Grace under Pressure

Summary:

Relatively short chaptered fic. When both Harry and Hermione find themselves trapped and - more importantly - alone; they find themselves craving for each other. And, in a way, succeed.

Disclaimer:

Everything concerning Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling. I, Runningidiot, own nothing from this story, and do not plan on making any sort of profit by selling. I do not intend to make a mockery of the epic tale of Harry James Potter, but I continue to write H.P fanfiction for the mere enjoyment of it. The title of this fic (Grace under Pressure) does not belong to me either, but the excellent writers/creators of the sci-fi hit Stargate: Atlantis. This fic is actually based off of one of the most recent episodes I viewed.

Rating:

It stands at Pg.

Author's Note:

Here it is. The second chapter! Sorry about the amount of time it took for this one to come out, but I've been kinda busy with school and such. I'm also going to apologize in advance for this chapter, since NOTHING happens in it.

I'm kidding. Heh … heh.

Harry and Hermione will be pushed to centre stage in this chapter, and we'll also see some developments stirring, even though both Harry and Hermione should be thinking about someone else in their life.

Enjoy!

Chapter Two:

The Board is Set…

Saturday came too quickly for Hermione, she found herself waking up, but refusing to do so as she wiggled around in her comfortable four-poster bed; trying to find a cosy position that could grant her the slumber she lusted for. The weekend had started, and that meant most of Hogwart's population was sleeping in, leaving the hallways deserted, though Filch was undoubtedly scurrying through the many passageways in his never ending pursuit of Peeves's righteous punishment.

Finding no slumber coming, Hermione Granger rose from her bed, rubbing the restlessness residue from her brown eyes. With a sigh escaping the narrow passageway between her rose coloured lips, Hermione quickly changed - noticing her three roommates all sleeping, each one smiling widely - and left for breakfast.

As the Muggle-born girl travelled down the winding stairs of the girl's dormitory, her footsteps echoed all around her, no doubt alerting any Death Eaters awaiting the first girl to come down the staircase in order to ambush her for some reason.

“Probably some fun for one night. Then they would kill me.” Hermione thought sourly, knowing that they would ditch her because she was - what they called - a Mudblood. She found herself not caring, her friends accepted her for who she was, she had found some love in the world from her boyfriend, her parents and Harry.

Harry. His name seemed to stay within Hermione's mind at all times, wondering how he was coping with this or that, or if he was happy with Ginny.

Hermione shook her head in an attempt to clear the name from her mind; she found it odd to be thinking of another boy than Ron. She felt guilty that she never really thought about Ron the way that she had dreamed of Har…

“That was the past.” The Know-it-all said to herself firmly, the embers from the nearby fireplace crackling as if in response to her statement.

“Oh really,” Hermione wheeled around to see no one. She indistinctively drew her wand, which she had always kept with her - even when she was sleeping - since the end of their fifth year.

“Now I'm turning insane.” Hermione thought as she lowered her wand. All the young woman could see was an open window - a slight autumn breeze flowing through the drapes - and a darkened staircase leading up to the girl's dormitory. She sighed quite deeply, sheathed her wand and departed for the Great Hall; in which she would indulge herself in a hearty breakfast.

As Hermione descended the many levels of the massive castle, she found her thoughts were still centred on Harry Potter. She felt concerned about his fate; about how he wished to be elsewhere, searching for the Horcruxes. Hermione could see it as soon as they entered their first class, Charms was usually entertaining, yet Harry made it rather depressing. He refused to take notes and speak at all, expect when they were practicing a spell.

Hermione had noticed a dramatic improvement in his spell casting abilities, even though he wrote down any notes, he had still performed the Protean Charm relatively well for a first time, while Ron only made his small rock squirm slightly. The only way Hermione was able to perform it flawlessly was because she had previously performed it during her fifth year for the secret society known as Dumbledore's Army.

And so it was that Hermione ended up in the Great Hall at ten past eleven, the usual chit chat that accompanied the entrance to the massive cafeteria like room was absent, since most of the occupants who contributed to the level of noise were not present, but happily dreaming.

“How I wish I could be one of them too.” Hermione thought sourly as she sat at the Gryffindor table all alone, helping herself to some of the breakfast present. She looked around in search of something to occupy her eyesight, normally the owls bringing the morning post proved adequate, but Wizarding post (via owls) was cancelled on weekends except for in school postage. Though, even on weekdays the normal chaos that accompanies the post owls flying into the Great Hall, delivering whatever, has lessened dramatically. This could mean two things, people aren't sending letters, or there were less people to send letters to.

“Could be both too,” She thought taking a bite out of her already buttered toast.

“Up already?” Hermione choked on her saliva covered toast slightly (how she did that was beyond her) as she looked up to see Harry Potter smiling slightly at her, his small bag dangling off one shoulder. He seated himself across from her, brought his plate closer and filled his goblet with some orange juice.

“Mm-hmm,” The brown haired girl replied, swallowing her toast. “Though it's not that early, you do know our detention's today right?”

Harry snorted slightly, filling up his plate with normal breakfast cuisine. “How could I forget? Hopefully it's not like the past ones I've been to.” He held up his right hand, showing Hermione the back of it. There - as if etched in with fingernails - read I must not tell lies.

“She was awful.” She was, of course, referring to their ex-Defence against the Dark Arts teacher, Dolores Umbridge. “Dreadful, horrific, mindless….” Hermione trailed off, shaking her head in dismay.

“Ran out of synonyms?” Harry smiled, a piece of bacon dangling from his mouth. Hermione snorted in reply while he laughed openly.

Hermione finished the remainder of her meal relatively quickly, but stayed with Harry and continued to discuss the many possibilities of what this detention could bring them. First Harry had suggested it was a search for Hagrid, though Hermione had scoffed at that saying that they were far too young to be dealing with that.

Harry crossed his arms defiantly. “I was going to be searching for the Horcruxes right now, Hagrid's huge! He'll be far easier to find.” Harry gave her a sidelong smile, signalling that he meant no offence, or - at least - Hermione hoped it meant that.

As Harry stabbed a sausage with his fork; Hermione's eyes followed, halting when the silver pierced the juicy meat. She found her eyes automatically travelling up his arm, studying his lazy - yet oddly relaxed - sitting posture and eventually reached his face, finding his eyes looking right into hers. Hermione jumped slightly, though didn't release eye contact.

It was odd, to say the least, to just stare at someone staring back at you for around a minute, not once darting away in embarrassment. They just lost themselves within the pools of colour. Though the hammering-like noise that signalled an hour had passed reached their ears, their bodies refused to move; though when it struck twelve times, they both scurried out of the Great Hall and out of the castle, running to the Iron Gate that led to Hogsmeade.

Reaching the entrance to the magnificent village in under a minute was breathtaking for the inexperienced athlete Hermione, while her friend - who has endured hours of multiple Quidditch practices - was still standing straight, his hand gripping something in his right pocket.

“Wands out you reckon?” Harry said, taking out what he was gripping so tightly.

“Good idea.” Hermione breathed, taking out her wand, nowadays, anywhere was unsafe. A wand - no matter the condition - was a necessity.

“'Ey Harry?” A voice called out, from somewhere near them. Hermione caught sight of the familiar Nymphadora Tonks approaching them with a smile - or at least, Hermione thought it was one; she couldn't tell from this distance - on her face.

“Tonks?” Hermione said incredulously. “You're supervising us?” Maybe this detention wouldn't be so bad with her around to bring up their morale. Though, to both Harry's and Hermione's utter disappointment, she shook her head.

“Nah, just here to escort you to Rosmerta; I'll warn you both now, she's acting rightly perky. Two of the best Hogwarts students, helping her with her restaurant, it's all just beyond her comprehension.” Tonks sighed, relaxing her tensed position. “Come on you two, I'll take you to her.”

They passed through the streets wordlessly, Harry and Hermione both too upset to say anything, and Tonks was rather busy making sure no one was following them, or making sure she didn't trip on anything. Hermione felt oddly thankful that nothing that resembled a Troll's leg was anywhere near them.

*

The task Rosmerta had set for both Harry and Hermione didn't sound that difficult.

“My basement, which holds the frozen food awaiting their inevitable purpose, has been repeatedly attacked by several … things.” The barmaid said curtly, indicating a dark staircase leading down to the cellar of the Three Broomsticks. “The basement is divided into two sections, which is perfect for the both of you. Split up and find those pesky creatures and deal with them how you see fit.

To Harry Potter, it was drearier than anything. As Hermione and he stepped down the basement stairs, their wands drawn and their eyes darting around the silent area; he couldn't help but want this to end as soon as possible. And could anyone really blame him? On a bright, September, Saturday like this one; he could be practicing Quidditch with Ginny and Ron; he could have been fooling around with Ron while Hermione would nag them to do the week's homework.

The Boy-who-lived involuntarily smiled as he mumbled the essential lighting charm and watched his wand suddenly glow bright green; illuminating the dusty area. He could still hear Rosmerta speaking with their escort, Nymphadora Tonks as his mind continued to wander, and fixate an image of Ron, Hermione and him in the Gryffindor common room, the males playing chess, while the female had her nose in a random textbook, jotting down noteworthy points.

“Where'd we start then?” Hermione asked uneasily as she stepped next to him, waving her lit wand around; looking for anything notable. Harry took in the scene around him; barrels were stacked neatly next to him, one on top of the other making a row of them along the left wall. The ground felt like stone, and, was in fact, made up of a simple lining of stones. Though the barrels had several spider webs doted the rows of barrels, Harry found no interest in them.

“Let's look for the food storage first, maybe we'll get an idea of what we're up against from seeing that.” Hermione nodded understandably.

“Rosmerta said that they were relatively nearby to the entrance.” Hermione said, starting off in the right direction.

Harry stood, puzzled, but followed her anyway. “Rosmerta said that?” Was he really that far from reality right now? Hermione laughed knowingly, glancing at him with a smile.

“Mm-hmm, she did. She also said that we should split up after this since the basement's divided into two sections. I'm assuming we're in one, and this -” she indicated a passageway to their left. “- is the other section, but first.”

“We should find the food storage thingy.” Harry finished for her, thankful that she was keeping his head on the job.

So they went onward, passing more and more rows of irrelevant barrels, the only sounds escaping from them were their feet; scraping against the stone lined ground. Soon enough, they found what they were looking for. Glowing fridge-like things, except for the fact that they were….

“Broken,” Hermione said simply, crouching to examine the bottom of it in which water was leaking through. She hissed involuntarily as she scraped her finger against something sharp and remarked - rather sharply ironically - that there was a large hole at the bottom, seeming dug by something … inhumane.

“What'd you think?” Harry asked her, not having any clue as to what would prey on frozen food. Hermione shrugged, opening the large door to see half of the food either gone or half gone.

Hermione shut the door in disgust, after seeing half of anything left; anyone would most likely feel disgusted, but seeing it frozen made it even more … odd. “Well,” she said finally, but rather reluctantly. “Let's get this over with. I'll take the other side, you can handle this area.”

“Wait,” Harry said as she started to march off, as Hermione turned back to him - looking at him with curiosity brimming within the pleasant pools of her eyes - Harry's heart unwillingly skipped a beat. “Wait, uh - if we find something….”

“Issue some loud noise that'll alert me.” The Muggle-born girl stated simply. “You and Ron have had enough fun with those spells; I suspect you've memorized a couple by now.” Harry felt a smile appear on his face instantly at the thought of the old days with his friends.

How he longed to be with the both of them again…. Acting utterly immature and blissfully, not having a care in the world other than the threat of Lord Voldemort's conquest.

“See you.” Hermione said, waving and bringing Harry from his reverie. Harry found himself waving in reply, not making any verbal noise.

He watched as her honey coloured hair wavered slightly because of the light given off by her wand, but when she disappeared around the corner; her wand light disappearing instantly, Harry found himself still standing on the same spot, staring off at where she had just disappeared.

Clearing his head of these longing thoughts (he noticed how her hair seemed to sparkle when it made contact with the light illuminating from his wand), he blamed them on Ginny, for he had not been with Ginny - snogging or whatever - for the longest time, and he was just noticing the difference in her absence.

And so he started to search the small - crammed - area; looking for anything that might be the cause of shortage of food at the wonderful restaurant; whether it was an animal, a machine or even a deranged human, he did not know. Yet he continued to look.

That's when it all started.