Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Batman.

McGonagall

"Yes, Mr. Grayson?" I asked, the young teacher as he entered my office. He looked worried, and I wasn't sure why. The man was calm and collected for most of the time that he had been here. He lived in Gotham for a majority of his life and he was trained in most martial arts. This wasn't going to be good, if his facial expressions were anything to go by.

"I've come across some information, and I cannot act on it without any physical proof. I am in need of your advice, Professor McGonagall," he said. The look on his face as he said that brought fear on me even farther.

"What is it, Mr. Grayson?" I asked. He'd been working here for a little over two months. It was getting closer to March, by this point. Most of the students loved his class, as it was a break from learning without too much thinking or homework. Richard is sweet and kind, and for him to be on edge like this, shouldn't have an outcome worth having.

"I overheard Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy discussing something that may pose a danger to the students." He told me what he had seen and heard. I paled at the words. He was right, there wasn't enough proof. There was no time. Hogwarts will never be the same again. There might not be much we could do to stop it. "Is it possible to lock down the school?" he asked.

"It might let them know that we are on to them. Did you know Miss. Granger before you came here?" McGonagall asked.

"Yes, she was in my fifth grade class," he said. He looked away.

"You were ten?"

"Yes. She came to school later in the fall than most people. Foster kid. She went away for a while, and the last that I had heard she was adopted by a couple in Europe."

"She came later in the year?"

"Hermione has had mental illnesses all of her life," Dick said nervously. "We were really good friends at the time, but she was a very private person. Her older brother was in Arkham, and her foster parents wouldn't let her see him."

"Why did she come late, if she was a foster kid?"

He took a deep breath and look McGonagall in the eyes. "It wasn't a known fact, but she was an Arkham inmate before she came to Gotham Academy." Her eyes went wide. "Sent there for homicide." Maybe the doctor's reports were more truth than lie than the Deputy Headmistress had thought.

"Ron?" Harry asked, as the pair walked back to the common room from quidditch practice. Ginny was behind them, sort of trying to figure out what they were saying. "Do you think we should talk to Hermione?"

"Why would we want to talk to the freak?" he asked, disgust in his voice. Ron's ability to judge people and hate them when they change was unbelievable. "You saw her in the hospital, she was nuts! Not much has changed since then!"

"I think we should try and make amends, Ronald," Ginny said. "She was our best friend, and still is. We should try to tell her we needed time to adjust or something. We can't just leave her thinking that we abandoned her completely."

"Wasn't that exactly what we did?" Ron asked. "She deserves that hospital, or even better yet, a bed next to Lockhart in St. Mungo's."

"If that is how you feel, Ron, don't come with us. But Ginny and I will be talking to her. Hermione was there for us for years, we can be there for her," Harry spat, storming off from his acclaimed best friend with Ginny not far behind him. The pair in search of begging forgiveness of their former friend.

"I think we may have had an intruder the other day," Mae said nonchalantly while sitting on the floor of the library. Drake sitting at the table above her, working on homework. She was drawing, and Drake knew better than to want to see the picture she was drawing. The last time he did, he never wanted to look at a guitar again without throwing up his own stomach. If she was this bad, he feared for what his cousin was like and what Mae's brother was like.

"What do you mean?" he asked. Potions homework sucked. Even for Slytherin's, contrary to popular belief. He paying more attention to that would get him a lot farther in life than hanging out with a known psychopath.

"I think a birdie may have snuck in when we were talking about killing Gandalf," she cheerily said. "He didn't hear much, and didn't understand the plans, but as long as we are still on for Wednesday night we will be fine. He won't figure out that they will be coming through the Honeyduke's entrance. Drake caught onto what she was doing and hoped that he was wrong. "How is life up there?"

"Fine. Why?"

"Because I really want you to see my new drawing."

"Hermione, no!" he yelled, as she shoved it in her face, and his lunch and tears ended up all over his potions homework. Sometimes, he wished that she was still in Arkham. Azkaban would be heaven to her. It wouldn't do crap to teach her a lesson, only make it worse. The two had a conversation once, and she said that most people's worst memories were her best ones and the ones people consider bad would be the ones happy ones. The dementor's would not be able to crush her, because her mind is so fucked up.

She laughed hysterically as hours' worth of NEWT homework gone in the matter of seconds. Plus the spying professor left bringing the new information up to the deputy headmistress.

"Come on. It is Saturday, and we have less than a day until we have to be ready. Grayson, bought the bait," she grin. "He never learns. I swear that Dick has a soft spot when it comes to me."

"You think?" he yelled. "I should kill you just for ruining my potions essay!"

"I didn't ruin your potions essay, Black, you are the one who isn't going be able to survive a week if you aren't going to be able to handle the fluffy bunny level of a drawing." Mae said. "I think I might tell your cousin you need therapy."

"I don't want to have Johnathan's therapy."

"Sure you do. It is moderately harmless, Drake," she said taking back her drawing and continuing to work on it. He banished his research and ruined essay and got out a new piece of parchment, looking up briefly to see two people headed their way.

"Mae, heads up!" he hissed.

"Why?"

"Two annoying people!" he replied. Her eyes lit up with joy, and then annoyance hen it wasn't Grayson and McGonagall. She was really hoping that they would confront her with the information right away, and force the truth from her. Dick may be one of her best friends but that doesn't mean that he is exempt from her schemes and tricks, despite what he may believe. Potter and Ginny were waltzing up to her, thief saw Draco, knowing that she wouldn't be too far from him.

"Hermione? Are you over here?" Ginny called, looking around at the tables in the labyrinth of books.

"Down here," she growled not looking up from her drawing. Draco had already look back to restarting his potions essay, and speeding through the work, clearly not caring if it was junk work or the perfect essay of his entire career.

"What are you doing down there?"

"What does it look like, Ginny?" she asked. "I'm drawing, would you like to see?" She started to pick up the piece of paper.

"Hermione, please don't," Draco groaned. "Hear what they have to say before you scar them for life."

"Buzzkill," she pouted. "What do you want?" her glare intensified.

"We want to apologize or being real jerks to you these past few months," Harry told her. "We abandoned you in a clear time of need because we were worried about you, and we were fearful of you mental illness."

"You were fearful of me?' Hermione gasped, feigning shock in her eyes. "I'm touched. I've heard that from many people, mainly the orderlies, but my school friends? Never. It makes me glad that I'm making such and impact on you. To be honest, I was worried that if I did anything in the past six years to make my true self be known, you would fear for me, or maybe even be afraid of me. But I guess I was wrong. You still came back to me!" Her glee wasn't hidden. "Not many ever come back. Never. Only a few have ever returned to little ole me!"

"So are you accepting our apology?" Harry asked. The hope in his eyes made it seem like she was the only thing that had kept him sane for all these years. Maybe messing with the boy-who-lived would be fun for a while. She would never actually let the thing he thought as friendship return. It wouldn't last for very long anyways.

"Yes!" Mae exclaimed, and looked away. "I want you to not abandon me again, if that works for you," she said darkly. "We will have to work our way up to what we once had." Her grin vanished. "If you do, good things in life go away, maybe even life itself will no longer be yours to keep."

Harry gulped, and Ginny looked very pale. "Oh, I'm just joking! Seriously? None of you can ever take a joke." Hermione folded up the drawing that she was working on. "Don't open it until you get back to the common room." She handed it to the pair. "Tell Ronald that I miss him," she said rather sarcastically. "No go away. Draco needs help rewriting his potions essay."

The two turned to leave. "I wonder what happened to the potions essay." Ginny asked.

"Trust me. I don't think we want to know," Harry said, looking over his shoulder at the pair. "Malfoy looks a bit green, it might be better not to ask." He led his girlfriend out of the room as quickly as possible.

"Maybe we should just let her be," Ginny said.

"Or, we should take baby steps, Ginny. Hermione is still our friend. We aren't going to leave her behind again." Harry said, this but could not help but feel a foreboding feeling that there was something bigger brewing around his best friend since first year. He just hoped it was him being paranoid. What could go wrong?

-Okay, so here is the deal. I have no idea where I wanted to go with this story, and if anyone wants me to continue, any ideas would be really helpful. I did not even realize that I had this chapter typed up until a few hours ago, and probably has been since I last updated three years ago. So let me know, otherwise, I probably will not continue any further. Let me know what you think of this chapter, and check out some of my more recent stories. I cannot tell you all how much your favorites, reviews and follows have meant to me over the years, and I apologize that I have taken so long, and that I may not continue this story. Hopefully, I will get around to editing it, but who knows. Thank you all again! –Delta