Same Day.

Thursday, Sept. 12

Her lungs ached. The air reeked of burning foam. Her wand in her hand thrummed with power in a way that she had never felt before. Power and eagerness; like it had been starving for a fight.

More spiders rushed at them and Hermione reacted.

There was no spellcasting, no fancy wand-work, just her raw will shaping the flames that now surrounded her. A dozen of them.

Two merged, against all logic becoming half a dozen times bigger than the sum of their parts, and, with a flex of her will, it shot off like an arrow and slammed into one of the approaching spiders, setting it alight.

The spider thrashed and burned for a few seconds, before it poofed out of existence like they always did after taking a serious hit.

That was one down but many more to go; the very reason why she and Harry had to remain on the move, lest they get swarmed by numbers.

A spider dive-bombed them from up in the trees, and Hermione only noticed it when Harry pointed his wand at it and shouted, “wingardium leviosa!” leaving it floating helplessly in the air.

Casting in the heat of the moment the way he was, Harry’s incantation was atrocious; he put emphasis on all the wrong syllables, and the less said about his wand-work the better, nevertheless, the spell worked. As it always had for the both of them no matter how much they butchered them.

Actually, it may be possible that Hermione had done silent casting once or twice since this mad rush started.

This mad rush that wouldn’t stop.

“Why won’t they stop attacking?” Harry shouted, unknowingly voicing her thoughts.

“I don’t know,” Hermione replied, as she tried to take a moment to create more flames so she didn’t run out. “From everything Hagrid told us they should have stopped by now.”

Both distracted by their conversation, an unseen spider slammed into Hermione from the left, sending her into Harry, and the two of them to the ground. That was it.

Over the hour they’d been practicing, both children had learned one very important lesson; when facing acromantulas, never fall.

Before she or Harry could get their bearings to control their flames, they’d been doused in ‘webbing’ and ‘bitten’ several times by the nearest spiders.

They were dead.

On the other hand, they had lasted almost eight minutes that time and killed over three dozen acromantulas before being taken down.

“Reset,” Hermione called, and the spiders and their webs instantly vanished in puffs of white, quickly-dissipating smoke.

Despite being free, both preteens remained on the ground, trying to catch their breaths as the effect of an hour of almost nonstop physical activity took its toll on them.

After almost five minutes, Hermione said, “I think it’s because we asked for a place to fight them in. That’s why they wouldn’t stop attacking.”

“Oh,” Harry said. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Then they both settled back into silence.

Between the softness of the ground and the serenity their idyllic surroundings afforded, Hermione and Harry soon began to drift off, and it was only Hedwig making her arrival known with a bark that kept the two from falling completely asleep.

Neither of them had any idea how the owl, who they hadn’t seen since lunch, had gotten into The Room of Requirement, but it was Hedwig, so they simply chalked it up to that.

Interestingly enough, the owl didn’t come empty-handed; she came carrying a note from Hagrid.

Apparently, he was inviting them over to watch the hatching of something called a rainbow butterfly. He also spelled her name wrong.

“Come on,” Hermione said rising, “if we hurry we might make it.” Hagrid’s note had warned that the butterfly might hatch at any moment, so hurrying might be best.

Unfortunately, the girl really didn’t want to go anywhere covered in icky, drying sweat like she was, so she had no choice but to head to the Gryffindor Tower first to bathe and change.

Or…

Outside the room, Hermione closed the door, and after it disappeared, walked across the blank wall three times, thinking to herself: ‘we need a bathroom.’

The door reappeared, and she opened it to find her bathroom at home. It was exactly how she remembered it, down to her toothbrush on the sink where she kept it.

Hermione walked in, looking around in amazement.

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“Is this the bathroom from your house?” Harry asked, and she nodded.

“It is! It’s exactly as I remember it. It even has my toothbrush. See?” She picked up the object to show Harry. “I brought this with me; it’s in our bathroom in the dorm.”

She looked at the toothbrush; it looked used. She sniffed it; it smelled used too, but more than that, it smelled like her toothpaste. The attention to detail was uncanny.

The girl looked around the bathroom; at the mirror she’d stood in front of for years, at the shower curtain her mother had bought just weeks before she left for Hogwarts, and at the door that led out of the bathroom that she knew would simply take her back into Hogwarts if she were to walk through it, and she was hit with a wave of homesickness so hard that it stole her breath away.

“Hermione, are you okay?” Harry asked.

She looked at him. “I miss home,” she said in a small voice.

Home didn’t have Voldemort. It didn’t have angry, hateful professors. It didn’t have basilisks, or giant man-eating spiders that she had to learn to kill so they didn’t kill her. No, it had safety, and comfort. And it had her parents.

And while she knew that their relationship wasn’t perfect, or even as good as it could be, she loved them, and she missed them. More than she’d imagined.

Harry hugged her.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “you’ll see them soon for Christmas.”

It barely took Hermione a second of thought to shake her head. “I’m not going home for Christmas.”

Harry pulled back. “Why?”

“Because I won’t leave you alone in Hogwarts, Harry. And you’re not going to those horrid Dursleys either. Those people are just awful. Treating you the way they do? What was Dumbledore thinking leaving you with them? They can’t even be called your family. And to think Petunia is your mom’s sister, I can’t even—”

Harry hugged her, tight. And for lack of anything else to do, Hermione hugged him back.

“I think I finally get what people mean when they say they’ve been blessed to know a person,” Harry said into her hair, and Hermione’s face went red.

“Oh, stop it, Harry,” she said. “All I have are books and cleverness.”

For some reason, Harry laughed, then he pulled back and said: “Don’t forget bravery and friendship.”

She could tell there was a joke in there somewhere, but Harry didn’t seem willing to share, so she ignored it.

Looking around the bathroom one more time, Hermione realised something; it was designed for one person to use at a time.

Great, she nearly sighed. There was no way Harry wasn’t going to make fun of her for this.

*****

A shower and magically cleaned clothes later, and Hermione and Harry headed for Hagrid’s hut.

His note had told them to come to the back, saying that was where he would be, so they did accordingly and went around.

The back of Hagrid’s hut had more space than Hermione had thought. There was a steep decline, just behind the house, which helped hide that there was an empty pen, as well as four small buildings of unknown purpose back there.

Finding Hagrid was easy, they could hear the man’s booming voice coming from the smallest of the buildings before them, and also see his dog, Fang, sitting outside of it.

The dog barked and rushed at Hermione as soon as it saw them coming, and Hermione endured his slobbery greeting stoically while Harry stood way back from the creature.

Coward.

“Fang, is that them?” Hagrid asked from within the windowless shack before the door opened to reveal the heavily bearded man.

“Hey, Hagrid,” Harry said, finally stepping forward now that Hermione had paid the price to calm Fang down.

“Harry, Hermione!” Hagrid called happily. “Yeh made it.”

Hermione was beginning to respond when Prof. Snape stepped out of the shack.

What was he doing here? She wondered.

Snape seemed to feel the same, because he asked Hagrid, his voice a growl through clenched teeth, “Why are they here, Hagrid?”

Hagrid looked perfectly ignorant of the sudden tension that had enveloped their surroundings. “Well, I thought they might like to see the butterfly hatch, so I—”

Snape began to walk away. “Have an elf bring the chrysalis to me when it’s done,” he said without turning.

All three of them watched him go, Hagrid with confusion, Harry with anger, and Hermione with a mix of both.

Finally, Hagrid muttered. “Strange one, that Snape.” Then louder, he said, “Yeh two should come in now, it’s almost starting.”

Hermione took Harry’s hand before they walked in, a gesture he seemed to appreciate.

The shack was dark inside, except for a weak, pulsing light that changed colours randomly. Wait. It wasn’t a light.

Hermione and Harry approached it and saw that it was actually a chrysalis. It was hanging off a broken branch, itself tied to a string hanging from the ceiling, and it was the source of the changing light lighting the room.

It was beautiful.

“This is a rainbow butterfly?” Hermione asked.

Hagrid nodded, smiling hugely. “Thought it would be the muggle one, did yeh?” He asked.

Hermione hadn’t even known that there were muggle rainbow butterflies, and she said so.

“Oh?” Hagrid looked surprised (Hermione didn’t know why, but people tended to get that reaction whenever they learnt she didn’t know something). “Well, there are,” the man said. “Beautiful, mind, but dull next to their magical cousins. Can’t blame muggles for giving ‘em the name though; completely blind to the magical kind, muggles. A shame. Quite the beauty.”

Hermione had to agree. It was quite unfair, really; being unable to see something so beautiful simply because you couldn’t use magic.

She wondered if there was a way to bypass it.

“I’m guessing it’s useful for potions,” Harry said. “That’s why Snape was here.”

Hagrid nodded. “Oh, yes, been waiting on this day near a week now. Don’t know why he suddenly left.”

The talk about the butterfly being useful for potions set off an alarm in Hermione’s head. “You’re not going to kill it, are you?” she asked Hagrid.

The man looked alarmed. “What? No, of course not! I didn’t bring the little fellow from The Forest to keep ‘im safe only to have Snape chop him up. All he’s taking is the cocoon when he’s done.”

Oh. That was good. Hermione had been worried they were going to watch the butterfly hatch only for it to be killed.

“So, you’re just going to let it go?” Harry asked. “What if something hurts it?”

Hagrid waved off the boy’s worry. “Nah, it’s only dangerous for ‘im at this stage.”

The light started to get brighter, and Hagrid said, “Almost there now.”

“Can I film it?” Harry asked, and Hagrid was elated at the idea.

Harry reached into one of the pockets on his muggle backpack that Hermione actually knew that, like hers, was much bigger on the inside, but unlike hers, contained much more than just his school books, and pulled out his camera.

He fiddled with the controls for a bit, then cast the Levitation Charm on it, magically keeping the lens pointed at the hatching butterfly. It was just in time, because at that moment, the butterfly glowed much brighter than it had before, and then started to break out from its cocoon.

It was slow, obviously laborious work for the little creature, but Hermione was enraptured by every second, and in the moment when the butterfly first spread its wings, bathing the room in rainbows almost too bright to look at, her heart stopped at the sheer beauty of it all.

She leaned into Harry, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

This was beauty. This was magic. This was Hogwarts. And this was what they needed to protect from Voldemort.

It was in that moment that Hermione decided that they would go to the acromantulas that night, and when she looked at Harry, somehow, without needing to say a word, she knew that he agreed.