Sweet Sixteen

~*Chapter Eleven*~

The golden sun was just about to set for the day, when Hermione awoke in the infirmary. Her eyes were cast to the wall, and she could see a swirl of carmine, lemon, and titian colors dance upon them. She must have been watching for only a few moments; but already she could tell by the sudden light change that the majestic moon was up. Hermione was about to get up and go when she heard voices in the back of Madam Pomfrey's office. Hermione carefully got up from her cot and tiptoed to the open door, making sure not to be seen. The voices were hushed and mumbled, but she could tell whom of which they belonged to: Snape, Dumbledore, and Pomfrey. Just as soon as the voices happened they stopped. Hermione decided to look and see what was going on; when she did she saw all three faces looking down at her.

Hermione jumped and just before she was about to find refuge in her haven (the library), she heard Dumbledore's voice.

"Miss Granger? Could you stay here please?" Hermione stood at a stand still and turned around slowly. At that moment the two professors came out of the room. Dumbledore, usually with a smile and a twinkle in his eye had a solemn face, and Snape looked even more angry than usual.

"Miss Granger, could you take a seat please?" Hermione did as she was told and sat at the edge of her bed. Snape and Dumbledore remained standing.

"Are you feeling alright?" Hermione nodded her head yes. Dumbledore gave her a disbelieving look. "You're not feeling dizzy, or having a bit of a headache?"

"No, sir. I feel perfectly normal. To tell you the truth I'm not even sure what happened. I mean, one minute I am standing in front of the class, the next I'm waking up and Harry's taking me to the Hospital Wing. I was actually kind of hoping Harry could tell me, but he just kept walking." Hermione ended with a small sigh, as she looked up at them. Dumbledore and Snape exchanged a glance, and Dumbledore started to tell her everything, except of course, their suspicions of her being possessed by the Dark Lord. When he was done, he paused, then added:

"Hermione, if anything... strange happens again, please let someone know." Hermione made a face. "Has anything happened, Miss Granger?" Dumbledore added softly.

"No, no sir, nothing." Hermione looked up and gave him a small smile, "May I go now, sir?" asked Hermione. Dumbledore looked at her, and then nodded his head. Hermione walked slowly out of the infirmirary and was traveling to her common room. Should she have told him about the vision she had? No, no, it meant nothing; I mean what could that have done with this? BOOM! Hermione looked to her right and saw a young girl, probably in her second year, land on the hard floor. By taking a closer look at her robes she saw she was a Hufflepuff.

Hermione was about to go and see if she was alright when she saw the little girls mouth turn into a 'o' shape and she scrambled off the floor and tried to run, but she ran into something, Hermione looked around the corner and saw it was Crabbe. She looked to the right and saw Malfoy come thundering towards her. She looked back at the girl; Crabbe had a hold of her. She felt Malfoy's body stop a few inches in front of her. She looked up at him; she could see his cold eyes looking down upon her. He glanced past Hermione's shoulder, and then gave her one of his trademark smirks.

"Excuse me Granger, but I believe you're standing in between me and that Muggleborn."

"Leave her alone," hissed Hermione. Now she knew what this was about, he was harassing the girl because she was a Muggleborn! Well, by golly, she wasn't going to let that happen.

"You don't understand Granger," he sighed. "That little piece of trash..."

"You listen up Malfoy, and listen good. What the hell died down there and made you a God? Just because she's Muggleborn, does not mean you're better than she. In fact, I'd say it is quite the opposite. So what if her parents aren't wizards? At least she's not emotionally drained of any feelings; at least there are people who actually give a darn about her. You have no idea how hard it is to walk anywhere where there are wizards, do you? People stopping and staring at you, spiting at you, knocking your supplies down, in general just treating you like some sort of an animal kept in a cage, stuck there for their amusement only."

Hermione finished her speech with a small sigh, unfortunately, she had to look at him afterwards. He had no smirk on his face whatsoever, instead, there wasn't any sign that he had even heard her, just then he answered with

"I've never seen that before," Draco replied in a haughty voice. "I think you're lying."

"Of course you've never seen it before, you don't care enough to look, and if you did actually notice it, what would you do? Stand there and watch it happen I presume," Hermione finished with a disgusted look on her face. After a few moments of silence, Draco spoke.

"May I talk now?" Hermione nodded. "I wasn't hassling her because she was Muggleborn, I was doing it because she stole money from me." He ended with a smirk.

Hermione looked behind her, the little girl was holding out the money in the palm of her hand. She turned back to him wanting nothing more at that moment than to hide under a rock and have it bury her six feet under.

"I... why didn't you stop me?" asked Hermione. Then Draco did something with his lips that looked like a smile.

"I tried, but you just kept talking, and I figured, if you wanted to talk so badly I should just let you."

"I'm sorry, Malfoy," was what Hermione mumbled as she ran as fast as she could past him.

As Hermione was running away. She didn't know what she was feeling; was it embarrassment? Anger? Relief? No, she thought, it was all three. She stopped to catch her breath. She looked around and saw that she had ended up in the trophy room. She looked into the glass-covered paneling and saw her reflection. She had never loathed her reflection as much as she did at that moment, because it was then that she realized what she was... nothing. What's worse is she was the one who brought any of it up. Hermione slid down the wall and did the only thing that made sense to her heart and cried.

At that moment Harry had come out of the Common Room to check on Hermione, seeing as how she had been in the Hospital Wing for a long time now. Since a couple weeks ago all he could think of was Hermione. About how wrong he was treating her, how much he truly needed her, worrying, but most importantly he was thinking of how truly and amazingly wonderful she was. Not just because she saved his arse all the time, but also because she was right by his side, no matter what, even if he was being an imbecile about something, she was his friend, in every aspect of the word. Then he started thinking of all the hugs she had given him, and realized she was the only person besides Mrs. Weasley who cared. That's the last coherent thought he had before he saw her crying. He didn't know if he should interrupt, so he just stood there until she could regain some composure.

Hermione looked up at the sound of rattling, she saw the glass paneling move, shaking as if it were terrified. The trophies inside however were perfectly still. Suddenly, it just stopped and the glasses broke into shards and flew to Hermione. She was just about to scream as they came hurdling towards her, when she felt two strong arms push her out of the way. She looked where she once was and saw Harry lying on the floor with the glass shards in his upper back.

"HARRY!" Hermione ran to Harry. She could see his back was bleeding profusely. She checked his pulse. He was still alive. Hermione ran her finger over one of the sharp edged glass pieces. She could see the cuts in the glass stained with blood. She got a better hold of the piece and pulled the object upright a little bit, as she did this she felt Harry suck in breath. She was about to continue with her task, when all the pieces slowly pulled themselves out of Harry's skin. They were dangling right above Harry's back, they were slowly rotating' then suddenly they slowly started to disintegrate into fine powder. Hermione went to touch Harry's back to find, there were no wounds. They had been closed up. She frantically checked his bloodstained robes to find nothing.

Hermione suddenly stopped. She could see Voldemort's bright red eyes fog her vision, she tried to shake it away, but grew increasingly dizzy, she tried to stand up, but to no avail, her head was throbbing with pain and her vision was slowly deceasing, finally she passed out right beside her best friend. In every aspect of the word.