Kapitel 109: I Would Never Want to Be in Trouble
"Well, I'm off to detention," Hermione said as dinner finished up. "Wish me luck."
"Do you have to sound so happy?" Sally-Anne asked. "It is detention. Just a few years ago, you would've dreaded the thought of it."
"And now everything's in perspective."
"Can I go with you?" Harry asked.
Hermione faltered, genuinely surprised by Harry's offer.
"Sure, if you want. I'm just walking upstairs."
She exchanged a quick glance with Sally-Anne, who appeared just as confused as she was. After sparing a glance down the table at Ron (who had decided to sit with Lavender and Parvati over her), she got up from the table and started off towards Umbridge's office.
"How are you feeling?" Harry asked. "After the other day, I mean."
"Fine, all things considered." They walked for a moment before a thought struck her. "Is that why you wanted to walk with me? To check up on me?"
"Just… making sure you're alright. Alavel was worried about you, so there's more to it than just you passing out. I… haven't really got a lot of friends right now."
"I'm not going anywhere." Hermione grinned. "Just watch them try to get rid of me. I'll be back by the next day."
Harry gave her a lopsided grin, but kept walking with her all the same. Hermione didn't give it much more thought. Like most of her friends, Harry was nice. She didn't know him as well as Sally-Anne or Ron did, but it was nice to know that her friends were all still looking out for her.
Including Ron?
Shut up, Princess! Quit nagging me about it!
It wasn't long before they arrived at Umbridge's office. It seemed to tower over Hermione, and she got a bad feeling about going inside. She dismissed it quickly. Umbridge was a Ministry goon, nothing more. The kind of person Rose would've chewed up and spat out without a second thought. Depending on the day, she might've even done so literally.
"See you later," Hermione said.
"I'll be close by," Harry said. "In case you need a quick getaway."
Hermione laughed and opened the door. The office was covered in bright pink and pictures of cats. Umbridge sat behind her desk, upon which laid a single black quill.
"Good evening, Ms. Granger." She looked past her to Harry. "You may leave now, Mr. Potter."
Harry hesitated for a moment, then nodded to Hermione before leaving. The door closed behind him, and Hermione took a seat in the only desk.
"You're going to write lines, Ms. Granger. Something simple. 'I must respect authority.'"
Hermione almost started laughing. It was exactly what she'd expected: a simple punishment from a simple teacher. Umbridge had no idea with whom she was dealing.
Harry and Alavel sat in a corridor not far from Umbridge's office as he heard the clock strike nine. Curfew. Hermione had been with Umbridge for two hours. Neither spoke a word. Harry didn't know why Alavel never spoke, but he was busy concentrating on Hermione.
Thanks to his bracelet, he had eyes and ears inside the room. As he'd found out, it allowed him to place a single, invisible sensor up to 30 feet away, through which he could see and hear. He'd also learned that he could walk away and leave the sensor whenever he liked, without concern for it disappearing.
Thus, when Hermione finally stepped out a few minutes later, Harry already knew exactly what had happened.
"Hello, boys," she said. "I'm all finished for tonight, but I'm expected back every day this week."
Harry glanced at her hand just as she pulled her sleeve over it.
"What's wrong with your hand?"
Hermione glanced at Alavel to see if he would tell Harry. Satisfied that he wouldn't, she lied to Harry.
"Nothing."
Alavel narrowed his eyes.
"Alavel says you're lying," Harry said.
"It's nothing," she replied automatically. "I'm fine."
"That's what you said after you passed out a few weeks ago." He glanced at her right hand. "You're hiding your right hand, but not your left. What'd she do to it?"
Hermione looked at Harry, then sighed. "Promise not to tell Ron or Sally-Anne?" She turned her glare to Alavel. "Or anyone else?"
"Sure."
"I'm only here to provide an excuse for Lord Skyeyes being out past curfew."
Hermione brought her hand up to show Harry. Traces of "I must respect authority" were still visible on it.
"What happened?"
"I'll explain later," Hermione said, turning around. "First, I've got to check something."
Hermione turned around and started walking up to the next floor.
"Where are you going?" Harry asked.
"Room of Requirement," Hermione replied. "I need to test a theory."
"Now?"
"If I'm right, it'll help hide the marks." She stopped walking and turned back to him. "Or do you want Princess to get involved?"
"What have you got in there that can hide it?" Harry asked.
"It's not what I've got inside," Hermione said. "What I've got is an understanding of how the Room of Requirement works."
Harry ran to catch up to Hermione, then fell into step with her. "What?"
"So far as I can tell, the Room of Requirement is created as a byproduct of the magic that sustains Hogwarts. I don't know if one of the creators created it on purpose, or if it just appeared, but either way, I think it was originally meant as a storage room."
Harry frowned. Of all the possible purposes he'd thought of for the Room of Requirement, storage never so much as crossed his mind.
"Really?"
"It's obvious. What better way to store something than a room completely out of the way, that can turn into anything you want? It's hidden, like a storeroom should be, but pops up whenever you need it. It can then redecorate itself to fit whatever organizational scheme the user wants, making it easier for them to find it."
"So you think someone hid a pair of gloves in it?" he asked as they rounded the corner to the corridor with the dancing troll tapestry.
"I think it collects lost objects in Hogwarts," Hermione replied. "People lose gloves all the time. Hopefully, someone will have lost an entire pair, or at least a pair that looks similar enough that I can use them."
Hermione paced up and down the corridor, triggering the Room of Requirement. Harry followed her inside the room, checking for anyone nearby so they weren't caught. Alavel agreed to patrol the corridor for them. Just in case, Harry left a sensor outside the room.
Inside, he found a room covered in gloves. Gloves of all shapes, sizes, and styles filled the room, all neatly placed on shelves, racks, and displays.
"Well, Hermione, you wanted gloves," Harry said, still bewildered that Hermione's theory had been proven correct.
"I think I asked for some." Hermione wasted no time looking over the gloves. As she'd said, most of them were single gloves. Some looked similar, but one was always bigger than the other. Some were the right size, but never looked right.
"Found one!" Harry called to her.
Hermione navigated the room to where Harry was looking. She followed his gaze to a display that the room clearly wanted them to see. The pair was on its own pedestal, and Harry swore a spotlight was shining on it from somewhere.
"It would do this," Hermione said.
"It's the only pair I've found that will work," Harry said. "The others are all too big or too small."
Hermione shot him a look that looked half angry, half curious. "How would you know?"
"I've got to be able to judge distance when fighting so I know if I'm within range for Rose's enhancements."
"Why wouldn't you know? Shouldn't it be obvious if you're within range for blindsight?"
"It is, but I need to know how much distance I can safely keep between them and myself."
Hermione pondered it for a moment, then picked up the gloves. She held them in her hands, either studying them intently or spacing out. After looking around the room one more time, she sighed.
"I guess this is the only pair." She turned them over a few times, carefully examining them. "No holes or anything."
"A little odd looking."
"So am I," Hermione said, slipping one glove over her scarred hand. "Oh, they're nice and warm."
"Doesn't that hurt?" Harry asked as Hermione slid the other glove over her hand.
"Of course not. Why would it?"
"You were slicing words into your own hand."
"I never said what she did in there."
Harry tensed as he realized what he'd said; what he'd done. He'd given away his gift that he'd been trying to keep secret.
Harry held up his hand and slid down his sleeve to reveal a chain-link bracelet.
"Alavel gave it to me after we won the Quidditch match last year."
Hermione still eyed him with distrust. "What's it do?"
"It… it lets me place a sort of… bug. I can see and hear through it, like a kind of camera."
Harry didn't know what to expect, but he knew it wouldn't end well. He knew lying was one of Hermione's buttons, probably induced by so much time around Rose. He tensed up and waited for her outburst, but she never started.
"Is that why you wanted to drop me off?" Hermione asked. "So you could spy on me?"
"I wasn't spying. I wanted to support you in case Umbridge did something horrible to you. Then we could both go to Professor McGonagall. She'd believe me when I told her about this; she's got that pendant Rose made her that she uses to tell Fred and George apart."
Hermione frowned and scrunched her nose. She wasn't angry; Harry knew that was a different face. He was looking at her thinking face.
"It must be like spymaster's coin," Hermione said. "It isn't clairaudience, that's just sound, and clairvoyence is just sight. Is it just one sensor?"
"Yeah."
"Interesting. Like a short-range scrying." She blinked a few times and changed the conversation. "Hold on, why?"
"Huh?"
Hermione rolled her eyes at him. "Why bother with me? I could see Ron trying it, or Sally-Anne, but why you?"
"Because… sometimes it feels like everyone thinks I'm mad. But you believe me."
"Of course I believe you. Nothing apart from Voldemort could've killed Rose, except maybe… never mind." She looked at him and realized he was hoping for an answer. "Sorry, something from her world."
Harry nodded, hoping Hermione wasn't about to launch into a Luna-style explanation of something he'd have to tune out.
"You're… sure you're okay?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"You… you didn't even flinch when you were writing lines. It was horrible just watching. You just wrote over and over, like it wasn't bothering you."
Hermione looked at him as if he'd just said something unbelievable. "Of course it was bothering me. I was carving words into my own skin. I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of seeing me in pain, so I shut it out."
"I don't miss details, Hermione. You weren't just shutting it out, you weren't even feeling it!"
"Maybe I've just gotten used to shutting out the pain!"
Glass shattered around them. Harry drew his wand. His focus went to his blindsight. He wasn't taking any chances, not with Hermione with him. Sirius and Alavel could take care of themselves, but the same couldn't necessarily be said for Hermione.
"It's alright, Scarface," Hermione said, considerably less on edge than he was. "It was just me."
Harry gave her a hard look before lowering his wand. "Are you sure?"
"Positive. That keeps happening to me. Just like over the summer when I set that article on fire. If I get too worked up, I lose control of my magic."
Harry put his wand away before taking a step closer to her. "Are you alright?"
Instead of looking afraid or worried, Hermione's distaste was what made it to her face. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Treat me like I'm made of glass. Like I'm helpless, and everyone else has to save me. I'm sick of it. Ron keeps doing it, Princess is probably the worst about it. I didn't ask for anyone's help. It's not as bad as it was, and I'm fine. It's just taking a little longer than I'd like to get back to normal."
Harry thought back for a moment to when he'd made the decision to plant a sensor in Umbridge's office.
"I won't put another sensor in the classroom," he said. "I… It seems like Alavel's the only one that isn't treating me like a kid."
"Well, you've always got me," Hermione said, giving a smile that Harry could've said was forced from a mile off.
They started out of the Room of Requirement. Harry checked the sensor before they left, and found only Alavel in the corridor.
"I hope you found what you were looking for," Alavel said. He glanced down at Hermione's hands and smiled. "Lady Rose would love them."
Hermione smiled back. On their way back, only Harry spoke.
"Don't call me 'Scarface' anymore," he said. "It's 'Skyeyes' now."
"Right, it is," Hermione replied. "I'll get the hang of it."
Herbology the next morning wasn't a problem with gloves; if anything, it was a lot easier. Hermione could hear her classmates whispering about her new "fashion choice", which she found just a little insulting. They either didn't think she could hear them, or didn't care. Either way, she felt she should be insulted.
"Stop judging me," she said to Sally-Anne when they both arrived at Ancient Runes.
"I haven't said anything about the fact that you're wearing welding gloves," Sally-Anne replied.
"You don't have to," Hermione replied. "I know you're thinking it."
She made a note of Professor Babbling's new office hours, having decided that she was going to start working on a runic cluster for telepathic communication. She didn't know how it would work yet, but she was determined to find a way. They had magic, after all; anything was possible. Even raising the dead seemed possible, what with Voldemort's return. She still didn't know how that had worked, but she had a horrible feeling that Rose had played a part in it.
No, Harry said she hadn't shown up until after he came back, she reminded herself. It's fine.
Although both Professors Sprout and Babbling gave her odd looks, it wasn't until Potions that anyone called her out on the gloves.
"What in Merlin's name is on your hands, Granger?" Professor Snape asked.
"Gloves, I believe," Hermione replied. "Why? Do you like them?"
Judging by Professor Snape's expression, Hermione determined that he either hated them or was positively ecstatic about them. With Professor Snape, those were the same facial expressions.
"Working on a Peta-Lorrum costume for Hallowe'en?"
"I am now," Hermione replied, doing her best impression of Rose, complete with toothy grin.
Snape was clearly not amused.
Hermione could hardly contain her excitement Wednesday morning. She was off to Professor Vector's office, ready to talk with her favorite professor. She'd barely talked with her in a year, and there was so much to show her. Hermione didn't know where to begin.
"Start with wandless casting," she muttered. "Then–"
"Ooooooh! Beware!"
Hermione rolled her eyes. On her long list of things she'd missed from Hogwarts, Peeves the Poltergeist wasn't one of them. She kept on her path, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of messing with her mind.
Something exploded near her, causing a few nearby students to jump. Hermione ignored it, glancing up as Peeves flew by.
"Ghosts," she muttered. "What do you do against ghosts?"
Wrong question, Brain. What do you do against Peeves?
Hermione slowly worked through a spell to replicate sound. It wasn't possible to replicate it perfectly, as she'd learned when she'd discovered that Basilisks could be killed by hearing a rooster crow. But then, it didn't need to be perfect.
Peeves stopped in the middle of another flyover when the sound of chains echoed down the corridor.
"Peeves!" a voice roared.
Hermione turned back to Peeves. "That sounds like an angry Bloody Baron to me. You might want to run."
The same voice roared, growing louder and closer to the frightened poltergeist.
"Ah!" he yelped. He flew off down the corridor and out of sight.
"That's what you do against ghosts," she muttered. She strained to hear herself over her own heartbeat.
"Hermione, are you alright?"
Hermione shot out a hand to steady herself, then slowly looked around. Professor Vector stood behind her.
"I'm fine," Hermione said. "Just got a little dizzy is all. I'll be alright once I sit down."
Hermione followed Professor Vector back to her office and took a seat across from her.
"Is there anything you'd like to ask me about?" Professor Vector asked.
Hermione took out a notebook, flipped to a marked page, and began to read down a list.
"I'm looking into Rose's magic," Hermione said. "It's… well, it's… erm…"
"She wasn't from our world, was she?" Professor Vector asked.
Hermione laughed in spite of herself.
"It's not hard to believe, is it?"
"Not in the slightest."
Hermione returned to her notebook and began to list off what she knew.
"I've seen her use dimension jumper, teleport, and dimension door; that's how she moved around the castle so fast and got me here. There's also telepathic bond, which was how she used the condition conch to communicate with me. Scholar's touch, and I've got a great specimen to study for that, same with sustenance, endure elements, and feather fall, although I think I know what to do for that last one. Maybe blindsight, while I'm at it."
"That's quite a list you've got," Professor Vector said. "What's the purpose of all of that?"
"I'm trying to replicate Rose's magic," Hermione replied. "I'm already working on telepathic bond. The goal is to create a cluster of runes that I can imprint on people to communicate with them, setting up a network like Rose did."
"Hermione, that'd be a breakthrough of unimaginable proportions," Vector said. "It'd change the way the DMLE operates. They could conduct entire raids without having to speak with one another."
"I also want to work on arcane sight," Hermione said. "Rose thought she could use it to detect magic in our world, but it didn't work on our magic. I don't know how much good it will do me, but I still want to try."
"That's easy enough. Change the focal point of an analysis charm to your eyes, and it should get you started."
"That's what I thought too." Hermione flipped through her notebook. "I also talked with her brother about something last year. She mentioned wish, which is how she replicated our magic with hers. Her brother told me most of the research on wish came from studying solar angels. He also said that happens a lot in their world. Freezing fog came from studying white dragons, that sort of thing. I thought if I could study how house-elves apparate, I could find a new way of apparating that wasn't blocked by the ward at Hogwarts."
"That would be dangerous," Professor Vector said. "If the wrong people found out how to do that, there would be no way to ensure the safety of anyone."
Hermione nodded and made a note of that in her notebook. She was sure it'd crossed her mind before, but she must've dismissed it. If it was a big problem, she would be sure to keep it away from anyone dangerous.
"What about your telepathic network?" Professor Vector asked. "What do you mean by that?"
"Anyone imprinted with the rune would be linked together," Hermione explained. "All you'd have to do would be to focus on the group, and you could send your thoughts to them. I figure the medium for it would be linked runes, I just don't know how to translate thoughts into that."
Professor Vector frowned and tapped her chin thoughtfully.
"I'm not sure either, but if anyone can figure it out, it's you." She took out a piece of parchment and scribbled something on it. "I'll ask around. I won't mention you or anything you're working on, but if someone else is working on something similar, perhaps we can collaborate. I can't make any promises, just that I'll try."
"Thank you," Hermione said. "Thank you so much."
After talking with Professor Vector about the past year, Hermione left for the library. Another problem had been bothering her for the past few days. When she arrived, she took in the overwhelming size of the library. That, and the fact that it had no proper filing system.
"All the problems that could be solved if you could just find the book you wanted," she muttered. "I should work on prying eyes while I'm at it."
Instead, Hermione went to work researching the quill Umbridge had made her use the previous two nights. While welding gloves were bulky, she quickly adjusted to flipping through books with them on.
"Hey."
Hermione looked up from her book on magic quills. Her heart stopped when she saw Ron standing a few feet away.
"H-hi."
Panic began to set in. She heard her heart beat louder, faster.
"What… what happened over the summer?" he asked.
Don't tell him you had other things on your mind.
"What do you mean?"
"I wrote to you. All the time, but you never wrote back."
Hermione's brain sped along and gave her hundreds of solutions.
"I'm sorry."
Ron stood and glared at her.
"Is that it?"
"I… I really can't talk right now. I've got to work out my next move against Umbridge, and then I've got work to do."
Hermione turned her gaze back towards her books, convincing herself that it was better that way.
It's better this way.
Best let him think I'm different.
I'm against Umbridge, and he's a prefect. I don't even think we can be friends. His mum was so proud of him, I can't take that from him.
I don't want to hurt him anymore.
"So that's it, then? You're just going to fight a whole war by yourself?"
Hermione spared a glance at Ron and saw only anger in his eyes. Eyes that had once shone with kindness and admiration.
Just don't tell him he wasn't important enough. Let him think you're blowing off everyone.
"If that's what I've got to do."
He trembled for a moment, but neither his glare nor contempt faded.
"Fine," he said. "I'll just stop wasting my time then."
Hermione kept her mouth shut. She didn't speak a word as Ron lingered for just a second, offering her a final chance. She didn't let her cool detachment falter. Not until Ron turned around and walked away. Only when she could no longer see him did she close her book. She'd already memorized it anyway.
It's better this way. It's better this way.
She repeated the same words over and over until she found the Room of Requirement. At first, she started asking for a place to hide, but she realized that wasn't what she wanted. She wanted somewhere where she could stay and look back on the past. Somewhere she could feel safe for a moment before waging a war by herself. She couldn't let any of her friends become involved. They'd only get hurt if they tried, and she couldn't let that happen.
I can handle it on my own.
She opened the door to the Room of Requirement, then let it close behind her. She climbed on top of one of Rose's crafting tables and drew her legs to her chest.
There, surrounded by dead furnaces and empty tables, Hermione allowed herself to cry.
It's alright, Brain. Uncle Oz says it's okay to cry when you're sad. Just cry until it stops hurting. Then we can face that pink thing together.
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein