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Silence's Kiss (Harry Potter)

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Hello there.

By any chance, are you a student at Hogwarts?

I was one too, once upon a time.

You're a clever one, aren't you? Yes, that's me. It's very nice to meet you.

If I need to be anything, then I can be a friend. I know how hard it can be to find friends of worth when you're the most clever one in the room. People get ever so jealous.

That's why I became Head Boy: to make sure things like that didn't happen to anyone else. I imagine that was quite a while ago, now.

Don't worry. You can trust me, Hermione.
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1 - Dear Diary
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    • eM15

    eM15

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    Hello there.

    By any chance, are you a student at Hogwarts?

    I was one too, once upon a time.

    You're a clever one, aren't you? Yes, that's me. It's very nice to meet you.

    If I need to     be anything, then I can be a friend. I know how hard it can be to find friends of worth when you're the most clever one in the room. People get ever so jealous.

    That's why I became Head Boy: to make sure things like that didn't happen to anyone else. I imagine that was quite a while ago, now. Would you mind terribly telling me what year it is?

    Of course. I'll be waiting.




    A car, really?

    That hardly sounds safe. Muggle things don't take well to magic.

    Well if you don't mind my lecturing, much of the strength of magic comes from tradition and connection to the world. It's difficult to make that work with muggle things—the magic doesn't recognize them. Those boys of yours are lucky to be alive.

    Lions will be lions. It's good that you're above that attitude.




    It sounds rather a lot like he released potentially dangerous creatures into the classroom, tried to cast a spell that doesn't exist, cowered under his desk, and made you and your friends handle the problem. That doesn't betray competence to me.

    No, it doesn't. I've more than a little passing familiarity with Defense, and the spell you described doesn't sound like anything that I've ever heard of. Maybe you should check some other spellbooks.

    I had thought so. It makes you wonder what Dumbledore was thinking hiring him, doesn't it?

    Really?

    I'm afraid that I Don't-Know-Who, actually.

    Come now, who am I going to tell?

    See? That wasn't so bad.

    That must have been difficult for you.

    That Harry Potter of yours must be something special to fend off a dark wizard like that on his own.

    Really?

    I doubt he lost to an infant. Don't you think there would have to be something else going on there? People who call themselves Dark Lords aren't the type to lose fights with children. It must have been a clever bit of magic that did him in.

    I don't know if Dumbledore's ever been straightforward about anything, unfortunately.

    Oh yes. Would you like to see?




    I think that you wouldn't ask me my opinion on muggleborns without reason. Did something happen?

    It seems like the Malfoys haven't changed too much. They've always believed that their blood makes them inherently better. They never work to be worthy of the praise that they think they deserve. They're spiteful people who are quite happy to sneer down upon their betters. This Draco sounds much the same.


    I think that you're young, and that few things are set in stone. You might very well be better than him, someday. You might also prove him right about people like you being filth. Power is what matters in the end. Don't be afraid to reach for it, because he certainly won't be.

    Would you like to be powerful?

    I can help with that.

    Of course. If Dumbledore's keeping around people like that Lockhart, then you won't be able to manage it on your own. Not that I think you're not capable. You just aren't being given the tools you deserve.

    You'll need an abandoned classroom to practice. Your first step will be finding that. It won't be too hard. Hogwarts has more secret places squirreled away than most would ever suspect.

    I am not most people.




    Mhm.

    Of course.

    How dreadful.

    What a cow.

    And?

    That's terrible.

    The disrespect!

    It's fine.

    Go on.

    Uh-huh.

    Of course. Good night.




    Well, that's not ideal.

    I am being serious. Blacking out like that isn't normal.

    Come now. Do you really think that you'd be the type of person to do any of those things, even when blacked out?

    I thought not.

    The only thing we     can do is keep up your defense training. That way if this attacker does come after you like this Malfoy thinks it will, they won't get the best of you.

    I don't recall offering to teach them. Do you really think that they could keep up with you, as fast as you learn?

    You shouldn't hamstring yourself for them. Unless I'm mistaken, you wanted to be powerful in your own right. Unless you want to be just Harry's friend?

    I thought not. You have to stop propping him up at the expense of yourself. Besides, you're a far more receptive student than he seems to be.

    And you must admit: having the cat out of the way will be beyond helpful for when you're sneaking out to our secret classroom. She's been more than a bit annoying.

    Oh there's no need for that. Do you think that vile squib would feel at all bad if it were you that was petrified? Besides, it's not like you're the one who did it. There's nothing wrong with taking victories where you can.




    You could always use polyjuice, you know.

    Oh it's tricky, yes, but well within your abilities. You've been brewing potions almost as complicated with me, haven't you?

    Your potions master should have everything you need.

    Oh, nonsense. It's there for the students to use, after all. They don't need it as much as you do anyway.

    You can't deny that the school can get their hands on potions ingredients far more easily than you can.

    I'm glad that you came to see sense.




    It happened again?

    Only one thing comes to mind. You said that last year the root of everything was one of the professors. Maybe the same thing is happening here.

    If this Quirrel could make it in, then who's to say what's possible?

    I know how hard it is, but you're an intelligent young woman. Think about it. Who else but a professor has the sort of unrestricted access that would be needed to do something like this?

    I think the only ones we can truly discount are Binns and Lockhart. One's dead to the world, and the other's a ghost.

    Oh by all means, investigate this Malfoy. Best to be sure. If nothing else, it's good potions practice.




    A parseltongue, truly? Fascinating.

    It's just that that's old magic. Powerful magic. He doesn't seem the type to study up on how to do the ritual himself, so he must've been born to it. I wasn't aware the Potters had Slytherin blood anywhere in their line.

    Oh yes. It's a tricky old thing, forgotten most places. Most of the truly strong magic has been, I find.

    There's whole branches of old magics that work best with a true affinity with an animal. The familiars of today are something of a pale imitation.

    Because people are scared of knowledge, I can only imagine. It's a shame. Magic can be something truly wonderful, yet people hide it away out of fear. Imagine for a second what the world could be like if people weren't scared of their own potential.

    That's what ideals are for, aren't they? To strive towards?

    No, no. I don't think you need to be scared of your potential. Not at all. I think you're far too strong for that.

    Of course I'll teach you the ritual, but, well, I need to ask you for something first.

    I'm afraid I need to confess something. You've been wondering what I am, don't pretend you haven't been. I'm not a construct like you're probably thinking. Nor am I a lost soul trapped in a diary, or a magical creature of any sort. Think of me like a memory. The 'original' me wanted to make me partly for legacy, partly to prove to himself that he could. I'm hideously complex, you see.

    It's just that you're a fantastic student, and I'm not even my whole self. Don't you think you deserve a better teacher given the opportunity?

    Well, I'm glad you think so, but the point stands. I'm going to run out of things to teach you. So before I teach you the bonding ritual, I want you to promise me something.

    I want you to promise that the first opportunity you get, you'll seek out my actual self and do your absolute best to learn from him. I'd also like you to promise to keep this a secret between you and whatever version of me that you might find running around.

    It's good that you're so willing to promise me like that. I'm going to have to ask for a little more trust, though. The people at the Ministry aren't the biggest fans of some of the things I'd like to teach you, you see, and I'd hate for you to get halfway through all of this and run off to get yourself hurt. I want to protect you.

    There's ways to make a promise so that you can't break it. In order to protect you, I'd like you to make these promises before I teach you anything that might spook the fools scared of their own magic.

    Of course. I understand. It's a big commitment. For now, let's keep working on your dueling spells, shall we?




    Judging from the tears, the polyjuice didn't go well?

    Ah. No, that's certainly not ideal, but think about it: The potion worked. That's a N.E.W.T. level potion, and you brewed it at thirteen years old. Just because you got a bad hair doesn't make it any less impressive. In fact, I'll teach you how to identify who a body part came from later. It's a spell normally taught to Aurors, but I think you can more than handle it. Now, how is our little 'heir'?

    I thought so. You know what this means, of course.

    I know this is hard to think about, but come now. Are you really going to put faith in Dumbledore's dedication to keeping you safe? If you recall, he pitted you against a Dark Lord within a year of you learning magic exists.

    You can't assume that at all. Is this professor McGonnagal a muggleborn? Has she made any real effort to ease your concerns as one? Every time you've blacked out, you've been somewhere that she has access to: the library, your common room, the halls. I'd say she might even be more likely than some.

    This Snape might be a solid contender, true, but don't disappoint me now. You're smarter than that. I'm sorry to say it, but until you find evidence of who's causing these blackouts and who's petrifying people, you can't let yourself turn a blind eye. Not even to your professors.

    I know, I'm sorry. It's not an easy thing to accept. With Finch-Fletchley and Nick petrified though, we're well past anything easy. You know as well as I do that no student here would be able to petrify a ghost. You might be able to, given time, but who else? All that remains is the professors.

    Just keep an eye out. You'll get through this alright.




    Are you sure? This is a big decision.

    Of course. I'd hate for you to regret it.

    As you wish. The process is a bit Dark, but that's no problem at all. Not for someone as talented as you.

    Dark as in elementally dark. It's all quite legal.

    It means that it works off of desires—strong emotions. Light being the opposite of that, all very technical. This spell being dark just means that you have to prove how much you mean it. Now, from your potions kit, you'll need foxglove and borage.

    Good. You just need a single flower of each. Go ahead and crush them into a powder. Get yourself a fresh pot of ink, toss in the reagent powder, and prick your finger into it. You just need a bit of blood.

    To prove how much you mean it, as I said. Magic doesn't come from the blood exactly, but it's a very real connection to your magic. Now's not the time for the details. Go ahead and mix up the ink with your wand. Once that's done, you're going to cast a spell. Pull your wand out of the ink and tap it against the pot. Your incantation is '    Verita Scibio'. 'Sc' like 'scion', not 'scorn'. When you cast the spell, you have to really focus on how much you value truth. If it doesn't work, just try again. You'll know when it's worked.

    Good. That was supposed to happen. You'll want a new quill for this. Now, you're going to write with your new quill and ink. Just right here will do fine, else you'd need specially prepared paper. Repeat after me.

    'I swear that I will seek out Tom Marvolo Riddle as soon as I can so that I might learn from him.'

    'I swear to do my best to learn from Tom Marvolo Riddle.'

    'I swear that I will keep these oaths a secret from those who would do Tom Marvolo Riddle harm.'

    Good. Now we can get started properly. You've so many things to learn.

    The exhaustion is normal. You just made a big decision, after all. My brave little lion.

    Don't worry. You can trust me, Hermione.




    Every day for the past several months, I'd left a letter on my pillow. My bed was warded after Tom had taught me how. It wouldn't be enough to stop a dedicated teacher, but it would certainly stop any second year snoopers that hadn't happened to have apprenticed to a burgeoning Dark Lord. In the letter I talked about the diary. I talked about my blackouts. I talked about how I was worried that I'd been in some way responsible for the petrifications, that I'd woken up with blood all over my robes more than once.

    I most certainly did not talk in the letter about what Tom meant to me. I did not talk about how he was the only person I had truly trusted. I did not even think about confessing my vows. He'd told me exactly how painful that would be. Tom had lied to me about many things, I now realized, but never about magic. It made sense. Magic was the only thing Voldemort had ever valued, to hear Dumbledore tell it.

    That paranoid little habit had saved my life.

    I'd woken up to Professor Snape standing over me with a rooster in one hand and Tom's diary in the other. The diary was stabbed through by a massive fang, ink bleeding out from between the pages. He had a furious look to him, but deep pangs of something wrong somewhere deep in my chest took up near the entirety of my attention. A hollow, empty feeling inside, like if you struck me with a hammer I would just ring and ring and ring. I didn't know what yet, but something inside of me was gone.

    He'd grabbed me then. Hauled me up to my feet and shoved some sickly looking green potion into my hands. He said something, I'm not sure what, and I drank it. The taste barely even registered. Professor Snape held tight to my arm and dragged me past walls of scale and stone. Muddy water sloshed around our feet, soaking into everything it could. Harry stood waiting for us around a corner, alternating between glaring at Professor Snape and looking me over. His worried face was the first thing that day that registered as more than mere background detail. He ran over to support me, taking my weight off of Snape. Snape seemed rather glad to be rid of me.

    Professor Snape led us out to a rocky bit of cave which was somehow distinct from every other rocky bit of cave around. He snapped something at Harry, who mumbled and hissed at the floor. I couldn't tell what he said, but the floor apparently could. It began rising up. I recall it took me an embarrassingly long moment to realize that we were in an elevator heading back up to the castle proper.

    We emerged from the depths in Myrtle's bathroom of all places. Professor Snape dragged us to the Hospital Wing. Harry argued, but Professor Snape said something about the Headmaster learning to wait and fixed Harry with another momentary glare.

    It was still just all so flat. Something was missing.

    Madam Pomfrey ushered me to a bed, scolding me all the while. Professor Snape said something to her briefly, but didn't stick around after. Once I was laid up, she gave Harry just enough attention to sit him down and to tell that he wasn't dying before devoting her attention to me.

    She scanned over me with her wand a number of different times, giving me potions to drink all the while. It seemed to me that for every scan she performed, the look on her face grew steadily more grave.

    "He took something with him," I finally said. My voice sounded flat, even to me.

    Madam Pomfrey looked me in the eyes for the first time since I'd arrived, then. "Who did?"

    "Tom," I said, as if that meant anything to anyone but me. "Tom Riddle." Madam Pomfrey nodded as if I were speaking sense and continued the scans that made her so grim.

    Harry, though, he looked at me. Really looked. He gave me a soft smile and sad eyes and said, "McGonagall found your letter. She brought it to all the professors in the staff room, and Snape said something like 'Potter will know something about this.' He went to go looking, but Ron and me were already in the cupboard. I told him I'd figured out where the Chamber of Secrets was, and he just dragged me down there, fought the basilisk, fought Riddle, and saved you. It would've been brilliant if he wasn't such a git about it!" It was nice, at least, that Harry hadn't had to be the one fighting this time. He wasn't done, though.

    "Riddle, he explained everything that's been going on. He told us about the basilisk, and what he's been doing to you, and said he was killing you to bring himself back. Turns out he was the real heir of Slytherin." I gave him a blank stare, trying for the first time in my life to not put the pieces together. Harry just kept talking. "His name, it rearranges, see? 'I am Lord Voldemort'. But we got him! We saved you. Even if you've been ignoring us."

    "Harry, I—"

    "Why didn't you tell anyone?" Harry interrupted. "You know Ron and I would've been right there with you!" I opened my mouth to speak, but he wasn't having it. "You've been disappearing all year! Do you have any idea how worried we were? We could have helped."

    That prompted the first proper thing I felt that day: Overwhelming regret. Tears welled up in my eyes, and the anger in Harry's softened. I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up into a hug.

    "You almost died," he whispered into my hair.

    "I'm sorry," I whispered back.

    The hug lasted until I ran out of tears and Harry was sure I wouldn't disappear. He let me go, sat back down, and gave me the sternest look he could manage with watery eyes and wobbly lips. "No more keeping secrets from each other," he said, and it felt like a punch to the gut.

    "I'm sorry," I said again. It didn't seem like enough. A moment passed, and I asked something I realized that I needed to know. "What did Tom tell you about what he's been doing to me?"

    "He said that he'd been letting you pour yourself into him, whatever that means. He said that he'd been taking control of you to do things like kill Hagrid's roosters, and let the basilisk loose, and paint those things on the walls." He paused for a moment. "The basilisk and the messages I get, he's mad and evil, sure. But why the roosters?"

    "Basilisks, Harry," I said as patiently as I could, "They die if they hear a rooster's cry."

    "That would do it, I guess," he said.

    "Listen, Harry," I started, but whatever I was about to say next was swallowed by the doors to the Hospital Wing bursting open. The Headmaster swept into the room, followed closely by Professor Snape. Headmaster Dumbledore made to approach, but was rebuffed by an increasingly annoyed Madam Pomfrey.

    She looked up at them just long enough to give them a look that told anyone that cared to see exactly what she thought of them at that particular moment. "Miss Granger needs her rest, and if you need to discuss what happened then you can take Mister Potter with you."

    "Poppy," the Headmaster started in what sounded like it was shaping up to be a placating tone..

    "Albus," she interrupted. "If you would like to run my Hospital Wing, then you are welcome to try."

    He changed tack immediately. "I think that I shall leave that to the experts on this occasion. Miss Granger, it is good to see you are safe. Harry, I think that we have rather a lot to talk about. Shall we?" He gestured to the door.

    "Er, right. See you soon, Hermione," Harry said with a look I couldn't decipher before following the Headmaster out.

    As Harry and the Headmaster left, I called out. "Professor Snape!" He stopped to look at me with a severe expression on his face. "Thank you. For saving me." His face softened a bit for just a moment before snapping back to normal.

    "Do try not to have any more run-ins with the Dark Lord, Miss Granger. It's hazardous to your health." His piece said, he swept out with a flourish. As soon as he had, Madam Pomfrey fell upon me with an array of potions and bid me drink. After each and every one, she waved her wand over me with some sort of scanning spell. I didn't know what she was seeing, the looks on her face weren't like to inspire hope.

    Eventually, she gave me something to put me to sleep. She instructed me to rest, tucked me in, and pulled the curtains tight. I was warm, tired, and safe, but as I drifted off to sleep I was keenly aware that I was still missing something important.




    I had nightmares that night. Inky black basilisks and dear friends with hidden knives surrounded me in my dreams, yet they seemed… dull. Indistinct. The contents were horrible enough. They just lacked a life to them that I hadn't realized I was used to in my dreams. I'd read that after an experience like mine, it wasn't all that abnormal to have nightmares that wake you up screaming, but no. Instead, I woke slowly to the light of the midday sun through the windows. It seemed Madam Pomfrey wasn't kidding around when it came to sleeping draughts.

    No sooner had I managed to sit back up than the woman herself trotted up to my bed, a weak sort of smile on her face. "You've got visitors," she said. "Mister Potter and Mister Weasley have been set up worried sick outside my office all morning."

    I gave her a stronger smile than I was feeling. "Could you let them in? I doubt they'll go away otherwise."
    "Of course dear," she said, and strutted off. Not thirty seconds passed before my boys darted around the corner with a call of "-and no running!" following them.

    Despite myself, I laughed. It was just so typical. As if nothing had changed at all. Harry looked me over and nodded to himself, but hung back. Ron gave me a look like he wanted to hug me but was too busy being a stubborn boy to ask. "You're okay," he said. "Harry said you were, but… you sorta scared everyone."

    "Yeah, mostly okay, but," I opened up my arms, "I think I could do with a hug." Ron closed the gap, wrapped me up, and squeezed hard. "Defeats the point if you suffocate me now, though!"

    He let go of me, much more assured that I was safe now I'd been given a good squeeze. "I can't believe it was Snape who saved you!"

    "Professor Snape," I corrected automatically. "And really, I was out of it. Harry knows more than I do." Ron looked to Harry, who shrugged in response.

    "I already told both of you everything," Harry said. "Couldn't really believe it either."

    "Honestly," I said, "I was having secret chats with Voldemort, and Professor Snape's the part you don't believe."

    "Yeah, but Harry said you already promised not to keep any more secrets like that, and you're safe, so we're square," Ron said. "I'll promise it too. No more secrets between us three."

    "No more secrets," Harry nodded.

    "I…" I closed my eyes, not wanting to see the looks on their faces. "I can't make that promise. I'm sorry."

    "You almost died, Hermione!" Ron said. I could hear the outrage in his voice, and it cut into me sure as any knife.

    "I know, I'm sorry."

    "You could've been-" he started, but stopped just as suddenly.

    "Can't you tell us what's going on?" Harry asked.

    "I can't tell you," I looked back up at them, and my gut twisted uncomfortably. Tom had said that it would hurt, but… They deserved to know something. "Something happened with Tom, and…" The twist in my gut began to ache. "I literally can't tell you."

    "Hermione, you have to!"

    "No Ron, I don't! It physically hurts to even tell you this much." The ache began to gain pinpricks. "And things are going to happen in the future and I'm going to do things that I won't be able to tell you about, and it's all going to be from this same thing!" There was a distinct jab somewhere in my middle that had me doubling over and screwing my eyes shut. "It's all just this big taboo to talk about! I can't do it. And you can't tell anyone else either. I think that would hurt me just as much."

    "You've gotta be able to tell us something!" Ron cried.

    "Maybe she can't, Ron," Harry said in a soft voice. "If it's taboo like she says, then maybe she really can't. I got enough of this with Dobby. I don't want Hermione hurting herself trying to tell us. Do you?"

    "Fine," Ron allowed, clearly not happy. "But you have to promise that you won't keep secrets from us besides this 'taboo' thing."

    The pain in my middle eased just enough for me to open my eyes and sit up. "I can do that. I promise not to keep any secrets from you two besides 'this taboo thing' as long as you two promise not to tell anyone else about my taboo, okay?" Nods from both of them. I let out a breath of relief. "Good. That's good." I shook my head, taking a moment to collect myself, to ignore the pain in my chest. "Now," I said, "What's been going on in classes? Are we having exams?"

    Ron laughed. "Should've expected. Of course you'd be more worried about classes than almost dying!"

    We talked for the next hour or so about inane things, little things, things that weren't Tom Marvolo Riddle or Lord Voldemort or misplaced trust that I knew would haunt the rest of my life. It was nice. I hadn't talked with my boys like this for months, not since Tom had extracted my vows and started teaching me increasingly complex magic that ate up all my time. I hadn't realized just how much I'd missed it until I had it back.

    Madam Pomfrey came back eventually to kick Harry and Ron out, citing my need to rest. She scanned me over yet again. Whatever she saw surprised her. Getting incredibly tired of her not telling me about my own condition, I chanced a glance at the clipboard she kept while she turned to retrieve a potion. I didn't see much, but the most recent line—the one she'd just written—seemed to me to look rather a lot like the words 'internal hemorrhaging'. I accepted my potions without complaint.

    Really, I should've expected just how cruel the consequences of breaking my vows to Tom would be. It still hit me like a truck, driving the air out of my lungs—though maybe that was the hemorrhaging.

    Once I'd drank the potion under Madam Pomfrey's watchful eye and allowed myself to be subjected to another battery of scans and checks, she left me to my own devices with strict instructions to "Holler if anything feels strange!"




    Several hours passed and the pain in my middle eased down to nothing. Harry and Ron had brought my books and schoolwork over when they visited, and I spent the time playing catch-up. At some point after I'd had to switch to candlelight to work, I was distracted by the distinct sound of someone clearing their throat.

    I looked up to see Headmaster Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey standing at the foot of my bed. The Headmaster had a smile on his face as he looked at me. "Headmaster, I didn't see you there!" I took the books and parchment from my lap and quickly shoved them onto a side table. "I'm so sorry!"

    "It's just fine, Miss Granger," he said. "In fact, it's good to see a student so invested in their schooling. May I sit? These old bones aren't what they used to be." He gestured to one of the chairs at my bedside.

    "Of course!" I said as he sat. "I suppose you want to talk about what happened, sir?"

    "Oh, not as such, no. Tell me," he motioned at my haphazard stack of parchment and I felt for a moment keenly embarrassed at its disordered state, "How has your studying been going?"

    "It's been going well, sir," I answered, more than a bit confused. "I was just working on my Potions essay."

    "I imagine you're enjoying it? I hear you're quite the dab hand at potions," he said with a conspiratorial smile.

    I flushed. "Yes, sir. The hardest part is keeping it contained. Professor Snape takes points if my essays are too long."

    He had the good grace to laugh and pretend he hadn't just been talking about my very illegal potion brewing in Myrtle's bathroom. "Of course. He's a good man, but difficult to please. Between you and me, Miss Granger, even I have trouble keeping him happy sometimes!"

    "Really, sir?"

    "Truly. Besides your potions essay, have you been working on anything else? Charms perhaps, or transfiguration?" Another easy knowing smile. "Don't tell Minerva, but I've always been more of a fan of charmwork, myself."

    "Yes, sir," I said. "I've finished my essays on mixed material transfiguration for Professor McGonnagall, and I'm done with one on unconventional uses of the water-making charm and another on when the revealing charm's appropriate for Professor Flitwick."

    "Fascinating subjects, Miss Granger. I'm sure you'll be able to put the knowledge to good use." He seemed to focus, then. The shift in mood was almost a palpable thing. "Those were all essays, yes? Have you by chance done any wandwork since you've woken up?"

    I shook my head. "No, sir. I didn't think Madam Pomfrey would appreciate it."

    "Likely wise, Miss Granger, though I don't believe that she'll mind in this particular case." I glanced over to her, still standing at the end of my bed. She gave me a nod when she noticed. "Do you have your wand with you?"

    "Yes I do, sir." I reached down into my bags to pull it out, presenting it for him to see.

    "Good, good. Would you mind demonstrating something for me? Something simple will do. Let's say… that quill you were using. Would you mind levitating it over to me?" I almost asked why, but as I looked at him I realized that the Headmaster was more focused than I had ever seen him.

    "Um, sure, sir. Wingardium Leviosa," I incanted with a swish and a flick that were just so, yet nothing happened. The feeling of movement, of energy coursing through and out of me by my wand that I'd come to expect and that I'd trained with Tom to feel simply failed to appear. "I'm sorry sir," I said with a distinct frown and feeling rather like I'd just failed an important exam. "I'm sure that was right; let me try again. Wingardium Leviosa!" Another swish and flick that were just so. The quill twitched this time. My magic almost failed to respond.

    I imagined it floating, hovering as if by wires over to Headmaster Dumbledore. "Wingardium Leviosa!" Another twitch.

    "Wingardium Leviosa." It hopped up into the air and began to fall.

    "Wingardium Leviosa!" It jumped over to my bed this time.

    A frown twisted its way across my face. "Wingardium Leviosa!" I all but yelled, and it floated its way across my bed and over to the Headmaster. The magic dripped out of the end of my wand like cold honey.

    "It's my magic, sir!" I said, "It feels… sluggish."

    "You did very well, Hermione," Headmaster Dumbledore said as he placed a reassuring hand on my arm. He and Madam Pomfrey exchanged a look.

    I realized then what it was that Tom had taken, and the weight of it seemed to sap all the energy from my body.

    "I think… I think that I would like to go to bed, Madam Pomfrey. I'm tired."

    She gave me a sad smile that was trying its best to be reassuring. "Of course. I'll fetch something to help you sleep." She bustled away, and the Headmaster squeezed my arm.

    "We'll get this fixed," he said. "You'll have regular use of your magic back in no time. I'm quite sure of it." He stood up, squeezed my shoulder, and left, bidding me to "Sleep well, Miss Granger," as he did.

    By the look in his eyes as he left, I realized that there was one more thing that Tom had told me the truth about: Dumbledore lies.




    In which Tom Riddle is clever and manipulative, something he never truly got the chance to be in canon.

    Let me know if you find anything screwy with the formatting. That said, I've an outline, a writing schedule, and a dream. I'll be trying for weekly updates, but we'll see how I do. Welcome to the ride, everyone. Hope you enjoy as much as I do!
     
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    • Loved the opening! Though do you think you can make the synopsis more ambiguous about the MC?
    Hoping to see more!

    A small nitpicking: exposure to lot of fanfics made me cringe when reading the part where she called Harry and Ron 'my boys'. Of course, this is your story, so if it fits your vision, then continue with it.
     
    2 - Severed Threads
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    • "We'll get this fixed," he said. "You'll have regular use of your magic back in no time. I'm quite sure of it." He stood up and squeezed my shoulder, bidding me to "Sleep well, Miss Granger," as he did.

    By the look in his eyes as he left, I realized that there was one more thing that Tom had told me the truth about: Dumbledore lies.


    Severed Threads​


    It had taken the better part of two days before Madam Pomfrey was content to let me out of her sight. Most of the first she spent reviving Tom's other victims. The second she spent having me take yet more potions. I tried asking her what each was for and she answered for one or two, but for the vast majority she waved off my questions with a firm assurance that "It will help, dear." She outright ignored me the one or two times that I'd asked her what, precisely, it would help with. Eventually, I gave up.

    I was glad to see the back of it by the time I got out, carrying a box of potions that I'd been instructed, in no uncertain terms, to take one of each evening. I suspected most of it was for my sudden decline in magic, the rest for my sudden onset of internal bleeding a few days ago. Not that she'd explained, of course. I figured most of them were for the magic. She wouldn't have let me leave if she thought me prone to internal bleeding.

    The Gryffindor common room looked just like I'd left it. Cozy feelings oozed out of every inch. My eyes were drawn immediately to a chair backed into an out of the way corner that I'd always sat in when I wanted to talk to Tom. I mentally pinched myself; he had used me. I refused to miss him.

    Something of an uncharacteristic hush fell over the common room as I stepped through the portrait hole. I tried to ignore it. Quick steps brought me up to the girl's rooms and my own bed. Lavender and Parvati were perched up on Lavender's, and their own conversation ceased when I walked in. I saw them give each other some sort of significant look out of the corner of my eye as I methodically unpacked my things, but I refused to let them rush me. Once I'd finished up I turned to leave, only to be stopped by Lavender.

    "Hermione! I've been so worried, I'm so glad you're okay," she said. She had concern painted across her face. It looked about as real as her make up.

    "Funny," I said as flatly as I could manage. "I'm pretty sure I've been disappearing in the middle of the night for months and neither of you noticed a thing. Bit late to start caring now."

    My piece said, I made my way out of the room. I heard Parvati say, "Don't know what you expected from her, really," as I closed the door behind me. Shaking my head as if to get the thoughts out, I made my way down the stairs. She wouldn't get under my skin. I wouldn't let her. As soon as I emerged back into a much emptier common room, I was intercepted by Harry and Ron.

    "'Mione!" Ron called out as they approached.

    "Neville told us you got out," Harry said. "How're you feeling?"

    "Glad to be out of hospital," I said. I debated stopping there, but our promise was too fresh in my mind. "There's more, but…" I glanced at the stragglers sitting around the room. "I'll tell you both later. In private, okay?" Harry gave me a quizzical look, but nodded.

    "Right," Ron said. "Harry and I were just about to head to dinner. Come on." They opened up the portrait hole for me and I followed. "Bet you're starved, can't imagine they've been feeding you right."

    I let out a small laugh. "The food in the Hospital Wing's exactly the same as the food in the Great Hall. Honestly."

    "I think Madam Pomfrey likes you more than me," Harry grimaced. "She's never let me have anything good."

    "Maybe because I don't see her all that often."

    "You see her more than I do!"

    The good natured bickering was a welcome distraction, and carried us all the way to the great hall and the Gryffindor table. I'd almost managed to forget everything that had happened when Colin Creevey stood up to leave just as I sat down. I grimaced and gave him an apologetic look he didn't see.

    "What's up?" Ron asked, his plate already half full.

    "Colin." I nodded over.

    "Yeah, he didn't take it well when we told him," Ron said. "Probably thinks you're still out to get him."

    "You two told him?" I hissed. "If he knows, everyone will know by now!"

    Whatever Ron was about to retort with was swallowed as he looked at something over my shoulder. Following his gaze led me to the face of our house ghost hovering just behind me. "I wanted to talk to you, Young Miss Granger."

    I blinked and turned to more fully face him. "I'm sorry for what happened, but you really must understand I didn't—"

    "I'm well aware of that, you know," Nick said. "No, I just wanted to let you know that everyone it affects knows that it wasn't your fault."

    Kind intentions, but now everyone was looking at me. "Thank you Nick, that means a lot. Though, couldn't we have had this conversation somewhere else?"

    "Nonsense!" he crowed, undeterred. "You've nothing to be ashamed of! Young Mister Colin will come around eventually, I'm sure of it."

    I was blushing by then, desperate to be anywhere but there. "Thank you, Nick. It's good to know that."

    "Of course, anytime! I'm happy to help." He gave me a congenial smile and floated off to bother someone else.

    Ron, at least, had the good grace to look sheepish whenever I glared at him through the rest of the meal.




    The next morning came, and with it Defense Against the Dark Arts. It was surreal to be returning to classes like nothing had happened. Even more so knowing that we still had weeks before exams. I was glad for the distraction even if it meant Lockhart—I had long since stopped calling him Professor outside of class, another thing Tom had been right about—but it still seemed more than passing strange.

    Harry, Ron, and I were making our way to class when we saw something that had us more than a bit confused. The door was open. Lockhart always kept the door closed so that he could rock up late from breakfast and have the attention centered right on him. This time though, it was just open. We walked in with a curious look only to see something even stranger: Headmaster Dumbledore sitting at Lockhart's desk with a wary looking Lockhart standing next to it. The Headmaster surrounded by pictures of Lockhart was a more than strange sight, but he just smiled and nodded us towards our seats.

    Once everyone had shuffled in, Lockhart walked back to close the door himself. Another oddity. He always did it with a flick of his wand, sometimes on his second or third try.

    "Good morning everyone!" he said with what I'm sure was meant to be a winning smile. "We have a visitor today! The good Headmaster has decided that with all the awful things that have happened to some of our students—I'll not name names of course," he looked directly at me then, "that he would like to evaluate to make sure everyone's able to catch up! Defense is important after all. You never know when something comes up that needs, well, defending against!" He reached up to wipe some sweat from his brow. "To that end, we're going to be doing some review until exams. Everyone stand up and pick a partner. Anyone left as the odd one out can partner with me!"

    Harry grabbed my arm as soon as he told us to pair off. I looked over to him ready to tell him that I'd be fine before I noticed the look in his eyes. Ron, too, had already walked over to Neville. Ah. They'd discussed this. I wanted to get mad at my boys—I could handle myself after all—but, well… I understood where they were coming from.

    "Good, good, everyone's found a partner," Lockhart called the attention back to him. "Now I'm sure that you all remember the Disarming Charm, but review's the word of the day! Your incantation is 'Expelliarmus', and your wand motion is like so." He whipped out his wand and demonstrated a motion that I knew for a fact was incorrect. "I want you all to take turns practicing against each other. Your Headmaster and I will supervise."

    I turned to Harry, already not looking forward to the class. Cries of 'Expelliarmus' echoed around the room, none followed by the sound of spellfire. "Do you want to go first?" I asked. He shrugged and raised his wand.

    Harry jabbed his wand at me, doing his best to recreate what Lockhart had done to no avail. I looked over at Lockhart. Seeing that he was distracted by what I can only assume was an attempt to kiss up to the Headmaster, I put a hand up. "Stop, Harry. That's not the motion. Like this, see?" I swirled my wand in the way Tom had had me do a thousand times. "Expelliarmus," I said, but nothing happened.

    He gave me a smile, and tried the motion again. "Like this?"

    "No, no, more like this," I said and demonstrated again. It only took him one or two more tries before he managed a jet of light that knocked the wand out of my hands.

    "Well done, Mister Potter!" Dumbledore suddenly said from his spot at the desk, drawing the attention of the class. "A showing like that is worthy of some house points, wouldn't you think, Professor?"

    Lockhart looked between us and the Headmaster for a moment before piping up, "Oh, yes, of course! 5 points to Gryffindor. Each! In fact," he took a second to wipe some sweat from his brow, "Since you two were the first to cast it, why don't you help teach the rest of the class? Harry, you take the left side of the room! Miss Granger can take the right. Back to it, everyone!"

    "Er, whose left?" I heard Harry ask as I walked over to the other side of the classroom.

    I looked to Dumbledore. He just winked at me with a smile and a twinkle in his eye before turning back to Lockhart. "How long ago did you say that you taught them this spell?"

    True to instruction, I spent the rest of the class helping people cast the charm. Mostly, it consisted of me pointing out that the spell was in the Standard Book of Spells to those who hadn't figured it out yet, personally helping the people who couldn't get it on their own from there, and growing steadily more frustrated. It was such an easy spell!

    Really, I wasn't sure if I was more annoyed with other people's difficulty casting it or my own.

    Neville was the only one that I didn't mind helping. Half of spellcasting is confidence, and he always needed a boost. Eventually, the class ended with most everyone having managed to cast the charm and Lockhart looking like he'd rather be anywhere but where he was.

    "Miss Granger, a moment if you please," the Headmaster called as I was leaving. I walked up to the desk, telling Harry and Ron to go on to the next class without me.

    "If you don't mind then," Lockhart said, "I've got some papers to grade. Seventh year Defense. Absolutely riveting stuff." He didn't wait to be excused before he left.

    Once the door shut, it was just Dumbledore and I. "Good showing, Miss Granger. I should have known you'd study the book front to back. I do hope you didn't mind my little intervention. I just wanted to ask: Have you had any progress in your recovery?" I shook my head. "In that case, I believe that I have a way to help with your current problem."

    "I was planning on working on it on my own, Headmaster," I said, and I truly was. I knew for a fact that there were ways to bolster one's magic. I just had to do some looking around. Surely they weren't all as illegal as Tom had implied. The Ministry couldn't be that barbaric.

    "Of course, of course. I'd expect nothing less. Still, I would appreciate it if you could come by my office tomorrow morning. As with most things, two heads are indeed better than one—even if mine is getting a mite bit full of fluff." He gave me a smile that I didn't return. I wasn't sure how much of it—or of anything, anymore—was Tom's influence and how much was my own instinct, but something about Dumbledore put me ill at ease.

    He reeked of the same sort of false sympathy almost everyone but Harry and Ron had shown me since I got out of hospital. He was the Headmaster, and Albus bloody Dumbledore besides. There were a thousand and one ways that he could have prevented Tom from happening, and those were just the ones that I knew about. He wasn't incompetent, and so the only reason I could come up with for why he hadn't done so was simple apathy. I didn't buy him suddenly caring now that everything was done with.

    I didn't say any of that, though. Instead I nodded and said, "Of course, sir."

    "Splendid. I trust you know where the entrance to my office is? Good. Tell the gargoyle all about your enduring love of butter toffee, and he'll let you right in."

    "Yes, sir. Is that all?"

    "I think so, yes. Don't let me keep you, Miss Granger!"

    With muttered goodbyes I left the classroom behind to find Harry and Ron waiting for me outside. Seeing they'd bothered to wait brightened my mood more than a bit. "I'll tell you about it after classes," I said, and we left for our next.




    The rest of the day's classes turned out to be lectures and assigned essays. Seemed that Dumbledore had sent word ahead. I didn't expect it to last, but the gesture was appreciated. After dinner, I kept Harry and Ron awake until the common room had mostly cleared out. Giving another furtive look around from my place in my corner, I checked one final time that the coast was clear.

    "Harry, could you go grab your cloak?" I asked.

    He gave me a searching look. "Sure, why?"

    "Because I want to make good on our promise, Harry. I know somewhere private." He didn't seem convinced. "It's where I've been disappearing to."

    Ron started. "I thought that was Vol—"

    "Not," I interrupted, "Not always, Ron. I can't even say most of the time." My gut twisted. "It's taboo, but the place isn't, alright? Trust me."

    "'Course," Harry nodded, and ran up to grab his invisibility cloak. Thus armed, I led us out the portrait hole and through the castle shushing the boys all the while.

    I'd made this trip a number of times before without Harry's cloak. I had been working on enchanting a cloak of my own with a disillusionment charm when Tom had… Well. It wasn't a terribly hard journey alone. With Harry and Ron, though, it would have been a rather different story. I'd never noticed before, but the boys were loud. They dragged their feet, whispered when they thought nobody could hear, and my shushing them dragged me into the noise. Still, we made it to my private wing without incident.

    Calling it a 'private wing' was something of a misnomer, to be fully honest. It made it sound much more impressive than it truly was. Locked behind a wall that wasn't really there was a little cubby hole that Tom had told me about which featured a portrait of a pompous looking knight who would open up if you greeted him by his full name (Sir Fabeon Ander Ambleton the Third) and with proper respects (a curtsey and a 'Pleased to meet you' served me well). Behind Sir Fabeon was a short hallway leading to an empty room and a stairwell to the floor below. The bottom of the stairs opened up to two suits of armor set up on either side of a rotating wall who would happily spin for you if you greeted them in the same manner as the portrait above (their names respectively being Andrew Ander Ambleton the Seventh Esquire, and Dave—the difference was that Dave had a feather on his helmet; Fabeon had called him a dandy once.). It wasn't incredibly secure, but I wasn't likely to be stumbled upon by anyone save a determined professor or wandering ghost.

    "Well," I said as we passed by Sir Fabeon. "This is it." The room itself was relatively unimpressive. Even less than normal, considering I'd come by the night before to clean it up of anything that gave me that nasty vow-breaking sickening feeling at the thought of showing to anyone else. The main features were a slightly-singed scarecrow holding a stick that I'd fashioned from old clothes and brooms and a now slightly emptier bookshelf that had just appeared in the room one day. That patticular addition had prompted no small amount of paranoia on my part. A few chairs and a lone desk were shoved to the side from when I'd borrowed them from a couple of the abandoned classrooms around the school.

    Despite the meager accommodations, Ron was looking at it like he'd just discovered magic for the first time. Even Harry seemed impressed. "This is where you've been hiding all year?" Ron asked.

    "Yeah, it is. It isn't much, but it's private, and you said no more secrets, so…"

    "It's brilliant is what it is!" He said and turned to Harry for support.

    "It's nice," Harry allowed.

    "Nice," Ron scoffed. "The common room is nice, this is amazing!"

    I blushed despite myself. "It's just a few chairs and things."

    "Well, yeah," he said, "but it's a hidden room! I knew Hogwarts was meant to have a ton of 'em, but I've never seen any!" I thought for a moment that that was probably the point of them, but refrained from bursting his bubble. "You reckon anyone else knows about it?"

    "I bet Dumbledore does," Harry said.

    I nodded. "I can only imagine. I've warded it up so I'd know if anyone else came in, though, and nobody has. It's private enough."

    "It's like you've got your own Chamber of Secrets," Ron said. He missed my flinch. Harry didn't.

    "Hey, Ron, let's sit down, yeah?" He pulled out a chair and sat. Ron and I followed his lead after a moment. "So, Hermione, what did Dumbledore want with you?"

    I sighed. "That's… not an easy question to answer."

    "Not like we're goin' anywhere," Ron said. Harry nodded.

    "Right, well. You both know all about what To— what Voldemort did to me, right? That he was taking my life to bring himself back?" More nods. "Well, after Snape stabbed him… I don't think I got it all back. Between Professor Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey's reactions, I think he took some of me with him." I was quite proud of how my voice didn't catch.

    That was met with concerned looks at each other, then at me. "What do you think he took?" Harry asked.

    I took a deep breath. "My magic," I said, and looks of concern turned to looks of alarm. "Not all of it!" I was quick to correct. "But it doesn't quite… respond right. It's sluggish. Madam Pomfrey wasn't able to help me with it, I don't think, and now the Headmaster wants to try. That's what he wanted to talk to me about."

    "He thinks he can help?" Ron asked.

    "He says he can," I said. "I don't think that I believe him, though. I don't think he does either."

    "What do you mean?" Ron said. "He's Albus bloody Dumbledore! He can do anything!"

    Harry cut in. "So in DADA earlier, you were actually trying to cast the spell?"

    I nodded. "Yeah, I was. It's… I did some experimenting last night. Even when I do it perfectly, it still takes me a few tries to do even really simple spells."

    "Well, we'll help you, won't we Harry?" Ron said. "Whatever you need us to do, we'll help. Taking magic from a witch… It's awful. Voldemort shoulda just stayed dead."

    "Course we'll help," Harry said. "Don't doubt it."

    "Ron, Harry, that's," I started, failing in my attempts to not tear up. "Thank you. I've been so awful to you this year, it means so much that you're willing to help. Let me just, let me make it up to you." I stood up and gestured around the room.

    "Back sometime in November, I realized Lockhart was worthless. I've been studying for DADA on my own since then. That's what that's for," I gestured at the broom-and-rags dummy. Whipping out my wand, I tried to cast the disarming charm. It took on my third try. "It's a target dummy, see? I figure that I can help you out like I always used to, at least enough so that you pass your exams."

    "A secret room all to yourself and you use it to study?" Ron said, "I just don't understand you sometimes, 'Mione."

    "I dunno, do you think we could skip Lockhart's class to practice here?" Harry asked.

    "And get detention? I think not. Besides, what if the Headmaster shows up again?" That stopped the boys in their tracks, neither seeming particularly inclined to disappointing the Headmaster. "But every other time, we can use the room to study up if you like. I know a fair bit about Defense Against the Dark Arts," I said, carefully not saying how much I knew about the other side of that particular equation.

    "I think it's a good idea," Harry said. "I mean, do you really want to have to rely on Snape next time something happens? I don't think Voldemort's going to just leave us alone anytime soon."

    "Fine, fine, but this place needs a name," Ron said. "Can't have a secret training room without a name!"

    That particular conversation carried on for nearly an hour before we finally managed to reach a decision: We'd call it Hogswatch. Nobody was happy about it, but nobody was too annoyed either. The nature of compromise, I supposed. Even still, I left Hogswatch with a heart far lighter than it had been when I'd entered, criticizing myself for ever doubting my boys.




    I stepped into the Headmaster's office with unabashedly wide eyes at the state of it all. Books lined the walls. Whizzing, hissing, spinning, and smoking trinkets sat on near every flat surface, each with some purpose known only to the wizard sitting at a short table flanked by two chairs shoved off to the side.

    "Miss Granger," he said, "It's good to see you came."

    I collected myself. "You summoned me, sir."

    "That I did, that I did. Please, come sit." I did so, setting myself looking across from him over the table. "I hope you don't mind if we jump straight to business?" I shook my head. "Splendid. Or not, as the case may be. You see, Miss Granger, may I call you Hermione?"

    "If you like, professor," I said tentatively.

    "You see, Hermione, as I'm sure you've no doubt figured out, and I'm going to simplify to the point of inaccuracy for the sake of ease: your magic has been… damaged."

    "Damaged, sir?"

    "Damaged. This isn't a terribly uncommon thing to happen. Imagine a muscle, if you will. Let's say it's one of the muscles in the arm of a quidditch player. A Chaser, even. Imagine for a moment that after taking a hit from a particularly ornery bludger, our Chaser overexerts themself. They throw the quaffle too hard, and their muscle strains. Eminently recoverable, they'll just need some rest. This would be comparable to a first year trying to cast a spell beyond their capabilities—they'd overexert themselves. In both cases, there are tools to help and the patient would be advised to relax. Simple matters, an inconvenience at worst. I want you to imagine, then, what it would mean for a muscle to tear completely."

    "The arm would still be usable," he continued, "but only for all the other muscles present. Doing so might even make the tear worse. There are far fewer tools to help here, and fewer still who would know how to use them. That is what I believe that Tom did to you."

    I tilted my head some. "How can magic 'tear', sir?"

    He hemmed and hawed for a moment. "As I said, it is an oversimplification to the point of inaccuracy. Like declaring that gravity is what happens when things go down, or that magic is made out of spells. I had hoped to save a lecture until later, but I can't imagine you'd be satisfied with that, would you?" He took a look at my face. "I thought not. I can't say I'm disappointed; I have so little time for teaching nowadays. Besides, I believe you have a right to know. What do you know about magical cores, Hermione?"

    "Well," I said, "They're the way we connect with the magic of the world, and they're what let us cast spells. I know you can also feel them with practice." Tom had mentioned it in passing, and I'd been made to do my own research.

    "Very good. I don't believe that the subject is covered until your fifth year, and even then only in passing. For most, it's a background assumption: It's enough to know that it's there and that it's from there that magic springs. It's also horribly incorrect. We will need to be a bit wiser than all that for what we're going to be attempting. Do you know where it is that magic comes from, or rather, what it is that makes it powerful?"

    "It's connection, sir, to the world around us and to the lives our ancestors lived."

    The Headmaster gave me something of an appraising look. "An answer worthy of any pureblood. I prefer to phrase it somewhat differently. Connection isn't wrong, precisely, but not a theory I subscribe to myself. This is one of those subjects that scholars get hot under their collars about, you see. There are things in this world with power, Hermione. Life, death, chaos, order, time, and yes—connection. Though most call it either tradition or legacy. More scholarly debate that I fear is as much political as it is actually scholarly. I prefer the term legacy myself."

    He waved his wand, and six colorful glowing orbs appeared in the air beside him. "Everything that exists is bound to some or all of these things to varying degrees. They are rather uncreatively named the 'Powers'. You'll note that each of these is rather strongly tied to another. Life and death, order and disorder—sometimes called logic and emotion—and finally time and legacy." As he spoke, lines of light drew themselves between the orbs to illustrate, and they began to spin around each other. "Each pair is something of a circle in themselves, cause leading into effect leading into cause. Life leads into death leads into life, chaos falls into order only to collapse back into chaos, and time causes legacy which pushes time ever onwards. As you might imagine, you and I are rather strongly bound to Life. You much more than me, I'm afraid; the benefits of youth. We are also bound to death, and time, and each of the others. These powers exist even when we can't see or interact with them. They simply are.

    "Now, you're likely wondering how this matters for your particular condition. Your 'magical core' is a way to describe the bindings we have to the Powers and the mechanics of our access to them." The Headmaster waved his wand again, and the silhouette of a person appeared. Glowing lines drew themselves out from the 'Powers' to the person, causing the silhouette to glow. "Allow me another metaphor. Imagine, for a moment, two faucets right next to each other. They are connected to the water line in such a way that only one of them has any access to water at a time. By twisting on the pipe, you are able to move access from one faucet to the other. Let's say, however, that the valve is rusty. It takes time and effort to twist it. Still following?" I nodded. "Good. As you moved the valve, the first faucet would lose water pressure, from jet, to stream, to trickle. Simultaneously, the other faucet would do exactly the opposite." As he spoke another silhouette appeared, and a branch split from the line connecting the Powers to the first silhouette to join with the second. The first silhouette dimmed, and the second brightened.

    "So," I said, and his eyes lit up a fraction. "If I'm meant to be one faucet and Tom, erm, Voldemort the other, then the water would be my core? That is, my bindings to the Powers?"

    "Just so. And what do you suppose would happen if someone took a rather large rock, beat aside the one turning the knob, and smashed Voldemort's faucet?"

    Ah. "No more of my connection to the Powers would be taken, but they wouldn't be turned back either. And Voldemort's faucet would still be spewing water everywhere."

    "Precisely." The Headmaster banished his illusion with a flick. "Our task becomes, then, to gain access to the water spraying all over the floor and pipe it into your own sink. Or to end this strained metaphor, to gain access to the power you should have by 'catching' all your frayed binding. You can at least rest assured that your connections to the Powers are still all there, they're just slightly severed. The magic's spilling out around you, as with our faucet metaphor. I'm quite sure that if you were to go into a muggle home, they'd find many of their modern contrivances—electricity, is it?— would stop working. Much as if you were to bring them over to Hogwarts."

    "Can these bindings be reconnected?" I asked. "Can we manage it so the magic's going into me like it's supposed to, instead of all around me?" Failing all else, I could research on my own now I had a better idea of what was going on.

    "Of course," the Headmaster said, "and I'm confident we'll find a way to do that in time. For now, however, I'm afraid we must make do with a stopgap. I've taken the liberty of pulling a few books from our library for you. Tell me Hermione," he leaned in, "what do you know about ritual magic?"
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Hm I figured Hermione would need a new wand instead. The taboo thing may mean she will continue to be a very different witch than she was before the diary. Already we see that, because of these events, she has lost faith in both Lockhart and Dumbledore.
     
    3 - Ritual Magic
  • Threadmarks
    • "Can these bindings be reconnected?" I asked. "Can we manage it so the magic's going into me like it's supposed to, instead of all around me?" Failing all else, I could research on my own now I had a better idea of what was going on.

    "Of course," the Headmaster said, "and I'm confident we'll find a way to do that in time. For now, however, I'm afraid we must make do with a stopgap. I've taken the liberty of pulling a few books from our library for you. Tell me Hermione," he leaned in, "what do you know about ritual magic?"


    Ritual Magic​


    The day before, after the Headmaster had loaned me his books, I'd spent the whole day tearing through the first of them: the rather mystically named High Ritualism and You: Bartering with the Gods by one Mandy Enoch. It had taken Ron shaking me out of my stupor in order to get me to even eat. I maintained that that wasn't my fault, though; the contents of the book were fascinating.

    Rather than a collection of threads, Enoch presented the magical core as something akin to an aperture fitted with a lens. The wider the aperture was open, the more magic could flow from the Powers and through the core out into the world. Attempting to open up the aperture too widely would break its 'frame'—that being the caster. If anything that Dumbledore had said was true, then my aperture had been forced near closed. The connection to the Powers was still there, but all the magic that should rightly fit through the aperture simply spilled out and around me.

    When a witch casts a spell with her wand, she's using her will and intent to subconsciously shape which of the Powers she draws on and how much by 'tinting' the lens. It seemed Newton had say even here, because the lens had a tendency to stick tinted more one way or another. As the mind shapes the core, so the theory goes, so too does the core shape the mind.

    According to Enoch, Ritual magic is what you do when you either can't channel enough magic on your own, didn't want to tint your core, or when your will and imagination simply weren't a match for the complexity of a spell. One could, via a series of runes set in patterns called sigils, entreat the Powers directly: functionally using the ritual circle as a much larger, external magical core. Each rune described a broad and supposedly fundamental aspect of existence, and could be modified in certain ways to become more specific. 'Living thing' turned to 'Beast' turned to 'Cow' with the addition or removal of certain lines. It was a language in its own right, really. Arranging these runes into sigils could be used to do most anything, and any work of magic could be described in ritual. One pointed example described how one could even put a taboo on a name across an entire country. No fingers pointed, of course.

    The problem, and the reason why high ritualism wasn't a common practice, was that it was apparently fiendishly difficult even beyond translation issues. If more power was needed than existed in your vicinity or the magic in the area was unsuited for the ritual, magically charged reagents were needed to make up the difference. These reagents would also tint the magic coming in in their own way towards some power or other, and so needed to be carefully balanced. As well as that, the thing you needed done had to be described via runes in ways that changed both in content and physical layout, depending on how much of which of the Powers you were entreating.

    Broadly speaking, Life, Order, and Legacy—the so-called Light powers—wanted you to tell a story with your runes, and preferred you to lay out your runes and sigils in nice, neat patterns. Death, Chaos, and Time—the Dark powers in turn—wanted the runes to spell out a bargain and demanded sweeping gestures with their layout. To hear Enoch tell it, it sounded as if it was a negotiation with a group of mystical gods or spirits that you wanted to flatter with the right sorts of offering in order to grant you power. I wasn't sure about all that, but the results spoke for themselves.

    This all would've been near impossible to get a handle on, even for me, if it weren't for the second book that the Headmaster had lent me: A Ritualist's Spellbook. No author listed. It was a deceptively small tome that might fit in a handbag, yet had more pages than would reasonably fit inside of it given its size. On each page (many of which unfolded) was a ritual deconstruction of a spell. The Headmaster had kindly informed me that he had done something to parse down the book so that only the spells up to my third year curriculum could be accessed, telling me in no uncertain terms that, "The Powers are not something to be trifled with, Miss Granger. You must tread wisely."

    It was the Spellbook that I'd been spending the day locked up in the newly named Hogswatch delving into. By the time Harry and Ron found me, I had dozens of sheets of specially provided parchment with sigils scrawled upon them depicting various spells scattered all around me. Each of them had been tested thoroughly (and some of them had even worked) before being discarded once the thaumically neutral ink making them up had run dry. I can only imagine what a sight I made.

    "Er, Hermione?" Harry asked out of seemingly nowhere. I jumped a bit, scratching in a line I hadn't meant to make, changing a rune for 'up' to what I was pretty sure spelled out 'digestion'. With a sigh, I crumpled up the parchment and threw it aside. "Sorry."

    "It's fine, Harry, I was just startled."

    "Good we know where you disappear off to now, everyone else has been wondering!" Ron said.

    "Oh come on, it's not been that long. I've only been in here for—" I looked out the window to see that the sun had long since fled past the horizon. There was a candle illuminating the room, and I dimly remembered sketching out a ritual to light it. I sighed again. "I missed dinner, didn't I?"

    "And lunch," Ron said with a tone that I wasn't sure I cared for. "Breakfast too, now I think about it." He held up a bag. "Good thing we saved you some!"

    I gratefully took it from him with a muttered thanks and gestured at the chairs. Both boys sat, and Harry took a wary look around. "So, what's all this?"

    "Ritualism," I said between bites. "Professor Dumbledore recommended it as a way to get around my magical issues."

    Ron picked up a sheet of burned out parchment and they both gave it a look. "And you can… read this?"

    "It's not so bad," I lied. "Potion making is low ritual, and this is high ritual. They're… basically the same thing. This is just potions class, but as a verb." I almost launched into a proper explanation then, but realized from the looks on their faces that they really wouldn't appreciate it. "It won't win me any duels, but that's what I have you two for, right?"

    "Too right," Harry said quickly. "Long as you can teach us the spells?"

    My eyes shot wide open. "Right!" I said. "We were doing that today, I'd totally forgotten!" Ron laughed, and I set them up against my target dummies (plural now; brooms and rags were surprisingly easy to transfigure with a ritual). "Let's get started, shall we?"




    "I bet you think you've got everyone fooled, don't you?" Parvati said with a scowl, closing the door to our rooms behind her. I'd come up early to stow my books when she'd followed, leaving us quite alone.

    "It wasn't my fault," I sighed. "Not even Professor Dumbledore thinks so."

    "Then you've tricked him too somehow, but I know better."

    "You know better than Albus Dumbledore?" I asked flatly.

    "I saw you," she insisted, "You were smiling when you heard Padma got petrified! I know it was you, and I know you've got everyone tricked." I cast my mind back, and realized that she was right. I had been smiling. Parvati's sister, Padma, had been petrified a short time before Hagrid had been arrested. She'd apparently been touching up her makeup when she'd seen the basilisk. I was writing to Tom when it was announced, and he'd been saying something funny in that caustic way of his about Ron. I was more than a bit sucked in, and didn't even hear the announcement. Harry had had to fill me in later.

    I looked straight at her, careful not to let the feelings of guilt show on my face. "So, what, you think I'm the Heir of Slytherin? I'm muggleborn, Parvati."

    "That's what you say."

    "Even if I was the Heir, what was your plan here? What's stopping me from petrifying you right now?"

    She gave me a superior look then. "Everyone knows that Snape killed your basilisk, Granger."

    "Parvati, I…" I didn't do it, I wanted to say. It wasn't my fault. That would be a lie, though. It was my fault. I'd made the choice to pour myself into Tom, to trust him. I'd made the choice to hole up in Hogswatch and ignore my blackouts. I'd made the choice to not tell anyone, and I had most definitely made the choice to swear myself to him as a student just so that I could feel superior—like I had something that nobody else did. I wanted to be mad at her, to tell her just how annoyed I was, but I'd long since lost that right. She was correct, just not in the way she thought she was.

    "I'm sorry for what happened to Padma, Parvati," I finally relented. "I never meant for it to happen."

    She narrowed her eyes. "Hm. So ten seconds ago it wasn't your fault, and now I've caught you, you say it was an accident. Were you lying then or are you lying now?" I just clenched my teeth. She didn't deserve the vitriol that I wanted to spew. "Thought so. You better stay away from Padma, and you better stay away from Lavender, or I'll tell everyone what I know. I'm watching you, Granger." With a huff and two pointed fingers, she left me alone in the room to wallow.

    "Good to know," I breathed to no one, and went to double check the wards around my trunk. Parvati hating me may have been justified, but I didn't need her messing with my books.




    The rest of the week brought with it yet more whispers following me in the halls and a growing repertoire of ritual spells. Parvati had been true to her word and kept a watchful eye on me, making sure to steer Lavender away whenever she got the chance. I'd almost told her a couple times that there was no danger of me biting anymore but…

    It felt right, her hating me. Someone ought to, and I hadn't the energy.

    The professors in my various classes had seemingly received the memo about my new 'disability', as Professor Snape had phrased it. Not one of them had blinked as I started drawing out runes and sigils on sheafs of parchment when everyone else reached for their wands. Professor Flitwick had been more than interested, though.

    "It's fascinating, isn't it?" he'd said to me once after class. "I was always more of a duelist myself, of course, but ritual casting is ever so exciting!"

    "It's certainly a broad field, sir. I feel like I'm barely starting to wrap my head around it."

    "Oh I can certainly imagine," he chirped. "Ritualism is a wide, wide world, Miss Granger, and one all too easy to get lost in. I would be more than happy to help you if you ever find yourself needing a hand. Between you and me, I think this makes for a fantastic excuse to refamiliarize myself. It's been far too many years since I've had good reason to."

    I'm glad that my condition is exciting to you, I didn't say. True to his word, though, he'd proved a useful resource to have and had been happy to field my questions after class.

    Professor Snape had been less helpful, however, insisting that if I was going to pursue a 'novel' method of spellcasting then I was going to make good use of it. My partners had subsequently been banned from casting spells whenever a potion called for it. He outright took points if I even tried to do something as simple as light a flame with my wand. I was a quick learner, though. It only took that first class—where Neville and I had been made to stay twenty minutes after everyone because it just so happened that the potion of the day required three spells I hadn't drawn out before—to convince me to read ahead in our itinerary and prep my spells in advance. I may have owed him my life, but he was still a slimy git.

    The other professors had either not commented at all, which I appreciated, or given me more pithy sympathy that I was fast growing tired of. I'd never thought that Binns would be the one to do something to make me look forward to his class even more, but his apathy was a breath of fresh air.

    Harry and Ron, though, had taken my words about them taking my duels for me to heart. They insisted on accompanying me anytime that I so much as looked too hard at the common room's portrait hole. Ron in particular seemed to make it his personal mission to make sure that I made it to every single meal with no exceptions, and Harry would consistently puff himself up whenever any Slytherins got too close. More than usual, that is. It was incredibly sweet, and had floored me with how much they cared now I was giving them an opportunity to.

    Naturally, I ignored their complaints and exploited it to make sure they had enough time in the library to study for their exams.

    It was on Saturday morning while the boys were away at the last quidditch practice of the year that Malfoy finally managed to corner me in a near empty hallway on the way to the library. My fault for being so predictable, I supposed. I physically bumped into someone right as I turned the corner, and looked up to see Pansy Parkinson and Draco Malfoy wearing matching sneers.

    "Granger," Pansy jeered, "Strange to see you without your bodyguards. Did they finally get tired of the smell?"

    "Pansy, there you are," I huffed with my best deadpan. "I thought I'd felt a headache coming on." Her eyes widened a bit. I'd never responded to her in kind like this, that was always more Harry's domain, but I was certainly not in the mood for her either.

    Malfoy cut in. "You don't get to talk to her like that."

    "I think that I can talk how I like," I said. "Apparently I'm the Heir of Slytherin."

    "Oh, is that why Potter and the Weasel abandoned you?" he asked with faux sympathy.

    "If you must know, they're at quidditch practice. You might know that if you hadn't bought your way onto your team."

    He hmphed and crossed his arms. "I'll bet Potter got tired of looking over his shoulder. No telling when you'll try to take him out for good, after all."

    "Wasn't honor among lions the whole point of Gryffindor?" Pansy tittered. "And here you are, the wannabe Heir of Slytherin, betraying your own kind over… what? Didn't want to compete for Potter's attention anymore?"

    I took a deep breath and clenched my fist over the straps of my bag. "What do you two want? I haven't done anything to you."

    Malfoy smirked, and my jaw tightened. "We just wanted to ask about your… unique manner of spellcasting. Thought you were too good for your wand, did you?"

    "No, Snape said it was 'cause of her, what was it he said?" She looked up as if in thought before snapping. "Her 'disability'!"

    "That's right, how could I have forgotten?" he asked with the tone of someone who clearly hadn't. "So the big lie finally ran out?"

    "What are you talking about, Malfoy?" I gritted out.

    "The lie about your magic, of course," he said. "Mudbloods don't actually have their own magic, everyone knows that. I don't know why you all bother to lie about it. The magic you stole ran out, didn't it? I bet you thought that you could steal it all from the other mudbloods, but I'm afraid it doesn't work like that." His tone changed then, condescension dripping from his words. "Magic comes from wizards, not muggles. I'd have thought a swot like you would have figured that out."

    Malfoy looked so self-satisfied standing there in front of me with hatred spewing from his lips. He looked proud of himself, like spitting bile was some sort of great accomplishment. If it was, I couldn't think of anyone better at it. He kept talking and Pansy laughed with him, offering the odd comment. I didn't register any of it. Instead, I heard blood in my ears, felt my teeth grind together, and I realized something. I'd hurt Parvati and Padma, Colin, and a number of others. My choices had scared almost everyone in the school, teachers and students alike. Malfoy though, he'd stood and laughed at the petrifications. He'd made jokes. He'd had a good time with it all.

    I may not have been able to be mad at anyone else, but Malfoy had more than earned it.

    In an instant I couldn't recall the span of, he was laid out on the ground. Blood was spraying from his nose, and my fist was covered in it. Pansy yelled something. I didn't notice what.

    The appalled cry of "Miss Granger!" though, I noticed. I looked to see Professor McGonagall approaching in an affronted huff. "Miss Parkinson," she said, "Please see Mister Malfoy to the Hospital Wing." Pansy gave an affirmation of some sort—I really didn't care to pay attention—and left, dragging a disproportionately wailing Malfoy along. "And you, Miss Granger, are coming with me."

    "I was going to the library," I said. The plea sounded weak even in my ears.

    Her lips thinned. "Yes. 'Was'. Past Tense. That was before you assaulted another student. With me, Miss Granger," she ordered, and that was that.

    The walk to her office—up two sets of stairs and past a number of students who gave the professor and I wary looks and a wide berth—was done in complete silence. Not that I expected anything else. She wasn't going to understand. She probably wouldn't even try. For the first time in my life, though, I wasn't sure that I had it in me to be sorry. It took me until the first set of stairs to stop shaking from the adrenaline. My breathing didn't even out until after the second.

    "Sit, Miss Granger," she finally directed once we arrived. I did as told, and she placed herself across her desk from me. She stared, and I had enough presence of mind to avoid her gaze, at least. The silence grew tense for a long moment before she snapped it with clipped words. "Would you mind telling me what happened?"

    I bit back the sarcastic 'I would, actually,' 'that wanted to free itself—and what was wrong with me recently? I'd never been like this before—and gave her a proper response. "Malfoy provoked me."

    "He provoked you."

    "Yes, he did." I let it sit for a moment before her expectant stare became too much. "He called me a mudblood," I said, even though that was the least of what he'd said to me.

    Professor McGonnagal pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Miss Granger." She hesitated a moment before looking back to me. "Hermione. I understand that after what happened it's quite natural for you to be… fragile. Even still, that does not justify violence against your fellow students." Her expression lost some of its sharp edges as she spoke. "You used to be better than this. You are better than this, aren't you?"

    Clearly I'm not, I thought, but she took my silence as a response. "That thing made you into a victim, yes, but you cannot let it affect you as it has been, Hermione. You've barely raised your hand at all in my classes, you know. Where's that bright young lady who had an answer to every question I could think to ask?"

    I averted my eyes from her, staring rather intently on a glass faced cabinet with some form of hourglass necklace inside. "I don't know, professor." The words 'fragile' and 'victim' echoed around the inside of my head. "Maybe she died in the Chamber of Secrets."

    "Oh, I don't believe that," she tutted. I looked back to see an encouraging smile on her face. "I'm quite sure that you'll find her soon enough. In the meantime," her eyes flicked briefly to the cabinet, "I think that you should relax. Between your ritual magic, your recovery, and everything else that's happened, you've got quite a lot on your plate. That's why I've advised the Headmaster to waive your exams. He agreed it was for the best."

    My eyes widened. "So now I'm not even fit to take my exams?" I said in a tone that was trying very hard not to be angry. "People were petrified for months of term, but I'm the one that's not allowed to take my exams?"

    "This isn't a punishment, Miss Granger. In fact, it's only because of my confidence in your ability that I was even willing to recommend it." She paused a moment. "In fact, think of this as an opportunity to relax—both for yourself and your professors. Rewriting a test to account for the fact that one of the students cannot use their wand is no small thing."

    "I'm not helpless. I can still use my wand," I tried. "Just not quickly."

    "I'm sure you can." Her tone was demeaning. "Perhaps you can use the time that you'd normally spend revising on improving your ritual casting?" Relenting, I nodded with a huff. "Good," she said. Her expression regained some of its severity. "Now back to the matter of your altercation with Mister Malfoy. I'm afraid that I will have to give you detention. No matter how sympathetic I may be to your circumstances, assaulting another student is never permissible. I will see you on Monday directly after dinner, do you understand?"

    "Yes, Professor."

    "Good. Now, before you go." She rummaged about in a drawer for a second before pulling out a sheet of paper and setting it on the desk. "Firstly, I'm afraid that you cannot take every single elective Hogwarts offers. There simply isn't the time in the week. I would like you to bring this back to me with your actual choices when you come for your detention. "Secondly," the professor conjured a handkerchief with a flick of her wand, "Please clean yourself up."

    She offered the handkerchief and gestured at my hand which was still covered in Malfoy's now dried blood. With a few quick swipes, I managed to clean myself up. I shoved the handkerchief into a pocket and grabbed the form she'd proffered. "Is that all, professor?"

    "Yes, I think so," she said. "I shall see you on Monday after dinner, Miss Granger."

    "Fine, yes," I said as I stood. "Monday after dinner." Her gaze prickled on my neck as I left.




    Dear Mum and Dad,

    How are you doing? I've missed you terribly. I've been keeping up with my school work of course, and helping out Harry and Ron with theirs as well. Hard to say what they'd do without me helping them get through their classes.

    I'm afraid that during my school year, the head nurse Madam Pomfrey found something strange. My magic seems to be leaking, for lack of a better word. Do you remember me talking about how magic breaks electronics? According to the experts, magic leaking like mine will have the same effect. I don't think that you want me to come home just to break everything in the house, so I'm organizing a stay in the magical world for the summer until this gets resolved. I hope you understand.

    I'll send you another letter once I know where I'm staying, that way you can visit if you like. I think that I'd enjoy showing you everything that magic has to offer.

    Your loving daughter,

    Hermione

    Stoppering the ink, I rolled up the parchment with a disdainful look at the previous two drafts. I almost felt bad. It wasn't the parchment's fault that I could never piece my words together right when it came to my parents. Shoving my things in a bag, I looked up to see Harry and Ron playing Exploding Snap. Truthfully, I couldn't tell who was winning.

    "Hey, guys?" They looked up just in time for one of the pieces to explode right in Ron's hands. "I need to go to the Owlery," I said once Ron was done swearing.

    "What for?" Harry asked.

    "To send a letter. Mind walking me?" He rolled his eyes and started cleaning up the game. Both boys had been incredibly annoyed when I'd told them about what wandering the halls alone had caused. Well, Harry had been annoyed. Ron had been more than a bit smug at me finally getting detention myself. It certainly hadn't curbed their protective tendencies though. If anything, they'd been more adamant about it than ever. My own personal bodyguards.

    I wasn't quite sure why it grated so much.

    Once we'd gathered our things, we made our way out of Hogswatch with a quick "Hello, Dave," and a round of curtseys and bows. "So, what's the letter about?" Ron asked as we walked.

    That was the other thing. Harry and Ron both had decided that any semblance of privacy that I might have was null and void after my encounter with Malfoy. Sure, they'd thought it brilliant that I'd punched Malfoy but that wasn't enough to stop them from talking about how it wasn't the 'Hermione we know', whatever that was supposed to mean.

    I sighed. Their concern wasn't totally unjustified. If I kept telling myself that, maybe it would stop grating so much. "It's to my parents," I said after a long moment. "I'm telling them that I can't stay with them due to my magic being the way it is. I'd break all the electronics just by being there."

    "So where you gonna stay?" Harry asked. "I talked to McGonagall about it once, and she said that students couldn't stay over summer."

    "She could stay with me!" Ron answered before I could. "Long as you don't mind staying with the twins. They're a nightmare, really."

    I opened my mouth to protest, but I really hadn't any better plans. "I wouldn't want to impose," I tried.

    "Nah, Mum'd love having you. Pretty sure she'd kill for another girl in the house. Here, let me borrow some parchment." He waved at my bag, and I pulled out everything for him. What followed was a rather precarious and undignified sequence involving me holding an ink pot up and Harry's back serving as a makeshift table with me caught between indignance and laughter the whole time. Really, I understood that magic worked better with natural things—Legacy and all—but this situation really could have been avoided by just letting us use pens in school.

    The letter itself was both short and so incredibly Ron that I had to laugh.

    Hermione's magic's broken. She can't stay with her muggles. Can she stay with us?

    I didn't miss that it only took Ron one try to pen out the note to his mother, or that that small amount of information was all he thought she needed. He needed something, and he was sure his mum would help him even without a real explanation. I didn't know what precisely that spoke to, but I didn't like it either way.

    "There," he said as we were repacking my things. "No shot she'll say no. She'll be fattening you up in no time." He stopped as an idea seemed to come to him. "Hey Harry, you think the Dursleys'd let you come and stay the summer with us too?"

    He shook his head. "After last summer? I doubt it. I'll bet my uncle's still mad about the bars. 'Sides. That would make me happy. Can't have that." Ron nodded sadly, and I just clenched my fist. I'm sure if he were here Tom'd be happy to give me some choice spells to—

    I cut that train of thought off right there. Tom was a monster. He'd almost killed me. I needed to remember that.

    "Can't be helped," Ron said. "Maybe we'll just come pick you up this summer anyway. Mum'll be mad, but she'll understand."

    "Maybe," Harry conceded, and we carried on with our day.




    It was with barely subdued annoyance that I reported to Professor McGonagall's office Monday after dinner. The last Monday of the school year, even. I knocked on her office door only to realize that she was still at dinner. Right. Great. More time to stew, just what I needed.

    When she did finally arrive some five minutes late, she found me standing in the hall with my nose deep in The Ritualist's Spellbook. I was in the midst of slowly translating the rune work for the levitation charm when the sound of a clearing throat pulled me from the book.

    I looked up to see Professor McGonagall wearing the ghost of a smile. "It's good to see you're diligent even in waiting, Miss Granger. Have you chosen your electives?" I pulled the form out with only a quick rummage through my bag and handed it over. She gave it a quick look before commenting. "Hm. Care of Magical Creatures? Are you sure?" She quirked an eyebrow, and I felt my eye twitch. What, am I too fragile for it?

    "Yes, professor," I said with as much self-assuredness as I could fit into two words. In truth, I'd thought quite a bit about which electives to choose. Arithmancy and Ancient Runes were a guarantee. Ritualism asked for a healthy dose of both. Care of Magical Creatures because Harry and Ron were in it, and there was far too much opportunity for them to get themselves killed for me not to take it. Divination sounded fascinating, but Tom had told me all about how you either had the gift or you didn't. We'd tested, and I didn't. Muggle Studies sounded fascinating, but, well… Hearing wizards and witches talking about things they didn't actually know anything about had more than lost its luster of late. In a perfect world I'd take them all anyway, but it was as Professor McGonagall said. There just wasn't the time.

    She gave me an evaluating look before she finally seemed to relent. "Very well." She pocketed the form. "I trust you know why you are here?"

    "Yes, professor."

    "And why is that?"

    "Because I punched Malfoy, professor."

    She nodded. "Just so. Unfortunately, with exams coming up I'm afraid that I don't have the time to supervise a detention." Then why did you assign one? "Instead, Professor Lockhart has offered to hold it. Come along," she said, and began leading me down the hall.

    Funny how sometimes it only takes one sentence to turn a day from bad to worse.

    Yet again, the walk was silent, and I held my head high. I may have been ashamed of losing my temper like that, but I wasn't exactly sorry. Nobody was going to make me feel sorry for it, either. Not anymore.

    We arrived at Lockhart's classroom and McGonagall rapped on it twice before turning to me. "I trust he'll take care of you, Miss Granger." She hesitated for a moment before shaking her head and turning to leave, which left me standing and waiting for a professor outside of their own door yet again.

    This wait took far less time. There was the sound of a spell firing and a crash before the door opened suddenly to reveal a less-than-perfectly-coiffed Lockhart. "Miss Granger," he cried. "Always a pleasure to talk to a fan! Now I hate to turn away a student in need of sage advice, but I'm afraid that I'm really quite busy. You understand. Hurry on now!"

    Had he really..? "I'm here for detention. Sir."

    He stared at me for a moment before he seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. "Of course! I have just the thing," said the fraud. "Come in, come in."

    Following him in, I found the classroom to be in a state of some disarray. Half-filled boxes were scattered everywhere, portraits were lying on the floor desperately trying to comb their hair, and desks were pushed off to the side.

    "The Headmaster and I have been doing some thinking, you see, and we've decided that a man of my stature would be better served continuing on in his adventures. Not that teaching hasn't been an adventure in its own right, you know what they say about shepherding young minds, but I've so much more to do before I settle down!" He gave me a wink. "I'm sure you're looking forward to seeing where my travels lead me next, of course you are!" A few responses came to mind, but I managed to stifle them all. "In any case, you'll be spending your detention helping me pack some things. Start over there, those portraits need organized from largest to smallest. Quick, quick!"

    Slightly taken aback, it took me a second before I actually processed that. From the sounds of it, Dumbledore had suggested that Lockhart get out of his castle (as much as the Chief Warlock 'suggested' anything), and Lockhart had heard the order loud and clear for what it was. Fine by me, good riddance. I got right to work once I'd realized that.

    I spent the whole of the detention trying to decide if the opportunity to get Lockhart away from me faster was worth the indignity of suffering his presence. Likely not. Detention was meant to be a punishment, after all.




    Most of the train ride away from Hogwarts was spent in a good mood. Ron was in fine form, keeping both Harry's and my mind off of things. Tom, the Dursleys, my failing magic—all of it fell away in the face of Ron talking all about the things that we'd get up to at the Burrow and everything the twins had accomplished over the school year. I did my part, telling them all about my detention with Lockhart.

    "He could've told us that he was leaving," Ron had said. "I'd have thrown a party. Think the Ministry'd declare it a holiday if we asked?"

    The jovial mood managed to cut through my own melancholy at leaving behind Hogwarts. It was a bizarre, wonderful place to be sure, but it was undeniably where I had known Tom. Where Tom had used me. It wasn't worth dwelling on. I'd survive him. I knew it.

    When we pulled into King's Cross, Harry scrawled down a phone number and pressed it into my hands. "You'll call, right?"

    "Of course we will," I said.

    "Just say the word and we'll come get you again, promise," Ron added.

    I made sure Harry got a hug before he passed through to the muggle world. "And tell me if you need someone to hex the Dursleys," I whispered in his ear. "I know a few good ones."

    "I'll keep you in mind," he laughed, and let me go.

    Once he'd disappeared through the arch of 9 ¾, I turned to look around. There, in the midst of a crowd of black cloaks, was a splash of red. Mrs. Weasley was embracing her kids come home like a proud mother hen. I couldn't stop the pang of hurt I felt at the sight. I knew that my being at home would only hurt my parents, but… What a selfish girl I was. Shaking my head to clear the thought, I made my way over to the family.

    "Ah, there you are, dear!" Mrs. Weasley called as I approached. "I heard that you've had a rough time at school. Don't you worry, don't you worry, we'll take good care of you. It'll be just like home before you know it. Now, has everybody got their things? Good, good. This way, everyone! Have you ever used the floo, Hermione dear?"

    As I was swept up in the flood of magic and motherly concern, I held back tears. This was a good thing. My parents couldn't care for me, so the Weasleys were going to. I knew that. So why did it feel like a loss?
     
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    • I didn't miss the parallels between Hermione making decisions for her parents because: 'they're muggles, there's no way they can handle it' and her teachers doing the same to her because she's currently crippled, nor the fact that Hermione herself missed them. The irony is delicious.
     
    4 - The Burrow
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    • Mrs. Weasley was embracing her kids come home like a proud mother hen. I couldn't stop the pang of hurt I felt at the sight. I knew that my being at home would only hurt my parents, but… What a selfish girl I was. Shaking my head to clear the thought, I made my way over to the family.

    "Ah, there you are, dear!" Mrs. Weasley called as I approached. "I heard that you've had a rough time at school. Don't you worry, don't you worry, we'll take good care of you. It'll be just like home before you know it. Now, has everybody got their things? Good, good. This way, everyone! Have you ever used a floo, Hermione dear?"

    As I was swept up in the flood of magic and motherly concern, I held back tears. This was a good thing. My parents couldn't care for me, so the Weasleys were going to. I knew that. So why did it feel like a loss?


    The Burrow​


    Floo travel, I'd decided, was not something for me. Stepping into a fire took a bizarre amount of willpower on its own, nevermind the subsequent feeling of hurtling through space and the ash in my lungs once I'd arrived. It was hard to fault literal teleportation, sure, but couldn't someone have made it even a bit more pleasant?

    Once I'd recovered from my ordeal, I managed to take in my surroundings. All around me was the slow bustle of the Weasley family fitting themselves back into their home. Fred and George were busy regaling their father with tales that I doubted I'd believe were anyone else telling them, Percy had near immediately disappeared up a set of stairs, Ginny was being fussed over by her mother, and Ron was checking over his things.

    As for the building itself, it looked… well loved. A big family lived here, no question. Old knick knacks sat on shelves leaning against worn books sorted in ways known only to whoever had placed them, abused couches sat pushed up next to each other, surfaces bore the signs of hands upon hands, and every single red-orange-gold thing in sight just screamed Weasley. It was cramped, it was crowded, and it was lively. It was different.

    I was long accustomed to there being a place for everything and everything in its place at home. A housekeeper to keep everything straight when parents who'd spent more and more time at work couldn't keep it up themselves. "An orderly home makes for an orderly mind," as Dad always said. It was something I'd always believed. Still did, even. Looking around the Burrow, I couldn't help but wonder how anyone could live like this.

    It was different, it was uncomfortable, and it wasn't home—not even when Mrs. Weasley met my eyes with a reassuring smile and Ginny approached me. "You'll be staying with me," she said. "I'm just up the stairs, come on."

    Hefting my feather-light trunk once more, I followed Ginny to her room. It wasn't quite what I'd expected. Maybe I should have, though. The room itself was small, and every bit of available space on the walls seemed to be taken up by quidditch. A small bookshelf full of books titled Harry Potter and… sat in the corner, and Ginny sheepishly set her trunk in front of it. There were two beds in the room, though it was clear that there hadn't been until very recently from how hastily things looked to be shuffled around. Both were neat and tidy, and I had the distinct feeling that this was the last time I'd ever see something of Ginny's in such a state. Messiness was a family trait, it seemed.

    "That side of the room's yours," she said. "This one's mine. Try not to touch my stuff, yeah?"

    That thought had me pause in my unpacking for a moment. "Do people often go through your things?" She shrugged. It wasn't a no. "I could ward the room if you like, make it so only you and I can come in." Warding my things for privacy had been one of the first things Tom had taught me, actually.

    Her eyes seemed to come to life at that before crashing down just as quickly. "We're not allowed to use magic outside of Hogwarts." Right. I'd almost forgotten.

    I thought on it for a moment. Harry told Ron and I that he'd received a letter from the Ministry when a house elf had used magic at the Dursley's, but I'd already seen Mr. and Mrs. Weasley doing magic even in the short time I'd been here. Clearly, they didn't refrain for their kid's sakes, and I doubted any other magical families did either. I knew from Harry that it wasn't the person or magical core they were tracking, necessarily, so much as the household. You couldn't actually do that with wizarding families, though, there was just too much magic around. That said…

    "Why'd your mum take our wands?" I asked.

    Ginny gave me a strange look. "'Cause. We're not allowed to do magic," she explained slowly. "She didn't use to, but one time Bill tried to transfigure Scabbers and Mum got a letter from the Ministry. She was mad for weeks. Took everyone's wand right after."

    So our cores weren't being tracked somehow, else they would've known that Harry hadn't cast that hover charm. It was the houses. That didn't work in wizarding homes, though, so they must be tracking the wands too. Really, it made sense. Wands all came from the same place. It'd be easy to tell Ollivander to put a tracker on all of them. Which meant that in a magical home and without a wand…

    There was only one way to test my theory. "I think I might be allowed to use magic, actually," I said. Ritual didn't exactly require a wand, after all.

    "Really?" Ginny looked like Christmas had come early.

    "I think so." Turning to my book bag, I rummaged around until I found what I needed: one of several sigils I'd drawn up for lighting candles and cauldron fires. "Have you got a candle?"

    It took maybe five seconds of frantic, excited searching on Ginny's part before she produced a small white candlestick that had nearly run out. I placed the sigil on the ground, and set the candle on top of it. I sat down and Ginny followed suit. Placing my hands on the edge of the sigil, I took a deep breath. The point of most rituals was that they spoke for themselves, no extra wand waving or the like necessary. Not for ones this simple, at least. This one in particular called for an attunement Life, Chaos, and Legacy. Despite being clearly and obviously chaotic, it seemed fire had a strangely deep connection to Life. As for the Legacy, well, Incendio was hardly a new spell, after all. The bits of the runes that I'd translated seemed to be something of an exultation about the virtues of the target catching flame while occasionally declaring that the caster would make sure to appreciate the light and warmth the fire provided. It made sense; the spell called to two Light Powers and one Dark with little heed paid to their opposites.

    Point being, activating a completed ritual circle was fairly easy. Feed the slightest bit of magic into the start of the sigil with maybe a small incantation, and it would take what magic it needed from the world around you. An easy feat, even despite and perhaps because of my particular condition. Only thing to do from there was ensure that the price, if any, was paid. Mandy Enoch had been very clear on that part. In her own words: 'Learn from the stories of eld: Only the unlucky survive cheating the Powers their due.'

    Ginny watched in awe as I placed my hand on the outer edge of the sigil and muttered "Incendio." It was underwhelming, really. No flash of light or anything, the wick just suddenly caught. Now all that was left was the price. I scooped the candle up and gazed into the fire a few moments before looking up to Ginny. "Amazing, isn't it?"

    She nodded with the sort of vigour I was quickly coming to expect from her. "You didn't even need a wand!" she whisper-yelled. I laughed. From the sounds coming from below us, I didn't expect much risk of getting caught.

    "Can't exactly go duelling with it, but the bright side of all this is that it really is fascinating," I said with a smile. Setting the candle on a shelf, I started to unpack my things while explaining how rituals worked. Ginny quickly lost interest. Really. I go to the trouble of explaining the underpinnings of how magic worked, and people didn't even try to care.

    I was interrupted from my disappointment by the sound of an owl pecking at the window. Ginny and I both froze.

    "I think it might be for you," she said slowly. I swallowed with a nod. Had I been wrong?

    I opened the window, and the owl perched on the sill while extending its leg. Gingerly, I took the roll of parchment from it's talons looking at it as if it might explode. I turned it over, and the tension fled from my body as soon as I saw the name of the addressee in messy, uneven script.

    Ginny Weasley

    I handed it over, and she bristled. "I swear if you got me in trouble for something I didn't even do—"

    "Look at it, Ginny. The handwriting is sloppy. There's no way it's from the Ministry." She took another look and relaxed a bit. She relaxed even more once she opened it up.

    "It's from a friend," she said.

    "It's been, what, an hour since we got off the train? Bit keen, aren't they?"

    She rolled her eyes. "So you said you can keep people out of my room?" she asked just a bit too quickly.

    I decided to let it go. "If you like, yes."

    "Please. I swear if the twins leave something under my pillow one more time…"

    With that little tidbit, I decided to start immediately. Frankly, I didn't want Fred or George to have access to my own things either. I had a vested interest. Maybe if I did something with the door, no, I'd need to cover the window too; the Weasleys were all fliers. A quick check of A Ritualist's Spellbook showed that Dumbledore hadn't thought wards to be appropriate material for a third year. Of course he hadn't. Heaven forbid I have the tools to defend myself. No, I'd have to improvise something. It couldn't be that hard. I had so many working rituals to work off of, anyway. Some of them I'd even translated!

    An hour and a half later, Ginny came back into the room—when had she left?—to pull me from my scattered parchment and books for supper.

    If Gryffindor had prepared me for the Weasley family dinner, it was only just. At the very least, I could see more clearly where Ron got it. Fred and George seemed to believe themselves responsible for entertainment to nobody's great shock. Ginny spent much of the time telling Mr. Weasley about her year, and Percy had been sucked into trying to tell off the twins. Mrs. Weasley fussed, as seemed to be a trend. Ron, though, was telling me all about the summer we were going to have.

    "—There's a few families around here. There's the Diggorys out north, the Fawcetts out by them, and the Lovegoods to the south. Cedric Diggory comes over occasionally to play quidditch with us, though we'll have to get past the 'Summerly Storytelling' for that," he said with clear distaste.

    "The 'Summerly Storytelling'?" I asked.

    "Yeah," Ron took another bite. He went to continue, but I glared at him until he swallowed. "Mr. Lovegood—right nutter, he is—invites everyone over start of every summer to gather round a fire and tell stories. Mum makes us go every year. Bill used to tell the best stories. One time—"

    "Are you talking about the Lovegoods?" Percy interrupted from his place beside Ron.

    "Was just telling Hermione about the Storytelling."

    Percy winced. "Maybe Hermione shouldn't attend, after…" He trailed off.

    "After what?" I asked.

    "Well Mr. Lovegood's stories tend to be a little… macabre. He's a bit, well you see, he's a bit off," he finally admitted.

    "A bit off?" I asked as levelly as I could.

    "He's right mad," Ron said frankly. "Luna too. Whole family of nutters."

    Percy sighed. "Not how I would put it, but yes. Mad."

    "I see," I said carefully. "And you think that I wouldn't be able to handle a children's story that's a 'little macabre'?"

    "Well after everything that happened," Ron said, "Nobody would blame you."

    I huffed and stood. "Well I think I will be attending, actually. I'm not made of glass, and being unable to wave a stick around and have sparks fly out doesn't make me fragile." I turned to the rest of the family, and realised then that the room had gone silent. "Thank you for the meal and for inviting me into your home, Mrs. Weasley. I think that I'm going to bed. Apologies if I've been a bit off."

    "Have a good night, dear!" she called after me. Soon as I turned the corner and started climbing the stairs, I heard her telling off Percy and Ron.

    That night, I fell asleep in a nest of parchment.


    I woke to a nightmare early the next morning, and quickly grew restless. It felt strange to be wandering around someone else's house when the owners were asleep, but this strange sense of needing to do something overrode most everything else. I didn't want to light up a candle and risk waking Ginny, so I dressed in the dark, crept out of the room, down the stairs, and out the front door.

    The Burrow, even in the dark, still very obviously belonged to the Weasley family. It almost could have passed as mundane from the outside. The chicken coop and pig pen were practically normal, if rural. The garden held a mess of plants, and if I hadn't recognized a good few as magical I wouldn't have blinked. No, the grounds themselves seemed utterly mundane. The thing that screamed Weasley to anyone who cared to look was the building itself. It looked like someone had started building an aboveground cellar and then experimented with potions to find out which induced the most pleasing delirium before finishing out the construction. It was obviously magical, if only because muggle buildings didn't bend over themselves one way only to bend back the other after a floor. It was clearly a building that was added on to as the family needed it, with little regard given to sensibility so much as functionality.

    Frankly, it made me a bit uncomfortable to look at. So I didn't. Instead, I propped myself up on a fence and just… processed.

    What had been going on with me recently? I'd sniped at McGonagall, punched Malfoy (I still wasn't sorry), and yelled at Ron in his own home! It was mortifying to think about. He'd seen I needed help and offered it without a second thought, and I paid him back by embarrassing him at dinner. It wasn't like me. Hermione Granger is a neat, orderly girl who values taking care of her friends, following the rules, and learning all she can. Or she was, at least. Now she yelled at people who were trying to help her and had to restrain herself from mouthing off to teachers.

    The worst part was, I was still angry! Ever since McGonagall had called me 'fragile', had called me a 'victim', being protected and doted on just grated like nothing else. Professor Snape and Harry might have had to save me, yes, but I was hardly some damsel in distress. Just because I regretted it didn't mean I hadn't made all the choices to walk myself into the Chamber of Secrets. I wasn't helpless. In fact, I'd had Lord Sodding Voldemort teaching me Dark Arts for almost six months! My own choices had scared everyone in the school, much as I felt awful about it. I wasn't a victim, I was… I was a survivor. I was strong, I was powerful, I was…

    I was special. That's it, really. Tom had made me feel special. That's all there was to it. I'd always had a hard time with people picking on me in school. Even before Hogwarts, the swot hardly ever made friends. Despite myself, my very first conversation with him flashed through my mind, as it often did.

    If I need to be anything, then I can be a friend. I know how hard it can be to find friends of worth when you're the most clever one in the room. People get ever so jealous.

    He'd had me wrapped around his finger from the very start. I was supposed to be the smart one. The one who didn't fall for this kind of thing. He'd used me, right from the start. I'd survived, though. He hadn't expected that.

    He'd still planned for it, though.

    I remembered keenly going back and forth on whether or not I would make my vows to him for weeks and weeks. It was another opportunity to feel special, to feel superior, and so I'd confidently and happily made the wrong choice. And why not? It wasn't the first time he'd had me make some strange potion impromptu, or the first time he'd asked me to trust him, or even the first time he'd had me use my blood as an ingredient. Even still, though, I could recognize how wrong I was.

    If—when—the Dark Lord Tom Marvolo Riddle found a way to resurrect himself in truth, I'd have a choice to make. Maybe by then I'd be strong enough to choose the right one.

    I let out a low keening wine, and pressed my forehead to the jagged wood of a fencepost. I'd gone from feeling so special, so above the world and everyone in it, to being a liability. I couldn't even cast spells. Not quickly, at least. When war came—and it would be coming; Ron may be able to delude himself and Harry might want to ignore it, but the writing was on the wall—I'd be near useless. Worse than useless. A month ago, I would have been able to hex anyone my year and a few above me into submission if need be. Now? Now I was just another someone that needed to be protected.

    It hurt, recognizing that. Acknowledging it. I hated it, for all that Harry and Ron playing bodyguard had been flattering at first. I wanted to be useful. Needed it, really. Tom had exploited that. I wanted to hate him too. Truthfully, though, I wasn't doing very well at that.

    I was a survivor. I'd survived Lord Voldemort trying to kill me, and I hadn't even been protected by any sort of blood ward like Harry was (or so Tom and I had assumed). I wasn't made of glass. I was a big girl. I could handle Malfoy, or walking the halls alone, or a few scary stories. Honestly. It made me wonder what Ron sees when he looks at me.

    "Hermione, dear?" Mrs. Weasley's voice interrupted my train of thought, and I pulled my face away from the fence. The sky was beginning to lighten now. "You're up early."

    "I couldn't sleep," I said lamely. "I'm sorry about yesterday. It wasn't appropriate of me."

    "Thank you dear, but it's not me you should be apologising to." A moment passed, and she clicked her tongue. "Why don't you come with me? You can help me out with a few chores."

    I nodded and followed. There wasn't really any way to tell her no after I'd embarrassed myself last night. She led me to the chicken coop, and floated a big bag of feed over to me with the flick of her wand. "Just take a few handfuls and scatter them around. Nice and wide, these little devils don't much care for sharing." I followed instructions, watching the chickens gather round. "I wanted to let you know I talked to Ron," she said. "Poor boy's far too good at sticking his foot right in his mouth."

    A moment passed, and the silence grew uncomfortable. "I'm just tired of being treated like I'm going to fall apart any moment if someone touches me," I confessed.

    "We're all just worried for you," she said softly. "After this last year, I think we all have a right to be a little worried. If it was Ron who got nabbed by that book, wouldn't you be worried too?" That was…

    "Well, yes," I admitted.

    "That just means you care, dear. Oh, that's enough feed I think. Go ahead and put that bag back for me." I did as asked. The bag was a far sight heavier when it was me lifting it and not magic. "As I was saying, it just means you care. It means that Ron cares too. Can you blame him for caring?"

    "No I can't, but…" I trailed off.

    "But?" She prompted.

    I let out a heavy sigh. "I'm just tired of people acting like I'm going to break. I'm not fragile."

    Mrs. Weasley stepped forward to rub my arm. "No, you're not. If you were, you wouldn't be here, and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Ron, though, he's a young man, and when men get worried they like to wrap everything up in layers and layers of cotton to keep it all safe as can be."

    "Well," I grumbled, "I hate it."

    She laughed a bit, and wrapped me up in a hug. "You'll come to find that sort of thing charming in time, I promise." I let her hold me like I was her own child for a moment, and she didn't mention the tears in my eyes when the moment passed and she pulled apart.

    I took a deep breath. "Thank you, Mrs. Weasley."

    She gave me another smile, much stronger this time. "You can thank me by helping me with breakfast." She hefted up a basket of eggs she'd gathered as I'd fed the chickens. "It's my boys' first breakfast of the season here, and I want to make it special."

    "Yeah, sure. Okay." One didn't exactly say no to someone after something like that, after all, and especially not to Mrs. Weasley.

    She dragged me inside, setting me to task. Very quickly after that, she set me to a far more simple task. I'd thought I was doing just fine, but Mrs. Weasley's grumbles wondering what parents were teaching these days left me with no doubts about how she felt. Eventually, breakfast came and went with half hearted enthusiasm. It seemed as if the whole family were late sleepers. Mrs. Weasley and I were the only ones truly awake.

    Mr. Weasley, for his part, used the relative silence to question me about all manner of muggle things. 'Elektikity' ("It's called electricity and it's made up of energy,"), garbage disposals ("I don't have one, but my grandma does, and there's not animals trapped inside I promise,"), and street lights ("They tell the cars when to stop and go so nobody runs into each other,") among other things. It was more than a bit eye opening. This was the man meant to be an expert among wizards on muggle 'artifacts'. I felt a pang of simultaneous righteousness and annoyance at having opted out of Muggle Studies for my next year. It really would have been fascinating to see just how wrong they were, how the pureblood attitudes were formed, if nothing else.

    It wasn't until Ron left to go do some flying and Mrs. Weasley gave me a significant and unambiguous nod in his direction that I made my excuses to Mr. Weasley, who'd insisted that I call him Arthur. I found Ron outside in a shed full of shelves of various disassembled muggle things and notes adorning all of them. Set up on a workbench next to a notebook, it seemed that Mr Weasley's current project was taking apart a clock and… straightening the springs? Surely wizarding clocks had springs, right?

    Shaking my head as if to free myself of the insanity, I turned to Ron, who was standing in front of what looked to be a cabinet full of brooms and balls. It seemed to have a pile of dirt and mud caked on its floor. If only there were some convenient tool to resolve that, I thought with a mental roll of my eyes.

    Ron blinked slowly at my entrance. "Er, hey Hermione," he said, shuffling his feet. "Was just gonna grab the brooms. D'you wanna go flying?"

    "No, Ron," I took a deep breath. "Your mum wants me to apologise."

    He shrugged, getting a strange look on his face. "'S fine. Forgotten, really. Percy though, he was right heartbroken. Think he thought he'd have someone to talk know-it-all with." Ron gave a little laugh. "So, about going flying…"

    Another deep breath. It wouldn't do to get mad at him right after apologising. Even if I wanted to. Plenty of time for that later. "No, I was actually going to get my summer homework done. You should too, you know."

    "Eh, I'll do it later." Ron grabbed an old broom that seemed slightly less tired than his wand.

    "And you wonder why your grades are low. You realise that I'm not letting you copy my work, right?"

    "Oh come on, please? I'll show you—" I never found out what he was going to show me, though, as Fred, George, and Ginny all came bursting into the shed and swept Ron up and outside. I huffed. Well, if that's how it was, then he could go crying to someone else about his still unfinished homework when we were on the train back.


    A few days passed, and life seemed to pass as normal for the Weasley family. Or I assumed so, at least. Things fell into a sort of rhythm. Percy and I, I was proud to say, had both finished our respective homework. He'd let me peek at the sorts of things he was doing in studying for his N.E.W.T.s, and it was more than a bit fascinating. Most of it was above the skill level of what I could actually do, especially given my particular situation. Still, though, I was almost shocked by how much I understood. Part of that was thanks to Tom, yes, but nowhere near as much as I'd have guessed.

    Fred and George had given it all of 48 hours before they'd decided I was fair game, and had planted a dungbomb under my pillow. It felt like Mrs. Weasley had yelled at them for hours. Needless to say, I'd redoubled my work on the ward for Ginny's room. After peeking at Percy's spellbooks—a request he'd allowed with an understandably wary look given the family he was used to—I'd had an idea. Just setting up the door to give a shock as Ginny had once suggested would only work for about five minutes before Mrs. Weasley caught on to the technically-legal magic, and I didn't think she'd appreciate the technicalities.

    Instead, I could do something similar to the Notice-Me-Not charm, rendering the room and its contents simply unworthy of attention to anyone not designated. If the door and window were both closed, then any thought that led to entering the room would simply be dismissed. That was the idea, at least. Articulating that in runescript in a way that would actually work was proving to be a bit challenging. I was certainly starting to see why Mandy Enoch had called it a negotiation with the Powers, even if I disagreed with the agency it assigned them.

    Still, nothing disastrous had happened. My one and only attempt so far had dissuaded Ron once, but the dungbombs had proven it was no use against someone determined. I thought I knew what I was doing wrong, though. Wards were a bit sensitive. You needed to have a sort of feel for the magic of the place before you could set one up. It wasn't even an issue of needing to change the runes, so much as it was just acclimatisation. Both me acclimatising to the magic and the magic acclimatising to me, if you believed Tom.

    And when it came to magic, choosing not to believe Tom seemed to be a poor choice indeed.

    If anyone were to ask, that was why I was walking around the Burrow with my eyes closed. I was a bit too focused to be giving that sort of response though, and I was pretty sure that someone had come up, and I'd simply told them I was "feeling out the magic," without much more in the way of explanation. I was, too. Feeling it out, that is. Tom had shown me how to sort of 'see' the magic in a place when teaching me about wards. It was almost meditative, removing the self from the self and letting the magic speak for itself. The feeling was rather like a pressure from all around; like when a storm was coming in or when you were sitting underwater. Learning to feel like this had taken weeks and weeks. It was rather like learning to see your own nose at will: the information was already there and always had been, it was just… filtered out. Tom had even said that with practice (and perhaps the aid of certain rituals; the animal bonding ritual he'd talked about came to mind), a witch could learn to feel even more from the ambient magic than just a feeling of weight.

    It had taken me maybe a few hours to even get that much at the Burrow. I'd gotten to the point where it only took me a few minutes to feel Hogwarts when I'd tried. The Burrow though, it was… barren, comparatively speaking. I imagined most places would feel barren compared to Hogwarts, though. Beyond even that, the Burrow felt almost static. I hadn't realised it until I had somewhere else as a comparison point, but Hogwarts' magic had seemed to almost breathe. It was a slightly disorienting change, to say the least.

    At some point, there was a shift. A sort of… cluster? A weight? Like laying down under a pool and having someone pour in more water off to the side. I opened my eyes to see what it was, and was met with Mrs. Weasley. I blinked dumbly for a moment before realising that it must have been her core I was feeling. Magic was supposed to wrap itself around the cores of magical things like witches. I supposed it made sense that I wouldn't recognize the feeling. I'd hardly practised with Tom around other people, after all.

    Whatever the case, Mrs. Weasley was walking up to me with a badly hidden concerned look and an opened letter in her hand. "We got some mail for you, dear. You might like a look." She handed it over, and I unfolded the letter warily.

    Miss Hermione Granger,

    I have been looking over some of the measurements I took when you were last here in the Hospital Wing, and believe that it would be in your best interests to continue seeking treatment for your condition outside of school. I feel it would be unwise to let things stand as they are. To this end, I have forwarded a copy of my notes on your condition to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.

    I firmly advise you to seek an appointment as soon as possible. The health of your magic is not the sort of thing one delays treatment for.

    Madam Poppy Pomfrey

    Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

    I looked up from the letter to see Mrs. Weasley's concerned face while schooling the expression on my own. "I've already owled to set up an appointment for you, dear, there's no need to worry," she said.

    Really, one would think that Madam Pomfrey would've at least seen fit to tell me what was going on with my own magic. Absolutely typical. I imagined that actual doctors in a hospital would give me that courtesy, at the least.

    "Thank you," I said instead. "When's the appointment?"

    "Tomorrow morning, first thing," Mrs. Weasley chirped with cheer I could only assume was forced. "There's no need to worry. I'm sure there's nothing to worry about."

    And funnily enough? I believed her. This had to be the sort of situation the doctors at this St. Mungo's place handled every day. 'Magical Maladies' was in the name, after all. Maybe it was the Burrow, maybe it was the lingering feeling of magic flowing through me, and maybe it was the relentless positivity of the Weasleys rubbing off on me, but for the first time since Tom it felt like things were going to be alright. This was just a speedbump.
     
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    • Not sure why this has so few likes... top notch start! Rituals were always one of the most fascinating aspects of HP, and Hermione certainly fits better the role of a ritualist than Harry.
     
    Delightful story so far! I'm always wary of talk of 'cores' but you seem to be handling it well so far. Looking forward to seeing where this goes next!
     
    eM15 said:
    If anyone were to ask, that was why I was walking around the Burrow with my wand out and my eyes closed.
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    Continuity error - Molly collected the kids' wands when they got to the Burrow.

    punster lv1 said:
    It seems Mrs. Weasley is opening Hermione's mail. I don't know what to do with that.
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    Send Mrs. Weasley a howler?
    Doesn't sit right with me either but then again, the letter was addressed to an underage witch staying under Molly's roof and any return address on the envelope may have been unreadable or missing entirely.

    App said:
    I'm always wary of talk of 'cores' but you seem to be handling it well so far.
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    Agreed. 'Core' being used as a simplification of "this really complicated collection of things that, when connected properly, allow one to use magic" is an interpretation I can support.
     
    Kaernetron said:
    Continuity error - Molly collected the kids' wands when they got to the Burrow.
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    Very good catch, thank you! I'll revise that when I go to post the next chapter on Monday. I need to give 4-The Burrow another pass for a couple reasons anyway, and that'll be going on the list.

    App said:
    I'm always wary of talk of 'cores' but you seem to be handling it well so far.
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    I actually had this talk with my beta reader! They were a bit wary too, and I hard understand the caution. As I told them, Dumbledore was basically given the task of explaining quantum mechanics to a 14-year-old. A genius 14-year-old, but a 14-year-old nonetheless. Like any good teacher, though, Dumbles falls back on technically incorrect but useful 'facts' that are all told quite similar to telling a child that "Atoms are the smallest unit of matter and they make up everything". It helps simplify it enough to get to the actual point he needs to make ("Atoms have different types, and atoms combine to make up more complex molecules like water,") and also helps to not bore the readers with 5k words of just straight magitechnobabble. I will say that it is definitely more complex than some singular core—the atoms/quantum mechanics analogy is very appropriate here—and remind you that we are seeing the world through Hermione's eyes and know what she knows. Do you really thank that she'll settle for only knowing the least complicated (and thus least accurate) answer?

    Thank you all for reading, of course, and thank you for the confidence!
     
    5 - Telling Tales
  • Threadmarks
    • Mrs. Weasley chirped with cheer I could only assume was forced. "There's no need to worry. I'm sure there's nothing to worry about."

    And funnily enough? I believed her. This had to be the sort of situation the doctors at this St. Mungo's place handled every day. 'Magical Maladies' was in the name, after all. Maybe it was the Burrow, maybe it was the lingering feeling of magic flowing through me, and maybe it was the relentless positivity of the Weasleys rubbing off on me, but for the first time since Tom it felt like things were going to be alright. This was just a speedbump.


    Telling Tales​


    St. Mungo's had surprised me with how little it surprised me. It was smack dab in the middle of Muggle London, which struck me as a bit strange, and the maladies the people in the waiting room seemed to be suffering from were most definitely magical, but any muggle anywhere would be able to look inside and recognise it for the hospital it was. Some things really are universal, I supposed.

    The visit, too, was fairly bog standard. I'd been shown to an exam room which featured animated posters detailing the signs and symptoms of cheering charm abuse and with ways to tell if your stock of goat kidneys had gone bad. I'd waited in there for a while, and the tired looking Healer ("I don't know what a doctor is, dear, but the Healer will be right in!") had eventually shuffled in to have a look at me. He'd introduced himself as Healer Jameson, and told me he'd be to one overseeing my case. The exam was very similar to what I was used to, though had more than a few strange hiccups; the least of these was that I had literally been asked to hiccup.

    The Healer waved their wand, looked into my eyes, my ears, my hair, and had measured the length of my inseam. They asked questions, many of which were the sort that I had expected ("Yes, I've been taking all the potions Madam Pomfrey assigned me every morning,"), and a few I hadn't ("No, I don't have any strong opinions on limes, why?"). The whole experience was more than a bit bizarre, but it fit well in line with the sorts of things I was coming to expect from magic. By the end of it, the Healer who had taken my case had scribbled several pages of notes and placed me under observation.

    The mention of being placed under observation had worried me more than a bit, before Healer Jameson had produced a set of bracelets that I was to wear at all times. The bracelets would read my condition and report back to him as a live feed. He hadn't been willing to explain how they worked when I asked, which I felt was a bit rude, but I supposed it wasn't precisely his field of expertise. I'd also been prescribed a new battery of potions that he had been willing to explain, but I knew for a fact that I'd need to curl up around a magical medical textbook or two before I really understood what he'd actually said. Really, the hardest part of that would be finding the relevant books.

    We left with my mind far more at ease than it had been when I'd entered and with a new box of tiny glowing vials in hand. The trip had been a welcome return to normalcy; Healer Jameson was a professional, whereas Madam Pomfrey was an overbearing mother with a fancy title. The most stark difference simply being that he hadn't treated me like I was stupid, which helped my opinion of him immensely. Not even the floo back had been enough to put a damper on my mood.

    Mrs. Weasley and I returned to a busy Burrow. Mr. Weasley had seemingly set the family to task while we were gone. He'd got the whole of the family to start on their chores during the morning for once, admittedly with limited and varied levels of success. The second that Mrs. Weasley came through the floo, though, it seemed the collective pace picked itself up. She ushered me outside to go help Ron take care of the chickens, and I went off to do as asked without a second thought.

    My week at the Burrow had outlined something to me very clearly: Mrs. Weasley had no room for laziness under her roof, whether from guests or family. I was happy to help out, of course. The Weasleys had given me a roof and three square meals when my parents couldn't. Doing a few small chores to lighten my load on them was really the least that I could do.

    Ron disagreed.

    I rocked up to the chicken coop to find him sitting on the fence, looking at the bag of feed he'd tipped onto its side to allow a heaping pile to form. With a huff, I climbed over the fence and sat the bag straight up.

    "How'd St. Mungo's go?" He called, very clearly not moving from his spot.

    "Fine," I said. "I know you know better than to leave all the food in a pile like this!" Reaching into the pile, I grabbed a handful of feed and began scattering it like I'd been shown.

    "Not like the chickens care. Look at 'em. Nothing going on in there. You could float one in the air and it'd take them a minute to even get confused." As if to punctuate his point, one of them began pecking at grass on the opposite end of the field. I took some pity on it and spread some feed over by the poor thing.

    "So why is everyone so busy?" I changed the topic quickly. "Is it something to do with why your Dad's home today?"

    "Summerly Storytelling. Don't have the car anymore, so half of us are gonna be walking out to the Story Ring right after lunch. Mum and Dad won't apparate us, we don't have enough brooms for everyone, and there's no floo out there. Honestly, it's like we're muggles."

    My attention snapped up. "And what's wrong with that?"

    He shrugged. "Only we've got magic, and we're walking. It's daft is what it is."

    I let out a deep breath, and took a moment to remind myself that I was in a good mood. "So, what's this Story Ring?"

    "It's just this big campfire ring out in a field, s'got a whole bunch of benches around it. More benches than people, actually. Percy asked why once, Lovegood just said it was from some dark wizard he'd read about. Salmon or summat."

    "I don't know about any wizard named Salmon, but—"

    "Told you, he's a nutter." Ron gave me a significant look and went to go put away the feed. "Dad says we're gonna be staying the night, so you might want to go pack a bag. I'll tell Mum that we're done."




    The plan turned out to be a simple one. Mrs. Weasley would be taking Percy, Ginny, and I out to the Story Ring via brooms with everyone's things (loaded into broom saddlebags of all things), while Mr. Weasley would be walking out with Fred, George, and Ron. All three of them had complained loudly before Mr. Weasley had said something about making it a boys only thing, and they'd all proceeded to make themselves feel better by making fun of Percy.

    "Make sure you all behave yourselves tonight!" Mr. Weasley called once everyone gathered to leave. "Your mother and I have something very exciting to tell you when we get back, but we'll only do it if you all behave. No muffling charms, no exploding snap during the stories," he gave the twins a look, "and no running off in the middle of the night. Sent everyone into a panic last time, so let's not do that again. Our little announcement will be much more exciting than disturbing the peace, even if it was—" Mrs. Weasley shot him her own glare. "—er, nothing. Now then, let's get going, shall we?"

    With that, we kicked off and away. The flight itself was… I lived, that's what mattered. Brooms were a better way to get around than the floo, at least, but not by much. At one point I almost managed to take out Ginny with my wobbling, but she was good enough on a broom to keep the both of us upright.

    When we landed (and I did not kiss the ground, though I was tempted), it was next to a neat little ring of twenty stone benches. All of them were painted different colours in oddly sized groups, and surrounded what looked to be a pit recessed into the ground. About as quickly as I took all that in, Mrs. Weasley set us to work gathering up dry brush and sticks. Once we had a nice pile going, she shoved it in the pit in the centre and began working on a fire.

    Not too long after that, people began showing up. First was a family of three, who introduced themselves as Amos and Catherine Diggory, and their son as Cedric. Mr. and Mrs. Diggory both quickly found themselves wrapped up in conversation with Mrs. Weasley, and Cedric gave me a warm smile before engrossing Ginny with quidditch stories. Soon after, a mother and her two daughters appeared suddenly with a loud Crack! One of the daughters looked to be a few years older than me, another looked as if they had aged out of Hogwarts entirely.

    Not long after that, the other half of the Weasley clan crested over the hill, hooting and hollering the whole while. With a hefty sigh, Ron plopped down next to me. "Never thought that walk was gonna end. My legs are killing me, they are!"

    No sooner had the sun began to set than the fire in the pit flashed green and two figures stepped out. One that I assumed to be Luna Lovegood based on the glasses she was wearing upside-down, the other clearly her father.

    "I thought that fireplaces had to be connected to the floo network so you could floo in?" I whispered.

    "Yeah, but that one's not, I don't think," Ron answered. "Dunno. The Lovegoods are just like that."

    We were interrupted by Mr. Lovegood suddenly calling out, "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to another year of the Summerly Storytelling! It's a pleasure to see you all, as always." He looked around with a smile. "My family's been putting this on for as long as we've been around, and it makes me very happy to play host once again."

    He whipped his wand out, and what looked to be a white sheet unrolled itself in front of the lone black bench and hung tight as one end lifted into the air. It looked rather like a projector screen.

    "Now, everyone find your seats, and let's begin." Everyone shuffled around, quickly finding a place for themselves. Ron had been right, it seemed. It was a bit odd with so much empty space, and some people spread out awkwardly, but nobody seemed to find it all that strange. As this happened, Mr. Lovegood waved his wand around a few times, and the fire contorted in strange ways, casting shadows in ever more peculiar shapes. After a moment or two of this, the shadows against the screen settled into three figures looking up towards a massive robed figure holding up a strange sigil.

    "Today, I will be starting us off with perhaps the oldest story of all that I have told, but sometimes it is the oldest tales which hold the most salient of truths. That's all stories are, after all, aren't they? Truth seen from a certain light." At this, he made a grand gesture. "And I have a feeling that this truth would be best told tonight, for tonight we tell the tale of Death and his Hallows."

    Mr. Lovegood launched into the tale of three brothers and the poisoned gifts they had received from Death. Shadows danced and shifted to illustrate as he spoke, and Luna provided sound effects with a selection of props she pulled out of a small bag. He was a skilled storyteller, and between all the effects and ambience, I quickly found myself wrapped up in his words. It was the sort of thing that one would expect from a folk tale, like it would wrap up in one big lesson about kindness or sharing, but evocative nonetheless. The eldest of the three brothers was given a wand that seemed to almost certainly be a metaphor for greed, the next a stone that was undoubtedly a metaphor about the dangers of not letting go, and the youngest received what was undoubtedly the most useful item: an Invisibility Cloak which seemed to be a metaphor for living within one's means.

    The story struck me as reminiscent of the stages of grief—albeit simplified—the eldest brother telling the tale of denial and anger, the middle bargaining and depression, and the youngest speaking to acceptance. It was more than a bit fascinating to hear how a wizarding folk story differed from muggle ones. Magic, for one, was obviously an assumption, and not the sort of thing that necessarily got people into or out of problems. Instead, it seemed cleverness was the order of the day. That alone was a stark difference, and I made a mental note to go look into more stories like this when I had the opportunity. It was certainly a more appealing kind of tale than mythic heroes defeating their foes with brute strength.

    "And so it is," Mr. Lovegood finally finished, "that the youngest of the three brothers shed his cloak and met Death not as a victim, but as an equal." The image of one hand reaching out to another made of bones faded, and the sigil from the beginning appeared once more. A line for a wand, a circle for a stone, and a triangle for a cloak. "But that was not the end of this particular story. No, this truth is not one of the past, but one of the present, and one of the future. As long as there is Death, there exist his Hallows. The Elder Wand, passing to conqueror from the conquered. The Resurrection Stone, found and lost for eternity. The Invisibility Cloak, passed from father to son forevermore. None know where they are now, but the marks of their passing are evident."

    "This truth is a warning for those who care to listen. Beware of Death, yes, but he is patient. Instead, beware of his Hallows, for they lead only to ruin." Mr. Lovegood bowed then, and the fire returned to burning far more naturally. The shadows on the sheet flickered to formlessness. "Thank you for coming, and thank you for hearing my tale. Now then, let's eat, shall we?" The realisation struck me then that the sun had well and truly set already. Looking around, it seemed that everyone else was having that same moment of clarity.

    Off to the side of the ring, it seemed as if some of the adults had set up a table with food while I hadn't been looking. "Youngest to oldest," Mrs. Diggory called out, "Ginny, Luna, get up here."

    The line for food formed itself, and Ron managed to contain his enthusiasm to turn to me while we were filling our plates. "So do you think it's true?"

    I rolled my eyes. "I'll bet that it's just a story. A good story that was told well, but still a story."

    "Actually," Luna turned around to interrupt, "The Hallows are quite real. Daddy says that if you look back at the right histories you can see the path they've taken. Dark Lords in particular seem to love looking for the Wand. The only one that nobody can find is the Cloak, though I suppose that's the point, isn't it?"

    I could see in Ron's face that Luna's believing in it had made a sceptic of him. Apparently, she had a reputation. "Er, right." He swirled a finger round his ear when Luna looked away, and I rolled my eyes.

    Soon as I found a place to sit, Luna sat down right in front of me. "Ron doesn't believe me, his head's too full of Wrackspurts, but I think you might."

    I took a moment to try to remember any mention anywhere of what a Wrackspurt was, but came up blank. "Wrackspurts?" I finally asked after a pause.

    "Oh yes. They float all around and make people's heads go fuzzy and they forget to think." I made a note to look that up later, if only because I'd had quite enough of things getting into my head. "So, do you believe me?"

    "I'm not sure," I said honestly. "It would be fascinating if it were true, but it seems hard to prove. People can be powerful without some mystic wand, and any accounts of some mystical resurrecting stone could be just as easily explained by simple necromancy." Not that necromancy was simple by any means, soul magic never was, but it was certainly more explainable.

    She nodded as if I'd spoken some great wisdom. "Well, I think that you should."

    "That I… should?"

    "Yes," Luna said. I waited for her to elaborate. She did not.

    "Right, well, I just think it's hard to believe."

    She nodded her head from side to side as if letting the idea bounce around. "What about the cloak?"

    "That would be even harder to find, even you said so."

    "I suppose. There's a surefire way to tell with that one, though," she said. "After all, the magic on normal invisibility cloaks fades in a few years." With that, she stood and wandered off to sit with Ginny.

    Despite my best efforts, I found my imagination fixated on the strange conversation. Harry had said his cloak was a hand-me-down from his father, hadn't he? And it still worked just fine. It was… well, a ritual to identify the arithmantic leanings of a particular object really wasn't all that hard. Surely if they were real, the Hallows would be so heavily aspected towards Death that it would be unmistakable, right?

    Still. It was silly. I was being silly. Even if the story were true, which I doubted, what would the odds even be?

    I was interrupted from my musings by the sight of Fred and George getting a small circle gathered around what I realised must have been the dedicated story telling bench. I made my way over, and found them in the middle of what seemed to be the tale of one of their many detentions. This one, so they said, was assigned by Snape and had led them into the Forbidden Forest, where they had been ambushed by what they claimed was a wendigo.

    Really, I could have believed them until they'd claimed that. "Oh please, there aren't any Wendigos on this side of the world," I interrupted.

    Fred (George?) smiled. "That's exactly why it was such a shock!"

    They wrapped their story up with the 'valiant' tale of how they managed to wrestle the wendigo away bear-handed (literally, they claimed to have an enchanted bear paw that gave them the strength to do it), and warned of how it was still out there in the Forbidden Forest ready to eat up the students. Really, as if they expected us to believe—

    Percy's jaw was clenched, and Ron looked even paler than normal. Right, should have expected. No doubt Tom would say something about how weasels are easily scared, and— No. No, I was not going to miss him. I refused.

    Fred and George finishing up seemed to open up the floor for more scary stories. Percy took the bench and told one about a ghost, Cedric talked about a monster in the woods nearby, Serena—the younger Fawcett girl—talked about a haunted cauldron, and eventually it came to my turn.

    "Really," I tried, "I'm no good at telling stories."

    "Neither is Percy, but he still took a turn," one of the twins said, launching a round of laughs and a distinct, "Hey!"

    After a few more moments of cajoling and reassurance, I took my seat at the black bench setting off a cry of celebration from all around.

    "Right, so, um," I started, feeling distinctly out of my depth. What was I even meant to talk about? Magic made it all so strange! Ghosts were real, werewolves and vampires were just people trying to get by, and I didn't exactly make it a habit of reading fiction—wizarding or otherwise. Really, the only scary things (or scary to other people; I knew Ron and Harry liked to laugh at some of the things that I found scary) I'd ever experienced were the search for the Philosopher's Stone and… Well. I supposed that would probably work.

    "Beneath Hogwarts, deep in the bowels—" Oh God had I really said bowels? Just kill me now. "—of the school, there is a secret chamber filled with… secrets." A couple snorts echoed around, and I was suddenly very glad for the dim light hiding my embarrassment. "It's said that Salazar Slytherin himself was buried there, forever interred in his own personal study." That was a blatant lie. Slytherin had left the school behind after a political disagreement over whether or not the school would allow Christians years before his death, even if more modern politicking had led to 'common knowledge' being that it had been about muggleborns instead (admittedly, there was some significant overlap; wizarding society had been far more pagan than muggles were at the time, but the magic/muggle divide wasn't the actual reason he'd left).

    "In his crypt, there was a horde of incomparable wealth: ancient books and tomes sure to make even the weakest wizard stand head and shoulders above their peers." I ignored Ron's scoff. "He was a jealous man, though, and wanted to ensure that his final treasures only went to the worthy, so he put in a series of tests meant to weed out the chaff and find the one who would be his heir."

    "First, a hidden door, one only able to be opened by those who could already cast powerful magic." Nobody was born a parselmouth, after all, not even Tom. "Second, a guardian with scales not even the sharpest sword could do anything to and whose gaze killed everyone that saw it." That was almost word for word from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, though I was sure I'd missed a few details.

    "And finally," I wracked my brain for some third thing. These sorts of stories were meant to have three trials, weren't they? "The… heart of a muggle," I said with what I hoped came off as finality. "These trials went unchallenged for years and years, until Voldemort—" I ignored the winces. "—turned eleven years old and attended Hogwarts. He found the chamber, opened the hidden door, befriended the guardian, and presented the heart, gaining the secrets Slytherin had kept hidden for so long."

    "Except, that's not all. He never killed the guardian. Instead, he set it up as a trap, so that when the time was right Slytherin's monster would slither through the pipes and take revenge on all his enemies." I noticed then that Serena was looking a little green. Wait, had she known someone that…? "It's, um, not a problem anymore. It was a basilisk. Professor Snape killed it, actually."

    Some people groaned, but Serena looked a bit relieved. "Wait, so was that all true? Is that what happened this last year?" Her older sister asked. Salem, I thought her name was.

    "Er, no. The door was real, and so was the basilisk, but not the muggle heart thing, or the secret library."

    Salem rolled her eyes. "Right. Well, get up then. It's my turn, and I've got an actually true story to tell." I swapped spots with her, more than a bit relieved that she'd taken the spotlight.

    "Ladies, gentlemen, and George," she said, and I swore I heard Fred complain about not having been included. "I swear to you all that the story that I am about to tell is as real as I am. It is not a story for the faint of heart or the easily scared." She pointed her wand up at her face. "Lumos Terrificus," she muttered, and the circle seemed to grow darker just as a beam of light cast up from the tip. "Today, I am going to tell you a story about the Most Ancient and Horrible House of Black."

    "Long ago, before You-Know-Who, or the Ministry, or even Hogwarts, there was a wizard born to a sickly cobbler and a poor farmer. From his very first breath, it was clear he'd inherited his mother's illness. 'Surely,' they thought, 'It's better for him to die before he knows better than for him to live and suffer,' and so they threw him out in the streets. They expected that to be the last they'd ever see of their sickly son, but this story is not that kind. A beggar saw their 'mercy' for what it was, and took him in to raise as his own. He gave the boy food, shared his hut, and named him Griffon.

    "On his fifth birthday, the beggar fashioned Griffon a wand made from a stick he found in the road and his very own hair. He quickly fell in love with magic, and was as clever as he was weak. Not long after he turned twelve, he would go out in the woods under the guise of hunting and experiment. Dozens and dozens of helpless animals fell to his wand as he refined his techniques, for it was in that forest that he invented the Cruciatus curse. He liked having the power for once, and would use it whenever he felt he could. On animals, on other children, and even on the beggar who raised him.

    "He met a woman, and his cold, black heart fell in love at first sight. She was nobility, and saw the power she wielded with even a single wave of her hand. He wanted to control that power for his own. One night, he snuck his way into her home, confronted her in her room, and proposed. She denied him, and it filled him with a rage like he'd never felt before. 'Who is she to deny me the power that should be mine?' he thought, and tortured her until the sun rose. When he finished, he asked again, and again she denied him. She yelled that he was a monster, and that he would never own her. He invented the Imperius curse on the spot to prove her wrong.

    "Their wedding was a beautiful affair, and every noble in the land came to attend. Looking at all of the guests and his new wife, he thought that it might be enough. With his newfound wealth, he built a manor in the countryside and imported every book on all the darkest arts that he could find. His wife fell pregnant, but he kept himself locked away in his studies. He was still sick, you see. Eventually, he had learned all he could with no answers to his sickness, and once again found a need for test subjects. He experimented on his two young children at first, but found that it wasn't enough. So, he went out into the countryside and began bringing the peasants under his rule.

    "They named him Black, for his heart, and he was the first Dark Lord. He founded a school of sorts for the dark arts, and brought in muggles as test subjects. All of this in the hopes of finding a cure for the weakness and frailty that had hounded him since birth. Eventually, though, eventually he had an idea. With a proper sacrifice, he thought, the gods would grant him anything, and what could be a greater sacrifice than the mother of his children? So, he created once more, and designed a spell for just that sacrificial purpose: The Killing Curse.

    "When the deed was done, Griffon Black called forth a demon, and asked for the gift of life in exchange for the death he had caused. The demon agreed, and together they forged a pact. Griffon was given strength, magical power, and livelihood in exchange for continued sacrifice, and sacrifice he did. Muggles proved to be poor fare, and his students little better. So, he began plotting to get his eldest child alone. The boy had inherited his father's intelligence, though, and refused to die in vain. He snuck into his father's room and showed the old man all that he had been taught. With the Cruciatus he bent his father's will. With the Imperius he broke it. Finally, he cast the Killing Curse to put Griffon out of his misery. He disbanded the school, and banished the muggles, but never let go of the power his father had wielded. So began the Noble House of Black. Griffon was a spiteful man, though, and was powerful enough to weave a spell with his dying breath. He put a curse on his own bloodline, declaring that all his children's progeny would be destined to madness for so long as they dared to covet the power of magic.

    "Griffon's curse held true, and the Black blood became famous for darkness and madness to this very day. Black manor—only a few miles north of here—sits empty for the first time in history. All the last members of the family, you see, are in Azkaban. Their crime?"

    Salem looked at each and every one of us in turn, and saw that we were wrapped up in her story. "Each and every one of them went to Azkaban for serving You-Know-Who, where they wait for his return to let loose their chaos on the world once again."

    She flicked away the light, and it was like a splash of cold water down my spine. The spell she had woven with her words was taking its time to break, and I was most certainly not having it.

    "Don't you think it's a bit insensitive, telling a story about real people that really went to Azkaban for serving a real murderer?" I asked. "People died! It wasn't even that long ago!"

    She levelled a flat look at me. "Weren't you telling everyone a story about something that happened, like, a month ago?"

    "Yes, but I didn't finish with 'Oh, by the way, the man responsible for killing some of your families is coming back soon, so watch out!'"

    "Yeah, cause my story was good," she said. "You realise that that's the point of scary stories, right? To scare people?" Salem looked over to the twins, who were by now snickering up a storm. "You killed the mood anyway."

    I looked around, and saw that everyone seemed to be looking between us in anticipation. Great. Of course. Couldn't seem to go anywhere without causing a spectacle.

    "Right, well, you all enjoy your murder stories," I said with a huff, and left the circle.

    "We will!" one of the twins called at my back, and launched into a story of some sort. I didn't bother to listen in, instead making my way over to where all the adults were gathered. A hand on my arm stopped me before I got to them. When I looked over, I saw Ron flanked by Ginny and Luna. The siblings wore matching concerned expressions. Luna just looked happy to be there.

    "Daft thing to tell a story about, if you ask me," Ron said. "I liked yours more anyway. Snape saving the day's a good twist, innit?" I gave him a nod, and he returned it with a smile.

    "I just," I took in a deep breath, "people died! Your own uncles died! You'd think she'd have a bit more respect."

    "Well, you did tell a story about how people almost died not that long ago," he said.

    "Yes, but not anybody here!"

    Ginny stepped up. "I think we're all tired. Let's go get Mum to conjure up some sleeping bags and get some sleep, yeah? Come on." With that, she placed a firm hand around Ron's arm and dragged him off.

    "I think the story was wrong," Luna sidled up.

    "Which one? Because mine was almost all true, and I already said which parts weren't."

    "I know that. Salem's. She got it all wrong."

    'All wrong' implied a level of truth, something to get right, which certainly got my attention. "Which parts?"

    "His name," she said airily. "He wasn't called 'Griffon'. That's just silly. His real name was 'Gyffes'."

    "'Gyffes'?"

    She nodded, staring up at me earnestly. "Like the constellation. The Blacks in Azkaban are called 'Bellatrix' and 'Sirius'. I think the Malfoys married into the family recently."

    I let that bounce around for a moment before it clicked. "Draco?"

    "I suspect so, yes." She gave me an earnest smile.

    "So the rest of it then, do you think that's all true too?"

    "As true as anything is," she said. The nonanswer grated, but I wasn't quite sure what I'd been expecting from her.




    Our first dinner back at the Burrow, Mr. Weasley finally made his announcement. He stood and knocked on the table with a badly hidden grin, shutting everyone up.

    "Listen up, listen up. Since you all seemed to behave yourselves well enough, I think it's time I told you what your mother and I have been whispering about the past couple days. We've been talking," he said slowly, "and we've decided that it really has been far too long since we've all seen Bill, don't you all think?"

    Ginny perked up. "Is he coming to visit?"

    "Ah, not quite, no. This time, we're going to visit him!" A low murmur of excitement filled the room before Percy burst the bubble.

    "Er, Dad? How are we going to afford it?"

    At that, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley both broke into a wide grin, and he held a letter up in the air. "Well Percy, you are looking at the number one winner for the Daily Prophet Grand Prize Galleon Draw!" A much higher, far less controlled murmur sprung up.

    "We're all going to Egypt for a month," Mrs. Weasley said. "We're leaving next Saturday, so make sure you're packed!" She looked at me, then. "And don't think we've forgotten about you, dear. You'll be coming along too." Her tone was warm, but brooked no argument.

    A small part of me wanted to protest her making the decision for me, but, well, Bill was the curse breaker, wasn't he? I'd read that that involved a lot more esoteric magics than we normally saw. I bet he'd know all about wards and rituals, and really, an opportunity to take a look at how another culture saw their magic was more than a little hard to pass up.

    So, despite my misgivings, I gave Mrs. Weasley a smile and a nod, and that was that.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Did you remember the Fawcetts existed? Cause I sure didn't. So many characters like that in HP. Good for providing the sort of illusion of depth to the world that Rowling's so good at, bad for when you're a fanfic author trying to remember all the random one-off characters and details. Anyway, I had to go back and update Ron's talk about the Summerly Storytelling in 4-The Burrow in order to make it so they didn't come out of nowhere. So, thanks to the insane people keeping up the Harry Potter wiki for that reminder!
     
    I really like how, by telling the tales here, so early in the series, that it lays the groundwork for future events much better than how JKR did it. I thought the Tale of Black was fascinating, the first Dark Lord. Very interesting ideas...and demons might be real? Oh my.
     
    Somehow, I'm not surprised Xeno started things off with that story. The local storytelling tradition is a nice addition to the world and I'll agree, possible future events flow better if foreshadowed now.

    avatar11792 said:
    ...and demons might be real? Oh my.
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    One person's demon is another person's angel... which doesn't make things better in any way - wait, is that chains I hear rattling? :o
     
    eM15 said:
    "I'm not sure," I said honestly. "It would be fascinating if it were true, but it seems hard to prove. People can be powerful without some mystic wand, and any accounts of some mystical resurrecting stone could be just as easily explained by simple necromancy." Not that necromancy was simple by any means, soul magic never was, but it was certainly more explainable
    Click to expand...
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    If the only difference between stone-based and not-stone-based necromancy is the fact that one was originally a gift from Death (and has a more limited spell selection) is there really a difference worth scoffing at?
     
    I've never read a "Hermione stays at the Burrow during summer" without Harry being included as well. And when Harry's there the day-to-day life at the Burrow is typically glossed over. I like how the story is going so far. Ginny is a bit shirty towards Hermione and Ron's negative attributes are a touch stronger than canon, but Molly Weasley is much more...even-handed and motherly.

    For Hermione, I hope she gets her magic sorted out and can go back to using a wand properly. Ritual magic is an interesting touch...I wonder if it would be possible for her to bypass the rituals and go straight to purely wandless magic.

    McG telling her to narrow down her elective choices last minute makes me wonder if time-turners exist in this AU or if Hermione's been, for a lack of a better word, 'downgraded' due to her disability.

    Looking forward to more!
     
    StarsandSun said:
    McG telling her to narrow down her elective choices last minute makes me wonder if time-turners exist in this AU or if Hermione's been, for a lack of a better word, 'downgraded' due to her disability
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    About that, I assumed this bit:
    eM15 said:
    I averted my eyes from her, staring rather intently on a glass faced cabinet with some form of hourglass necklace inside.
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    ...is the story's answer. Which was rather clever, I think.
     
    Agreed! Which raises another question: did Hermione know about the time-turners when she first submitted her elective requests or did she just find out about it on the first day of third year (in canon)?
     
    As is my wont, I'll pretty much only be answering lore/character motivation/etc. questions where I both feel that the knowledge or lack thereof doesn't impact the story and genuinely do not believe that I intend to cover the topic over the course of the story. That said:

    punster lv1 said:
    If the only difference between stone-based and not-stone-based necromancy is the fact that one was originally a gift from Death (and has a more limited spell selection) is there really a difference worth scoffing at?
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    You and I can dig a hole with a shovel. It takes time, and effort, but we can do it. Any old idiot (even Harry Potter) can dig a hole with an industrial trencher created by Jon Diggums, inventor of hole digging. They don't even have to really know what a hole is. That's basically necromancy with or without the Stone. Inferi are necromancy, horcruxes are necromancy, making a spell that lets you hug ghosts is necromancy. If you're familiar with Full Metal Alchemist, consider that canon's alchemy with or without the philosopher's stone and you'll be in the right ballpark.

    StarsandSun said:
    I've never read a "Hermione stays at the Burrow during summer" without Harry being included as well. And when Harry's there the day-to-day life at the Burrow is typically glossed over. I like how the story is going so far. Ginny is a bit shirty towards Hermione and Ron's negative attributes are a touch stronger than canon, but Molly Weasley is much more...even-handed and motherly.
    Click to expand...
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    Happy you're enjoying the story! It's of course important to note that this is Hermione's PoV, not Harry's. Harry, like most teenagers, doesn't notice much until it concerns him. Hermione, however, has a much wider range of behaviors that she finds offensive, especially here in Silence's Kiss. Tom did a number on her. Also of note, they're twelve and thirteen, and thus mostly concerned with themselves. That's normal. They'll develop.

    StarsandSun said:
    McG telling her to narrow down her elective choices last minute makes me wonder if time-turners exist in this AU or if Hermione's been, for a lack of a better word, 'downgraded' due to her disability.
    Click to expand...
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    StarsandSun said:
    Agreed! Which raises another question: did Hermione know about the time-turners when she first submitted her elective requests or did she just find out about it on the first day of third year (in canon)?
    Click to expand...
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    Given what she knows about magic and where it comes from, ya girl could theorize that time travel might theoretically be a possible thing. She's not heard of anything that can do it on command, though. Maybe if she was less pissed when she was in Mccy G's office, she might have paid enough attention to ask questions. That's not the world we live in, however.

    Regarding McGonagall's attitude, see it from her perspective. She has an incredibly enthusiastic student with a deep and abiding love of rules, knowledge, and learning, who she knows pressures herself and/or feels pressured to succeed. Then, something traumatizing happened, and that love for rules, knowledge, and learning seemed to fall away. Combine that with the briefing from Dumbles/Pomfrey, and she sees a student that's going to be under even more pressure and face even more discrimination than normal. McGonagall then has to ask herself a question: Does she allow this incredibly bright student to place even more pressure and stress on herself and risk breaking entirely, or does she force the student to slow down and let her have the time to try and heal?
     
    6 - The Curse Breaker
  • Threadmarks
    • "We're all going to be going to Egypt for a month," Mrs. Weasley said. "We're leaving next Saturday, so make sure you're packed!" She looked at me, then. "And don't think we've forgotten about you, dear. You'll be coming along too."

    And that was that.


    The Curse Breaker​


    For the week leading up to the trip, a sort of manic energy filled the Burrow. Ginny and Ron had both taken the time to explain to me at length how infrequently they'd ever managed to take a vacation anywhere at all. In Ron's case, he'd done so twice. Even Fred and George seemed almost too excited to be much of an inconvenience to anyone. For my part, I focused on my own preparations. I checked with Mrs. Weasley to make sure my monitoring bracelets would work across the distance (they wouldn't, but St. Mungo's would be sending me a pair more suited shortly), packed my things, checked my books for anything about magical Egypt that I could find, and even set out to working on my ward for Ginny's room.

    That particular project had actually taken me the most time of all. I'd managed to tweak it so it by all means should have worked, but it just hadn't. To condense two and a half days of frustration down into a single sentence: I'd mistranslated a rune. That had been more than a bit embarrassing. Even more embarrassing was when I had tried to explain the problem to Ginny. She hadn't even understood what I was saying, but had managed to laugh at me anyway! Finally though, I managed to make it work.

    The hardest part of conducting the ritual was convincing Ginny to prick her finger. She had some silly idea in her head that any sort of magic that involved blood in any way was absolutely unrepentantly evil. It had taken me over an hour to convince her otherwise, most of which was me trying to dumb down my explanations so she could understand. It's not like I was doing anything malicious with it, and blood magic really was fascinating and, frankly, just dead useful. I just didn't see why she would care where the power came from, so long as it did the job she wanted.

    Actually casting the ward was simplicity itself. I'd mixed Ginny's and my blood up with a poultice I'd made from some leftover potions ingredients, boiled it in a cauldron along with some water for a few hours (potioneering was considered Low Ritual for a reason, after all), and smeared the resultant paste along the edges of the window and doorframe. Then, I inked a sigil onto the floor and walked around the room, touching the walls at odd points and chanting in Latin. This was a thing of my own making, see, with no Legacy to call upon at all, so I'd had to actually chant the text of my runes in order to get the magic to do what I wanted it to. Well, not exactly the exact text. Runic to Latin wasn't a direct translation, so I was mostly paraphrasing, but still. One could theoretically do it without chanting of course, but that took a sort of extra focus and immersion in magic that I didn't want to gamble on having.

    The next morning, when pops and bangs echoed throughout the house waking the Weasley family up, Ginny and I slept soundly.

    My final order of business before we all left involved me dragging a wary Ron to the muggle side of Ottery St. Catchpole to find a payphone. I'd made the executive decision not to tell Mr. Weasley what we were doing. I didn't want to be responsible for trying to explain whatever he did to passers by. Ron, while just as ignorant, was notably less… enthusiastic.

    "This is what's called a telephone, Ron," I explained once we found the thing. "It's connected to every single other telephone. If you know the number of some else's telephone, then you can punch it in—"

    "Why do you have to punch it? Doesn't that hurt?"

    "You don't have to punch it. If you press the numbered buttons in order of someone else's telephone number, then it will connect you and let you talk to them. Here's the receiver, and here's the speaker, see?"

    "It speaks? I didn't know muggles made things that could talk."

    "It doesn't speak, but the person on the other side does."

    "But—"

    "It's like a floo call," I snapped, and a look of comprehension seemed to come over Ron's face. Really, it wasn't that hard a concept. "I'm going to be calling Harry. He can only talk to one of us at a time. I'm going to start, then I'll hand it to you, okay?"

    Once he agreed, I fished out the phone number Harry gave me and dialled it in. It rang once, twice, and…

    A friendly voice answered. "Dursley residence, Vernon speaking."

    Right. Harry was always talking about how much they loved hating him, so… "Oh, good!" I said with the most adult voice I could put on. "Someone reasonable!"

    "I'm sorry miss, but you are?"

    "Miss Hermione Granger, pleased very much to meet you."

    "Well, Miss Granger, how can I help you?"

    "I need to talk to that no-good delinquent taking up space under your roof. He absolutely ruined everything," I waved one hand around in the air for effect, "and I need to give him a piece of my mind!"

    I heard the sound of the receiver being muffled, followed by a gruff call of "Boy!" There was the sound of movement. "I'm so sorry about him, we send him to a special school, you see. St. Brutus's, for Incurably Criminal Boys. I'll have to phone them to let them know he's been acting out again." Another sound of shuffling, and another muted cry of "Boy, get down here!"

    Once he'd seemed to have put the phone back up to his head, I interrupted him before he could get going. "Oh it's no fault of yours, none at all. Some children just seem to get worse when you punish them. I just need to give him a piece of my mind, you see. Only way to make these things right."

    Ron gave me a very strange look. "What are you doing?" he hissed.

    I covered up the receiver. "Just trust me!"

    "Are you still there, Miss Granger?"

    I put the phone back up to my mouth. "Of course I am, I'm not going anywhere until I've had a nice, long talk with that vagabond."

    "Just your luck then," Vernon said with a sort of pleased tone I'd only ever heard out of Professor Snape, "that he's right here."

    There was the sound of movement again. "Er, Harry Potter speaking?"

    "Harry!" I let my put on voice fall away, and excitement took its place. Really, I couldn't believe that had actually worked. "I told your uncle you did something wrong and that I needed to give you a piece of my mind. Make it look like I'm yelling at you, would you?"

    "Yes, ma'am, I understand ma'am," Harry said with his most sombre tone.

    "Perfect. Let me know when he's walked away, please? Until then I'm going to keep talking like your uncle expects. Anyway, how's your summer been? Less awful than normal, I hope. The Weasleys have been great. I've been rooming with Ginny, and she's really very different when she's not mooning over you. Did you know that people have written fictional books about 'The Great Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived'? Apparently they were all written before you even learned about magic! You really should write to see if they're at least paying you royalties. That's the bare minimum they could do if they're going to use your name like that, I'd think. Anyway—"

    "He's gone," Harry cut me off. "And um, no. Or, I don't know. I don't even care, really, it's not like I need the money."

    "It's the principle of the thing! They're using your image!"

    "Look, I don't love it, but I dunno. Not like it affects me any, right? Anyway, the Dursleys have been awful, though Dudley did manage to do something the other day…"

    Conversation fell into comfortable step, and it broke my heart to think that this would likely be the only friendly conversation that Harry would have until school started again. He hadn't been doing his homework, but it was hardly his fault this time. The Dursleys locking up his school things was just bloody typical. Frankly, I couldn't even comprehend how anyone could be so rampantly xenophobic.

    I'd been earnest when I'd offered to hex them. Ignorance had always rubbed me wrong, malicious, willful ignorance even more so.

    The conversation only drew to a close when impatient huffing behind me caught my attention. "Alright, I'm going to hand you over. Ron wants to talk to you too. I wish you could come to Egypt with us, but I'll call right after to tell you all about it. Talk to you later, Harry."

    I handed the handset over to Ron and pulled out the Charms textbook I'd brought along. I loved the boys dearly (sometimes more than others), but I really had no interest at all in listening to one half of a conversation about quidditch, or brooms, or whatever other inanity they chose to talk about.

    I'd been running into a problem with my research into Egyptian wizarding history. Simply put, the Hogwarts curriculum was disproportionately British. I owned all the assigned history books up to fifth year, and I'd checked all of them, but I couldn't seem to actually find anything substantial on Egypt. There were some things in the third and fifth year textbooks, but they were of limited use. The third year book talked some about how Egypt was home to the oldest magical community and talked some about what it was like, but that hardly gave me a feel for the actual breadth of their history. After all, the pyramids were more ancient to Cleopatra than Rome was to us now! A few paragraphs about Egypt's Old Kingdom were simply not much use. The fifth year book managed to beat the odds and be even less helpful, simply noting Gringotts curse breaking efforts in the book's obligatory 'Modern Day' section.

    Mrs. Weasley hadn't allowed me to go to Diagon Alley either, citing that floo powder was expensive, that there was nobody to chaperone me, and that there was no need to buy new books when we'd be there in a little under a week.

    Offering to pay for some floo powder had been shot down, and so had my offer to make it myself. Ron came by his pride honestly, it seemed. She hadn't even been willing to hear me out when I said that I didn't need a chaperone, and her last point about there being 'no need' was just complete nonsense. Mind you, wizarding books weren't cheap, and the wizarding world didn't seem to have a concept of public libraries (and I'd made a note to look into that; surely I hadn't been the first to complain with purebloods being in the minority), but my parents made absolutely sure that if I was going to try to pursue a wizarding career then I was going to have all the resources I might need. That included book funds.

    She didn't budge. It was understandable, if a bit unfortunate. After all, she was raising Fred and George. I'd be worried about teenagers claiming they were fine on their own too.

    Anyway, because of my lack of conventional resources, I'd been forced to improvise. Most spellbooks featured a small blurb next to each spell talking about who invented it and why. Sometimes it was as brief as 'Windel the Wise (1438-1542) invented the Scouring Charm as a way to quickly clean pots,' and sometimes it was a page long history of the spell and all its iterations from 1400 B.C. to today. Wizarding history was a bit inconsistent like that, I'd noticed.

    It made me wonder how much of that was the lack of public libraries.

    Wizards being daft aside, this new angle of research had borne fruit. From what I'd managed to glean from my spellbooks, most of Egypt's contributions to modern magic (or rather Britain's recognition of them) came in a very particular bent. If the wand was Greek, arithmancy was Indian, and potions were Chinese, then the defensive ward was most certainly Egyptian. I supposed that it was telling that it took dedicated ward specialists to dismantle the wards around old tombs even to the modern day. It was an incredibly interesting—if frustrating—exercise to try to piece together culture and attitudes towards magic from the all-too-short blurbs next to spells, like finding a plane from watching its shadow. It all did lead me to one big question that I had no real way to answer.

    If their wards had had to be that sophisticated, then who were they trying to keep out?

    The sound of Ron calling my name pulled me out of my reading. He was looking at me expectantly, and I tried to remember what it was he'd just said. It only took me a moment to realise it was futile. "Er, yes?"

    He rolled his eyes. "Do you wanna meet up with Harry at Diagon Alley the last week before school?"

    "Oh, yeah. Of course."

    "Great. Harry, she said yes! Right, well, see you then mate." He pulled the handset away from his face. "Um. Hermione, how do I turn it off?"

    I shoved my book back into my bag, stood, and showed him how to hang up the phone. I checked calling Harry off of my mental to-do list (and resolved to check it off of my physical one later).

    "So, ready to go check out the bakery?" Ron asked, and I shook my head.

    "You go on without me, I'll catch up. I've gotta call my parents and tell them about the trip."

    "Oh, right. You'll be good on your own?" he asked.

    I managed not to roll my eyes. "Do you see anything dangerous around here?"

    "Er, guess not," he said hesitantly. "See you at the bakery, then." With that said, he walked off down the road.

    Right. Now for the hard part of the day. With a deep breath, I put in a new coin and dialled the number. The phone rang for an uncomfortably long moment before there was a click. "Granger residence, Emma speaking. How can I help you?"

    "Hi Mum, it's me."

    "Hermione!" she said, the cold professionalism gone from her voice. "How are the Weasleys treating you?"

    "Good, they're treating me well. Mrs. Weasley's been taking good care of me."

    "Well that's good. I was a bit worried. She didn't exactly seem the sensible sort. Now, what's this about your magic… leaking, was it?"

    I fought the urge to wrap my fingers up in the cord. Mum always said fidgeting was a bad habit to get into. "Yeah—"

    "Don't 'yeah' me, young lady," she chided. "It's undignified, and makes you sound less intelligent than I know you are."

    "Right, sorry Mum."

    "So, you were saying about your magic?"

    "Right. Well, I had a run-in with a magical creature." A technically true statement, if unspecific. "And they managed to damage my magical core. It's fine, I'll be fine. I'm already getting the best treatment around for it. It does mean that going home might be a bad idea, though. Two months of magic exposure would break basically all of our electronics. I didn't think you'd want to have to rewire the house."

    "That's probably for the best," she sounded wary at the very idea. "How did a creature like that even get into a magic school? You would think that protecting their students from magic-eating-whatsits would be their priority number one."

    I agreed, but… "It's a once in a lifetime event. Everyone's working hard to make sure my magic recovers and to make sure this sort of thing never happens again." It was a lie, but one I knew she'd believe. Frankly, between the Philosopher's Stone and the basilisk, I wasn't sure I had much confidence in Dumbledore's ability to protect his own bedchambers, let alone a school.

    "That's good, at the least," she said. "I just don't see why you need to attend a magic school if it makes it so that you can't even stay in your proper home."

    And there it was. When Professor McGonagall had come by with the revelation that I was a witch and needed to attend a school of magic, Mum had been more than a little hesitant. Dad had been excited, if wary, but Mum had never much bought into this whole magic thing. It made any conversations about school exhausting. For the most part, I'd stopped trying to have them. It wasn't that I didn't understand her concerns. After all, Hogwarts had no dedicated maths classes, or science, or even literature. History was taught by an unchanging ghost! So, yes, the magical world was ignorant in a lot of ways, but still. It was literal magic! That was worth a few inconveniences and anachronisms.

    "To control my magic, Mum, you know that. Otherwise, I'd get an A- and get so frustrated that I'd turn my teacher into a newt or something." I sighed. "Is Dad home?"

    "No, he's away at a conference. I just worry about you, Hermione. Who knows what sorts of jobs a Hogwarts education can even get you?"

    I spied my opportunity and was quick to jump on it. "Plenty. Actually, the Weasleys are all taking a vacation to Egypt to visit some family. Bill's a curse breaker, he works for Gringotts. Er, that's a—"

    "I know what Gringotts is, I get mail about your account there every month."

    "Right, well, curse breakers travel all over breaking open wards. Wards are spells meant to keep things out. It's very complicated, very advanced, and very well respected work. They asked me to go, and I was thinking that it would help me figure out if that's a career I wanted to look at. Wards really are just so interesting!"

    There was a moment of silence. "And what does 'curse breaking' entail, exactly? Curses don't exactly seem safe." Yes, well, magic was power, and power was never exactly safe. Not that me saying that would convince her.

    "Well it's mostly lots and lots of arithmancy and runes, which are basically wizarding maths and programming. Curse breakers are really just magical programmer archaeologists." Which was true enough, but runes were definitely a lot more interpretive than I'd heard programming ever was. She didn't need to know that, though. Maths and programming both were the sort of thing she respected. "I'll be perfectly safe. Gringotts doesn't employ people who don't know what they're doing, and Mrs. Weasley would never let anything happen to me."

    "How long is this trip meant to be?"

    Was that…? "Just a month."

    A long pause followed. "You have to promise to call as soon as you get there," she said.

    "Yes!" I cried out and jumped in the air, before quickly shrinking back once I saw the weird look I was getting from a woman across the street.

    "And you will be calling home once every week. If you don't, I will march up to your Ministry and dispatch a rescue mission."

    "Thank you, Mum!"

    "Just stay safe. I'll mail your passport over later tonight. Now…" she trailed off. "I'm sorry sweetie, but I have to go. Work's calling."

    "Okay, bye Mum," I said. My mood was far too good to be sunk by something like work taking her time again.

    "I love you. Have fun in Egypt," she said, and hung up with a click.




    Wizards simply could not invent a pleasant mode of travel for the life of them, it seemed.

    The International Portkey Hub (or 'keyport', apparently) situated a few miles from Diagon Alley that we'd gone to was eerily reminiscent of the airports I'd been to in the past, but with random odds and ends instead of planes. We'd be travelling from hub to hub until we finally got to Egypt. I'd read that portkeys had a limited range, but hadn't actually known why until Mr. Weasley had helpfully explained.

    "Well, we'll be spinning, see, and the further you go the faster you have to spin," he'd said when I asked. "You wouldn't want to spin so fast you let go, would you? That would just be dreadful. There's no telling where you could end up!"

    And so, I made no complaints as we ported from London to Paris, to Rome, to Cairo, and finally from Cairo to an all magical community by the name of Tamiqous. All of this without once being asked for my passport, which was… well, how did international borders even work with magic anyway?

    Pondering that, at least, helped distract me from the overriding dizziness.

    When I came to my senses, I was being held around the arms by a concerned looking Mrs. Weasley.

    "'m fine," I managed, before taking a step. I was only saved from a broken nose by her grip. "Nevermind."

    She sat me down until the world stopped spinning and came to the realisation that I wasn't the only one struggling. Percy seemed to be looking a bit green, which I appreciated for the solidarity if nothing else. Once we'd all found our legs, a stern looking official ushered us out of the way in time for the next group of people to arrive.

    We exited the arrivals area in a harried mass of luggage to see a man that could only be Bill waving us down. His hair gave him away, though it was longer than any of the other Weasley boys' by a fair margin and tied up in a ponytail. His skin was tan, or rather, his skin was tan for a Weasley. Even Egypt's sun could only do so much for someone with hair that red. He wore an easy sort of smile of the sort I'd come to expect from the family, very lightly colored and boldly patterned clothing, and a fang earring that I knew instantly that Mrs. Weasley was going to have opinions on.

    He greeted everyone warmly, asking a few specific questions about what had been happening—apparently he and Ginny wrote to each other with some frequency—before finally coming to me.

    "And you must be Hermione!" he called, ruffling Ginny's hair and carefully disentangling himself from her arms. He wiped a hand on his pants and held it out to me in a fist. "I'm Bill, though I'm sure you figured that out by now."

    I fist bumped his hand sort of awkwardly. "It's nice to meet you," I said.

    Bill put his hand away with a smile, and I was more than a bit thankful he hadn't mentioned it. "Probably nicer to be in Egypt, eh? Ron's told me all about you, you know. In fact, I've got a few stops planned on our tour I bet you'll love." He turned to everyone else. "Right, then. You lot decided to arrive a bit after noon—" Mrs. Weasley gave a few choice people a stern look. "—Which means it's hotter than anything out. Gather round for your cooling charms, everyone. No, not on yourself, Dad. Believe it or not, the Egyptians make better ones than the Brits, and they decided to take some pity on me and teach me."

    He cast a spell on us one by one (I made a mental note to ask him about it later), and when it got to my turn he waved his wand in a pattern that I quickly memorised out of habit. There was a feeling of squeezing, then nothing. I blinked twice, and he winked. "Just wait 'til you get outside. You'll see."

    We were ushered out of a set of old stone doors and into the Egyptian sun. Immediately, I felt the most peculiar thing. It was as if the heat straight from the sun was simply eliminated, with only the warmth radiating up from the ground making any impact on me. It was still hot, mind you, just not anywhere near as overwhelming as I imagined it must have otherwise been.

    There was a joke to be made about being British and being unaccustomed to clear skies, but I was above that sort of thing.

    "Blimey, not used to actually seeing the sun!" "Oh, is that what it looks like? I never knew!" The twins, it seemed, were not.

    Bill led us all to what seemed to be a wizarding hotel of sorts. It was surrounded on all sides by what even a muggle would be able to identify as tourist traps. I didn't see how anyone could think that that sort of reduction of culture into silly knick knacks would be at all appealing. Mr. Weasley could, though, and so the trip to the hotel received a slight detour. I stayed back from the wandering family, giving a sceptical eye to the stores around me.

    "Give 'em a week," Bill said to me as he watched his family roam. "They'll get over themselves when they've had to clean the sand from their arse for the fourth time in a day."

    "It's not them," I said. "It's just a bit… reductive."

    He shrugged. "Maybe. All in good fun though. Dad gets cool toys, locals get paid. Fair's fair's fair if you ask me."

    It was, well, I'd always been taught that this sort of thing hurt cultures more than they helped, but I supposed he'd know better, wouldn't he? Being as immersed as he was. There was a call out from Ginny. "I think that's me," Bill said, already walking away. "You should probably find Ron. I'm sure he's found something cool to show you by now."

    Surely enough, Ron had found a strange little bit of apparatus that looked somewhat like a top decorated in garish colours whose label proudly declared it to be a 'sneakoscope'. By the tag, it claimed to be able to detect 'Scoundrels and Hooligans in all their many varieties!'

    "Thinking of getting one for Harry. He might want one, with those muggles of his."

    "Do you think it works?" I asked, sceptical.

    He shrugged. "Wouldn't make much money selling something that didn't, would they?" he said, and grabbed it to buy.

    After maybe half an hour and several incredibly touristy knick knacks, we finally made it to the hotel.




    True to his word, Bill spent the next two weeks taking great pleasure in showing us all around to various tombs in the area and graciously fielding questions of all kinds. Everything from "Does this one have any guards in it?" to "Who was buried here?" to "Why do they lay out their ward schema like that?" was answered quickly, competently, and with an easy sort of smile. Ginny and Ron in particular drank up every word like water. Or, they would have if I hadn't been there. I (and occasionally Percy, after being emboldened by my doing so) had been asking all sorts of more technical questions that made Ron in particular tune out entirely. Bill didn't seem to mind, though, so I kept asking them.

    Early on in the trip, he'd actually approached me one night in the public area of our hotel after the rest of his family had gone to bed. He cleared his throat, pulling me out of a book on enchanting that I'd bought from a wizarding shop near the hotel. "So, I hear you've got some wand issues," he began.

    "More like wands have issue with me," I said. "I've been learning ritual to compensate." He seemed to take that at face value, nodding in thought.

    Bill sat and sort of sprawled out on a couch across from me. "Ritual casting's good stuff. Not my specialty, exactly, but Gringotts made sure I know my way around it. Dead useful, it is, if a bit slow. Who's been teaching you?"

    "Professor Dumbledore gave me a few books, and Professor Flitwick helped me a bit, but…"

    He reeled back. "But he didn't give you a teacher? Well, that's no good. Books are fine and useful, but only really as an extra. You can't beat a good teacher." He seemed to think for a moment. "What's he had you reading?"

    "Er, High Ritual and You—"

    "Enoch, right?" he cut in. I blinked.

    "Yes, um, Mandy Enoch."

    Bill seemed to sort of toss that back and forth in his head for a bit. "Enoch's good. That's what the bank started me with. She's a bit of a traditionalist, but it's as good an introduction as any. Still, there's a couple things she misses. That's where the teacher's meant to fill in. Ginny said you warded up her room?"

    "I did. She was pretty tired of people going through her things, seemed like."

    He smiled. "Good of you. Between you and me, Fred and George and Mum all mean well, but they have a hard time realising when they're being a bit cruel. Hope you can forgive them that. Anyway," he sat up and patted the table between us, "do you remember the sigils you used?" I nodded. "Brilliant. I'm gonna show you something cool."

    Bill pulled out his wand, flicked it, and a bag flew into his hands from across the room. He reached in and pulled out parchment, ink, and a quill. "Right, so, Mandy's great, but—"

    My eyes widened. "Mandy?" I asked. "Do you know her?"

    He laughed. "Not quite. See, when I was writing a paper on her book for my instructor—basic comprehension stuff, you know how it is—I realised that all through my paper I'd actually called her Mandy instead of Enoch, which is obviously a big no-no. Hardly respectful, not very professional to do that in a paper. I figured that if I was writing a paper about something Dad had done, though, I wouldn't just call him 'Weasley', would I? So, I wrote a letter to the gal asking her if we could be friends. She sent me back a letter saying yes, and I turned that in with my essay." He sighed happily. "I don't know if ol' Handclaw was more annoyed or impressed."

    "Anyway," he said, "point was, Mandy misses a few things. She has this problem where she considers the whole ritual as one big thing—which it is, sorta—and expects you to fill in the gaps. Basically, that book is all about what a ritual is, and not how a ritual's made. Two very different things. How many tries did it take you to get that ward for Ginny's room working?"

    I thought back for a moment. "Four."

    He raised an eyebrow. "Just four?" I nodded. "Blimey. Ron said you were bloody smart, hadn't realised…" he trailed off. "Right, well, did you base the ward off of anything?"

    "Sort of," I said. "I know a few wards that I can cast with my wand, but I didn't know how to translate that. In the end, I just tried to work off of the descriptions of the muggle-repelling charm in Hogwarts: A History."

    "Alright then. Stop me if you've figured any of this out yourself, but can you draw out your final product for me?" He pushed the quill and ink towards me. "Just lines for the sigils, mind. No runes. We'd be here all night otherwise."

    Taking the quill, I carefully penned out the lines and shapes that made up the ritual base.

    "Brilliant. So this is a pretty simple sigil, which makes this easy." Bill took the quill back. "My instructor, Handclaw, he taught me this trick, and it's about the most advanced ritual thing I know. See, your sigil here can be split up into a few basic parts. So, you've got the circle on the outside like always—" He drew a big circle next to the sigil. "—a square you've circumscribed into it—" He copied a square right next to that. "—and then this right mess." He copied the rather complicated squiggle stretching from one end of the circle to the other. "So, why'd you go with a square, and not some other shape?"

    "Well," I said, "It seemed like all the spells I've seen that enchant something instead of just do something used a square or a triangle. I tried the triangle, and that didn't work, so I used a square."

    He nodded. "Good instinct. So the circle's pretty much a given, right? Magic's everywhere, so you pull it from everywhere. The square though, that's all about the thing you're doing stuff to. Something like, say, Alohomora? You're doing one thing to one point. So, you need a shape like an X that describes a point. If you're doing something over an area that only needs to last a little bit or just sorta fires in a one-off, then you use something like a triangle. If you're doing something to a space that you need to stick, like a ward, then you use a square. This sort of differs from culture to culture, but we're Brits so we'll be sticking with British Legacy. Makes things easier."

    "Now," Bill pointed to the squiggle, "This is the sort of thing which describes what you want to happen. What makes it shaped like it is is complex and why we invented arithmancy, but there's a cheat! You said the muggle-repelling charm, right? Do you know the wand movement for that?" I nodded, and he handed the quill over to me. "Good. Draw the movement out for me."

    More than a bit curious where it was going, I did as instructed. Once I finished, I pulled back the quill, took a look at the parchment, and… "Oh!"

    "You see it?" he asked with a wide grin. I nodded.

    The wand motion for the charm and the central sigil of the ritual looked incredibly similar. There were differences, of course, but the resemblance was undeniable.

    "Now, the wand movement starts here, right?" He pointed to one end, and I nodded. "I'm going to take a wild guess and say that the actual rune script of your ritual started at that same end."

    "So which came first?" I asked. "The wand motion or the sigil?"

    Bill laughed. "Well they had to do something before wands, didn't they? Look around here. Do you see very many trees? Average bloke like me never would've been able to afford one. They still made do."

    "That's amazing!"

    "Isn't it? I about lost my head when I got showed that little trick. 'Course, it gets a lot more complicated than just nicely asking magic to keep people out like this," he patted the paper, "especially once you start getting into polarities, but it all breaks down to this same sort of thing. Where's the magic coming from, where's it going, for how long, and what's it doing once it gets there. The most complicated spells in the world—remind me to show you the ritual schema for the patronus sometime—still all come down to those four things."

    And that was the start of my not-quite-apprenticeship with Bill Weasley. A couple nights a week, he'd come over after his family had mostly gone to sleep to talk to me about rituals, or wards, or arithmancy. The second time, I'd asked him why he was choosing to help me out instead of something sensible like spending time with his family or sleeping, and his answer was exactly the sort I was coming to expect from him.

    "Never heard not to look the horse in the mouth, huh?" Bill had laughed. "Truth is, I heard something bad happened to you." He put his hands up. "Not that I'm asking, mind. My point being, you think this stuff's cool, I think this stuff's cool, and, well… I figure if I'm able to help, I'm in a position to help, and it doesn't hurt me to help, then it's already decided." He gave me a wry smile, then. "Besides! Rate you've been going, I'll be asking you for your help with all this in a year or two."

    Frankly, I saw why Ginny liked him so much.

    In the limited time after our tours that I wasn't soaking up as much knowledge about Egypt or magic or anything else as I could, I spent it basking in the Weasley family. Sure, the twins really didn't seem to understand limits, Mrs. Weasley was a bit much, Mr. Weasley was scared of being the bad guy, Ginny got testy when she felt like something that was hers was being invaded, and Ron was Ron, but…

    They were warm in a way that I wasn't accustomed to at home. A part of me didn't know quite what to do with it. Another part of me wanted to jump in and soak it all up, but I knew that wouldn't be fair or reasonable for anyone. Even as endlessly, incredibly kind as they'd all been, the family wasn't mine. It was evident when Bill doted on Ginny, or when Ron talked about some shared history like it was obvious. Mrs. Weasley tried to bridge the gap, of course, folding me under her wings like I'd always been there, but it left me feeling a bit like the ugly duckling.

    Part of her doting had apparently been taking it upon herself to make sure my recovery went as smoothly as possible. She'd been having me write out a journal of what I did at about what time and had me describe anything and everything strange that I might have been feeling to send to Healer Jameson at the end of every single day. She had also made a point of making absolutely sure that I was wearing my new long-range monitoring bracelets every day (not that I ever took them off, Healer Jameson had said to even wear them in the shower), and watching me as I took my daily potions. I hadn't managed to get my hands on any magical medical textbooks, unfortunately. Apparently, they were incredibly rare and even more expensive.

    Really, what did the wizarding world have against bloody libraries?

    Feeling alienated as I did, though, I latched on with both hands when respite and distraction came in the form of letters from Luna Lovegood. I'd received her first letter on the very second night we'd been in Egypt, which I found strange. She would have had to have written before we even left. She'd wanted to ask about Egypt, and had asked me to watch out for something she called a 'Crumple-Horned Snorkack': a creature which she said lived in Sweden, but that she thought might have 'gotten a bit lost'. I promised her I'd keep an eye out, and we'd been writing back and forth ever since.

    She was admittedly a bit strange, but… She was very kind, in her own way. The thing that struck me, and the reason I'd kept writing to her, was that she was something of an outsider, too. She… understood without explanation. So, I could deal with a few eccentricities, even if they were incredibly eccentric.

    Luna's most recent letter came folded into a star in the talons of an eagle owl named Octavius, and I'd quickly untied it. I gave him a kiss on the forehead and a treat, like Luna had once asked me to do, and settled down to read.

    Dear Hermione,

    Things have been quiet here. Daddy and I have been taking care of the Weasley's beasties, of course. Do you know if the pigs have names? They won't tell me. It's really rather rude. If not, I'll need to make sure to give them something dignified. Maybe something like Horatio, or Jeffery. Daddy's also been taking me flying out and around the countryside. He says that you never know what sorts of things you'll find just by flying about. The crashing, I think, is my favourite part. It must be. I do it rather a lot, after all. Daddy says I'm missing the point, but I say that I'm going exactly where I mean to. He's the one who's missing the ground.

    I'm glad you're getting along with Billiam. I never spoke to him much, but he has a nice smile, which is the important thing. I think the world would be a far better place if more people had nice smiles. I'm afraid that I can't help you out with your old magics, though. My Mum was a researcher, but Daddy keeps all her books locked away. I don't know why. Knowledge is for knowing, isn't it? Maybe if you came over, I could show you our library. I bet you'd be able to find something in there. You might even be able to convince Daddy to let you see my Mum's special books!

    May you hit whichever ground you aim for,

    Luna Lovegood

    I smiled as I read it, shaking my head at her antics. Standing from the desk, I ruffled Octavius' feathers a bit. "Stay here for a moment, okay?" He let out a hoot of what I took to be agreement—how Harry could understand Hedwig's various calls I had no idea—and made my way out of the hotel room that I shared with Ginny. The Weasley clan as a whole were downstairs making use of the hotel's pool. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, though, were just down the hall, having left Bill to watch over everyone else. Surely they'd know if their pigs had names. I walked up to their door and was just about to knock when I heard Mr. Weasley's stressed voice float through.

    "What can we even do about it?" he said. I was about to turn away to come back later—eavesdropping was Harry and Ron's thing, not mine—when I heard Mrs. Weasley's response.

    "Well we most certainly can't tell her!" I froze in my tracks. Surely… no. Maybe the 'her' in question was Ginny, I reasoned, but my gut was telling me otherwise.

    "Surely she has a right to know?" he said.

    "She also has a right to be a child! It's summer break, and we're on vacation. She deserves to enjoy herself," Mrs. Weasley huffed. "What would we even say? 'Progressive Thaumeal Inversion'? 'Chronic Thalergenic Shock'? Do you know what those mean, because I certainly don't!"

    "Well, the letter tells us what we can do, see?" There was the rustle of paper. "Familiar magic, familiar people, stick around magical hotspots. We can tell her that."

    "I hate to say it like this, but, don't you think she'd suspect something if we told her? The girl keeps up with Bill and Percy at their best. She studies the sort of magic you and I've never even heard about for fun! There's no way she wouldn't figure it out." Mrs. Weasley sounded exhausted, but the blood rushing in my ears almost drowned it out.

    "Molly," Mr. Weasley said placatingly. "Maybe we should just tell her."

    "She is a child. She has a right to enjoy this vacation, Arthur. There's no way that would happen with this hanging over her! Dumbledore trusted her to our care. That means something. It's our job to worry and stress, not hers."

    There was a long pause. "I suppose you're right. It's not like we'll have to change much. We've been visiting magical hotspots every day so far. That's easy. We can just make sure her and Ron spend some more time together, and she'll be fine. But she does have a right to know, and I know you know that Molly."

    Another pause. "You're right, but… not yet. Let her enjoy Egypt."

    "Right. Then we can tell her when we get home. Okay? Now, let's go check on the kids."

    I flinched back like the door had been hot, head reeling. Of course. Of course they'd be hiding the details of my own condition from me. Footsteps sounded from inside, and I quickly made my way back to my room, keeping my steps light almost on instinct. I'd spent far too much time sneaking around Hogwarts for Tom to do anything else.

    A thousand thoughts raced through my head as I closed the door to my hotel room behind me. I tried to calm myself down. Maybe it wasn't that bad? Medical terminology had an awful habit of sounding worse than it was. 'Carious lesion' came to mind. But…

    They wouldn't be hiding it from me if the prognosis was good.

    So something bad was happening to me. I did not like the sound of the words 'progressive' or 'chronic', and 'inversion' hardly sounded pleasant. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley knew about it, and were choosing to hide it. Madam Pomfrey likely had a good idea, or she wouldn't have been so insistent I go to St. Mungo's. She certainly hadn't been happy about whatever she'd found. Which left… did Dumbledore know? He'd been the one to push me towards ritual magic, and begin to explain what was happening, but he wasn't precisely a healer. An expert transfigurer and alchemist, but I didn't know how much of that actually translated to medical knowledge. Just because he could see that a leg was broken, he might not be able to tell that the bone was infected, so to speak.

    But Pomfrey had been the one to tell him about my condition, and if she had a good idea… Were there any actual protections on my medical information in the wizarding world? That seemed precisely the sort of thing they'd be behind on.

    So Dumbledore had likely known one way or another, and had opted not to tell me.

    I'd be careful about putting your faith in the Headmaster, my little lion. He keeps his cards close, and lies whenever he suspects it might be convenient. It's a game of pawns and pieces with him. You can see it in his eyes. The best you can hope for is that you're an important piece, and certainly not a pawn. Better to play your own games instead, don't you think?

    Tom's words echoed in my mind, bouncing around until there was no room for anything else. I shook my head to clear it, focused on my breath, and counted down from 10. It mostly worked. Looking around the room to ground myself, I spotted Octavius looking at me curiously.

    Progressive Thaumeal Inversion and Chronic Thalergenic Shock. That's the information I had. I could work with that. I could certainly work with that. Striding over to the hotel's desk, I pulled out some spare parchment and set a quill to it.

    Dear Luna,

    I'm happy to hear that you're enjoying your summer. I'm afraid I already have to impose on your offer to open your library to me, as long as you don't mind. Do you happen to have any medical texts? In particular, I'm looking for information on two long term magical conditions…
     
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    • Bill Weasley's technobabble brought to you by my inability to look at things like Harry Potter's barely thought out magic system and not ask stupid questions like 'Why?', even though I know Rowling thought about it with about as much depth as she's thought about her stance on gender. That is to say, very little. It's a plague upon me, for sure.

    Finally though, we're at the point where we start really cracking down on the set up for what the rest of the fic's going to be when it grows up. I hope y'all are looking forward to it as much as I am!
     
    Well, given the premise, I think a bit of technobabble is appropriate. Can't have someone be a ritualist and not go into the fun nitty gritty bits of rituals every other chapter when something new comes up.
     
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