A Turn for the Better

Chapter 9 ~ Chasing a Dream

Neville kneeled over the open trap door and shined his wand down inside it. All he could see was well, nothing but black space. He looked up at Hermione.

"There's nothing in there, Hermione. It's just a long drop," he said, rising and dusting off his robes. "I can't even see the ground."

"There's nothing in there now, but before it was filled with a writhing layer of deadly Devil's Snare," she told him.

"Before? What do you mean before? You had a dream, Hermione," Neville said a bit worriedly. "There was never Devil's Snare there."

Hermione looked up at Neville and saw the concerned look in his eyes. Neville was a good friend, and very supportive, but it was easy to see he was getting very worried about her and these dreams. To dream strange dreams was one thing, but to go trying to verify them . . . well, that was something else entirely. She hadn't told him about being in Harry's room and he knew nothing about the Time Turner Snape had taken from her.

"Hermione, I'm worried about you. Anyway, didn't you go to Madam Poppy to get some help for these dreams? What happened?" he questioned her, folding his arms now.

When Neville Longbottom folded his arms, he was going into "mule mode." Which meant he wasn't budging until he got some answers. He could be pushed, pulled and even kicked and he wouldn't give an inch of ground. He was so stubborn sometimes, but usually with good reason.

"Neville," Hermione said desperately, "I . . . I really think there's more to these dreams, and there's something I didn't tell you about . . . something really strange and embarrassing that happened just before I started having these dreams. I just want to see if I find anything that corresponds with what's been filling my head night after night. If you come with me, I promise . . . I'll tell you everything. Don't think I'm nutters, Neville . . . please."

Neville looked down into Hermione's desperate brown eyes and sighed, unfolding his arms.

"All right, but I want to know what you're looking for in advance. That way I can tell if you are really finding anything or making it up as you go along," he said to her with a frown.

"Neville Franklin Longbottom! I'd never do that!" Hermione exclaimed.

Neville arched an eyebrow at her.

"It wouldn't be the first time you've stretched the truth to get your way, Hermione. You're a right good little liar when you set your mind to it," he replied evenly.

Hermione colored. Yes, she would "stretch" the truth a bit sometimes. But just a little. Neville was such a stickler about not losing house points and following the rules. Hermione thought it was because both of his parents were Aurors and it was in his blood. So she may have intimated there was a rare plant in the Forbidden Forest that had gone to seed to get him to come with her while she collected Deadly Nightshade for some potion she was illegally brewing for acne, of which she had developed a horrible case.

"It was right here, Neville," she said, furrowing her brow at an empty patch of ground as Neville narrowed his eyes at her. They became even narrower when Hermione looked five feet to the right and exclaimed, "Oh, Deadly Nightshade! I might want a bit of that," and set about harvesting it.

He knew he'd been duped and lectured an unrepentant Hermione all the way back to the castle. It wasn't the first time she'd done it to him, or the last.

"All right. In this room, there was a layer of Devil's Snare. We dropped down a long ways and fell into it, and it tried to strangle us, but I used a bluebell fire spell on it and it released us. We dropped neatly to the floor below," Hermione said.

"We?" Neville asked her.

Hermione nodded.

"Ron Weasley and Harry Potter were with me," she explained.

"Weasley and Potter?" Neville said, shaking his head.

Hermione had only a few words for Ronald Weasley, and an angry, flicking wand for Harry Potter. They were two very unlikely companions. Neville looked doubtful.

"Go on, what happened next?" he asked her, his arms folding again.

"Well, we walked down a long, sloping passageway. The walls were damp and we heard clinking sounds. We entered a brilliantly lit chamber with a high ceiling above us and it was filled with what we thought were flying birds," Hermione continued. "There was a door on the other side and we were worried that the birds would attack us if we went for it. Then Harry saw they weren't birds, but keys."

"Keys?" Neville exclaimed. "Flying keys? Oh, Hermione."

"Just listen, Neville! There were broomsticks and when we found the door was locked, we figured out we had to each get a broom, fly up and find the right key for the door. Ron identified what it would probably look like, so we flew up . . ."

"That had to be a dream, Hermione. You hate flying," Neville commented.

"Will you let me tell you what happened?" Hermione said with irritation now.

"All right. All right," Neville said placatingly.

"So we flew up, Harry caught the key and we opened the door. In the next room was a giant chessboard, with great stone black and white pieces. Three of the black pieces were missing and we had to replace them and play a game of Wizard's Chess to get to the next door. Ron got clobbered by the White Queen, but we made it," she said smiling at the memory of it.

She really wasn't wild about Ron Weasley at all. They had left him knocked out.

"Can you hurry this up, Hermione? Lunch is going to be over in another half an hour," he said to her.

"We entered another room, and there was a troll, but someone had already taken care of it and it was out cold," Hermione said, her nose wrinkling. Her dreams were so lucid she could still smell the stinking beast.

"So we walked into the next room, and purple fire sprang up behind us, and black fire in front of us. We were trapped, but there was a table with seven differently shaped and colored bottles on them. Potions. I had to figure out which potion would put out the black fire and which would put out the purple fire. It was a logic puzzle and I had to figure out a riddle on parchment. I think professor Snape made it up," she said.

"Because he's a Potions master," Neville said rather dully.

"Naturally," Hermione said. "Anyway, Harry went through the door by himself, sending me back to check on Ron. He got the Sorcerer's stone before Lord Voldemort did, but he had to fight professor Quirrel. He had two faces, one on the back of his head, according to Harry. He was possessed by . . .

"Hold it. Professor Quirrel? The Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher?" Neville said with a snort, "You have to be kidding me. Professor Quirrel wouldn't fight anyone. He's scared of his own shadow!"

Professor Quirrel's was such a nervous teacher, that the students called him professor Squirrel behind his back, saying if you surprised him, he'd run squeaking up the closest tree. He truly was a nervous individual, who spoke with a slight stutter and didn't like to come into physical contact with other people. He never shook hands and his classroom stunk of garlic. He wore a turban supposedly given him as a reward for getting rid of a zombie, although he never spoke of exactly how he did it. Rumor had it, that it was stuffed with garlic too, because some pissed off vampire was after him. So he was quite jumpy, particularly at night.

"He was possessed by Voldemort," Hermione explained.

"But . . . " Neville pressed.

Hermione put her hands on her hips.

"You told me to tell you what was in my dream, and I did, Neville. I'm not going to stand here arguing with you about how logical it is. Now, come on . . . we have to go down there," she said, conjuring a small rock.

"What's that for?" Neville asked her.

"Well, I need to estimate how far down the floor is," Hermione explained. "I'll do this by dropping the stone and timing how long it takes to hit bottom. A dropped object starts its fall quite slowly, but then steadily increases its velocity each second by a constant amount . . ."

"Don't bother, Hermione," Neville said, waving away her explanation. "I'll never get it. Just drop the stone."

"Oh," Hermione said, blinking up at him as if unable to believe he couldn't grasp the simple concept. It was easily expressed through algebraic equations. Ah well. She dropped the stone counting off the seconds out loud. Four seconds had passed before it hit solid ground.

Neville looked pale.

"That sounds like a long drop," he said, "and I don't think I still bounce."

"You won't bounce. We're going to climb down," Hermione said, conjuring up a very large coil of rope and securely knotting it to a strong looking sconce on the wall. Neville threw the rope into the yawning black hole, his expression doubtful.

He'd do this, only because he knew if he didn't, Hermione would most likely come back here later and do it by herself. When she got it in her head to do something, nothing could stop her.

"Let me go down first," he said, grasping the rope and letting himself down slowly.

Hermione waited and waited. After about five minutes Neville called up to her.

"I've done it. It's a hard climb, Hermione," he said to the witch.

"Don't worry Neville, I can do it, Hermione said, lifting her robes and wrapping a good amount of fabric around the rope and clutching it tightly with her hands. Using the fabric as a buffer, she slid down the rope very quickly toward the small glow of Neville's lit wand, tightening her grip to slow down as she reached the floor.

"How'd you do that?" Neville asked her, amazed. She had reached the bottom twice as fast as he had.

Hermione tapped her temple with one hand as she pulled out her wand.

"Brains, Neville, brains," she replied smugly. "They can be just as good as muscles. Now come on. Let's see what we can find."

They walked through the area. Indeed there was a passageway that sloped downward, and a door that opened on a high ceiling room, but it wasn't brightly lit, and then there was a door, unlocked as well.

Hermione walked through it and froze.

Neville entered and stopped beside her, his mouth dropping open as they shined their wands on what lay before them.

A huge chessboard with large sized pieces.

"It's here," Neville breathed, his eyes wide as he looked at Hermione in disbelief, "the chessboard's really here. How can this be possible, Hermione?"

Hermione stared at the ghostly White Queen, which stood partly in shadow. Slowly, she responded to his question.

"Well, it could be my dreams are based on reality, Neville," she said softly, but her brown eyes were excited. "A reality that never happened. Then again, it could be some kind of divination too. Precognition. But there's one sure way to find out for certain. This wasn't all I dreamed last night. There was one more dream before it . . ."

She turned and looked at the stunned wizard, a slightly crazed glow in her eyes reflected by the wand light. Neville recognized that look. It was a look Hermione got when she believed she knew something no one else did.

It was rather frightening, actually.

"I need to talk to Hagrid, the groundskeeper," she breathed.

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After classes that evening, Hermione and Neville hurried across the grounds for the groundskeeper's small hut. Neither of them had ever visited the half-giant before. Hagrid was a rather quiet, solitary fellow, often the brunt of student jokes. He lived alone and as far as anyone knew, did no magic. On occasion he could be seen leaving the Hogwarts grounds on some errand for Dumbledore.

There was a sadness to Rubeus Hagrid, the kind of sadness that comes from being a man wrongly accused and punished, ostracized because of an act that he had nothing to do with, a terrible act that had caused a young witch her life. He wasn't accused of causing the actual death, but his actions were deemed to have facilitated it. It was an onus that followed him all of his days.

Hagrid sat before the fire in the hut, his large hands clamped around a mug of hot soup. He sipped it, his whiskery beard catching some of the steaming liquid. He started when a knock sounded on the door.

He put his mug down on a roughly hewn wooden table and heaved his bulk up out of the chair and lumbered over to the door.

"Who's out thar?" he said through the door.

"It's . . . it's Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom, Mr. Hagrid," Hermione replied.

"Wot 'd yah want?" he asked suspiciously. He'd been pranked on occasion by students and wasn't taking any chances.

"I'd like to talk to you, sir," Hermione said, "I'm doing a report on historical occurrences at Hogwarts and would like to interview you."

Both of Hagrid's bushy black eyebrows rose.

"Ter interview me? Well, now . . . tha's all right," he said with a smile.

No one ever paid him any attention. He pulled the door opened and looked down at Hermione and Neville, who both swallowed. He was bigger than they thought.

"Come on in. Make yerselves comf'table," the wizard said genially, waving his hand at the clutter.

"Thank you," Hermione murmured, walking past him.

They settled on a bench. The hut was close and the air slightly stale. It could use a good airing out. Hagrid grasped two brown, round and rather hard looking buns in his dirty hands, offering them to Neville and Hermione.

"Rock cake?" he asked them politely.

Both Hermione and Neville declined.

"Thank you, Mr. Hagrid, but we both just ate and couldn't possibly eat other bite," she said, not wanting to offend him by turning down his hospitality.

Hagrid put the rock cakes down on the table with a clunk.

"Well, yah kin wrap 'em up and take 'em wit you when yah go," he said smiling, lowering his bulk into the chair. "Now, wot'd yah wan' ter talk 'bout?"

Hermione took a deep breath.

"What can you tell us about the Chamber of Secrets?" she asked.

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A/N: Uh oh. Lol. Thanks for reading.