Our World As It Is

Chapter 6: Unexpected

The fireplace reveals to be empty, traces of floo powder all about it. The walls are mainly bare, save for a single ceiling height, narrow bookshelf in the far right corner, perpendicular to the fireplace. The centrepiece of the room is nothing more than a shabby wooden desk, messy and bent over with one uneven leg and papers all askew as if thrown in a rush. The only light came from a small, four panel skylight from above the bookshelf, filtering in a stained green light from the pond in the McNairs' courtyard, not unlike the Slytherin Common Room.

For a moment longer Hermione stayed in stark calculation. Her eyes catch the trail of dead rodents at the edges of the room—witnesses killed in hasty, paranoid flight. But what was cleaned up so hurriedly?

Completing her analysis of the room, she steps forward, cautiously, towards the most important part of the room: the desk. The desk speaks of use and misuse like a child crying out after being mistreated and terrorized time and time again. The papers scattered across it's surface lay naked in all their haphazard glory. But there isn't anything special about them, absolutely nothing to see.

Why?

They are all blank.

Tattered edges, stained with water and covered in a fine layer of dust. Scattered and left forgotten on that desk.

And, in the middle of this miserable scene lay… absolutely nothing.

Amid all of the papers is a near perfect rectangular space, empty and covered in that translucent layer of dust as well. Something was there. Just what was it?

Hermione purses her lips, not touching the scene for fear of contaminating it. She stares at that space, her eyes narrowing zooming closer into that empty cavity. Closer and closer and closer-

Flicker—a small brown heap, the unknown book.

"Whaa!" She jumps back, touching her head with her right hand and cutting off the rest of her speech with the left. What on earth was that?

"Penny! What was that?! You better not be messing around in my items!" She can hear the anger in his voice, even at the mere notion of rifling through his private belongings. His footsteps start to thunder down the staircase. She doesn't reply, knowing it would give away her location. I need to get out—NOW!

Hermione starts, jumping towards the staircase, albeit a little less gracefully than the gazelle-like movements she had before. She turns back to the room one last time and then she notices it—the ink bottle knocked over on the corner spilled onto the table but the papers which should be leeching in the water-diluted ink showed only to be wet, not smudged.

Invisibility Ink! she thinks. Looking up the stairs with near-panicked alertness, she realizes that McNair must be only moments away from reaching her. She makes a split-second decision.

Grabbing all of the papers, she promptly puts them in her small bag (Undetectable Extension Charm, remember?), with a quick Disillusionment charm to make it appear as if the table was untouched. Fleetly, she darts up, running down the hallway towards the left, away from the incoming boar of a man.

Once she is about 20 m down she waits a moment, long enough for McNair to notice the closed highly secretive door and runs back in his direction.

"Oh, I am so sorry, sir! There was a rat down the hallway and I got frightened. It really is too bad that I did not have a strong man like you around to help me." She holds her hands together in front of her, swaying back and forth and pouting up at him with feigned innocent fear.