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Silence's Kiss (Harry Potter)

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App said:
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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I'm looking forward to Hermione holding a ten minute speech about why this one rune/sigil has to be placed at that point in the sequence in exactly this orientation. :)

And damn, Tommyboy left some impression. Some of it Hermione doesn't even seem to be aware of.
 
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7 - The Last Laugh
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    • 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…


    The Last Laugh​


    Everything that exists can be described via its relationship to a strange and not well understood sort of energy sitting under the skin of the world. It flows and stops, with points of high pressure and points of low, with twists and turns and narrows and eddies. Sometimes, the energy snags up. One of the primal Powers gets caught against another, and forces all the rest to follow in turn. This snarl thus gains a stance in the battle between Order and Chaos, gains a Life and a Death, gains a History behind it and a Future before it, thus coming into existence as a thing. Any thing. Rocks, trees, grass, air, people, the moon, the sky, throw pillows, all of them are the result of snags in the weave of this energy.

    In fact, it was theorised by the great modern thinkers of the wizarding world that every thing that existed was in fact composed of an infinite number of these snags, and these constituent parts added together into one big knot in the skin of magic. The Earth could correctly be described as one snag, and so could all the rocks that make it up, and so could the people walking on those rocks, and so could all the individual organs inside of those people, and so on and so forth. 'Infinite' was a word that I found interesting in a distant sort of way. I wondered whether these great thinkers were purebloods, or just bigots. After all, muggles have a theory that states that everything is made of smaller things, too.

    In scholarly texts, these knots in magic describing a thing were referred to as the item's 'thaumic centre'. In common parlance, they were referred to as the 'magical core', a name that seemed to have scholars ripping their hair out in frustration due to its apparent inaccuracy.

    The thaumic centre of an object was considered to be an average of all the thaumic centres making it up. More unstable centres—knots and snarls that were tied more loosely than others—were capable of twisting themselves in ways as to manipulate the energy around them. These manipulations are what we know as 'magic'. In a very real way, this meant that beings more capable of magic were much more susceptible to its influence.

    What, then, if one were to reach in and unravel the knot?

    It was a well documented phenomenon, something akin to a particularly aggressive form of Vanishing. Sir Isaac Newton, though, had the last word yet again. Unravelling the knot—or 'inverting' it, to use the scholarly word—would send out something of a shockwave through the magic surrounding it. This shockwave would be comprised of strands of magic which already had a tendency to be closely tied to each other. If done slowly, this could be directed into another snarl, causing it to tighten itself and cement itself more firmly in reality. With this method of sacrificing something of proportional strength, one could theoretically turn a mage into a muggle, make a phoenix burn to death, make a giant collapse under their own weight, or take the magic from anything to make it mundane.

    One could even spin an ephemeral spirit into mortal flesh.

    If done slowly enough, a sacrificed person would notice a loss of vibrancy in their dreams, and an increasingly unstable mental state. These things were subtle, though, and didn't precisely lend themselves to diagnosis. The most observable symptom was that the sacrifice would notice a massive boost to their magical abilities for a time, followed by those same abilities suddenly falling well below their 'normal' levels only to decay from there. Before the point of decay, the process was reversible. The magic would settle down into normalcy over a period of some days or weeks. Afterwards, however, it was only a matter of time. Even if the source of the syphon was stopped, the thaumic centre would continue to invert. The process could not be stopped or reversed at that point, only slowed. Due to the nature of the act, such a sacrifice wouldn't even leave a body behind. The sacrifice would simply fade from existence.

    And that… something in that was wrong. It had to be. The process had to be reversible. Via the sacrifice of some third thing or several somethings or a clever ritual or potion nobody had thought of yet, surely there had to be something that hadn't been tried, some avenue of research that nobody had thought of. Things were only impossible until someone did them. Or maybe, just maybe, maybe the healers were wrong. Misdiagnoses weren't unheard of, especially given that they had only examined me in person once! Putting a name and prognosis to a thing after just remote observation had to be malpractice, even in the wizarding world!

    I was thirteen. I had the world ahead of me. I was going to be Minister of Magic, and be forced to learn from Voldemort, and help Harry survive what was coming, and fall in love! I… I couldn't be dying. I couldn't! It just didn't make sense! One plus one doesn't equal three, and I was not dying.

    It just didn't make sense.

    There was a sudden knock on the door. "Hermione!" Ginny called. "Your hair can't seriously take that long!"

    Right. I was… I was in the shower. I'd finished my reading, realised what the books were saying, and had suddenly felt all too keenly the trace that Tom had left on me. The urge to clean myself had come, to scrub and scrub until I couldn't feel him in my soul any longer, and so I'd done so. I'd scrubbed my skin raw and it hadn't helped, so I lay in the tub letting purifying water wash over and past me and hopefully taking any trace of him down the drain. Distantly, I felt that my fingers and toes had pruned beyond recognition. An almost manic thought came to me, bubbling up past the sea of no it can't be. What if that was the way to prove the healers wrong? To clean myself so thoroughly and prune up so much that Tom wasn't, yet I remained, and the healers would examine me and see they'd been mistaken. Or maybe I would just drown, and let Tom win.

    "You've been in there nearly two hours! You're gonna use up all the water in Egypt, and I still haven't showered yet!"

    Propriety would be the thing that stopped me testing that theory, then, because even while dying (not dying, I told myself, I was simply working off of incomplete information) I couldn't bear to be rude.

    I shivered as I got out, cold air meeting red raw skin and near scalding water dripping off of me. The towel stung as I dried myself. Slowly I dressed and exited the bathroom, silently making my way past a rightfully annoyed Ginny. The hotel room was in a state of disarray borne of weeks of cohabitation. The only tidy thing was the desk that Ginny never used, Luna's medical texts still lying open. I'd never bothered to close them, it seemed. Sloppy of me.

    Deep breaths, count from ten, focus on the counting.

    I reverently closed the borrowed textbooks, and began to prepare for my day. We had another exciting trip planned for the tomb of a pharaoh whose name had been lost to time in the frantic scramble caused by the enacting of the International Statute of Secrecy. This pharaoh had apparently been even more magical than most, and had undergone a very Egyptian form of the animal bonding ritual that Tom had taught me. The gods with animals for heads were apparently not so fictitious as many muggles believed, it seemed. Because of this, the tomb was cordoned off for magical eyes only.

    It had seemed fascinating last night, before I'd done my reading on the conditions I apparently had. Less so, after. Now the only thing on my mind was the crystal clear realisation that I needed to see the letter from St. Mungo's. I could just ask for it. Mr. Weasley would surely crack if I pushed. He'd seemed in favour of telling me anyway. If I did that, though, there was the risk that he denied everything and hid the letter somewhere I wouldn't be like to find it. Mrs. Weasley was his wife, after all. She'd been intent on deciding things for me, and surely Mr. Weasley valued his wife's opinions over those of a child that wasn't even his.

    I quickly dug through my binder of pre-prepared ritual circles to find the one I needed. Once I found it, I ripped it out of the binder, walked out the door, and down the hall. They had already decided to hide things from me. I had to take matters into my own hands. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had almost certainly already gone down to breakfast, but even still I put my ear up to their hotel room's door and spent a good few seconds listening for noises.

    Satisfied that nobody was inside, I flattened my ritual parchment against the lock. "Alohomora," I muttered. The magic coursed through, and the sigils burned themselves out. I tried the door, but the handle refused to budge. Of course. I should have figured that the doors in a magical hotel would be warded against first year charms.

    "So, that's how you've been doing it," a voice said from behind me. I spun around to see one of the twins looking at me like the cat that got the canary. "Me and Georgie have been wondering. Ginny's room at home and your one here didn't ward themselves up, after all."

    "I… I wasn't, er," My stuttered denial was quickly shut down by Fred laughing.

    "I don't need to know. Not my business, really. So with all that stuff you can do your magic without telling the Ministry about it?" He gestured at the ritual diagram, and I nodded hesitantly. "Brilliant. In that case, I'll happily open up that door for you. You'll just need to do me a favour later."

    "Er, you can get in without magic?" I asked, disbelieving.

    He shrugged with a cocky smile. "Sure." I considered the offer. I really did need to see that letter…

    "Fine," I said. He stuck a hand out and I shook it.

    "Pleasure doing business with you, Ms. Granger. Now, step aside and let the professional work." I did so, and Fred pulled out what looked like a swiss army knife and a bobby pin before kneeling in front of the lock. "Lots of wizards get so caught up in magic, they forget about the more mundane ways of doing things. I'm a fan of the classics, myself. They're classics for a reason!"

    A minute or so passed as I grew slowly more anxious and Fred worked the lock. Eventually, he twisted the handle and the door popped open. "And voila! We're in. Have fun in my parents' room. Friendly advice, though. Stay out of the drawers by the bedside unless you want scarred for life." He shuddered. "Some things you just never forget."

    "What about the favour?" I asked.

    He stood with a shrug. "Dunno yet. George or I'll let you know when we decide on something. Promise. Enjoy your mischief!" His piece said, he turned and walked down the hall. Shaking my head as if to clear the thoroughly bizarre interaction from my mind, I stepped inside the room and slowly closed the door behind me with a click.

    My search, it turned out, was fairly short. The important document was in the briefcase on the desk, the very first place I looked. There was a long moment where I just stared at the folded up St. Mungo's letterhead. A temptation surfaced, telling me that I could just put the letter back. An irrational thought that if I opened it up, then it would become real. I could remain happy and ignorant, and things might not be so bad.

    It was that same thought cinched my resolve and forced my hand. I couldn't stand to be ignorant. With a deep breath, I unfolded the letter.

    Miss Hermione Granger

    I would like to thank you for your extensive and thorough documentation of your days and experiences. It has allowed us to map fluctuations in your magic to the events of your day quite closely, and has enabled me to speak with some confidence in regards to your case. In respects to your desire for honesty, I feel that it is my duty to frankly and clearly inform you of what I am seeing from the readings that we have taken.

    Your magic is decaying. It would defy explanation, but Hogwarts' own Madam Pomfrey's descriptions of what events befell you paints a clear picture, I'm afraid. For the sake of duty and thoroughness, I would like to take another set of readings in person when you return to Britain given your stated desire to continue your vacation. The signs, symptoms, and story of how the condition came about, however, point in a particular direction so thoroughly that I feel that I would be remiss in my duty of care were I not to inform you of what we know now, if only for the sake of caution.

    You show clear signs of both Progressive Thaumeal Inversion and Chronic Thalergenic Shock. I'm afraid both of these conditions are quite serious, and both are independently and irreversibly lethal.

    Words cannot express how very sorry I am, Miss Granger.

    The good news is that you do have time. The situation is     not without hope, and it is not over. Many people have managed to live long lives with these conditions, even despite their nature. By continuing your carefully monitored potions regimen, we can buy time and allow you to live a full life with what time remains. There are also lifestyle changes which can combine to do as much as double your expected remaining lifespan. Enclosed you will find a chart detailing what your treatment entails, but I will boil it down to basics here for the sake of convenience.

    Your best case is that you remain around familiar and lively magical people and circumstances as often as possible. The weight of magic in magical hotspots can also help slow the inversion. Frankly speaking, I believe your continued attendance in Hogwarts will prove to be the single most effective part of your treatment, and urge you to return to its halls as soon as you can.

    When you return to Britain, please make an appointment at your earliest possible convenience. I will be able to take a few more thorough scans that we might set our expectations, and we'll be able to have a more plain discussion about what you can expect in the coming days.

    My most sincere condolences,

    Senior Healer Argyle Jameson




    "When do you think we'll hear back from Healer Jameson?" I asked at breakfast in a clipped voice. Mrs. Weasley hid her flinch in a smile. I ignored Fred's concerned look.

    "Whenever he has something to report, dear. No need to worry your head about it. You just focus on enjoying the trip, alright?" Her tone betrayed nothing but me. I imagined the nonchalance to be the result of having raised her eldest sons in the middle of a war they weren't ready to hear about.

    "And you promise that when he sends a letter you'll let me know?" The question was as blatant a test as I was willing to give.

    "Of course, Hermione," she said. I nodded and returned to my food with a scowl. Either she'd seen the test for what it was and made a choice, chosen to underestimate my intelligence, or simply didn't care. I wasn't sure which potential answer annoyed me more. Seemingly sensing that, nobody bothered me the rest of the meal.

    After breakfast, we took yet another portkey to the day's tomb. I'd become grudgingly accustomed to the asinine method of travel, but today it seemed like it was just another straw on the pile. Once we landed, Bill started leading the way to the tomb proper while lecturing like he was born to it.

    "So like I was telling some of you last night, this is the tomb of one of the animal bonded pharaohs that were too magical to have their tombs revealed to the muggles. This one was actually breached a century or so after it was built, giving us the best clue we have about why these tombs were so heavily warded. You see…" He continued on, but I just didn't have the energy to listen. Instead he settle into a low drone in the back of my head, finally punctuated by him calling out, "Now everyone buddy up and let's head inside. This place is all cleared out, so feel free to spread out and take a look around!"

    I wondered, briefly and uncharitably, if this was how Ron and Harry experienced the world.

    Ron nudged my side with a concerned look. "Wanna head in?"

    "Sure, of course," I said without feeling, and trudged forward.

    We all made our way inside, the air cooling instantly and sound seeming to quiet as if supernaturally dampened. Sure enough, everyone spread out down various rooms and hallways. Ron dragged me off into one of the side halls nobody else had gone into, looking around with wide eyes. "So you think we'll find a mummy?" he asked after a long few moments of walking.

    "Probably not."

    "Yeah, you're probably right," he said simply, and went back to it. A few moments later, it seemed as if he got tired of the silence. "So, what do you think this means?" He pointed to a set of hieroglyphs on the wall.

    "How am I supposed to know that?" I snapped. "I'm not the curse breaker, am I?"

    Ron reeled back. "What's wrong with you today?"

    "It's not me that's got something wrong, it's everyone else!"

    He opened his mouth to snap back at me before seemingly thinking better of it. "Something happened, didn't it?" he asked gently. "What's everyone else been doing? Was it Fred and George? I'll get back at 'em for you if you want."

    "Actually, Fred is one of the only ones around here with his head screwed on right!"

    "What's that supposed to mean?"

    "It means, Ron, that your Mum's a liar, and your Dad's a coward!"

    "Don't call my Dad a coward."

    "Well it's true! He won't even stand up to your Mum when he knows she's wrong!"

    Ron took a breath, clearly trying to calm himself down. I found my sympathy in short supply. "Being scared of Mum's just good sense," he joked weakly before taking another deep breath. "What did my Mum do?"

    "It's not your—"

    "I thought we promised no more secrets between us, Hermione, or are you a liar too?" Despite his best efforts, he looked furious.

    "It's…" I thought about telling him that it was nothing, or not his business, or that it was Taboo, but… I would be a liar, then, wouldn't I? No better than Pomfrey or Dumbledore or Mrs. Weasley. Or Tom. "It's my condition. Your Mum got a letter from St. Mungo's and I overheard your parents talking about it. I snuck in this morning, found the letter, and I've looked up some of the terms. I…" I took a deep breath. I didn't want to put it into words. If it was in words and it was out loud, then what? It seemed for a moment like some impossible task that would snap me into a million pieces just for trying.

    But then I saw Ron's worried face, and I remembered my promise.

    "I'm dying, Ron." Tears welled up in my eyes. "I'm gonna die."

    He let out a nervous laugh. "You're joking, right? Real funny."

    I wrapped my arms around my middle. "I wish I was." His face fell.

    "Well, there's gotta be some cure, right? This is what St. Mungo's does! There's gotta be."

    "They're the ones who said there's no cure." I looked down, unable to meet his eyes.

    "What about Dumbledore?" His voice bordered on frantic. "He's the greatest wizard around, he can fix anything!"

    "He doesn't know how to fix this," I said. The tears started falling in earnest.

    "There's gotta be something, right?" he whispered. "There's just gotta be."

    "Nobody knows how to fix it, Ron. Nobody."

    He stood there in silence, seemingly just processing. Then, with just a brief hesitation, he stepped forward and wrapped me up in a hug. I let myself go, then, crying into his shoulder. We stayed like that for a long moment. "Your Mum lied to me, Ron," I sobbed out. "She's been sending letters to the Healers in my place and not telling me a thing. You can't tell her I know."

    "We have to tell Harry."

    I nodded against him. "Alright."

    "And we'll, we'll fix this, okay? I don't know how, but you're the cleverest witch around, and you've got that ritual stuff, and you've got me and Harry, right?"

    I pulled away from him. "I don't think anybody can fix death."

    "Well," he looked around as if an idea would appear in front of him. "You-Know-Who did, didn't he? He was right and proper dead, only we met him last year."

    "I don't exactly want to be like him, though," I said, and even managed to mean it.

    "You don't have to be. I figure you're twice as clever as him, so anything he can do, you ought to be able to do better, yeah?" He gave a shaky laugh. "Though if you do end up possessing someone, Malfoy might be a good start."

    That pried a weak smile from me. We stood there in silence for a moment before Ron breached it yet again.

    "Do you… D'you know how long you have?" he asked.

    "I don't know."

    "Well that's a load of rot. Don't even know if it's still worth it to go to classes!"

    My smile grew a little less weak. "Honestly, Ron. In case you forgot, I like school."

    "I'm serious! You could be out vacationing or something! I know that's what I'd do." His tone was jokey. I knew what he was trying to do, but I was too numb for it to work like he wanted.

    "Even if I didn't want to go back to Hogwarts, Healer Jameson says it's still a good idea. I need to stay around 'familiar, lively magical people' and 'magical hotspots' apparently, and Hogwarts has both."

    Ron levelled me with the strongest smile he could muster. It wasn't terribly convincing. "We'll fix this. We've fixed everything else so far, right? This is just one more thing. Just have to think outside the box or summat. I'll let you know if I can think of anything, alright? And hey, maybe one of these blokes'll have something helpful to say." He tapped a hieroglyph of a man on the wall.

    "They wouldn't be in a tomb if they'd managed to not die," I said, but it got me thinking. It may not have been intentional, but Ron had a point. I wasn't the first sick person in history, and I certainly wasn't the only intelligent sick person in history. Someone had to have had an idea, somewhere, somewhen, somehow. It wouldn't be easy, though, or even well documented. If it were, everyone would do it. If an answer existed, it would be hidden away somewhere. As brilliant as it was, I doubted that the Hogwarts Library's Restricted Section would have anything of use. They kept instructions for more dangerous potions or spells than a first year ought to have access to, certainly, but mucking about with one's thaumic centre was Dark with a capital 'D'. No shot they'd keep anything like that in a school library of any kind, which meant I'd need to go looking elsewhere.

    "You're right," I finally said. "You're absolutely right." His smile grew far more genuine.

    "'Course I am!" he laughed. "We'll get you through this. I just know it."



    The remaining days of the trip had passed quickly, and without major incident. That wasn't to say that I was okay, exactly. Sometimes I would lay awake and think about what it meaned to be dead, or if death would really be so bad. Not like I'd much care after the fact. Worse was when I thought about what it would mean to live. Voldemort was coming back, whether I liked it or not, and I was bound to him. I wondered at what it might cost me to live. What it would cost everyone else. Sometimes, I'd just wake up in the middle of the night to cry.

    Ginny never said anything, for which I was thankful.

    I called Mum once a week as asked, and managed to keep from giving anything away. I suspected that she knew I was hiding something, but had no real idea what. She was content to let it lie, at least. Luna and I kept up our letters. I'd thanked her profusely for sending the textbooks. "I hope you didn't manage to find what you were looking for," came her odd reassurance, and she expressed both condolences and a willingness to help when I told her that I had.

    Sure as anything, Ron had stuck right by me every second he could the remaining week and a half of the trip. He'd seemingly made it his mission to make sure I took care of myself. He'd even attended Bill's scattershot lessons with me, though he freely admitted that what we talked about was going right over his head. Ron also made a point of intercepting whenever either of his parents decided to talk to me. Everyone had noticed, but the Weasleys collectively seemed to choose tact for once, and nobody commented. I'd like to say it was unnecessary, but…

    Well, it was hard to justify getting enough sleep or not snapping at people when they annoyed me or doing much of anything when I knew it wouldn't even matter in too long. Most of the time, Ron proved to be surprisingly good at his chosen role, too. It was the little things. He'd noticed that I wasn't as engaged with Bill as I normally was once, about a week after our conversation in the tomb, and he'd done the strangest thing in response. Instead of talking about the ritualism, or the lesson, or Bill, Ron asked me if I'd actually bothered to read anything ever since I'd found out the news. It struck me as passing strange, and I couldn't help my curiosity.

    "No," I'd said. "Why do you ask?"

    Ron sort of shuffled. "Figured it was worth asking."

    "But why that question?"

    He hesitated, took a deep breath. "Promise to keep this a secret, alright?"

    "I can do that," I said, somewhere between concerned and curious.

    "Right, so, well. Fred and George were worried. So they talked to Bill, right? And Bill talked to me. Apparently, Charlie used to get really sad, I guess. More than normal sad. And Bill would take care of him. Fred said he noticed you acting like Charlie used to, so Bill came and talked to me. Told me what to look for, I suppose. He said that if you weren't doing the things you enjoyed, I guess, then someone else'd need to make sure you did things like get out of bed or whatever. I dunno. It's a lot." Ron shuffled side to side. "Only, it's a bit embarrassing. Nobody really likes talking about it, so they asked me not to tell."

    Oh, well that was… "Thanks, Ron. That's… thank you."

    A part of me resented being a burden to him and to the family, but didn't I have that right? If I didn't find a cure, I wouldn't be a burden for all that long anyway. There was a sort of peace in that. Practice for when keeping my peace was all I could do, I supposed.

    After the last two weeks passed, it was finally time to return to Britain. Our departure from Egypt was just as well-organised as our arrival. That is to say, not at all. Half the family had extracted seemingly unnecessary promises from Bill as we were leaving, making sure that he'd write to them soon. Ginny in particular seemed distraught. They really did seem to be close.

    Finally, after another nauseating series of portkeys and keyports (I quietly resolved to find a better way to travel magically if I managed to survive everything that was coming), we were back at the Burrow with two weeks left of Summer. Everyone settled back into their places quickly, if with a renewed energy.

    The next morning brought two things: St. Mungo's, and the Daily Prophet.

    Soon after breakfast, Mrs. Weasley gathered up her things and ushered me into the floo. I noted that she still hadn't told me what she'd told Mr. Weasley she would. Likely hoping to outsource the unpleasantness to a Healer. I couldn't help but think it cowardly.

    Healer Jameson met me almost as soon as I stepped into the examination room, greeting me with a sad sort of smile. As if trying to earn my approval even more thoroughly than he already had, he noticed my coldness towards Mrs. Weasley and ushered her out into the waiting room.

    "How long?" I asked as soon as the door closed.

    "Finding that out is why I asked you here," he answered as the polite smile cracked a bit. "If you don't mind, I'd like to make some more thorough scans. Arms up, if you would?" He raised his wand, and I did as asked.




    Numbers made things far simpler and far more immense than they had any right to. A way to contextualise, even as the mind failed to grasp. One split into twelve split into fifty two split into three hundred and sixty five with twenty four each. Twenty-four, even, was just one thousand four hundred and forty four expressed differently. One year, give or take a margin of error of a few months.

    One year to live. If I didn't do something unprecedented, I'd be fourteen years old when I died. Fifteen if I was lucky. In a couple weeks, I'd be turning the age I'd be when I was buried. The thought took the edge off of my emotions, like they simply weren't enough to process. Like thinking about the size of the sun. The brain just couldn't do it.

    Mrs. Weasley had asked how the appointment went when I finally came out hours later, and I hadn't told her. It was only fair. In fact, I'd asked that Healer Jameson not notify anyone of the particulars, asking that my potions regimen be the only thing he sent to Madam Pomfrey. I didn't want anyone's pity.

    We arrived back to the Burrow, a distinct lack of energy to the place piercing even my haze of apathy. In lieu of other explanation, a copy of the Daily Prophet sat on the centre of the table in the empty kitchen.

    Apparently, Sirius Black had escaped from Azkaban. Right under the moving photo of a dishevelled looking prisoner, the article described how he had been one of the lead Death Eaters. One of Voldemort's most loyal, and apparently exiled from his family entirely. Mr. Weasley, who'd planned on savouring the final day of his vacation, was nowhere to be found. All hands on deck at the Ministry, I supposed.

    I noted the whole thing dispassionately, like it was far away, happening to someone else. Dimly, I wondered whether I'd live to meet the man when I was forced to seek Voldemort out. His name bounced around in my head like all the worst things tended to do.

    The name was still bouncing when I was laid up in my bed that night, wondering what I was going to do. I had the most important deadline of my life coming up, and I didn't even know where to start with the homework. I needed information, which meant books, which meant libraries, which the wizarding world didn't really have.

    But Malfoy had talked about how impressive his library at home was, hadn't he?

    Maybe that was why there were no libraries in public. Magic made knowledge lend itself to power even more than normal, and history was quite clear that any good elite caste would guard power jealously. If my answer was anywhere, it was going to be in someone's private collection. I stood there in silence, wracking my brain for what sort of family would both have the sort of thing that I needed and would let me access it. The Longbottoms and Lovegoods weren't the type to have anything helpful, and the Malfoys weren't the type to let me in. The Weasleys were right out. To tell the truth, I just didn't know of that many old pureblood families. The only thing I could think of was…

    They named him Black, for his heart, and he was the first Dark Lord.

    When the deed was done, Griffon Black called forth a demon, and asked for the gift of life.

    Black manor—only a few miles north of here—sits empty for the first time in history.

    Well. That would work just fine, wouldn't it? It was only a story, sure, but where else could I turn when the hard facts were killing me? Stories always came from somewhere, after all. And it wasn't like there was anyone to stop me since Sirius Black was apparently exiled from the House. The wards would almost certainly deny him entry, even if they tended to decay without a power source. Tom—no—Voldemort had once told me that most old pureblood families favoured blood wards, which drew their power from the family living inside.

    Unlike the ones in the Egyptian tombs which were powered by a sort of crystal matrix at their centre, the Black Manor's wards would be near on collapsing after twelve years of no power. Any idiot could get in with the right training. Given that I counted a curse breaker and a fledgling Dark Lord among my teachers, I think I qualified. The only problem was that the reason blood wards were even used was how incredibly absolute they tended to be in their judgement. There'd be no way to get in without a way to bypass…

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

    Oh, hell. Throwing myself out of bed as quietly as possible so as to not wake Ginny, I started rummaging through the part of my trunk I knew held my Hogwarts robes. I'd been too busy to wash them all summer. I'd been beating myself up about it off and on, but it might just save my life. I briefly entertained that maybe Ron had a point in his slobbiness, but near immediately dashed the thought against the proverbial rocks. Quickly, I started turning out the pockets of all of my robes. Come on, in one of these, there had to be… No, no, not that one, oh please come on…

    There!

    I shakily held up the handkerchief Professor McGonagall had given me and had to fight the sudden urge to kiss it. I'd never washed the thing, and it had slipped from my mind so thoroughly I'd never gotten rid of it either. There, dried brown and staining an unassuming rag, was my best hope of salvation: a sample of Draco Malfoy's blood.

    A healthier Hermione might have sighed in relief. A Hermione who hadn't been violated by a memory in a book, maybe, or even one who'd just gotten more sleep. But this Hermione? This me, this now?

    By the time morning came, I was almost shocked that my half mad giggles and sobs hadn't managed to wake Ginny.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Hermione just seems she's gone full "the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully" mode.
     
    Well that's... not something a few chalk lines on the floor and some shouted words from a dead language can fix in a moment. I hope Hermione at least manages to go out with a bang, as I notice a distinct lack of "I swear to do no harm to Tom Marvolo Riddle" among her oaths...

    Also, Charlie has/had depressive episodes? And they let him handle dragons? Wtf, wizarding world?!
     
    8 - The First Artifice
  • Threadmarks
    • Content Warning for Suicidal Ideation going forward. Stay safe, y'all.




    I shakily held up the handkerchief Professor McGonagall had given me and had to fight the sudden urge to kiss it. I'd never washed the thing, and it had slipped from my mind so thoroughly I'd never gotten rid of it either. There, dried brown and staining an unassuming rag, was my best hope of salvation: a sample of Draco Malfoy's blood.

    A healthier Hermione might have sighed in relief. A Hermione who hadn't been violated by a memory in a book, maybe, or even one who'd just gotten more sleep. But this Hermione? This me, this now?

    By the time morning came, I was almost shocked that my half mad giggles and sobs hadn't managed to wake Ginny.


    The First Artifice​


    Every single second between my sudden realisation and the sun's rising was spent coming up with a plan and theorycrafting the ritual circles that I'd need. I'd sent a quick letter to Luna asking if I could stay over at her house for the remaining two weeks of the break. Her response had been shockingly quick and equally enthusiastic, which solved the first problem of my plan handily.

    Once that had finished and breakfast had passed me by in a haze of ideation and theory, Ron pulled me into his room to talk. Mrs. Weasley called up to leave the door open, prompting Ron to flush and me to roll my eyes. Even if the idea she was getting at wasn't ridiculous, she'd left her right to authority in Egypt. I'd closed the door as soon as we'd stepped into Ron's cluttered little room.

    "You've got that look on your face," Ron started.

    I sat down on a comic-covered stool. "What look?"

    "The look where you've got a plan nobody else would ever think of." Ron had his own look. He seemed to be excited, like we were to be embarking on some grand adventure. I really wasn't sure how to take that. "So come on, what is it?"

    "Well," I hesitated. Speaking honestly, Ron would likely be more of a hindrance than a help here. I did mean to steal away into a library for two weeks. That wasn't precisely his cup of tea. He meant well, but I needed to find a way to convince him to back off, which would be… difficult to manage. "It's not quite a plan, more of an idea."

    "What's the idea, then?"

    "You remember the story about the Black family, right?" Ron nodded. "Well, I think I know how to get into their Manor."

    He frowned. "But aren't they all, y'know, evil? How could that help?"

    "Because they're an old magic family and they'll have lots of books. Something in there might be helpful."

    "Hogwarts has lots of books too," Ron said.

    "If the answer was sitting in Hogwarts, I wouldn't be dying, Ron." That hit him like a slap to the face. It had been my intent to shake him up, but still. It didn't feel great to just use it as a weapon like that. Needs must, though. Being nice takes time, and I hadn't any to spare.

    "Right," he said, now failing to make eye contact and making me feel even worse. "Makes sense, I suppose. So, I guess we're going to the creepy evil manor. Great."

    "I'm going, you're staying here." Ron almost immediately made to protest. "Because I need you here, Ron," I cut him off. "Your Mum would never let me just run off, but she might let me stay with the Lovegoods who will." I wasn't quite sure about that, but failing all else it would be easier to slip out when not under Mrs. Weasley's watchful eye. "I've already talked to Luna about it. I just need your help convincing your Mum to let me go. I can't do that without you."

    That wrapped it up neatly, I thought. Ron got to be useful and important, I got the opportunity to browse a hidden and forbidden library in peace. The small part of me that wasn't quietly panicking was almost salivating at the thought.

    "I don't like this. It's too dangerous," he said. I noted he hadn't thought so when he was coming along. He was such a boy, honestly. There was hardly going to be anyone that needed duelling, and I was pretty sure being a fledgling Dark Lord's student beat out enthusiasm for everything else. Not that he knew that, of course, but still.

    "It's this or wait for the inevitable," I said. "Don't you get it? I have to do this."

    Ron heaved a great sigh. "Fine. Okay. I still don't like it, but fine."

    "Thanks, Ron," I stood and gave him a hug. He stiffened up a bit, but he could deal. "Now let's go convince your Mum to let me go."

    I dragged Ron back out of his room, down the stairs, and into the kitchen, where I knew Mrs. Weasley would be washing up.

    "Mrs. Weasley?" I asked, pulling her attention from the pots and pans scrubbing themselves.

    She turned around and gave me a tight smile. "What is it, dear?"

    I gave Ron a look, and he returned it by urging me forward. Right, of course. I wasn't quite sure why I was nervous about this. It wasn't like I wanted her approval. "So ever since the Summerly Storytelling, Luna and I have been writing, and she asked me to come stay over at her place for the rest of the summer. Can I?" The act of asking grated. She wasn't even my mother, just someone trying to stand in.

    Mrs. Weasley flicked her wand, and the dishes came to a halt. It seemed that I'd earned her full attention. "I'm sorry dear," she started, "but—"

    "Only, she's been telling me all about her library, and I wanted to see it."

    "I think that you'll have to tell her you'll come see it some other time?" I only just managed not to scoff. It wasn't exactly like I had a lot of 'other time' left, and I knew that she knew that.

    "Why?" I asked.

    She blinked. "I'm sorry?" Seemed like her kids didn't often ask her that question. I wasn't shocked. The Weasleys tended to go for the emotional plea rather than the rational argument. It would be a good reminder that I wasn't one of hers.

    "I want to know why I can't visit Luna." From the look on her face, I had her. She couldn't admit to knowing about Healer Jameson's advice about familiar people and places.

    She quickly schooled her expression. "Because, dear, that madman Black is on the loose. It's not safe."

    I rolled my eyes. "So the Death Eater is going to go have a change of heart and attack the pureblood Lovegoods?"

    "Well—"

    "Please, Mum?" Ron interrupted with a not-quite-whine.

    "Don't tell me that you want to go too," she chided.

    "No I don't," he lied, "they're just gonna be holed up in books the whole time. But you know Loon—er—Luna hasn't had anyone to talk to since her Mum died."

    Mrs. Weasley's face softened a bit at that, and I made a point to ask Ron about it. At the very least, I could see why the family defaulted to the emotional appeal. "Oh, fine," she said after a long moment. "But not for the rest of the summer. Only a week. We've got to go to Diagon Alley for your school things then, and we'll need to make sure you've got everything packed."

    I wasn't quite happy with that, not really. A week wasn't all that long to research. I was about to speak up to push for more, to say that I could give Ron my money and he could buy my things for me, but it wasn't to be.

    "Thanks Mum!" he said, the traitor. "Come on 'Mione. I'll help you pack." With that he grabbed my shoulder and dragged me out of the kitchen. Ron ushered me up the stairs and then sort of stopped. "I um, er, where were we going?"

    That earned a proud smile that I barely managed to hide, and I grabbed his hand. "Come on." I pulled Ron up and through into Ginny's room. The fog cleared from his face as soon as I opened the door. I pushed him in, and closed the door behind us.

    "Sorry, forgot where we were headed for a sec," he said. "Weird."

    "I'm sure it's nothing," I said, keeping the pride out of my voice. "So, what's this about Luna not having anyone to talk to?" The deflection was easy. Forgetfulness wards really only worked if you kept attention away from them, after all.

    "Oh, erm. Right. So, a while back, Luna's Mum died in some weird experiment. I dunno what. Only, Luna got really weird after. Ginny and her were thick as anything before, but once she went, y'know, all Loony, they sorta stopped talking."

    Well that was… Okay she was rather strange, but hardly strange enough to avoid. I'd need to see about talking to Ginny. Later, though. When I wasn't on a timer. Putting it out of my mind, I started packing.

    "So, what do you think you'll find out there?" Ron asked.

    "I'm not sure," I said, and it was true. It wasn't like they'd have a book titled Stopping Thaumeal Inversion for Dummies, but they'd surely have all sorts of magic bolstering rituals, or potions books, or research journals, or something. "I suppose I'll know it when I see it."

    A few minutes into packing, Luna's owl Octavius came back by. I scrawled a note telling Luna that they could come pick me up whenever they liked, and sent him off with a kiss on the forehead.




    Not to sound like a broken record, but I hated apparition.

    Mr. Lovegood had come by to pick me up within an hour of me giving the note to Octavius, at exactly 8:53. I was assured that this was important somehow. He'd shrunk my trunk down, shoved it in one of the many, many pockets on his outfit, and we'd disappeared with a pop. The sickening twisting squeezing sensation was simultaneously blessedly short and far, far too long. After it was over, I swayed while Mr. Lovegood held me steady by the arm and spoke in a gentle voice which went in one ear and out the other.

    "There now, focus on your breathing. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and… attagirl. Sidealong's always worse. I'd have warned you in advance, but I find the anticipation of the thing's always worse than the thing itself. If you need to lose your breakfast, go ahead. Very normal. Now I think about it, I think I might have lost my breakfast too. I know I made it, not quite sure if I ever got round to eating it… "

    After several long moments, I managed to find my own feet again. "Thank you, Mr. Lovegood."

    "Oh, please! My name is Xenophilius. Call me that. Or Xeno. Philly, maybe. Nobody's ever called me that before. That might be fun, don't you think?"

    I… what was I even meant to do with all that? "Can I just call you Mr. Lovegood?"

    "Well, I'm hardly the one to tell you what you can or can't do, of course. Er, except for that." He pointed at a bush sprouting what looked to be something like radishes. "You should probably stay away from the dirigible plums."

    "Yes, sir. Will do," I said absently, and took a look at where we'd landed.

    The house in front of me was, well, it was a rook. Like, the chess piece. It seemed to be just one big tower, with parapets all along the top. I was left to wonder if those were there as decorative railings, or if the place actually had a history of needing the defence. Given the recency of the last war, I wasn't quite sure. Surrounding the tower were the gardens that I was quickly coming to expect from a wizarding home, all surrounded by a wooden fence. On the gate were all sorts of signs, one proudly declaring Mr. Lovegood as the editor for the Quibbler. As I understood from Luna he was the everything else of the Quibbler too, but I supposed that wasn't as impressive a title.

    Mr. Lovegood opened the gate for me with a bow, ushering me into the yard. He caught up with me at the front door, opening that for me as well with a little flourish. "Welcome to our home, Miss Granger."

    "Just Hermione's fine, please."

    "Of course, of course," he said, seeming faintly amused for reasons I couldn't place. I took the moment to look around. It seemed as if the entire first floor was one room, namely the kitchen. The whole place was decorated in bright colours, little paintings of myriad creatures dotting the walls. Taking up the centre was a wrought iron spiral staircase leading up into the ceiling.

    Mr. Lovegood turned to the interior. "Introducing Lady Just Hermione!" he called. Immediately, the distinct sound of footsteps on stairs began sounding through the house. Luna appeared rounding the steps after a moment, clad in a simple white dress stained with what looked to be paint. She met me with a smile.

    "Just Hermione! You came!" Luna shot forward and wrapped me in a hug.

    "Hi Luna," I said. She let me go and took my shrunken trunk from Mr. Lovegood.

    "For the record, I don't think you're 'just' anything," Luna said as she turned back to the stairs. "Come on, I'll show you my room."

    I followed her up through the second floor, which seemed to be a quarter living room, a quarter Quibbler production, and about half stacks and stacks of books. Luna didn't stop, though, and I kept following. The next floor had a wall surrounding the stairwell with a curved door bearing the name 'Luna' ensconced in a crescent moon. She opened it up without hesitation, leading me into what could only be her bedroom.

    The room's walls seemed to be covered in book shelves. Only half were covered in actual books. The rest were holding clothes, odd spinning and whizzing knick knacks, and origami creatures of all sizes and shapes. There were two beds right next to each other, one mussed up with blue and yellow sheets, the other with red and gold. The latter bed seemed to be well made, including the books laid out in an orderly fashion on top of it.

    Luna placed my trunk by the red and gold bed, and with a whispered word it expanded out to full size. That done, she plodded over to the other and sat down to watch me.

    "Thanks," I said. "I suppose those books didn't fit on the shelves?" I pointed to the bed.

    "Oh, no, they do," she responded with the same shine to her voice as always. "People always see a problem and say they're going to sleep on it, so I thought you might want to do the same." I took a closer look and sure enough, the books on the bed I'd been offered were all medical in nature. A few did look a bit questionable, but the thought was there.

    "I don't think that this is quite what people mean," I said with a bemused smile.

    "Well, maybe it's what they should," she said, sure as anything. "I certainly don't do much thinking when I'm sleeping. Maybe I should practise that…"

    I moved half the pile of books over to the other side before sitting down to face Luna. "Thanks for being willing to help out," I said after a long moment. "It means a lot."

    "I'm happy to do it!" she chirped. "Do I get to know what I'm doing?"

    "Oh, yes. Of course," I said. I hadn't quite realised until then just how little she knew. She knew I had something medically wrong with me, and given that she had searched for the terms in the books she'd sent she almost certainly knew the implications. But… "Have you told your Dad about…" I gestured to myself.

    "No, I don't think I have," Luna looked up in thought. "Though he very often knows things I haven't told him, so I don't know that that means anything."

    "Okay, well that's good." It meant I could probably trust her, at least. Especially since there apparently weren't a lot of people she could even tell, though I felt a twinge of guilt even thinking it. "So, I guess I'll start by saying I'm on a bit of a time limit."

    "Aren't we all?" she said.

    "Well mine's a bit shorter. I've only got a week—"

    Her eyes widened. "But you're not see-through yet!"

    "I mean, a week to finish what I need to do," I rushed out, more than a bit off balance. "I've got a year for that, and—" I stopped. Oh God, had I just told her? I hadn't even told Ron! She knew! She knew and I could already almost feel her pity. I didn't need that or her judging stares or her comments or… I stood to do something, leave maybe, but Luna's voice stopped me.

    "Oh, well that's good," she said much more calmly than I was feeling.

    "In what world is only having a year to live good?" I all but yelled, only just mindful of Mr. Lovegood downstairs.

    "Well," she smiled at me, "It's better than the world where you only have a week."

    I sat back down and slumped, tears threatening to well up. "How can you look on the bright side of this?"

    Luna tossed that around in her mind for a moment before seeming to come to a decision. "It's easy," she said. She stood and walked over to my bed before sitting down right next to me. "I'm just helping. It's harder for you, but that's why you ask for help, because it's easier to help with something than to do it yourself."

    I looked away from her. "I don't know if anyone can help me with this."

    Luna leaned against my side. "Maybe. But then, why are you here?"

    She… well, she had a point. I went to continue, to ask her about what I needed to know, but it caught in my throat. Why was it that thinking about the leap was always easier than doing it? All my planning to tell Luna what she needed in order to help seemed impossible now I was facing it. I wasn't even sure why. She didn't seem to mind my indecision, though. After another long few moments, she spoke up again.

    "You're really brave, you know." She stated it like a fact, like talking about homework.

    "I'm sorry?"

    "You're forgiven," I could hear the slightest smile in her voice.

    "I meant, what do you mean?"

    "Bravery means continuing on even when you're scared."

    "I'm not…" I trailed off, not even sure what I'd been about to say.

    "I am. The idea of going to meet magic like that is scary." She hummed against my shoulder again. "I think that if it were me, I'd be running to Daddy's arms and never leaving. But you're looking at the scariest thing in the world and going to try to fix it. That's brave."

    "How do you know I'm trying to fix it?" I asked quietly. As far as I knew, all I'd let her know was that I was sick, and that I needed her help with something.

    "You're here, aren't you? You're not at home, or running around with the Weasleys, or at Hogwarts early. I think you're kind and brave, but I don't think that I'm your favourite person, and you're here anyway. So, you must be trying something." She reasoned it all out loud as if it was the simplest thing in the world, and as she spoke I almost believed it was.

    "I think that I know how to get into Black Manor," I blurted out before I could stop myself. "I want to go out there tomorrow morning. They might have something in their library that can help me."

    Luna perked up beside me, standing immediately. "I'll go tell Daddy that we need a linner picnic for two tomorrow. We can take the brooms out!"

    I reeled back a bit. "It might be dangerous, I don't want to put you in harms way…"

    "Don't be silly," she laughed. "Two heads are better than one!" With that said, Luna turned and ran her way down the stairs.




    Freshening up dried blood was one of the first things that not-yet-Voldemort had taught me after I'd made my vows. I'd taken significant convincing to decide that it was something worth learning, but I was incredibly thankful that he'd bothered now that it had become relevant. He'd reminded me of the importance of power no matter the source, of what it meant to me, and he'd chided me for submitting to my fear of what other people thought, asking if I was even really a Gryffindor. Of course, as with everything he talked me into, the thing that held me back was the all too weighty stigma.

    According to 'common sense' and some of my more puritanical textbooks, blood magic was said to be addictive. It wasn't, though. Not really. Blood magic was addictive in the same way that the automobile was addictive: Not perfect in every situation, but dead useful most of the time. Even if there was a little risk—just like with automobiles—the usefulness more than made up for it. It was very easy to start to see everything as a nail, of course, but that's easily remedied by keeping an open mind; a solution that the purebloods who typically learned blood magic had significant issue with even on a good day.

    And frankly, if breaking into an ancient blood ward wasn't a correct, reasonable, and justified use of blood magic, then I didn't know what was.

    It was a work that was significant to me, which demanded that the ritual be performed at a significant time. For magic such as this where I was convincing magic that there had been a change from one thing to another, midnight was best. The transition from one day to the next had weight, granting the ritual legitimacy in Legacy that couldn't be denied. It would be useful given how novel the whole thing was like to be.

    All that was why Luna and I spent a majority of the day on her roof. Luna claimed that her Mum had once used this very spot for all sorts of strange magics, and it showed. I'd taken the time to familiarise myself earlier, to reach out and feel the pressure of the world around me, and it was undeniable. Luna's Mum had left a mark in this place, placing more weight here than I'd felt even at the Weasleys. It was no Hogwarts, but the weight of magic upon the place would help immensely, even past that which my own disentanglement leaked into the world.

    I spent some hours drawing out the spell circles and making my preparations while Luna gathered up all the materials that we'd need. First was freshening up Malfoy's blood, causing it to glob up as a liquid once more and split itself into two little vials. I corked them up and braided together some leather cord so it was just long enough to make a necklace. I split the braid at the bottom, tying one end of the split to the neck of the vial. The other end of each side of the cord was tied together into a loop. Glass was nearly thaumically neutral, being a very stable liquid that acted as a solid, and potions glass was typically spelled to be even more so. The leather was important too, as was its braiding. Leather was undeniably dead, and so served as an excellent conduit for Life aspected magics. Life fed on Death after all, and vice versa. The cord would need replacing every once in a while given that it was the only thing which would be consumed with use, but I doubted that I would need this particular bit of kit for all that long anyway.

    I asked Luna to find some clay bowls, and she had just the thing. They were colourful and had clearly been made by her, but they worked all the better for it. Legacy was connection was legitimacy to magic. The clay being earthly and thus Orderly with little opinion on the whole Life/Death aspect, it also lent a great deal of stability to the ritual. Without it, the magic would try to lean far more Dark than I wanted, and would demand more price for power than I'd already factored in. That was the thing about the Dark Powers: They were easy. Chaos, Death, Time, all of these things just happened naturally. It was easier to bring them about than to do otherwise, provided you could stomach the price. Light things were more complicated, but far less inherently costly. Building something was hard, after all, and so was keeping it built.

    Constantly through my preparations had I been reminded that there was a reason that most people didn't bother to learn the ins and outs of how and why magic worked. It was half symbolism (for which I was happy I had Mandy Enoch to guide me; I was pants at symbolism), and half methodical planning and set up. Ritual crafting was many things, but it most certainly wasn't convenient.

    I wove together two lattices of silver wire and placed them within the clay bowls. Silver, like most of the rarer metals, served as a good conduit for magical energy. It was quite happy to take on and 'store' the properties of whatever you fed it. Gold was better for that, but it was horribly soft, and there weren't many ways of fixing that without ruining that sort of magical absorption. Silver was a passable option. It was made much more so by a quick Draught of Magical Absorption that I whipped up and let the wire soak in in the hours before midnight.

    Luna had asked me to make a bit extra of the potion, citing that she wanted to use it as a shampoo to sleep on a book. I briefly entertained arguing that that wasn't how it worked before thinking better of it. Best not to scorn the girl helping me.

    The ritual circles themselves were just as complicated as everything else, and I'd needed two of them. One for myself, and one for Luna. I'd quickly realised in my frantic planning the night before that a single circle wouldn't actually work. Too many things needed done at the same time. So, multiple circles doing multiple things were inscribed on a larger whole. Frankly, I didn't have the time or knowledge to design from scratch. Instead, I'd taken a couple of the rituals described in the Ritualist's Spellbook and made some heavy modifications. It wouldn't have been possible without Bill's lessons. I made a point to find a way to properly thank him later.

    Finally, after I triple checked everything, Luna had insisted that I get some sleep before midnight came around. I wanted to argue, but she simply said that not getting enough sleep would make the 'flamps' floating around the house annoyed and distract us during the ritual. It made her point in that odd way of hers, and it wasn't one I could argue with. Not that I didn't want to. Even despite how late I'd stayed up the night before, I expected sleep to be hard won. Doing anything but focusing on the mission in the here and now gave me time to think, and I wasn't too fond of where those thoughts led. I had far too many anxieties about the price of failure for that.

    Blessedly, my fears were unfounded. I was out as soon as my head hit the pillow.




    "And you remember what you're supposed to do?" I asked as I looked over my copy of the written incantation. Luna had lit candles and spread them around the roof, giving us just enough light to read by.

    "I think so," she said.

    "'Think so' isn't the same as 'know so'," I said. "This is important. We can't afford to mess it up."

    She seemed immune to my stress. "I won't know if I remembered it right until it works. That's the point of tests, isn't it?"

    "Just… try not to forget?"

    "I'll do my best to remember that."

    I opened my mouth to ask whether she was messing with me or not when a bell rang midnight. With a deep breath and a significant look to Luna, I drew a knife and began to incant.

    I dragged the knife across my wrist, letting the blood fall into the clay bowl and soak into the silver wires (Luna had been surprisingly okay with this when I brought it up, for which I was thankful). I spoke of unity, asking for magic to make the silver one with my life. Pleading even, for the shedding of lifeblood was undeniably an act of darkest Death. Pain served as my price. The pressure of magic around us increased and the blood began to glow in the moonlight. There was a moment of reprieve while the blood soaked in, and I used it to bind the wound on my wrist.

    "They're watching," Luna whispered reverently. "They've never watched me like this before." I didn't have the time to question it, but quickly checked to make sure her end had worked regardless. Seeing her own bowl of blood glowing, I breathed a quick sigh of relief.

    The lifeblood receded, absorbing into the silver entirely and leaving it red-tinted and gleaming. I began to incant again, picking up the preprepared vial of Draco's blood. This incantation told a story of sorts, describing precisely what I needed to happen next. Holding the vial up by the cord, I lowered it into the centre of the lattice of blood-silver. The wire crept up seemingly of its own volition, wrapping itself tightly around the vial. The ends poked through the cork to feed themselves inside and weave up against the glass. Finally, two pieces of the wire rose up to meet the loop in the cord; the half of the split braid not tied to the neck. The wire formed a hook, pulling the leather tight against the cork.

    It was perhaps a bit gratuitous, but bending and shaping wire into a uniform pattern like that was far easier with magic than by hand. Another check showed that Luna's seemed to be working similarly, if a bit more slowly. The magic in the air sat taut while I waited for her to finish. Once Luna had finished the wire shaping, I gave her a nod and began the next stage.

    Where the rest was simply the completion of setup, this final step was the actual enchanting. My incantation spoke of hiding, of concealment, of using the certainty of life and blood to convince magic itself that I was no different from the life inside the vial. I spoke that so long as Draco Malfoy lived and I bore this artifice, my blood was as good as his.

    The whole construct glowed brightly in the moonlight as I spoke, and dimmed only when I finished. The pressure all around me relaxed, like letting go of a deep breath. That same sense told me that the ritual had done exactly as I wanted. I just didn't know if that would be enough. I knew I'd be shaking with exhaustion if the magic had actually been lensed through my core, but that was the point of ritual for most, wasn't it? I wasn't sorry about reaping the benefits.

    A grin overtook me despite myself. Both the joy of success and the raw irony struck me. After all, hadn't I first laid hands on Malfoy's blood when he'd accused me of stealing magic? He really had no idea how right he was. It was petty spite, but I felt I was owed that much at least.

    The smile Luna gave me was far more genuine and drove thoughts of Malfoy out of my mind.

    "Come on," I said. "Sooner we get this cleaned up, the sooner we can get to bed. We've got a long day tomorrow."

    "My favourite kind," she said, and we got to work.




    "You've got your basket all packed? Books? Brooms? Good, good," Mr. Lovegood said. He clearly doted on Luna, and I couldn't help but feel bad about deceiving him.

    Luna had told him that we'd be spending the day flying out into the countryside and reading. It was technically true, though incredibly lacking in specifics. I'd had enough of a guilty conscience to tell Luna that I could go on my own, but she'd shot that down quickly. I didn't actually know where Black Manor was, after all. She was quick to point out that she did.

    "I think we've got everything," I said. "I've already triple checked." The sun was just barely risen, and I was impatient to get going.

    "Oh yes, yes, but one more thing!" Mr. Lovegood reached into his pockets and pulled out what looked to be two matching earrings with full sized dice hanging from them. He whipped out his wand, and tapped it against each of them in turn. "Portus! There we go. Can't be too safe with that Sirius Black about. Just say 'Flobberworm', and you'll be brought right back here.

    He offered one to each of us, and Luna put hers in without hesitation. "Er, Mr. Lovegood?"

    "Yes, Ms. Hermione?"

    "My ears aren't pierced." My parents were against piercings of any kind, and I'd never much seen the point myself. It just seemed like something for the girls who didn't have anything better to do than talk about boys. I wasn't boy crazy like that, and I didn't much care to be. Seeing that Luna wasn't like that, though, and she'd had her ears pierced… It made me reevaluate for a moment. It was something to think about later. When I had time.

    "Ah! Well. I'll make it a clip on, but I'll have you know that it's hardly secure. Someone could grab and pull, and then where would you be?" He wiggled his wand and the earring shifted to a sort of clip on cuff. I took it and put it on.

    "I'll um, I'll think about it," I said. "Thank you."

    "No need for that. Now, you two girls have fun! I'll see you by sundown."

    Luna hugged her father and mounted her broom. I did the same, albeit with markedly less confidence. She shot me a smile, and we kicked off.

    The flight was longer than the one to the Storytelling had been, made worse by the fact we had to circle wide to avoid the Burrow. Luna's constant and intentional weaving through the air slowing her down didn't much help either. After a moment, I realised that the flying wasn't as bad as I'd feared. I wasn't going to be playing quidditch anytime soon, but the Lovegoods' brooms seemed to be much better behaved than the Weasleys'. The flight quickly grew monotonous.

    I'd been pointedly not giving myself time to think for the past few days, but I didn't dare to push the broom to go any faster. The weight of what I was doing struck me then. I was breaking into an ancient magical manor of one of the darkest families the UK had ever seen. Sure, the 'dark arts' were mostly a legal classification for criminalised magics that had little to do with the actual polarity of the spells in question, but… Inaccurate and infuriating terminology aside, Voldemort and his followers were still hardly nice people. I didn't dare to think that the particulars of the story that that Fawcett girl had told were accurate—it was almost certainly just a scary story exaggerated from known facts for the explicit purpose of being scary—but Voldemort had told me all about the sorts of wards the oldest pureblood manors had, and the Blacks were one of the oldest of them all.

    If anything that people had been saying about Sirius Black were true, then the Black family had been mad in every sense of the word for a long, long time. No part of me believed that their wards were going to be the gentle sort. With that much madness, that much hatred for so many years? Well, magic followed minds, especially magic tied with something so close as blood. Even if they hadn't been planned as such, their wards would be just as cruel as their masters. According to Bill, that was why the Weasley family was never able to keep up wards around the Burrow for long. The people inside were just too welcoming.

    With a hatred for the 'impure' that had burned so brightly for so very long in that home, the wards would almost certainly be carrying that enduring hate for as long as they could. No, it wouldn't be the strength of the defences that decayed; it would be the ward's perceptiveness. That's what I was counting on. Certainly, a healthy blood ward would spot me out. Draco Malfoy was from an offshoot family, for one, and had likely never been introduced to the 'family magic'. A healthy ward would almost certainly need to be introduced to each new member of the family by one it already knew, like a skittish dog. The comparison wasn't even all that farfetched. Blood was about the most Life aspected thing that existed. According to my research, old enduring blood magics had a tendency to take on a life of their own for just that reason. On top of that, wards that had been so finely tuned for so many centuries would almost certainly catch on that I was lying to them.

    That was the thing, though. All of that was if the wards were healthy. Fortunately for me, I was almost certain that the Black family magic and I were kindred spirits. What I was betting on was that the wards were near enough to dying to accept my lie of another Black greedily, to not have the strength to subject Luna and I to more than passing scrutiny.

    I could certainly relate. I was self aware enough to realise how much more insular I'd been since reading that letter.

    It was a massive risk, though. If I had messed up making the blood-masks, or miscalculated just how close to death the wards were, then Luna and I would certainly die. Painfully. If we were lucky. I'd warned Luna for a reason, even if her presence lent me strength I wasn't sure I'd have otherwise. The only painful part of Thaumeal Inversion was the knowing, at least. According to Healer Jameson, fading from existence was supposedly rather peaceful. There was a choice to be had there, and it weighed on me.

    As we flew, and as I thought and worried and planned, I was reminded of the hundredth birthday party for my great grandmother, Grand-Mère Granger. I'd been small then, only seven or eight, and she'd been reading to me while the other kids played. She was hooked up to machines of all sorts, the sort which I doubted I'd be able to name even today and that the telly told me ought to have been beeping instead of silently whirring away. Grand-Mère Granger had read me poem after poem before closing that book of hers and giving it to me. She told me to keep it, that she wouldn't need it anymore. She said that she was tired, and that she would need help going to sleep.

    "On the back of those boxes there, look for the switches," she'd said to me. "I can't very well get any decent sleep with the lights on, can I, little angel?"

    My Dad had seen me, and run over to smack my arm away. Me and the rest of the kids were ushered out of the room. The door was closed, but I couldn't help but hear some of the words being said.

    "Because I'm tired!" she'd cried out. "Save me the sanctimony! It's coming whether I like it or not! Don't make me do all this horrid waiting to satisfy your own guilty conscience. I know how this book ends, just let me skip the last few pages!"

    I hadn't understood then what she meant. How could I have? I was so very small, and the ending always was my least favourite part of a book. Now, though, I think I was starting to get it. I wasn't like to go looking for my end, no, I had too much to do. But if in searching for a fix I accidentally skipped the last few pages? Well, that was barely a loss at all.

    Luna pulled me out of my thoughts by calling out and stopping. "Look, there it is!" I followed her pointing finger to see a messy structure maybe a mile away. "Can you feel it?"

    I closed my eyes and opened myself up. After a few long moments, I realised what she was talking about. From some ways ahead of us there was a pressure, yes, but emotion too. The magic carried feeling with it in a way I'd never felt before. The emotions clearly weren't my own, but still they riled up inside of me. I wondered at how very potent it must have been to make such an impression at such a distance.

    Never before had I felt blind hatred like I could feel emanating from the Black Manor.

    "The wards will kill you if the necklace doesn't work," I said. Before it had been conjecture, but now I said it with certainty. Nothing that hated that much would do anything else. "It'll probably hurt a lot."

    "Then I'm happy that the necklaces will work." For all her bravado, though, she seemed unnerved too.

    "I wouldn't be mad if you wanted to stay out here."

    "No, I'm staying with you," she said. The cheeriness that she normally kept in her voice seemed to disappear.

    "You don't have to."

    "But I'm going to."

    I sighed, clearly seeing that I wasn't going to convince her. Had I a wand I might have stunned her, checked my work on the blood-masks myself, but it wasn't to be. As it was, I just had to grin and bear it. "Okay. Fine. In that case, time to put on the necklace. Make sure it's all the way against the skin."

    I pulled out my own, wobbling on the broom slightly and putting it on. A very thorough check to make sure that I didn't have any fabric between me and the necklace later, I looked over to Luna. It seemed like she'd poked feathers of all different sizes and colours into the braid of the cord. The effect was admittedly rather pretty, and a quick mental run through assured me that the feathers wouldn't interfere with the function of the blood-mask.

    "Okay," I breathed, "Let's keep going."

    We approached the Manor at a sedate pace, something that was almost entirely unnecessary but made me feel better about the whole ordeal. The overgrown fields surrounding it were in sorry shape. The closer we got, the more the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I didn't know how much of that was my nervousness and how much was a reaction to the sinister magic in the air.

    Finally, I felt the wards. They formed a nearly tangible barrier around the grounds, slowing us nearly to a halt. I swore that I felt the magic judging us, looking somewhere inside to see if we were worthy.

    And after far too many long, tense, horrible, anxiety-ridden moments…

    The Black family wards let us through.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Hate to leave on a cliffhanger, but it's holiday season and I'd feel bad not giving my beta a break, at the very least. Next post is gonna be in January. This does mean that I get to spend more time refining the next chapter, and it might even be a fair bit longer. We'll have to see.

    As a comment for the chapter itself, things are starting to happen! Our dear Hermione is out rolling rather than just taking punches! Looking forward to being able to show you all where it'll go.
     
    The Raid of Black Manor is on!

    Phase 1: Pass the Walls of Hate
    Phase 2: Traverse the Corridors of Madness
    Phase 3: Catalogue the Cursed Library
    Phase 4: Get out with your mind and skin reasonably intact

    Good Luck!
     
    9 - Black Manor
  • Threadmarks
    • We approached the Manor at a sedate pace, something that was almost entirely unnecessary but made me feel better about the whole ordeal. The overgrown fields surrounding it were in sorry shape. The closer we got, the more the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I didn't know how much of that was my nervousness and how much was a reaction to the sinister magic in the air.

    Finally, I felt the wards. They formed a nearly tangible barrier around the grounds, slowing us nearly to a halt. I swore that I felt the magic judging us, looking somewhere inside to see if we were worthy.

    And after far too many long, tense, horrible, anxiety-ridden moments…

    The Black family wards let us through.


    Black Manor​


    Black Manor was a massive building with very few nods to such petty ideas as sanity. From the outside, it seemed to be made of a tangle of hallways curving around, crossing each other, turning upside down and inside out only to end in rooms that clearly looked to be taking up the same space as other, separate rooms. The points where things joined or took up the same space made me genuinely nauseous to look at. Escher would've had a field day. I'd stopped to marvel at the mess, at the chaos of it, to wonder what I was even looking at, and Luna had answered.

    "It looks like all the internal expansion charms stopped working," she said. "I've heard stories about this. People expand the rooms out and out and out with a nice pretty outside and a maze inside. Then the charms get too old and…"

    "It's mad," I said.

    "It's magic."

    After nearly an hour of hunting for a door or window that we could open, we managed to find a way in. Our saving grace turned out to be a balcony half buried underground. As soon as I laid a hand on the glass door, a shudder both magic and mundane ran through the building.

    "It's reacting to us being here," I said after a few breaths.

    "Maybe it's waking up." Luna said this in the same pleasant voice as always. "I bet it's excited we're here. I know that I would be too, if I were a house."

    I stopped to wonder at her. "Why?"

    "Houses are meant to have people in them," she said as if it were obvious.

    I took a deep breath. "Right," I said, reminding myself that I needed Luna's help. "That makes sense." It didn't. "I suppose we shouldn't keep it waiting, then." As if on cue, the door slid open of its own accord. I took a step back. "That said, I'm quite sure that that can't be a good sign."

    Luna managed a giggle, somehow. "No, that's how I know I'm right! I don't invite in guests that I'm not excited to see!" With that, she strode in through the offered door. I quieted the part of me that insisted that any snake would be excited to see a mouse, and followed suit.

    As soon as we passed the threshold, darkness seemed to settle in all around. It was hard to see even with the light filtering in from the window, and I rummaged through my bag for a candle, cursing magic's inability to play well with electricity all the while. Really, a torch would have been so much easier to manage, but that would have been too easy, wouldn't it? Luckily, the candles that Luna had provided were charmed to shed more light than normal (albeit in a strange shade of blue-green which gave everything a slightly underwater look) and had no trouble illuminating the whole room.

    In the light, the room revealed itself to be an expansive bedroom in pristine condition. There wasn't even any dust. That said, 'bedroom' might not have been strong enough a word. There was a bed, and there were dressers, and all that you would expect from a bedroom, but that was only the start of it. The sitting area as big as my living room, taking up maybe a third of the space, spoke to that. Another third was made up of what was clearly intended to be a study area, complete with a few books. A quick glance at the spines told me that whoever had lived here had been a Hogwarts student. I recognised a few of the titles.

    Not-Yet-Voldemort had been right. Hogwarts really did need a curriculum update.

    There were conspicuous absences on the shelves, though. Whenever the occupant had left, it seemed that they'd taken some of their favourites with them. Another look around the room showed clear signs that we were in a sort of childhood bedroom whose occupant had seemingly moved out when they grew up. There were stuffed animals on the bed, but no personal photos. Old spellbooks were left behind, likely long since memorised. I flicked through some of the books just in case while Luna wandered around.

    A few minutes later, she called out. "This place is filled with Nargles."

    I managed to pull my eyes away from the potions book I was skimming. "Nargles?" Looking around, I saw an open door and no Luna. I set the book back down on the shelf and made my way over.

    "Oh yes, they're always causing trouble. I think this infestation might be worse than most." Walking through the door, I found what might have been the largest walk-in closet I'd ever seen. It was bigger than my room at home, and was just as strangely half-stripped as the bedroom had been. Only elaborate shoes and dresses remained. Whoever our mystery Black was, I could appreciate their sense of practicality in what they'd taken when they left.

    The clothes weren't the thing that drew the eye, though. There on the opposite end of the closet was a doorway. It was inscribed with a complex runic array with a crystal embedded in the centre. Luna was staring at it with head cocked sideways. Feeling out, the array seemed to be thrumming with magic, above and beyond even the family magic baked into the building all around us.

    "I don't think that Nargles did that, Luna." I eyed the array up and down warily.

    "You never know," she said. "What do you think it's for?"

    "I'm not sure." I tried reading it offhand, but I'd not anywhere near memorised runic script yet. "I can probably figure it out, though." A closer look pointed out to me a few runes that I did know. 'Fire' seemed to be a theme in one of the circles, and I was pretty sure that another was something like 'punish'. If so, it was repeated worryingly often throughout the whole array. "I don't think it's a good idea to mess with it."

    "Shame that the other door out is sealed, then."

    That got my attention. "Sealed?"

    Luna gave me a thoughtful nod. "Oh yes."

    I quickly turned and made my way back into the bedroom proper, beelining to the other door. A quick check showed that the word 'sealed' may have been an understatement. The door seemed to be completely fused with the wall, as if it was just a piece of door shaped moulding. I knocked on it, and it sounded as if it were solid wood. Great.

    "Do you think we can go back outside, find another way in?" I asked as Luna emerged from the closet.

    "I think that the house wants us to be in here," she answered.

    "What, why?"

    "Because the way out is closed," she said as calmly as ever.

    I looked over and realised with dawning horror that she was right. Quickly, I ran over to test the balcony door only to find it was locked. "We still have the portkeys," I said, mind racing.

    "Do you think that the house would let us back in?"

    I took a deep breath. No, no I didn't. Not if the house was making decisions, at least. Mocking up a blasting charm was out for the same reason. I reminded myself that this was where I needed to be, though the assurance was growing quickly less convincing. Another once-over showed that none of the books in the room would be any help. Of course they wouldn't.

    "I suppose," I said slowly, "that I should get translating."




    It took two hours of work, five sheets of parchment, and Luna's enthusiastic help for me to get what I believed to be a functional translation. Or, at least what I believed to be something approximating one. Some of the runes in the array had no equivalent in High Ritualism and You, any of the rituals in A Ritualist's Spellbook, or the outright runic translation guides in my actual textbooks for my upcoming Ancient Runes class.

    Hence, approximate was the strongest word that I was willing to use about my work. That 1:1 translation had taken the first thirty or so minutes. The next thirty were focused on actually arranging the mostly translated runes into their order. The last hour was spent in conjecture, attempting to make educated guesses about what all the untranslatable runes actually meant based on context. Luna had been immensely helpful there, her admittedly more creative mind filled in gaps in ways I hadn't considered. At the end of it all, I knew two things for absolute certainty.

    The first was that the magic involved was the Darkest thing that I'd ever seen save for maybe the Diary. The second was that the caster had had the sort of issues that would make a fascinating case study for generations of therapists to come. Neither was good.

    In simplest possible terms, the array was designed to seal the door and deter the caster from attempting to open it from the other side. 'Simplest' being the key word there. Ascribing the word 'simple' to the construct was about as accurate as calling Hogwarts 'some Scottish school'. That is to say, an insult to everyone and everything involved. The parts of it that I understood were genius. Mad, certainly, horrifying as anything, obviously, but genius regardless. Sealing the door was the easy part. Barely an afterthought in a minor sigil shoved off to the side. The twisted brilliance of it was in the deterrence.

    To anyone but the caster of the spell the door was simply sealed. Over and done with. If, however, the caster themselves attempted to open the door from the other side, they would experience increasingly severe punishment the harder they tried. The lowest of these punishments was stinging, followed by freezing, followed by burning, followed by ripping flesh, followed by something with the same root as the stinging but modified for severity. The best word I could come up for it would be 'agony'. This would be concerning enough on its own, but I could tell by how burnt the runes were into the wood that the caster had reached agony levels more than once.

    That wasn't even the bad bit. The most genius, mad, and complicated in ways I didn't even understand part was how it was fuelled. After all, the spell called to the Dark Powers and nothing but. A price had to be paid, and if I was reading it right then the way it was executed was horrifyingly elegant. When the deterrence was activated, the runic array would reach into the mind of the caster and take the happiness from their memories. It was only specific memories with a common element, of that I was certain, but I didn't even know how to start trying to interpret the array to figure out what that element might be, though. Soul magic was pointedly not my field of expertise.

    As horrifying an insight into a stranger's mind as that all was, none of it was important to the here and now. That fact took me longer than I cared to admit to remember. Morbid curiosity, and all. The actually important bit was this: The price was filtered through the crystal at the centre to feed the runic array, and there were no particular consequences for removing it for anyone but the caster.

    So, shoving my many notes on this madperson's work into my bag (and briefly entertaining burning the lot), I shook myself loose. Luna stood and stretched.

    "Are you ready?" she asked with a yawn.

    "Yes," I said after a moment. "I just hope that we don't have to do this for every door we want to open."

    She shrugged. "At least we'd learn a lot."

    I paused. She had a point. "Yes, but I don't know if any of it would be useful."

    "Oh it certainly would be, I think. Just not right now. Knowledge is funny like that, don't you think?"

    "You're right, of course," I said. I found that I was quickly coming to terms with Luna being right in the strangest of ways. With one last wary glance at the runic array and a deep breath, I grabbed the crystal and pulled. It came free easily, and I almost dropped it. Holding it, I could tell that the crystal absolutely radiated magical power. It would be harder not to feel it, honestly. It was warm to the touch, the same way the sun was warm filtered through the window. Memories of lazy days curled up around a book came unbidden. The effect was peculiar, and I found my mood brightening almost on its own.

    "Wow," I eventually breathed. "Luna, here, feel this!"

    I handed the crystal off, and I saw her face crack in a grin. "I don't think it ever forgot," she said, staring down at it.

    "Forgot what?"

    "What it took."

    This had been the centrepiece of the 'price' segment, hadn't it? "Do you think we should keep it?"

    "Maybe…" Luna closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "But maybe you should put it in your bag. The joy isn't ours to feel."

    I saw some sense in that, but saw even more in being wary of mind-altering magical constructions, and quickly shoved the crystal near the bottom of my bag. It would be a good power source, if nothing else. That done, I turned to the door. I turned the hidden knob we'd found in our inspection and pushed it open.

    Luna and I entered into another massive closet, this one actually filled with clothes. Mostly dresses, I noticed, and most of them black. Emerging from the closet found us in another bedroom, similar in layout but distinctly different in character. Where the room before had been stripped in its occupant's exodus, this one looked rather as if someone had just got up one day and simply never came back. The other thing that struck me was the layout. The first room was split up into thirds—bedroom, sitting area, and study—while this one was nowhere near so balanced. The 'study' seemed as if it had encroached on everything else to the point that the sitting area was just a couple of chairs near the desk. The only concession to the room being a bedroom was a cramped bed, a vanity, and a full-length mirror. The rest of the space was filled with tables covered in complex notes, articles and parchment pinned to boards, and tons and tons of books stacked upon numerous shelves. It was as if somebody had compiled their own personal library and simply decided to move into it.

    I had a sudden vision of my future, and it looked bright.

    Making my way over to one of the tables, I gave the notes a look. With my very recent and holistic dive through my runic translations, I realised that the owner of this bedroom was in fact the person who'd created that runic array. The writing style was similar, and I recognised some of the runes that I didn't know. From a quick once-over, it seemed like the last project Mystery Black Number 2 had been working on was something to do with extracting something that was a property of life (in the same way runic script described blood as a property of life) and putting it in something else.

    Well, I had been looking for the work of someone clever, and my mission was a little mad…

    "I think," I finally said with a long look around, "that we've found our starting point."

    And so Luna and I got to work.




    The room proved to be a treasure trove full of knowledge, all of it fascinating, but little of it useful. Or as Luna had asserted, it wasn't useful yet. I knew that I could certainly make use of books discussing in depth magical theory, or different runic dictionaries, or magical first-aid texts, and any other time I would have loved to dig into a treatise on how different kinds of magic affected the flight patterns of different migratory birds (Luna's eyes in particular had seemed to shine when I found that one), but none of that had any bearing on my little problem. That wasn't to say that they hadn't found their way into my bag, though. You never knew what would be useful given context.

    So we browsed and skimmed and tried not to get lost in our reading for hours, the only noises the turning of pages and the occasional groan of the building settling. At some point, Luna pulled me out of a text on the history of duelling charms to eat the lunch that Mr. Lovegood had prepared for us.

    It was getting to late afternoon when I managed to find something with potential. Hidden between a cheery book on identifying poisonous fungi and a hilariously biased history book was an ancient looking brown tome without a title. In fact, it didn't seem to have any decoration on it at all save for the old leather binding it. It rang all sorts of alarm bells both good and bad in my mind, and I quickly realised that it was bound to be important. In no time at all, I'd hefted it onto a nearby table and was trying to open it. 'Trying' being the operative word. I wasn't succeeding. There was no latch and no mechanism to speak of. The book simply failed to open.

    I felt my eye twitch slightly. Well that just wouldn't stand, would it? I wasn't going to lose to a book again, that was for sure.

    Three ritual circles later, and I was getting increasingly worried that the book was winning. I had just started work on my fourth when Luna pulled my attention away with a hand on my shoulder. It was a matter of some effort not to snap at her. She just smiled at me.

    "It's sundown," she said. I looked to the balcony window covered in packed earth.

    "How do you figure?" I asked.

    "My watch says so." She raised up a wrist adorned in… was that a miniature sundial? How was that supposed to work? After an embarrassingly long moment, I realised that Luna and I were witches. It almost certainly worked by magic. I shook my head to clear my stupor.

    "Well we can't leave yet," I said. "I've almost got this book open."

    Luna gave it an appraising look. "Have you tried asking it?"

    I looked back down to the book. "Would you please open?" I asked, feeling a bit daft. Fortunately, it stayed decidedly shut, proving me right.

    "How rude," Luna pouted. "Well, we can always come back later."

    I hesitated for a moment, looking between her and the book. "Fine. But I'm bringing it with us."

    Luna looked up and around as if to check for something. Seemingly finding whatever she was looking for, she picked up her broom and basket, grabbed her earring, and disappeared with a cry of "Flobberworm!"

    The dark around me seemed to magnify as I gathered my things, even more so than the loss of Luna's candle would justify. I knew that there was no chance of there being anything alive in the place. Really, I did. Even still, I couldn't help but search for shapes in the shadows. I swore that the odd rumble of the building settling grew louder. It was irrational. Nerves, most likely.

    I finally managed to get everything I needed into my backpack and slung it over my shoulder, feeling faintly ridiculous for getting so nervous the moment that Luna left. Bracing myself, I grabbed my earring and portkeyed away.




    The next morning started just the same as the first. We had breakfast, Mr. Lovegood made up a picnic basket, Luna and I were presented with portkeys (colourful bracelets this time), and we flew out to Black Manor. This time, Luna was happy to spend the hour or so long flight talking to me all about the creatures she and her dad liked to go see. I hadn't read about any of them. She seemed to be quite the expert, though, and I was always happy to learn, even if the fact that 'nobody else can see them' set off sceptical little alarm bells in my head.

    Much bigger alarm bells began ringing once we arrived.

    The house—and I was using that term loosely—had changed in our absence. The wards seemed less angry, barely projecting any emotion at all, actually. That would certainly be good under other circumstances, but change meant life. As we got closer to the manor, it became very clear that the shape of the place had changed too. It was smaller, less strung out. Less, well, mad. Slightly. The tangle of exterior hallways and rooms seemed to have shrunken into itself, with hallways shortening and some of the rooms seeming to have disappeared entirely.

    "Nature is healing," came Luna's awed whisper.

    "I don't think nature did this," I said after a long moment. "I think this was magic."

    "What's the difference?" she asked. "Nature is alive, and the manor's alive. I think this is wonderful!"

    "Healed blood wards hurt intruders, Luna."

    She squirmed a bit on her broom. "Maybe wonderful for the house isn't always wonderful for us. Still wonderful."

    I rolled my eyes. "Don't suppose that the balcony to that bedroom's still around?"

    Luna and I flew around to check. I wasn't even shocked when the balcony was gone entirely, seemingly sucked back into the sin against architecture. What we did manage to find was a propped open window to a large room on top of the building. That would've been fine but for the drop of far-too-many metres between the window and the nearest flat surface below it. After some assurance from Luna ("It's not the fall that hurts!", "Please be quiet.") and some very careful manoeuvering ("Look, if I hold my broom just right it starts to shake! I think it's purring.", "Luna."), we managed to get in through the window without dropping anything or anyone.

    And if my heart happened to be pounding after crawling across the much too wide gap between my broom and the windowsill? Then that was nobody's business but my own.

    "That was exciting, don't you think?" Luna asked as she climbed into the room. "A shame that there's no windows in quidditch."

    "I think that I'm very glad that we don't have to leave the same way we came in."

    As Luna continued to muse, I retrieved two more of her candles and lit them with another pre-prepared Incendio. I made a note to make more of those. I was running out, and they really were dead useful. More useful would be not having to need them at all, but beggars couldn't be choosers. Luna pulled me out of my grumbling with a gasp as soon as I lit the candles, and I followed it with one of my own when I looked up.

    We were in what could only be a ballroom. Or at least, I assumed that it must be. A majority of the room was composed of a large wooden floor. There was a stage off on one side, abandoned instruments telling a tale of revelry gone by. It was almost perfectly preserved save for the fine layer of dust and the myriad stains and scorch marks scattered around. The last time this room was used had been a very bad day for someone, clearly. Given the Blacks' reputation, I wasn't sure if I wanted to ask the question of 'who?'.

    "Do you think the instruments still play?" Luna asked.

    "I doubt they're in tune."

    "I've heard stories about the sorts of parties the old families would hold." She began to approach the stage. "The instruments would play themselves. Maybe if we could wake them up somehow…"

    I followed her, keeping a wary eye looking around. I didn't trust any part of this place, especially not an abandoned ballroom whose last event had seen what looked to be a rather large fight. Luna wiped some of the dust off of an ancient looking cello and began to hum something. An idle part of me noted that she had a pretty voice. I listened for a long few moments, letting her soften the tension in the air like she was so good at. When her song finally finished, the silence seemed louder than before.

    "I don't think they're waking up anytime soon," I said.

    "Maybe," she said without disappointment.

    "Let's get going." I pointed a thumb at the lone set of doors out. "We've still got the rest of the manor to explore."

    The elegant and dust-covered double doors opened with a low groan which was echoed by the manor. I wasn't quite sure that it was just the sound of the foundation settling anymore. Immediately, the musty smell of abandonment assaulted my senses. It struck me suddenly that I hadn't been smelling already. Not in the ballroom, not in the bedrooms the day before. For some reason, these rooms were preserved while the hallways weren't.

    Black Manor seemed to revel in giving me questions when I was looking for answers.

    The hallway we came out into smelled like stale air and allergy season, dust kicking up wherever we sunk our feet into plush carpet. It curved to the right and distinctly downwards, leading into a shape that I knew from the outside to be a spiral. The strange thing was how very… stretched it seemed, for lack of a better word. It was as if the hallway was meant to be only a few feet long and had been lengthened out and up into a massive spiral. The burnt-out candles and dust coated moulding dotting the walls were almost impossibly wide, like taffy that someone had grabbed and pulled. The consequences of expansion charms fading, I supposed. Too many things shoved in too small a space. When physics asserted itself, the house had had no choice but to squish or stretch. The whole effect was incredibly surreal. Idly, I wondered if I'd stepped into a funhouse mirror dimension of some sort.

    Luna and I wandered for what must have been hours. We poked our heads into lifeless bedrooms, ancient sitting rooms, near-empty studies, and half-rotten storage closets. All of it fruitless, and all of it telling a tale of decadence.

    When we finally found the library, it was only my nervous grip on my candle which let me avoid a disaster.

    The Black family library was beautiful. There was no other word for it. Massive, maybe. The huge circular room had rows and rows of bookshelves arrayed around a central fireplace, each tall enough to need a ladder and each filled all the way up. Books floated lazily between the stacks, shelving and reshelving themselves according to whims only they understood. Tall windows stood to let in sunlight, but were blocked by the chaotic knot of hallways outside. Desks and couches were scattered about, placed between shelves, against windows, and around the lone fireplace at the centre of it all. An only mostly sarcastic part of me mused that going to learn from Voldemort wouldn't be so bad if this was what it would give me access to. A suspicious part noted how important proper bait was to any good trap.

    I quashed both parts down and set to looking around.

    Something that struck me rather immediately was the lack of dust or decay. Like the bedrooms from the day before, it was as if someone had just gotten up and left just a few minutes before. Clearly the Black family magic prided itself on its knowledge above all else. My grudging respect was quashed by the realisation that the Blacks had never heard of the Dewey Decimal System. Or sorting by category. Or organisation at all, apparently. Transfiguration was next to Dark Arts was next to Potioneering was next to The Adventures of Happy the Hippogriff. French texts were next to English were next to Greek were next to Latin. (I made a note to shore up my knowledge of the romance languages. The scholarly wizarding world didn't seem to care much for the English-centric muggle mindset.)

    It was with the start of a headache that I resigned myself to scouring the library.




    On the third day, Black Manor had changed once more. The ballroom up top of the construction was no longer there, nor was the spiral staircase down. In fact, it looked from the outside as if all of the rooms and halls that Luna and I had explored had simply disappeared. The spaghetti of halls seemed much smaller. Less hopelessly tangled. There was a connection there, but I wasn't sure what it was.

    We found our entrance by way of an open window in a room hosting a duelling platform and chairs lining the walls. The wards surrounding the platform thrummed even to my still-developing magical senses. Luna seemed to feel more from it, urging me to keep a wide berth. I didn't argue.

    Once again we wandered the halls and checked every room before coming to the same library as before. It might have been a trick of the eye, but I was sure that the books were reshelving themselves with a bit more pep in their proverbial step. The part of me crying 'trap!' grew steadily louder, and I ignored it just the same.

    The fourth day of research saw yet more disappearing halls and an entrance via an exterior door to the kitchen. A servant's entrance, I supposed. Likely one for house elves if the size meant anything. I couldn't help but wonder at it. Couldn't house elves teleport through wards? Dobby had seemingly been able to. If so, then why a door sized for them? Yet more questions that I hadn't the time to find answers to. I was noticing a trend, and I didn't like it.

    On our exploration on the way to the library, Luna and I found a set of three bedrooms side by side. The first was absolutely pristine. It looked clearly lived in, but its occupant seemed to have conducted themselves with a comforting sort of absolute discipline. It reminded me of my parents rather a lot. I could respect it, even if my own rooms tended towards a sort of organised chaos. The second room was the room of Mystery Black Number 2, the mad scholarly one. Luna and I gave the shelves another quick once-over for anything of use, but the sense of time running out gave the search a rushed quality that it hadn't had on that first day. The third room, the one we'd entered via the balcony, had its door sealed permanently. The word 'TRAITOR' was burned into the wood in thick, harsh lettering. I took a moment to vainly hope I never met Mystery Black Number 2 before we moved on.

    The fifth day saw us entering via a greenhouse overgrown with plants. Most of the ones I recognised seemed to be benign potions ingredients, though there was a distinct walled-off section that looked to be composed entirely of plants likely too dangerous or toxic to be kept with the rest. We eventually entered a grand entrance hall, the doors to the library standing open right across from us.

    Something seemed to spark in Luna's mind then, as she grabbed my hand and dragged me through and out of the library despite my vocal complaints. For a moment I missed Harry and Ron. They at least knew better than to get between me and my books. She led me through faintly familiar and surprisingly normal looking halls before we turned a corner and found a dusty ballroom. The same dusty ballroom as before, in fact. Not that I expected there to be a second one, but there was enough money in this place that I wasn't discounting anything.

    I looked back into the hall. When we'd walked that route a few days before, it had taken nearly an hour to do, discounting our exploration of the rooms adjacent. It had spiralled down for two floors, ramped up for one, and I was pretty sure that it had twisted upside down at least once. This time, though, it had been just a few turns. A few metres between each turn. It was a frankly reasonable distance.

    Black Manor was seemingly restoring its expansion charms, squeezing back into itself, but why? Why now, so many years after its occupants had left? The only thing that had changed was us, so what had we provided? I voiced my thoughts to Luna, but she just hummed and fingered her blood-mask.

    "Maybe it's doing some spring cleaning now that we're coming by?" She looked around. "We're the first visitors in some time, I think."

    It was a good enough explanation, but it rang false somehow. Questions, questions, and more questions. Unlike the one of mortality, though, the answer to this one was just on the tip of my tongue. Something in the back of my mind knew it, and the niggling sensation that I ought to have figured it out already persisted, hurting my focus in the library and keeping me awake that night.

    The sixth morning, Black Manor seemed on the outside as if it was restored in full. It looked rather like someone had taken a tudor style mansion and jammed it together with a gothic castle; towers, turrets, gargoyles, and all. The front door swung open as we approached, and my unease grew tenfold. We entered into that grand entrance hall that we'd seen the day before, turned left into the library once more, and marvelled for a moment at the sunlight streaming in through the windows for the first time. Books reshelved themselves at a dizzying pace above us. Just as I went to pull out Luna's candles once more, a nearly tangible pulse of magic swept through the library, lighting the candles on the walls and setting the fireplace alight.

    Luna and I stood there hushed and looking around for a long moment. When nothing else seemed to happen, we continued our search. A search which quickly ended when I found an ancient looking journal on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. A journal that I was quite sure hadn't been there the day before.

    "Luna?" I called. "I think someone's been here." Warily, I circled in towards the book. Someone else might have felt silly treating a book as if it might explode, but I knew better. Strange journals turning up out of nowhere hadn't exactly ended well for me previously. Two very large wrongs don't make a right, they'd just kill me even faster somehow.

    Luna turned the corner to see me eyeing the suspicious book. "That's new. Do you think it checked itself out?"

    That only served to make me warier. Yes, some experiments the day before had proven that the books were likely reshelving themselves based on what the people in the library needed, so particularly useful ones might very well present themselves like so, but I was still suspicious. "Maybe," I allowed. "But if it starts talking, or writing back, or even uses the word memory, then I'm burning it." I made no move to approach.

    Luna had no such qualms, and approached the jaws of the trap into which we'd been so expertly baited with all the caution of a child at a puppy farm. She plopped herself down onto an admittedly comfy looking couch, picked up the definitely-cursed book, and opened it up in her lap.

    "Oh," she said as I reached for my Incendio sigil. "It's in Cumbric!" She sounded strangely pleased by this. "I never get to practise my Cumbric. On the Powers of Magic, by Corvus Blaec. I think it's a research journal!" Luna flipped the page, read for a bit, and finally spoke out loud.

    "Let all Magic see that I am Corvus Blaec, eldest son of Gryffes Blaec who founded our Noble House," she translated slowly. "My father stood tall as Lord, and lays low with the earth. Now it is mine to stand as Lord. Let this record stand as a testament to our greatest strengths: the Magic which blesses our blood and the knowledge with which we wield it. To you whom I have already blessed with the first, I pen this book as a record of the last. In this way, you might stand as Lord when I too lay low with the earth. Use it well."

    Luna began flipping through pages seemingly at random. I approached slowly, curious despite myself. Over her shoulder I saw text I couldn't read (and of course I had another language to learn, why wouldn't I?), and diagrams and rituals laid out on parchment. On one page she found a highly detailed drawing of a body which had been flayed open. It would have looked like so much meat if it weren't for the clear pain in the figure's eyes. Luna snapped the book shut as soon as she saw it. Looking at her, she seemed a little unnerved. I couldn't blame her. I'd almost puked when I'd seen similar sketches in Moste Potente Potions.

    "Are you okay?" I asked, putting my burning curiosity to bed for a moment. She didn't respond, instead taking a few deep breaths. My worry jumped up another notch. I circled around and sat down next to her on the couch. "Luna?"

    Her breaths turned shaky. "Did you know that nobody knows for sure when unicorn mating season is? Anytime anyone has tried to put them in captivity to watch them, they just lay down until they're let out." She spoke with a strangely level voice, and I realised that I'd accidentally run afoul of something deeply important. I'd heard my Grandpa talk like that sometimes when I was staying over and people would ask him about his old war buddies. Normally, he'd start drinking soon after. I never knew how to deal with it then, and I didn't know now.

    "Luna?" I asked.

    "It's awful, trapping innocent creatures like that. Isn't it?"

    "Horrible," I said softly, carefully. "Can I hug you?" She nodded slowly, and I wrapped my arms around her. "Are you okay?"

    She let out a shaky breath at my rhetorical question—people that were okay didn't just break down on a hair trigger like that, I would know—and finally shook her head. "Daddy says that it's okay to not be okay. He says that we keep going and keep learning and it'll be okay later." Luna finally leaned into the hug. I gave her another squeeze, like I could hug tight enough that the pieces would fit back into place. "I think he might be wrong," she whispered.

    "Well let me help," I said because my mind was racing because something had happened and I didn't know what and this had come out of nowhere. After a moment that was almost definitely too long, I finally latched onto something. "You're the one dealing with this. That's the hard part, like you said. Let me do the easy part and help. Just tell me what happened. What did you see in the book?" Talking about things was supposed to help, right? I knew that talking about my own stuff had made it easier for me, at least. My Grandpa said it helped him. So that had to be the right thing to do.

    A glance showed the offending journal still sitting on Luna's lap. I grabbed it and shoved it in my bag. Out of sight, out of mind. Hopefully.

    She took another shuddering breath complete with tears before cuddling up to me. I was happy to provide what comfort I could. "Blibbering Humdingers and Crumple-Horned Snorkacks and Dragons can all take so much magic," she said, voice still level as anything. "They're made up of it. But we're not. If we put too much magic in, it hurts us. Really badly." I just held her, not quite sure what to do.

    "The picture in the book," I tried. "Have you… Have you seen that before?"

    "It looked like my Mummy, the last time I saw her," she whispered in that horribly calm voice even as her breathing shook more and more. I squeezed her again, mind reeling. Ron had said that her mum had died, that she'd changed. And that… That'd do it. No wonder she daydreamed about things that didn't exist. If that was my reality, I would too. For once I really, truly had no idea what to do. I was good at knowing things, sure. Facts and figures. I'd always been pants with people, their feelings, and there wasn't any spell I could cast to make this better.

    I felt her tears on my shoulder, and I realised that I needed to do something anyway.

    "I'm not okay either," I said with the desperate hope that I wasn't making things worse. "I'm going to die soon, Luna." She gave me a squeeze this time, pulling me closer. I let her.

    "I don't want to die," I whispered. "I was supposed to graduate and help Harry and Ron out and become Minister of Magic. I'm not ready to go." Tears started falling down my face because of course they did. How could they not? "But we're friends. And friends help each other, right? We can be not okay together."

    I felt her nod against me. "Friends," she said. "Okay." As if that summed up everything.

    We didn't end up getting much more done that day.




    On my last day with the Lovegoods, I found the answer to one of my questions. Luna and I were flying towards the Black Manor for the last time when she'd stopped us dead in the air just outside of the wardline.

    "Feel it," she'd said the most urgently I'd ever heard her say anything.

    Not one to ignore a warning so uncharacteristic, I closed my eyes and opened myself up to the magic once more. Near immediately I felt the wards, swirling and angry once more. That was a change, but not exactly a bad one. It had been like that when we'd showed up the first time, which meant Luna had seen something else that I hadn't. She had a tendency to do that. I took my time, let myself be 'one with the magic' as Not-Yet-Voldemort had once instructed me to do. Several minutes passed as I wondered what it was that Luna had found before the answer became incredibly clear. There was a weight to the wardline that there wasn't before, the sort that made my hair stand up on end and put a prickle at the back of my neck.

    The Black family magics had woken up, and they were watching us.

    I was dimly aware of Luna guiding me down to the ground and dismounting us both as my mind raced. The house had been clearly and obviously active, yes, but that was easily explained as the ambient effects of two witches prompting it to tuck in its chest, to stop conserving power. That didn't explain why the wards would be so aware, though. It wasn't just a waking, that was practically a revival! That sort of thing took power and lots of it, and wasn't the sort that a week with two witches with immature cores would…

    Oh. I was thick. An idiot, really. I was pretty sure I'd earned an Order of Merlin for my innovations in the field of being a complete bloody moron. I'd forgotten something so simple, so fundamental, the very reason I was even at Black Manor in the first place! I was unravelling! My thaumic centre was inverting, causing increased instability in ambient thaumic energy around me! In common terms, I was radiating magic like the bloody sun! And all of it was filtered through the blood-masks, making the blood wards see it as Black magic. No wonder the house had woken up. I'd hooked it up to the magical equivalent of a nuclear reactor for nearly a week straight!

    And it had herded us, too! Making sure we spread the magic around to get everything. God that was clever. A part of me suddenly felt very sorry that walking past the invisible line a few feet in front of me would tear me to shreds, because I desperately wanted to get a look at the ward schema. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to curse the wardcrafters responsible or shake their hands. There was a brief moment where I considered going and finding that Sirius Black fellow and convincing him to let me in before I remembered that he'd almost certainly been barred from entry. And was a mad, violent murderer. That too, I supposed.

    "I think that we're done in Black Manor," I finally said.

    "I think that Black Manor agrees," Luna responded. "It would be rude to just barge in."

    "I'm glad I thought to take all the promising books with me." And I was. There was now a very appreciable (and magically expanded) portion of my trunk at the Lovegoods' which was dedicated to Black Manor books. Partitioned off, of course, because most of said books were thoroughly cursed. Someone that wasn't the 'right sort' cracking them open likely wouldn't regret their mistake, but only because they wouldn't have time to. An unforeseen benefit of my blood-mask, but one I was immensely glad for regardless. Really though, what kind of person puts a curse on books? That had to be an Azkaban-worthy crime in and of itself.

    Luna cupped her hands around her mouth. "Thank you for letting us borrow your books!" she yelled.

    That got me giggling at my newest friend and I followed suit. "Thank you! I'll bring them back someday, I promise!"

    Luna turned to me with a beatific smile. I found myself grinning right back at her. "I'll race you back!" she cried out, quickly mounting her broom.

    "Wait, no, you know I'm…" Luna took off. "Oh sod it." I remounted my broom and made to follow.

    The rest of the day went like that. Trying to keep up with Luna on a broom, failing, stopping to talk, and repeating it all again. She kept a smile on my face throughout, even when she was telling me about creatures that I was reasonably sure simply didn't exist. And when we finally stumbled through the door to the Lovegoods' home and I eventually lay down in bed? I realised that I hadn't worried about the future one bit that day.

    For just one day Luna had given me freedom from the dread that had come to define my thoughts, and I wouldn't be forgetting it anytime soon.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Glad to be back! Holidays kicked my ass. Not sure how well I handled some of the things in this one (and would love feedback), but it's finally out and we can go on to the next bits!
     
    Great chapter, even though the manor was far less malevolent than I was expecting.
    Baiting the girls around to recharge its magical infrastructure evenly - brilliant.

    I'm still scratching my head wondering just why the scholarly Black set up a ward that will harm him when he tries to enter his female relative's room through the closet door... the implications aren't nice, but some are worse than others.

    Luna's small breakdown providing a chance for two damaged girls to find common ground from which a true friendship can develop was also well done.
     
    10 - Impotent Vows
  • Threadmarks
    • Luna turned to me with a beatific smile. I found myself grinning right back at her. "I'll race you back!" she cried out, quickly mounting her broom.

    "Wait, no, you know I'm…" Luna took off. "Oh sod it." I remounted my broom and made to follow.

    The rest of the day went like that. Trying to keep up with Luna on a broom, failing, stopping to talk, and repeating it all again. She kept a smile on my face throughout, even when she was telling me about creatures that I was reasonably sure simply didn't exist. And when we finally stumbled through the door to the Lovegoods' home and I eventually lay down in bed? I realised that I hadn't worried about the future one bit that day.

    For just one day Luna had given me freedom from the dread that had come to define my thoughts, and I wouldn't be forgetting it anytime soon.


    Impotent Vows​


    There was something to be said about Diagon Alley as an introduction to the wizarding world, even if the idea of doing the reverse and introducing a wizard to the muggle world by way of a shopping centre seemed a hilarious concept. It was bustling with wizened warlocks in outrageous robes and covens of witches clad in hats with razor sharp points. Bright banners advertising newt eyes (6 sickles per set!) hung next to sparkling signs selling collapsible cauldrons and flying broomsticks. The book seller in the main street, Flourish and Blotts, was dotted with floating signs advertising spellbooks of all kinds for all ages. Everywhere around, things bounced, and flew, and fizzed, and popped, and hooted, and spat colourful smoke.

    It was, in a word, wonderful. A wonder that had gripped me with both hands way back when I was eleven, and hadn't let go since. Even through possessed professors, and basilisks in the walls, and Voldemort, Diagon Alley forced me to step back and remember the wonder. It made me want to smile and spin and call out "I'm a witch!" with all the disbelief and pride and pure childish joy that that entailed.

    I didn't obviously, because I had some class, but the urge was there. It wouldn't have even been the most mad thing to happen that day in Diagon Alley, or even that hour.

    I loved magic. How could I not? How could any muggleborn be introduced to literal magic, see Diagon Alley for the first time, walk into the oh so very enchanted halls of Hogwarts, and not fall in love? A witch turns up at your home, tells you you're special, and you fail to wonder? In that way, I would never understand most of my classmates. Harry I understood somewhat. He simply hadn't the energy to care. Understandable, given everything (and I truly hadn't been kidding when I offered to hex those Dursleys of his; my time in Black Manor had taught me some good ones). Ron had grown up with it. It was mundane to him. Of course owls would deliver letters, and heads would talk in the fireplace, and chess pieces would give advice, and cards would shuffle themselves. Deep inside myself, I hoped that I'd never come to see magic like that.

    And that wonder, that love for magic? It was killing me. It was how Tom the Diary had managed to trick me so thoroughly. I loved magic, and I still believed him when he said that he did too. His was a possessive love, though, an oily thing meant to keep and claim, which lingered where it wasn't welcome.

    But when Mrs. Weasley led me into the Leaky Cauldron and I saw my parents for the first time in a year, the love in their faces managed to wash that oil off for just a bit.

    "Mum! Dad!" I called, slipping free of Mrs. Weasley's guiding arm and running into theirs.

    Dad wrapped me up in a tight hug, lifting me into the air. "Hello there, my brave little lion!"

    I winced. "Don't call me that," I grumbled into his shoulder. I really didn't want any reminders of him right now.

    "Little witch, then," he said. Dad loosened his grip. I did not. He took the cue and gave me another long squeeze. "I missed you," he said, smile evident in his voice. "But I think your Mum missed you too, yeah?"

    Dad let me go, and I turned to hug Mum too. She squeezed me tight with one hand in my hair and one rubbing my back. I couldn't help the tears that budded up. I didn't try either. Another long moment passed and she let me go to hold me by the shoulders and look me up and down. "Our baby girl's growing up," she said with a tone I couldn't quite decipher.

    Looking at them, I noticed they seemed, well, smaller. I was almost the same height as Mum now, and I didn't have to crane my neck so much for Dad. He'd always been taller and skinnier than most other adults I knew, but it seemed like he was just a bit shorter now, just a bit skinner. I really had grown up a lot since I'd seen them last, and it wasn't just in size.

    Before I could stop myself, I wondered if this would be the last time we'd ever talk. An unnamed sense of guilt filled me up at the thought.

    "Seems so," Dad said, as if to break me out of my spiral. He threw his arm over my shoulders, squeezing once. "Still our little Hermione, though. Come on. Let's sit down. We already ordered lunch from the barman. Nice bloke, him."

    He directed me to a grungy little table with three chairs, and we all sat down. Warily, in Mum and Dad's case. I wasn't shocked. The Weasleys had managed to inoculate me against my distaste, but I'd grown up eating in nice, clean, well maintained restaurants, which the Leaky Cauldron really wasn't.

    "I still don't know why they think a dingy pub's the best first impression they can give," Mum said.

    "It's meant to be a smoke screen," I explained. I'd read as much back in my first year. "There's charms meant to make it so muggles can't see it, but they don't always work. The hope is that those people walk by, see a seedy pub, and move on without seeing anything strange."

    At that moment, we were all distracted by a man whose head swelled to nearly twice its size before blowing smoke out of his ears and deflating. Dad laughed, and Mum just raised an eyebrow at me.

    "Yes, well, it doesn't really make sense, but that's magic." I resisted the urge to fidget under her scrutiny. "The more magic you are, the madder you get."

    "Really?" she said.

    "I've been doing some reading because of my… condition, and it's true. It's well documented that more powerful mages tend to be a bit more eccentric." I thought to Dumbledore, his opening speeches, his lackadaisical stance on child care, his fashion sense. I thought to Voldemort and his quest to take over Britain. I thought to the runic array in the closet in Black Manor, and the picture of Sirius Black that had circulated in the Daily Prophet.

    I thought to my breakdown in Ginny's room when I realised I could get into the ancient Black Library, how I'd laughed and cried and flipped through books for hours and hours to figure out the specifics.

    "A lot more eccentric," I amended.

    The clatter of plates on the table interrupted us. "Order for the Grangers, here ya go," said the very friendly and very unfortunate looking man who plopped them down.

    Dad flashed him a perfect smile. "Thanks, Tom." Despite myself, I only managed to contain my flinch at the name by stilling entirely. By the look on Mum's face, it hadn't been lost on her.

    "Anytime! Let me know if you need anything else," he said, and walked back to the bar.

    "So, about this 'condition'," Mum said once he was out of earshot.

    "Emma, she just got here!" Dad interjected. "Let the girl eat, at least."

    She scoffed. "Hermione's sick, Dan. She couldn't even come home for the summer! We can't help if we don't ask. That Headmaster of hers certainly hasn't been answering any questions."

    "You wrote to Headmaster Dumbledore?" I asked.

    "Of course I did," she said in a soft tone. "I'm—we're worried about you. I asked him about what happened and demanded to know what he was doing to prevent it from happening again." She huffed. "He gave a right politician's answer, too. So please, love, tell us what happened? We've been worried sick."

    My mind raced, wondering what I could, what I should tell them. Dumbledore apparently hadn't thought it a great idea to say much, but I found I was starting to care little and less about what he thought. He wasn't the one dying. And that was the thing. They already knew I was sick, but didn't they have the right to know that? It was sort of the elephant in the room, even if they didn't know it.

    One time I'd asked Grandpa Granger something—I'd long since forgotten what—and he'd told me about how when you considered telling someone something important, you had to consider if they needed to know, if they had a right to know, and if it was a burden to know. And my parents, they had a right to know. Of course they did. The problem was, they loved me, and I loved them. And they wouldn't be able to do anything. They'd have to send me off to Hogwarts knowing, and I'd be slowly dying away from them, and I knew my Mum too well to think she wouldn't do something drastic like go to the Wizengamot and file a suit against Hogwarts.

    They had a right to know, yes, but wasn't the burden of knowing larger? Especially given that I was working on fixing it. One year. I had one year to find a solution. Probably more like ten or eleven months, actually. Egypt hadn't precisely been 'familiar', and the magic in the places we'd explored had felt more than a bit stagnant.

    "Hermione?" Dad said. Looking my worried parents in the faces, though, I realised that lying to them now would be much harder than over the phone. My resolve dwindling, I decided that I could tell some of the truth. I'd just have to… edit it a bit.

    I looked around the busy room. "Can we talk about it somewhere else?" I asked. "After lunch? I'm starving." And delaying the inevitable. By the look Mum gave me, she hadn't missed that bit of subtext. I wasn't shocked. Dad may have been my favourite, but Mum had always known how I thought.

    "Of course," Dad said with a significant look at Mum. She seemed to relent after a moment. The food was pleasant, if a bit greasy. We filled the silence with meaningless nothings. I asked after their dental practice. It was doing well. The conference Dad had been visiting apparently showed off some fascinating bits of tech. They asked about my classes and friends. I talked about how due to circumstances my exams had been waived, but that I'd gotten good grades. I dodged the questions about friends by complaining about Lockhart.

    Before too long, I was out of both food and excuses.

    As we stood, Dad grabbed my bag for me. "Your Mum and I rented out some rooms for the rest of the week. We've been writing back and forth with Molly, and thought we'd spend the last week of summer with you here since you can't come home. We can talk there, if you'd like?" I nodded. "Make sure to keep close. The hallways are a little mad."

    I did so, following my parents up a set of stairs that I was reasonably sure didn't even fit in the physical space of the building. After Black Manor, I found that I was developing a very keen sense for telling when space had been folded. It wasn't hard to tell what Dad meant. The layout had clearly been done by a skilled mage. That is to say, it certainly made perfect sense to the caster, but the rest of us were left to puzzle out the pattern. We found my parent's room (number 316, on the second minus one floor) and they pointed out the room they'd rented for me right across from it (number 143).

    The room was cleaner than I expected, with a small table, a desk, a large bed, and a mirror that I was pretty sure was softly snoring. We found our seats. Mum was the first to speak up.

    "So what was it you wanted to tell us, love?"

    Looking into my parents' faces, my resolve almost cracked. So much of me so desperately wanted to let them in. I could even imagine what I would say, something not quite true but not quite false either. 'I met an older boy named Tom, who made me trust him. He told me that he was my friend, and helped me study, and showed me his memories. He'd been discriminated against too, and I could talk to him about it in a way that I couldn't and can't with anyone else. I thought he was all I needed. Then he used me and tried to throw me away. He used a dark creature to take some of my magic, and I'm still recovering.'

    But I couldn't. For the same reasons that I'd avoided telling them about my more bizarre Hogwarts experiences all the way back to first year, even. They'd want to pull me out of the school. There were other magical schools, of course, even in the UK, but that had always felt too much like giving up to me. Even ignoring its status as the most prestigious school around, Hogwarts really was wonderful (and maybe the 'trying to kill its students' thing was the reason why it was so prestigious; the survivors would have undergone trial by fire). My parents wouldn't accept that explanation, though, so I'd have to tell them about how leaving Hogwarts would kill me faster, which would lead into the fact that I was dying, and I'd already decided that I wasn't going to go there.

    Burden to know, burden to know, burden to know.

    "Hermione?"

    I took a deep breath. I had to tell them something. And given I was a shite liar, I opted for the truth. Partially.

    "Near the end of the school year, someone decided to prank me. They took one of the books I'd borrowed from the library and told me they'd hid it in the Forest at the edge of the grounds. It was almost due back, so I went out to find it. It was stupid, I know that, but I was worried about getting detention. While I was out there, I ran into a very rare magical creature. A…" I studied my shoes for a moment, scouring my mind for something that wouldn't give proof to my lie if they looked into it, which Mum certainly would. "Snorkack. The curly horned kind, I think." Sorry, Luna. "It was nesting, and I didn't see it, and it attacked. It sort of… destabilised my magic. I got back to the castle and to the hospital wing, and I've been taking medicine for it since."

    My parents shared a look. "Destabilised?" Dad asked. "What's that mean, practically speaking?"

    "It means a few things. It means that I can't really cast with my wand properly, and so I've been learning this really fascinating runic casting. I also leak magic everywhere, which is good for things like runic casting and rituals, but bad for electronics." And now that I'd learned more the blatant inaccuracy of the word 'leaking' grated, but this wasn't the time. Besides that, an actual technical explanation was something my parents could look into and ask questions about, which I certainly didn't want. "There's some mental symptoms too, but—"

    "Mental symptoms?" Mum asked immediately. I cursed myself. I hadn't meant to blurt that out, but I'd been thinking about the facts and theory and got distracted.

    "You remember how I said that magic can make people a bit strange?" Nods from both of them. "Well, apparently not having that magic go to the right place is like any other thing getting stopped up in the body. I've been having strange dreams, and there's some day to day… instability." Mum's look was all that I needed to tell me to elaborate. Which, fine. I could do that. It wasn't easy to describe how I was slowly going mad, exactly, but it was a far sight less difficult than talking about all the other things I was avoiding. "There's some… depression, sometimes. The books say some people get manic and think that they can do things that they really can't. I don't think I've had that one. My um. I've also got a bit of a temper since the accident, too."

    I liked that word, wrong as it was. 'Accident'. As if my developing madness and oncoming (and preventable, I reminded myself) death were some unforeseen unavoidable thing rather than the act of one malicious man.

    "There's some other things, but those are the big ones. I've got good Healers, though. That's what they call doctors here. I'm being well taken care of, I promise, and Headmaster Dumbledore's made sure I can keep casting and that nothing like this can happen again." He hadn't, but half the point of this was convincing my parents to not pull me out of his school, so needs must. "I'm on the mend already. You should see how many potions they've got me taking," I joked with levity I didn't feel.

    Why was my heart beating so hard?

    "I'm glad you're okay," Dad said. "We're just worried about you, that's all."

    "I'm fine, honest." I gave him a smile. "Now can we talk about something else? I've missed you, and I learned all sorts of things in Egypt this summer…"




    After dinner that night, I ran into the one person in Britain who I could honestly believe had had a worse summer than me. Apparently, Harry had blown up his aunt, ran away to an incredibly brief life of crime, met Minister Fudge, and had been told to stay put in Diagon Alley until school started. Because of course he had. Because Harry Potter was fate's favourite punching bag (though I was starting to suspect that I made for a decent runner-up). He'd been staying in the Leaky Cauldron for two weeks when I showed up.

    I filled him in on my cover story and introduced him to my parents that very same night. Mum and Dad seemed to take it and him at face value, for which I knew he was grateful. Harry really did tend to flourish outside of scrutiny, and given that Mrs. Weasley hadn't stuck around past dropping me off and that the Weasleys wouldn't be doing their school shopping at all until later in the week, there was nobody to object to his independence. After a summer with Mrs. Weasley trying to mother me, I couldn't even say that I didn't understand that need for freedom.

    Harry, for his part, was happy to spend his time showing me around Diagon Alley. He'd come to be quite familiar with it in those two weeks, it seemed like. He even came with my parents and I when we did my own school shopping. That had been an interesting experience. The difference between my Mum and Dad was never more clear than when I'd asked a bruised and bandaged bookseller for a copy of the Monster Book of Monsters. Mum had looked on in muted horror as Dad slipped off his belt and wrangled the tome into submission, grinning like a loon the whole while.

    Needless to say that I enchanted the belt with a soporific charm as soon as we returned to the Leaky.

    Shortly after, I dragged Harry into my room, ignoring his numerous protests.

    "Honestly, Harry, I'm not sure what the problem is."

    "It's just that this is a girl's room…"

    I rolled my eyes. "Yes, Harry, I'm a girl. This is my room. Glad you've pieced that together. Now sit." Wisely, he sat. Harry may have been stubborn, but he wasn't an idiot.

    "So what's up?" he asked. I took a moment to gather myself. This was the last time that I'd be having this particular conversation if I had anything to say about it.

    "You remember my casting difficulties?" I started. "It's gotten worse."

    "Dumbledore was helping with that, though, right?" He seemed… genuinely confused, for some reason.

    "Not really, no. He pointed me in the right direction with ritual, yes, but that doesn't really help the real problem." I sighed. "We said no secrets, right?"

    "Right." Harry punctuated with a smile.

    "I'm dying." The smile disappeared.

    A long moment passed. "Oh," he said, because this was Harry and Harry understood these things better than anyone else I knew. Not like Ron who thought it was a joke, or Dumbledore who thought he could protect me from it. No, Harry knew Death. He got it. Between his parents, Voldemort looming over him, seeing my near miss in the Chamber, and even Quirrell, Harry had had a pretty good look at Death. Out of everyone, he was the one I'd dreaded telling the least.

    "Yeah."

    "How long?"

    "About a year. Longer if I'm around lots of magic and familiar things and people."

    "Huh," he said. "Good job we're going back to Hogwarts then." I looked up at him—and when had I looked down?—to see a face without pity. A sort of resigned sadness, yes, but no pity. He just seemed to accept that this is the way it was, and that it sucked.

    In that moment I looked out at the world and judged that it was not worthy of having someone as wholly good as Harry Potter in it. If I only had a year left to live, then I swore to myself that I'd use as much as I could to help him wherever he needed it.

    "And there's no…" he trailed off.

    "No there's not," I said, "but I'm working on it. Come see." I stood up from my chair and popped open my trunk. It, like the rest of my things, had been brought over from the Burrow. Mrs. Weasley had even returned my wand instead of just giving it to my parents, because apparently 'underage witch' rated higher on the responsibility scale than 'muggle adult' in her eyes.

    My blood-mask was donned and my clothes were shoved aside, revealing a locked panel in the bottom of my trunk. I'd transfigured in a keyhole, but that was mostly a red herring, a paranoid little trick I learned from some of the shelves in the Black Manor Library. I placed my hand on the panel and muttered "Revelare". The panel popped open with a click. It was, admittedly, a simple command word. It would be insecure if not for the tiniest bit of blood magic behind the spell. I'd even charmed it to see through deceptions like the one I'd made for the Blacks.

    And yes, I was proud, thank you very much.

    I opened up the panel to reveal an extra-dimensional expanded space full of books. Pulling a few out, I spread them out on the floor.

    "So I realised that if I wanted to find a cure, I was going to need to look outside of the box. If even proper Healers don't know what to do—don't touch that one, I'm pretty sure it's cursed to turn your mouth inside out. And no, I don't know what that means either." Harry yanked his hand back from the book he'd been about to touch.

    "How can you touch it, then?"

    "I'm getting there. So I realised that what I was looking for wouldn't be in any sort of public library." Not least of which because the concept itself was a foreign one to magical Britain. "But you've heard Malfoy talk about his library. Some of the older families have been hoarding knowledge to themselves for centuries. Best part is, I managed to find one of their old houses that had been practically abandoned! The Black family's ancestral Manor."

    Harry worried at that. "Wait, did you say Black? As in, mass murderer Sirius Black?"

    "I think so, yes. It's fine though, Mrs. Weasley said that he was exiled from the family years and years ago. The wards wouldn't have allowed him in."

    "That's…" He looked to the side. "Did you happen to see any…" Harry trailed off again.

    "Any?" I asked. He wouldn't look this nervous if it wasn't important.

    "It's probably nothing," he said.

    I gave him a look. "I can decide that for myself, I think."

    "It's nothing!"

    "Harry."

    "Fine," he sighed. "When I ran away from the Dursleys, I saw a big, black dog. Then when I talked to Fudge—" "Minister Fudge." "—he was worried about Sirius Black. It seemed, I don't know, like it was connected?"

    Hm. That seemed ridiculous on the surface, of course, but… Harry did have an eye for these things, didn't he? Now I thought about it, he had a remarkable way of telling if something was off, and his tendency to be in the right (or horribly wrong) place at the right time was more than a bit uncanny. He'd just so happened to be the one to push us into that hallway on the third floor just as Quirrell had been doing the same, and hadn't he been the one to tell the professors all about my situation at the end of last year?

    Now I thought about it, I wondered if Divination wouldn't be more than just an easy OWL for him after all. Or Luna had infected me with believing in things that didn't exist at some point over our week together. One of the two.

    "I didn't see a dog, no, but I'll keep an eye out, okay?" He nodded, seeming the slightest bit relieved.

    "So, er, Black Manor?"

    I blinked. "Right. So I met this girl named Luna at this silly Storytelling thing the Weasleys do, and she agreed to help me break into Black Manor."

    "I thought that you said there were wards keeping people out?"

    "I had some of Malfoy's blood," I shrugged. "Purebloods are all weirdly related, so I was able to get in."

    "Why did—"

    "It doesn't matter. The point is that Luna and I spent a week going through every book we could find in their library. These and the ones in my trunk are the ones we thought were useful." Or interesting, or particularly strange. In one case, we'd taken a book because Luna liked the design on the front. It's not like anyone would be missing them.

    "And that's why you can touch them?"

    I nodded. "The books think I'm a Black, yes."

    "Hermione?" Harry gave me a serious look. "You know you're absolutely mental, right?" He cracked into a smile. I just rolled my eyes and laughed.

    "So these books aren't dangerous or anything, are they?" he asked once my laughter died down. "I mean, aside from the curses."

    I gave my trunk a wary look. "There's no such thing as dangerous knowledge," I lied. There absolutely was. Black Manor had taught me that. I wasn't 100% confident, but I'd done a bit of checking with some of Mr. Lovegood's legal texts, and I was pretty sure that some of these books were illegal to even own. Which was obviously stupid. Knowledge was knowledge. It wasn't like I was going to go around cursing people just because I happened to have read a book.

    That said, I could understand a certain desire to restrict who had access to certain knowledge. Some of the books I'd taken were spellbooks for fairly blatant malefica, including parts of On the Powers of Magic and a tome plainly named Mastering Malicious Malefica, just to name two. And practising malefica was, well, dangerous by definition. That's what made it malefica. Those types of spells formed the centre of what the Ministry called the 'Dark Arts'; itself a catch-all term for all the spells which the Wizengamot had voted to outlaw for one reason or another. Not that thaumic polarity had anything to do with it. I'd seen a highly Light aspected spell in one of these books which had the sole effect of inflicting what looked to me like late stage cancer upon the victim.

    I was quickly coming to understand that 'light' didn't precisely mean 'good'.

    By the look on his face and to his immense credit, Harry clearly didn't believe me. I ignored it. "From what I've seen, between all this and the Hogwarts library, I think that I can find something that works."

    "Well Hermione, you're the cleverest person I know. If anyone can do it, you can."




    A few days into my stay at the Leaky Cauldron, I met a cat. More precisely, the cat met me. Much in the same way any active missile meets its target, I imagine. I was walking past a pet shop when I felt an impact from above. It nearly bowled me over, and claws sank into my shoulder as I was regaining my balance. Once I recovered, I realised that I was serving as the perch to a rather proud looking feline. As noble a purpose as any, I supposed.

    I cradled my arms, and the thing climbed down into them. They had tall ears, a smushed face, and a regal mane. By the legs, ears, and fur, they seemed to be at least part-kneazle, assuming the Monster Book of Monsters' illustrations were anywhere near accurate. "Well, hello there gorgeous. What's your name?"

    "Crookshanks!" the cat didn't yell. The harried looking shopkeeper coming through the door of the pet store did, though, which served me well enough.

    "Hello Crookshanks, I'm Hermione," I said. Kneazles were supposed to be fairly intelligent. "Going on an adventure, then?"

    Crookshanks seemed to size me up for a moment. Apparently finding what he was looking for, he turned to give the approaching shopkeeper a look that I was reasonably sure would map to a sneer. Regal indeed.

    "Crookshanks, you know you're not supposed to leave the shop!" the shopkeeper admonished. "I'm sorry, miss. Crooks' is like this with everyone." She pointed at the cat with a stern look. "If you keep attacking random people, you know nobody will adopt you." Back up to me. "Apologies again."

    "It's fine," I said, scratching Crookshanks ears. "He's a bit older than you'd normally find in pet stores. How long have you had him for?"

    "Maybe a year?" the witch mused. "His last family didn't care to deal with him anymore. Half-kneazles—" Called it. "—are smart, which they thought meant it'd be easier to teach him to do tricks and the like. They didn't realise that they're smart enough to do things like not want to be trained, though." Crookshanks blinked up at me slowly. I did the same right back.

    The poor thing had been snatched up by someone he came to trust and thrown away when he was no longer exploitable. He'd become a little warrior for it, too, driving people away so it couldn't happen again. Maybe I was just projecting, but looking into his cute little kitty face, he sounded far too much like a kindred spirit for me to just walk away.

    "I'll just take him back—" the witch started.

    "You know, Crookshanks," I interrupted. "I was going to ask my parents for an owl, but I think I have a better idea. Would you like to come to Hogwarts with me? Honestly, I think I could use the company." He looked around, gave the shopkeeper another kitty sneer, and settled more fully into my arms.

    "I think that's a yes," I said to the witch. "You'll have to stay here for a moment, Crookshanks. I have to go talk to my parents. I'll be right back." I handed him back to the shopkeeper and ran off back to the Leaky Cauldron.

    I was happy to report that Dad broke first. My father was a dental surgeon, by definition a skilled man capable of doing many difficult, stressful, and complicated things on a near daily basis. Denying his chronically ill daughter a cat, however, was certainly not one of them.




    The day before I was due to leave for Hogwarts, the Weasleys finally came to do their shopping. Ron brought Harry and I along to his wand fitting. It only took three or four tries before Mr. Ollivander made a match. Willow and unicorn hair. A loyal wand for a loyal boy, Mr. Ollivander had said. Ron had tried to wave it off, but Harry and I both agreed that it fit quite well. It did lead me to wonder if there was any truth to what wood and core fit who, or if it was something like muggle astrology.

    I had only asked about four questions when Harry and Ron bodily removed me from Mr. Ollivander's shop, which I felt was a bit rude. Ron insisted that me asking "So, is wandlore even real or is it just made up?" to someone who'd dedicated their life to it was even ruder, though. In retrospect, I admit that he may have had a slight point.

    The most unexpectedly gratifying part of the whole mess was seeing my parents' reactions to the way the Weasleys lived. That is to say, messy, chaotic, and loud. Their shared looks of horror were supremely vindicating. They stayed the night at the Cauldron—apparently Mr. Weasley had managed to swing Ministry cars and drivers for the next day somehow—and over the course of about 12 hours my parents got about as concentrated a blast of the Weasleys as could be expected. .

    After the second lost wand, third misplaced robe, and a lost and found pet, I gave my absolutely exasperated parents a conspiratorial smile. "It was like this all summer," I said. "Just be glad the twins haven't set off anything explosive. Did I mention how much I missed you?"

    I finally had to say goodbye to them the next morning outside of the Leaky Cauldron. The Ministry drivers weren't willing to let muggles into magical cars, despite the fact they'd been frequenting Diagon Alley for a whole week. There was all sorts of hemming and hawing about the Statute of Secrecy and regulations and vague ideas about muggles not understanding properly when Dad pushed.

    Really, I'd prefer they have just given me the trademarked pureblood sneer and saved everyone some time.

    Eventually Dad gave up, and Mum helped me pack my things into the Ministry cars. They each gave me a big hug, Dad picking me up with it yet again. I quashed down the guilt that came with knowing Harry was watching.

    "We're gonna miss you, little witch," Dad said as he put me down. "And make sure to write this time! If something happens, we want to know about it."

    "Whether you think we want to hear about it or not," Mum said. "Understood?"

    There was only one real answer to that, even if it was a lie. "Yes, Mum."

    "Good." Her face softened. "You know how we worry about you. Part of the whole 'parent' thing."

    "I know," I didn't quite grumble. "I love you Mum. Love you Dad."

    "Love you too," Dad said and Mum echoed it. "Have fun at school, and stay safe, okay?"

    I looked up into Dad's worried smile, felt his hand on my shoulder, and the desire to lie and claim that I'd be fine shrivelled up and died. I cursed myself for lying, my parents for caring so much, the professors for failing to notice anything, and the Headmaster for being so ineffectual. Most of all, I cursed Tom, I cursed his stupid Diary, and I cursed Lord bloody Voldemort. In that moment I wanted to run into my Dad's arms and tell them everything so they could make it all better like they always had. But I couldn't. It would hurt them. Break them, even. They wouldn't be able to fix anything, they'd just be scared for me. Impotent. Mum and I were too much alike for me to ever inflict uselessness on her; in the past few months I'd come to know too well just how she'd take it.

    "I'll do my best," I said as if it was anywhere near adequate. "You'll see me again before you even know it. Promise."

    And I didn't need to sign in blood to know that I'd fulfil this promise just as surely as my other Vows. 'Whatever it takes,' I swore to myself. 'Whatever it takes.'
     
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    • Can't decide between ''Like' and 'Hugs', so take an envelope.

    Again, some emotionally heavy stuff in this. I think you hit exactly the right amount of funny little asides to keep the chapter from dropping into a depressive pit.
     
    I receive your envelope with the spirit that it was given.

    Kaernetron said:
    I think you hit exactly the right amount of funny little asides to keep the chapter from dropping into a depressive pit.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Glad to hear this! Given that I've very little interest in writing happy stories, I'm happy that I've managed to strike a balance. The inner monologue of a depressed teenager doesn't exactly make for gripping reading, after all. Determined depressed teenagers are far more fun.
     
    Memory I - Family Values
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    • Content Warning for child abuse, animal abuse, and the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black.


    Silly, foolish, stubborn girl. Don't you know? Haven't you figured it out yet? Of course not. The books never talk about this part. Nobody ever tells you that your lot is to rot, and wither, and decay. The sunrise eventually sets, the lively spring eventually gives way to cruel and unforgiving winter. It is the nature of things. It is inevitable.

    So of course it hurts, idiot child. Escaping the inescapable always does.    ​


    Memory I - Family Values​


    Before anything else, Narcissa Malfoy was someone who knew both what she wanted and how to get it. She valued control of her own life, and who wouldn't? She valued her son, the one good thing that she had ever brought into the world. Most importantly, Narcissa valued power; an unseemly trait among good trophy wives, but she had never been one to settle for a trophy. Power, though, often came most easily from playing to expectations. It was a subtle dance that she had mastered young, presenting a front as a perfectly respectable pureblood woman while simultaneously seizing control of everything she touched. If looking pretty as a picture and smiling at the right times gave her the route to control of her own life? Then she would do it gladly. It was amazing what one could get done so long as they didn't care who got the credit.

    To that end, asking her father to arrange her marriage with Lucius had been one of the best decisions that she had ever made. Even back in Hogwarts, he had been so amazingly suggestible. He was no fool, but it had always been easy for a pretty face to whisper in his ear and make him believe that something was his own idea. He was the best husband she could have ever asked for: prideful, charming, and ever so gullible. Lucius made for a perfect smoke screen behind which she could project control.

    Many had tried to hang their judgements over her head. Some—particularly the more traditional members of the Umbrists and the Federalists—called her a traitor. Those people so quickly forgot that the only loyalty she had ever pledged was to family. Commonly, Narcissa was called an ice queen by those who foolishly believed she wouldn't hear; people who failed to realise that she heard everything said by anyone of import one way or another. This was regarded with no small amount of amusement. To anyone with a mind for politics, the declaration that she kept her cards well hidden was nothing less than the kindest of compliments. There were those who called her cruel and unfeeling, and those who accused her of some moral failing against which they had righteously succeeded. These earned outright laughter within the confines of her well occluded head. Narcissa knew cruelty all too well, and sly comments and whispered words in receptive ears were far from it.

    If asked (and compelled by some outside force to answer truthfully), Narcissa would proudly declare herself a pragmatist. A survivor. War spared none save for the pragmatic and the lucky, and Narcissa had never been very lucky. She was born right into the centre of the Dark Lord's war and had managed to get herself, her husband, her son, and most of her allies out unscathed. No amount of luck or good intentions would have managed that.

    She had learned the value of such ruthless pragmatism by watching her elder sisters—both of them idealists to their core. One was an outcast, penniless and bearing a mudblood man's name over the noble one she'd been born to. She was the lucky one, and had been ever since the day of her birth. Her eldest sister had always been unlucky however, and so had played guest to the dementors of Azkaban for over a decade.

    If those were the glorious lives that petty ideals had to offer, then Narcissa wanted none of it.

    Narcissa remembered briefly that it was nearly time for her annual visit to Azkaban. Bellatrix may have been a madwoman—and worse, an idealist—but Narcissa owed her more than she would ever be able to repay. The occasional visit was the least she could do. Timing it for September that she might take her mind off the freshly emptied house was just practical.

    But again, that was rooted in sentiment, and Narcissa was a pragmatist. It was this pragmatism that led Narcissa to the uncomfortable position of sitting across from Rita Skeeter, sharing tea. At least, that's how she justified it. While Narcissa didn't care for the reporter any more than she had when she'd attended school with her, she couldn't deny that the woman was useful. Sadly, necessity dictated that she humour her. Few could deny the power that she held over the common people. Scintillating gossip always proved to be a highly effective diversion, and that was just what Narcissa needed.

    A few months back, a team of Aurors from Misuse demanded entrance to Malfoy Manor, proceeded straight to the drawing room, and began scrying for compartments under the floor. They'd found some old family relics that were more than a bit embarrassing to be harbouring in the current political climate. The standard fine for the sort of thing they'd found was hardly a concern. The Malfoys had fallen back a bit since the Dark Lord's fall, but they were far from poor. No, the part which demanded action was the publicity. Lucius was the de-facto head of the Umbrists, one the two largest parties in the Wizengamot. The damage to reputation which would come from being discovered hiding so-called dark artefacts would cost far more than the few measly galleons which would undoubtedly be levied as a fine.

    This, of course, was only compounded by the idiocy that was Lucius slipping the darkest of the aforementioned artefacts into a schoolgirl's things a few months before. The fact that the only consequence was the loss of a single disobedient elf was a miracle in its own right.

    Narcissa, of course, was not without a plan. The auror in charge of their case was one John Dawlish, and she happened to know that he purchased smuggled potions ingredients from a little shop in Knockturn a week or so before every full moon. Narcissa had sent him two letters in the time it took him to prepare his case while Lucius did everything that he could to delay the presentation of the evidence. The first letter had been sweetened with honey. The second bore only vinegar. She hadn't received a response to either.

    Which brought her to lowering herself to inviting Rita Skeeter into her home yet again. It didn't do to make threats that one wasn't prepared to follow up on, after all.

    "So, Narcissa," the insignificant bug broached, ignoring any and all social graces that might be expected of her. "I doubt that this is a social call." Her tone was grating. If she hadn't grown up with Bellatrix, Narcissa might have even been annoyed. Being intentionally unpleasant was a particular skill of Skeeter's, and one she had made a living out of, but very few people were as good as her eldest sister at much of anything.

    Narcissa gave the detestable woman a conspiratorial smile. "A social call it is not, but I gather that business and pleasure are much the same for you."

    "Ah, little Narcissa, you know me so well!" She calmed her rising blood pressure by imagining what the Dark Lord might have done to the insolent woman were He still around. It was a frequent fantasy, and not one that she'd ever managed to feel bad about. "I imagine that you have something for me to sink my teeth into then, hm?"

    "That depends entirely on whether you can keep a secret, Ms. Skeeter." It was a rhetorical question and they both knew it. Skeeter had never managed to keep a secret in her life; a fact betrayed by her shoddy occlumency practically screaming her thoughts to the world. The question did its job, though, as the reporter only seemed to grow more excited. "It's true that I hear about a great many things." Narcissa took a sip of her tea, relishing in making the foul woman wait. "But so do many others. I'd hate for a whisper in your ear today to be a whisper in someone else's tomorrow."

    Skeeter rolled her eyes. "Oh must we play this game every time? I'm not about to give up the anonymity of my favourite source! Now, what do you have for me?" Her eyes looked almost hungry.

    It really was too easy to bend Skeeter to her will. She fashioned herself as a shark, but the animagus ritual seldom lied. The woman was an insect; a bottom feeder happy to devour any little tidbit that came her way. She thought herself one of the little people, and she dreamed of bringing her betters down a notch. It was petty, childish, and highly exploitable. So long as Narcissa fed her a morsel or two when it proved convenient, Skeeter kept her nose well away from the Malfoy's business. Narcissa, of course, had far more than just a single morsel or two to spare. She heard everything, after all, and Skeeter often begged at her table for scraps.

    Narcissa lazily waved her hand, prompting a folder to pop out of her purse. "I have it on good authority that one of our supposedly upstanding Aurors has been making illicit deals with a potion seller in Knockturn." She floated the folder over to Skeeter who snatched it up eagerly.

    A few moments passed as she skimmed the contents of the folder with greedy eyes. It contained photos, speculations on ingredients with referenced identification books, dates, times, and more. Thorfinn Rowle was quite the thorough investigator when he cared to be, and had made a habit of caring on command ever since Narcissa managed to keep him out of Azkaban.

    "Of particular attention is the dates. Note how they correlate to lunar cycle. In fact, I'm told that Dawlish has a nephew who hasn't made an appearance anywhere on the night of the full moon for many years."

    "You suspect these to be for the Wolfsbane potion?" Skeeter didn't glance up.

    Narcissa allowed herself a smile. "I can't say, but I considered that you might find its recipe interesting."

    Skeeter flipped through the documents in the folder before coming to a copy of Wolfsbane's recipe. In a flash, she was pulling out images of the ingredients and speculation sheets to compare. "Oh Narcissa, you give me the sweetest of gifts," she finally said with a predatory grin. Narcissa didn't need to look into her head to see how pleased she was.

    "I'm simply doing my part for the community."

    "And the community will eat this up," Skeeter purred.

    The insolent woman was quick to finish her tea and depart after that, eager to get to work. She'd been fed, and fed well. Neither woman saw any reason to dally. Based on experience, Narcissa knew that she would be seeing an article within the week. She mused that she'd need to get to work as well. Blackmail, of course, was a more effective means of getting what you wanted when the other person actually listened. Releasing leverage to the Prophet outright simultaneously removed the hold she had, and advertised that she wasn't afraid to follow up if necessary. She'd lost this snitch, but it would ensure quite well that she wouldn't miss the next one.

    Which meant that she needed a new form of leverage to ensure that Dawlish wouldn't foolishly believe that he had nothing left to lose, get desperate and stubborn, and push the case forward regardless. Luckily, Narcissa had just the idea.

    While the Malfoys traditionally made their money in the harvest and trade of potions ingredients, the Blacks had a long shadow in the field of real estate. Narcissa had received a sizable share of the company as part of her dowry. Now with everyone else either dead, exiled, driven mad, and imprisoned, there was nobody to protest when she suggested that the company inquire about buying out Dawlish's mortgage from Gringotts. A copy of the inquiry and the bank's positive response would fit very nicely in a self-destructing letter to the foolish auror.

    Everyone always had something else to lose, after all.




    During the summer, family dinners were something Narcissa insisted on. She understood well the need for freedom that so often characterised the teenage years, but she indulged that decently enough the rest of the time. Truthfully, she had underestimated the toll that having her little dragon away at Hogwarts would take on her. Having her only son away in the dubious care of Dumbledore for ten months of the year stung. At least Narcissa had Severus to rely on, even if he never seemed to be able to decide whether he hated her or not. She herself had been hesitant about the dour man, but the frequent updates he sent cemented his place in her mind as a steadfast friend and a worthy godfather.

    Powers knew her son often forgot to write, something which caused her no end of anxiety when Severus wrote that children were being attacked in the halls. Mudblood children, yes, and nobody would be like to mistake her proud son for one of them, but children regardless. Severus had claimed the beast responsible was a basilisk, and those weren't precisely known for taking care to limit collateral damage.

    Lucius had joked that stressing so much about their son would give her grey hairs. Not that there weren't solutions to that sort of thing, but she'd banished him to one of the guest rooms regardless. He didn't seem to understand her concern. His position made sense to her—fathers and Heads of House weren't meant to care and dote like she tended to do—but she found herself loathing it regardless. Draco may have been his heir, yes, but he was also her son. If there was a more worthy cause of stress anywhere, Narcissa had not yet found it .

    Fortunately, both of the men in her life knew better by now than to complain about her insistence on family dinners. Lucius had, once upon a time, but that had ended by the time her dragon had turned four. He had always been one to turn with the wind when the consequences for stubbornness were too much to bear. It was part of why Narcissa had married him, after all. For Draco, a doting mother and loving father was all he had ever known. If that kindness was the only good thing that she ever wrought, then Narcissa would die happy.

    "—but I can't wait to see the look on Potter's face when he sees how much I've been practising!" he said. "He won't even know what hit him."

    Even if his obsession with the Potter boy was more than a bit transparent. Her baby always had had a taste for the finer things. Narcissa knew well that she'd bare tooth and claw against anyone who dared begrudge him that, and dreadfully anticipated the day that she would have to.

    "Your mother's been a little worried about sending you back tomorrow," Lucius said. "Between the dementors and her cousin, she's convinced there's going to be trouble."

    That was the other concerning thing. Draco knew well enough to stay away from the demonic prison guards, she had taught him better than that. Sirius, though, was another case entirely. He was no Death Eater—even if bringing that up to the Wizengamot wasn't in anybody's best interests—but he had inherited the Black Madness just as surely as Bellatrix had. Running headfirst into a castle guarded by dementors to see his godson sounded like exactly the sort of thing he would do. Sirius likely wouldn't even plan it out in advance. He wasn't stupid, precisely, even if Narcissa would never say that out loud. He was just mad. Walburga had made quite sure of that, and his stay with the dementors almost certainly hadn't helped.

    "I would be more confident if Dumbledore hadn't been content to let a basilisk roam around for six months," Narcissa said.

    "I'll be fine, Mother," spoke the light of her life with an aborted roll of his eyes. "Even if something happens, Uncle Sev won't let it hurt anyone." He spoke with the easy confidence of youth, but Narcissa knew far too well just how many people Severus had failed to protect before. "He's the one who killed the basilisk, remember?" He made a face. "I'm not looking forward to seeing Granger again, though."

    "That's the mudblood girl who got possessed?" Lucius prompted between bites.

    "She's insufferable! Top of the year, and she's always so smug about it!" Draco stabbed his fork in perhaps a touch harder than was necessary. "Dumbledore let her get away without taking her exams last year. I tried to put her back in your place like you told me, Father, but she just punched me like some muggle!"

    "She punched you?" I asked.

    He nodded. "Broke my nose too. The worst part is, McGonagall saw it and took her side! I had to scrub cauldrons for hours."

    "One would think that Dumbledore would have elves to do his labour, rather than foisting it on children," Lucius said. Draco nodded, vindicated.

    Narcissa took a sip of her wine before an errant thought came to her. "You vanished the blood, of course."

    "Er, no, I didn't. That's what the elves are for, isn't it?"

    She blinked, quite sure that she had heard incorrectly. It was Lucius' job to ensure Draco knew what he needed as heir of the House. Surely, he would have brought that up. "Are you saying that you did not cast a Blood Incineration charm to get rid of the blood that had been shed?"

    Draco shot his father a confused look as Lucius' eyes widened in realisation. "No, I didn't."

    "Then did you dedicate the blood to magic to strip it of its potential?"

    "No, Mother. Should I have?" There was a tinge of worry to his voice, but nowhere near enough. "Granger's a mudblood, it's not like she'd know what to even do with it."

    "I see." Narcissa's voice was cold as ice. She felt walls closing in around her, and wondered if perhaps she should have been a touch less protective. At times like this she remembered just how coddled Lucius had been as a child. Of course this would be the sort of thing he'd fail to place appropriate priority on. "Draco, meet me in the library when you have finished eating. Don't dawdle." Without another word, she rose and swept out of the dining room.

    Barely suppressed panic coiled around Narcissa's throat as she realised just how ignorant she'd allowed her son to be. It was a luxury that she'd never had, and it seemed that she'd been too permissive with allowing her son his luxuries. Draco thought the world to be a kind place. It was an illusion she had had dismissed early.

    When she had turned seven years old, Narcissa's father had decided that she was old enough to learn magic. More precisely, all the ways that magic could be used against the House. He started with an explanation of why, exactly, protecting one's blood was so important. She had listened as he talked about how blood was so intimately tied to the powers of Life and Connection as to be indistinguishable. Blood was Life, he had explained, and it was also the closest Connection to her family that existed anywhere. Narcissa had nodded and said that she'd understood, but he hadn't quite believed her.

    She always felt so small in her father's study. It was like the weight of the attention of all the Heads of House that came before were pressing down everywhere. The effect only seemed to magnify when her father decided to place his attention onto her.

    "You've been listening, yes, but I'm afraid that you don't understand quite yet." Cygnus gestured to an ornate dagger laying on its sheathe on the table beside them. The whole thing was deep black, with a bizarrely flared handle. "A demonstration is in order. Go ahead and prick your finger." He levelled his expectant gaze at her, a look that even the always indomitable Bella bowed to.

    "Will it hurt?" Narcissa asked.

    "Of course it will. It's meant to be a lesson." His voice held no pity, only cool certainty.

    With shaking hands, Narcissa picked up the dagger and took a deep breath. "Where would you like me to…?"

    "The end of your finger."

    Narcissa calmed at that. If the only pain from this lesson was a prick of the finger, then it would be a far kinder one than most. Cygnus was always harsher with her lessons than he was with any of her sisters. With newfound resolve, she placed the dagger against the end of her finger and pushed. It slid in easily. The slight pain was almost an afterthought.

    The moment the dagger touched her blood, it seemed to thrum softly. After a moment, watery ripples spread outwards from the point all across its surface. The black blade lightened to pale silver, and the handle shifted to spotless ivory. Narcissa felt the strangest sensation of oneness with the blade. It was almost as if it was part of her. Somehow, she knew for a fact that she would know precisely where it was even if she placed it down and closed her eyes.

    "Good," Cygnus said. "That knife is yours now. It will work as a focus for you and you alone, much like a wand. You are a Black, child, and every Black worthy of the name learns the knife before they learn the wand. You will keep it by your side always, without exception. Now, put it down." He produced a monogrammed handkerchief. "And clean up your hand with this."

    Narcissa did as instructed, placing the new part of herself onto the table quickly and gingerly. Father was never a patient man. In the privacy of her head, she knew that she was worried about what the lesson might entail. That worry fought a losing battle against the fear of what she knew would happen if she was so foolish as to disobey. Once she was done and had wiped her finger clean, Cygnus snatched the handkerchief from her.

    "Now, do you remember why you are not to allow anyone to have your blood?"

    "Because blood is Life and Connection, and allowing it to get into enemy hands harms the House of Black," she recited dutifully. That was always the point of the lesson. Narcissa might come to harm, but the House always came first.

    "And do you know what that means?" he asked her.

    Narcissa hesitated for just a moment. "No, sir."

    "Well then, allow me to make it very clear," Cygnus said. He levelled his wand at the spot of blood on the rag.     "Dominus."

    She felt every cell of her blood freeze inside of her body before marching along at a languid pace. Narcissa attempted to move, to adjust her place in her seat, but found that every attempt brought spikes of pain.

    "There are two reasons that the Imperius is considered 'Unforgivable'." Cygnus lectured. "The first is that there is no known defence for the ill tempered mind. The second is that the state of mind required to cast it is considered to be dangerous by the Ministry. These are reasons fit for spineless cowards and ignorant fools. Of all the spells I know to take control of a person, the Imperius is by far the nicest."

    He flicked his wand up, and Narcissa's body stood of its own accord. A swirl, and her body gave a perfect curtsy.

    "Every spell can be resisted. You insist that you are worthy of your station? Then do not simply allow me to have my way with your body. Be better than that."

    Narcissa's body began to walk around the room. She prepared to fight rising panic, but her breathing was too calm, her heart too steady for panic to occur. It gave way to an all encompassing fear which she covered up with determination and righteous fury, just like Bella said she should. Her mind was still her own, after all. After a moment of preparation, she tried to stop moving her legs.

    Before that moment, Narcissa had believed that there might be a limit to pain. She thought that there was some plateau beyond which the body simply shut down. How very naive she was.

    Stabbing agony coursed out from every vein from her waist down, like every single drop of blood was ripping through its lining and tearing out the muscles. The pain forced her spine to freeze and her whole body to spasm, spreading the white hot searing stabbing burning pain ever upwards, like a thousand rusty hooks digging in and ripping out and tearing and cutting and twisting. She'd have screamed were she able, and she felt her stomach flip as if to vomit before being beaten back down by the ironclad control of the spell.

    She stopped resisting. It had to be better if she let the spell take its course. The agony coursing out from her blood dimmed, but with dawning horror she realised that the feeling of her body tearing itself apart hadn't just been her imagination. Narcissa's body walked on with eviscerated muscles casting bolts of lightning up her spine with each step for what seemed like an eternity before the curse lifted and her body collapsed to the floor. Tears streamed freely down unseeing eyes.

    Cygnus voice filtered to her as if through a distant veil, as if it was being said to someone else. Somewhere else. "Your blood is your life. It hurts now, but you will come to thank me for this lesson in time. Elf!" A distinctive pop filled the air. "See to it that she's functional again." His piece said, Cygnus turned and left the room.

    "Please do not cry, Miss Black. Mimsy will take good care of you," said the matronly elf. "Mimsy already has everything Miss Black needs to get all better. Off we—"

    "Wait," Narcissa managed to say.

    "Miss Black you shouldn't be speaking. You could hurt yourself! Mimsy promises that—"

    "The knife," she gasped through the blood quickly filling her mouth. "Father said I need to keep my knife with me."

    "Of course, Miss Black. Just stay still."

    Narcissa grasped at skin to pull herself out of the memory, pacing through the library as she attempted to recentre herself. Memories of her father's many lessons always put her off balance, but when combined with the idea that her son was vulnerable to that same experience at the hands of an enemy it sent her into an anxious fit.

    It had taken a week and a half for her to be healed back up to full. Cygnus had forbidden pain relief that the lesson might sink in more fully, but her elf had snuck some to her anyway. She had no idea if she would have ever recovered had medical attention been any less immediate. Narcissa forced herself to sit, grasping through her dress at the dagger strapped to her thigh. The action made the world stop spinning, the same as it always had. Her dagger had been a constant companion since she'd received it. She could feel it the same as she would any limb, but the reminder soothed her in ways she hadn't the words to describe.

    She realised from the muttering voices in the back of her mind that she'd let her grip on her legilimency slip. Sloppy. Ever since she came into her power, legilimency had come to her naturally. It was useful when she kept a handle on it, but that became significantly more difficult in times of stress.

    It might have been for the best, she mused as she let the reassuring familiarity of her family's thoughts wash over her. The presence of her son's mind had ever served to calm her, even when it was racing almost as much as hers.

    It's just blood only blood Granger wouldn't know how to Father says stealing magic could she steal mine will I be alright Father says so but he looks worried will Mother be alright I should finish eating—

    His thoughts were as disorganised as they always were, the same as those of anyone untrained in Occlumency. It was a shame that they couldn't teach him yet, but forcing Order like that on a developing core could damage it irreparably. Even knowing that, she'd considered teaching him anyway once Lucius began teaching him about the family magics. The book had already been purchased and her calendar was cleared when she realised that prioritising keeping secrets over his children's safety was something that Cygnus would do.

    Narcissa refused to be her father.

    "Mimsy," she said with an ever steady tone. The aged elf appeared before her with a pop and a curtsy.

    "How can Mimsy help you Missus Malfoy?"

    "I need you to bring me one of the rodents you breed for the owls. Alive."

    "Of course, Missus Malfoy."

    Narcissa didn't linger on the melancholic affection coming from the elf's thoughts, instead focusing on leashing her legilimency once more. After several minutes, the door to the library creaked open and Draco walked in.

    "Mother?" he called as he approached. "Is everything alright?"

    She opened her eyes and looked at his worried face. "No. Sit, Draco." He sat without hesitation. "Draco, do you know what magic is?" He knew better than to claim that he did, and so shook his head. "Magic is, at its most basic level, Connection. You have magic because you are at the end of a long chain of people who had magic. The spells you cast are the way they are because that is how they have always been cast. It wears a hole in reality like a river might through stone."

    "What does that have to do with me not cleaning up my blood?" Confusion was writ large on his face, and Narcissa mourned the loss of innocence that she would be responsible for today.

    With a crack, a cage appeared on the table between them, a large rat inside.

    "Everything, dragon. When you have something in your possession which bears a strong connection to something else, you have power over both. Now, can you think of anything more thoroughly connected to you than your blood?" Draco's eyes widened.

    "So Granger could have power over me if she had my blood?" He shuddered. "I think I understand why you're worried."

    "No, you don't," she echoed. "But you will."

    Narcissa flicked her wrist, causing the cage to open and the rat to float out before she reached under her dress to remove her dagger. The bashful boy averted his eyes. Too innocent by half.

    "Keep your eyes up, Draco. This is important." She waited for him to pay attention once more before reaching out and pricking the squealing rat in the belly. With blood on her focus and steel in her spine, she incanted. "Dominus."

    The squealing stopped immediately. She felt the rat, in a distant sort of way. Like a phantom itch for a limb long lost. Its blood hovered at the edge of her sense, a small rush of magic and Life whirling around her like Power everlasting. The rat's blood froze before she breathed the magic in, adjusted to the sense, and bade it flow once more. Narcissa cancelled the levitation charm to drop the rat onto the table. With a flick of her dagger it rose up on two legs and began to walk.

    "With blood, the most vile of malefica can be cast. You could kill someone from miles away, or take control of them just as easily. The cruellest spells ever invented call for the blood of their victim. By blood, I have seen grown men reduced to mere screaming, wailing flesh. You are familiar with the Imperius curse, correct? It works on the mind, filling the victim with joy whenever they please their master. Blood magic is not so kind. It works on the body, promising punishment for disobedience instead."

    Draco swallowed, eyes like saucers. "Is it in a lot of pain?" he asked.

    She felt it twitch in protest, felt the muscles shred in response. It felt good. It felt like power. "Yes."

    "Please stop."

    "Of course." Narcissa dropped the curse, and the rat began squealing once more. She ignored it writhing on the table to focus on her son. "I think you understand the lesson. Now, give me your hand."

    He looked up suspiciously, filling Narcissa's heart with a mixture of pride at how he had learned and horror that she had made him mistrust her for even a moment. "Why?"

    "The caution is wise, but unnecessary. I'm going to show you how to incinerate any blood that's been left outside of your body. It won't affect any already dedicated to a working, but it will prevent someone from using it for something new. I don't imagine that that fact will matter much today. As you said, the girl is a Mudblood. However, not everyone who might want power over you will be so unfortunately born. The fact that I never taught you this is an oversight on my behalf. I'll demonstrate, then you'll follow." Narcissa picked up her wand and pointed it at the blood still on her dagger. "Like so. Combustus Sangui."

    The tip of the dagger lit up in flame for a moment, as did several spots on the table. She handed both dagger and wand over to her son. "Now, prick your finger and cast the spell. We need to make sure that there's no traces of you left sitting around for anyone to find." The rat's squealing reached a fever pitch. "Mimsy," she commanded, and both rat and cage disappeared.

    Draco took the foci with trepidation. It was with shaking hands that he finally pricked his finger. "Combustus Sangui." Nothing happened.

    "Don't forget the swirl at the end."

    "Combustus Sangui."

    "Tighter motions. You're banishing something outside of you, you need to keep it constrained."

    "Combustus Sangui!" The dagger's tip finally lit up in flame. Narcissa grasped his hands and moved them to place the foci down on the table.

    "Good." Narcissa gave her son one of the smiles she reserved only for him. "There are many people who will want to hurt you. More who will want to control you. You are pureblood, Draco. That means more than just money and privilege. The mudbloods and blood traitors scorn you and covet your magic. You need to protect yourself from them. It's the only way to stay alive." She squeezed his hands once more. "Do you understand now why I was so concerned?"

    He nodded, ashen-faced. "Yes, Mother."

    "Good." She let Draco's hands go. "Now, tell me more about that trick that you're going to beat the Potter boy with."

    He took a deep breath. "Actually, I think I have some homework left to check over. If I may?"

    "Of course," Narcissa said, as if the thought of her son pulling away from her didn't feel as if her heart was being torn from her chest. "I wouldn't want to disturb your studies."

    He stood and began walking away. "I love you, dragon," she called after him, the words bubbling out of her as if they had no place to go but out. "Never forget that. I just want to keep you safe."

    "I love you too, Mother." Draco closed the door shut behind him without another word.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Hi, I'm eM15, I like reading and writing stories about damaged, broken people, and the Black family are my favorites. Can you tell? Cannot wait to write Sirius. Won't be too long either, cause we are firmly in the realm of Prisoner of Azkaban. It's gonna be fun.

    Next chapter's back to Hermione. As always, comments make for a happy author, whether they be discussion or critique!
     
    Well, you certainly managed to write an interesting and scary Narcissa who cares for both her sisters while not hiding how she feels regard muggles/muggleborn.
     
    Good one Narcissa, not handing out the same kind of trauma your father did. I know demonstrations may be seen as necessary to garantee a point being driven home, but... those could've been made if Draco failed to get the explanation for why he shouldn't leave his blood unattended. Now he may develop some light emotional scarring when he didn't need to.

    To be clear, this comment is directed at the character. eM15 wrote another fine chapter.
     
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    11 - First Impressions
  • Threadmarks
    • "I love you Mum. Love you Dad."

    "Love you too," Dad said and Mum echoed it. "Have fun at school, and stay safe, okay?"

    I looked up into Dad's worried smile, felt his hand on my shoulder, and the desire to lie and claim that I'd be fine shrivelled up and died. I cursed myself for lying, my parents for caring so much, the professors for failing to notice anything, and the Headmaster for being so ineffectual. Most of all, I cursed Tom, I cursed his stupid Diary, and I cursed Lord bloody Voldemort. In that moment I wanted to run into my Dad's arms and tell them everything so they could make it all better like they always had. But I couldn't. It would hurt them. Break them, even. They wouldn't be able to fix anything, they'd just be scared for me. Impotent. Mum and I were too much alike for me to ever inflict uselessness on her; in the past few months I'd come to know too well just how she'd take it.

    "I'll do my best," I said as if it was anywhere near adequate. "You'll see me again before you even know it. Promise."

    And I didn't need to sign in blood to know that I'd fulfil this promise just as surely as my other Vows.     'Whatever it takes,' I swore to myself. 'Whatever it takes.'


    First Impressions​


    Trouble had a nasty way of finding Harry at the most inopportune times. Apparently, he'd overheard Mr. Weasley talking about how Sirius Black was hunting down Harry specifically. Mrs. Weasley hadn't wanted to tell him, which surprised me not at all. Ron had reacted with horror and I felt like I should have too, but…

    I was a bit too tired for that. Of course the escaped mass murderer would be gunning for Harry. That might as well happen.

    "It's just one more thing we'll have to deal with," I said. "Even if you don't go looking for trouble, he'll probably make his way into Hogwarts anyway. We'll have to keep an eye out."

    Ron reeled. "Do you really think Dumbledore would miss something like that?"

    I rolled my eyes. "How old do you think that basilisk was? It would be just like Dumbledore to miss something like a murderer getting into the school."

    "Look, I get that you're annoyed with him, but—"

    "I'll keep an eye out, okay?" Harry interrupted, ever the peacemaker. I relented, content that I'd had the last word. After a moment, Ron did too.

    After a few hours more in the company of the tattered, battered, and sleeping R.J. Lupin, during which Ron picked a fight about Crookshanks being let out—as if Scabbers couldn't just hide in his robe—Harry's new Sneakoscope span and hissed, and Malfoy swung by to be a prat and give me a few wary looks, the train pulled to a stop. As the sound of the engine running and rails passing by dimmed to nothing, the space almost seemed to be filled with the howling wind and pounding rain instead. Then, all at once, the lights went out.

    "There's something moving out there," Ron said with his face plastered to the window to see through the sheets of rain. "I think people are coming aboard."

    Just then, the compartment door slid open, causing each of us to jump only to see the silhouette of a round faced boy filling the portal. "Neville?" I tried. I calmed my racing heart.

    "Do you guys know what's going on?" He stepped in and sat down across from me.

    "No idea," Harry said.

    A moment later the door slid open once more to reveal Ginny and Luna. Ginny was holding a wand with a glowing tip, casting dramatic shadows everywhere. I gave them a smile and picked up Crookshanks to make room for Luna next to me. She slid in with a hum.

    "Hello there, my name is Luna." She zeroed in on Crookshanks, extending her hand as if to shake. "It's nice to meet you." Crookshanks gave her an appraising look before batting a paw at Luna's hand. Her face lit up nearly enough to banish the dark around us.

    "This is Crookshanks. He's a half-kneazle." I began to stroke down his spine.

    "He's a menace is what he is," Ron grumbled.

    "Kneazles are very intelligent, you know. They're aggressive to the people they think are dishonest, and they're rarely wrong." Luna scratched between his ears, and he pressed his face into her hand.

    "Scabbers hasn't done a thing!" Ron covered up the lump in his robes with his hand. "He's just a rat."

    "Guys," Ginny hissed. "Don't you think we have better things to worry about, like why the lights went out? And who's this bloke?" She waved a hand at the sleeping man.

    "We think he's the new DADA professor," Harry said.

    "You reckon this one's evil or just an idiot?" Ron gave the man a wary eye. "Or maybe he's Sirius Black in disguise."

    That earned a laugh from me, despite my annoyance at him. "That would be just like Dumbledore, wouldn't it?"

    "Don't joke about that!" Neville said. "He could be—"

    We never found out what he could be, because the temperature dropped sharply, cutting him off. It was like ice down the spine, all sharp edged cold. The feeling earned silence from all of us and jerked R.J. Lupin awake with a start.

    "Everyone stay seated," he whispered with intent, voice hoarse like he'd been screaming.

    The compartment door slid open and the temperature dropped once more. Standing, no, floating there was perhaps one of the most horrible things I'd ever seen. My mind almost seemed to reject it, bidding me to close my eyes and deny, deny, deny. I would have, were it not for the clear memory of neat script writing itself to say, "You should never look away from what scares you, little lion. Closing your eyes is the surest way to be blind." I forced myself to look.

    A mottled grey hand like a corpse left underwater to rot poked out from tattered black robes which seemed to waft around as if lighter than the air, as if gravity was a mere suggestion for a thing as wrong, as other as this. The face of the thing was hidden beneath its cloak, and I couldn't help my curiosity at what horrid sight must lie beneath. I could feel its pull and pull and pull on the magic around as it took and took and took. Like a black hole, sucking in everything. It looked at me—not with eyes, I could tell, but with something beyond knowing—and I could feel the weight of its gaze as it tilted its head like a curious dog before surveying the rest of the room.

    Memories of the Diary—of Tom—came up unbidden. Neat script on impossibly clean pages writing things out just so, making more sense than anyone had ever before. I remembered my Vows, my Taboo, and it filled me up inside with dread and horror and what have I done? The despondence I'd felt in the Chamber of Secrets returned to me more fully than it had even then, not saddled with the cold comfort of recency.

    I recalled the moment I learned that I was dying in perfect clarity, as if i was still in that sterile white room with the all-too-sorry Healer giving me sad eyes and understanding assurances like he knew what it was like to have one's world collapse when he didn't and couldn't and wouldn't know until Death came for him too. My mind raced to moments lying awake in Luna's room as I stared up at the ceiling and wondered if anything I did would ever be enough, if perhaps I was just doomed. My denial came as reflex, but it was weaker than it had ever been before. Was it inevitable? Was I wasting what time I had left in futile resistance? My parents, would I ever see them again? Would they attend my funeral knowing how fully I had lied?

    Luna's vice-tight grip around my hand pulled me from my stupor. I looked to see that everyone was in some state of shock. Harry had passed out on the floor and Luna's face had paled more than I'd ever seen. A dementor, I realised. Tom—not Tom, not a person, but the Diary, Voldemort—had told me about them. He'd said that they were truly Dark creatures who sucked out happiness and forced their victims to recall their worst memories, that they fed on these emotions. They were guards to the wizarding prison of Azkaban, I recalled, and weren't these things surrounding Hogwarts for the year in a desperate bid to catch Black? Hadn't Hagrid gone there for a time just the year before?

    I wondered at what it said about the wizarding world that using these monsters as commonplace guards was considered ethical. Just, even.

    It occurred to me then what memory it was that Luna must have been reliving, and I squeezed her hand with both of mine and pulled her close. "It's not real, it's not happening. It's just a bad dream," I whispered in a desperate attempt to help. I couldn't fight the thing off without a wand, not without casting…

    "Expecto Patronum!" Lupin cried, and a white mist sprouted from his wand casting joy and and warmth and a resolved sort of protectiveness into the air. The dementor reeled back as if struck. "Get back, get out!" he called, taking a step forward to fill the door. "I said go!"

    The dementor fled, and warmth returned to the world once more. Luna's grip lessened a bit. I saw Ginny giving her a worried look, and Ron and Neville hauling Harry back onto the bench. Ron smacked Harry's cheek until it seemed like he returned to his senses. "Are you okay?" he asked.

    "Yeah," he said. "What happened? Where's that, that thing? Who screamed?"

    "No one screamed," said Ron.

    Suddenly I realised what it was that Harry must have been reliving. He seemed as if the memory was fuzzy, like he hadn't known what was happening. It only made sense, if it was what I thought. Harry would have been very small. I turned my attention to Luna. "It wasn't real," I assured her. "Just a dementor."

    "It was real," she insisted. "But… it isn't anymore." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guilty sort of look come over Ginny's face.

    "It can't hurt you now," I tried.

    "It already has." She leaned into me. "How much magic do you think a dementor can take? More than us, I think."

    I didn't know how to respond to that. Professor Lupin saved me from trying by procuring a large chunk of chocolate from his suitcase. "Everyone, take a piece," he said. "It'll help." Harry's piece was particularly large, I noticed, not that anyone would begrudge it. I took a bite of my own and felt warmth fill my limbs once more. I'd need to remember that remedy, especially if the dementors were going to be sticking around Hogwarts. "I need to speak to the driver, excuse me." That said, he slid the compartment door shut behind him.

    "What was that? What happened?" Harry finally asked.

    "A dementor," I explained. "One of the guards of Azkaban. They force people to relive their worst memories. They feed on them, I think."

    "I thought you were having a fit or something," Ron said with worry plain on his face. "You went all rigid and fell out of your seat. Lupin got up and said all furious, 'None of us is hiding Sirius Black under our cloaks. Go.' But the dementor didn't move, so Lupin yelled something and made this white mist—"

    "A patronus," I muttered. "It's a guardian charm."

    "Right. He cast a patronus and it just sort of flew away."

    "It was horrible," Neville said. "Did you feel how cold it got?"

    Ron shuddered. "It was like I'd never be cheerful again…" Luna gave my hand another squeeze.

    "But did any of you fall off your seats?" Harry asked.

    "No," Ron said. "But Hermione just stared at it and started crying, and Loony went all pale and was shaking like mad."

    "Don't call her that," Ginny interjected. "Her name is Luna."

    Luna gave Ginny a wavering smile and I lifted a free hand to my face. Sure enough, my cheeks were wet with tears. I hadn't even noticed.

    Lupin returned eventually, bidding Harry to finally eat his chocolate. Stubborn boy. Conversation stalled after that, even once the train began to move once more. The rest of our ride was filled with the howl of wind passing by and rain spattering itself against the windows. It felt right, somehow. Sunlight would have felt fake. Luna didn't let go of my hand for the whole ride, for which I was thankful. I think she knew that I needed the assurance as much as she did.

    The train finally came to rest at Hogsmeade station, and we ventured out into the elements. Harry and Ron had to be pulled towards the carriages—of course they wouldn't know what to do, they'd come by flying car the year before. I was just about to board when I noticed Luna standing in the pouring rain and petting the air in front of the carriage. "Luna?" I resigned myself to being wet and made to join her. "What are you doing? We need to get to the castle."

    "Thanking our guide for pulling the carriage, of course." I looked once more to the twin harnesses floating in the air.

    "I don't see anything," I said.

    "Neither can I," Ginny said as she joined us. I gave her a wary look. Last I'd checked, she wasn't associating with Luna.

    "That's good." She smiled at me. "You can only see thestrals if you've seen death, you know." I didn't, actually, and didn't quite manage to hide my grimace at the knowing.

    "What do they look like?" Ginny asked.

    She cocked her head to the side. "Horses, but if they wanted to be bats too," she finally said. "You can see their prints in the mud if you look."

    I looked down, and to a small amount of surprise saw just as she'd described: fresh hoofprints. As I watched, another formed, presumably as the thestral shuffled in place. "Do you think I can pet it?" I asked.

    Luna gave the air in front of her a look, as if asking for permission. "He says yes. I think he likes you, Hermione!" I elected not to think about the implications of a death omen being fond of me.

    "Where is…" Ginny asked, and Luna seemed to realise we had no idea where the thing was. In a bid to correct her mistake, she grabbed each of our wrists and lifted them out in front of us. Immediately, I felt smooth, slightly slippery skin. I rubbed up and down to Luna's approving nod, and got the impression that the creature in front of me was near malnourished, skin stretched tight over knobby bones. Ginny and I both did our best not to look grossed out, though I doubt either of us succeeded.

    "Come on!" Ron suddenly called out from within the carriage. "Dinner's getting cold, and so am I!" One track as he was, he wasn't wrong, and so we loaded into the carriage as Luna muttered a 'Thank you,' to the thestrals.

    Ever so slowly, the carriage wheeled us towards a perpetually impressive Hogwarts looming over us, pushing past the gates to the grounds and between hooded dementors standing guard. The cold from the rain seemed to sink into my bones even more fully as we passed, but it was thankfully short lived.

    "You fainted?" Malfoy's delighted voice rang out as soon as we disembarked, his focus lasered in on Harry. "You actually fainted? Is big, strong Potter frightened of the scary, old dementor?"

    Ron retorted, and Malfoy changed focus. Professor Lupin came to interrupt as soon as he stepped down from his own carriage. Predictably, Malfoy fled, no doubt feeling smug as anything. The feeling of his nose crunching beneath my fist came to mind unbidden, buoying my mood considerably.

    As soon as I stepped foot in the castle, the tingle of magic that I'd spent so many hours opening myself up to seemed almost to press into me; it breathed in and out, stinging slightly and soothing an ache somewhere within me that I hadn't realised existed. I closed my eyes to immerse myself in the feeling. It was pressure on a bleeding wound, relief and reassurance and an enormous weight that I'd near forgotten it held. Perhaps it was the practice I'd had, perhaps it was the memory of feeling the hatred and rage in the magic of Black Manor, or perhaps it was just one more symptom of my slowly unravelling mind, but I could almost feel emotion in the air around me. It seemed happy, ecstatic even. I couldn't place why at a glance, but every student that passed through the front doors seemed only to cause the feeling to swell.

    It was glad that we were back, I realised. Hogwarts was happy to see us again.

    I wondered at it yet again. How is it that anyone could fall into a world of magic and not fall in love? There was joy, and warmth, and love, and I swore I felt the slightest bit of concern swirling around me—concern rather like I imagined a mother might feel at the sight of their daughter returning home with a skinned knee. There were those who'd deny me this, who'd deny this feeling to any not of the 'right' sort. How horrid their lives must be that they would hoard this wonder rather than share it wherever they could.

    I made a note to teach Harry and Ron how to do this, how to feel this. Luna already could, of course, and had a far keener sense than I did. Ron would struggle, I thought, but I could only imagine Harry would take to it like a fish to water if he would only focus. The thought crossed my mind that the Diary had been the one to teach me how to feel this, and I didn't manage to contain the pang of longing at the idea of talking to it again. I buried the feeling.

    My eyes opened once more to see Harry and Ron giving me strange looks. Malfoy seemed to be snickering, but Luna just looked at me with a dreamy smile.

    "It missed us," I said to her, knowing she'd understand.

    Her smile only brightened. "Of course it did. The doors were wide open, weren't they?"

    We had barely entered the Great Hall when my attention was called once more. "Potter!" Professor McGonagall called as she approached, "I need to speak with you." Harry looked between the lot of us before she scoffed. "There's no need to look so worried. I just want a word in my office." With that, she turned on her heel, and Harry had no choice to follow.

    Ron gave me a shrug, and we continued on to our table. Luna sat herself at the Ravenclaw table, of course, but I couldn't help but notice that people scooted away from her as if she was contagious. Ginny got my attention, and we shared a look. Understanding passed between us that that was something that needed addressing. "I thought you weren't talking to her," I whispered as we sat.

    She looked guilty. "Look, it was stupid, and I was being stupid. It's none of your business."

    "If you're going to hurt Luna again, then I think it is." I wasn't quite sure where this surge of protectiveness came from, but I didn't find myself too shocked by it. She and I had told each other quite a lot, after all. It was only natural that I'd be concerned.

    Ginny huffed. "I already said it was stupid. She changed, and I got weird about it."

    "Of course she changed," I hissed. "Her mother died!"

    "Yes, well, I'm sorry! But I was little, and my best friend in the world was acting weird, and I didn't know what to do about it. Shove off."

    "It's not me that you need to apologise to."

    She sighed. "Fine. You're right. When did you and her get so chummy anyway? Mum just said you were staying over at hers for a week, she didn't really explain."

    "If you must know, we'd been writing each other ever since the storytelling."

    At that point, the doors opened and the drenched first years filed their way in. It was with a black sort of amusement that I noted what a good introduction to Hogwarts they'd gotten—accosted by dementors, pounding rain, and at least one of them looked as if they'd fallen in the lake. Let it never be said that Hogwarts was anything less than honest about what sort of experience it held inside.

    Harry returned as soon as the sorting finished and took his seat between Ron and I. "What was that about?" Ron whispered.

    He bristled. "McGonagall wanted to check up on me after the dementor attack. She said—" He cut off and the Great Hall went to a low mutter as the Headmaster stepped up to the podium. Harry seemed to relax immediately at the sight, even as my hackles raised.

    "Welcome," he said with his ever-present pleasant geniality. "Welcome to another year of Hogwarts! I have a few things to say to you all, and as one of them is very serious, I think it best to get it out of the way before you become befuddled by our excellent feast." He cleared his throat. "As you will all be aware after their search of the Hogwarts Express, our school is presently playing host to some of the dementors of Azkaban, who are here on Ministry of Magic business. They are stationed at every entrance to the grounds, and while they are with us I must make it plain that nobody is to leave school without permission. Dementors are not to be fooled by tricks, or disguises, or even Invisibility Cloaks."

    He gave a long look around the room, lingering on Harry, Ron, and I. "It is not in the nature of a dementor to understand pleading or excuses. I therefore warn each and every one of you to give them no reason to harm you. I look to the prefects, and our new Head Boy and Girl, to make sure that no student runs afoul of the dementors." I grimaced at his description, at the horror of the Ministry using something so thoroughly awful as prison guards.

    He announced the new staff, then. First was Professor Lupin, who Professor Snape seemed to hold some particular loathing for. The applause was half-hearted at best save for those he'd saved on the train. Second was something of a shock, even if it maybe shouldn't have been. Hagrid was stepping up as professor for the Care of Magical Creatures. That announcement was met with much more applause, even if it was mostly from the Gryffindor table.

    Once we'd finished eating and were dismissed to bed, Harry, Ron, and I made our way up to the staff table by silent agreement. Hagrid was crying with joy, and he clapped a great big hand on each of our shoulders. "Great man, Dumbledore is… It's what I always wanted…" I hadn't the heart to let my wince go unhidden.

    Professor McGonagall eventually managed to shoo Harry and Ron away, but pulled me aside. "Madam Pomfrey wants to see you straight away. I'll bring you up to the hospital wing, then I'll drop you off at your common room for the night."

    I opened my mouth to tell her that I could find my way there on my own, but a stern look told me that it would be an exercise in futility. True to word, she led me out of the Great Hall and around a few bends to the familiar sight of the hospital wing. The professor pushed open the doors and strode in as if she owned the place. "Poppy," she called out. "Miss Granger's here to see you."

    Madam Pomfrey popped out from her secluded office and beckoned me over. "Step into my office, dear. Minerva, if you wouldn't mind waiting outside?"

    Her face soured some, but she complied. "Of course," she said.

    I followed Madam Pomfrey back into the side room. "Do close the door." I did so, and the sound from outside cut out completely. I glanced around the room. To one side of a cluttered desk stood a row of filing cabinets. Opposite them was a bookshelf absolutely packed with medical texts of various sorts. Along the back wall was a row of differently sized cauldrons set up on cold burners with a glass faced cabinet hung above, seemingly full of various potions and tinctures. "Sit, sit," she instructed, and I did as asked, looking over a stack of rolls of parchment at her. Seeing that, she huffed, and the parchment floated itself over to the bookshelf with a flick of her wand.

    "I hope you don't mind the dramatics, but I've been in contact with your Healer—Jameson, I believe—and he told me about your desire for privacy. You'll be happy to know that he hasn't even told me your diagnosis," Madam Pomfrey grumbled. "He did send me a form I'd like you to sign that would allow him to tell me." She reached under her desk and pulled out a sheet of parchment to present to me. It was in legal speak, but Mum had long since ensured that I knew how to navigate that. The form simply said that it would authorise Healer Argyle Jameson to release details about my condition to Madam Poppy Pomfrey, including my diagnosis, prognosis, and the real time results of the monitoring charms on my bracelets.

    I'd done my research, though, and Madam Pomfrey wasn't actually a certified Healer. Not really. She was more than qualified enough to serve as one for a school, but my condition was bizarre enough to be well beyond her field of expertise. Besides that, I was quite sure that any information in her hands would quickly find itself in the Headmaster's, and I had absolutely no idea what he would do with it. I didn't need the pity or coddling. I would solve my problems myself.

    "Do I have to sign it?" I asked.

    Her face twisted into a tight frown. "You do not have to, no. Your Healer has given me a list of potions for you to take, and he's asked that I make sure you keep your monitoring bracelets on, which I see that you have. However, I won't be able to take any steps to react to changes as they happen without being read in."

    I rolled up the parchment and handed it back. "Healer Jameson has taken very good care of me so far. As you said: I value my privacy, and respectfully, I don't think you being read in would change anything."

    She opened her mouth as if to protest before seemingly seeing something in my face and thinking better of it. "Very well." I sounded as if it hurt her to say, and for a moment I almost felt bad. Then I remembered that she'd been quite happy to keep what she knew of my own condition a secret from me, and that feeling vanished. Turnabout is fair play. "As you wish. Since you're already being monitored, there's no reason for me to make you stop by every week. I'll have some potions delivered to your bedside every morning. Make sure to take them every day, no exceptions."

    "Of course, Madam Pomfrey," I said with all the subservience I could manage. I may not have liked the woman, but there was no reason to earn her ire any more than necessary.

    "Go on, then. I'm sure Minerva's eager to be done waiting."

    With a nod and a muttered "Thank you," I left Madam Pomfrey's office behind. Professor McGonagall stood outside, just far enough to be decent.

    "All finished up?" she asked me. I nodded. "Good. Let's get you to bed, shall we?"

    Professor McGonagall led me through an eerily silent castle and up seven floors in near silence. When we finally arrived at the portrait, she cleared her throat.

    "You'll be happy to know that all of your teachers have had time to configure your year's exams to be passable with the use of ritual and runic magic in place of a wand." She levelled a tight smile at me.

    "I am happy to know that," I said. "Thank you." Not that my end of year exams were even a thought on my mind for once. There were bigger things to worry about. Of course I'd put in all due effort, that wasn't in question. It was just that passing my exams only to drop dead a few months later felt as if it might be a bit pointless.

    Her smile grew a bit more open. "Welcome back to Hogwarts, Miss Granger. It's a pleasure to have you. Fortuna Major." Hearing what must have been the password, the portrait swung open. "Have a good night."

    "Good night, Professor," I said, and climbed through the portrait hole.

    The Gryffindor common room was empty as I'd ever seen it on a first night back. It made sense; dementors had taken the energy from everyone, it seemed. I climbed the staircase up to the girl's dorm. Everyone was readying for bed, clearly exhausted, though Parvati managed to spare the energy to give me a pointed glare. It was with weary limbs and a heavy heart that I made my way to bed.




    The next morning brought with it another array of sickly sweet potions, Draco being a prat to Harry—though he seemed more than a bit nervous around me for reasons I couldn't put my finger on—and classes. Arithmancy was first on my docket, and I walked in more eager than I'd expected. Bill had introduced me to some of the basic concepts of the field over in Egypt, and I was thoroughly excited to see what an actual class might entail.

    Professor Vector was a stern looking woman who regarded each of us with a frown as we made our way to our seats. The seats themselves were arranged peculiarly, in 3 distinct rows on either side of the centre of the room, each row separated by thick lines in the ground. "Welcome to Arithmancy," she finally called out once we'd all found a chair. "To those who have not yet cracked open their textbooks, you might be wondering what this class is about. Now, is there anyone here who cares to define what precisely Arithmancy is?"

    I raised my hand, and she nodded towards me. "Arithmancy is the study of numbers in regards to magic, including magically significant numbers and their uses. In particular, it's used in developing and use of advanced potions, spells, rituals, and as a probability centred divination technique."

    "Good," Professor Vector said. "Five points to Gryffindor. Unlike every single other one of your classes—save for Potions should you pursue it to a NEWT level—we will be beginning this class with a test. This is the study of numbers, which demands a certain degree of maths knowledge. Since this is the first maths class many of you will have had since your tutoring by your parents or your muggle schools as appropriate, this test will serve as a way to gauge your knowledge and let me know where we need to start." She flicked her wand, and sheets of parchment flew out from her desk to land in front of a student each. "You have until the end of the class period. You may begin."

    Needless to say, I was already in love with the class. Unfortunately, not everyone was so lucky. In our next class, Transfiguration, I became distinctly annoyed with the teacher for divination, even despite not being in the class.

    People walked into Transfiguration in a sour mood, and had barely reacted when Professor McGonagall revealed herself to be an animagus. Apparently, Professor Trelawney found it to be great fun to fearmonger amongst the students, and had chosen Harry as her victim for that year. I could already tell that Harry was letting it get to him.

    It was good that I wasn't in the class. I'd likely have said something unwise.

    I'd said something to that tune at lunch, and Ron had given me a strange look. "Honestly, Hermione, you're more mad about it than Harry is, and you're not even in the class!"

    "That's the thing, though," Harry said. "That dog she saw, the Grim's supposed to be a big black dog, isn't it?"

    I stopped halfway to bringing a spoon to my mouth. "I… can see why you might be concerned."

    "Wait, Harry, you haven't seen a Grim anywhere, have you?" Ron looked distinctly worried.

    "Yeah I have. I saw one the night I left the Dursley's." Ron boggled at that, and I knew that he wouldn't be letting go of it anytime soon. And, of course, that would only make Harry more worried, which would get Ron more scared, and back to Harry. I huffed, knowing it was up to me to break the cycle.

    "Look," I said. "We're already all keeping an eye out because of Black, and it's not like Harry's going to go out looking for trouble. We'll just have to be careful, right? And stay together if anything weird happens." Harry nodded, but Ron didn't seem convinced. "I'm just glad I decided not to take the class, even if it would get her attention off Harry. Who knows what she would have seen in my cup?"

    That earned a startled and slightly guilty laugh from Harry. Ron looked distinctly uncomfortable. "How can you joke about that?"

    I shrugged. "I've had time to get used to it. It's not like I haven't been thinking about it, or like ignoring it makes it go away." I looked up at the clock. "Come on. We're gonna be late for Care of Magical Creatures."

    "But what about the Grim?" Ron insisted. I rolled my eyes.

    "If Harry sees it again, I'm sure he'll let us know. No secrets, right?" I looked to Harry for confirmation, who gave me a small smile.

    "Right," he said.

    Ron nodded. "Yeah, alright. Guess that's the best we can do."

    With the boys now reassured well enough, we made our way out of the castle and to Hagrid's hut. Hagrid met us with a great smile and wave. He was surrounded by the Slytherins we were sharing the class with. Based on Harry's grimace it seemed he hadn't read that far in the schedule. Honestly, what was I going to do with him?

    To nobody's great shock, Hagrid's teaching style was one of enthusiasm—he loved dangerous 'misunderstood' animals, and he assumed everyone else would too. As he instructed us on how to calm down our textbooks, I made a mental note to introduce him to Luna. No doubt they'd get along like a house on fire.

    Of course, Malfoy insisted on making an annoyance of himself. He made fun of Hagrid, ridiculed the school, and ratcheted up Harry's temper with every word. I wasn't unaffected either, but I was hardly keen for another detention. No matter how good I knew it would feel, and how very little I knew I would actually regret it.

    The Diary had done a very good job of forcing me to open my eyes to the fact that yes, I was admittedly a tiny bit spiteful. That wasn't a bad thing, necessarily, but it was something that I needed to keep an eye on.

    Hagrid eventually left and returned with few creatures bound in thick leather collars, looking like a mix of a horse and an eagle. "Hippogriffs!" he called them. "Beau'iful, aren' they?"

    Only Harry, Ron, and I had the courage to approach. I didn't blame the others. The claws on the hippogriff weren't the sort of thing most would approach without extensive experience with the sorts of things Hagrid thought to be cute and fluffy. Fluffy the three-headed dog came to mind.

    When Hagrid asked for volunteers to approach the appropriately named Buckbeak, Harry approached first. He bowed as instructed, and after a long moment the creature bowed back. He got closer at Hagrid's urging, patting the hippogriff's beak. The real show came when Hagrid told him to mount up and the hippogriff took flight.

    Frankly, I wasn't surprised. Harry belonged in the air, and Hagrid knew it.

    When he returned unharmed, he brought confidence with him. People surged forward to meet their hippogriffs. For his part, Hagrid looked over the moon to see students so enthusiastic. Even Neville managed to give one a few pats before being scared off by a flutter of wings.

    I was watching Ron bow to a hippogriff of his own when I heard a scream. There, Malfoy was lying on the ground bleeding from the arm while Hagrid wrestled Buckbeak back into his collar.

    "I'm dying!" Malfoy yelled out. "I'm dying, look at me!"

    He wasn't, he clearly wasn't, but Hagrid paled all the same. An injury during his first lesson wasn't precisely a good start. He gathered the overdramatic boy up, and I held the gate open as he carried him up to the castle. We followed, of course, because nobody exactly wanted to stick around the deadly looking creatures without Hagrid to wrangle them.

    Curiously, Malfoy stopped his wailing for a few moments to pull out his wand. I could just barely make out a muttered incantation before I saw the blood splattered behind us burn up in an instant, startling the hippogriffs. My eyes widened immediately. That was… a rather smart move, actually. One that worried me more than a bit. What were the spell's limits? I still had my blood-mask hidden in my trunk upstairs. Would that be affected? I hadn't dispelled the curses on all those books yet, I still needed it!

    I grabbed a confused, concerned, and annoyed Harry and Ron by the wrists and rushed us up to the Gryffindor common room. Class was dismissed anyway. It was with a frantic energy that I tore up the stairs to my room and through my trunk in search for the necklace. Finding it, I held it up to the light. The blood was still inside, completely unburned. I let out a deep sigh of relief.

    Replacing it in its spot—in a locked jewellery box hidden underneath my clothes—I shut the trunk tight. Whatever that spell was, it had a limit. Whether it was the wards around Gryffindor tower, the distance, a time delay, or something else, I wasn't sure. I had to assume the worst—that it was only a matter of time before the artefact became useless. Either way, I resolved to keep the blood-mask safely stowed save for when I needed it.

    And I would be needing it. I had research to do, and I needed to learn Cumbric so I didn't need to rely on Luna to read Blaec's journal, and some of the books I needed were still very much cursed. Hogswatch would serve as a safe place to work, I decided. At least, it would once I'd put up some proper wards. So much to do, and so very little time to do it…




    Hagrid had been despondent when we went down to visit him. I couldn't really blame him. Seriously injuring the son of one of the school governors on one's first day teaching was just about the worst case scenario. The only way that I could imagine it would be worse is if the wound had been anywhere but the arm. He was lucky in that way. Attempted homicide of a student on day one of the school year was a bit early, even for Hogwarts. Petrifications hadn't started until Halloween last year, and we'd at least made it to the first quidditch match the year before.

    Of course, having an injured student on day one after said student was warned about the danger was the sort of thing that might be swept under the rug were it not for the fact that the student in question was a pureblood, that Hagrid was half-giant, and that the Malfoys were racists in a position of power. No doubt if the teacher or injured party were literally anyone else, it would be the stuff of gossip for all of a week before everyone moved on. Malfoy being a prat and faking his injury being worse than it was didn't help. There was no part of me that didn't believe that he'd be miraculously recovered just in time for his first quidditch practice.

    Harry and Ron had been too depressed to finish their homework that night. They seemed deeply affected, and I was too, but being too depressed to progress was not an option for me; my timer was too tight. I shuddered to think about how much time I'd lost to Black Manor's exploitation of my magic. So, I finished up my homework, warded up my bed—far more thoroughly than last year, I was proud to say; being taught by a curse breaker had advantages—and returned to the common room to find the boys sitting in front of the fire playing a half-hearted game of chess and tossing sad speculations at each other.

    "Hagrid will be fine." I snapped them from their stupor. "He already said that he notified the governors, and they didn't mention anything about firing him."

    "They might still be talking about it," Ron said. "They wouldn't want to say anything beforehand, would they? They'd probably just keep it all secret until it happened."

    It had been hours of this. I was more than a little done. "Yes, well, I'm not in the habit of worrying about things I can't change. I'd prefer to keep my concerns in reality, and not in 'what-if's."

    "It's like you don't even care." Ron gave me a dirty look.

    "Ron—" Harry tried, but I wasn't having it.

    "Of course I care," I hissed. "It's just that I've got a few other things on my mind, in case you'd forgotten!" Ron flinched, and I quashed the ugly feeling of satisfaction at the sight. "Speaking of, Harry, I need to borrow your Cloak."

    "Why?"

    I cast a quick look around the semi-busy common room to ensure nobody was listening in. "Because it's after curfew, and I want to ward up Hogswatch so I can have a safe place to work."

    "Want us to come with?" Harry asked. I shook my head.

    "If you don't have the focus for your transfiguration homework—" I gave him a pointed look. "—Then you certainly won't have it for wardcrafting. Honestly, more people being there would just make it harder." He still seemed wary, so I pushed a bit more. "It's not like I'm going to run into anyone that desperately wants to duel, especially with the Cloak on. I'll be fine."

    He seemed to accept that explanation, and a few minutes later I was out in the halls. The walk was eerie for all that it was familiar. It took me a few minutes to place why before I realised. When was the last time I'd gone somewhere truly unescorted? Black Manor had Luna, Egypt had seen Ron as a constant companion, and there was no privacy at all at the Burrow. Even before leaving Hogwarts, Harry and Ron had stuck close by my side after I'd been dragged down to the Chamber. Before that, I'd had the Diary, which I wasn't sure counted.

    It was strange to be truly alone after so many months. The boys were clumsy and ill-suited to stealth, but I found myself immediately missing them regardless.

    The halls were quiet enough that even my whisper-silent footsteps rang loud in my ears, irrationally winding my anxiety into a tight coil in my chest. By the time I reached the illusory wall, I was jumping at every little noise. Relief filled me up as I stepped through and saw the portrait of a proud knight sitting tall in a high backed chair.

    "Who goes there?" he asked, and I winced. I'd need to add some soundproofing to the illusory wall. Almost certainly something conditional, else it would be far too easy to be baited into a trap. A spell for that didn't come to me immediately. It seemed some research was in order.

    Acknowledging the knight, I lowered the hood of the Invisibility Cloak and swept its sides back in a curtsey. "It is I, Hermione Granger. It's a pleasure to see you again, Sir Fabeon Ander Ambleton the Third."

    "So it is! It's an honour to meet once more," he bellowed. I put a finger up to my lips, and he had the decency to look sheepish as he lowered his voice. "Of course, of course. You must understand, it's been months since anyone stopped by to chat. Andrew and Dave have missed you terribly. Not that Andrew would ever admit it, the fool. I presume you're wanting access to… Hogswatch, I believe your little friends called it?"

    "I would appreciate it, Sir Ambleton."

    He scoffed. "Ah, but we are friends, are we not? I'm Sir Fabeon to you! No matter. In you go!" With a heave and a twist of his body, the portrait swung open.

    "Thank you, Sir Fabeon," I said with another curtsey, and stepped through

    "It is my pleasure. Speaking of, I believe Dave did some redecorating over the summer. Do make sure to tell him what you think!"

    The first thing that I noticed was the thin, slightly tinted window in the hallway. It was subtle, but not unwelcome. I supposed that a bit more light would be nice, and I appreciated the gesture. When I opened the door to step into the room proper, though, it became very clear that someone had been making far larger changes than I'd anticipated. I was glad Sir Fabeon had told me in advance, else I'd have grown immediately and immensely paranoid.

    The far wall had been covered in empty bookshelves waiting to be filled. A single desk and chair sat in the far right corner, and the far left was taken up by two short couches with a coffee table between them. In the near corners, a podium and potion station stood facing inwards. The greatest change was the centre of the room. Where once there was a mostly flat floor made up of stone bricks, a large circle in the centre had been recessed down and ground smooth with candle holders dotting its edge. A wide window took up the left wall with thick blackout curtains. Out of curiosity, I shoved my hand through it, finding that there was no glass. Most peculiarly, It seemed as if the wind and chill of the night air outside simply ceased at the precipice. That was… absolutely genius! There were so many rituals and potions which demanded unfiltered sunlight or moonlight, and some that demanded no natural light at all! If my suspicions were correct…

    I took out a piece of the ritual chalk I kept on me and made a mark on the ground in the recessed circle taking up the middle of the room. It applied smoothly, like it was a chalkboard designed for it.

    It seemed that Hogswatch had become a perfect ritual room over the summer.

    I raced out of the room, into the hall, and down the spiral staircase. The sight of a shining suit of armour clutching the pommel of a sheathed sword at its hip came into view.

    "Miss Granger," it said in a hollow and dour voice. "Returned to disturb our rest once more, I see."

    I curtseyed. "It's good to see you again, Andrew Ander Ambleton the Seventh Esquire. May I speak to Dave?"

    The suit of armour rolled its head around in what I had come to know as an approximation of an eye roll. "Of course. I don't suppose you'd like a full tea service as well?" Its sarcastic tone was at odds with its actions, as the wall behind it began to spin, rotating the floor and Ambleton with it.

    As the revolution finished, a new suit of armour came into view. This one holding a spear in one hand and with a feather attached to its helm. "Lady Granger," it said. "A pleasure to see you again."

    "Dave!" I said. "Were you the one who renovated the room?"

    The suit of armour pressed its free hand to its chest and laughed a hollow, metallic, and jovial laugh. "It was my idea, at least. We haven't had a good ritualist in attending here in years! It was the least I could do."

    "How?" I asked. "I thought you couldn't move."

    "Rather easily, in fact. It should come as no surprise that Hogwarts is alive, and I and my brother knights are merely a part of it." He patted the stone wall behind him.

    "If you would keep your dramatics quiet, I'm trying to sleep," came the muffled voice from the other side of it.

    "No sense of humour, that one," Dave said. "But yes, it was a simple matter to ask the castle to make a few changes on our, and your, behalf."

    "I don't know what to say!" And I didn't. I was expecting to have to transfigure the furniture myself as a temporary solution, or else shrink it and haul it from abandoned classrooms. The idea of making a proper ritual circle didn't even occur to me, and the window would have been right out.

    "Nothing needs said, young Miss Granger. This castle has too many empty rooms as it is. It's my distinct pleasure to fill one of them up for a student as eager to learn as you." The cheer was evident in his voice, even as disembodied and hollow sounding as it was. "Now, I expect you've no small amount of work to be doing. I think it's best you hop to it!"

    With a few more 'thank you's, I made my way back up the spiral staircase and into the ritual room once more. I took a seat at the desk, pulled out my parchment, and began to work.

    As Dave had said, Hogwarts was alive. The breathing in and out of its magic spoke to that. Now it had been brought to my attention, though, I could close my eyes and just barely feel the tinge of pride and satisfaction. The castle seemed… glad that I was happy with my new workspace. That would be something to work around. For a myriad of reasons, I didn't want anyone save for Harry, Ron, and maybe Luna to have access to Hogswatch. Even beyond the probably-illegal books I would most definitely be storing here, I had come to value my privacy.

    In a magical environment as clearly opinionated as Hogwarts seemed to be, though, that would get difficult. Wards inherently separated things; designating an 'us' and a 'them'. It carved a divide in the magic. For someplace like Black Manor which had been built from the ground up with that attitude in mind, that sort of thing would almost certainly be easy. The same with any less magical places. The less magic there was to divide and the fewer dissenting opinions the magic had—and I was coming to terms with the fact that magic did seem to have something approaching rudimentary opinions—the easier the job. My bed had been easy to ward, I suspected, because the bedrooms were already walled off from each other and seemingly inherently designed to be private. It probably also helped that I hadn't cared to be too horribly thorough.

    There were clearly separated common rooms and the password up to the Headmaster's office, but those were almost certainly all put in place by the Founders. I hadn't anywhere near that kind of pull. I would need to be convincing. I'd done it with Black Manor, even if I'd been convincing it of a lie.

    The key, I decided after some thought, would be intent. Not intent-based passage, necessarily. That could go wrong in so many ways I didn't even know where I'd start listing them. The Mirror of Erised had proved that all the way back in first year. Rather, declaring my intent for the wards at the very start of the schema. Declaring in plain runes that I wanted to set the wards for the sake of the safety of myself—given my history in particular this would no doubt be an easy sell—and for the safety of others—some of the books that I wanted to store were highly cursed, after all, and rituals that went wrong had a tendency to do so dramatically—would almost certainly allow me to protect Hogswatch without separating it from the flow of magic in Hogwarts proper. Anything less would place restrictions on the magic, and I didn't have anywhere near the power at hand to bind it without expecting those bindings to break. There was just too much magic. It would be like securing tectonic plates with twine and being shocked when the first earthquake broke the tie.

    The approach was something of a departure from what I'd been doing already. Before, I'd always simply described what needed to happen and willed it to be so. With this, though, I needed to convince a rudimentary intelligence that allowing and even maintaining the spells were a good idea. Certainly, I would need to dive deep into my various runic texts. Most of the runes I knew already dealt in cold, hard facts—not abstract ideas and justifications. I wasn't even sure where I would start. It was an entirely new sort of challenge.

    Truthfully, I was more than a bit excited.

    It was late, but I hadn't the luxury of going to sleep. I doubted I'd be able to either, not with the buzzing excitement of a new venture into the unknown and the eager flush of pride from the magic all around me. The sooner I got the wards set up, the sooner I'd be able to move my more sensitive materials over, and the sooner I'd be able to get to work on saving my life. I knew for a fact that the answers were out there waiting to be found. I just had to find them. Thus resolved, I put quill to parchment and got to work.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • I find this story fascinating, especially how works to explore both the characters and new ideas regarding magic. The new update was a highlight of my evening.

    The lack of discussion often surprises me, though I suppose that's just a systemic issue as SV's User Fiction board just doesn't have as much activity as SB's Creative Writing, in spite of them being essentially identical.
     
    Evilness42 said:
    I find this story fascinating, especially how works to explore both the characters and new ideas regarding magic. The new update was a highlight of my evening.

    The lack of discussion often surprises me, though I suppose that's just a systemic issue as SV's User Fiction board just doesn't have as much activity as SB's Creative Writing, in spite of them being essentially identical.
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    Happy to hear you're enjoying it! Hearing you appreciated seeing the update that much does quite a bit to buoy me up, I'll admit. As for the discussion, I think that's partly due to the general lack of discussion on SV comparatively, yes, but I also think that SV's differing rules regarding necroposting sort of do me in. Old stories that may not have seen an update in quite a while still get discussion, pushing the littler stories down a wee bit. Just a consequence of the thing. I ain't tripping. I'd crosspost to SB too, but I'm pretty sure that certain later chapters might get the story flagged. Again, it's just the nature of the game. C'est la vie. I'm just happy y'all like this story enough to keep reading.
     
    eM15 said:
    How is it that anyone could fall into a world of magic and not fall in love?
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    I'm really glad to see this story take this stance! So many stories tend to ignore the idea that magic is fun, and furthermore ignore the idea that much of the fictional world's appeal lies with magic being fun.
     
    Hacking Hogwarts: Runic Edition
    ...yea, not my best pun, I admit.

    Wonder if Hermione will realize she could theoretically blackmail Draco into being a closet bigoted idiot. Doing so would have consequences for her, but the options's on the table.
     
    Takareer said:
    I'm really glad to see this story take this stance! So many stories tend to ignore the idea that magic is fun, and furthermore ignore the idea that much of the fictional world's appeal lies with magic being fun.
    Click to expand...
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    Right? Sure it gets dark, but the foulest creature in the setting is literally the flying depression monster. This is the world of self-shuffling cards, opinionated chess pieces, mirrors who rate your fit, talking heads in fireplaces, and sports played on flying brooms. It's the world of fizzing whizzbies, ton-tongue toffees, cheering charms, and Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes! Where good wizarding names are all wordplay and kids go to school in a giant castle. It's silly! It's fun! It is wonderful by the literal definition of the word. I may have a lot (and being transgender, I mean a lot) of strong opinions about Rowling and her writing, but she writes wonder and fun like nobody's business. This story is sort of my love letter to that, to that silly, fun, badly fleshed out setting that has had its spot in my mind ever since I was little and being read bedtime stories about the Boy Who Lived. Even for all that I write depressed and traumatized characters being depressed and traumatized, I'll always try to fit that wonder in. It's the whole reason we're here.

    And Hermione and I agree on something: The best way to love something is to try to understand it, to analyze it until all the pieces fit together. I could write a dissertation on Hermione Granger and her motivations through the series, but I think a large part of what you see her do is because she truly does love magic, wants to understand it, and reacts violently to anyone who tries to take that away or ruin it for her (Draco, Skeeter, even Ron occasionally (at least before he pulls his head out of his ass; he really does develop a lot post GoF)). It means first person Hermione is sort of the perfect PoV for the core conceit of this love letter—The simple questions of 'How?' and 'Why?'.

    Point being, I'm happy that you see the same appeal to all this that I do!
     
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