Hermione Full of Grace | By : AdamantEve Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Harry/Hermione Views: 13378 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. |
I’m
almost sure a lot of you have already figured things out. Read the AN at the
bottom when you’re done, please. Just a bit of info.
Not essential to the story, of course, but I’m obsessive… sorry. ^_^
----------------------------------------------------------------
In which
Hermione learns how to read.
-------------------------------------------------------
Hermione learned how to read while she was at work.
She was sitting in her work station puzzling over certain
judicial precedents when she heard Lysander’s echo in
her head once more.
Read the book.
Frowning, she had tried to ignore it, but it persisted,
and finally, frustrated that no amount of work was shutting the voice up, she dipped into her work bag and opened the Nauta Oira.
The pages came alive with words and she could understand
everything.
That same sense of fear that first took her when she
discovered the power came over her again, but this time, she was better
prepared. Not by much, but by enough to
keep herself together.
It wasn’t a very thick book; almost like a hard-bound
pamphlet, but it was a thesis about a decimated race, persecuted because they
were feared; hunted because of exaggerated tales told.
Hermione remembered another thesis that made theories
about those exaggerated tales.
The legend was about a race of sentient beings that were
so beautiful, so majestic, that muggle and wizard
alike deferred to them for leadership and guidance. They were angel-like in their
appearance. They were benevolent, and
they were the ideal muggles and wizards aspired to
become, but as the centuries wore on and the wizards that once admired them
learned envy and fear. Tales—no better than lies—were told about them, about
wizard and muggle babies taken from their cradles,
and children taken from their rooms, eaten as sacrifices to prolong lives and
preserve youth. The tales were spun,
grown more horrible at each telling, until the fear became palpable and the
genocide began. Their angels were angels
no more; they had been named demons and creatures of evil. They were run out of their homes, grown-up
and children alike, to die as miscreants.
They were executed and tortured through dark magical means; destroyed
for the color of their skin, hair and eyes.
None must be left alive, and it was written than none survived.
But some did survive, and what little was
left of the dying race strived to live through the centuries undetected,
because the “demon-taint” their race was faulted with remained.
There were rumors of their continued existence, of
course. In the last five hundred or so
years, there were sightings of them, and by then, wizards
had better learned the virtue of life, if not benevolence. But in spite of the changed attitudes of
wizards, the race remained in hiding. It
was not difficult, anyway. These
“demons” were magical folks in themselves.
Though they needed no wands to manipulate it, it was easy to pretend
they needed a stick of wood to make magic work.
Hermione kept this legend in mind as she read through the Nauta Oira: To try
and regenerate the race, or at least to keep it alive, the race took on
rationing its magic through familiars.
This was a common enough theory.
Witches and Wizards kept familiars in any form of animal their magic required. Familiars were magical vessels which their
owners could tap into as a spare source.
Kind of like keeping a spare tire in the trunk of one’s car in case the
car blew one of the four it was running on.
The decimated race valued familiars in particular because
the amount of magic they could contain in their familiar dictated the length of
their lives. Their familiars acted not
just as vessels but as generators that
can actually reproduce power from what it was initially given, like a tree that
produced fruits season after season.
Because of this peculiar trait, the dying race had
prolonged life spans, but some remained longer than others. The dark legends
surrounding their violent past was not without basis. While familiars were expected to be animals, some preferred more powerful sources:
people.
While the keeping of human familiars in itself was not
forbidden, the very idea of it, especially within the more modern ideals of
man, was dark and disturbing.
The dynamics of familiarism were
set within certain limits. Muggles couldn’t be kept as familiars. They lacked the inherent magic to be useful
as familiars to Lysander’s kind. Only demons, real demons, had use for muggles as
familiars, but Lysander’s people could not utilize muggles the way demons could.
These angel-like creatures could make their own kind their
familiars. Ideally, they married, fell in love and agreed to be each other’s
familiars. It made sense; it was
romantic; it was practically the only way to go, but they cannot force each
other after the fact. They could only be
bound of their own free will; no tricks; no deceit; no power in the world could
force them to become familiars of each other if they didn’t desire it. They can even revoke their familiarship as easy as they
can take anything back. There was no
conflict pertaining to familiarship within the same
race.
Wizards could be made into familiars. Wizards were prime familiars, and the “shinier” they were, the more power they
had to offer. By shinier, it meant that the
wizard was more accomplished, perhaps beautiful; of a special renown;
intellectual, or maybe excelling in sports.
Hermione’s frown deepened at what she read next.
Wizards could be compelled to be familiars under certain
circumstances. The keeping of a Wizard
familiar was tolerated, so long as the wizard was willing. It was expressly forbidden to force a wizard
outright, but it didn’t mean it couldn’t be done. There was a process that involved trickery;
the trapping of a wizard or witch’s aura.
When the trap was sprung, the binding process would begin, and forced or
not, it was next to impossible to escape the clutches of the spell.
And here, Hermione felt her stomach drop.
0000000000000000000
Hermione shut herself in the ministry bathroom stall and
retched. It was all she could do not to
go mad.
As she emptied the contents of her stomach in the toilet
bowl, all she could think of was: “What
have I done? What’s going to happen to
me? What will I do? Oh, bugger!”
She felt sick to the core of her. And the worse part of it
was she had brought it all upon herself.
The flush of the toilet was like a death-knell to her
existence.
Hermione cursed the day she met Lysander
Athanasius.
She retched some more, disgusted with herself, the entire
situation and the thought that Lysander can keep her
alive for half-a-millenia so that he could use her
like a battery that would make him coffee, or tie his shoelaces, or walk his
dogs…
Bugger all to hell!
More retching.
She had nothing more to barf. It
hurt to turn her stomach inside out and it wasn’t helping the ache in her head,
either.
Flush.
With nothing left to heave, she leaned back on the stall
door and pounded her head against it, punishing herself for her stupidity; her
vanity; her spectacularly bad luck.
She survived Voldemort just so
some schmuck in an expensive suit can keep her as a magical slave for the next five hundred years; because really,
that’s how long one can stretch the warranty on a Witch Familiar.
Harry was not going
to be pleased.
Hermione weighed her options.
She could either resist the Final
Binding and feel excruciating, mind crippling pain, or she could
dutifully prepare herself; participate in the ritual and let the transition be
comfortably lovely. Either way, she was
screwed. Lysander
would have her and she could—well—continue to be screwed in the next five
hundred years.
Great options.
I can kill him, I
suppose.
She groaned. Again, great options.
The ritual of the Final Binding was best undertaken during
a Waxing Moon. Hermione thought about
it. That would be a week from now.
She pounded her head back again. “Bugger, bugger, bugger,
bugger!”
There was a knock on her stall door and the voice of a
woman came through. “Oy, you there.
Are you alright?”
Hermione sighed.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? I
can get a Medi-witch here in a flash if you need
one.”
“It’s fine. I just
ate something bad, is all.”
“Umm… is that you Hermione?”
Wonderful, she sighed. I’ve
been recognized.
Reluctantly, she got up and opened the door.
Can it get any
worse?
It was Gail.
Hermione groaned and went to the sink, splashing her face
with cold water. “You will not tell Harry you found me like this.”
Gail frowned. “I
won’t… were you just sick in there?”
“Sort of.”
She wondered if there was such a thing as “sort of retching
your intestines.”
“Oh dear, are you pregnant?”
Hermione frowned. “Of course not. That was stress
and I just needed to get it out of my system. It’s out, so now I’d really appreciate it if
you kept this between us.”
“Good God, are they working you that hard at the WizCOF?”
“Yes.”
“You know, if you’re feeling under the weather, you might
want to tell your bosses to let you off early, just this once.”
Hermione would have done just that, but if it meant going
home and doing nothing, she’d rather stay at work and puke her guts out. At least in the Ministry, she would have more
things to occupy herself with, like staving off nosy auror
partners.
She sighed, taking a paper towel and wiping her face with
it. “I’m going back to the office. I think maybe the crisis has passed,
anyway.” Not by a long shot. “I’ll
see you around, Gail.”
Gail nodded and Hermione could feel the woman’s eyes on
her as she left.
Hermione walked back to the hole in the wall and found Heartcomb waving to a pile of owls.
“They’re yours,” he said, and looking up, he frowned. “You look peaky. Have you been letting vampires bite you
again?”
“Among other things,” Hermione muttered, taking her pile
of owls.
She took them to her work station and flipped through
them. They were mostly work related and
she sorted them into organized folders.
But then there was one from Hogwarts.
Hermione felt her heart thump. Maybe McGonagall had found something out.
After reading the letter, some of her optimism waned as it
contained information she already knew.
That the Waxing moon was prime for certain
rituals; that the “gift exchange” was usually undertaken to begin binding
enchantments, etc., etc.
There was a note at the bottom. McGonagall pointed out that the theory of Lysander’s species was reinforced by the fact that he came
from a clan of weapons smiths and warriors, as it was the primary means of
income for those of his kind back then.
The owning of land was characteristic to his kind as well, though not
always in such a grand scale as that of the Athanasius
clan.
She was about to toss the letter aside, out of sheer
frustration, when something farther down the scroll caught her eye.
It was a list of references; places where she might find
more information regarding ancient rituals pertaining to waxing moons and
gift-exchanges. There was one in the
Norse lands, where Lysander’s species were rumored to
originate. There was one in Ireland,
where Lysadner’s kind were known to have flocked, but
there was one right in London, and she had a key to it.
The Library of Ancient Runes.
00000000000000000
Hermione asked Heartcomb if she could
leave for the day because it seemed the vampire that bit her took more than she
had been prepared to give.
Heartcomb let her go, recommending
blood-replenishing potions.
Hermione hurried out of the
ministry and apparated outside the Library of Ancient
Runes. She hoped to Merlin Lysander
wouldn’t show up unexpected, like he did the last time and she wondered if the
key she was using had anything to do with it.
Finding a secluded spot in a nearby park, Hermione
examined the key with every magical tester she could think of.
She smiled triumphant when she discovered the trigger
spell for the summons. Now she only
needed to remove it. She needed a spell
breaker and she vaguely recalled one from her many books, she just needed to
know the exact type and parameters. She
made sure that the removal of the trigger wouldn’t inadvertently trigger the
summons anyway and was glad to discover that the spells on the key weren’t all that complex.
This might be easier than she though.
She brought out her wand.
“Reconligo,”
she said,
thinking of the accompanying password that would recover the spell-breaker book
she put in magical storage.
The book appeared and fell on her lap. She flipped through the pages, cross
referenced and found the spell she needed to break the trigger spell in the
key.
“Dearmare
arcessitu!” she whispered, waving her wand and tapping the key. The key trembled for a bit before
settling.
She could only hope the breaker worked, and there was only
one way to find out.
After returning her reference book to magical storage with
a “Repositum!” she
went to the library and tried the key.
The library opened itself to her.
As she walked in, she was met once more by Lord Mac a’Bhaird and she happily told him she would like to see the
books in the upper floors.
“Ready to take on the challenge of
deciphering the strange runes, my lady?” asked Lord Mac a’Bhaird.
She smiled and nodded.
If her suspicions were correct, she would be able to read what was up
there.
Hermione apparated to the upper floors
and Lord Mac a’Bhaird met her there.
“I’d like to familiarize myself with very old
rituals. Binding rituals, actually,” she
said.
Lord Mac a’Bhaird nodded. “I’d suggest you go to aisle four, then. But be warned. The books have been catalogued based on
academic theory, not certainty. A lot of
the runes in these books are unreadable, and while we’ve had the best scholars catalogue and classify them, we have little way of
knowing if they’ve done so correctly.”
That, Hermione thought, made things a bit daunting. It meant what she was looking for could
actually be anywhere in the upper
levels.
Well, you have a
week left yet to prepare, Granger.
It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do.
“Thank you Lord Mac a’Bhaird. You have been a
great help. I can manage from here.”
The ghost bowed and left her to her work.
Hermione began to scan the shelves and she found that the
books were relatively organized. It was
quite possible that some literate had actually ventured to arrange the books.
Probably another
reluctant familiar trying to find a loophole, she thought bitterly.
She sifted through the books, finding a lot of binding
rituals pertaining to waxing moons and gift-exchanges.
Minutes turned to hours, and by the time the clock struck
eight in the evening, she had learned a lot, but hadn’t exactly found what she
needed.
She found a rather interesting Familiar spell when the
familiar was an animal. While the wizarding world had several basic spells for binding an animal
as your familiar, this was curious in that she could be connected to her
familiar’s thoughts when she wanted to.
Hermione seriously thought about performing it on Crookshanks, and hopefully, she would gain insight into the
ritual Lysander wanted her to do for him. She might be able
to use that insight to find a way to break
the binding.
The more she thought about the idea, the more plausible
the idea seemed. She noticed that all of
the binding rituals had similar characteristics, and sometimes, it was only the
incantation that changed. If she gained
first-hand insight on any of the binding rituals, she could very well suppose
that the binding ritual Lysander would use on her
followed similar patterns.
Knowledge was power, after all.
After a few moments of thought, she sighed and closed the
book in front of her. She knew she had
to go home. Harry didn’t know where she
was, and Gail could have let slip their episode in the bathroom, which meant
Harry might be having kittens now.
Hermione made a copy of the binding ritual for animal
familiars and resolved to do her ritual the following day. If it meant she had to take the day off
getting the materials ready, then so be it.
Now, she just needed a spell to make her seem sick enough
to stay in. If she was going to do this,
she didn’t want anyone knowing about it just yet.
Yes, not yet.
I don’t want to
worry Harry.
Oh, but won’t he
want to know?
Of course he
will! But what he doesn’t know won’t
hurt him, right?
Right…
She frowned a bit.
She still had reservations about all this secret keeping. She had always
trusted Harry, but now… there was just that nudge that made her need to
keep it…
An idea suddenly hit her and she knew exactly what she had
to do to stay home the next day.
I know just the
thing! It’s perfect: consistent with the
bathroom episode if Gail told, or ever tells, on me. Hooray for Fred and George!
0000000000000000000
“Ron, you are so dead!”
Harry growled, holding up Hermione’s hair as she heaved into the toilet. It was midnight, and she had woken up the
whole house.
Well, all for the
sake of drama, she
thought as her stomach recoiled.
She groaned miserably for effect.
Ron looked terribly guilty, and anxious, but he was never
too quick with his apologies. “It was Chinese!
I bought it from our favorite Chinese place! We’ve been eating the stuff forever!”
“Well, it was bad!” Harry cried. “And now Hermione’s sick like anything! We’re never going to order Chinese from that
place again!”
She retched. Her
moans became less for show and more real than she would’ve liked. Fred and George’s Puking Pastilles from the Skiving
Snackbox were lethal
in upped doses; but it promised that the effects would be nullified if you
took the exact same dose of the accompanying antidote. In the meantime, it was dead uncomfortable
and exhausting.
“Oh, Merlin, please kill me now…” she groaned, meaning
it. The things she would do to be left
alone in the house for an entire day…
She doubled over again and felt Harry rubbing her back as
he held her hair off her face.
“I don’t know why she was the only one affected,” said
Ron, as if it was her fault. “We both ate the dumpling.”
“It’s because you’ve got the constitution of a steam-roller,
Ron,” Harry said, reaching for a towel and running it under cold water. He gave the wet towel to her. “Here, love, try this.”
“Th-Thanks, Harry,” she
muttered, taking the towel and using it to wipe her face with. Her stomach spasmed
again, but she managed to hold it in a bit.
“Cor, this is almost as bad as getting cursed
by Dolohov…”
The look of horror blossoming on Harry’s face alerted her
to the fact that she might have gone a bit overboard with her descriptions.
“It’s an exaggeration, Harry,” she muttered. “Nothing to be alarmed
about.”
Harry did look awfully relieved. “Ron, fetch some tea for her, will you?”
Sighing and rolling his eyes, Ron left to do it, muttering
something about being a replacement House Elf.
It turned out Gail hadn’t told Harry about the bathroom
incident, which Hermione thought was decent of her, but all things considered,
so long as Harry didn’t do something silly like stay home to take care of her,
she would have the house all to herself the next day; or at least long enough
for her to gather certain ritual materials.
She could perform the ritual while they were out,
too. This particular ritual wasn’t time
specific, which was fortunate. She’d
hate to have to formulate a load of bullcrap just to
get Harry and Ron out of the house at night.
That aside, she was feeling rather wasted right now. I think
I can stop retching in a while…
She hugged her middle.
It was really beginning to hurt.
“I think I’ll be able to go to work tomorrow, anyway…”
Predictably, Harry objected. “No, you’re staying home to recuperate. I don’t care what your bosses say. You’re
really sick right now.”
She shot him a petulant look but he remained stern.
One more obligatory protest on her part was required and
she gave it, telling him she was feeling better now, but as if rehearsed, she
retched again. The timing was excellent.
“Like you were saying?” he muttered.
“Alright,” she spat out.
“Maybe I can’t, tomorrow, but I’ll not have you fussing over me the
entire day, Potter. If you so much as check up on me, I’ll go to work even if
it means I’ll be barfing all over the ministry.
Deal?”
He smirked, pleased enough with his success. “Deal.”
Perfect. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pull out my
intestines.”
Hermione bent over the toilet again to empty her gut.
000000000000000000
The following morning had Harry tucking her into bed with
way too many pillows and healing potions.
He had a list telling her when to take the potions and at what
time. It was all very endearing, and
given the true nature of her health, she felt a bit like jumping him and
telling him she was well enough to shag.
But of course, she had to pretend that she hardly had the pep to pick up
a book.
She may have overdone it a bit, as Harry seemed to hover
before leaving for work. Ron had already
left, having no patience for Harry’s fussing.
Harry looked worriedly at her from the foot of her
bed. “Maybe I should skive
work…”
“No!” she yelled too abruptly for someone who was supposed
to be too sick to react to anything at all.
She hastily covered-up her lapse.
“You can’t skive
auror duties!
It’s not like skiving history class at Hogwarts. Auror duties are important, and your being there may
spell the difference between a Death Eater being caught or getting away!”
Harry sighed.
“You’re right, of course, but you look so ill, Hermione… I just don’t want to leave you alone…”
She waved his concerns away. “I’ll be just
fine. See here, I’m eating this
kidney pie, and yum! It’s
delicious! Now, I wouldn’t have an
appetite if I was very sick, now would I?”
He smiled slightly.
“Alright then, I’ll go. But I’ll
be back as early as I can.”
She nodded.
He gave her a kiss and he was gone.
The moment she heard Harry apparate,
she jumped out of bed and grabbed the list of things she would need.
Among the more basic materials were spell chalk, candles,
an Athame or ritual knife, and a cauldron. She had those in storage. The more exotic materials she would have to
get from a few muggle markets and Knockturn
Alley.
She went out to the muggle
markets first gathering fresh herbs for the ritual. When she ventured to Knockturn
Alley for the various dragon ingredients and stolen hair of unicorn, she had to
wear a robe to cover her face with.
There were too many people there who might recognize her.
She had to get a scrying mirror
too, which was something they should have had at Grimmauld
Place, but since nobody in the house put much stock on divination (or perhaps
they’d had quite enough of prophesies), none of them had ever bothered to buy
one.
By the time she was done with shopping, it was lunch time,
and she had to hurry home to prepare her ingredients.
There were potions to be made with the stolen hair of
unicorn and other ingredients, and until she had the potion made, she couldn’t
be entirely sure that the hair was indeed, stolen. She took comfort in the fact that no
self-respecting unicorn would let anyone take hair from them willingly for
commercial use.
It took her at least two hours to complete the
silver-mercury potion, and she was confident it would work, as the description
of a successfully mixed Binding Elixir matched that of the one she had in her
pot.
The instructions explained that when she had her familiar
handy and it was time for them both to ingest the potion, her dose would smell
like her animal’s favorite scents while the animal’s dose would smell like
hers. This part of the process served a
double purpose, as a properly chosen animal wouldn’t mind any scent pertaining
to the human, mainly because it was the kind of presence-sense an animal relied
on to recognize a human they trusted, and a human they didn’t. The instructions didn’t say anything about
the human’s reaction to the animal’s favorite scents, which could only mean two
things: One, it was assumed that a human has the maturity (or the willpower) to
ingest the potion whatever its smell,
and two, the animal did the choosing in the binding, because according to the
instructions, the animal couldn’t be forced to take the potion.
This was a very interesting insight to Hermione. It could mean that while she could be forced
to be Lysander’s familiar, there was an aspect
pertaining to her own choice. How she can exploit this, she didn’t know
yet. She hoped she could find the
answers.
The other materials for the ritual weren’t as complicated,
as dragon parts in the raw were powerful enough to act as catalysts. She merely had to cut the dry pieces and make
them manageable for the ritual.
The instructions for the dragon mix had a portion
pertaining to astral vision, which Hermione had read about in theory, but
hadn’t quite ventured to practice. Until
now, she never considered it as more than the taking of Wizard hallucinogens,
which was exactly what she thought it was: drugs. And while she was still a bit iffy about
taking anything of the sort, she knew it was essential for her to try. It would involve the prepared dragon
parts: She would mix dry ingredients of
dragon in a boiling cup of dragon bile, add some of her own blood and reduce
the mixture while she inhaled the fumes.
After which she would have to consume some of the flakes of dragon
hide. It was definitely dodgy
potion-making, but she was determined to see the entire thing through. She only hoped that by the time Harry got
home, the effects of the “dragon drug” would be gone.
Considering the hour, she felt that she didn’t have much
time left to complete the ritual. Harry
said he would try to be home early.
Knowing Harry, that could mean between four to
six. She couldn’t risk it. It was already two after noon. She still had to make sure she could read the
incantations for the ritual.
She figured the perfect place to perform the ritual would
be on the roof. The trouble, she realized,
with spell chalk, was that it couldn’t be scourgified. It could, however, be removed by a good dose
of soap and water. If
she had to scrub anything, better the roof where she wouldn’t have to worry
about wiping up the flood.
With a peg and a string, she drew two perfect, overlapping
circles. Carefully, she wrote the runes
around them. When she was satisfied with
the results, she went to look for Crookshanks.
She went straight to Crookshank’s
usual haunts, calling on him gently, as her finicky pet didn’t like to be
summoned like a common dog.
Crookshanks padded into the receiving room
from the viewing chamber with a soft mew.
“There you are,” said Hermione, crouching down on her
knees.
Like a proper human, Crookshanks
sat in front of his mistress, stretching his front and hind quarters fitfully
before he set his orange fluffy tail winding around his feet. He looked up, waiting for what she had to
say.
“Crookshanks,” she said. “I’m in trouble, and I really, really need
your help to figure out how to get out of it.”
He stared for a moment, unresponsive, before turning his
head to look at the side table holding pictures of her, Harry and Ron. He gave a loud meow.
While Hermione didn’t exactly speak cat, she knew Crookshanks to be unusually intelligent, and she could only
assume Crookshanks was telling her what she thought
he was telling her.
“I can’t let Harry or Ron know about it yet,” she
said. “Not until I’m sure it won’t put
them in danger. I got into this
situation because I didn’t know what I was doing. Until I can be certain, I don’t want to
unwittingly drag them into this. I’ll
tell them when I have it all figured out.
In the meantime, it’s just you and me.”
Crookshanks hissed at her.
Hermione wasn’t sure what that meant. Was Crookshanks
insisting? “You have to trust me on
this.”
He hissed again.
She frowned. “I
made a mistake, you see, so this time, I
want to be more careful. You’re the
only one I can rely on right now.”
Crookshanks pranced towards her and began
rubbing himself around her hips.
Hermione smiled and petted him.
He really was the dearest pet ever.
“I need you to be my familiar, Crookshanks,”
she said. “It’s mostly just so I can
experience this binding ritual and learn things from it, but of course, the effects
of it will be permanent on us both. But
really, it won’t be so bad. According to
the book, we’ll be able to communicate somehow when we’re bound, and we’ll have
certain new powers because of it. I
don’t think there’s really anything wrong with that, as I think I have a lot to
offer you on that respect and you have a lot to offer me. Also, it will extend your life span. D’you fancy living
to a hundred years, poppet?”
Crookshanks didn’t stop lavishing her with
affection, meowing and purring.
Hermione’s smile widened.
“You’re the best, Crookshanks. Come on.
I have to perform the ritual up in the roof.”
She got to her feet, walking to the stairs. She wanted to see if Crookshanks
would follow. He did without
hesitation. When they got to the stairs,
she picked Crookshanks up and carried him the rest of
the way.
At the roof, she let Crookshanks
down and he immediately began prancing around the circles she drew on the
floor.
Hermione got her things prepared. She set up a second cauldron (Harry’s) in her
circle and poured in the entire contents of a small covered cup. It was the dragon’s bile. She put the cup in her handy garbage bin. Next, she placed the scrying
mirror over the interlacing arcs of the two circles and set the athame beside her cauldron.
She took the cauldron of mixed binding potion, ladling some in a potion
cup and a milk saucer. She put the milk
saucer in Crookshank’s circle and the potion cup in
hers. Carefully, she placed the candles
in the proper directional points.
She stepped into her circle and instructed Crookshanks to step into his.
Like a behaved participant, Crookshanks
settled in his spot and watched her with avid curiosity.
“This is going to take a while, so you have to be patient,
alright?” she said.
Crookshanks made no move to complain.
She opened her parchment and set it down where she could
read it. She breathed in and out,
focusing herself, before she lit the candles with a wave of her wand.
They came to life.
She put down her wand and tried not to let the uncertainty
of its loss overcome her focused determination.
The spell expressly said that her hands must not be burdened, so it
meant she wasn’t allowed to hold a wand.
She wasn’t sure if it would work at all without the wand, but she had to
put her faith in the magic.
She began the incantation in the ancient language of Lysander’s kind:
“Im
man tri rinde ilya athan
Ne suule fanyare ar talan
Wilya, uur, linque ar kemi
nauta
Sirima lindele en fea anna.”
She let the words settle in the embrace of the circle,
absorbing the meaning of uttered syllables:
I cleanse through
circles all around
By spirits of the
sky and ground
Air, fire, water and
bound earth
Flowing song of
spirit’s worth
And then she felt it; the stirring of magic she so often
felt when she let loose a spell from her wand, only this time it felt enhanced,
like it actually had density. It pressed
on her then settled all around her in the circle. There was heat, wind, and a slight
condensation.
Crookshanks flicked his tail, turned in a
circle then settled back down, embracing himself with his tail.
Hermione felt somewhat elated. It seemed to have worked!
Following instructions, she lit the fires under Harry’s cauldron
and put in the dried dragon ingredients to cook with the bile. Taking the athame,
she pricked her finger and massaged the wound to let the few drops of blood
fall into the mixture. Soon enough the
bile was boiling and Hermione leaned over to take a whiff of the fumes. The instructions said she had to take as much
as the fumes as she could.
It didn’t smell bad, though she could feel the fumes
traveling up her nostrils. She could see
Crookshanks sniffing some, but he turned away after a
while.
Hermione began to feel a slight headiness overcoming
her.
Oh, goodness, here
we go: Hallucinogenic effects.
It didn’t take long for the bile to evaporate, and using
her wand, she levitated a flake of dragon skin from the reduced mixture. It was a bit difficult to target since her
vision was seriously swimming.
She blinked several times before she took the flake and
ate it. It tasted like dried mint, but
that hadn’t exactly occurred to her as her vision suddenly took on a very eerie
turn. Everything turned black and gray;
dark and dull, but her surroundings were not entirely devoid of color. Tendrils and ribbons of all shades were
wriggling out of Crookshanks. It didn’t seem to bother the cat-kneazle at all. She
could only suppose it was the visualization of his aura. It made sense. As a few birds flew by, she could make out
colors from them, though not as strong as Crookshank’s.
She looked at herself and she saw that her aura was gold
and green, and that there was something very odd about her tendrils. Her tendrils were extended at a certain
point, reaching out to another line
of aura from an unknown source. The
alien aura came from some distant being beyond Grimmauld
Place. It was purple, and while her aura
and the other weren’t permanently connected, they were reaching out to one
another; feeding a bit on each other.
It bothered her that she could see Lysander’s
aura, because that was all it could be, really.
They weren’t bound yet, as he said, but they were already
connecting.
She scowled but decided she couldn’t let her irritation
detract her from her goals.
“Are you ready, Crookshanks?”
she asked.
Crookshanks sat motionless.
She nodded and spoke the next enchantment, touching her
fingers to her cup of potion. Amazingly,
Crookshanks padded his paw lightly on his
saucer. She read the ancient language,
speaking it carefully to make no mistakes.
The translation of it came easily enough, to her.
“Shade to you and
shadow me
Bound by soul
through magic’s key
Dark made safe, tied
souls made twain
Nature’s laws spun
true by reign
Give thy oath,
carrier of worth
Chained until the Earth’s reversed.”
The words swam in her head, flowed to her shoulders, down
her arms and through her fingers. As she
let her mind comprehend the words, the potion began to glow.
Just as the instructions said, she began to smell a hint
of cooked chicken liver and baking cookies.
It was the strangest thing; that Crookshank’s
favorite smells were cooked food. Then
again, it would have been horrible if the potion began to smell like rats, or
doxies, for that matter.
She took the cup and drank the potion down while Crookshanks lapped his potion up. She wondered what her scents smelled like to Crookshanks and hoped hers was as pleasing to him.
The milk saucer was emptied and Crookshanks
rose, licking his lips.
Hermione watched as their auras began to drift to one
another towards the scrying mirror. It was a little freaky, and Hermione saw her
aura drawing back in response to her feelings.
But after a while, she let it go.
She happened to notice her aura taking bits of Lysander’s, but it didn’t seem like Lysander’s
aura was responding much else to the ritual.
Her aura and Crookshank’s met
over the mirror and Hermione realized she can manipulate both auras while it
was held within the mirror. The auras
were being drawn to one another, but she could push hers in one direction and
push Crookshank’s in another. Some of their tendrils would meet and bind,
but Hermione found she could separate them again even after those tendrils
seemed to fuse.
She stored this information away for later processing and
let the auras join completely. The
tendrils became one big ribbon, adhering to one another. She could still see the difference between
her aura and Crookshanks, and she could see where
they were joined, but she assumed that as time wore on, the lines would be less
apparent.
It was then she realized that a flood of strange, oddly
patterned thoughts began to peter into her mind about food and hunting and cold
comfort and relaxing warmth. She saw
tiny places and soft surfaces, familiar laps and lots of different ankles. She felt like she needed to preen, and then
she felt the need to share a rat with Hedwig and Pig. And finally, she felt unadulterated hate for Tonks because she once stepped on her tail.
Tail?
And then it dawned on Hermione. She was sharing Crookshank’s
initial flood of thoughts.
The binding ritual had worked.
It occurred to Hermione that the reason Tonks couldn’t apparate into Grimmauld Place had been Crookshanks’s
hatred of her all along.
And Harry thought it
was me! Honestly, how awful does he
think I am? Humph. She would have to tell Harry about Crookshanks
one of these days, just so he didn’t think she was so uptight. She was still reeling from the “killed or
worse expelled” factoid Harry had shared with her last Saturday.
Refocusing her thoughts, she read the instructions to the
spell. It merely said that once the
binding ritual was complete, all she had to do was thank the magic and close
the spell.
Hermione blinked and the color in the world returned while
the auras faded to invisibility.
She looked at Crookshanks,
wondering. “How do you feel Crookshanks?”
Hungry.
Hermione chuckled.
She resolved to feed Crookshanks some after
she cleaned the circles off the roof floor.
But first…
“Let’s try some of this, shall we?” she said, reading the
annotations on the instructions. “Let’s
see now… it says here I might be able to acquire some of your senses, through you. I
must focus my mind’s aura into yours.
You should feel my presence but I can’t control you, only tell you what
to do. It’s still up to you to follow me
or not.”
Hungry.
Hermione chuckled.
Some compromise was required. “I
promise I’ll feed you after this.”
Good.
Hermione concentrated, letting her aura flow. She felt that part of her that was in Crookshanks and she closed her eyes, seeing herself from Crookshank’s eyes.
It was almost as good as seeing from her own eyes, with colors and
everything, except that objects farther behind her were somewhat blurry. Everything from within running range,
however, were clear as day, and Crookshank’s
eyes darted from one magnified sound to another.
Crookshanks, said Hermione. Fancy a
bit of a walk-around?”
More food.
Yes, Crookshanks. I’ll feed you a cookie. She knew Crookshanks wouldn’t be
able to resist those, now that Hermione knew it was one of his favorite scents.
Crookshanks padded around the roof, checking
into corners and pouncing on a few bugs that caught his attention. Hermione knew this was all for her benefit;
to help her experience how it was to be a cat.
Once around the roof was enough. Hermione thanked Crookshanks
and retreated back into herself.
Hermione stood, figuring that she’d have to do clean-up
after she fed Crookshanks.
“Come on, then. The
cookies are waiting,” she said, opening the door to the house. Crookshanks darted
through it and Hermione followed.
00000000000000000000
Hermione scrubbed the roof chalk-free before cleaning up
her materials to put them back in their proper places. She made sure to hide the excess potion
ingredients properly, as she didn’t want to explain to Harry and Ron what she
was doing with Knockturn Alley merchandise.
She looked up at the clock and saw that it was almost
four.
Hurriedly, she went back to her room, picked out the
medical potions she should have already taken and reduced them accordingly by
flushing them down the toilet. Harry
would surely check if she had taken her medicines.
She cleaned up, changed into house clothes and analyzed
her experiment as she scribbled her findings on parchment.
It was interesting, the auras. She could see them and manipulate them to a certain extent, even after they were
bound. Of course, it occurred to her
that she had to be seeing the auras to manipulate them, and it was entirely
possible that after a certain period, she couldn’t separate them whether she
could see it or not. She would have to
look around for information regarding that.
Her willingness to be bound did make the transition
smooth, and it did imply that her will would be playing some role. Maybe she could find a way to bar the binding between her and Lysander, or maybe even sever the ties once they’re
bound.
She had consumed quite a bit of parchment when she heard
the crack of Harry’s apparating.
It was just about to hit five in the afternoon and she
chuckled. Exciting as Harry was, he could be predictable in certain
matters.
Harry found her sprawled, stomach down on her bed, writing
with books all around her.
“You must be
joking,” he said, sitting beside her on the bed.
He caressed her head a bit and she noticed his eyes
trailing to the potions on her bedside table.
She stifled a laugh.
She looked up at him.
“I got bored.”
“At least it means you’re well enough to work tomorrow.”
“Yes, I am.”
“What’s that you’re writing?”
For a moment, Hermione considered lying, but she supposed
she’d done enough cover-up for a day. She smiled.
“Stuff that has to do with what I researched in
Hogwarts the other day. It’s not
ready for me to tell you about it.”
He chuckled. “It’s not ready or you’re not ready?”
Tell…
Oh, but poor Harry
will worry…
“Both.” She began
to fix her papers and put her writing materials aside. She rolled over on her back and smiled up at
him, striking a slightly sexy pose. “I
missed you.”
She hoped to distract him and perhaps distract herself,
too.
He grinned, his green eyes taking on an affectionate
glow. “What else are you well enough
for?”
She smiled, feeling that spark of naughtiness charging her
nerves. “You tell me, doctor.”
He leaned over, slipping his hand beneath her shirt and
over her stomach. He kissed her slowly
before speaking in an intimate voice.
“Well, you are plenty hot.”
“Mm-hmm.
Is that bad?”
“Yes, but in a very, very good way…”
00000000000000000000
Harry pushed back the drowsiness he felt from having just
made love to Hermione. It was a
difficult thing; far more difficult for him as a man than it was for her as a
woman, yet she was deep in her nap and he was managing to stay awake.
He pushed back some hair from her face, watching her in
her sleep. He could watch her until he
dozed off on his own and resolved to do that in a bit just as soon as he got a
look at the papers she had been writing on earlier.
It wasn’t as if he had planned on have mind-numbing sex
just so he could exhaust her enough to put her to sleep. The sex had been spontaneous, however much he
had thought about it while he was away from her, but seeing her asleep,
peaceful and sated, he had one of his unrelenting urges to protect her.
She hadn’t actually said it, but her upset last Saturday
had triggered something in her to do research in Hogwarts, and then she had
these books all pulled out from the shelves.
She was looking for answers, and he couldn’t help but be worried about why.
At least, he thought, she wasn’t lying outright. She was being elusive, yes, and he just knew
she was hiding something, but knowing the dynamic of her thought processes, she
was keeping the truth from him, and from Ron, to protect them. He knew, because he would do exactly the same
thing.
He pulled the blankets closer around her to make sure she
didn’t catch a chill and she shifted a bit, burying herself under the
sheets.
Carefully reaching over her shoulder to her bedside table,
he picked up the parchments and summoned his glasses. There was a soft, barely discernable shuffle
as the scrolled parchment zipped into his hand.
His glasses clicked as they snapped into his palm.
Slipping his glasses on, he read Hermione’s pages and
frowned. He couldn’t understand a
thing. She had written in some strange
language he had never seen before, and while he was no master linguist, he at
least had a store of general knowledge to know that this was not of any known
ancient rune.
The script was slanted, and cursive, with very little
spaces in between. While it didn’t
surprise Harry that Hermione was fluent in some ancient dead language, it
surprised him that she would use it like this, as if writing in it was easier
than writing in English.
Unless she knew you
would do this. He sighed, shaking his head. There were drawbacks to the two of them
knowing each other too well.
“Mankoi
naa lle sinome…”
she muttered in
her sleep.
He froze and listened, but she didn’t say anything
more. Instead, she shifted into his
embrace, nestling against his chest. She
was cold.
He put his arms around her, tucking the blankets more
securely as he rubbed her back. Holding
her, he felt the drowsiness begin to set upon him.
“Amin
ve laa er
lle hanya,” she breathed in the silence.
He had absolutely no idea what it meant.
000000000000000000
Why are you here? she wanted to ask,
instead, it came out in his language. “Mankoi naa lle
sinome?”
Lysander stood at the edge of her
unconscious mind, present, but barred from coming any closer. She knew it was because of Harry. She knew it was because Harry was near. She burrowed deeper into Harry’s presence and
Lysander seemed to get pushed back farther, but his
presence remained, and it irritated her.
He smirked.
Hermione frowned.
“You are speaking
the language already,” he said. “You
have read from the book.”
A growl escaped her.
“Kela!”
She cursed, hating
that he could compel her to speak the words.
This wretched
language of his was going to drive her spare.
“WHAT are you, Lysander, exactly?
Your kind—your true kind—wouldn’t do this.” she managed through grit
teeth. “You’re a monster.”
“Mani amin
naa uuminda,” he said
smoothly.
What I am matters not.
“Mani minda,”
he continued, “naa
tanya amin
naa sinome an lle faare.”
What matters is that I am here because you wanted all that
is.
“Lle wethrine amin.”
You deceived me, she
whispered. “Lle nuema amin!”
You trapped me!
“Lle faare
an na wethrine,”
was his ready reply. “Lle faare an
na nuema.”
You wanted to be deceived… trapped.
The truth speared
through her, and she hung on to Harry for dear life.
She brought this upon
herself. She got herself into this.
She wanted out. She NEEDED out.
He chuckled. “Lle naa nuema.” You are trapped.
She shook her
head. “Not yet. I still have my will. My will is the key.”
“Your will is weak.”
“It was. Now I know, and I won’t let it be weak
again.”
He merely smiled,
her words amusing him. “You will give
in. They all do.”
She shook her
head. “Amin ve laa er
lle hanya.”
I am like no one you’ve met.
“Neither, avarier, am I.”
Unwilling one, he
had called her.
She said nothing
else, and with everything she had, she pushed him out of her dreams.
She succeeded, but
his laughter rang in her head long before he was gone.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/N:
The Language I used here exists in fiction.
I didn’t create it. I repeat, I didn’t create it. I wasn’t really being lazy, as I have a bunch
of made-up fantasy languages ready in my hard-drive, but I wanted to use this
because I’d like to “make-believe it exists”.
So instead of coming up with my own language, I stuck to one that’s
pretty well-known to all fantasy fiction fans out there. Makes it seem more… realistic.
For
those of you wondering why Hermione’s… being so secretive, I agree it’s not
normal. In fact, it’s wrong. So wrong. Why do you think she’s doing that? I wonder. ::winks geekily::
Also, I
cut out a lot of the ancient language incantations spoken. I had them rhyming and everything, but it
just… well, it all looked too much like gobbledygook (even if I really did have
them in actual poems), so I just left the English translations on. I kept the language in this last exchange,
though. Just so readers get the feel of
Hermione being able to speak it fluently.
While AFF and its agents attempt to remove all illegal works from the site as quickly and thoroughly as possible, there is always the possibility that some submissions may be overlooked or dismissed in error. The AFF system includes a rigorous and complex abuse control system in order to prevent improper use of the AFF service, and we hope that its deployment indicates a good-faith effort to eliminate any illegal material on the site in a fair and unbiased manner. This abuse control system is run in accordance with the strict guidelines specified above.
All works displayed here, whether pictorial or literary, are the property of their owners and not Adult-FanFiction.org. Opinions stated in profiles of users may not reflect the opinions or views of Adult-FanFiction.org or any of its owners, agents, or related entities.
Website Domain ©2002-2017 by Apollo. PHP scripting, CSS style sheets, Database layout & Original artwork ©2005-2017 C. Kennington. Restructured Database & Forum skins ©2007-2017 J. Salva. Images, coding, and any other potentially liftable content may not be used without express written permission from their respective creator(s). Thank you for visiting!
Powered by Fiction Portal 2.0
Modifications © Manta2g, DemonGoddess
Site Owner - Apollo