Chapter Text
12 September 1995
Hermione had hardly finished fastening her prefect badge to her robes and swiping on some lipstick—a near-black burgundy, her favorite, and mercifully not a color either of her roommates were at all inclined to borrow—when Ginny hailed her.
“Hey—Hermione—you’re going to want to see this,” the younger witch called, beckoning her to the Gryffindor notice board.
“What do you—oh.”
Normally, the notice board was plastered in a chaotic medley of advertisements, flyers, notices, and club and Quidditch schedules. Now, the usual mess was almost completely covered in a large sign on heavy parchment. The words were in bold, black letters, and the bottom bore a wax seal with the official Ministry insignia and the signature of none other than the new Hogwarts High Inquisitor herself, Dolores Jane Umbridge.
The previous day, Hermione had opened her morning paper to headlines declaring the hated Defense professor the “High Inquisitor of Hogwarts,” a position created by the Ministry to bestow upon itself an unprecedented level of control over Hogwarts. The paper had all but admitted that the appointment was a power play against Dumbledore, in order to further weaken his authority within the walls of Hogwarts—and, of course, Hermione knew, the intention behind that was to proverbially castrate the Defense curriculum in order to dramatically shrink the pool of potential Order recruits. There had even been an interview with Malfoy himself openly criticizing the headmaster.
Hermione had found herself rather more disturbed by the article than she had anticipated. She was no fan of the headmaster, herself, with his arrogance and patronizing, falsely grandfatherly demeanor. She still had not forgotten what he had said to the Order over the summer—that she was only valuable insofar as her presence kept Harry stable and manageable, as if she and her best friend were mere faceless assets instead of real people.
However, she also understood that Dumbledore was better than the alternative—the alternative being a system in which the only way to learn Defense was through summer tutors, something almost entirely unavailable to Muggle-borns, thanks to the use of the Trace to penalize the use of underage magic in Muggle locales. Without Dumbledore’s strong influence, Voldemort’s agenda would prevail, and the Order would be unable to grow large enough again to pose a meaningful resistance against the Death Eaters.
What was so concerning about the article, though, was that the criticisms Malfoy had leveled against Dumbledore were not falsehoods, as she had expected—they were the truth. Dumbledore had hired a werewolf, who had failed to take his potion and attacked students—she would know, having been one of them. Dumbledore had also hired Hagrid as a professor, and, while Hagrid was a wonderful friend, he had never actually finished school, and his lesson plans were often rather less than safe. And Dumbledore had even hired Mad-Eye Moody, who, though he had been kidnapped and impersonated before he actually had a chance to teach, she knew from her observations at Grimmauld Place to be acutely paranoid and quite terrifying to grown Order members, let alone first-year students.
The problem, of course, was the argument Malfoy was making in using those truths—that the appropriate solution was Umbridge. It was quite clever, she had to admit. But people did not call her the brightest witch of the age for nothing, and she was determined that her Morganite Guard would at least make some progress in canceling out Umbridge.
The sign on the bulletin board was making things a little more complicated, though.
“’Educational Decree No. 24: By order of the High Inquisitor of Hogwarts,’” she read, fury building in her chest, “’all student organizations, societies, teams, groups, and clubs are henceforth disbanded. An organization, society, team, group, or club is hereby defined as a regular meeting of three or more students’…”
“And, look—” Ginny said, pointing to the small text below that, “the only way to reconvene your club is to get permission from the toad herself.”
“Someone must’ve seen the signup sheet going around,” Hermione murmured, her brow knitting. She turned to her friend. “Get word out that we’re canceling the meeting on Saturday but that we’re not disbanding—we just can’t have seventy-two people in one place like that. I’ll find a way to reschedule everyone in smaller groups.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ginny said, grinning and raising her hand in a mock salute. “I’ll go find Neville and Michael, see if they can’t tell Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.”
Hermione made her way down to the Great Hall, lost in thought.
Realistically, we have four people—wait, six—who are capable of instructing other students: Harry, Ron, Ginny, Neville, Luna, and myself. That means we can divide the seventy-two into groups of twelve. That size should be able to go unnoticed if no more than half of them are from any given house…
She fiddled with the black velvet of her choker as she allowed the morning crowd to sweep her down another flight of stairs.
…but communication’s going to be a problem. How am I going to give them their schedules? I can’t have them training at set times, or they’ll be caught no matter how small the groups are. And I can’t risk handing out schedules like McGonagall on the first day of term. If only pagers worked in Hogwarts…
She sat down at the Gryffindor table. Harry and Ron had not yet arrived, so she sat down in an empty stretch of the table, saving seats for them, and began ladling porridge into her bowl.
Is there a magical equivalent of a pager?
The honey spoon was halfway to her bowl, dripping amber over the table, when the answer came to her.
The Dark Marks that Voldemort uses! I suppose even that noseless maniac can be right occasionally…but a brand is a horrible idea. Even a tattoo would be really extreme. The Morganite Guard is a school club, not a terrorist cell…But the Protean Charm he’s using on the brands…if I put that on something else, something that everyone carries around, that wouldn’t be unusual for anyone, no matter who they are…
“Money,” she murmured to herself, a slow smile spreading over her face. “I think galleons would do nicely. Probably not real ones, though, seventy-two of them, that would be far too expensive…”
“Have you gone barmy?” came Ron’s incredulous voice from behind her. He moved to drop into the seat beside her. “You’re talking to yourself, did you know that?”
Hermione feared that if she rolled her eyes any harder, they may very well get stuck in the back of her head.
“No, Ronald,” she said dryly. “I make it a habit to be completely unaware of my own vocalizations, thank you very much.”
“Did you see the sign on the notice board?” Harry asked, sitting on her other side and grabbing a pastry from the platter before him. He lowered his voice. “D’you reckon it’s about, y’know, the Guard?”
Hermione nodded.
“Ginny showed me. We’re dealing with it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ron asked—or Hermione thought he asked—through an enormous bite of scrambled eggs. A few flecks of egg spewed from his mouth as he spoke, landing wetly on the table, and she felt her nose wrinkle in disgust.
“It means that we’re canceling Saturday. It also means that I need to reschedule everyone for different times—groups of twelve, including us—and I need some fake galleons. Seventy-two of them, to be precise.”
“Seventy-two fake galleons?” Harry asked, clearly puzzled. “How’s that going to help us?”
“If I put a Protean Charm on them, then I can tie them to one I hold and send short messages—whatever will fit around the rim—to whichever ones I want with a simple tap of my wand. They’ll heat up when a message is sent, so if they’re kept in a pocket, everyone will know immediately that they’ve got a message. A little like a pager, don’t you think?”
“A little like a Dark Mark,” Ron countered, his brow knitting.
“Yes, well,” Hermione said, flashing a tight smile, “that is where I got it from. But I’m not burning it into anyone’s skin. Kind of an important distinction, don’t you think?”
Ron mumbled something incoherent around another bite of egg, and Harry rolled his eyes, apologetically jerking his head in Ron’s direction.
“Move over, Ronniekins—we need to have a little chat with your girlfriend.”
Hermione turned in her seat just in time to see Fred flick his wand, wordlessly shoving Ron down the bench, and by the time she had turned back around, George had done the same to Harry, and a tall boy with dreadlocks—Lee Jordan, she belatedly realized—sidled up to stand behind her. His wand was out, loose by his side, but his gaze flicked sharply between Harry and Ron, who wore identical expressions of fury.
Her mouth set in a hard line.
“What do you two want?”
“Feisty, feisty, ‘Mione,” George purred, a wicked smirk twisting his mouth. “On any other day, the only correct answer for us would be you, a brand-new king-size bed, and enough time to break it all in…”
“…but unfortunately,” Fred continued casually, his own smirk quite possibly wider than his brother’s, “today, we only desire to give you a nice little update on our business venture.”
“I meant it when I said you’re not testing your products on students,” Hermione said flatly, discretely attempting to adjust her position, so her legs would not brush the twins’. They seemed to notice, and only scooted closer still. “And move over. You’re crowding me. And unlike Angelina, I really don’t appreciate it.”
“Oh, I think not, ‘Mione,” George said softly. “This needs to be done up close and personal.”
“What did you call it again, little love?” Fred asked, putting an arm around her waist. His fingers dug painfully into her flesh, and she stared determinedly into her dish of porridge, willing herself not to react. “It was S.P.E.W., wasn’t it?”
“I started S.P.E.W. last year, yes,” Hermione ground out. “Now get to the point. I have class in a few minutes, and I don’t have all day to deal with the likes of you.”
“You’ll deal with us as long as we want you to, ‘Mione,” George said, leaning casually on the table and gesturing to the tall boy who stood behind them. “Our mate Lee will make sure of that.”
“But what we mean to say,” Fred continued, “is that we took your advice. We got a solicitor. And do you know what he said?”
Oh no. There’s no way he let them test on students, so that means—
The horror must have shown on Hermione’s face, because George cut her off before she could speak.
“That’s right, little love,” he murmured, leaning in so close his lips nearly touched the shell of her ear. “Freed elves. They’re nobody’s property, so there’s nobody to sue us for property damage…and they’re also not wixen, so they can’t take us to court themselves.”
“It was real easy to get them to agree, too, wasn’t it, George?” Fred added, his grip on Hermione’s waist tightening further. She was sure she would have a bruise. “What were their names—Dobby and Winky, wasn’t it? And all they wanted were some misshapen old socks and cheap butterbeer.”
“Loads cheaper than paying students, too, I’ll say,” George commented airily, rising to his feet. Fred followed suit. “Should’ve been doing this all along, eh, brother?”
“Of course, brother,” Fred grinned. The expression reminded Hermione of the Cheshire Cat, sharp-toothed and feral. “Except for that pesky problem with those Nosebleed Nougats—not sure elves have the blood volume to withstand another failed batch of those. It was lucky we had Blood Replenishing Potion on hand, though…”
“But a real shame to waste it on elves…nasty little buggers,” George said over his shoulder as he strode off. “And it was hard work nicking that potion from Pomfrey, too…”
Fred followed his brother back down the table, pausing only to send a cheeky wink over his shoulder at Hermione. At length, Lee Jordan followed as well, walking backwards, his wand slightly raised and trained on her chest.
For a moment, Hermione only sat, shaking with rage. Tears burned her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Her throat burned as she swallowed, and in her lap, her fingers tightened into fists, nails cutting into her palms.
At some point—she was not sure when—Harry and Ron resumed their former places, and the three of them finished breakfast in a red-rimmed silence.
Charms class passed in a blur, and Hermione was only vaguely aware that she had successfully performed a Color Change Charm, turning the white rabbit before her scarlet, before she was back in the halls and headed to Transfiguration. That class, too, passed in a similar haze as she graduated from Vanishing kittens to Vanishing turkeys—both of which Professor McGonagall had assured her were freshly Conjured for the exercise.
She was rather thankful to be practicing on turkeys rather than the kittens—it was more than a little uncomfortable when the small tabby kitten before her popped out of existence right as her Animagus professor stalked past in cat form, tail twitching as she leapt up onto Seamus Finnigan’s desk to observe the strawberry blond boy’s latest attempt to vanish the rat before him, which was—both inexplicably and concerningly—smoking faintly.
Still, the turkeys were not without their own issues; her third turkey managed to escape from her desk and run, flapping and gobbling, through the legs of Susan Bones, knocking the bespectacled Hufflepuff girl flat on her back before it attempted to make a bid for freedom into the hall. Only a well-timed Stunning Charm on Harry’s part prevented this eventuality, earning him an arched brow from Professor McGonagall, now back in human form, her wand raised a moment too late to intervene.
Umbridge, who had apparently taken it upon herself to inspect other teachers’ classes—almost certainly an attempt to come up with an excuse to sack teachers suspected of being Order members, Hermione realized—had been sitting in, and Hermione noticed with not a little dread that, after this, the pink-clad witch spent the rest of the period scribbling furiously on her little pad of pink parchment.
Once the bell rang, Hermione practically ran out of Transfiguration class, not to lunch in the Great Hall, but to the Room of Requirement, pausing only to quickly Scourgify the turkey feathers from her robes. Pacing before the wall, she pictured a small room with a chest full of fake galleons.
Soon, a door materialized.
It was far smaller than even one of the doors of the Morganite Guard’s training room, hardly larger than that of a cupboard and quite shabby, its worn wooden surface scuffed and battered as if it had been kicked repeatedly by someone very angry and possessed of a pair of steel-toed boots.
Glancing about the hall—still deserted, as it was lunchtime, and there were no classrooms in sight—she dropped to her knees and opened the door. Crawling through, she found exactly what she was looking for—a small chest, filled to overflowing with galleons. Galleons that were, on closer inspection, far too light to be real galleons.
Snapping the chest shut, she extracted her wand from her pocket and waved it over the chest, shrinking it to the size of a golf ball before slipping it into her satchel.
Hermione followed the corridors back to Gryffindor Tower, then up to the now-deserted girls’ dorms. Sitting on her bed and drawing the heavy burgundy curtains shut, she canceled the Shrinking Charm on the chest and counted out seventy-two galleons—one for each member of the Morganite Guard, including herself.
In the early afternoon light shafting through a crack in the curtains, the gold of the fake coins glinted a near-blinding white as she examined them. She nodded to herself, selecting a coin and putting it aside. This would be the master coin.
Then, she drew her wand and began to chant, the familiar words falling from her mouth. She was brought back to the Weasleys’ tent at the Quidditch World Cup, where she had taught herself the Protean Charm in a bid to retain her sanity amidst the Quidditch-crazed festivities, seemingly a lifetime ago, though it had only been a year. She traced over each galleon with the tip of her wand, making the complex swirling patterns from each of the seventy-two back to her master coin, binding them into the web of the charm.
The coins glowed red for a moment, then darkened to black as the charm set in, before returning to their normal gold. The charm seemed to have worked, but she paused for a moment. There was still a rather glaring problem—
How will Harry, Ron, Ginny, Neville, and Luna communicate with their groups?
Hermione twirled her wand in her fingers contemplatively.
Could it be done the same way as the first time? Can Protean Charms be layered?
She tried to recall everything she had heard about them. It was not much—just a description in a library book and a single seventh-year Charms lecture she had eavesdropped on when she had, quite by accident, time-turned an hour too far back during third year. Nothing she had heard, however, indicated that it could not be done, or that it was dangerous—in fact, it had not really been discussed at all.
There’s no reason it should be dangerous, she reasoned. Professor Vector is always talking about not combining a Transfiguration spell with any form of blasting charm, due to the risk of the production of a volatile burst of magical energy, but this obviously is not that…
After running through a few rather complex Arithmantic equations, Hermione, now satisfied that a two-layered set of Protean Charms would be safe, set aside another five coins from the ones she had already keyed to her own and separated the rest into piles of eleven. Pile by pile, she keyed each of these to one of the six coins set aside. Pile by pile, they glowed again, crimson in the artificial gloom, then obsidian, then gold once more.
Then, she slipped each of the piles of eleven, still almost hot enough to burn, into envelopes, and dropped her friends’ coins into another. Her own coin went into her pocket.
Carefully, she wrote down eleven names at random from the sign-up sheet on each envelope, taking care never to repeat a name and that no more than five in each group were from any given house.
Out of spite, she made sure to put the Weasley twins and Lee Jordan in three separate groups—none of which would be hers.
Horrid, elf-exploiting, underhanded, petty bullies…
A sudden glance at her watch told her that she had about five minutes before her next class. If she really hurried, she might still get to Care of Magical Creatures on time.
She took off at a run, back down through the castle and to Hagrid’s hut. She was barely on time, and while a few of the Slytherins snickered at her slightly disheveled state, she hardly noticed. Umbridge was inspecting that class, too, and while Harry’s jaw tightened when Lestrange began a rather melodramatic retelling of his hippogriff-inflicted injury from third year, laying the blame squarely at the feet of Hagrid, who was still not present, Harry mercifully held his tongue.
All eyes fixed on Lestrange, who had begun reenacting being thrown to the ground by Buckbeak, Hermione slipped an envelope and a galleon first into Harry’s hand, and then Ron’s. They pocketed both, each giving her a small nod.
Soon, they bell was ringing again, and the three of them picked up their things to walk to Herbology. The Slytherins, she noticed, gave them a wide berth, careful to avoid eye contact. Even Lestrange did not attempt a confrontation, apparently sufficiently cowed for the moment by the previous week’s humiliation. He stormed past Hermione and her friends, his own cronies struggling to keep up, and did not even chance a glance in their direction.
That’s certainly an improvement, Hermione thought, smirking a little while watching his retreating figure. I suppose literally turning him into the nasty little cockroach he is was quite beneficial, after all. Hopefully, it sticks…
Her mood somewhat improved, Hermione flagged down Ginny and Luna just as they exited one of the greenhouses. She handed them their envelopes and coins, briefly explaining what they were for, before heading into the adjacent greenhouse where that day’s lesson would be held. Seeing that Neville was already inside, helping Professor Sprout tend the fanged geraniums, she waited until the stout older witch had gone for a bag of fertilizer and pressed the final envelope and coin into Neville’s hand, repeating the explanation she had given Ginny and Luna.
He nodded, wide-eyed and serious, before wordlessly pocketing them and turning back to the plant before him.
Hermione resumed her usual place by Harry and Ron, and the lesson—the proper pruning and fertilization techniques for sopophorus plants—quickly began and ended, and before she knew it, she was back in the Great Hall, scarfing down dinner before that evening’s detention.
As she and Harry walked to Umbridge’s office that evening, he held up his left hand—the words, I must yield to authority, still shiny and swollen on the back of it—and remarked to her, “What happens when these things don’t close? I reckon we’re pretty close to that point, and we’ve still got weeks of—”
“We’d need murtlap essence,” Hermione interrupted, anxiously rubbing the letters on the back of her own right hand, “and ideally dittany. I don’t have any of either, though, but I suppose we could probably get some from Snape’s personal store-cupboard…”
“You want to steal it?” Harry asked incredulously, turning sharply toward her. “From Snape? That’s—I mean—”
“I’ve done it before—don’t look so surprised,” Hermione chided, pursing her lips. “That’s how I brewed Polyjuice back in second year, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“I suppose so…” Harry mumbled, staring at his sneakers and shaking his head slightly. “But why can’t we just go to the hospital wing? I don’t think Madam Pomfrey would object to patching us up…”
“And risk her bringing in Dumbledore? Who, need I remind you, is a Legilimens? Because that’s what would happen. No, Harry, we need to handle this ourselves.”
Harry sighed, but said nothing, only nodding grimly.
Soon, they arrived at Umbridge’s office once more and resignedly entered. It was all the same as it had been the last seven times as they sat down at her table with its ugly pink lace cover. Hermione was not sure if it was her imagination, or if the pink was getting a little darker each time, as though the blood spilled upon it had been diffusing over its surface, staining it little by little. She would not put it past the awful pink toad to come up with such an idea…
She picked up the blood quill, Umbridge’s pouchy eyes boring into the side of her head.
I shall know my place.
The back of her hand split open, but Hermione did not flinch. It was a familiar pain by now.
I shall know my place.
Blood spurted, warm and wet over her fingers. In her mind’s eye, a great gash opened over Umbridge’s own hand.
I shall know my place.
The phantom knife hit bone, and she concealed a gasp of pain with a cough. She pictured another gash ripping through the toad’s shoulder, blood dyeing the horrible woman’s pink robes red.
I shall know my place.
Yes, I shall, she thought viciously, the knuckles of her left hand white where she gripped the hated black quill. And I’ll make sure you regret it when I do.
And on and on it went—Hermione wrote her lines, that invisible scalpel carving them into her flesh, turning the phrase from debasement to vow, and little by little, Umbridge was reduced to little more than a bloody lump of flesh.
The clock ticked on the wall—a horrid powder-pink ornament surrounded in white-painted arabesques—and occasionally, a kitten on one of the plates meowed. Once, when Harry swore under his breath, one of the kittens even hissed, as if suddenly made aware by the sound that two students adversarial to its mistress currently occupied the office and attempting to make its objection heard.
“Hand, Miss Granger—Mr. Potter,” the real Umbridge simpered at length, breaking Hermione from her thoughts. Hermione turned to face the unpleasant sight of the older witch’s wide, toad-like face, regrettably still possessed of both of its eyes, a nose, and all of its teeth.
As she had in the seven previous sessions, she stiffly proffered her right hand. It still took all of her willpower not to snatch it back the second Umbridge’s thick, clammy fingers met her own, dragging painfully over the wounds on the back of her hand.
This time, though, the pink-clad witch grinned, her enormous, saggy mouth stretching wide. Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips, and she looked for all the world like a toad poised to slurp down a large insect.
“Oh, my,” she said softly. “It looks like the message is finally sinking in…”
“Then you’ve made your point, professor?” Hermione asked carefully, her tone clipped but measured, not belying the searing shocks of pain that accompanied the smallest movement. She doubted she would get the answer she wanted, knowing the woman’s reputation, but maybe…
“No, no, Miss Granger,” Umbridge giggled. The malice underlining her glee was nearly palpable. “I think not. You’ll come back for the rest of the month, as I’ve told you.”
Then, it was Harry’s turn to offer his hand for the odious pink witch’s inspection. The giggling continued—perhaps even intensified—as she took in the words cut into the back of Harry’s left hand, gaping like angry mouths against the pallor of his skin.
When Umbridge dug a pink-painted nail into one of Harry’s wounds, causing him to hiss in pain and her grin to turn perilously close to a leer, it was all Hermione could do not to draw her wand and hex the woman on the spot. Or worse.
She’s not getting away with hurting my best friend like that, Hermione’s mind raged, her left hand twitching unbidden toward her wand even as she restrained herself. She’s not. She’s going to pay for this, she and Malfoy the rest of their lot. They all will. We’ll make them pay.
“Yes, it’s painful, isn’t it?” Umbridge said softly, her voice sickly-sweet, like the nectar of a carnivorous plant. She still had not released Harry’s hand, oblivious to Hermione’s barely-contained fury. “But I think pain is a skilled teacher, don’t you? Given sufficient time, it can impart valuable lessons upon even the most recalcitrant pupil…”
“Lessons, I’m sure,” Harry ground out, snatching away his abused hand.
Umbridge giggled again.
“You may go now. But don’t forget to come back tomorrow…and the next day…and the day after that. And lest we be mistaken…you will learn your lessons eventually.”
Harry turned stiffly on his heel and fled the classroom, his pace brisk enough that his school robes billowed behind him, and Hermione had to jog to keep up.
“That sodding pink—” Harry started, once they were far enough down the corridor that Umbridge would not hear. He cut himself off, too angry to speak, his hands balling into fists at his sides.
He swore aloud, releasing the tension in his hands as if burned.
“It’s not closing. Not even close.”
Hermione examined her own wounds. Red, raw, and still oozing blood, they were not as deep as they had been when they were fresh, but blood still poured in rivulets down her fingers, dotting the flagstone floor as they walked.
She removed the bandages from her bag and handed a roll to Harry.
“Do you have your cloak with you?”
“The Invisibility Cloak?” he asked, beginning to wind the gauze over his hand. “Yeah, I always keep it in my bag—you know that. Why?”
“I think we’re going to need that murtlap essence. Probably the dittany, too.”
“What—now? Right now?”
“Yes, now, Harry,” Hermione said as she performed a silent Sticking Charm, adhering the end of her own bandages in place. “We do have homework, we can’t go back to the common room and explain everything to Ron—that’ll take half an hour we don’t have. We lose enough time as it is, with these stupid detentions…”
“Homework,” he repeated hollowly. “Homework. Assuming Angelina got the team approved like she said, I was supposed to have been at Quidditch practice today…”
Hermione sighed. She understood that Quidditch meant a lot to Harry—Ron, too, for that matter—but neither of them seemed to be planning a career in professional Quidditch, and it certainly would not get them the grades they needed to gain admission to the Auror academy like they had actually planned.
“I get it Harry…I really do...but right now, we need to focus on doing something about the mess that awful pink toad’s made of our hands.”
Harry sighed.
“So where does Snape keep all this stuff?”
“Do you know where his office is?”
Harry nodded slowly, and Hermione continued.
“Well, there’s a pantry in there—it’s not that large, just a boring, black-painted closet, really—but that’s where it should be. We just have to make sure he’s not in his office, then get in, take the murtlap, dittany, and a few other things, and leave.”
“A few other things?” Harry turned sharply toward her, alarm in the poison-green of his eyes. “Don’t you think we’re stealing enough as it is?”
“We can’t have Snape suspecting it’s us, Harry. He guessed someone was making Polyjuice just from the list of ingredients that were missing, and he knows about Umbridge’s—well—her tendencies. All he’d have to do is ask who’s in detention with her, and then he’d know it’s us. No, he needs to think something else entirely is going on. Something scandalous but ordinary—like someone brewing an absolutely enormous amount of Fleetfoot Tonic.”
Harry’s face drained of color.
“Zoom juice? You want Snape to think one of the Quidditch teams is doping? He’s going to think it’s us Gryffindors, you know that, right?”
“Well,” Hermione said, cocking her head to the side, “if he tests all of you, and none of you have it in your system, then he’ll be forced to look elsewhere.”
“And if he doesn’t find it anywhere?”
“Hm, you have a point. I suppose we could make it a poison—but I don’t think we want him concerned a student’s trying to kill someone. We want him to think it’s a normal secondary school scandal, not something more serious. So, if Fleetfoot Tonic won’t work, I think our best bet is Bachelor’s Brew.”
Harry’s ears immediately took on the quality of a pair of ripe tomatoes.
“But that’s—”
“A contraceptive potion, yes, I know. But the reality is that, even if we are a little too busy dealing with the whims of a noseless maniac to have time for that sort of thing, we go to a boarding school full of people who think of little else. It would be the perfect cover.”
Harry’s face now matched his ears.
“Er…I’m not sure that’s, um, entirely…”
Hermione winced slightly.
Oh…that’s right…this morning…Cho…I rather forgot about all that…
“Well, anyway, it would be extremely difficult for Snape to figure out who the culprit was, when it could realistically be anyone in the castle who’s particularly competent in potions and isn’t a first or second year.”
“I…suppose we’ll go with that, then. Bachelor’s Brew.”
“Come on, then—we’ll miss the staircase down to the dungeons if you don’t hurry.”
Harry extracted the Invisibility Cloak from his satchel, throwing it over himself and Hermione in a ripple of silver gossamer. They descended the stairs, down from the third floor to the basement level that housed the Hogwarts dungeons.
“I was almost Sorted Slytherin, did I tell you?” Harry suddenly said as they reached the base of the final staircase.
“No, but Ron told me about it back in second year.”
Harry nodded wordlessly, and they walked in silence for some time through the maze of damp stone. Green torchlight lit the walls, the same, Hermione noted, as the Room of Requirement when it was the Morganite Guard’s training room, and the same as Grimmauld Place.
“I suppose if I was,” Harry mused, sounding slightly discomfited, “this would be heading back to my common room.”
“Ours, actually.” Hermione did not know what made her say it, but she did. “The Hat wanted to put me there, too.”
“What?” The expression on her friend’s face was almost comic in its shock. “You never mentioned—”
“It never came up, I think,” she said, plucking at the scrunchie around her wrist. “But yes, it told me, well, it told me that I was clever enough for Ravenclaw—”
“Well, obviously—”
“—but that I don’t learn just to learn, which is different from a Ravenclaw. It said that I was a…a crusader, and that Gryffindors are heroes, not crusaders. That Slytherin was the home for a crusader…”
“So how are you in Gryffindor? I just kept telling it, ‘not Slytherin,’ and it listened. Is that what you did, too?”
“Um…not exactly. The Hat did half want to put you in Gryffindor, from what Ron told me. It…well, it didn’t want me there at all. It was pretty set on Slytherin, or maybe Ravenclaw. But I sort of demanded that it put me in Gryffindor…”
“I can see the whole crusader thing,” Harry said slowly, even as he blinked in obvious confusion. “S.P.E.W. and all that. But why did you want Gryffindor so badly? Why not Ravenclaw?”
“Because I’d read Hogwarts: A History. It explained the history of each house, and only Gryffindor and Hufflepuff were particularly accepting of Muggle-borns, and Hufflepuff was…well…Hufflepuff. And Gryffindor produces the most Ministers of Magic out of any house. It was the logical choice.”
They rounded a bend, where the corridor branched off deeper into the dungeons. This far down, moisture beaded on the walls, glittering like peridot in the flickering green torchlight, and the shadows threw the rough stone of the walls and floor into stark relief, every crevice a gaping limestone maw.
“I thought you said you wanted to be a professor,” Harry remarked quietly as they neared Snape’s office, “not Minister. Didn’t you say Ministry corruption makes it pointless to try that?”
“I do want to be a professor,” Hermione whispered back with a small shrug. “But when I was eleven, I was a little more idealistic. That’s all.”
An uneasy silence fell over them as they approached the door of Snape’s office.
Hermione wasted no time in pulling out her vine wand and pointing it at the door.
“Hominem revelio.”
Nothing happened.
“So d’you reckon he’s in there, or not?”
“No, but we need to hurry. It’s not even seven thirty, he’s bound to be back. Probably soon, too…”
Harry eased open the door, and they shuffled in under the cloak. Snape’s office was exactly as Hermione remembered it: poorly lit, drafty, and lined in dark wood shelves crowded with countless jars of largely unidentifiable pickled creatures. With nearly three more years of education since her last foray into this space, she could identify more of them than she had before, but now, she was not entirely certain that all of them were actually potions ingredients. She had a strong suspicion that most of them were simply there to aid the black-clad professor in projecting an aura of menace. The method was effective when she was thirteen, but now, a week from her sixteenth birthday, it read as obsessive and slightly overdone, as though he was attempting to compensate for something and not fully succeeding. It would have been almost comical—the man even dressed as though he had never quite escaped his secondary school goth phase—except for the fact that she knew him to be, from both Death Eater and Order meeting transcripts, the only Death Eater outside of Azkaban capable of safely brewing the Fog of War.
I wonder what someone like that has to compensate for… Hermione mused as she and Harry moved past Snape’s heavy oak desk toward a nondescript wooden door just to the left of it.
The door swung open under Hermione’s hand to reveal an ingredients pantry, before shutting behind her and Harry with a click. This was, again, much the same as she had remembered it, with all of its jars and boxes arranged in rigid alphabetical order and labeled in the dour professor’s cramped, spidery hand.
Reaching out, she plucked all five jars of murtlap essence from the shelves, along with the eight small phials of dittany.
“Do we really need all that?” Harry asked under his breath, gesturing to where Hermione had crammed it all into her satchel. “Snape’s going to explode when he realizes it’s all been nicked…”
“But he won’t know it’s us,” Hermione countered in a whisper, flipping open Harry’s bag and beginning to load the decoy ingredients into it. “I know he doesn’t like you, Harry, but he can’t blame you for this. There are too many other people far more likely to make Bachelor’s Brew—let alone this quantity of it—than you.”
Harry stared at the shelving, nodding slowly for a moment, as if making a decision.
“Alright, what else do we need?”
“Silphium, garnet powder, pennyroyal, and bicorn horn. I can’t reach the bicorn horn, and I don’t want to risk summoning it, the jar’s way up—”
“Did you hear that?” Harry suddenly asked, cutting her off.
Hermione froze. She did indeed hear it—footsteps. One set.
Snape.
Their breath was loud—far too loud—in her ears, as was every shuffle of their feet. She wordlessly cast a Silencing Charm on their shoes and stole toward the pantry door. Through it, she heard the muffled voice of the Potions professor and the tinkle of glass, as well as the soft thud of what could only be a bag being dropped onto a hard surface.
“…can’t he damn well tell I’m busy as it is?” Snape muttered to himself. “And yet he wants me to make Edurus Potion for all those bloody Aurors…why he can’t tell them to have the damn Ministry labs do it is beyond me…I’ll go insane if he keeps this up…”
More glass clinked, a little farther away this time.
“…and, of course, Poppy oh-so-conveniently had to misplace her entire damn supply of Blood Replenishing Potion…’oh, Severus, couldn’t you be a dear and make me another batch, you never know about those Quidditch injuries’…I ought to tell her no, for once…perhaps if she made it herself, she’d stop losing the damn phials…”
A closer tinkling told Hermione that Snape had moved again.
“…and then, the Dark Lord, irrational son of a skrewt he is…almost as fond of the Cruciatus as his bloody wife…it’ll be a wonder if everything doesn’t collapse within the year at this rate, prophecy not withstanding…we all know who keeps the damn thing functional…and obviously the bloody maniac is the only one who doesn’t see it…obviously…I wonder what that freak will do once he’s pushed it so far, the man can’t even duel anymore…except of course, of course, that bloody madman’ll never point the finger at himself…why he couldn’t have stayed dead is beyond me…”
Snape kept muttering, his complaints interspersed with the occasional rattle of glass on glass. Eventually, though, the sound quieted.
Harry and Hermione exchanged a frantic look. If Snape had sat down to grade papers, it could be hours before they could leave. And if he started brewing another potion…
After what seemed an eon, Hermione heard the door of the office fly open, and footsteps sounded on the flagstones—someone else had entered.
A boy’s voice sounded, tight and irate.
“They’re at it again, Professor. Davies and his lot. I told him I’d booked the pitch, but—”
“Mr. Montague,” Snape said tiredly, “I have told you before, I will speak with Professor Flitwick about it. Beyond that, there is little I can do. You and Mr. Davies will have to come to an understanding.”
“Professor, they spelled every last quaffle in storage to behave like a bludger! One of them nearly took Lestrange’s head off, and Pucey’s in the hospital wing as we speak—Madam Pomfrey’s saying he’s going to be there for nearly a week before she’s got his skull back to normal! A week! How are we going to be ready for our match with Gryffindor like this? It’s only a few weeks away!”
Snape sighed audibly.
“I see this feud has become…rather more serious than it had been. I think Professor Flitwick will need to know about this sooner than later. Come with me, Mr. Montague.”
Two sets of footsteps swept from the office, and Hermione finally released a breath she had not realized she had been holding.
“Let’s go, Harry.”
She pulled open the door and stepped into the empty office. On the cluttered surface of Snape’s desk and on a side table opposite the ingredient pantry, there were phial racks, each of them filled with two dozen uniform phials. The two racks on the side table were filled with a dull red potion that Hermione would have known, even without the labels affixed to each phial, to be Blood-Replenishing Potion. One of the racks on Snape’s desk was filled with a luminescent blue-grey liquid labeled as Edurus Potion. The other was unlabeled and filled with a cobalt blue potion unlike anything Hermione had ever seen.
She inched closer to the desk. The other two potions corresponded to something he was complaining about—the Edurus Potion for the Aurors, and the Blood-Replenishing Potion for Madam Pomfrey. But Snape had also complained about Voldemort—specifically, Voldemort’s tendency toward liberal use of the Cruciatus Curse. If this was what she thought it was…
“Hermione, what are you doing?” Harry hissed. “We need to get out of here—now.”
“I want to get a better look at this potion. I think…I think I might know what it is. Well, not what it is, but what it does.”
Her unbandaged hand shot out from under the cloak and closed around one of the phials. The cobalt blue swirled, almost metallic-looking, in the glass. She dropped it into her satchel atop the stolen ingredients.
“Hermione. You still haven’t explained—”
“I will—I just need to run a few diagnostics, and then I’ll know if I’m right. But we need to go now.”
As quickly as they could, the pair shuffled out of Snape’s office under the cloak. They retraced their steps out of the dungeons, ascending the staircases all the way to the seventh floor, where they removed the Invisibility Cloak and walked the rest of the way to Gryffindor Tower.
They paused only briefly before the Fat Lady’s portrait to mumble the password before collapsing into a pair of armchairs by the fire.
“Bloody hell…” Ron breathed, his eyes wide as Hermione extracted a jar of murtlap essence from her satchel and began dipping gauze into it. “Where’d you get that?”
“Snape’s personal ingredients pantry,” Harry replied in a low voice, eyes flicking around the still-full but mercifully inattentive common room.
“It got that bad, did it?”
“Yeah,” Hermione confirmed, capping the jar. She handed one length of soaked gauze to Harry, who had already unwound his old bandage in preparation.
“Blimey…” Ron muttered, shaking his head. He winced when he saw the swollen mess on the back of Harry’s hand. “That Umbridge is a right bitch, you know that?”
“You think we don’t?” Hermione commented wryly, rebandaging her own wounds. The effect of the murtlap essence-soaked bandages was immediate, relief flooding her body like a cool wave on sunburnt skin.
Ron’s lips pressed together in a thin line, and his fingers twitched upward, as though he had intended to offer help, but he said nothing, and his hands retreated back to the Transfiguration textbook balanced in his lap. For several minutes, the trio sat in silence as the murtlap essence did its work, cleansing the wounds and reducing the swelling.
“I think we should try the dittany now,” Hermione announced once the swelling had gone down enough that the joints of her fingers were no longer stiff and painful.
Harry nodded his assent, and they again unwrapped their bandages. Hermione carefully uncorked one tiny vial of essence of dittany and poured a small amount over the wounds on Harry’s hand. He hissed in pain as it began to smoke, but after just a few seconds, the smoke cleared, and only a faint silvery scar remained where the dittany had touched.
She repeated the process on herself, wincing at the sting as greenish smoke rose from her wound. Soon, though, the pain abated, and, like Harry, the only evidence that there had ever been a wound were faint silvery letters spelling her line: I shall know my place.
A couple hours afterward, she was eleven inches into the essay Professor Vector had assigned on Sappleton’s Principle of Harmonic Intent, half listening to a pair of third years across the room sleepily discussing the upcoming Hogsmeade weekend while the fire crackled, low in the grate. After the events of the evening, it was a welcome return to normalcy.
And then an idea struck her, shattering that brief lull as her eyes flew wide.
“Harry,” she began, “I think I know how we can get your prophecy.”