Chapter 2 - Reconnaissance

Hermione was still fuming and thinking about the conversation she'd overheard as she made her way slowly back up to the Gryffindor rooms. She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she paid little attention to the castle around her. The pictures, however, noticed her distraction and whispered comments to each other on her inattentiveness. They were used to seeing the Gryffindor girl striding purposefully no matter where she was off to, head held high and determination in her steps. Now she wandered, almost aimlessly, her head down and her steps guided more from autopilot than any true will of her own. More than one painting also commented on the ferocious scowl that marked her features.

Not only the pictures, but the castle itself seemed to notice her internal preoccupation since the stairs, instead of letting her step out into empty air, turned and formed themselves into correct alignment to get her safely back to her dorm with the least amount of backtracking or fuss.

"Password, dear?"

"Wha-?" Hermione raised her head to find herself outside the portrait door to Gryffindor Tower with no clear idea of how she'd gotten there.

The Fat Lady, long used to dealing with distracted teenagers, and having been alerted to the girl's unfocused state by the other paintings simply repeated her question.

Hermione flushed a bit at being caught in her mental wanderings but gave the password with only a semi-forced smile. "Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble." As she crawled through the door, she had to wonder if Professor McGonagall hadn't been reading Shakespeare when she chose this week's particular password.

The common room was its usual noisy, crowded, controlled bit of chaos. Gryffindors, by nature, seemed to be the loudest House of the four. And while the noise and chaos could get on her nerves on occasion, Hermione had to admit that it was just the thing to pull a person out of too deep thoughts. She was ready to admit that when it came to what she'd overheard; her thoughts were very deep indeed.

Spotting Harry and Ron across the room engaged in a battle of Wizard's Chess, she crossed the room, threading her way past several groups of students, younger and older, that were scattered around the room. Snippets of conversations reached her as she passed each one.

" . . . eight uses of Nightshade? He's nuts. I can only find five uses of Nightshade. I tell you, Snape must be making up those extra three uses . . ."

" . . . are the Chudley Cannons going to pull it off this season, especially with O'Reilly sidelined?"

"Snape gave me detention with Filch for tomorrow night . . . "

"I love that color on your nails. Can you show me the charm you . . ."

". . . did you hear that he made a first year Hufflepuff cry today . . ."

The walk back to the tower had calmed her initial burst of anger, but she could still feel it bubbling just below the surface. Now, each repetition of Professor Snape's name jabbed at her Gryffindor sense of justice, demanding she do something.

Intent on the game before them, Ron and Harry only glanced at her as she joined them at their table. She settled herself into a comfortably squashy side chair, its Gryffindor red upholstery worn along the tops of the arm rests from countless students over the years. She was rather glad of the boys' distraction. She had too much on her mind to be good company this evening, so she scrunched down into the chair and turned her thoughts back to the conversation she shouldn't have heard.

Harry finally looked up with a strained grimace on his face as one of Ron's bishops decapitated one of his pawns. Catching Hermione's eye, he pulled her out of her thoughts. "Tell me you've come to rescue me from this unfair slaughter?"

As Harry had only ever won one game against Ron, and that was the day that Ron was sick, running a fever and half delirious, Hermione wasn't exactly overflowing with sympathy. "Harry, if you know you're going to lose, why do you persist in playing him?"

Harry shrugged good-naturedly. "Hope springs eternal, I guess. I always think this time I'm going to trounce the redheaded blighter."

The redheaded blighter in question sat up straight with an indignant, "Hey!"

Harry grinned unrepentantly back at his friend.

Turning up his nose in Harry's direction, Ron swiveled to face Hermione. "So, did you get all your library research done? You promised you'd get out of the castle and go to Hogsmeade with us tomorrow if you finished. Besides, it's going to be a real celebration what with the Ferret getting expelled for almost killing Harry." Ron's grin was wide and toothy with anticipation. "Do you think Dumbledore will make an announcement?" The sharky grin got even wider and his eyes twinkled in an unholy imitation of the Headmaster's. "Ohh, maybe they'll escort Malfoy through the Great Hall and out the front door in front of the whole school?"

Harry matched Ron's grin of delight. "Naaah, I think Malfoy will just slink away in the night like the slimy little snake he is. But, you have to feel sorry for Crabbe and Goyle with Malfoy gone; they won't have anyone to do their thinking for them."

Hermione opened her mouth to tell her friends that Malfoy wouldn't be leaving, but nothing came out. She couldn't seem to say anything. If she told Ron and Harry, they would want to know how she knew and for some reason she couldn't breach Snape's privacy like that. It felt wrong, like kicking someone when they were already down. It didn't matter in the end anyway, she reasoned, they'd find out soon enough that Malfoy wouldn't be going anywhere.

Hermione was also reluctant to share the knowledge of the listening device she'd found. Harry was no longer sunk into the deep depression that Sirius Black's death had thrown him into, but even now little things had a way of setting him off into either anger or misery. The Christmas holidays a few weeks earlier had been hell on all of them as Harry had alternately turned inward and struck out at his friends. She didn't think that Harry would handle the additional knowledge of being spied on well, even though the spying device wasn't meant specifically for him. He would view it as one more strike against the adults that were trying to both protect him and ensure that he had the necessary knowledge and abilities to defeat Voldemort when the time came.

"So, Hermione, Hogsmeade?" Ron asked again.

It's for the best, she thought, while trying not to think about the fact that she was keeping a very large secret from her two best friends.

"Sure," she answered, forcing a smile for their benefit. Feeling decidedly uncomfortable about keeping secrets from her friends, Hermione decided to retreat to her room before she was forced to actually tell any lies rather than just withholding the truth. Standing up, Hermione gathered up the books she'd originally gone to the library to get. "I'll meet you guys in the Great Hall for breakfast and we can head out to Hogsmeade together. Good-night."

With distracted "good-nights" the boys turned back to their game and Hermione headed for the girls' dormitory.

Staring up into the shadowed folds of her canopy, Hermione listened to the soft snores of Lavender in the bed across from her. She'd given up trying to sleep over an hour ago. She'd learned a long time ago that when her mind was filled with questions, sleep was the first thing to desert her. Tonight she just couldn't seem to shake her lose from thoughts about Professor Snape and the overheard conversation. She wasn't exactly sure why she was so angry on his behalf, but there was just something about the circumstances of what was done to him, of the assumptions made about the characters of young Sirius, James, and Professor Snape, that rankled deep inside her. It was that same sense of outrage that had made her start SPEW, an outrage that made her decide that since no one else would stand up for the house elves, she would.

Sitting up in the dark, she released some of her pent-up frustration, punching her pillow into a more comfortable shape before lying back down on her side. Reaching out in the dark, she rubbed her fingers through Crookshanks' warm fur. It was the same feeling that had led her to choose the ginger-haired tom that day in Diagon Alley at the Magical Menagerie. Crookshanks had been a fur-matted monster with an ugly, squashed face and a hissing, biting temperament that caused all other shoppers at the store to pass him by time after time. No one else had wanted the half-Kneazle. Hermione had taken one look at him and hadn't even hesitated.

She rubbed one silky ear, until a slumbering Crooks flicked it out of her grasp. She'd seen something else in the cat that day. She'd given him a chance and he'd proved his worth time and again since that day she'd bought him.

So what about Professor Snape? Hermione smiled in the dark at the image of her Potions professor as a hissing, ugly, mangy, blacked-furred Kneazle. The analogy was too simple though. She knew that. Professor Snape was entirely too complicated a man to be put into a box entitled 'Reminds me of my cat and house elves' and yet he did.

She'd never really given Professor Snape much serious thought. He had a nice, neat label in her mind Teacher, Nasty, Approach with Caution, Dumbledore Trusts Him. That label defined him and her interactions with him, but she'd always dealt with him on a superficial level. Now she wanted to dig deeper. Of course, what she was contemplating now was foolish, the kind of foolishness that generally gave Gryffindors their leap-before-you-look reputations. She just couldn't seem to let the idea of Professor Snape go. She needed more information, the kind of information you couldn't find reading a book. She needed information from hands-on research and the only way to get that was to spying on Professor Snape. Spying on the spy. She could think of few things more dangerous to an overly curious student than stalking that most dangerous of Hogwarts' teachers, the decidedly deadly Head of Slytherin.

Yet regardless of her apprehension, she had questions and Hermione Granger was never one to turn away from the unanswered question. She'd seen something beyond servitude in the elves and beyond ill temperament in Crookshanks. If she really looked, what would she see in Professor Snape?
For all that Hermione had gotten very little sleep the night before, she still beat both boys down to the Great Hall in the morning. She wasn't upset though since it gave her a few quiet minutes to observe the Head Table in peace. In keeping with her thoughts the previous night, Hermione moved around the Gryffindor table, sitting across from her usual seat to eat breakfast this morning. Her new vantage point would allow her to watch the teachers without having to crane her neck around to watch; an exercise she felt sure Professor Snape would notice.

Keeping her head down and nibbling on a piece of toast she studied the Head Table from under her lashes. She was somewhat surprised to see Professor McGonagall wearing the pinched look of disapproval that Hermione associated with an angry House Head. She would have thought that the headmaster and the assistant headmistress would have settled their differences. However, the stiff-necked way the Transfiguration mistress sat beside the headmaster indicated that whatever else had been said last night after Hermione stopped listening, it was obvious that Professor McGonagall was still angry. For a moment Hermione wished she could see beneath the teachers' table to see if the headmaster was wearing socks. Given that look, she somehow doubted it.

Sliding her gaze down the table, she focused on where Snape sat picking listlessly at his meal. Trying hard not to view the man through the lens of 'feared Potions master,' Hermione tried to see him objectively. The picture coming into view before her was rather startling. The man she normally associated with tightly controlled power was sitting dull and listless. He looked tired with faint shadowed smudges deepening the set of his eyes. His sallow skin had an unhealthy cast to it. She'd always just dismissed his look as too much time locked away in the dungeons away from the sun, but looking at him now, he looked almost sick, as if he'd not had a good nights sleep or eaten well in a long time.

Hermione wasn't sure how long she gazed at him, but it wasn't long before his eyes snapped up to scan the Great Hall. Dropping her eyes, she concentrated on buttering another piece of toast. Only when that task was done did she risk raising her eyes again. As before, it didn't take long for him to sense someone watching him. This time Professor Snape's scan of the Hall happened even faster, so fast in fact that he caught her in his gaze, a sneer of what she was sure was contempt curling his upper lip into a silent snarl.

"Oy, Hermione!"

Ron's loud greeting broke the connection between Hermione and Professor Snape. She lowered her gaze back to her breakfast, however the damage had already been done for the day. Her professor would be wary now; she was going to have to be sneakier if she was going to avoid his suspicions.

Deciding to ignore her enigmatic professor for the time being she turned her attention to Ron and Harry as they seated themselves across from her. Ron wasted no time in heaping eggs and bacon onto his plate while Harry reached for the pumpkin juice.

Halfway through breakfast, while Ron debated on whether he needed one or two more rashers of bacon, Hermione realized that she'd learned something important during her first foray as a stalker. Snape was, for a lack of a better term, extremely high strung. He was like a thoroughbred racehorse, wound up so tight that he was sensitive to the least little thing. The man seemed to have an uncanny sense of when he was being watched. That he'd been able to tell that one student out of a three hundred had been focused on him said a lot about his level of paranoia, his sensitivity, and the power of his magic. It was rather unnerving.

It was like living under the pressure of NEWTs week all the time with no relief. It was no wonder he was always snapping and biting students' heads off. If she carried that much tension around her all the time, she'd probably snap as well.

While Hermione remained lost in her thoughts, the boys continued their breakfast, talking about what they wanted from their anticipated stop at Honeydukes. As Ron finished his last bit of bacon, Professor McGonagall came up from behind Harry. "Mr. Potter, if you will come with me please."

Ron made as if to get up out of his seat as well but stopped halfway up at Professor McGonagall's next words. "Not you, Mr. Weasley." Exchanging a semi-worried glance with Ron and Hermione, Harry headed off behind the briskly moving professor.

Ron settled back down after throwing a worried glance towards Harry's retreating form. "What do you suppose that's about? The professor didn't look too happy."

"I'm sure Harry will tell us when he gets back," Hermione answered. "It's probably just something about class." Hermione winced inwardly at her words. She had a good idea of why Professor McGonagall wanted to speak with Harry alone and knew it wasn't going to go over well.

That expectation was confirmed when Harry swept back into the Great Hall with a furious expression on his face, the air around him fairly crackling with barely controlled magic.

"Harry, what-?"

"Not here," Harry snarled, cutting Ron off. Narrowing angry green eyes at the faces turned curiously in their direction, he grabbed up his and Ron's cloaks, thrusting the heavy black fabric into his friend's arms. "Let's go!"

Hermione scrambled to get her winter cloak around her before Harry, with Ron trailing behind him, headed back towards the door.

Harry's swift, angry strides took them out onto the grounds at an almost run. Only once past the gates of Hogwarts did his pace slow to a more measured walk and the aura of emotionally fueled, uncontrolled magic hovering around him settle down.

Ron decided that was his cue to start the questioning, as usual, getting straight to the point. "What happened, mate?"

"They aren't expelling him." There was no need to explain to whom Harry was referring.

"Impossible! They have to expel him."

"Oh, no they don't. They don't have to do anything." Harry raised his pitch to imitate Professor McGonagall. "You have to understand our position, Mr. Potter. We have to tread carefully right now, Mr. Potter. I'm sure that Mr. Malfoy only meant to play a prank, Mr. Potter." Harry dropped the falsetto to return to his own voice. "A prank! McGonagall and Dumbledore want me to believe this was all a harmless prank."

Ron's temper joined with Harry's. "Are you kidding? Malfoy tried to brain you. How could they even think about letting him stay?"

Harry had stopped walking forward now and taken to pacing in a tight circle around Hermione and Ron, Hermione turning on her heel so that Harry always remained in front of her.

"Oh, it gets even better," Harry said. "Not only does the so-called Prince of Slytherin stay, but I can't talk about it. No one who wasn't already there is to know. How am I supposed to save the world from Voldemort if Malfoy 'accidentally' kills me first?"

It was a mark of how angry Ron was that he didn't even flinch at Harry's use of the dark wizard's name. "This is well insane."

Even knowing it was a losing battle; Hermione stepped into her role as the voice of reason. "Harry, the Headmaster and Professor McGonagall were right. They have to look at the larger picture. They can't afford to make a stand now and draw attention to Hogwarts." Hermione dropped her voice down to a harsh whisper. "Not to mention, sending Malfoy away from the school could put Professor Snape's life in danger. V-Voldemort would punish the professor for not protecting Malfoy. You know he would."

Harry's eyes were hard and unforgiving. "Then the great bat would get what he deserves. He joined the Death Eaters. Let him reap what he bloody well sowed."

Hermione drew back in shock. Over Harry's left shoulder she could see that even Ron's face reflected a degree of uneasiness at his friend's words.

Hermione's face flushed as her anger rose. Her own troubled thoughts and feelings concerning Professor Snape came forth in her words. "You arrogant, sanctimonious prat! Professor Snape made a mistake when he was 18 years old. It was a big mistake, I'll grant you, but a mistake he's been trying to fix ever since. He's done nothing but try to protect all three of us time and again. We might not like his methods, but we are all three still alive." She remembered the comment about Malfoy still being redeemable and added, "We also don't know the Headmaster and Professor Snape's ultimate plans, having Malfoy at the school could be important. And Dumbledore didn't expel Sirius when he almost killed Professor Snape during a prank. Is it only Gryffindors who get special treatment?" Hermione didn't know why she said that last bit but knew the words were wrong even as they left her mouth as Harry's face went white and then blood red.

"This," Harry hissed, "is nothing like that. Sirius pulled a prank on a nosy Snape. Malfoy tried to kill me."

"But-" Hermione stopped when it became clear that Harry wasn't listening anymore. Her anger drained away leaving an odd sadness. The cycle started 20 years ago was beginning again.

Harry wasn't done though. "You are right about one thing. There is something in common. Snape is at fault."

"Harry!"

As Harry rounded on her, Hermione stepped back, suddenly afraid of the expression of her friend's face. "He had something to do with this. He isn't to be trusted and this proves it. And you know what, Hermione; I'm tired of you defending him. That bastard isn't worth anyone defending him."

With those last words, Harry spun around and started walking towards Hogsmeade. Hermione found herself rooted to the spot, Harry's last words still ringing in her ears. Ron cast desperate glances between Hermione and Harry's rapidly retreating back, unsure of what he should do.

Feeling very tired suddenly, Hermione looked at Ron as she tilted her head in Harry's direction. "Go on, catch up with him. Talk to him . . . calm him down." She made a vague, helpless gesture with her hands. "Do what you can. I'll go back to the castle."

Ron stared hard at her for a long moment before nodding. Spinning on his heel he took off after Harry.

The walk back to the castle was a cold one, January winds whipping around her cloak and tangling her hair into knots that would take her hours later to work through. Colder than the winds though were Harry's last words.

That bastard isn't worth anyone defending him.

Was that really true? Didn't everyone deserve to have someone on his or her side? Someone to keep watch while they slept? Someone to worry about them? Her face twisted into a scowl at her next thought even Voldemort had Pettigrew.

End Chapter 2