Chapter 9
She had to stop herself from skipping through the halls to the last Defense class. After Harry had explained the plan, she was more than happy to back him up. They had already done all the studying needed for exams, and the more she adjusted to the idea that her grades at Hogwarts were irrelevant, the happier she was.
Her parents had been completely off their nuts as well when she told them she wasn't returning to Hogwarts and that she was attending Westminster next year. That had been beyond their wildest dreams, and they instantly loved Harry for it. She hoped they stayed in love with him when they met next week, she planned to claim him as her own in the not too distant future. It was far too early for loveydovey stuff and they both knew it, but she liked they way their magics snuggled together when they were near.
She found it strange though, that nearly every other student knew Harry, and would respond when he spoke to them, but none of them would say hello to him in the hall or just chat about things. It was also strange how Parvati and Lavender had suddenly become chummy with her after she'd become friends with Harry.
As they entered the classroom she was hit with the cloud of garlic smell that Quirrell used to cover up the fact he was rotting from within. She had been back to the classroom most days, at least for a little while, to try to get used to the stink so it didn't distract her anymore. They took their seats, and shared a smile over the faces and complaints of the other students.
When Quirrell arrived and closed the door behind him, they had all their class materials ready - books, parchment, quill, inkpot, wand. Quirrell - Professor Quirrell, she corrected herself - waited while he looked out over the class, and everyone waited patiently for three minutes until Ronald Weasley arrived. When he opened the door and shot into the nearest desk, there were more than a few smirks in the room.
"D-d-detention, W-w-w-weasley!" Professor Quirrell stuttered.
In the early part of the year, several other Gryffindors would have laughed out loud at Weasley's habitual detention, but after serving a few with him for their laughter, they learned to keep it under wraps. Now, at the end of the year, most of them were just annoyed at having to wait for him.
Professor Quirrell stuttered and stammered his way through a lesson on trolls, and toward the end of the class, actually mentioned that a large group of trolls had served You-Know-Who during the last war. She couldn't believe her luck, and jumped at the segue with both hands.
"Yes G-g-granger?"
"Sir, everyone seems to go on and on about how great and powerful Voldemort was, but how is it a mark of greatness to trick a group of the stupidest bipeds in existence?"
Professor Quirrell's face twisted in rage, and his eyes went slightly wild. "Fifty points from Gryffindor for your cheek!" He shouted. "Voldemort was the mightiest dark lord in history!"
Harry calmly raised his hand.
"Potter!" Professor Quirrell spat his name.
"I don't think Voldemort was great at all, professor. I think he was an idiot and a coward."
Instantly, silence filled the classroom. Quirrell’s eyes flashed with rage as his cheeks went red. "Explain yourself!" He shouted.
Harry remained impassive. "Well, there's a lot of evidence, so I'll just stick with three obvious points. First of all the name Voldemort - French for 'flight from death'. It's like a big flashing sign that says 'I'm afraid of dying'. He must have thought it was cool until he figured that out, because then he tried very hard to get people to stop saying it, even going so far as to cast a Taboo on the name. That just screams 'I binned it and it's too late to take it back.' It's pure buffoonery.
“Secondly, there's the issue of his followers. If he'd bothered to do any actual research, he'd have seen that Britain was primed for a revolution against the Pureblood idiocy. He could have ridden the wave of freedom and power for the oppressed muggleborn and halfbloods and been installed as Minister inside a month, easily. Not only did he choose the wrong side idealogically, he chose the ones with political and monetary power but no magical power. Again, if he'd bothered to do any research, he'd have discovered that inbreeding weakens a family's magic. So why would he collect all the inbred weaklings instead of the powerful and competent ones that were subsequently driven away to enrich other countries? Again, pure stupidity.
“Thirdly, there's the means of his immortality. If he'd bothered to do any real research, he'd have discovered that there's a reason nobody sees ancient egyptians running around. No ten thousand year old Egyptians, no five thousand year old Egyptians, not even any thousand year old Egyptians. I read in the library of Hamunaptra that the experiments of Nicto the Outcast prove conclusively that splitting reduces the potency and longevity of all the pieces far below what they had when whole. Voldemort was so blinded by fear of death that he rushed to do anything that he thought would make him immortal, without researching whether his methods were sound. The evidence of history proves that Voldemort was a coward and a moron, professor. "
It was all delivered as though Harry were giving a lecture, and she had to hold back giggles as professor Quirrell got progressively more enraged, and by the time Harry finshed, the professor was near apoplectic.
"You'll pay for that, Potter!" He screamed.
She looked over to Harry, and he shifted ever so slightly, instantaneously. One second he was in one position, the next he was facing her just a hair more.
The professor reached into his robes, but pulled his empty hand out of them. He looked confused for a second, and then screamed "Fifty points from Ravenclaw and detention!"
She glanced subtly around the room, and there were a couple of Ravenclaws who seemed like they were torn between being impressed with Harry's knowledge and reasoning and wanted to kill him for insulting Voldemort.
Wasn't hard to mark whose family had supported him.
Professor Quirrell seemed to be listening to something then, and calmed immediately. "C-c-c-class d-d-dismissed!" He shouted.
Everyone shuffled quickly out of the classroom as they always did, eager to get out of the stink.
Finnegan ran up to her and Harry in the hallway. "Potter!" He said excitedly, "Was all that true what you said?"
Harry turned to look at him. "Yes, of course. Only an idiot bases an opinion on hearsay without doing research into the facts of the matter."
She wasn't sure if he did it on purpose, but it was a clear slap in the face to most Gryffindors. Finnegan looked suitably chastised.
"Uh, thanks." He managed after a moment, "That was brilliant."
"You're welcome." Harry responded politely.
When they went to dinner that evening, the whole Great Hall was buzzing with whispers about what Harry had said. Most of the Slytherin table glared at him like they wanted to kill him, and most of the Gryffindors stared at him like he was some kind of hero.
They retired to their training room for training after dinner, and Harry ignored the detention. When she asked him about it, he shrugged.
"What are they going to do, expel me?" He asked. "It would be a pointless waste of time, and he might force a confrontation I don't want."
She nodded, that made sense.
Harry was called to the headmaster's office again, presumably about skipping detention, but his 'stern talking to' clearly made absolutely no difference. That Saturday, Harry took them into London so she could establish her own bank account with Barclay's. Once that was finished, Harry transferred seventy thousand pounds into it.
"Payment complete." He said with a little smile.
"Pleasure doing business with you." She smiled back.
Exams were a dawdle, and they spent most of the week training in their training room. Hermione absolutely loved her knives, and often practiced with them without magic as well as with. Using the levitation spell in conjunction with her knives, she could draw them and control their flight to attack a target from behind. That made her all kinds of fizzy inside.
Harry said once she was used to doing magic without a wand or incantation, he would show her how to control each knife independently, one to attack and distract with, one to finish from behind with. She looked forward to that, even though she realized it would probably be a few years and they would be well established at Westminster by then.
It was the first day of five that had no classes or exams and she and Harry were in their room. She was practicing with her knives, of course, when Harry suddenly stiffened, then relaxed and smiled.
"The trap just activated." He said.
She made her knives fly back into their sheaths. "Do we need to change for this?" She asked.
He cocked his head and thought about it. "Technically no, but I think we should always change. It's not like it takes any time, and it is a safety measure."
She nodded once in acknowledgement. If it was going to be an always thing, then she would make sure it was an automatic reflex. She stepped over to Harry and wrapped her arms around him until the room took on its beautiful colour sheen, then walked to her dorm to change into her work clothes.
Harry was already waiting for her in the hall outside the common room when she was finished changing and braiding her hair - which took very little time, thanks to a spell she learned from one of Parvati's Witch Weekly magazines.
"Where's professor Snape?" She asked him.
"Third floor, heading toward the 'trap' room." Harry replied. He'd told her he tacked a tracking charm onto Snape's cape at the beginning of the year, and had been tracking the man the entire time, so she just assumed he knew where professor Snape was.
Sure enough, the Slytherin head was mid-stride in the third floor hallway only meters from the door that hid the three-headed dog - the cerberus, as she'd subsequently learned, was a species rather than a single specific animal like in the greek myths.
She took out her wand and pointed it at the professor, who obligingly floated into the air and followed along behind them as they walked down to the second floor.
When they traversed the broom cupboard into the room with the flying keys, they found all the keys lying still and quiet on the floor around the open door. The chess set in the next room had been exploded, and shards of stone lay strewn everywhere. Even the checkered board had pockmarks with divets blown out of the stone.
The logic puzzle room was untouched, and she figured that Quirrell had just done the same as them, and used a flame-freezing charm. Harry cast one on the flames, and they walked into the final room where Quirrell had his chin in his hand and was staring at the mirror.
Harry reached out a hand toward the possessed professor, and he floated into the air, turned, and then set back down on the ground facing them. Seeing what he was doing, she lined Snape up with Quirrell and the mirror, then patted Snape down and took his wand out of a hidden pocket in his sleeve.
Harry took Quirrell's wand, and they lined up their shots, but the angle was wrong. "Stop." She said.
"What is it?" Harry asked.
"We're too short." She said, and went to fetch two stepladders they had passed in the broom cupboard on the way in.
"Good catch." Harry said when she returned.
They lined up their shots again, she with Snape's wand, and Harry with Quirrell's, though they were side by side in the middle of the room, as Harry was about to use a blasting hex.
"Three, two, one." Harry counted down, and when he said "Fire.", she unleashed the most powerful severing curse she could, and was satisfied that it sailed through Quirrell's neck, through the mirror behind him, and cut a deep slice into the stone wall on the far side of the room.
Behind her, there was a thunderous detonation followed by splashing sounds.
Harry climbed down from his stepladder, and placed Quirrell's wand facing Snape and slightly right, near his headless body. She took a cue, and tossed Snape's wand by the tip up into the air over the area he occupied.
She climbed down from her stepladder, and hoisted it onto her shoulder, but stopped next to the gory remains of Snape on the way out.
It was disgusting of course, but she had to admit a certain fascination with what the insides looked like on the outside. She had expected to be nauseated by it, and there was a slight queasiness to her stomach as she catalogued the things she could identify - heart, intestines, lungs, liver - but there was nowhere near the revulsion she'd imagined she'd feel.
"You alright?" Harry asked.
She nodded, and smiled at him. "Just curious. Never seen the insides everywhere like that before."
Harry held his hand out to her, and she happily took it as they retreated from the scene and hung the stepladders back where they'd been on their way out.
Again, they stopped in their training room to clean and properly store their work clothes.
"Now just Dumbledore after we board the train." He said.
"Not looking forward to that one, but only because I have to stay on the train." She told him.
"It'll be nothing." He reassured her, "No time at all, just a nice relaxing train ride and meeting your parents."
"I can't wait." She grinned at him, "We are going to have so much fun training this summer!"
She pulled him over to sit on the sofa, and snuggled into his side, just like her magic snuggled up to his. He put his arm around her with a confused but happy expression on his face, and she could feel him relax.