AN: Thanks for sticking around and reading. :) I hope everyone's doing fine and staying safe!

Song recs:

Chungha ft. Rehab - Dream of You

Gang of Youths - Magnolia

OneRepublic - Wanted (String mix)

For the first time in the life of Hermione Jean Granger, she was exhausted.

Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.

Utterly exhausted.

She honestly couldn't tell which was worse; being targeted and chased across the United Kingdom by a blood supremacist hypocrite, having to erase herself from her parents memories to protect them, while also having to deal with cursed objects that made her think of only negative thoughts.

Or this. Being targeted by someone she didn't know, for a reason she had no clue of, refusing to let her two oldest friends know about what she's going through, researching a way to reverse said memory erasure of her parents' minds, all while going through traumatic and torturous nightmares that could kill her at any point, and still having to appear to be a regular eighth year student.

The having to relive the worst possible day of her life made her lean towards the latter.

When she walked through the portrait hole to get to her dorm, she couldn't tell if she felt relieved to be somewhere other than the hospital wing, or anxious as all the incidents had happened in this very space. The same space she was supposed to feel safe and protected.

At least having Aurors with them helped lighten the blue whale that was sitting on her chest, and it was now replaced with a nicely sized Finback.

They immediately got to reading as soon as they entered the common space of their dorm, none of them really bothered to enter the bed rooms just yet, they could sort out accommodations after going through a few books.

A few hours had passed before they realised that the lunch hour was almost over. But because they didn't want to disrupt the momentum they had set, Hermione had asked to have their lunches sent up. Two bowls of porridge, six sandwiches, nine tarts and two jugs of pumpkin juice later, they were full and continued to read on.

"I think I might have something," Auror Elaine said as she finished up the pumpkin juice in her mug. At the sound of somewhat positive news, they all gathered around her, their own books forgotten for the moment. She pointed to the page she was reading, there was a beautiful moving illustration of a blue bottle that had a cloud wafting out of the top where sparkles and shape shifting animals moved about the cloud.

"It's quite different than what you've experienced so far, but it's also not completely out. This is a potion from the southern region of China. It was invented by a soothsayer, but was widely used by normal magical folk," she translated out loud. "It says here that the primary use was meant to make the drinker's dreams come true, but it was only temporary and had no lasting effects on reality. The example here explains that the potion would be taken and there would be someone who watched what happened in the real world while the drinker slept. The person who was watching would document everything that happened, usually people's dreams consisted of fantastical scenarios and all that jazz. It was believed that people's dreams had meanings, and this potion was meant to project the dreams so it could be interpreted.

"Although, it says nothing about being able to control someone else's dreams or the dreams having any real world consequences, and it definitely doesn't say anything about being able to harm the drinker. It seems like this potion was invented for fun and possibly fortune telling. But this is the closest we've gotten to something that could be the answer."

The group took all this information in, Hermione had written down the name of the potion and whatever Elaine had said about it. While it was definitely a step in the right direction, the problem was she had no clue which direction she was going in, and for all she knew, they were walking around in circles.

"Do you think it could be a mixture of different potions?" Hermione supplied, she had heard of people mixing different potions together to get a completely different effect. "There could be another potion that makes whatever happens in these dreams have a permanent effect in the real world, and there could be another that allows a third person to control the dreams."

"The only magic that I can think of that gives someone the power to control other people is dark magic. Blood magic to be precise," Malfoy said darkly. "I don't doubt that is what's been added to the potion."

"Very possible," Chris mumbled while rubbing his chin, he stood up and headed to the portrait hole. "I'm going to ask the headmistress if she can give us access to the restricted section of the library. I'm hoping that there'll be a few books on blood magic."

A few more hours had passed when she heard a knock coming from the portrait hole.

She looked at Malfoy, "are you expecting anyone?"

"I don't make it a habit to invite my friends here, they usually appear here themselves," he shook his head. "But I have a feeling it's either the she-Weasel or Lovegood."

Hermione had stood to open the door, but Elaine held her arm. "I'll be right behind you, just in case it's someone… unfriendly." She nodded her understanding and approached the portrait hole cautiously.

"Hermione? You in there?" Harry's voice came from the other side of the portrait. At the sound of his voice, she let out a breath she didn't know she was holding.

"Harry?" She called out and pushed the portrait open. On the other side stood her two best friends, "what are you doing here?"

"You weren't at meal times for the past few days, and we haven't heard from you. Gin said you were swamped with stuff, so we came by to check up on you and to see how you're doing and if you were eating alright," Ron said with a concerned look on his face. "We would have dropped by earlier, but training has been kicking our arses lately, and we've been sore from all the physical exercises they've got us doing."

Hermione smiled at them, "I've been fine, but yeah, I've just caught up in some Head duties, so I got the elves to bring my food here," she lied. She hated lying to her friends, they used to share everything, but she knew that she could get through this without involving them. "Would you like to come in, I've missed you guys."

She stepped aside to let them in, but they didn't move to enter.

"We would love to, but we've actually got more training in ten minutes, we just wanted to come by and make sure you were doing fine," Harry said apologetically. "We can catch up later tonight after dinner if you're free?"

Hermione thought about any plans or work that she might have, but could think of none. "Tonight sounds wonderful!" She replied with a big smile on her face. The boys returned her smile, clearly eager to hang out with her after what felt like forever.

Walking back into the common room, she noticed that Elaine and Chris had resumed their reading, whereas Malfoy was staring at her.

"What?" The malice the was once in her voice whenever she spoke to him, was gone.

"Just thinking," was all he replied.

"About what?" She rolled her eyes and made her way back to her seat that was a spot on the couch next to him. When she moved to sit, he removed a pillow that had fallen into her spot. As nasty as he had been when they were younger, it was no question that he had manners instilled into him, she just hadn't been able to witness it before.

"Potter and Weasel coming over tonight," his eyes still followed hers.

"It's not like it's a problem, is it?" She raised an eyebrow at him. "I mean, our other friends come over all the time."

"It wouldn't be a problem if they knew about our situation. But since they don't, how will you explain why we have two new roommates living with us after the term has already started?"

She hadn't thought about that. She had been too caught up with the idea of spending time with her best friends that it hadn't even passed her mind. "I don't know," she admitted, hoping that he had some ideas.

He thought about it for a while, his fingers tracing his chin while he seemed to be going through possible explanations. "Mentors," he finally broke his silence.

"Mentors?" She echoed, confused.

"Have you decided what you want to do after we graduate?"

"I'm thinking about working in the Department for the Regulation of Magical Creatures," she replied honestly.

"Such a predictable answer, you and your love for elves," Malfoy rolled his eyes at her. "But yes, we can say that they're mentors from the ministry here to give us some guidance before we get accepted into whatever department."

"But the ministry doesn't send their employees to live in Hogwarts for the school year just to mentor one student," Hermione remarked.

He just shrugged, "isn't that what they're doing with Potter and Weasel?"

"That's different, they've already applied for the Auror programme, and they require special training for fieldwork," she pointed out.

"Well, it's believable enough, at least until we think of another reason before tonight. Let's just use that, I can say I want to work in the Department of Security or whatever and Chris is my mentor, and Elaine is yours," he said, resuming his reading. "Besides, it's not like they're going to doubt whatever you say, pretty sure if you told them that the sun was purple and was spinning on a unicorns horn, they'd believe you."

"They're not that gullible," she scowled at him. "They're going into the Auror programme after all."

"Not my point, but I do pray for the safety of the wizarding world if they pass the training."

"Ugh, whatever. But fine, we'll go with mentors if neither of us can come up with something else," then, she too returned to her reading.

It was an hour until dinner time when Hermione found something that might be another piece in the fifty-thousand piece puzzle they were trying to put together.

"Look here," she grabbed Malfoy's arm to draw his attention. She had been reading a German potions book, with the aid of a translator spell since she didn't understand a word of German. "Do you think this could be what is making our dreams permanent?" She pointed at the paragraph that she had read while Malfoy's eyes scanned the page.

"It could be," he took the book from her hands to read more on the spell. "This talks about making something permanent, all right, but what is it usually used for?"

"It's quite vague on the details, but maybe other books might have more information on it?" She said hopefully, reaching for another German potions book, scanning the pages for the words "endurance" or "ertragen", since that was what the other book had named it, endurance potion.

"Ah ha!" Hermione exclaimed when she finally found a page that had more details on the potion. "According to this book, it says that the potion was meant to make semi-permanent or temporary spells last longer. It seems like it was a supplementary potion, one that you have to add to another for it to work. Although, it doesn't seem like it was meant to make the effects permanent, just last longer than it originally would have."

Malfoy was silent for a few moments before he spoke, "it is possible that he just tweaked the ingredients to make the effects permanent."

Before she could reply, Elaine poked her head up, "oh yeah, we never did get to ask. Do you have any idea how you came to ingest the potion?"

Hermione and Malfoy looked at one another. Now that she thought about it, she never did wonder how she came to be cursed with whatever this was.

"It was probably during our first night back in Hogwarts, the opening feast," he suggested. "Although I don't know how someone could've slipped it into our meal, since we shared the food with the other people we sat with."

The realisation hit Hermione like a train, "OUR DRINKS!"

Malfoy winced at the sudden spike in volume, but recovered rather quickly. "Now that you've mentioned it, my pumpkin juice did taste a little off. I just thought that it was because I hadn't drank it in a while. It was like I had dropped some gravy into it or something."

"Mine tasted a little salty, but I thought it was an aftertaste from the food, so I didn't think much of it." How could she have been so stupid? She should've realised that her drink had been spiked with something as soon as she tasted it. She had been having pumpkin juice almost everyday at Hogwarts since the day she arrived, and it has never tasted like that before!

"Salty?" Chris asked. "That's an unusual taste for a potion to have, it's usually bitter or sweet, sometimes minty. But I've never heard of a potion tasting salty."

"It could be the alteration of the potion, since we're almost certain that it's Frankenstein's potion," Elaine added.

"What or who is a Frankenstein?" Chris asked.

Surprisingly it was Malfoy that answered him, "Frankenstein was a scientist in a book written by a muggle authour Mary Shelly. He tries to create a human by using the body parts from different dead people, then reanimates the creature. He is successful, but has created a hideous and gigantic monster. Then the story goes on, yada yada yada, then the scientist dies and the monster drifts out never to be seen again."

"That's one way to summarise the book that brought about the genre of science fiction," Hermione scoffed, "but yes, essentially Elaine is referring to how the potion is probably a combination of different potions. I'm surprised you even know about Frankenstein."

"I read books," was all he replied.

"But it's by a Muggle authour."

"Books are books. The only thing I discriminate between is if it's a good book or a bad one. And you can't judge a book until you've read it," he said simply.

That was something she never thought she would hear out of the mouth of one of the most bigoted people she ever had the misfortune of meeting. But with that comment, she was starting to see him in a different light. Before she thought that he would burn if he ever made contact with anything Muggle-made, but clearly he had grown up and matured somewhere along the way.

"You surprise me, Malfoy," she said, not intending to be heard. But he clearly heard her as a smirk appeared on his face, even if he did stay silent.

"While it's good to know how you consumed it, but we want to know how exactly it got there in the first place?" Chris brought them back to the point at hand. "It's not like there were prearranged seatings in the Great Hall."

"Someone could have either threatened or enticed a House Elf into putting it into their drinks, since they do prepare all the food and drinks that are served," Elaine brought up, "I'll speak to the Headmistress and ask if I can talk to the Elves."

And with that, they closed the books and left for the Great Hall. The four sat together, McGonagall thought it might be better if they limited any unnecessary interactions with the other students, since they really couldn't really trust anyone. And as much as she wanted to interact with as many students as possible, she had to give in since it was for her safety.

"Hey 'Mione!" Ron greeted her, they had waited outside the Great Hall for her.

"Ready to go?" She asked as she looped her arms with the two boys and they made their way towards her dorm.

When they arrived, Hermione took Harry and Ron on a dorm tour since it was their first time inside. They gawked at how large her quarters were, and they were definitely jealous of her room.

"Your room is massive!" Harry commented.

"It's actually about the same size as the ones in Gryffindor tower," she corrected.

"Yeah, but we had to share it with five other people," Ron said as he spun around on the spot, ogling at her room. "Wait, why's there another bed in your room?"

She hadn't noticed it before, the room must have accommodated for Elaine already. There was a smaller bed on the opposite side of the room and a trunk in front of it.

"Oh… that's Elaine's bed. I am actually sharing the room with someone," Hermione got the lie out as smoothly as she could.

"Who's Elaine?" Harry asked.

"She's my… mentor."

"Mentor?"

"Yeah. Mentor. She only arrived a couple days ago," if the boys noticed her choppy replies, they didn't mention it. "I had informed the Ministry what I wanted to pursue after I graduate, and they thought it would be better if I got some guidance before I started working."

"They sent a mentor for someone who wants to join the Department for the Regulation of Magical Creatures?" Ron raised his eyebrow. "I never heard of that before."

She knew it didn't make sense, so she had to come up with another lie on the spot, "I actually applied to the Department of… Mysteries."

"The Department of Mysteries?" Harry and Ron said at almost the same time.

"Are you serious 'Mione? Even after what happened the last time we were there?" Ron asked her. "I thought you wanted to work with Magical Creatures and House Elves." Ron was right, but she couldn't let him know that.

"I changed my mind recently, with what happened in the war, I thought of something else I wanted to do."

"Are you sure?" Harry asked this time.

"I'm sure," she hoped she was convincing. "Actually, Malfoy's got a roommate too."

"He's got a mentor too?" Ron sounded surprised. "What's he going into? The Death Eater reassembly department?" He said with a thick layer of sarcasm.

She didn't know why, but Ron's tone annoyed her. Sure, just a few weeks ago he was still a giant prat, but as soon as he found out what was happening, he actually matured enough to not let it get in the way. Or maybe she was spending too much time with him.

"He's actually going to be joining me in the Department of Mysteries," she didn't know why she said it, but it was out of her mouth before she could really process it.

"You've got to be joking," the redhead's tone was starting to get more and more annoyed.