"If you didn't want our help, you might as well have just locked us in our rooms!" Harry shouted. "Do you think we're stupid?"

"You left Hogwarts." He glowered angrily. Snape vowed he would find out, someday, how Potter kept managing to sneak out of the castle. "We don't belong in this time and as benign as it appears, it's not safe and our mere presence around others risks the future as we know it. So yes, Mr. Potter, I do think you're stupid. Why none of you can even THINK before doing anything is beyond my comprehension! And you, Miss Granger," Snape's gaze zeroed in one her. "I would at least have thought you'd come to me with your co-horts' plans."

"No she wouldn't!" snapped Ron. "Hermione's not a snitch!"

"Another grave error on her part," he bit back.

Hermione remembered the recent "bossy" essay she had to do and snapped, "Grave error? Didn't I just hand in an essay because you didn't care for my 'tattling'? Something about my 'Gryffindor honor eclipsing my loyalty to my housemates'?"

I could kill them all, right now, Snape growled inwardly. No one would blame me. They're insufferable, unruly, stupid... He paced in front of them for several seconds. Snape had exhausted his vocal chords yelling at them. In turn, Harry, Draco and Ron had yelled right back. And now the so-called brightest witch of her age (and insufferable know-it-all) was using his own words against him? It was enough to give him a stroke. Instead of surrendering to the pounding of his head, he conjured four chairs and faced them into the four corners of his quarters. They stared at him with four puzzled expressions.

"If you're going to act less intelligent than first years, I have no choice but to treat you as such. Sit down! Shut up! Contemplate your combined idiocy and what I'll do to each of you should this happen again." Without a word, the four teenages each took a chair and began to stare resolutely into the corner.

Snape, now seated in the chair by the fireplace held a book in his lap, but he wasn't reading it. He stared into the crackling flames and wondered, for the umpteenth time, why this had to be so difficult. It wasn't enough that every minute was spent worrying over the non-existant solution to getting them back to their time, but he had to deal with the emotions and hot-headed tempers of these four excuses for wizards and a witch. Oh yes, they were intelligent. That showed in their classes and their grades and their work. But, as human beings, they were, frankly, as useful as an exploded cauldron. Even Neville Longbottom showed more sense then did they.

"Professor?" came Hermione's tiny voice. "May I have a book to read?"

"No, you may not," he said firmly. A snicker came from one corner. "Quiet!"

The hour ticked by slowly. Ron's head drooped as he slept off his butterbeer and Harry kept a steady beat by sending angry looks toward the Potions professor. Draco had recently begun to kick the wall.

"Mr. Malfoy," Snape's voice rose darkly from the chair he'd taken refuge in, "if you persist in kicking that wall, I will take great pleasure in removing your legs." The kicking stopped abruptly.

A snort came from Ron and he lifted his bleary head. "I'm hungry."

"You mean to tell me that your meal of butterbeer, nuts, and chips weren't enough, Mr. Weasley?" Ron chanced a dark look of his own at the professor. Snape shot him a grim smile, "Pity, but it will have to serve you until morning." Snape rose to his feet. "Go on. Get up." One by one they turned to stare at him. "All of you get out of here and go straight to bed."

Draco was out the door in a flash, not even leaving behind a blur. Hermione, Ron and Harry huddled together and made for the door, but Snape wasn't done quite yet. "Miss Granger, stay a moment." Ron and Harry both gave her worried looks, but she waved them on and turned back to face Snape.

"Yes, Professor Snape?" she asked as Harry pulled the door quietly shut.

"Professor Grailing was reviewing your rather copious notes this afternoon and informed me that you had an intriguing theory you dismissed? I'd like you to explain your theory and why you felt it irrelevant to our research." He motioned for her to take the chair opposite himself. Hermione sat down.

Hermione beetled her eyebrows as she frowned in thought. She'd actually had quite a few theories she'd crossed out during the course of their research. She wasn't entirely sure which one Snape could be referring to.

Seeing the confusion in the girl's eyes, Snape prompted, "Wild portals, Miss Granger."

"Oh." She thought back to the theory she'd sketched out one night. "Well, apparating, Floo Network, portkeys... they're all related. They're controlled portals." Feeling a bit more confidant in her subject, Hermione recited, "In the Muggle world there are places, referred to as hot spots of supernatural activity. In the wizarding world, we know that those hot spots have to do with residual magic. The Ministry of Magic neutralizes the worst of these which are often portkey stations, or areas along the Floo network. Smaller hotspots have caused speculation and a bit of mystery for Muggles, but they dissipate and are often harmless. However, there are some hotspots that don't go away, that aren't even explained by residual magic. The wizarding world has no more of a clue than the Muggle world what's going on." She took a deep breath and continued. "One of the most famous of these hotspots is the Bermuda Triangle." Snape nodded. He knew of the Bermuda Triangle, that place in the northwest Atlantic legendary for the disappearances of ships and Muggle planes. "A lot of these hotspots are marked by regular disappearances and I wondered if it was possible that a wild portal, an uncontrolled one, could be at fault. As intriguing as I found this research, I was unable to see how it was relevant to us."

Snape was quiet for a minute. "Miss Granger, Professor Grailing believes that Hogwarts castle is home to a 'wild portal'. Tomorrow we shall visit it."

"We will?" she asked and as intrigued as she was by seeing a wild portal, Hermione was still puzzled. "I don't know how we could use it, though, sir."

"Professor Grailing thinks we might be able to harness it. I am, to be honest, dubious about such a prospect, but we cannot afford to dismiss any possibility without exploring it thoroughly first."

"What about the boys, Professor? Can they help."

Snape sighed as he glanced momentarily toward the ceiling. "Miss Granger, if you would, please tell your erstwhile compatriots that they will be required tomorrow." The corner of his mouth quirked slightly. "After all, at this rate their escape paths might end them up in the Colonies, so it's best we keep them within sight."

Hermione was stunned by the professor's small touch of levity that she could only nod and run out of his room. The door slammed behind her and soon she was knocking on Harry's door, rapidly.

"What is it, Hermione?" Harry peered cautiously into the corridor, worried that Snape might swoop down on them.

"I'm supposed to tell you and the others something. Let me get them." A few minutes later Hermione had dragged Ron and Draco out of their rooms and they were congregated in Harry's room.

"All right, spit it out, Granger," snarled Draco.

Hermione was about to launch into what she and Snape had talked about when she noticed the remains of a meal on Harry's table. "You had dinner?"

Ron replied. "Yeah, the kitchen elf snuck us some food. Said he couldn't bear to see us starve to death. Nice elf." He grinned.

"I wasn't finished with mine, so what's going on?" complained Draco.

For the next several minutes Hermione did her best to explain about the wild portals and that Professor Grailing believed one existed in the castle somewhere. "I still don't see how this will help get us home, but I suppose we'll find out."