Hermione froze, feeling her heart pounding in her temples.
"What do you mean?" Her voice trembled. She instinctively clutched Miranda's shoulder. "You can still see him? I… I'm still a verdilisk, aren't I?"
Hermione's eyes widened in fear, and her legs went weak. If she hadn't been holding onto Miranda, she probably would have just collapsed.
"It's alright, Hermione," Miranda said quickly, trying to reassure her. "You look the same as before." She glanced aside and added, "Sorry. That was a stupid thing to joke about."
Hermione blinked, took a few moments to catch her breath, then let out an indignant breath.
"Miranda! That's not funny at all!"
'I should have left her in the forest, trembling under that tree!' The angry thought flared up so suddenly that Hermione flinched. She didn't even have time to process where it had come from when she noticed Miranda's face go pale and her eyes widen.
"Your pupils!" Miranda exclaimed, instinctively stepping back.
"What about them?" Hermione asked sharply.
"They… they turned into vertical slits for a second. Like a verdilisk's," Miranda said, her voice shaking. She was still looking at Hermione with a strange kind of distrust. "They look normal now."
"You're joking again, aren't you?" Hermione demanded, though her anger was already giving way to unease.
She caught herself hoping to hear a stupid laugh that would instantly explain everything. But Miranda didn't laugh, only shook her head and kept staring into her eyes. A chill ran down Hermione's spine. Miranda looked genuinely frightened. Unable to stay on her feet any longer, Hermione sank down onto a fallen log. Breathing became harder; her gaze darted over the ground.
"Could it still be in me?" she said quietly. Then she looked up at Miranda. "You don't understand what it's like under that cloak. It's like there's someone else in your head, whispering that being a monster is a good thing. That it's real power, and with it I won't have to be afraid of anyone. Not the Smiting Hand, not the League of Light, not Voldemort. No one at all."
She fell silent for a moment, then looked at Miranda again. There was both reproach and confusion in her eyes. Miranda gave a guilty smile, a flush rising to her cheeks.
"Sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have joked about that. I was just… shaken after the forest. I tried to lighten the mood. It was stupid, I know."
Hermione shook her head. She glanced toward the swamps, then at the path leading to the castle. Slowly she got to her feet, brushed herself off, and, trying to put her usual confidence back into her voice, said:
"All right. It's fine. Let's get out of here."
***
When Hermione pushed open the heavy door of the Relicium Club room, she froze on the threshold for a couple of seconds. The smell of old wood and the faint scent of potions pulled her straight back into the past.
The large table stood in the same place, in the centre of the room. She remembered how Dumbledore, leaning against it, used to talk about the properties of artefacts. He always spoke calmly, with quiet pleasure, as if he were sharing something personal. Hermione couldn't help but smile. Back then, everything had seemed so simple. And she herself had been so confident… perhaps even too confident.
Her gaze slid to the right, to where Elliot Grimm usually sat. His mocking voice came back to her: "Little girl, did you get the wrong door? This club isn't for babies." Later, she had been certain this Slytherin was involved with the League of Light. How wrong she had been. She looked away, feeling an unpleasant burn in her chest. She still felt ashamed.
The real threat had been much closer. Casper Honeydew, the one who had smiled at her, who had found it so easy to get along with her. The one she had trusted, like a fool. Hermione clenched her fingers tighter, remembering the wind at the top of the Astronomy Tower and the moment when it became clear that everything around her was a trap set by the one she had thought was a friend.
"How deceptive appearances can be…" she thought, running her fingers across the smooth surface of the table. This room had once seemed like a place of discovery, but now it felt like an arena of lies and betrayal. Casper, Thomas Nightshade, the other members of the League of Light… The Ministry still hadn't caught any of them. But they certainly hadn't stopped making their presence known.
The Smiting Hand… Who was he? And was he somewhere in Hogwarts right now?
She let out a slow breath, trying to push the images of the past out of her mind. No. This was not the time for memories. She had come here for a reason.
Hermione pulled a folded sheet of parchment from her robe pocket, a note written from memory based on what Foster had told her. She unfolded it and smoothed it out with her palm. The Eye of Chronos. This device was supposed to become the key to the Vault of Time. And the memories… they had to stay in the past and not interfere with what she came here to do.
On the shelves, covered with a thin layer of dust, tools and rare ingredients waited for their time to come. This year, the Relicium Club had failed to recruit enough students, and the room was barely used. So the chances of someone coming in were next to none.
Hermione walked over to the shelves and gathered everything she needed: alchemical tubes, enchanted stabilisers, rare ingredients in glass jars. Her fingers moved confidently, as though a year hadn't passed since the last time she had been in this room. She skilfully mixed ingredients and assembled the pieces step by step, precise and focused. Magical instruments clicked softly, as if recognising her touch, while the quiet murmur of spells filled the room, making the air thick with magic. Everything she had studied a year ago was taking on a new meaning. Theory was becoming practice.
Hermione spent several hours absorbed in her work. One final click, and the Eye of Chronos came to life with a low hum, like a cat purring in satisfaction. Hermione lifted the device and examined it closely. A simple little box, yet inside it was a power capable of opening a path to a place no one except Terry Foster had set foot in for centuries. For now, the Eye of Chronos was running idle. To truly activate it, it still needed the final and most important ingredient: quicksol slime, gathered the previous day in the Forbidden Forest at the risk of her life.
Now all that remained was to wait for the right moment.
***
Time passed, but the "decisive day" Miranda had spoken about had yet to come. Hermione tried not to think about it, just as she avoided thinking about the Green Cloak. On the very first evening after their trip into the forest, she had shoved it into her trunk, closed the lid, and pushed it far away so she would not even accidentally catch sight of a corner of the hated fabric.
One day, Miranda asked casually, as if it were nothing important:
"Listen, Hermione… remember how Foster asked you to keep some Polyjuice Potion aside?"
"Yes," Hermione replied cautiously.
"Could you give it to me, please?"
"What for?"
"You'll find out when the time comes," Miranda replied with a slightly guilty smile.
Something inside Hermione gave a sharp jolt. 'She's hiding something again.' The thought flashed through her mind like an angry spark. 'She can't be trusted.'
These outbursts had started after that damned trip into the forest. At first they frightened her, but over the past few days Hermione had learned to suppress them. 'If I ignore it, it'll pass.' That was what she told herself every time. Besides, her pupils no longer changed, and the flashes of anger seemed to be growing weaker. Not as sharp, not as bloodthirsty as they had been during the first days.
She managed to push the anger down this time too. Hermione took a slow breath, trying to calm her thoughts. Then Foster appeared in her mind, along with the words he had once said in passing: "It's the only way no one dies this year."
That was enough. Hermione gave a short nod, and later that evening handed Miranda the remaining potion without asking any more questions.
March flew by unnoticed. Then April arrived, along with the Easter holidays. Hermione suddenly caught herself feeling relieved: at least she would not have to miss too many classes because of the attempt to rescue Foster, which promised to drag on. But almost immediately, other anxious thoughts began creeping into her mind. Would she return before the summer holidays? What would her parents say if she was not home after the school year ended? How was she supposed to explain her disappearance?
She had prepared several letters to her parents in advance, filled with neutral lines about classes, the weather, and exam revision. She had asked Miranda to send them from time to time, hoping that would be enough to avoid raising suspicion. But if she failed to return on time, all that preparation would be for nothing. And what would her father think then? Would he believe a single word she said after she came back? And would he even let her return to Hogwarts next year?
But something else worried her just as much: Miranda still had not said a word about how she planned to hide Hermione's absence from the teachers and the Hogwarts administration. That remained a mystery, and Hermione did not like it one bit.
Still, that was not the only thing occupying her thoughts these days. During the Easter holidays, they were supposed to choose the subjects they would study next year. Hermione now sat on a bench by the lake, frowning at the sheet of parchment in her hands. The table listing the subjects had been written out with the neatness of an examination form. And next to almost every subject stood a long row of pluses. There were barely any minuses.
'How am I supposed to choose?' she thought, reading through the lines. Ancient Runes, Care of Magical Creatures, Divination… Each of them was interesting in its own way, each opened up a whole world of knowledge. 'If I choose one, I'll never know what I missed in the others!'
Hermione sighed, set the parchment aside, and reached for a thick volume on ancient spells. Usually books calmed her down. But not today. Her eyes kept drifting back to the list again and again, as though it were calling to her.
"Hermione, have you picked your subjects yet?" she heard Ron's voice.
He had just come back from the lake, playing with a stone he had found by the shore, tossing it into the air and catching it again before finally turning and throwing it into the water. A quiet plop sounded, and ripples spread across the lake.
He and Harry had not spent long agonising over the choice. They had picked the same subjects, the easiest ones. 'As if the chance to sit next to each other in class was the only thing they planned to get out of studying at Hogwarts,' Hermione thought irritably.
"No," she snapped without looking up. "Not yet."
"You do realise you can't choose everything at once, right?" Ron said. "Just take the same ones Harry and I did, and that's it!" He spread his hands. "You can't be in two places at once."
"I know, Ron," she replied too sharply. But then, catching herself, she quickly pulled herself together and softened her voice. "It's just more complicated than you think."
Then the meaning of his words suddenly hit her. You can't be in two places at once… Without even realising it, Ron had just given her the answer. Terry Foster had promised that if she helped him escape from the Vault of Time, he would give her a Time-Turner. Hermione's eyes lit up with anticipation. She snatched up her quill and turned back to the list.
"Hermione?" Ron leaned over her shoulder uneasily when he noticed how suddenly animated she had become.
"It's alright, Ron," she said without looking up. "I've just figured everything out."
The doubts vanished, and with a lightness unusual for her, she began ticking boxes next to every subject.
Ron froze, then let out a startled breath.
"Wait… that's… all of them! You won't have enough time for all that!"
Hermione only smiled.
"Time is a matter of self-organisation, Ron."
Without another word, she got to her feet and headed back towards the castle.
"She's completely mental," Ron muttered, staring after her.
***
Hermione settled into an armchair by the window in the Gryffindor common room, bent over Ancient Rune Interpretation. Her quill glided across the parchment, leaving fresh strokes of ink behind. She bit the edge of her lip as she carefully drew a particularly difficult symbol, and only after the final stroke did she allow herself to breathe out.
'If I start now, next year I'll be able to handle the workload much more easily,' she thought, tracing over the last symbol and looking over her notes with satisfaction.
Hermione straightened up, about to take a short break and make a few more notes, when suddenly hurried footsteps thundered from above. Harry and Ron came rushing down the stairs. Harry jumped over the last two steps, barely catching himself on the railing; Ron nearly tripped over the rug by the fireplace. Both headed straight for Hermione.
"Harry? Ron? What happened?" she asked, frowning.
Harry grabbed the back of the armchair as he came to a stop.
"It's terrible," he blurted out.
Ron immediately added, "The diary… the diary's gone!"
Hermione opened her mouth, then closed it again. She looked completely baffled.
"What diary?" she finally asked, setting her quill aside. "Since when do you keep a diary?"
"No!" Harry waved the suggestion away. Then he quickly, and a little incoherently, began explaining. "Tom Riddle's diary… the one I found in Moaning Myrtle's toilet. I hid it in my trunk under a pile of things, but when we came back, the whole dormitory was turned upside down, and the diary was gone!"
"Turned upside down?" Hermione repeated, her eyebrows rising.
"Yeah!" Ron nodded. "All of Harry's stuff was scattered everywhere. Someone was definitely looking for it!"
Hermione got to her feet; the armchair creaked softly. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the room, as though expecting to spot the intruder hiding among the armchairs.
"Just the diary? Nothing else was touched?"
"Yeah," Harry confirmed, watching her. "Everything else is still there."
"That's… strange…" Hermione said slowly. "Who would want an old diary that belonged to a Hogwarts student from fifty years ago? Even if he was Head Boy, it's hardly some priceless relic."
She walked over to the window and stared into the distance, tapping a finger against her chin.
"Though… maybe…" She turned to Harry and Ron. "Maybe this has something to do with what we were trying to find out last time, who let the monster out of the Chamber of Secrets. Maybe someone's afraid we'll learn from the diary how to find the person responsible?" she finished uncertainly.
"You mean Hagrid?" Harry asked incredulously. "You think it was him?"
Hermione stared at him blankly for a second, and then suddenly realised something.
"No, it couldn't have been him. He doesn't know the password," she said quietly, her eyes widening. "Which means only someone from Gryffindor could have stolen it. No one else knows the password!"
"Yeah… right," Harry replied with a frown.
He looked at Ron, but Ron only shrugged helplessly, clearly not knowing what to say.
***
That night Hermione lay in bed, staring into the darkness of the canopy without closing her eyes. Sleep refused to come.
'Who could have done it? And more importantly, why?'
The diary… a magical diary that answered questions and possibly contained the key to the school's greatest threat, knew who had opened the Chamber of Secrets fifty years ago and how they had done it.
'It definitely wasn't Hagrid,' Hermione decided at once. 'First of all, he's our friend. Second, even putting that aside, there was no way he could have squeezed into the Gryffindor common room. Someone would have noticed a guest that enormous. Besides, the portrait hole clearly wasn't meant for someone his size.'
'Then who?' she continued thinking. 'One of the boys from Harry's dormitory? Unlikely. Why would they have thrown everything around? Anyone who lived there every day could have picked the right moment and done it quietly. Whoever did this had clearly been in a hurry.'
The thought she had been stubbornly trying to push away surfaced again.
'Olivia… She had already done unforgivable things on the League of Light's orders. What if the Smiting Hand really was hiding in Hogwarts and knew how to open the Chamber of Secrets? What if Olivia was once again acting on the League's orders, removing a threat to their agent? Or maybe Olivia was the Smiting Hand?' The suspicion flared up in Hermione's mind once again.
No matter how hard Hermione tried to find flaws in the theory about Olivia's involvement, it still seemed the most believable to her. First of all, Olivia was a Gryffindor, which meant she could easily get into the boys' dormitory. Second, to put it mildly, she was not someone who deserved trust.
'But simply going up to her and accusing her would be foolish,' Hermione decided. She remembered last year, when she had accused Elliot Grimm too early, and how badly it had turned out. It would be better if Olivia, or whoever was responsible, was exposed by the teachers rather than by Hermione herself.
The next morning at breakfast, Hermione cautiously brought up the missing diary.
"Harry," she began quietly, leaning towards him across the table. "I still think we should tell Professor McGonagall about this."
Harry took a bite of toast, trying not to meet her eyes.
"I don't think that's a good idea," he replied after a short pause.
"But this is serious!" she whispered indignantly. "Someone got into your dormitory and stole a magical object. Do you realise how dangerous that is?"
"Yeah, but if we tell them, they'll start asking questions," he said with a frown. "How did we get the diary? Why were we hiding it? What were we doing with it?"
"So what?" Hermione shot back stubbornly, a little louder than she had meant to. "Harry, this isn't just your thing anymore. If someone was specifically looking for the diary, that could mean –"
"Hermione, I'll handle it," he interrupted.
She frowned, pushing away the bowl of porridge she had not touched.
"You don't understand how important this is. If you won't tell them, then I will," she warned him.
"No," Harry said firmly, finally meeting her eyes.
Hermione pressed her lips together, holding back her irritation. He was as stubborn as ever, but the feeling that they were making a mistake would not leave her. Throughout breakfast, her thoughts kept drifting far from the usual conversations. The diary could be the key to something far more serious. Deep down, she had already decided that she would speak to Professor McGonagall anyway, despite Harry's stubbornness.
As they left the Great Hall and headed towards Gryffindor Tower, Harry suddenly stopped dead.
"The voice!" he shouted. "I just heard it again! Did you hear it?"
Hermione slapped a hand against her forehead.
"Harry, I think I've figured it out!" she exclaimed. "I'm going to the library!"
And without explaining anything else, she rushed off to check her theory, leaving her friends completely bewildered.