To Melt Down Gold

Someone is plotting to bring back the Dark Lord. Not Lucius. Hermione had taken a deep swim into his mind when she was last summoned home to perform a trick on someone’s vaults. Emptying them into the Malfoy vaults and leaving enough behind the goblins didn’t care to address the sudden transfer.

She’s been sifting through the rest of the students, overly ambitious seventh years who think they could be the next Dark Lord themselves. Idiot fourth years who might not realise the danger they are playing with by sneaking into the restricted section.

Apart from a sixth year with a fairly intent plan to kill his brother, they all seem too selfish to think about bringing back Tom.

The teachers are another thing. She hasn’t gotten close enough to most of them to take a clear look. Their minds are better protected, more developed.

Which is why she tells Harry and Theo to go to lunch without her after Potions.

Hermione waits for the last of the students to filter out of Severus’s classroom before she stands from her station.

“Professor,” she says, stopping him from walking into his office.

“Miss. Granger. To what do I owe the pleasure of your attendance to my entire lesson?” He asks, a bit rudely.

Hermione rolls her eyes. She’d found herself leaving his classroom early, bored out of her mind.

It was only because his classroom was the only one she felt comfortable performing so well.

Well above the level of her classmates.

“I quite enjoyed your lecture on temperature variation during a single brew. Not that anyone else did.”

“Let us skip the antics, Miss. Granger.” He sneers.

She smiles. “Someone in the castle is trying to bring Tom back.”

Severus stops tidying the room with his wand and scowls. “What?”

Hermione explains her suspicions and what she’s managed to pull together. He just looks at her sceptically until she gets to the creature in the woods.

“This wraith spoke to you?”

“Yes. I need you to tell me who on staff would most likely want Tom to come back.”

Severus opens his mouth as if to say none of them and then he swears under his breath.

“I don’t know. Professor Dumbledore has chosen everyone on staff. Except Binns but I’m fairly confident you can count him out. He’s filled the castle with allies.”

Hermione scoffs. She highly doubts that he wouldn’t hire someone questionable purely for his own means.

“How do you know it is a teacher?” Severus asks.

“Why else would the wraith be in the Forbidden Forest?”

“You have forgotten that mere miles away there is an entire wizarding village filled with witches and wizards? Any one of them could be involved.”

She hadn’t thought of that. 

It opens a whole can of worms she’d rather keep closed. But she has to know who the wraith is relying on. She has to stop them before that demented fractal takes physical form.

“Can you help me figure out the likely suspects?” She asks.

“Miss. Granger, I think you should focus on your studies. Keep your head down.”

It is a slightly longer ‘no’ than Hermione was expecting.

Fine. She doesn’t need his help.

Luckily, she knows a couple of third years who might be willing to poke around.

“I’ll try, Professor.”

And then she excuses herself.

“I told you, inevitable,” Fred Weasley grins when she sits opposite him at the Gryffindor table.

“Yes, you are so wise. Listen, I need a favour.”

“A favour for our friend?” George Weasley asks, tapping his brother’s arm and smiling.

“We can do our friend a favour,” Fred answers.

Hermione resists turning them both blue.

“Hogsmeade this weekend. I need you to get me a list of witches and wizards who live there that are part of the Sacred 28.”

She’d decided that was as good a place as any to start. She’d also spent the last couple of days trying to get detentions with as many different professors as possible. That way she’d have time alone with them when she could take more time to look into their minds.

“Homework, on the weekend?” Fred asks.

Hermione pulls the bribe she’d taken from Lord Malfoy’s study from her pocket.

She slides the tube across the table.

“What’s this?” George asks, sounding more than intrigued.

“It's a Probity Probe. It detects hidden objects and concealment spells.”

Both boys spend a minute looking at it before looking at each other and then smiling.

“Of course you'll have to come with us,” George says slowly.

"Yeah, help us stay task oriented." Fred wags his brow.

"I'm not allowed to go to Hogsmeade. I'm a first year student," she answers.

If any of the professors saw her they would have questions. And then they would keep a closer eye than they already are. Both things Hermione wants to avoid.

"Of course you can! You just can’t get there the same way everyone else does.”

Hermione looks at them in question but all they do is share a knowing look and shoot her matching mischievous smiles.

From a quick glance, she can tell that they have a much better command of the castle's many secrets than even the probity probe could help find. They had truly agreed to help her because they think of her as their friend.

“And what about the fact that people might see me?” She asks, pointing out a fairly large flaw. Getting to Hogsmeade isn’t the issue. Hermione could blink there in a second. It is the fact that she can’t do it under the radar.

“We’ll provide an excellent disguise,” Fred says.

She peers into his mind and nearly laughs. He is picturing a bright red wig and a pair of glasses with thick green frames.

“I can’t. I already promised Theo and Harry I’d help them with Potions,” she lies. Until the boys come up with a better plan, she won’t be visiting the village.

“On a Saturday? What a disappointment, green girl,” George tuts.

She rolls her eyes and excuses herself from the table. Taking note of the fact that she is receiving a lot more withering looks than she had when she first sat down.

Fred and George find eight people who fit Hermione’s criteria. She spends a pointless afternoon in the library tracing their lineage and trying to figure out which is the most likely culprit. 

She decides by the time dinner rolls around that she will just have to go to Hogsmeade and talk to them all herself.

Hermione is frustrated.

She isn’t supposed to be handling this yet.

Tom’s return was in the far off future.

It was something that she thought of completely in the abstract.

Her whole life she has thought of it as something entirely in her control.

Something that would wait as long as it had to. She’d figured out how to push Lucius’s timeline back. Figured out how to manipulate him into allowing his precious son more time to be a child.

And there is too much she doesn’t know. For the first time in her life, she has more questions than answers.

She feels a bit hopeless. Like she had when she realised she’d never know her parents. Her origins. The people that should have taught her to walk, to read, to love.

Before she goes to dinner, she decides to go to the bathroom. She leaves the library and walks down the third floor corridor to the nearest one.

There is no one else there.

She stands at the mirror and stares at her reflection.

Hermione Granger. That is all she has. She doesn’t have a middle name. Or a birthday. She doesn’t have anything other than a name she was raised to be ashamed of.

Her vision blurs and she blinks, surprised by the tears in her eyes.

Hermione doesn’t cry. Not anymore. 

Wiping at her face, she sniffles. When she looks once more at her own reflection the tears fall harder. She is just a child.

Why is this on her?

Before she can dry her eyes and pick herself up, a heavy thud sounds outside the bathroom door.

And then there's a troll standing in the bathroom, a four foot club in his hand.

It takes every part of her not to laugh.

Because of course there is a troll standing ten feet in front of her. An ugly, warty, foul smelling troll.

For a long moment, she thinks maybe it will just turn around and walk back out. It doesn’t seem particularly motivated.

And then it sees her.

Hermione doesn’t panic, but she also doesn’t move. She can’t kill it. That will only draw more attention- more suspicion- to her.

She should have her wand out.

For some reason her mind is working slowly.

“Hermione, move!” Harry’s voice comes from the door just as the troll lifts it’s arm and smashes his club through the three stalls, sending wood flying everywhere.

She shrieks and reaches for her bag only to find that it has been kicked against the row of sinks, five feet away.

Her wand is in there. She can’t do wandless magic right now. Not with Harry here.

“Hey, pea brain!” Another voice shouts.

Hermione turns. Theo is throwing a piece of wood at the thing.

Merlin, they can’t be here right now.

The troll could kill them.

The troll swings his club again and water bursts from a broken pipe. Before Hermione can come up with a plan, Harry is jumping on the back of the troll.

What he plans on doing up there escapes her, but luckily for the pair of them Theo seems like he keeps a good head in a fight.

“Wingariudm Leviosa,” he tries, aiming his wand at the club that is still wreaking havoc. It doesn’t work the first time but following another, stronger, “Wingardium Leviosa!” the club lifts out of the troll's hand. Hermione takes advantage of the chaos and helps Harry to the ground as gently as possible before using the club to knock the bloody troll out.

As the troll falls to the ground, it moans loudly and Hermione is able to get to Harry.

“Are you alright?” She asks.

“I should be the one asking you that,” he says, righting his glasses on his face.

“Um, do you think it’s dead?” Theo asks, wand pointed at the troll as if he knows another spell that might help him take down a fully grown mountain troll.

Luckily, several professors burst into the bathroom and usher them away from the awful creature.

Hermione can’t help but notice that Severus is hurt. Bleeding from his calf.

From the look Harry gives him, he’s noticed too.

Snape gives points to all three of them, much to McGonagall’s chagrin, and then tells them all to go to their dormitory.

As Hermione passes him exiting the bathroom, she looks up into his eyes.

The three headed dog.

A vague image of the right hand corridor on the very floor that the troll had managed to reach.

And Professor Quirrell.

Hermione manages to keep Harry and Theo quiet until they reach the common room at which point they are bombarded by questions from the other students, allowing Hermione to slip away to her room.

Theo had saved her from the troll.

Harry had run in without a thought for his own safety.

And Hermione didn’t do anything to stop the troll even though she could have done it in half a second.

She is a coward.

A coward who needs to get detention with Professor Quirrell.