All through the train ride up to Hogwarts, something had been nagging at the mind of Hermione Granger. This was perfectly usual for her, as she spent most of her time with ideas and dilemmas developing and coalescing in the back of her mind, but this something was particularly forceful in its demands that she pay attention. Despite that, however, she pushed the trouble down until she had the peace to think about it, safe in her dormitory, and away from Ron, who was extremely distracting.
“Did George tell you he worked out a contract with the Hogwarts Express to sell Canary Creams, Ton-Tongue Toffees, and Edible Dark Marks on the trolley?”
“Really,” Hermione returned, jolted out of her reverie and irritated about it.
“Yeah,” he said excitedly, much to her relief, he hadn’t been getting excited about much of anything lately. “They wanted to sell Skiving Snackboxes too, but the Express said they didn’t dare.”
Hermione sighed thankfully and Ron huffed at how unreasonable they were. When she dipped her nose back into her book, he had brief unformed notions of tugging her hair to pull her out again. She might need rescue.
It was very difficult to read when her mind kept veering off, so after a few moments, the book remained closed in her lap for the rest of the journey back to school.
~*~
Hermione bantered and smiled her way through dinner in the Great Hall, shoving back the thoughts that clamored for her attention like puppies in a basket, but it was a relief when she could slip away to the tower. Lavender, Parvati, and the other girls in her year stayed in the common room, so she had the dormitory to herself as she sat cross-legged on top of her bedspread, her curtains pulled closed.
It irked her deeply that she did not have all the little bits of information she needed to figure out exactly who her professor, Sebastian Prince was. She couldn’t definitively say anything except that he wasn’t what he seemed, and that wasn’t very helpful or very satisfying.
Carefully, she smoothed the bed spread with the palm of her hands, as if laying out what she did know on the bed before her. She knew that he did not like her, and yet had no overarching prejudice against Muggleborns. She knew he disliked Harry, but that Harry spoke with him in private often. She knew that he had known about Ginny’s tendency to prank despite being a new professor. She knew that he was a knowledgeable teacher with a strong grasp of history and real defense, yet she could find no record of him in any Wizarding journals. Most infuriatingly of all, she knew that Harry knew whatever it was she wanted to know.
~*~
“Ginny,” Hermione called, motioning to her across the common room, “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
“Yeah, sure,” she shouted back though the noise and chatter of the common room on the first night back. It had been distressingly easy to catch her alone that evening, and Hermione bit her lip. Ginny made her way though the crowded room over to where Hermione stood in the less glairing light of the stairway. “You wanted to talk to me?”
“I wanted to ask for your help,” she ran her fingers absentmindedly through the ends of her hair. “I wanted you to help me watch Professor Prince.”
“What? Why?” Ginny replied loudly.
Hermione put a finger to her lips and guided her upstairs. “There’s something not right about him,” she told her, “and I know he’s seen me watching him, and I think he suspects I’m trying to figure him out.”
“You mean you want me to spy…”
“Not spy,” Hermione wheedled, “Not really, just keep an eye on him.”
“You’re crazy,” Ginny told her nodding sharply, avoiding her eyes, “completely mad. You’re so used to there being something wrong that you think there’s something wrong when things are too quiet! Voldemort’s gone,” she reassured her, “we don’t have to worry about him anymore.”
“Not about him, no,” Hermione murmured thoughtfully.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
“Oh nothing, I’m not worried really, and I don’t think he’s a dark wizard, but I don’t think he’s who he says he is.” Ginny cocked her head and Hermione furrowed her brow. “Harry knows who he is, I’m sure of it, and he’s lying for him!”
Ginny nodded suspiciously, but said, “I’ll do it. I’ll help you find who he is.”
“Thank you!” she exclaimed, running off for the library.
~*~
Hermione poured over the student lists from Durmstrang, and a pair of ponderous volumes entitled “Notable Achievements in Greek Wizardry, 1945-1995” and “Cold War Era Eastern European Magical Advances”. Professor Flitwick had let slip that he had spent most of his adult life in Greece, and it was common knowledge where the man claimed to have gone to school. While Madam Pince filled out a form, Hermione slipped the class list into her bag, and followed it with the Beauxbatons and Hogwarts lists for good measure.
With the records secreted away in her bag, she hefted the tomes of regional discoveries and carried them to the librarian’s desk to check them out.
She carried her prizes snuggly in her arms as she made her way back to the tower and through the common room. A frustrated frown pulled her face down while she read and reread the books. Lavender had come up into the dorm, and she gave her a sidelong look. “What are you reading?”
Hermione showed her. “The magic of the eastern Mediterranean is terribly interesting, so different from ours.”
Lavender raised her eyebrows disgustedly, flipping idly through Witch Weekly, and Hermione smiled, convinced that Lavender wouldn’t bother to ask what she was doing for at least another week. She pulled the curtains shut and examined the school lists one last time. There were no Sebastian Princes to be found in any of the lists, or any Princes at all more recent than Eileen Prince. There was a Sebastian Abbot, a Sebastian Lefevre, a Sebastian Moreau, and a Sebastian Renard, but none of their pictures remotely resembled the professor. There was also no one of that name to have made his way into the ranks of notable Eastern European or Greek wizards. Hermione filed away the knowledge that a Sebastian Prince probably did not exist to add to her store of facts and decided to add a few more. Snape had disappeared when Prince arrived. McGonagall had been under pressure from the parents to fire him, and she suspected they both had received death threats. Prince and Snape both hated Harry Potter. She dropped her books back into her bag, a slow smile spreading across her face. Sebastian Prince was in all likelihood Severus Snape.
~*~
In the morning, Hermione awoke much less happy with her conclusion than she had been when she had gone to bed with it. She, truth be told, knew nothing except her premises. Her premises told her nothing definite. All she could determine was what they made most likely, and it drove her mad. She fussed with her conclusion all through Transfiguration and Potions, and added two drams of salamander blood instead of one and three quarters to her potion, and spent the next half hour fixing it. Professor Belby had sniffed at her cauldron and given her a detention. She wasn’t used to getting detentions, especially not for substandard work.
Actually, Professor Belby had given several people detentions and taken points at least once from every single student, but since all of the houses came out about even, no one minded too much. Hermione had wondered absentmindedly what had put him in such a foul mood.
Yet when she at last caught Harry away from either Ginny or Ron after class had ended for the day, she pulled him out of the common room and into a secluded hallway. “Hermione, what-” he blinked at her bewilderedly.
“I wanted to talk to you about Professor Prince.” Harry froze, and Hermione’s resolve hardened. “I know he isn’t who he says he is.”
“Hermione,” he pleaded.
“I know he’s Snape,” she burst out, and then bit her tongue, uncertain, more aware than ever that it was only likely.
Harry grimaced. “You weren’t supposed to find out.”
A rush of pleasure tingled through her. She had been so worried that she was wrong and that she would look like a fool. “Why not? I know why he can’t teach openly, and I’m not about to tell anyone.”
Harry sighed with relief. “You can’t, you know,” he told her, and the doubts that had plagued her all day resurfaced with a vengeance.
“I do want to know a few things,” she said tentatively, and Harry set his jaw. “I mean, I can’t figure them out.”
“Alright,” Harry nodded, “if I can tell you, I will.” Something about the way he shifted his feet however told Hermione there was a lot that he knew that he could not tell, and she resolved to pry it out of him. “If you tell me how you found out?”
She nodded, and then stopped, wondering if she should use her methods as a bargaining chip, but concluded she might not get anything out of him at all if she tried that. “He didn’t act like a new Professor, so I looked him up, and he wasn’t on the Durmstrang school lists, or in any of the books on modern Greek and Eastern European magical discoveries in the library, and well, he dislikes you, Harry.”
Harry absorbed the information that there were books of modern Greek and Eastern European magical discoveries in the library and that Hermione knew how to find them. He almost sagged with relief, and leaned against the wall to prevent it. She couldn’t figure anything else out even if she was Hermione. A rock lifted out of where it had settled in his stomach. A group of Third years passed by them, and he pulled Hermione behind a tapestry that he had seen Filch use and into a secret passage.
“Where does this go?” she asked curiously.
“No idea.”
Hermione refrained from asking how he knew about it, annoyed. “Harry, why does Snape look like you?”
Harry flinched and wondered why she had to ask that first. “I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t, all right?”
“But you know,” she pressed.
“Yeah,” he acknowledged. “Yeah, I know.”
“So why do you know about all of this?”
“I can’t tell you that either.”
“Well, what can you tell me?” she demanded
He shrugged. “Just what you already know, really.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You tricked me.” Harry shrugged again, and she glared at him. “Why can’t you tell me?” she begged, almost but not quite whining.
“Hermione…”
“Well?”
“They’re secret!” he cried, exasperated.
“I’m not going to tell, Harry, I told you that,” she tried not to scream.
“I can’t tell you,” he whispered, leaning away from her, “I just can’t. It’s not my secret to tell.” And he realized as abruptly as he spoke that it wasn’t, and he couldn’t tell, even if it wouldn’t be too horrible trying to explain to his friends and to Ginny how he had suddenly become Snape’s father. In some vague impetuous way, the mere idea of it being someone else’s secret and not just his own made him want to share it with Hermione, but he squelched the impulse guiltily, his cheeks turning pink.
With the secret being someone else’s secret as well as his own, he had a good reason to keep it. It became a sacred trust, a duty. He didn’t feel so backed into a corner, queasy stomached at the thought that someone might find out. He could fight to defend the secret. He had a duty, even if that duty was to Snape.
“But you know!” Hermione exclaimed, and Harry put a finger to his lips imploringly. She ignored him. “Why do you know? If it’s Snape’s secret, why did he tell you Harry?” She cried, angry, and bewildered, missing great piles of pieces in the puzzle and wishing she could tear them away from her friend, by force if she needed to. “He hates you.”
“He didn’t tell me,” Harry said very quietly, and wondered if he should tell her that he told Snape. Hermione wrinkled her nose and walked off in disgust.
~*~
Hermione kept giving Harry dark looks all throughout Tuesday, and Ron, who had no idea what they might be feuding about, tried to make peace even as they pretended for him that nothing was wrong. Harry, who was himself quite used to being peacemaker for Hermione and Ron, felt no sympathy whatsoever.
Throughout dinner, Harry and Hermione politely passed the rolls and the salt while Ron stared resolutely at his plate. Finally, Ron couldn’t take it anymore. “I know you two are fighting!” he shouted, and heads across the Great Hall turned to him. Gryffindors stared astonished, Hufflepuffs stared uncertain, Ravenclaw stared disapproving, but Slytherin stared fascinated, eager to see the unofficial and unwitting leaders of Gryffindor and possibly all the students quarrel. “And you’re not telling me what you’re fighting about.” Ginny aimed a spoonful of mashed potatoes at him. “You’re not even telling me you’re fighting.”
Hermione and Harry waived at him to be quiet as they watched the people stop eating to watch them. “Ron,” Hermione spoke concretely, “We aren’t fighting-“
“Yes you are,” he muttered, “And you shouldn’t keep that sort of thing secret.” Harry flinched as he spoke.
Despite Hermione’s assurances, when she raced out of the Great Hall, Ron’s hand clutched in hers, Harry followed, terrified that she would tell him. He excused himself politely from Ginny, even daring a kiss on the cheek, but didn’t notice that her eyes followed him, furious to be left out again, not even knowing what she was left out of, as he slipped into the shadowed hallway and snuck behind his friends.
They headed for the statue of the humpbacked witch and Harry’s skin prickled with foreboding. Hermione smiled at Ron, letting go of his hand and tapping the hump. It ground away, protesting the movement. “Are we going to Hogsmeade?” Ron asked, smiling back at her as if he felt that he looked like a fool.
She stepped onto the steep stairwell inside the hump and shook her head. “I just want to use the tunnel.” He stepped down beside her, and she whispered something into his ear, not smiling. A blush spread across Ron’s face and neck, dying his ears a deep cherry red. Harry too blushed hotly as the witch’s hump slammed shut.
As Harry slipped away to the tower, Hermione told Ron nothing whatsoever, and when Ron and Hermione found their way back to the tower, a few brave fourth years whistled at them. Ron grinned widely as he plopped down into one of the overstuffed chairs. Hermione huffed instead and insisted to Lavender and Parvati that nothing happened. As the evening wore on, the other students began to drift out of the common room and up to their beds until at last only Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Ginny were left. The four each drifted off to sleep in front of the fire, only to be awoken the next morning by the other students rushing downstairs to breakfast.
Ron stood up, brushed himself off, straightened his robes, and left with them. The other three at least went upstairs to change their clothes.
~*~
Hermione had come around to Harry and Ron’s belief that it was best to sit inconspicuously in the back of the class, at least in Professor Prince’s class, but as Snape lectured on the ways to hex people in groups, she felt it even more strongly. She watched him nervously, wondering if he could tell somehow that she knew.
Every so often she could see him try not to glare at Harry and Harry try not to glare back. She didn’t bother to not glare at Harry. How could he send all of them unprepared back into Snape’s class? How dare he give Snape his face?
At the end of class she muttered to Harry that she wanted to talk to him later, and both he and Ron followed her docily enough to the library to study, staring more avidly at the clocks than at their books. Barely fifteen minutes into their study time, the boys leapt from their seats and dashed off, using Quidditch practice as their excuse. They had been humoring her and it annoyed her.
By the time they returned, muddy and exhausted, but cheerful, she had made her way into the common room and was pouring over an ancient runes text. “You two aren’t going to get any work done tonight, are you?” she stated more than she asked.
“No,” Ron replied grinning.
“Not likely,” Harry answered, with the grace to look chagrined.
Hermione groaned, turning back to her book. “You’re dripping mud all over the carpet, Ron,”
“Yeah, Dean brought a red rubber ball out because the Ravenclaws were using the Quaffle, and Ron kept landing in the mud trying to catch it.”
“Freezing mud,” commented Ron, scratching off a drying patch. He visibly steeled himself for standing up again, and climbed up to take a shower.
Harry started to follow, but stopped. “Hermione,” he muttered, “I need to talk to you.” She nodded, satisfaction sweeping through her, and they walked off together to the empty seventh year boys’ dormitory. “Glaring at me isn’t going to get me to tell you,” he told her sharply as soon as he had shut the door.
“What on earth have you gotten yourself into, Harry,” she cried, furious again “that you can’t tell me?”
“I haven’t gotten myself into anything, really! I just can’t tell you!”
“Harry…”
“Why do you want to know so much, Hermione! McGonagall knows about it, and no one’s going to die if I don’t tell this to you, nothing good is going to happen because you know, do why do you need to know this?”
“I’m worried about you and-“
“No,” he stopped her. “Maybe you think you are, but really you just can’t bear the fact that you don’t know something, and you really hate that I do.” He folded his arms across his chest and stood rigidly straight as he spoke very very quietly. “You’re so used to us three sharing everything and every secret being big and dangerous, and really no one’s right to keep them private, but this isn’t like that. You aren’t on the trail of something, and I’m not going to tell you just to satisfy your curiosity. It isn’t my secret to tell.”
“Harry,” she insisted.
“And I’m not going to tell you to shut you up either.” He almost cheered as she twisted the door handle and stomped out.
As soon as she had shut the door behind her, Hermione slumped against the stone wall of the stairwell, wondering if she was really that jealous that Harry had a secret that he wouldn’t tell her. She calmed herself down as best she could before she went back to the common room to collect her books and go to her own dormitory.
Before she could make her way out of the common room, Ginny fell in beside her, hair still dripping and a towel around her shoulders. “Did you find anything out a bout Prince?” she asked, glancing around so make sure no one was listening.
“Oh, Ginny, about that, I was wrong, it’s not important.” Suddenly Ginny’s eyes gleamed, her suspicion peaked. Hermione was lying, and she did know something, which meant that there was something to know.
Of course none of them were telling her; she was just the little sister. She wasn’t one of them, even if she was Harry’s girlfriend, and she was always being left behind even when she could help, just like they had left her behind the year before. She was so sick of it, and even as she smiled and nodded at Hermione, she fumed. This time, she swore to herself, she would find out their secret, even if she couldn’t find it out from them.
She folded herself into a chair beside her pajama clad brother and glared at the back of his head. “Hey Ginny” Ron laughed nervously as she sat down, “Is it just me or are Hermione and Harry acting really weird?” The scowl disappeared from Ginny’s face and a fierce rush of joy filled her, because at least this one time, Ron was left out too.