Chapter Text
Fwoom. The low flame took life under the gentle prodding of Hermione’s wand. It lit the cauldron she placed above it with a soft golden light, the water inside swirling a bit with the movement. As it heated up, she used a mortar and pestle at her makeshift workstation to soften up some peppermint flower heads. Once softened, she added them to the slowly heating water. With them, she also added whole peppermint leaves into the water. She surveyed her work area.
She had utilized Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom again for this potion. The bathroom had still gone mostly unused in the four years since she had brewed Polyjuice there, and so she knew it would be as good a place as any to brew another potion that would definitely be against the rules if found out. This time, she wasn’t brewing on the floor, but had brought a folding table and chair and her potions kit to set up near the stalls at the end of the room, not visible from the door. She had steadied the table with a stabilizing charm to ensure no spillage would occur to her brewing cauldron. She focused back on her potion, very eager to see how it would turn out.
She next added powdered moonstone, a small spoonful at a time. Stirring three times in a counter-clockwise direction after each spoonful, she carefully counted the repetitions. After all the powdered moonstone had been added, she sprinkled rose thorns and rose petals into the water. She sat back and wound up a potions timer for one hour. She left it on the table then got up to stretch and walk around the bathroom.
It had been just two weeks since Slughorn had introduced their sixth-year class to the Amortentia potion. Two weeks since she had wondered what that elusive scent was after the obvious scents that she already knew she loved: freshly mown grass, new parchment, and spearmint toothpaste. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was, though. After wondering about it for two nights in a row, she realized the only way she could let this rest was to re-create the potion and try to figure it out herself. Students were not allowed to have love potions, and Slughorn had disposed of his batch as soon as the class was over. Not down the drain, as she had expected, but she saw him owling it off to some buyer. In any case, it was not available to her to try to figure out what it was. So she surreptitiously gathered the ingredients on her own. Just that very afternoon she had come back from Hogsmeade and the potions shops there for the rest of the ingredients she hadn’t been able to find around the castle over the past two weeks. She had made thorough notes on how to properly brew the potion and to set up the space to make it yield the best results.
In her mind, she knew she could have been spending her time better. There was tons of preparation and scheduling that she could be doing for her N.E.W.T.s coming up next year, or even helping the boys get their plans together. She knew Ron and Harry were sparing no thoughts to their studies, instead focused on the Quidditch tryouts for Gryffindor. She could be enjoying her first weeks back at school with her other housemates, talking to Ginny or Neville. But she just could not get this out of her head. The steam that spiraled up during that first advanced potions class had engulfed her and lit the fire of her curiosity. She could not place that final scent. It was all-encompassing, consuming her thoughts and her heart. She desperately wanted to know, no, needed to know, what that could possibly be, and maybe where it came from. She figured, if she could have some time to really smell it, and try to analyze the different notes within the scent, in private, she might be able to figure it out. And so, she was here. Brewing an illegal potion in the girls’ bathroom. Just like old times.
She sighed and sat back down at the table, pulling some of her notes from the week out of her bookbag. She studied for a little while, as she waited for the timer to go off.
After an hour had passed, the timer let off an insistent chiming bell sound. Hermione jumped a little bit, having been quite absorbed in her studies. She was glad she had stabilized the table before starting this. She tapped the ringing timer with her palm to turn it off and put her books away, standing up to give her full attention back to her potion.
She removed the gold cauldron from the heat of the low flame and covered it with a silk cloth. Carefully picking up the whole thing, she walked over to one of the stalls she had prepared for the purpose of letting the cauldron sit here disguised in the dark. She put it down on the closed toilet lid, making sure it was situated without risk of tipping or sliding off. There were drapes of dark fabric pinned up around this stall, blocking all the light from the high gothic windows of the bathroom. She had attached them with many tacks and even a few sticking charms. She collapsed her workstation table and chair and slid them in next to the toilet, for storage until tomorrow when she would need it again. When she closed the stall door upon the whole scene, she whispered Colloportus and then added a Notice-Me-Not charm for good measure on the stall area.
She stepped back and enjoyed her handiwork. Nothing looked out of order or noticeable. It would be fairly secure until next time she came back, she was sure. She picked up her bag, slung it over her shoulder, and went to the bathroom door. Peering out, she saw nobody coming from either end of the corridor and quietly slipped out, closing the door softly behind her. She breathed a sigh of relief when she rounded a corner and nothing had gone amiss. She hadn’t even seen Myrtle that day. It was all going smoothly.
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Hermione was a lot more engaged in the conversations in the Gryffindor common room that Saturday night. Knowing she had a plan of action that was set in motion to solve her burning curiosity, she was able to immerse herself more fully in the goings-on of her housemates. It was fun watching Harry, Ron, and Seamus play exploding snap, alongside Ginny and Dean. They were rooting the boys on and heckling whenever cards would blow up in their faces.
They had a good night with plenty of laughs, and she found herself looking at Ron a lot in the light from the setting sun. He was the same as he’d always been, albeit a lot taller, and his hair a bit longer. His blue eyes and huge grin were the same warm and inviting she had always associated with her second home. But there wasn’t that spark there. The way she had started noticing him over the summer and early this school year seemed to pale in comparison to the elusive mystery of what that Amortentia smell was. Ron was Ron, and she appreciated him and knew they’d always be friends, but there was nothing more there, as she had thought there might be earlier that summer. She was happy to have come to a conclusion about that at least. It was good to be friends, she didn’t want to have to worry about upsetting the dynamic or trying to have him feel feelings that weren’t there.
The group parted ways, and she went up to bed feeling reassured about her conclusions that night and plan of action for the Amortentia for the next week and a half. In nine days when the potion was complete, she would be able to dive into research and analyzing that scent.