Hermione Granger and the Secret Fire

Chapter 5- The fire begins to burn

“Yeah…um,” Misten said glancing at the creepy look in Malfoy’s eyes, “I’ll be leaving now. Bye! Good luck with that, Hermione.”

Hermione watched Misten make her quick exit and briefly thought, ‘Nice friend! Leaving me here to deal with a deranged Malfoy!’

“Sit down, Granger! We need to talk!” Malfoy said for the second time.

“Um…Malfoy? Whatever we need to talk about can wait until you’ve solved whatever it is that is upsetting you,” Hermione said, trying to think of a plan to save her own neck. She had been on the wrong side of Malfoy’s anger before and she had no interest in repeating the situation this afternoon.

Malfoy stopped, gave Hermione a look she was unable to interpret and collapsed on the couch in front of the fire.

Hermione slowly walked over to the fire to see if Malfoy was face up or face down on the couch. She didn’t need him creating some melodramatic death scene in their common room, especially on a day like today. Thankfully, he was face up. He was staring at the ceiling and his chest was heaving, but he showed no other sign of duress.

‘Well, at least he’s breathing. What in the name of the Gods is the matter with him? Is this about what I said earlier? Maybe I should apologize. But why should I make the first move? He wouldn’t apologize if he had said something mean. He did say something mean and he isn’t apologizing! Why should I?’ Hermione thought as she sat down on the floor, sliding against the chair opposite the couch.

“I need to talk to someone and since my infantile house mates are about as trustworthy as Dumbledore is evil, I thought maybe I could…oh, I don’t know!” Malfoy said pitifully.

“What am I going to do, Granger? How am I going to get out of this? This was not supposed to happen yet. I thought I had until my birthday in December at least. I hoped for summer, but I had at least until December, right?” Malfoy said, almost pleading, from his place on the couch.

‘I guess this isn’t about me,’ Hermione thought with a sign of relief. ‘Oh, I feel sorry for whomever is at the other end of this tantrum!’

“I can live with you and your Gryffindork friends making fun of me. I have had years of practice at that. I can live with having no real friends, after all most people are beneath me. I can even live with this suicidal notion the members of my family have and their incessant need to outmaneuver, outsmart and even outlive the competition. But I can’t…” Malfoy said in a low, melodious voice.

Hermione felt herself frowning in confusion and fear while holding her breath waiting for him to finish his thought. His change in mood frightened her. He was screaming in anger and burning things one second and speaking in a deadly calm, composed and under control tone the next.

‘Who is this person in front of me?’ Hermione thought. ‘Who is this person beginning to pour his, dare I say it, heart out to me? What in the hell is going on?’

Malfoy started shaking his head back in forth as if saying ‘no’ to whatever thoughts were going through his head. “I can’t…” his repeated while his voice broke.

‘Did Malfoy’s voice just break? Like as in about to start crying?’ Hermione thought with alarm.

Hermione Granger was not a person who was content with not understanding something. She was not accustomed to being ‘left out of the loop’ and she prided herself on knowing something about almost everything. Looking at Malfoy, she realized she had no clue what he was talking about, and that made her uncomfortable. It made her very uncomfortable.

“Nothing could be worse, could it? Even if I refuse, it can’t be as bad, can it? Oh Gods! I can’t go back already! I just got back from that bloody place this morning!” His questions were asked with a new level of pain.

Finally, Hermione found her own voice, “Uh, Malfoy. You’re frightening me. I am dreadfully sorry about whatever is upsetting you, but I have to ask, what is going on?”

Malfoy turned his head and looked at her almost as if he hadn’t expected her to be sitting there. However he had a newfound fire in his eyes. He started yelling, but never got up off the couch. “I can’t Hermione, and I won’t. I WON’T, DAMN IT! I don’t care what the consequences are for refusing, but I REFUSE!”

Hermione’s brain once again could not process what was going on in front of her. ‘Malfoy is possessed by some…what…demon? He’s refusing something. What in the hell is he going on about this time?’

Hermione was about to respond with the next bombardment of ‘What the hell’ questions when Snape barged through the portrait into their common room.

“Draco? Draco, what the fuck happened? I thought I told you…” Snape barked but stopped when he saw Hermione sitting on the ground in front of Malfoy.

Hermione had been surprised when Malfoy had been carrying on talking to her about Gods knows what, but nothing prepared her for the shock she felt with Professor Snape using vulgar and ghastly language not only in front of students, but TO a student! To say she was mortified would be a great understatement!

“Granger, OUT! NOW! GET OUT OF HERE!” Snape ordered forcefully. Hermione stood up, shaking, and tried to run up to her bedroom.

“Severus, that is quite enough,” a voice reasoned from behind the portrait, halting Hermione where she stood. Albus Dumbledore strode into the common room with a grace and a presence like none other.

“Miss Granger has a right and a responsibility to be here. It is her home we are barging into, is it not? After all, Mr. Malfoy was speaking with her before you came into their rooms.”

Severus Snape was seething with anger and glaring daggers at Hermione, but he stalked off into a corner at the Headmaster’s words.

“That’s…that’s all right Professors, I’ll be upstairs,” Hermione shot out of the room like a bat out of hell. She could not climb the stairs fast enough.

Hermione ran right into the lavatory and began throwing water on her face. She felt truly scared for once. She was not used to feeling scared at Hogwarts. This was her safe haven!

Hermione collapsed on her bed and started to cry. It took a long time before she got past all the strange words Malfoy had said, and what Professor Snape had said.

She calmed herself using a Muggle breathing technique and decided to replay in her head as much of the conversation she could remember.

“He said, ‘I can’t go back already! I just got back from that bloody place this morning.’ Did he mean Malfoy Manor? Where else could he have been? But if he just got back this morning, who was having sex in his room last night?” she mumbled at Crookshanks as she went through the conversation.

She made it all the way to the words Malfoy said before she mentally accused him of being possessed by a demon, before she stopped in horror and alarm.

Hermione sat up on her bed and gulped in a lungful of air, almost damaging them in the process. Malfoy had called her ‘Hermione’.

~*~

Hermione wanted desperately to leave the confines of her bedroom and to talk to Misten, or at least Harry and Ron. She knew that Misten always seemed so calm and capable of handing a situation. It was a trait Hermione recognized in herself, but was also able to appreciate in someone who was around her.

‘I have to tell someone what Malfoy said!’ she thought. ‘But I can’t even explain what happened because I don’t understand everything that went on!’

Hermione got off her bed and tiptoed to her door. She opened it a crack and listened for any sounds coming from the common room.

“Nothing,” she whispered. “I hear nothing.”

After waiting another minute just to be sure, she grabbed her wand and made her exit, finding the common room empty.

Hermione found Misten, sans the boys and every one else, in the Gryffindor common room. Misten didn’t waste any time. She stood up at seeing Hermione and closed her into a hug.

“Are you okay?” she asked tentatively. “I probably shouldn’t have left you with Draco unhinged like that, but he can be pretty scary when he is in that mood.”

Hermione lost herself in the generous hug before realizing what Misten had said. ‘…left you with Draco…he can be pretty scary...in that mood’

“Wait…what?” Hermione said as she pulled away. “You just called Malfoy ‘Draco’. I don’t think that is the first time either, now that I remember our earlier conversation in the library. And what do you mean he can be pretty scary when he is in that mood? When have you seen him in that mood before?”

Misten looked like a kid who had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

“Hermione, I need to tell you something, but you must keep it a secret. I don’t expect you to understand, but being an outsider here has been hard. Everyone already has his or her set of friends and whichever group I try to be part of, I constantly feel like a fifth wheel,” she turned seventeen shades of red, once again.

“I have kind of been talking to Draco; a lot. It’s no big deal, but he thought it was a good idea for us to keep it quiet. He didn’t want his reputation as a Gryffindor-hater to get tarnished by spending time with me,” she smiled sheepishly and looked at Hermione for approval.

“Are you dating him?” Hermione asked, knowing she couldn’t help herself from asking the very private question.

Misten screwed up her face as the flopped onto one of the couches and said, “Gods no! I mean he is good looking and has a great body but he’s not my type. That is why I was in the classroom on Saturday night with Professor Snape who, by the way, is seriously sexy! I had just finished talking to him about something that I was worried about with Draco and then I asked my potions question and got the eye thing, and well, you know the rest.”

Hermione’s brain once again started to spin from all the shocking things that were going on in her head.

“You think Professor Snape is sexy? With his greasy hair and huge nose and attitude problem? Have you gone mad?” Hermione couldn’t help herself. The words Misten said all sounded ludicrous!

“No way, Hermione. Snape is beautiful. Sure he has greasier hair than I’d like, but he’s around potions and boiling cauldrons all day. He can’t help it if it is humid as hell in his classroom. And his attitude can be pretty grouchy. But I already told you I think it’s how you look at it. I mean he’s got to deal with disrespectful students all day who don’t understand the first thing about potions, really. He can’t relate to them because he’s a master at what he does and probably knows more than most of the world about brewing!”

“Are we talking about the same Professor Snape here?” Hermione asked disbelievingly.

Misten smiled as she looked at her bewildered friend, “You’re right about his nose, though. I can’t believe he doesn’t have a bird nesting in those nostrils!”

This caused both girls to laugh and it lightened the mood in the room, considerably.

“Okay, but I am still confused. Where did you and Malfoy find time alone to become friendly?” Hermione asked, still confused at the thought that any Slytherin could be worth Misten’s time.

“Here and there. He walks the hallways at night, much like I do.” Misten saw the concerned face Hermione gave and added, “I have never been able to sleep the whole night through and I find a good walk usually helps me unwind. Anyway, he and I have spent hours just talking and blowing off steam. I have seen him in those outburst stages before and have learned it is just better to let him get it all out rather than interfere. Interrupting him in the middle of one would be a bit like trying to stop an erupting volcano!”

“I can’t get past the fact that you are friendly to Malfoy. He’s always been such a pompous jerk,” Hermione said, giggling at the picture in her brain of Malfoy’s head exploding like the top of a volcano.

“He’s a good guy, Hermione. He may not have been in the past, but this summer has really changed him. He’s gone through a lot of stuff in the last six months,” Misten explained. “I believe he’s on a better path now, even though he doesn’t always act like it. I imagine he knows I understand him on some level and that is why he felt comfortable enough to play that prank on us in your common room. I don’t think he would have done that, otherwise.”

Hermione and Misten grew silent as each of them reflected on what was just said.

“I can’t believe you fancy Malfoy!” Hermione breaking the silence and thinking about what Misten had revealed to her.

“I don’t fancy him, but have you looked at his body? He’s hot! And that whole bad boy persona he puts on? Yummy!” Misten said giggling at the horrified face Hermione was giving her. “Haven’t you ever looked at him and thought he was cute?”

“I’ve never been able to get past the ‘Mudblood’ comments and the swearing that comes out of his mouth to notice anything else,” Hermione stated in all honesty.

“Even Ginny thinks he’s good looking!” Misten said, defending herself.

“Ginny would think any male was cute as long as he was breathing!” Hermione said and gave in to a fit of laughter.

~*~

That night at dinner, Hermione received a note from the Headmaster that Malfoy needed to be excused from Head duties that week due to an out-of-school emergency that had come up. Hermione was advised to get Ron or Harry to complete rounds with her and to let the Headmaster know if anything occurred that Hermione could not handle.

While Hermione was not happy about getting all the duties dumped into her lap, she was secretly glad she would not have to deal with Malfoy’s moods again for a while. Besides, she thought it would be fun to spend the time talking to someone she liked.

Ron and Harry decided it would be a good idea if both of them were to accompany her on her walk Monday night. It seemed the two had realized they needed Hermione’s advice on a new plan. The three began the long walk through the many hallways of Hogwarts with Hermione in between the two young men who had shaped so much of her childhood.

“So what’s going on with the two of you? I haven’t seen much of you in the past few weeks!” Hermione complained to her best friends.

Ron and Harry exchanged a look and then Ron said, “What we are about to tell you can go no farther than us, okay?”

“That seems to be the Gryffindor line lately, but okay,” Hermione conceded. “Wait, let me ask you this, is anything you are planning going to cause me to have to inform Professor McGonagall? I am Head Girl this year and…”

“Yes! Yes! We know, Hermione,” Ron interrupted. “We’re fully aware of your dilemma between good friend and good Head Girl. If you remember Percy was Head Boy and we still told him things.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t like Percy. We never told him anything incriminating,” Harry said smiling at his two friends.

Hermione smiled once again at the two young men. It was almost like old times, the three of them talking and sharing secrets. “All right, what do you have cooking? Does this have anything to do with that potion you were researching?”

Ron and Harry exchanged another look and Harry said, “Well, we’re actually a little past that. You know how this was a Hogsmeade weekend, right?”

“Harry, you have to start at the beginning. It won’t make sense unless you start with the letter,” Ron interrupted, once again.

“Oh, right. I am always forgetting stuff,” Harry agreed. “Anyway, Ron got this letter from Percy the first week back. It seems our ex-Head Boy/Ministry of Magic ‘Weatherby’ know-it-all found out some new information about Voldemort’s plans.”

Hermione stopped walking and stared at her companions. “So you went to Dumbledore straight away, right?”

“We couldn’t! Percy didn’t actually tell me what the plans were, just that he was privileged enough to know about them. He wanted to brag and show-off his new knowledge,” Ron explained.

“Did you even show Professor Dumbledore the letter? Did you even try?” Hermione asked exasperated.

“There was nothing there, I tell you. Just let Harry continue!” Ron answered.

“Right, so Ron and I got the idea that…” Harry started.

“Brilliant idea. Say it! It was a brilliant idea and it was all mine!” Ron interrupted.

Harry just looked at him and continued, “…we would get it out of him. I remembered that Ginny was telling us this summer about how she read some old potions book that she found in the basement of the Burrow.”

“Don’t ask me why she was reading a potions book over summer! Who does that?” Ron said, rolling his eyes.

Hermione looked like she was going to lecture at the boys that it was an intelligent thing to do when Harry got back to his story, “The book had a potion for making someone tell you something and then forget not only what they told you but that they told you. I guess it was made by some witch who wanted to find out if her husband was cheating on her but she didn’t want him to remember she had asked in case she was wrong.”

“We couldn’t ask Ginny about the book again because she would be curious as to why we wanted to know the information. So we started doing some research to find the potion ingredients,” Ron explained.

Harry and Ron exchanged yet another look, reminding Hermione of the dozens of times the Weasley twins had done the same thing, before Harry continued. “We found the potion with your help on Saturday in another old text book here. When we realized that it would only take three hours to brew, we went to work. I am not going to tell you how we got the ingredients, but we did and we brewed the potion in an unused classroom on the sixth floor. Besides all the ‘borrowed’ ingredients have been replaced.”

“Oh Gods! I do not know anything about missing or replaced ingredients. That is just information that I can not know about, especially the part about you two brewing it in an unused classroom,” Hermione mumbled.

“Oh like you never brewed a potion in the lavatory with Moaning Myrtle crying away back in our second year,” accused Ron.

Hermione shook her head resignedly and smiled at the memory. She encouraged Harry to continue.

“We figured we had to talk to Percy anyway, so last week we owled Ron’s information-rich brother and asked him to meet us at the Three Broomsticks. We made it out like we needed him for some advice Ron wanted about his girlfriend. We figured Percy would jump at the chance to provide us innocent, naïve boys with some of his wise, worldly knowledge on the subject of witches.”

Ron couldn’t seem to contain his excitement any longer and spit out, “This past weekend when we got him alone in a booth, we got to use the potion on him!”

Hermione stared at the boys before asking, “You used an unknown potion on poor, unsuspecting Percy?”

“Well, Hermione,” Harry interjected, “we had to find out what he knew and if it was credible. You know better than most that it has been very quiet since the end of our fifth year and I needed to know if I was going to have to worry about an attack and studying NEWTS in the same year.”

Hermione knew Harry was being melodramatic and adding in the NEWTS bit purely for her benefit, but, nonetheless, the explanation still had its intended effect. It made her feel bad, “So what did you find out?”

“Other than Percy is an idiot? Not much. The only thing he said that was of any interest was that Voldemort was planning on increasing his numbers by recruiting students,” Ron said.

“Which we already knew, incidentally. So over-all it was a big waste of time, energy and potion ingredients,” Harry added, “but at least we now know about the potion in case you want to know anything about our favorite Death Eater in training.

“Harry! We cannot use that on Malfoy, I am shocked by your suggestion. Not to mention the trouble you two could have gotten into by brewing something in an used classroom and by not telling Professor Dumbledore that Percy knew something that could have helped the cause!” Hermione scolded remembering that she was upset with their choices.

Ron put his head down and shied away from Hermione like a puppy that was in trouble and said, “We would have told him if Percy had actually known anything.”

Hermione felt her old friends regret and conceded, “Well, no harm done I guess. I hate to be Percy when his boss asks something that you two have erased from his mind.”

“No one will probably know the difference. He’s such a tosser that it will be chalked up to another Percy-moment,” Ron said, laughing at his own joke.

“What am I going to do with you two?” Hermione asked half-kidding.

Harry gave her one of his famous smiles and asked, “The real question is what are you going to do next year without us?”

~*~

The following Saturday night, Hermione decided to take a long bath in her marble, private bathtub. Malfoy was due back from his family emergency the next day and she knew this would be one of the few times she would be able to soak uninterrupted.

After filling the tub with a mix of Lavender oil and bubble bath, she sank into the tub and started flipping through a Witchy Wearables catalog that Misten had gotten from a Chicago suburban store. Hermione could not stop thinking about her conversations the past week with her friends. This led to thinking of Malfoy’s discussion with, or rather, at her and Hermione refused to relive that exchange!

She found herself dozing several hours and water warming spells later. Hermione dragged herself out of the bath and into her bed, certain she would get a fantastic nights sleep.


Hermione was walking down an abandoned hallway on one of the top floors of Hogwarts. She had heard a noise and was curious to find out who was responsible for the clatter.

She walked into a very dark classroom and said, “Lumos.” Nothing happened. She tried again, “Lumos!” Again, nothing happened.

Hermione pulled on the sleeve of her robe and felt for her wand. She realized, belatedly, that it wasn’t there! After searching her body for the missing wand, she realized with dread that it was not with her in the pitch-black classroom.

“Looking for something, Hermione?” a male voice called out from somewhere in the middle of the room.

“Who’s there?” she said with fear and trepidation ringing in her voice. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

The voice chuckled and said, “Would you prefer to have the room lit? You do know how to light a room, don’t you?”

“I…I tried. It didn’t work,” she replied.

“Well, I like the darkness; it suits me. Why, Hermione, do you think your spell failed to work?” the voice said.

Hermione thought about it and couldn’t come up with a logical answer, so she decided not to answer, “Light a candle, please. I can’t see you.”

“Hermione, when you can light it, it will be lit. You know, you didn’t answer my question. Why didn’t your spell work?”

“I don’t know. I can’t find my wand,” she admitted. She immediately regretted announcing that she was unarmed. She used a trick she had heard from Harry to make the attacker forget your moment of stupidity and asked, “Why didn’t it work?”

The voice laughed out loud. “Good thinking, Hermione. I figured you wouldn’t ask that question, but as usual, you proved me wrong. I can’t tell you why it didn’t work, you must find the answer yourself.”

Hermione found that she was feeling frustrated as well as fearful and apprehensive. The phantom male was not giving her any information whilst confusing the things she already knew to be true.

As Hermione sighed out loud thinking about how she could get herself out of her current situation, she felt the man grab her arm and yank her into the room, slamming the door behind them. Immediately her frustration turned to pure terror.

“What…what are you doing? Light a candle so I can see you,” she commanded trying to sound fierce. But nothing was lit and Hermione felt the man’s arms encircling her waist.

“You are such a dumb witch. There is no way you are the smartest in your class. In fact, I think I saw that you were slipping in the ranks,” the man whispered in her ear.

“Let me go,” she cried as he shoved her onto the ground. She could feel the man stepping on her robes. “Let me go. Please, let me go!”

He bent over her putting his head close to her head and said, “You must be the least clever person ever. How could you allow yourself to be falling behind in your studies?”

“LET ME GO,” she screamed as she slapped the man, hoping to force him off of her before he said a spell to make her silent.

The man grabbed her shoulders and began to shake her.

As sudden as it began, it ended. Hermione woke up from her nightmare, sweating and crying.

She took deep breaths trying to get control of her emotions. When she looked up, she saw a face in front of her that she was sure was a live version of her nightmare!

“Oh my Gods! What are you doing in my room?” she screamed, terrified.