Chapter Summary: What was going through Hermione's mind when she saved Harry's life at that first quidditch match? Now we get to see.
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Hermione bundled her robes around her as the wind whipped through her bushy hair. If she hadn't been a witch, she'd have never come up on the ramparts that night. Winter was definitely coming to Hogwarts and it was very cold. But she was ready for this. As she stepped towards the wall, she pulled out her wand and muttered a few words. The wind seemed to cease. Then she used her favorite spell to conjure some blue flames. After a few seconds, it was almost as warm as it was in the fall.
She looked out over the wall and she could see the lights of a few houses in Hogsmeade in the distance. It was long after midnight, definitely past curfew. She would have never done this before she became friends with Harry, but it seemed he and Ron had an influence on her behavior. They would probably say that she had "loosened up."
It was the night before the Gryffindor/Slytherin quidditch game and Hermione couldn't sleep for several reasons, the biggest being that she was worried her friendship with Harry and Ron was making her two roommates loath her. They never said anything about it to her face, but she had overheard part of a conversation that evening as she walked into her dormitory.
"It's so obvious they're not really friends," Parvati had been saying. "She's using Harry to be popular, and they're using her to pass all their classes. It was probably all her idea."
Hermione leaned against the wall as she thought about the conversation she had inadvertently walked in on. She knew that Parvati was just jealous because Hermione was spending time with Harry and she wasn't, but it was still unfair. She wondered if other people thought the same thing. She didn't get nearly as many angry stares from her classmates, except for the Slytherins of course. Did they all back down because she was the friend of Harry Potter?
She didn't know why this bothered her so much. She wasn't using Harry to be popular. If anything that was the last thing she wanted, to be more noticed by her classmates. She had even stopped being as enthusiastic in classes. Sure she still raised her hand more often than most others, but now that she sat near Harry and Ron in every class, she was already getting enough attention that she didn't want anymore. The whole thing was weird and exciting all at the same time.
Then of course she was worried about Harry. It seemed that the stress of school, coupled with his upcoming first quidditch game, was too much for him. He was beginning to see conspiracies where they didn't exist. Just earlier that day, Harry had told her that he was convinced that Snape was trying to steal whatever was being guarded by the huge three-headed dog they had run into several weeks ago. It didn't help that Ron was encouraging this theory. But Hermione knew there was nothing to it. Hogwarts teachers were always the most trustworthy wizards and witches in the world, she had read all about it in "Hogwarts: A History." Even if Snape was unfair, there was no way that Albus Dumbledore would keep him on staff if he didn't trust him.
No, this was all due to Harry's stress level and the fact that Snape was being particularly mean lately. "This is exactly why first years aren't allowed on the house teams," she thought to herself. "The stress is just too much." She had been doing her best to help Harry with his homework but she feared even this wouldn't be enough. Perhaps after he got his first quidditch game out of the way, he wouldn't worry so much about them afterwards and he'd begin to relax. Then, maybe she could relax.
"You know, somehow I knew you'd be up here," Hermione spun around so fast she almost tripped. Harry was standing right behind her on his Nimbus 2000.
"Harry, are you crazy?" she almost shouted. "What are you doing up here? You could have been caught. You could have gotten detention. You could have been banned from playing quidditch tomorrow."
Harry ignored her ranting. "I couldn't sleep. There were lots of things going through my head. Looks like you couldn't sleep either. As for being banned from playing quidditch tomorrow; that would probably be a load off my mind."
"Oh Harry," Hermione sighed. "You'll be fine tomorrow."
"Everyone keeps saying that."
"I've watched every single one of your practices from up here, you know. You are the best flyer of any quidditch player in this school. No one will be able to touch you tomorrow."
"You think so?" Harry asked stepping off his broom onto the wall. "You really think I'm better than all the other players."
"There's no comparison." Hermione said earnestly.
"You know, when you say it, I actually believe it. I know you'll tell me the truth and not just what I want to hear, even if it hurts."
"That's me, good old blunt Hermione," she laughed.
"Of course, that whole thing with Snape is bothering me too," Harry admitted. "Every time I closed my eyes tonight, I could see the expression on his face."
"Oh Harry, you're not still on about that," Hermione sighed.
"Hermione, if you had seen what I saw, you'd believe me."
She stared into his eyes again; they had a pleading look in them. "I just don't know. Maybe if we had more proof."
"Then we'll get more proof," Harry said determinedly.
"Alright, alright. I guess it wouldn't hurt to do a little digging around. I mean it is kind of odd that a troll got into the castle. I mean, things like that almost never happen at Hogwarts; the castle is far too well protected. Someone would have had to let him in."
"See now you're thinking," Harry said eagerly.
"I'm not saying it was Snape," Hermione added quickly. "But if it is, I bet we could find out for sure. Then we could tell Professor Dumbledore what we know."
"Agreed." Harry nodded. "After tomorrow, I'll have more time because we won't have any quidditch practice for a while. We can start figuring out what to do then."
"Okay, I'll start thinking of a plan," Hermione decided.
Harry turned back to his broom and climbed on. "Thanks Hermione, I think I'll sleep a little better knowing your going to help us figure this out."
Hermione couldn't help grinning from ear to ear as Harry flew down the side of the castle.
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"Oh, Harry will love this!" Hermione squealed. She was referring to a large banner that Seamus, Ron, and Dean had unfolded once they reached one of the top rows of the quidditch stands. It read, "Potter for President" and had a picture of the Gryffindor lion on it. "Who drew this?"
"I did the lion," Dean said proudly.
Neville was trying to keep the banner from flying away with the wind. "Now if only we could figure out how to hold this up."
"Oh Neville, you should never go anywhere without your wand," Hermione chastised. She pulled out her own wand and waved it at the banner. "Wingardium Leviosa." The banner rose into the air, just above their head.
Hermione wasn't done though, she waved her wand and said another spell that none of the others recognized. The paint on the banner began to flash different colors.
"Where do you learn this stuff from?" Ron asked.
"Books, Ron. You know… those little things with paper in them." Hermione said with a grin.
Ron sat down but said nothing.
"Oooo look. They're coming out." Hermione squealed as the Gryffindor and Slytherin team emerged from their locker rooms.
After a few minutes the quaffle was in the air and the game had begun. Hermione had read all about quidditch, of course, so she knew the rules and how the game was played, but she had never seen an actually game. Even watching countless practices hadn't prepared her for what she was seeing now. It was incredible. The speed and accuracy of the players was amazing. Quaffle and bludger alike flew around the field at an almost insane speed. She wondered how anyone could see what was going on, let alone concentrate with all of the balls and players flying around. Now she knew why witches and wizards everywhere loved quidditch. It was truly the most amazing sport she'd ever seen.
"It's no wonder Harry loves flying. If I could be a part of that, I would." As she watched the game, Hermione absentmindedly wondered what it would be like to be a quidditch player, perhaps a chaser or a keeper. But then she quickly remembered that she was an average flyer at best and that quidditch definitely wouldn't be her cup of tea. She decided to stick to being a spectator.
After Gryffindor's first goal, Hagrid had come to join the group in the stands. The action of the game was heating up and he didn't want to be left to watch from his cabin. Hermione couldn't blame him. There was no place she'd rather be right now. Even though Harry hadn't had much work to do yet, the game was still exciting. A few minutes after she thought it though, all that had changed.
"There it is!" Hermione shouted. "There's the snitch." Lee Jordan's commentary had confirmed it. "He's seen it, he's seen it." Hermione was dancing on her toes now as Harry flew down from his lofty position to grab the snitch.
Hermione was positive he would reach it before the Slytherin seeker, but then suddenly, Marcus Flint blocked him and Harry spun off course.
"Oh that dirty cheater," Hermione shouted.
Ron looked at Hermione in stunned silence. "Whoa Hermione, I've never seen you get this excited about anything beyond your Transfiguration grades."
"Oh Ron," Hermione huffed. "I do have a life you know."
Ron was about to say something to retort, but was distracted by Dean, who was shouting something about red cards and soccer. Hermione was ignoring all of this as her attention returned to the game. She found the dot that was Harry and noticed that he was surprisingly still. Perhaps he had seen the snitch again and was preparing to dive. No, he was rising higher and higher. Every now and again she saw his broom jerk.
"What's going on? Why is Harry flying so erratically?" Hermione had spent hours watching Harry fly and she knew his style better than anyone else. Something was terribly wrong.
Hagrid seemed to have noticed it too. "If I didn't know better, I'd say he lost control of his broom. But he can't have."
The situation was getting worse. Harry's broom wasn't just bucking, it was rolling around. He was hanging on for dear life. The broom was actually trying to throw him off. Everyone had noticed it now but no one could do anything about it. Anyone who tried to get close to Harry to help him, only caused the broom to go higher and higher.
A terrible thought struck Hermione. "Harry's going to die. No one can help him, not the other players, not the professors. Where's Dumbledore?" She wondered vaguely if this was Pansy's doing. But somehow she didn't think the first year Slytherin could accomplish something that complex.
"Can't nothing interfere with a broomstick, except powerful dark magic. No kid could do that to a Nimbus 2000." She heard Hagrid saying to Seamus.
"He's right, no kid could do that. No student at Hogwarts could. It would take dark magic, the kind of dark magic that only a fully trained wizard skilled in the arts would know. It would have to be one of the adults, one of the professors, cursing the broom. But what Hogwarts professor would want to harm Harry…"
Then suddenly, she knew. It came to her in an instant. She grabbed Hagrid's binoculars and began to scan the Slytherin section of the stands. Sure enough, there he was, Snape, muttering under his breath, ever so slightly. If she hadn't been looking directly at him, she wouldn't have noticed.
"I knew it!" she shouted at Ron. "Snape… look!" She handed him the binoculars. "He's doing something… jinxing the broom."
Ron looked shocked and pale. "What should we do?"
A wild look flashed in Hermione's eyes. "Leave it to me," and without any further explanation, she took off down the stands, her mind racing.
"How could I have been so dense? Harry tried to warn me. He told me that he had found out that Snape had tried to get passed that three-headed dog, but did I listen? No! I can't believe this. It's all my fault. If I had just taken him more seriously, we would have known to keep our guard up around Snape. We could have prepared for an attack like this." She was hurtling down the stairs now. She could still see Harry dangling from his broom. "I won't let you die, Harry. Just hang one. I'm going to get you out of this I promise."
She started sprinting across the quidditch field. No one even noticed her, because all eyes were on Harry now. As she ran, Hermione's mind flashed back to all of the fun she'd already had with Harry these past few weeks and she couldn't remember any happier time in her life. She finally had a real friend, someone who understood and accepted her, and now Snape was going to take that all away. "No, I won't allow it! Please Harry, I'm going to get you out of this. Just hold on a few more minutes."
Hermione had made it to the opposite set of stands. She was completely out of breath now, clutching a stitch in her side, but she wouldn't stop running. She kept pushing herself as she pelted up the stairs. "Oh if I could kill Snape I would. He'd better be glad I don't have the skill to use the cruciatus curse. That would teach him for messing with Harry." As much pleasure as the thought torturing Snape gave her, Hermione realized as she ran through the stands that she really had no idea what she was going to do. All she knew was that she wanted to hurt Snape, punish him for the pain he was causing Harry and her. She was moving so quickly that she knocked people out of the way in her desperate effort to get directly behind Snape.
"Stupid git," Hermione thought as she pushed Professor Quirrell to the side. "If he were any good at defense against the dark arts he'd be helping Harry instead of standing there like an idiot while Snape tries to kill him."
She'd reached her target. She was crouched directly behind Snape. Now all she needed was the right spell. Something to break Snape's eye contact for a few seconds would do the trick. Hermione was so mad and flustered that only one spell came to mind, but it was perfect. She pulled out her wand, uttered a few choice words and produced her trademark blue flames. They shot out of her wand onto the back of Snape's robes.
The wait was agonizing. It seemed to take an eternity for Snape to notice that he was on fire, but he finally did and it made him jump in pain. Hermione quickly collected her magical flames into a jam jar that she used often to hold similar fires, and then she speed away before she could get caught. As she took off for down the row again, she looked up and saw that her diversion had been enough. Snape's eye contact had been broken and Harry was able to get back onto his broom.
"Alright Harry!" Hermione shouted as she watched him steady himself. "Now go get that snitch!" She started down the stairs again to join her fellow Gryffindors in the opposite stands. As she ran back across the field, she noticed Harry shooting like a dart towards the ground. Was he going to crash? Was he going to be sick? Had the ordeal been too much for him?
She watched him hit the field on his hands and knees. He really did look like he was going to be sick. Hermione was debating about whether or not she should try to help him, when suddenly he spit something up. Harry wasn't sick after all. He held up his hand to show everyone that he had the golden snitch. He had ended the game and Gryffindor had won 170 to 60.
She saw Harry look right at her, a huge grin on his face, before collapsing on his hands and knees again. Suddenly Ron was by her side. He and the other Gryffindors were pouring out of the stands. "Come on," he said, grabbing her arm. "We'd better go see if he's okay."
They ran off to where Harry was still sitting on the field, dazed. "You did it Harry! You won the game!" Ron was shouting.
"You were amazing Harry. I was so worried," Hermione squealed.
Other students were gathered around as well. "Back up now. Everyone out of the way," Hagrid boomed as he swept through the crowd. In one swift motion he picked Harry up, broomstick and all. "I'm taking him back to me cabin. Come on you two." He said to Ron and Hermione. "Back up, I said. Harry needs some strong tea and some rest. You can celebrate later."
Hermione let out a calming sigh as she followed Hagrid through the crowd. She had done it; Harry was safe. She felt like collapsing herself.
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Hermione sat in an un-crowded corner of the common room that evening. The whole of Gryffindor house was celebrating their quidditch victory. It seemed that everyone had forgotten about the near fatal incident that had befallen Harry and were instead concentrating on the fact that they had beaten Slytherin.
But Hermione couldn't forget. She couldn't forget the dark look in Snape's eyes, she couldn't forget how Harry was hanging on for dear life, and she couldn't forget how it made her feel to be that close to losing the best friend she'd ever had. She wanted desperately to escape to the quiet of the ramparts so she could think, but she didn't want to seem anti-social, not while everyone was celebrating Harry's triumph.
She thought about the conversation they had had earlier in Hagrid's cabin. She, Ron, and Harry had tried desperately to convince Hagrid that it was Snape who tried to kill Harry. But Hagrid was just as stubborn as she had been on the topic only a day ago. He wouldn't believe that a Hogwarts teacher would try to kill a student. She realized then that there was no way that Dumbledore would believe them either. They would have to get more proof.
They had learned some useful information from Hagrid though. As it turned out, he was the one who owned the three-headed dog. He had named it "Fluffy," which Hermione found rather ironic since there was nothing fluffy about the dog in her opinion. From what Hagrid had let slip, he lent the dog to Dumbledore to protect something that was valuable to both the headmaster and a man by the name of Nicholas Flamel. But beyond that, they were just as clueless as before. They had known clue who Flamel was, though the name did sound familiar. What could be so valuable that Snape would try to betray Dumbledore and kill Harry Potter? It just didn't make any sense.
As the party began to die down and the crowd in the common room thinned, Harry came to sit with her. Ron was still laughing with his two older twin brothers.
"Hey," he said calmly as he sat across from her. "You okay?"
"Yeah, just thinking about everything," Hermione said quietly.
"You know in all the rush and celebrating and stuff, I never did properly thank you for saving my life." Harry grinned awkwardly at her.
"Oh Harry…" Hermione waved it away as if it were nothing.
"Hermione," Harry cut across her. "If it weren't for you, there's no way I would have survived. You really kept your wits about you. I'm glad you were looking out for me."
Hermione blushed. "Well, you saved my life too, you know. I guess we're even now."
Harry put a hand on her shoulder. "You know how you always used to tell me that you weren't sure if you'd be able to react well in a pinch, you know, because of what happened with the troll and how you froze." Hermione nodded slowly. She remembered sharing that fear with Harry in one of their previous conversations.
Harry continued. "Well I think this proves that you can be the same clever, resourceful witch that you always are, even when the stakes are high."
Hermione smiled. She realized that she had answered the question that had dropped in her head back at Halloween. The tables had been turned and when Harry was in trouble, she was able to save him, just as he had done for her. Maybe she did have the courage it took to be a good witch after all.
Harry stood. "I'm glad to have you for a best friend." He told her.
"Thanks," Hermione said almost breathlessly as he left. Harry didn't know it, but Hermione felt like she could explode with joy right there on the spot. She realized that it didn't matter what Lavender or Parvati or any of the other students thought. She knew the truth: she and Harry Potter were best friends.