He approached her and was about to shout at her, hoping to make her cower, when he noticed something that made the words stick in his throat: she wasn’t giggling. Neither was she doing anything unnormal. She was just sitting at the desk, bent over a book, oblivious to her surroundings.
Severus cleared his throat, startling her. She nearly fell off her chair, but caught herself and turned around, wanting to see who was there.
“Professor Snape.”
He was about to make a snide remark at her, when he realised that something was not okay; or rather okay as opposed to its alternative. “‘Professor Snape’? Not Severus, Sevvie, Darling, Sweetheart or Prince Charming?”
A shining strawberry red crept up her cheeks and Hermione lowered her gaze. “I’m sorry for what I have done and will do, Professor,” Hermione apologised. “Did you find your wand?”
“Do you want to take the mickey out of me? I am sorry to inform you that you’ve chosen the wrong person,” he answered coolly.
“I know you must think I’m playing an evil trick on you,” Hermione said sadly.
“Correct. Five points from Gryffinor.”
“I don’t know what has happened to me, but I am sincerely sorry for everything I have done to embarrass you,” Hermione said again. Oddly, she sounded as though she meant what she said. Which confused Severus.
“Why should I believe you?” he asked doubtfully.
“You don’t have to,” Hermione replied. “But now that you are here, do you want to know what has happened to me? Maybe you can help me.”
He strongly doubted that. But he had nothing to do in the dungeons. Essays were graded and sample flasks marked, he had time. “Go on.”
Hermione shut her book and conjured up a chair for him. “Better sit down, the story might take some time.
“It started shortly after the Christmas Holidays,” she recounted. “I was in the library, looking for some light reading in the Restricted Section when I suddenly found an interesting book ..”
The book, titled “The Midnight Book”, had looked like a poetry book and Hermione had wondered why there was a poetry book in the Restricted Section. She took it from the shelf and suddenly words formed on its cover:
A poetry book? My dear, What do you think? If you really believe this, Go get yourself a drink!
She wasn’t used to books that spoke to her, so she was curious to find out what was inside this book. She flicked through it, looking for nothing in particular and landed on a page with a short poem on it.
“I can’t remember all the lines of the poems, though I think if I did, it would help me a great deal. But what I remember is this:
Good day to you, dear reader, I hope you have some time, For whatever lies within you, Will soon be in its prime.
When midnight strikes And nothing is reversed, You are lost, my soul, And deeply are you cursed.”
Hermione sighed. “There were three more stanzes, but I can’t remember them. It’s driving me nuts, because I know they were about how to reverse this.”
“Do you want to tell me,” Severus cut in, “that since you’ve read this poem you have gone mad?”
“Essentially, yes,” Hermione affirmed. “It’s absolutely dreadful. I often can’t remember what I have been doing for hours at a time. In your potions class, I didn’t want to disrupt it, I really, really didn’t. But some voice in my head told me what I had to do and even though I didn’t want to obey this voice, my body just did. When I opened my mouth to answer your question I hadn’t planned to say anything stupid. But I just had to ask you about your fanmail address. I couldn’t prevent it.”
Somehow the whole story sounded very much made-up to Severus. But on the other hand, it was Hermione Granger who was telling it and despite her madness of late she usually had given answers that made sense, even if he would never openly admit it.
“Why are you back to normal now?” Severus asked, eyebrow raised.
“I am back to normal in the time from midnight until one o’clock,” Hermione answered. “But this time is getting shorter and shorter! Last week I was like this for one and a half hours, now I only have one hour for my research!”
“Your research?”
“Do you honestly believe I want to be like that for the rest of my life?” Hermione shrieked. “You can’t imagine how embarrasing it is. You’ve seen what I have done in the dungeons yesterday? You can’t believe how embarassing this is! It’s like this in the common room all the time.
“One night I pretended I was a fairy, I asked everyone to tell me three wishes and I would make them come true. They were really annoyed when I hadn’t stopped this after two hours. I made Seamus’ Potions essay vanish when he said he didn’t want to ever have Potions again. He couldn’t find it and had to rewrite it.
“The other night I went to the boys’ dormitories and tried to persuade Ron and Dean to fall in love with each other. They weren’t exactly enthusiastic about the idea and tried to get rid of me. Which was complicated by the fact that I had shut the door, locked it by magic and taken their wands from them. Ron was about the strangle me at one point.
“On another occasion I felt like playing ‘wild west’. I managed to lay railroads in the common room and tied Harry, who had dozed off in front of the fire place, to them. Lavender could only just free him before the train arrived.
“Then I crawled through the common room on all fours and bit everyone who didn’t pay attention to me in the toes! It was so disgusting. Colin Creevey’s feet tasted like moulded cheese and I couldn’t get the taste from my mouth for three days!”
Despite himself, Severus found the whole thing quite amusing. Maybe he should ask the Headmaster to install monitoring cameras in the common rooms.
“That’s why I come to the library at night, when I am back to normal. I hope to find that book again because I need to know the other three stanzas. Plus, the time to reverse this whole bloody mess seems to be limited. I think the second stanza I told you says that I will stay like this if I can’t find a cure for it. And I can’t bear the stares of my house-mates. They’re driving me mad! I feel like a complete fool!”
“You are behaving like a complete fool,” Severus assured her, earning himself a dirty look from her.
“Will you help me?” Hermione asked him, hope in her brown eyes.
“Why should I“”
“Because, as you see, only having an hour a night to search for a book in the not exactly small library of Hogwarts is no precondition for progress. I’m, stuck, Professor and I desperately need your help! Or do you want to continue receiving confessions of love from me?”
No, he didn’t want this, so agreed to help her find the bloody book. Back in his office, he poured himself a monstrous cup of coffee. He was doing the one thing he hadn’t wanted to do, help Hermione Granger.