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"Tom," Merope said in a tone of warning, her eyes wide in shock. "I know of what you speak, and I cannot believe you would suggest it." |
In spite of the fact that the spell sounded bad and that she did not really want to return to normal terms with Tom without a big apology from him, Hermione could not but seek more knowledge. "I don’t know anything about this ritual. What does it do? How does it work?" |
Tom raised his eyebrows at her inquiringly. He paused for a fraction of a second, but his inclination to discuss what he knew won out. "It blackens and blights a tract of land. They would use it in war. It can be reversed with another ritual—" |
"Hermione, what my son is avoiding saying is that both rituals are fueled by human sacrifice," Merope said, eyeing him darkly. "And not "just’ one victim for each, given the size of the area that it would have to affect. This is powerful magic." |
"I wasn’t suggesting killing our own villagers!" Tom exclaimed. "But there are plenty of vile Norman Muggles, like the Muggle king’s soldiers." |
Merope gaped at her son as if she had never quite seen him before. "Hold your tongue, Tom," she snapped. "I forbid any further mention of this." She breathed deeply. "If anyone has a productive suggestion to evade this tax, please speak up." |
Hermione tried to clear her head of her own shock at the ideas that Tom was contemplating. "What about charms to disguise the land? Not to actually kill the plant life, but... to make it look unhealthy." |
"A glamour charm?" Merope asked. She considered. "Yes, that might work." |
"The Carrows are not very skilled in magic," Severus supplied. |
Merope nodded. "So if one of them is the "assessor,’ it might trick them. It would require all of us to walk the grounds to set it up, but it might work." She smiled grimly. "And if it doesn’t, we will have to "secure’ the assessor and prepare the castle for a magical siege." |
Hermione lay on her bed in the castle that evening, staring at the ceiling, Crookshanks curled up next to her side. She was not sure what to think of Tom’s grim suggestion earlier that day. On one hand, it was disturbing that he apparently considered sacrifice-fueled rituals an acceptable solution. But did he really? Tom had always had a tendency to show off what he knew, and perhaps it was just the eagerness of a magical scholar who focused on theory. |
She acknowledged to herself that in any other circumstance, she probably would not have thought a "but" at all. The ritual would have been shocking, and that would have been that. But for that brief moment, we had some of our old rapport back, even if it was so that he could talk about murderous ancient magic.... |
She turned, upsetting Crookshanks’s rest. The cat stretched and jumped off the bed, to Hermione’s chagrin. She reached an arm toward the fluffy animal, trying to coax him back, but he leapt into the chair in the room instead. Sighing, Hermione lay back down. Tom still owed her an apology for his behavior. She could not let him think otherwise. |
A few rooms away, Tom turned repeatedly on his bed, restless and unsettled. He supposed he should have held his peace, and when the time came, simply performed the ritual himself. Now, if he did that, his mother would instantly know what had happened. It was frustrating to acknowledge his own mistakes, but so it was. Tom really did not see anything wrong with capturing a few of the Muggle king’s soldiers and using their lives as fuel. There was a kind of poetic justice, in fact, since many of these particular Muggles supported this pretender because they agreed with him and his noble backers that his female cousin should not rule due to her gender. Tom did not want a Muggle queen any more than he wanted a Muggle king; he wanted to rule, but somehow that reasoning made it worse. To use the lives of woman-hating Normans in a Celtic ritual to protect the property of an English witch seemed perfect to Tom... but it seemed that it was not to be. |
He wondered about something else related to the discussion. Why would Malfoy and Lestrange try a scheme to seize the castle outright, when Tom knew very well that the typical practice was to try to force an obdurate opponent into a marriage to one of their allies. Obviously he did not want his mother to have to deal with that, but it was strange to him that their enemies were thinking of seizing the castle through an immense, punitive tax increase instead. Mother is a widow, he thought. Why would they not try that with her? Is there something I am not being told? |
The darkness gave him no answers, so he sighed to himself and tried to get to sleep. |
The rest of the intermission passed uneventfully. Tom did not make any overtures to her to make amends for his past conduct, and after the unpleasant confrontation with his mother, he kept to himself most of the time. Hermione was glad when it was finally time to return to Hogwarts. |
The first evening that they were back, she stayed in the Slytherin common room, Harry Potter sitting next to her but not inappropriately close, as she read. In another corner, Tom and his friends huddled. Hermione wondered for a moment where their adversaries might be. |
She did not have to wonder long, at least for one of them. The door swung open, and Adelaide Lestrange stumbled in. Her gaze darted sharply and suspiciously from one side of the room to the other, taking in her enemies. She cast Hermione a glare of deep dislike, but what struck Hermione was that the girl’s face seemed to entirely lack the self-assured arrogance that had marked her for the past two and a half years. Instead, beneath the personal dislike for Hermione, she looked hunted and defeated. |
She was also intoxicated on something, Hermione noted. Strong drink? That was most likely it.... |
"What are you looking at?" Adelaide snapped. |
Hermione realized that she had been staring and sneered back. "It’s hard not to look when someone stumbles into the common room drunk." |
Adelaide let out a hiss. "I am not drunk, Mudblood." |
Hermione was about to snort in derision, but then she caught sight of the burns on Adelaide’s wand arm. They were in exactly the place one usually had them when a cauldron fire flickered up around the edges while one was stirring the contents. Had she made a potion that had caused this? And what potion? With a sigh, Hermione realized that she was not going to get an answer. She huffed and returned to her book. It was not her problem, in any case. |
The next morning, Hermione received news that positively elated her: She would be in the mastery classes for Potions, Arithmancy, and Ancient Runes. Harry was also going to be in the mastery class for Potions. Tom was already in the mastery classes for all of his subjects, but even he had not been advanced to three mastery classes all at once in the middle of his third year. He had advanced in just one at this time a year ago, Charms and Curses. Hermione smiled smugly when Professor Slughorn gave her the news, ignoring Tom’s expression of intense jealousy. |
Adelaide Lestrange’s odd behavior continued for several weeks. She was finally in some of the intermediate classes, which meant that she did share those subjects with Hermione still, giving Hermione more opportunity to observe her. She retained the clear undertone of simmering misery. What had happened to her over the winter holidays? Something must have. |
About a month after they had returned to school, Hermione was returning from a late visit to the library when she passed by a room with the door open a crack. Inside, someone was sniffling and cursing—not magical spells, but swearwords. It was a witch’s voice, and the girl seemed miserable. Hermione drew her wand in case the person inside reacted badly, then pushed the door open. |
Clouds of smoke and vile fumes assaulted her nostrils immediately. A potion had gone badly wrong. Hermione coughed, cast a spell to clear the smoke, and focused on the crying person. It was Adelaide. Hermione’s adversary sat hunched over a cauldron that was the source of the fumes, her face red and streaked with tears, her black hair damp and frizzy. |
"What are you doing?" Hermione exclaimed. "What is that meant to be?" |
The girl looked up with loathing. "Get out, and attend to your own business for once, Mudblood!" |
Hermione ignored this and approached the cauldron. Something about the smell was familiar to her... the potion was ruined, of course, and these fumes were tinged with the smoke of burning, but there was something about the aroma that triggered a memory.... |
"I said leave!" |
Hermione pointed her wand at Adelaide’s neck. "This was supposed to be a stronger version of the potion that prevents conception," she realized. She gazed at Adelaide’s face and suddenly was sure she understood. |
Adelaide glared back with unmitigated loathing. "Get out." |
"Are you with child?" Hermione said baldly. "Is that what you have been so upset about ever since we returned to school?" |
The other girl did not answer. A tear trickled down her cheek. |
Despite the history between them, despite the two and a half years of slurs and insults, despite the attack in the corridor in Hermione’s very first week at the school, compassion suddenly overwhelmed her. A memory flashed through her brain, a dream she had about a year ago in which Adelaide stared into space miserably and she felt sympathy for her enemy. |
Divination is often rubbish, Hermione thought in that same flash, but that dream was prophetic. |
"Is it Malfoy’s?" she asked Adelaide gently. |
Adelaide glared at her with contempt as another tear fell from her eye. "You fool. I would marry Draco if it were." |
Hermione chastised herself for asking that. Of course it was obviously not. "Can you not marry the father, then?" she said. |
Adelaide ignored this question, casting her face down. "That’s probably what he wanted," she muttered almost under her breath. "Filthy bastard. That was probably his scheme." |
"Were you forced?" Hermione exclaimed in horror. She moved to the cauldron, took out her wand, and cleaned it. "Lestrange... Adelaide. You were, weren’t you?" |
Adelaide did not reply, but the silence spoke volumes. |
For a moment Hermione hesitated. Was it really a good idea to let her adversary know that she had this knowledge? But that instinct of self-defense was instantly overpowered by the sympathy that Hermione felt, especially if someone had raped Adelaide—evidently someone with a title, probably one of her father’s own vassals, if she thought he believed he could leverage this into a marriage to the lord’s daughter. |
"I know how to make it," Hermione said. "I know how to make that potion. If you have enough ingredients left over, I could do it." She had never made this version of it, the far stronger version that terminated an existing pregnancy rather than preventing it, but the formula had the same procedure and ingredients, just in different proportions. |
Adelaide appeared resistant for a moment about accepting Hermione’s offer, but then she sighed deeply, her breath shuddering as she did. She gave a small nod, not looking Hermione in the eye. She pointed at a parcel, which Hermione found contained the ingredients. A book with the formula rested next to the cauldron. |
Hermione began to make the potion, consulting the book as a reference as she added the ingredients. Soon steam began to rise from the cauldron, still foul-smelling, but not because of combustion of the ingredients this time. Even the milder form of this potion smelled bad, and this was a far more intense one. |
Finally it was ready and stinking. Hermione turned to her old adversary, who was staring at it with deadened eyes. "Will it make me unable to conceive in the future?" she asked, still not looking at Hermione, her voice toneless and miserable. |
"It shouldn’t," Hermione said. "It happened about a month ago, did it not? It won’t be traumatic to your body, I wouldn’t think." |
"Traumatic?" Adelaide repeated. |
"After you take it, you should remove your undergarments and..." She gazed around the room to see what objects were in it. "Use that bucket." |
"Bucket?" Adelaide exclaimed, looking queasy. |
"Well, what do you think it does?" Hermione said, a bit annoyed. "Didn’t you read that part?" |
Adelaide shuddered, almost seeming for a moment to resist, but then she took a deep breath. "It has to be done," she said. She moved over the potion. "If you made a poison instead, you will regret it." |
Hermione glared. "I wouldn’t poison you. Don’t assume everyone is like your parents." |
"Don’t speak of my parents." Adelaide filled a goblet with the potion, winced, closed her eyes, and downed it. She shuddered again as she swallowed it. |
"You need to take more." |
"I know." Adelaide refilled the goblet, gulped it down, and gagged. But she did not regurgitate it; she shivered as she refilled the goblet for the third and final time. This time she sipped it, draining it slowly. When the third dose was finally gone, she trembled from head to toe. |
"Look away... Granger." She headed to the corner of the room where the bucket rested on the floor. |
Hermione averted her eyes as Adelaide apparently removed her underclothes. She could not help but notice that she had not called her "Mudblood" this time.... |
"Do you need me to stay?" Hermione asked. |
"No. I—" Whatever she was going to say was lost as she lurched in pain, clutching her lower abdomen. She barely managed to hitch her skirts up in time to position the bucket. Hermione averted her eyes from the three drops of blood left on the stone floor in her wake... but it meant that the potion was working as it should. Hermione regretted leaving even her enemy to something like this by herself, but if it was what Adelaide wanted.... |
Silently she slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her as she did so that no one else would overhear. |
In a couple of hours, Adelaide appeared in the Slytherin common room looking very sick but also relieved. She refused to meet Hermione’s eyes, which did not entirely surprise Hermione. She passed through the common room and into the girls’ dormitory corridor, evidently to go to bed at once. |
The incident deeply disturbed Hermione as she thought about it that night. She wondered with a kind of morbid curiosity what had happened over the holidays. Had Adelaide been tipsy—or more—and that was how someone thought he could get a marriage out of raping the lord’s daughter? Hermione thought, again, about Tom’s past comments about the Malfoy and Lestrange faction’s disdain for witches. Perhaps he was right, she thought. They had made that new law requiring married Muggle-born witches to present themselves according to the restrictive Muggle rules for women, and before that, they had changed existing wizarding law to give authority to husbands of ruling witches if they married in the future. Perhaps the rapist had very good reason to believe that Lord Lestrange would ignore his despicable act, and not even consider it rape, if Adelaide had been drinking.... |
Hermione thought of that dream of a year ago once again. She wondered, as she finally felt sleep creeping at the edges of her thoughts, if this event meant that Adelaide would rethink her own allegiances. Adelaide did owe her now, with a magical debt. It was certainly not as powerful as a wizard’s debt incurred from one saving the life of another, but it was the same category. Perhaps this would mark the beginning of a new alliance that cut across all the boundaries among magical people that Hermione had rued recently. |
Two days later. |
When Hermione sat down at the Slytherin table for the midday meal, she knew something was wrong. Everyone in the Malfoy-Lestrange group was looking at her and sniggering. Even Harry looked askance at her, and Tom was shooting glares of outrage in her direction. |
She sighed and steeled herself, turning to Harry. "All right," she said in a low voice. "What is this about?" |
Harry winced, not really wanting to explain. He did not need to. Yvette Rosier, one of Lestrange’s friends, burst out gleefully. |
"Who was it, Mudblood?" |
Hermione gazed up. "Who was what? What are you talking about?" This was already starting to severely irritate her. |
"Don’t act stupid," the girl taunted. "You were caught making that potion. You know the one. Everyone does. Was it Potter?" She leered at him. |
A horrible, and utterly infuriating, idea entered Hermione’s mind at this vague yet telling statement. Would Adelaide really have— The mere thought of it, that Adelaide would have repaid Hermione’s favor with a stab in the back, sent a flood of toxic rage through her veins. She shot a glance at Adelaide, who was gazing at her plate, deliberately not making eye contact with anyone, a smug little smirk on her face. That confirmed it for Hermione. |
"I was making it for someone else!" she exclaimed. She caught Tom’s eye and deliberately took down her Occlumency shield, inviting him to see the truth for himself. He gazed at her for a moment, and some of the rage on his face melted away—but only some. So be it, then. She would have it out with him—again—later, she resolved. |
Rosier and the other girls merely laughed at Hermione’s words. "Who, then?" the girl trilled. "Who would be so desperate as to ask a Mudblood to make a potion for her?" |
"Your friend!" Hermione roared, her finger pointing directly at Adelaide Lestrange as if casting a malediction upon her. "She had me do it!" |
This only provoked an uproarious burst of disbelieving laughter. "What a pathetic lie!" Rosier chortled. She smirked at Hermione. "Own up to it, Mudblood." |
Her assertions were met only with more laughter. Hopelessly she gazed again at Tom, who was staring back at her in frustration. Her resolve hardened. Apparently, both Tom and Harry had, to varying degrees, entertained the false rumor as possibly true. She would have it out with both of them—and then Lestrange herself, who would feel the brunt of her fury. She had not just defaulted on a wizarding debt, but had compounded it. She would pay. Clearly being kind gets me nothing but a stab in the back, she thought, trying to blink away tears of fury as she ate. |
Hermione herded Tom and Harry into an empty room that afternoon and locked the door. She gazed at each of them impatiently. "Well?" she said. "I was telling the truth. You both know it. Why did you ever think otherwise?" |
"I thought perhaps it was—you and him," Harry protested. "That you had... resolved your differences over the holidays—" |
"How dare you speak of our private affairs, Potter?" Tom snarled. |
"I will handle this, Riddle," Hermione retorted. She turned to Harry with a hard look. "Is that so?" |
"Hermione, I know you! You have been my friend for two and a half years. I know you wouldn’t... and I also know that it would be really important to you to finish your schooling here... so it made a kind of sense. I didn’t believe it was necessarily true, but if it were... I was sure that would have been what happened." |
She huffed, but at least Harry had not believed anything about her that was dishonorable. "You should not have believed or even half-believed anything my enemies said about me, but if that’s what you thought, I suppose I can forgive it." She managed a thin smile, then turned to Tom in renewed fury. "And you." Her voice was low and dark. |
He bristled at her tone, but she continued relentlessly. "You are a Legilimens. You must have looked into Harry’s eyes and seen that he was innocent. I know you have been jealous of him before, groundlessly I might add, but since you were, I suppose you might have thought you needed to know about him. But after you did, how could you have entertained such a vile idea about me?" Her voice broke. "At least Harry didn’t question my honor! Whereas my "betrothed’ would not even defend me against a loathsome lie—" |
"That’s not true," he spat. |
"He did curse Malfoy for saying it and called it a lie," Harry said hurriedly. "It happened before you came to the table." |
Some of Hermione’s anger and sense of betrayal cooled, but only some of it. She eyed Tom. "You still glared at me. Why are you still angry?" |
He breathed deeply. "Why did you help her?" he snapped. "Why did you help that Norm—that bitch? It was her problem if she couldn’t make the potion herself." |
"She had been raped," Hermione said. "She thought that the wizard who did it would have tried to force her to marry him. It was disgusting. Tom, if you really would allow that to happen to a witch, even a witch that you hate, when you had the power to stop it, then all of your fine talk is meaningless." |
Tom was startled into silence. He struggled to find the right words. "You could have sworn her to silence," he said. "You could have done anything that didn’t leave you so vulnerable." |
"Believe me, I have learned quite a lesson about vulnerability from this," she said evenly. She swished her wand through the air, pointing it at Tom’s face and then at Harry’s, not casting anything, before allowing her arm to fall to her side. She sighed. |
"I will curse anyone I hear saying it," Harry said. |
"So will I," Tom growled in the next moment. |
Hermione did not smile. "That’s all very well, but I have learned my lesson." I have learned more than one lesson, she thought. Enemies repay favors with knives in the back, friends entertain rumors even if the source is untrustworthy, and it’s possible that Tom and I will never again have what we used to—if even that was real and I was not just deluding myself. "I know what I have to do." She walked to the door, opened it, and cast one last look at the young wizards. "And I’m doing it myself." Clearly, she thought, I cannot count on anyone else. |
That night, Hermione stood by the window in the Owlery, an uncharacteristically grim look on her face as she corked the glass flask she had conjured. It swirled with the white mist of a memory. She pricked her finger, pressed a drop of blood to the parchment to seal the Charm of Veracity, and rolled it up, addressing it to Lady Bellatrix Lestrange before sending it by owl. |
Castle l’Etrange. |
Bellatrix Lestrange frowned deeply as she replaced the memory. This and the letter had come from a Mudblood, but they were true. This was a conflict for her. A part of her did not want to act on the word of such a one, even if it bore a Veracity Charm and an unaltered memory. But the rest of her was outraged at the story that it told. How dare one of their vassals do such a thing to her precious daughter! And it was also wrong for her daughter to be put in the position of having to accept the help of a Mudblood. |
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