The Confectionary Chronicles || HP/SPN

Sweets and Studies- Ch9

CHAPTER NINE:

Professor Quirrell's 'mysterious illness' was quickly forgotten in the wake of their sudden free time before lunch. Transfiguration followed lunch, and Hermione was able to turn her thistle into a thimble on her first try. Professor McGonagall awarded her fifteen points to Slytherin and told her she could get started on the essay she was assigning them for homework.

Sheepishly, Hermione pulled the already completed essay from her bookbag and handed it in to the transfiguration professor. After learning the topic from the Gryffindors during Study Hall the previous day she'd been able to get started on it the previous evening as she'd already finished her Herbology and Charms homework and then complete it during the free time earlier that day as they'd been let out of DADA early without being assigned any work.

Exasperated, though in an amused sort of way, not an annoyed one, Professor McGonagall awarded her another ten points and invited her to tea and biscuits in her office the following afternoon for a discussion. Hermione got to spend the rest of that class alternating between helping Millicent and working on a fascinating new essay topic Professor McGonagall assigned her on non-living to living transfigurations.

With classes finished for the day, Hermione and Millicent headed for the grounds at Hermione's request– it had been three days since she'd arrived at Hogwarts now, and Hermione had made a promise to a squid she intended to keep.

On their way down to the Black Lake– the name of which was a bit of a misnomer seeing as it was freshwater and landlocked, making it in actual fact a Scottish loch– Hermione was delighted to bump into Neville. "Where are you off to this fine afternoon?" she asked him cheerfully.

"I'm looking for Trevor," Neville told her and Millicent glumly. "I can't find Fred or George anywhere to summon him."

"You should join us," Hermione suggested, "toads like damp environments with lots of plants, right? We're going down to the Black Lake, that would be a perfect toad environment!"

"If you don't mind," Neville said shyly.

"The more the merrier!" Hermione said brightly, and Millicent nodded, her smile small but genuine.

It was late afternoon as they made their way out across the wide lawn, heading towards the shore of the loch. There was a slight nip to the air and the surface of the loch was rippling from the breeze. Hermione sat down at the edge of the loch and pulled off her shoes and socks and hitched up her long skirt above her knees with one hand before stepping out into the shallows. The water was cold, numbing her skin. She shivered, letting her magic flow through her body, ripple out through the water, reaching out.

What she found wasn't at all what she'd been expecting.

Hermione froze when from the depths of the loch, a presence unfolded and reached back. It felt vaguely like an ocean's tide, vast and unknowable, but the water was an unfathomable void that swept over her, all-consuming, as if it were about to swallow her whole. Hermione instinctively reached for burning wildfire/flashing thunderstorms/steadfast faith/brilliantgold, wrapping it protectively around herself as a shield until the eldritch presence backed away, no longer prodding but instead slowly rising from the depths.

She sucked in a startled, gasping breath, only just realising she'd been holding her breath for the entire encounter, which had spanned for both an eternity and a second. "You alright?" Millicent called out from the shore. 

"Um," she said, a bit shaky, watching as Bertramus's mantle breached the dark surface of the loch, coincidentally at the same time as the eldritch presence rose to the loch's surface, "I think so?"