torso.

"Easy there, Hermione. Christ, did you have to set Myrtle off?" Ron pulled the door shut. It didn't marginally reduce the volume.

"Look, let's go and walk down by the pitch, no one's practising out there tonight." Harry kept his voice low, and gestured obliquely back towards the Entrance Hall. Ron nodded fervently and tightened his grip around Hermione's waist. How he expected her to walk, she had no idea, but just then it made her feel marginally better. He did really care, maybe.

"I'm sorry about this morning, Hermy, if that's what's got you so upset."

She couldn't see his face, but he sounded contrite. Still: "Her-mi-o-nee. And no, that isn't it at all!"

"Well, well, good, then! Because you can't be skipping classes just because we've had a tiff, now, can you? I mean, you won't let us skive off Potions..."

"Lord, Ron, is that why you think I wasn't in class?"

"Well, what else am I supposed to think?"

She pulled away from him, slumped against the wall, and gently beat her head against the stone. "Maybe. You. Could. Listen. For once in your self-absorbed little life. London? Ministry hearing? Sentencing? Any of that ringing any bells?"

"Oh, hell, Hermione," Harry looked appalled, "I forgot all about that!"

"Fuck me, I did too. I'm an utterly shite boyfriend, aren't I?"

"Don't make me answer that, Ronald."

"I'm really sorry, Hermione." He pulled her close to his chest, tucking her head under his chin.

Her eyes were still burning. She squeezed them closed, breathed in the melange of sweat, laundry detergent, and broom polish. Here, nestled into the comfortable prison of his sturdy arms, she almost felt safe. If she didn't think about the utter Ron-ness of him, for just a few moments she could revel in the feeling that somehow things would come out right. Someone strong, someone adult, could just sweep in and fix everything.

"Let's all just go back up to the Tower; Hermione, you can tell us what happened. We're here for you, no matter what."

They were such entrancing little lies. Funny, she only remembered Professor McGonagall coming down to London with her. She sighed and pushed away from Ron's well-meaning embrace.

"It's alright. I'll tell you all about it later; I have to run, right now, if I want to make it to Professor Snape's office hours in time."

Harry was rolling his eyes. "Seriously, Hermione? He'll just set you an essay; you can ask for it tomorrow."

She rubbed her tongue over her chipped tooth again and made a valiant effort to curb her frustration. "Harry, I really can't afford any toes out of line this year. I haven't got Kingsley Shacklebolt or Rufus Scrimgeour worshipping the ground I stand upon; I've barely got McGonagall on my side. It's all well and good for you and Ron to swan around the school without a care in the world. Everyone bloody well loves you, don't they?"

"Hermione, they're not not on your side."

"You really think, Ron? Wish you could've seen them, today, then. Listen, I'll tell you about it later. I have to go; I have to go now. I definitely don't need Professor Snape throwing a wobbler at me, on top of everything else."