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The heavy gates of the ancient manor, with the Black family motto carved into the high arch between two facing stone serpents, swung open with a thunderous clang at the motion of a wand. Her Grace Bellatrix Black, Duchess of Gravenhurst, as her newly confirmed title now proclaimed, emerged from the darkness of the courtyard in the full splendor of her regalia, worn in honor of the moment’s solemn uniqueness. There was a particular stillness that always preceded Bellatrix — a tightening of the world, as if even the air remembered to hold its breath. Hermione felt it now, unbidden, a reflex etched over years. With a tilt of her head, the elder witch summoned her forward, and the young woman followed a few steps behind, hesitant and pale.

The formidable Duchess — once the Dark Lord’s most feared lieutenant — was dressed in her customary black, though more sumptuous than usual: a gown of heavy velvet, gloves of soft leather. Over it she wore a satin cloak — black as well, but lined with deep crimson — fastened at her throat by a clasp in the shape of a dragon with outspread wings, wrought in blackened silver and set with garnet eyes. Across her breast lay a broad golden chain of interlocking serpents and obsidian roses, supporting a medallion that bore the Black family arms; a similar chain, without medallion, encircled her waist. On her right hand gleamed a heavy gold-and-onyx signet, engraved with the Black family crest.

Hermione wore a modest gown of reddish-brown wool that reached her ankles, with sleeves to her wrists and only a small, demure opening at the throat. Though woven of inexpensive fabric, it suited her remarkably well, harmonizing with the unruly chestnut of her hair and the soft, milk-chocolate shade of her eyes. Yet she felt uncomfortably overdressed — no wonder, for until that very morning her mistress had preferred to see her in garments far lighter and barer.

The surroundings pressed upon her: the leaden clouds hanging so low that the spires of the not-so-lofty towers seemed to vanish into them; the humming iron gates, untouched for many years — for wizards had long possessed far quicker ways to enter or depart a house; and, above all, the sudden, blinding grandeur of Bellatrix’s figure — a glaring reminder that, on this morning, their bond had changed forever. Beside Bellatrix’s splendour of black and crimson, Hermione’s russet dress seemed woven from the dust of years spent within those walls — the hue of the life she had come to know. The world before the war, before the collar and the chains, already felt like something dreamt by another girl. Now even this — the dim security of servitude, and the strange comfort of a love born from submission — was slipping from her grasp, and the chill of the open air tasted like loss.

When Hermione drew level with the Duchess, she acted on sudden impulse and took a quick step toward Bellatrix.

“Mistress, may I…” The girl’s eyes pleaded for closeness, for protection, as if for one last moment of belonging.

“No, Mistress Granger, you may not,” replied the elder witch, halting her with a gloved hand raised in warning. “From this day, our bond is of law, not flesh. Go in the Dark Lord’s peace.”

Some part of Hermione — the part Bellatrix had shaped with relentless consistency — waited for the familiar murmur of permission, the soft “come here, little one” that had once governed her nights. Its absence cut more sharply than the refusal itself. And the address Mistress — required by etiquette, yet unthinkable on the lips of the woman to whom she had belonged so completely only yesterday — convinced her at last that her life had entered a new orbit. At that moment it occurred to her, absurdly, that she was standing too close for a proper curtsey; etiquette had opinions about everything, even heartbreak.

Hermione stepped back, lowered her gaze, and sank into a deep curtsey — left hand upon her heart, right hand open and low — the gesture of a freedwoman acknowledging fealty.

“Your Grace.”

“Rise, Mistress Granger,” said Bellatrix evenly; yet her flaring nostrils and the slight tremor at the corner of her mouth betrayed the effort it cost her to feign indifference in this final parting.

“Your Grace has my gratitude,” Hermione said, straightening.

“Serve the Dark Lord well. He dislikes waste. My nephew will escort you to him.”

She inclined her head toward Draco, who waited beyond the gates of the manor, ten paces away.

The only son of Lucius Malfoy — newly elevated to the dignity of Marquess of Wiltshire, a title which automatically made his heir the Earl of Winterbourne — was likewise dressed in black. His coat, fastened high at the throat and falling in long, straight panels over the upper halves of heavy boots with thick soles, gave his figure an impression of unshakable steadiness. He stood so motionless that Hermione briefly wondered whether he had been trained to hold his breath for ceremonial purposes. There were no decorations to proclaim his noble birth, nor any ornament at all save for a small silver epaulet with a short fringe, in the centre of which a neat letter V gleamed in red gold — the mark of military distinction denoting its bearer as the personal adjutant of the Dark Lord.

Draco had only recently returned to service after the grave injury he had sustained three years earlier, when he served as an Auror under the command of Bellatrix. His present appointment — one that many could only dream of — was both a sign of the Dark Lord’s trust and of his favour.

At the threshold he stood, still as a carved effigy, the red-gold V on his epaulet catching the first glint of dawn. Hermione turned to the young lord and curtsied again — not the deep, reverent motion she had offered Her Grace, but the measured dip prescribed by protocol: no more, no less. It was the curtsey of a freedwoman acknowledging a superior, not a master.

“My lord, Draco,” she said softly.

Draco inclined his head; a gloved hand crossed his chest in the exact gesture of acknowledgment prescribed by the code. For a heartbeat he remained the image of composure — poised, disciplined, untouchable. Then he faltered. The silence stretched; the proper response would not come. Bellatrix’s eyes narrowed. The movement was brief, but Hermione recognised it: the cold, assessing flicker Bellatrix reserved for anyone who presumed to stand between herself and what she claimed as hers — even if that claim was no longer spoken aloud. With a subtle flick of her fingers the Duchess prompted him, and he startled as if struck.

“Rise.” The word escaped too quickly, breaking the stillness like a misfired spell. He caught himself, voice tightening into brittle formality. “Rise, Mistress Granger.”

The authority in his tone sounded rehearsed now — the echo of command rather than its source — and the perfection of the tableau dissolved in an instant.

Having at last received permission, Hermione straightened and walked the few steps that separated her from the young aristocrat, stopping at arm’s length and waiting for his invitation to apparate — a privilege forbidden to a freedwoman unless accompanied by one vested with authority.

“You cannot travel unaided. Permit me,” said Draco, clearing his throat slightly to restore the command to his voice, and offered his gloved hand, palm upward.

“I am in your care, my lord,” replied Hermione softly, placing her hand lightly upon his.

Draco cast his aunt a parting glance, and then he and Hermione vanished with a loud crack and a brief distortion of air.

They reappeared on a broad terrace before the colossal gates of Voldemort’s castle — a space designed specifically for apparition or for the landing of guests who preferred slower but more reliable means of travel. Only members of the Dark Lord’s trusted inner circle could enter the fortress by any way other than the gates; all others risked a painful death amid the countless wards and magical sentinels that infested the palace grounds.

Among these guardians were the dreadful Dementors, who in former times had guarded Azkaban but now served almost exclusively in the personal retinue of the Lord of Magical Britain. They drifted above the towers, most often concealed within the clouds, yet at times — suddenly and for no discernible reason — they would plunge toward the ground in a swift, predatory dive, sending screams of terror through anyone unfortunate enough to stand nearby.

“Mistress Granger,” Draco began, glancing quickly toward the sky where the Dementors kept emerging from the low clouds only to sink back into them a moment later. “Before we enter, I must give you your final instructions. It is very important.”

There was a faint note of genuine concern in his voice, and it brought to Hermione’s dark eyes a mixed expression of gratitude and disbelief.

“When we approach the chambers of His Majesty the Dark Lord,” the adjutant continued, “I will bow before the doors and announce your arrival. The Dark Lord will then bid you enter. As soon as you do, you will sink to your knees — both knees — and of course you will not rise until he commands it. Do you understand?”

“Yes, my lord, I do,” Hermione replied meekly.

“Your hands, meanwhile…” Draco started, then faltered, realizing he had forgotten again one crucial part of the etiquette.

“Oh — shit,” he exclaimed, and with that single word — so ill-suited to courtly speech, a ghost of the pre-etiquette age lingering where nearly all trace of that vanished tongue had been swept from collective memory — he shattered the image of patrician authority he had been struggling to maintain before the freedwoman entrusted to his care.

“Just a moment!” He drew a small notebook from the pocket of his coat and began to leaf through it feverishly, growing more agitated with every passing second as the right entry refused to appear. The book was full of cramped marginalia — gestures, titles, postures — tiny reminders of the elaborate rituals demanded in the new order, all of them designed to keep even the nobility forever uncertain of themselves.

Hermione recognised the same panicked flutter he used to show whenever an exam contained anything he hadn’t specifically memorised from a tutor’s notes.

“Before the Dark Lord,” The young witch said at last, breaking the awkward silence, “the freedwoman kneels upon both knees, head bowed, hands extended before her with the palms turned upward in token of surrender. The thumbs must be crossed — left over right — to signify obedience of the will. Her gaze must remain lowered, and she may not speak or rise until commanded; to do so unbidden is counted presumption.”

Draco stared at Hermione in utter astonishment. How — after four years of war and five more in captivity, after everything that had happened to her and to the world, but especially to her — could she still be the same insufferably know-it-all girl she had been, and how infuriatingly so, at school?

Of course, that a former slave should possess such detailed knowledge of the newly codified forms of authority and submission — rules only recently disseminated through the wizarding world — seemed almost incredible. Yet the reason for it was simple, though even more astonishing: Hermione could quote almost any article of the Documented Etiquette at will, for she herself was its author.

Naturally, this humiliating fact was never made public. Within pure-blood society, the authorship of that foundational document was attributed to Voldemort himself. In truth, the idea and its principal provisions had been presented to the Dark Lord by Bellatrix — but even she had merely delivered the results of her young captive’s labour.

The initial concept had arisen during one of those long, nocturnal pillow talks that, by some strange paradox, had gradually become the most intellectually demanding conversations of Hermione’s life. Despite her status as a slave, she was never assigned household duties; the elves performed all that could not be accomplished by a flick of their mistress’s wand. So it was with the other enslaved Muggle-borns, whose sole purpose was to serve as playthings for their pure-blood masters.

Thus, while her mistress — who at the time held the position of Head of the Auror Bureau — spent her days at the Ministry, Hermione passed nearly every hour in the seemingly endless library of the House of Black, devouring book after book.

Upon returning home, Bellatrix required a form of release, and found it in the wild intimacy that bound her to the young slave — an intensity that quickly exhausted them both. Afterward, they would collapse upon the silken bed and talk, sometimes for hours. Bellatrix listened with an intensity that bordered on possession. In those nights, the realm of thought became the only place where Hermione felt something resembling freedom: here she was permitted to speak, to reason, to be more than a body bent to another’s will. When Hermione struck upon the pattern of thought Bellatrix hungered for, the elder woman’s voice softened — not with feigned kindness, but with the fleeting tenderness of a predator unexpectedly sated. In those rare instants the iron boundaries between them loosened; Bellatrix listened, answered, even wandered with her through ideas as an equal. The freedom of those moments was real — unbearably real — and it was that freedom, more than fear or pain, that kept Hermione striving to reach them again. At first their conversations lingered on sensual themes alone, but gradually they took on an increasingly intellectual cast. Known to the world as a mad and murderous berserker, Bellatrix possessed a quick and subtle mind. She was a thoughtful interlocutor who valued Hermione’s relentless intellectual curiosity. Hermione herself could have talked all night, though her mistress eventually required a few hours of sleep before yet another day of service.

As Bellatrix’s trust in her young captive grew, she began to touch on matters of current politics — including the debates that flared among the new rulers of Magical Britain about the desired shape of the emerging society. The political relations that had arisen made the old divisions of pure-bloods, half-bloods, and mudbloods inadequate and demanded a new formal hierarchy even within the pure-blood elite, so that it might be clear to all that, say, the Malfoys stood above the Yaxleys, and the Yaxleys in turn above the Crabbes.

Hearing of these discussions, Hermione remarked that the pure-blood world would be well suited to a medieval feudal system, with its intricate gradation of titles and web of vassalage — and was astonished to discover that her mistress had never heard of anything of the kind. At first, Bellatrix listened with the polite bafflement of someone forced to follow a Quidditch match narrated in Professor Binns’s droning monotone; but once her razor-edged mind caught the underlying pattern, she became not merely a convert but an ardent champion of the idea. The reason was not any lack in Bellatrix’s education but something deeper: feudalism had never existed in the wizarding world. Magic — the source of its power — unlike land, the foundation of wealth in the medieval Muggle world, could not be partitioned and granted as fiefs in exchange for oaths of loyalty.

Magical knowledge could be accumulated in scrolls and grimoires — hence the vast libraries like that of the House of Black — yet once a spell was shared, its owner ceased to be its sole possessor. Thus, in ancient times, wizarding families lived in isolation, avoiding one another to prevent the theft of magical knowledge. Wizards kept their distance from their own kind but dealt freely with Muggles, charging handsomely for their services. The occasional Muggle-borns who appeared from time to time troubled no one; raw power meant little without access to spells and artefacts guarded by the old families.

All that changed, however. Under the influence of social transformations in the Muggle world, powerful movements for the democratization of magic arose among wizards, demanding the inclusion of Muggle-borns in the magical community. Hogwarts — once something like a temple where heirs of ancient houses studied the craft under long-bearded patriarchs and stately matrons — quickly filled with every variety of nouveaux mages: Muggle-borns and rootless half-bloods whose numbers multiplied each year. Systems were devised to register magical births among Muggles, so that such children could be recruited and incorporated into wizarding society.

The growing population of wizards and the expansion of their contact inevitably bred conflicts, culminating in the adoption of the Statute of Secrecy, which for all time declared the separation of the wizarding world from that of the Muggles. The new progressive leaders demanded that the ancient families share their hoarded treasures of magical knowledge, and many complied — thereby undermining the very foundations of their power and wealth. Not only did the old houses lose their exclusive access to vital magical resources; they also forfeited their traditional income, the fees they had long received for their services to Muggle kings. Ironically, the hermitic isolation so prized by the old families prevented them from uniting in defence of their interests, and until the rise of Voldemort they could do little to halt the steady decline of their former influence.

Now, after the victorious uprising and Voldemort’s enthronement, the ancient families had at last regained the privileges once taken from them. Yet there could be no return to their old seclusion; on the contrary, they now required a strong and unified realm, capable of withstanding its many external and internal enemies, and a political hierarchy that harmonized with their ideology.

After Hermione explained to Bellatrix the basic principles of the feudal state, her mistress hurried the very next day to present the idea to Voldemort. The Dark Lord was delighted, regretting only that such a simple and obvious structure had not occurred sooner to himself or any of his advisers. He ordered immediate work on a detailed hierarchy of ranks and titles, and — something he considered of utmost importance — on codified phrases and gestures by which the bearers of those titles were to address their peers and their inferiors.

The result was the Documented Etiquette, on which Hermione laboured tirelessly for more than half a year, chiefly adapting formulations copied from Muggle historical texts that Bellatrix had retrieved for her from the sealed but still intact library of the former Department for Muggle Studies at Hogwarts.

Upon publication, the etiquette was received with enthusiasm by the pure-blood aristocracy — an enthusiasm that quickly blossomed into something like mania. In manor after manor, nobles practised before mirrors until their reflections seemed to waver with exhaustion. Hermione, accompanying Bellatrix on her calls, witnessed scenes so absurd she struggled to keep her composure: cousins poised on the brink of a duel over the proper depth of a bow; a Rosier patriarch who dipped so fervently that he toppled headlong into a cabinet; the daughter of an ancient house tripping over her own train while rehearsing curtsies for a dinner no one had yet dared schedule.

In several households she encountered etiquette tutors — those who had studied the new code with such zeal that they now offered their services to instruct slower learners. Retired Aurors were especially prized for the role, valued for their ability to bark corrections with military precision. In some homes entire rooms had been rearranged to allow freer movement during ceremonial gestures. One lady insisted her mirror had shattered because her curtsy had been “too loyal” for glass to bear.

Not everyone proved equally adept, as Draco’s experience would later show, but overall the adoption of the new behavioural code was astonishingly swift — evidence, if any were needed, of how fervently pure-blood society had always yearned for something of the kind.

The titles followed almost as quickly, bestowed by Voldemort himself. There were, of course, disappointments. Bellatrix had grown quite fond of the sound of Marquise and had hoped to receive it. Yet the Dark Lord, consulting the rules composed by Hermione, decreed that the Blacks, by virtue of their ancient lineage, were to be Dukes, while the Malfoys were to hold the rank of Marquesses. Bellatrix submitted — not without a display of wounded pride, largely theatrical.

A still greater surprise awaited the newly made duchess some time later. Voldemort observed that Hermione, with her exceptional abilities, might serve higher purposes than the bed of Bellatrix Black. The duchess did not dare protest and professed her full approval of the decision, though inwardly a tempest raged; for the young captive had long since become to her not a toy but a remedy for the mind scarred by years in Azkaban. Among other decrees, Voldemort ordered that Hermione be formally freed, for the Dark Lord’s servants — even those of Muggle birth — by definition must stand above the slaves of the aristocracy. Only much later did Hermione hear whispers of how Bellatrix had received the decree — a moment of frozen stillness behind the outward display of submission, a single breath drawn and not released. She never knew whether the tale was true, but the image settled in her mind with the weight of something that might have been.

Thus, by the time Hermione and Draco stood before the gates of Voldemort’s fortress, the etiquette she had composed had already become the invisible architecture of the new realm. Every bow, every word, every silence was governed by rules whose phrasing she remembered as clearly as the spells that had once filled her school notebooks.

And now those very rules — born of Bellatrix’s sleepless nights and her own weary pen — rose before her like living walls of protocol, enclosing her as surely as the wards that guarded the castle.

The air on the terrace was cold and utterly still. Above, the Dementors circled like scraps of black smoke against the grey sky. Hermione drew a slow breath, steadied her mind, and turned toward Draco, who still clutched his notebook as if it were a talisman.

“Shall we, my lord?” she said quietly.

He hesitated only a heartbeat before answering, his voice regaining a hint of the authority he had rehearsed. “Yes. We shall.”

Together they approached the gates. The engraved metal gleamed faintly, and the sculpted figures upon it stirred — half-reliefs of serpents and angels that whispered the names of those who entered. Somewhere beyond, deeper within the walls, the wards awoke and recognised them.

The massive doors began to open without sound.

The stone chimera crouched above the gates, its leonine head and serpentine tail wreathed in frost. As its jaw opened, a voice — as if forged in a great bell — rolled out across the terrace:

“Draco Malfoy, Earl of Winterbourne — Heir Apparent to the Marquessate of Wiltshire — presenting before His Majesty the Dark Lord, Mistress Hermione Granger, Freedwoman of His Majesty’s Gift.”

The chimera finished the announcement with a last slow toll. For a moment the terrace hung between speech and silence; then the bas-relief’s eyes flared and a soft current of light uncoiled from the statue and wound around Draco’s ankles like a ribbon. The air tightened, the sound of distant iron folding on iron; Hermione felt the faint tug at the centre of her being — a pressure like the first note of a bell — and then the world dissolved into motion. They spun inward, not with the violent snap of raw apparition but with the measured whirl of sanctioned transit: a slow, spinning column of air and faint motes of script that unstitched them from the terrace and sewed them back upon the inner threshold before the Dark Lord’s doors. The gates behind them closed with no more noise than a breath.

They stopped before the great portal — immense slabs of blackened bronze traced with silver runes that pulsed faintly, as though they breathed.

Draco straightened his coat, drew a slow breath, and stepped forward. His movements were careful, deliberate, rehearsed. Then, with a sweep of his arm, he went down into a deep bow — one hand pressed flat against his breast, the other extended toward the threshold. His voice, when he spoke, was steady but low, echoing in the hush of the antechamber:

“Your Majesty, your servant brings Mistress Granger — freed by your mercy and summoned by your will.”

For a heartbeat, nothing happened. The silver runes along the portal brightened, tracing the curves of serpents and thorns. A tremor passed through the floor, like the drawing of a long breath — and when the answering voice came, soft, toneless, and dreadful in its calm, the bronze slabs moved with it, gliding open as the single word resounded:

“Enter.”

Draco stepped aside and, with a slight inclination of his head, indicated that Hermione should enter.

She crossed the threshold with her gaze lowered and saw only the Dark Lord’s feet — pale, bare, resting upon the dark stone as though the chill of it could not touch him. The hem of his robe drifted around his ankles like smoke, and above them rose the stillness of the throne. Then she sank to her knees, performing the ritual she herself had described only minutes before.

How easily she knelt now. Who would have recognised her in this posture, she who once stood defiant upon the battlements of Hogwarts? And yet — strangely, almost shamefully — there was a whisper of solace in the abasement, for one who is already at the lowest rung may, for a heartbeat at least, fear no further descent. The absurd consolation of one who has learned to find safety in the posture of a slave at the feet of her mistress.

A few long, tense seconds passed in complete silence — broken only by a faint, uneven breath from the throne, so soft Hermione almost doubted she had heard it.

“Rise,” said the Dark Lord at last.

She obeyed, the hem of her gown brushing the cold stone, her gaze fixed on the floor.

“Your Majesty,” she said — barely more than a breath.

“Look at me.”

The words were soft, but they carried the weight of command.

Slowly, unwillingly, she raised her eyes — and saw him.

The Dark Lord sat upon a throne of dark gold, and the walls of his chamber were of the same hue — faintly reflecting the torchlight that burned somewhere high above. Along the upper arches, serpents and angels wrought in gold caught the light and seemed to move with it, as though the room itself were breathing. The height of the chamber was surely increased by magic, for the ceiling was lost in shadow, invisible to the eye.

A dim half-light filled the space, mingling with the chill and dampness of the air to create the impression of something between a crypt and a shrine — a place where necromancers might worship the memory of their dead gods.

Above the throne swayed the head of Nagini — his eternal companion and the last keeper of the fragments of her master’s divided soul. The enormous serpent fixed Hermione with a hypnotic stare from eyes that never blinked.

Voldemort’s face — hairless, nearly noseless, with a bluish, deathlike pallor and wide, livid scarlet eyes — also seemed more serpentine than human.

She remembered when she had first seen that face — five years ago, when he had cast before the crowd of his demoralized enemies the lifeless, blood-stained form of Potter.

“Harry Potter is dead! … The Boy Who Lived is dead! … Join me in the new world we build together! … Now is the time to declare yourselves!”

What followed in the next few minutes left no doubt that the enemy’s will to fight had rested entirely upon the image of Potter — upon faith in his destiny and in the prophecy that had supposedly foretold his victory. Potter himself had probably believed in that prophecy; otherwise, he would never have walked of his own accord into the Forbidden Forest, hoping that Voldemort, in trying to kill him, would destroy himself instead.

But it did not happen. Potter died, and Voldemort lived. The killing curse, though it rebounded from Harry and struck the Dark Lord with terrible force, was not enough to end his life.

Only one voice rose against the tide of despair. Neville Longbottom stepped forward — bruised, shaking, yet unbroken — and dared to answer the Dark Lord with defiance. His words were brief, but they carried the desperate courage of a youth who had lost everything and still refused to bow. And as the crowd watched in stunned silence, he drew the Sword of Gryffindor from the battered Sorting Hat, ruby and silver blazing like a final spark of hope.

He meant to charge Voldemort. He managed a single step.

Bellatrix struck first.

A flash of green — sharp, instantaneous — and the lad crumpled without a sound. Before the onlookers could even cry out, she flicked her wand toward the giant standing nearby. Obedient as a trained hound, the creature lifted its massive foot and brought it down upon the fallen youth. The crack that followed silenced the last breath of resistance in Britain.

Bellatrix stooped and lifted the Sword of Gryffindor. Bloodless, immaculate, still glowing with the fire of its ancient enchantments, it was now hers. She raised it high above her head, ruby light dancing along her wild smile, and turned slowly to face the defeated crowd. Her gaze found Hermione at once — bright, ravenous, triumphant.

Four years had passed since Hermione’s escape from Malfoy Manor; yet in that instant Bellatrix’s gaze erased the distance between then and now, burning with the same possessive fury as on the night the girl slipped from her grasp.

No words were needed to convey what her eyes declared  — You fled me at Malfoy Manor. But now you belong to me again.

For a few stunned seconds, the army of resistance stood motionless, paralyzed by the sight of Potter’s fallen body and the brutal, final end of Longbottom. Then a lone man stepped out of the crowd and, after taking a few hesitant paces toward the Dark Lord, sank to his knees. Others followed. Then more — and more.

It was like the birth of a flood in a desert rain: at first, a few faint rivulets; then stronger streams; and at last a roaring torrent, unstoppable, surging where the ground had lain dry moments before. So too did they rush forward, kneeling en masse to pledge allegiance to their new master.

Among them was Ron Weasley — the very man who, not long before, had declared his love for Hermione and sworn to stand by her to the end.

She herself remained standing, together with those for whom surrender was no choice at all. They did not go to kneel before the new ruler — not because they were brave, but because no such grace was extended to them.

Muggle-borns simply did not belong to the world Voldemort offered to build.

They were shackled in chains and collars and left among the ruins of Hogwarts to await their fate, while the Death Eaters who guarded them amused themselves with loud and obscene discussions of the torments they would soon inflict. Their imaginations grew more fevered with every passing hour; they could hardly wait to begin.

Toward evening, Bellatrix appeared — newly widowed, having recently buried her fallen husband. Persistent rumors whispered that she had been the one to kill him, but no one dared to speak it aloud. Now, with no restraint left upon her, she came to claim her spoils.

Her robes were splattered with blood, and blood had dried in her hair, so that the black locks clung together like serpents on the head of a Gorgon — an impression heightened by the mesmeric gleam of her mad eyes. She passed through the crowd of Death Eaters like the incarnation of a battle demon, and the ranks parted before her in silent dread.

Bellatrix approached the cluster of prisoners, among whom Hermione stood bound hand and foot. She seized the girl by the hair, dragged her forward, and threw her at the heels of her boots. Then, with a voice that brooked no dispute, she declared the captive her prize.

No one dared object, though many pairs of eyes followed the young witch with hungry envy. Terror had filled Hermione’s throat like ice, and yet — beneath it — there ran a single, shameful thread of relief: someone had chosen her. Someone had wanted her while others only hungered for her suffering. The thought came unbidden and lodged itself like a thorn.

Thus began the next stage of her life — the life of a captive, whose every breath is a gift granted at another’s whim. In the days that followed, Hermione was taken to the ancestral home of the House of Black — once silent, now awakened to a new, infernal life under its mistress.

It did not happen at once. The warrior who had stood at Potter’s side, hardened by battle and accustomed to command, did not bow easily. Bellatrix understood this; indeed, she relished the challenge. Breaking the will of the girl who had once inspired a flicker of caution even among Voldemort’s most reckless followers was a task his most feared lieutenant undertook with a patience bordering on artistry.

And in time — through sleepless nights, through alternating cruelty and unpredictable gentleness — the moment Bellatrix desired came to pass. Hermione, driven to the edge of madness and fearing above all the loss of her mind, the one possession she valued more than life itself, knelt before her mistress and yielded.

Then the collars and fetters were replaced by silks, and the threat of torture by a devotion more terrible than pain — a devotion born of fear, fascination, and the slow, deliberate unmaking of one’s will.

Thus her service began: not only as a slave of the flesh, but as a prisoner of the mind. In those months, between cruelty and discourse, the blueprint of a new order was conceived — an order that, through many hands and many years, had at last brought her here, kneeling before the Dark Lord in the chamber where all designs found their end.

 “Mistress Granger,” said the Dark Lord, drawing out the syllables as though tasting them. His voice was soft, almost courteous — and all the more terrible for it.

“Your Majesty,” she answered, her voice steady but quiet. “I am honoured to kneel before you.”

“Are you?” His tone was almost idle. “I have been told you are… exceptional. But I find that word is used far too freely. Tell me — do you believe yourself exceptional?”

Hermione hesitated only for a breath. “I believe myself fortunate, Your Majesty, to have served those who are exceptional.”

A faint smile touched his colourless lips. “A modest answer. Or a careful one. I wonder which you mean it to be.”

“Whatever pleases Your Majesty,” she said.

“Good,” murmured the Dark Lord. “Then let us be pleased.”

The silence that followed was long enough for her to hear the faint hiss of the torches along the walls.

“You served under the Duchess of Gravenhurst,” the Dark Lord said at last. “She speaks highly of your… intellect.”

“Her Grace was generous in her praise, Your Majesty,” Hermione replied, careful to keep her tone level.

“Generous?” He tilted his head slightly, studying her. “She claims that much of the new etiquette — the structure of our restored order — came from your quill.”

“Her Grace allowed me to assist in drafting certain forms and definitions,” she said. “Only as a scribe, Your Majesty.”

“A modest answer again,” he murmured. “But tell me — when you built this code, did you imagine that one day it might bring you here, before me?”

“No, Your Majesty,” she said. “I imagined only survival.”

The Dark Lord regarded her in silence for a while, as if measuring something unseen.

“I am told,” he said at last, “that while you studied at Hogwarts, you also continued your Muggle education. Is that true?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“How?”

“Through the Muggle networks. I studied online,” she said softly, “and had begun my first year at college before the war interrupted it.”

His expression did not change, yet a flicker of something — surprise, perhaps — passed behind the scarlet eyes. The unfamiliar words seemed to trouble him, though he gave no sign of it beyond the faintest tightening of his jaw.

“And why,” he asked at length, “would you seek instruction among Muggles, when you had access to the finest magical education in Britain?”

“Because their methods differ, Your Majesty,” she said. “They seek knowledge through proof — through what can be tested, measured, repeated. Magic teaches what is; science teaches why.”

Again that silence, longer this time. The torches crackled faintly in the chill air.

“Interesting,” he said at last. “I have not yet decided how best to employ you, Mistress Granger. But I will.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “First, however… I must know how loyal you are.”

The Dark Lord rose in a single, fluid motion and, in the next instant, stood before her. At the same moment Nagini slithered across the floor in a swift, sinuous zigzag and coiled behind Hermione’s back.

“Open your mind, girl,” he hissed, fixing his crimson gaze upon her and seizing her temples in his cold hands.

Instinctively, Hermione tried to raise her Occlumency walls — a reflex born of terror and long habit.

“Don’t you dare,” Voldemort said, and his voice carried a lethal softness. She felt Nagini’s breath against the nape of her neck.

The walls fell, and her mind lay naked before him.

Cold, slick tendrils swept through her thoughts, probing, twisting, tearing apart everything they touched. Pain flared through her body — not sharp but all-encompassing, like being turned inside out. She tried to hold on to something, anything, but there was no place left to hide. A cry escaped her throat before she knew it, raw and helpless.

The Dark Lord hissed in satisfaction.

“You seem loyal enough… Bella was right,” he said, releasing her.

Hermione swayed, tried to steady herself, and slipped — her knees striking the cold stone.

“Your Grace,” she whispered, not knowing what she said.

Voldemort’s mouth curved — not quite a smile.

“Good,” he said softly. “At last you acknowledge my grace.”

“Mercy,” she breathed.

“Serve me well, girl,” he said, “and you shall have both — my grace and my mercy.”

Chapter Text

Staggering, Hermione stepped out of the Dark Lord’s chambers and would have fallen had Draco not caught her as he emerged from the shadows.

Without a word, he apparated them into a small, dimly lit room whose curtained windows let in a pale, uncertain light. He did not set her down.

“Attend me,” Draco said sharply, and two house-elves materialised with soft cracks, shrinking from the sight of him.

“All of you,” he added with a flick of his hand. At once half a dozen more elves appeared, trembling in a shuffling semicircle.

“See to her,” he said, lowering her to her feet without looking at her face. “She is under my protection tonight. If she is not intact by morning, every one of you will answer for it.”

The elves bowed in terrified silence. Draco did not wait for a reply; with a curt twist of his cloak, he disapparated.

Then the elves guided Hermione toward the bath chamber with quiet care, their touch light, almost fearful. They helped her out of her garments without meeting her eyes, filled the stone tub with steaming water, and eased her into it. Their movements were practiced but not mechanical; each gesture carried a subdued gentleness, as if they understood pain but were forbidden to name it. One of them tucked a folded cloth behind her head; another murmured a charm to soften the water’s heat..

They washed her hair in silence, combed oil through it with delicate fingers, and smoothed her trembling shoulders with warm water scented faintly of herbs. Now and then her body shuddered, but the elves did not recoil. They worked patiently until her sobs subsided and her breathing steadied. When at last they stepped back, Hermione was asleep, her cheek resting on the rim of the tub, the steam curling softly around her face.

She woke the next morning under a blanket in an oak bed to a curious noise above her head. It came from a house-elf, coughing discreetly in an effort to rouse her and draw her attention. The contortions of his small face were so comical that Hermione gave a short, startled laugh.

“Master Draco Malfoy requests permission to enter, mistress,” the elf said once he was sure she was awake.

“Tell him — please — give me a moment to dress,” she whispered.

The elf bowed and vanished with a soft crack.

She rose unsteadily, snatching up the plain linen dress folded on a chair. Her hands trembled as she pulled it over her head, fastening the clasps.

Privacy, like everything else, was a matter of permission. She hurried before that permission was withdrawn.

Somewhere beyond the door, she thought she heard footsteps pacing, stopping, pacing again.

When at last she caught her breath, she said quietly,

“He may come in.”

A heartbeat later the door opened, and Draco stepped through — eyes lowered, expression carefully neutral, as though neither of them had anything to be ashamed of.

Tucked under his arm was a large folder bound in dark leather.

She dropped into a deep curtsey, as she had done at their first meeting.

“My lord.”

“You may rise,” he said softly, clearly relieved that this time he had managed the ceremony without a stumble.

He took one of the chairs, placing the folder across his knees, and when he saw that she remained standing, added,

“Please, be seated, Mistress Granger. There are a few matters we must discuss.”

Hermione drew out a chair and sat opposite him.

“How are you feeling?” he asked suddenly.

“Thank you, my lord — much better. The elves took good care of me.”

He nodded. “The first time is always... difficult.” His tone held something that might have been sympathy, or merely habit. “It passes. In time, most find it easier — some even say they come to prefer it.”

Hermione swallowed hard and did not answer.

“Anyway,” he continued, “it is my duty — in my official capacity — to inform you that… well… while masters are permitted to treat their slaves as they see fit, the relations between free persons are strictly governed by law. And the law decrees that any intimacy between witches or wizards of magical blood and the freed Mud—Muggle-born is forbidden — punishable by death. Do you understand?”

“Yes, my lord, I do,” whispered Hermione.

“It includes my aunt,” Draco added quickly, as though the clarification embarrassed him. His eyes flicked away.

“Of course, my lord. I understand perfectly.”

“Now, although intimacy between Muggle-borns is permitted, Muggle-born pregnancy is strictly forbidden and punishable by death. The Ministry strongly recommends sterilization, but it is your choice.”

“My choice, my lord? Oh — thank you!”

“For what?” Draco looked taken aback.

“For giving me a choice, of course! It happens so rarely these days that I’ve learned to treasure it whenever it appears.”

“Well… hmm… in any case, it isn’t me — it’s the Ministry.”

“Then, pray thee, my lord, thank the Ministry on my behalf.”

Hermione bit her lip, realizing she had sounded far too bold.

“Anyway, my lord,” she said after a long pause, “there’s no need to worry. I’m a lesbian.”

“You can’t be sure of that!” Draco exclaimed. “You were never given a choice, as you just said.”

“Yes, my lord, but I know how I feel.”

“You dated Weasley!”

“But there was nothing between us — fortunately. I felt nothing for him, only didn’t realize it then.”

Draco said nothing, and silence settled between them again for several seconds. Yet a faint doubt brushed her thoughts. Did she truly remember how she had felt then, or had those memories long since been reshaped by all that followed?

“He’s a Death Eater now,” he said at last, “and a Knight of the Serpent. I thought you should know.”

“Those are distinguished achievements for an aspiring young gentleman,” Hermione said evenly.

“Well then,” Draco sighed, “now comes the final and most important part of my mission. In this folder” — he extended the thick leather file he had been holding all along — “you’ll find the background materials for your next assignment. Please review them carefully and prepare a detailed plan of action. I’ll return the day after tomorrow, so you’ll have almost two days to think it through. You cannot leave the house without my escort; the wards won’t let you. The elves will provide everything you need. If you require my assistance, tell one of them — they’ll find me.”

When he finished speaking, the young aristocrat rose abruptly from his chair. Hermione hurried to stand as well, clutching the folder he had given her.

Draco, however, hesitated, as though searching for a reason to prolong the conversation.

“My mother,” he said at last, “told me that if you had not been there when I was wounded — about three years ago — I would not be alive today. I’ll always remember that.”

“I only fulfilled my duty, my lord.”

“My mother thinks otherwise… though, of course…” He tried to lighten his tone. “I still remember how insufferable you were at school — and how you once struck me in the face.”

“My insolence in those days was unforgivable,” the girl replied with grave seriousness. “I can only say in my defense that it was before the world changed, my lord.”

“And now?” asked Draco.

“Now, one remembers one’s station.”

Draco found nothing to say and turned toward the door.

“My lord!” Hermione called after him. “I also remember — and appreciate — what you did for me after the war.”

“Me? I barely looked at you!”

“That’s exactly what I appreciate, my lord.”

Before her liberation, she had seen Draco several times at the Death Eaters’ memorial feasts, where Muggle-borns were paraded naked as living trophies to serve the victors. The spectacle was meant to humiliate them, but Draco never joined the laughter. He kept silent, his gaze turned aside — though sometimes, when he thought she could not see, he looked at her briefly with something like pity.

“Granger,” he said quietly from the doorway. “I’m not sure you think anything good of me. But I want you to know — I’m truly sorry for everything that happened to you.”

“My birth happened to me, my lord,” she answered bitterly. “I appreciate your compassion; I’ve learned not to expect it from most of those around me. But you needn’t be sorry. I consider myself fortunate — for many met a far worse fate.”

Draco inclined his head — a little lower than etiquette required — and, turning quickly, left the house.

When the door behind him shut, the silence pressed against her like an unfamiliar weight. She had not been alone like this in years; solitude had always belonged to Bellatrix, who filled it with her presence as completely as she claimed Hermione’s body and mind. Thought itself had become something Bellatrix governed — permitted only in the languid aftermath of pleasure, when her voice softened and the world, for a few stolen hours, ceased to hurt. It was in those intervals that Hermione learned to speak, to reason, to exist again; and she had given Bellatrix what the elder witch sought so desperately: not obedience, which any slave could offer, but the fragile illusion of being loved. Hermione had shaped herself to that need until she could no longer tell where the performance ended. Now, with no voice to please and no gaze to anticipate, her mind faltered, unsure how to move within a silence that belonged to her alone. She touched the folder lightly, as if waiting for a permission that would never again be given.

Hermione sat down at the oak table by the window and, untying the leather cords of the folder with deliberate care, prepared to immerse herself in reading.

“Coffee, mistress?” piped a house-elf who had appeared from nowhere.

“Yes, please — thank you,” Hermione replied.

The elf gave an embarrassed little grunt, snapped his fingers, and a cup of steaming coffee appeared on the table. Then he vanished again, this time in complete silence.

Hermione reflected that, had she still possessed her wand, she would have needed far less help from elves. But her wand had been taken from her the moment she was captured, and since then she had been allowed to use only the far weaker art of wandless magic — and even that, only when permitted.

She took a sip, letting the bitterness settle her mind, and drew the folder closer. The first document was an edict—its parchment thick, its ink slightly raised as if impressed by authority itself. Across the top ran the seal of the Ministry and, beneath it, the heading:

“By His Majesty’s Command. Be it proclaimed that We, by the Grace of Magic, Sovereign of All Britain and Protector of the Realm, do hereby establish the Privy Council of the Archmaguses of Britain, to sit as Regents of Our Will and Guardians of the Realm’s stability.”

The first paragraph read: “By the Grace of Magic and in the fullness of Our Sovereign Will, let it be known that each person admitted to the Privy Council shall, while sitting in Council or executing decrees of State, bear the style and precedence of Highness, in token that the Archmaguses act as Regents of the Realm and voices of Our direct authority. Beyond the bounds of Council, every such person shall be known and addressed according to his or her hereditary rank and title, as lineage and custom require; yet the honour of the higher style shall not be diminished thereby, nor forgotten when Our service demands it. So is Our pleasure.”

Below followed a roll of names and dignities, each inscribed in a different hand yet bound by the same ornate flourish of obedience.

Bellatrix Black, Duchess of Gravenhurst, Archmagus of War, Supreme Commander of the Magical Legions.

Lucius Malfoy, Marquis of Wiltshire, Archmagus of Blood, Warden of Lineage and Custodian of the Ancestral Rolls.

Severus Snape, Lord of Spinner’s End, Archmagus of Alchemy, Chancellor of the Collegium.

Corban Yaxley, Baron of Fenridge, Archmagus of Order, High Justiciar of the Realm and Overseer of the Auroral Corps.

Pius Travers, Earl of Dunrobin, Archmagus of the Exchequer, Master of the Treasury and Keeper of His Majesty’s Coffers.

Rabastan Lestrange, Earl of Arundel, Archmagus of Secrets, Warden of the Inner Eye.

Alecto Carrow, Baroness of Beckley, Archmagus of Ritual and Wards, Custodian of Ceremonies and Keeper of the Royal Sigils.

She read the last line twice, tracing the neat flourish beneath Carrow’s name. Seven names — seven pillars of the new order. War, Blood, Alchemy, Order, the Exchequer, Secrets, Ritual: a whole nation dissected and arranged like the parts of a spell, each bound to the next by obedience. The elegance of it sickened her.

It was not chaos that ruled now, she thought, but design. The same hands that had once left bodies in the street now wrote decrees in gold ink, and the old brutality had learned to speak the language of law. Somewhere between the parchment and the sword, the world had changed its shape — and perhaps that was the Dark Lord’s greatest victory.

The following pages contained extracts from the minutes of the Privy Council, together with memoranda submitted by both domestic and foreign field agents of the Department of Secrets and the Inner Eye. The question that had occupied the lion’s share of the Council’s recent deliberations was the increasingly complex position of Magical Britain among the other wizarding communities.

At first, the foreign wizarding societies regarded Voldemort’s revolution on the British Isles with a certain indifference — a response consistent with the long-standing isolationist temper of the magical world. Of course, reports of gruesome reprisals against Muggle-borns, who were said to have been torn apart in the streets, provoked horror among foreign observers, and sporadic protests broke out across continental and even overseas communities. Yet official authorities adhered to a policy of non-intervention, or at least refrained from open opposition to Voldemort’s regime.

The few clashes that did occur — such as the attack three years ago by a group of French Aurors on Draco and Bellatrix in the middle of Diagon Alley, during which Draco was gravely injured — were officially described as the action of a rebel faction within the Bureau de la Justice Magique and “in no way sanctioned by the Ministry’s leadership.” That, at any rate, was the explanation offered by the French Ministry’s representatives. The account could neither be confirmed nor disproved, for in the ensuing battle Bellatrix annihilated every one of the assailants.

But soon after, as the wild anarchy of the Death Eaters gave way to the rigid hierarchy and unshakable order of a new, pseudo-feudal society, everything began to change. It might have been expected that these reforms would improve foreign opinion of Magical Britain. Public spectacles of cruelty had ceased; Muggle-borns remained enslaved, but most masters had grown more restrained in their treatment of them — save, of course, for degenerates like Fenrir Greyback. During the first two years after the war, few foreigners had taken much interest in the fate of Britain’s Muggle-borns; it should have followed that now, with order restored, they would forget the unpleasant aspects of the regime altogether.

Yet it was precisely then that the sufferings of the island’s slaves became the chief subject of indignant articles in the foreign press. Governments, ostensibly under public pressure, began to send the British Ministry of Magic a flood of notes demanding clarification. In their speeches, foreign leaders now spoke of slavery as “unacceptable,” and Voldemort’s rule as a “usurpation.” At first these were veiled hints; lately they had grown into open declarations of a “moral duty” for the international community to intervene.

So far, the threats had remained rhetorical — due not least to the formidable reputation of the Dark Lord and his foremost lieutenants, whose martial fame cooled the hottest heads and restrained direct aggression. But the situation continued to deteriorate. Agents reported persistent attempts by foreign forces to rekindle local resistance, which had seemed long extinguished. Moreover, evidence multiplied of the formation in France, Germany, and Italy — and perhaps elsewhere — of volunteer units, said to be ready, at a signal, to cross the English Channel and strike suddenly at Voldemort’s regime. There was no reason to believe an attack imminent, yet the agents agreed that the training of combat magic in these groups was continuous.

The most astonishing reports, however — the ones that utterly confounded the Privy Council — spoke of discussions, in circles close to certain foreign ministries, of a temporary suspension of the Statute of Secrecy for the purpose of enlisting British Muggles in the struggle against wizards. Advocates of this notion believed that the union of Muggle and wizarding resources might create a military force capable of overthrowing Voldemort’s rule. On what principles such cooperation could rest, and what advantages it might offer, the agents did not report — perhaps because even its authors had little idea themselves.

On the surface the proposal seemed absurd: Muggles, in pure-blood opinion, were helpless before magic, and the thought of involving them in a war against Voldemort appeared laughable. Yet if it was truly absurd, why were the foreigners wasting time and effort discussing it? Were these debates merely a stratagem to confuse the leaders of His Majesty’s government, to make them anxious and drive them to errors? Or did they conceal a genuine threat — some power of the Muggles of which Voldemort’s followers knew nothing at all?

One memorandum, written in a florid, insinuating hand, caught Hermione’s attention. The phrasing was unmistakable — adjectives tumbling over one another, mock-sympathy curdled into malice. Rita Skeeter, Hermione thought grimly. The quill-driver should have been in prison for failing to register as an Animagus — and the young witch had helped to put her there, betraying the journalist’s secret to Bellatrix. Yet it seemed the regime had found a new use for the scandal-monger: truth twisted into intelligence. A logical move, Hermione thought, considering the peculiar talents of that incurably nosy woman.

Other documents were not agent reports but extracts from letters addressed to the Dark Lord by the heads of continental aristocratic pure-blood houses. As might be expected, the intense media campaigns against the pure-blood regime on the British Isles had quickly translated into mounting political pressure upon the continental nobility, who were increasingly urged to give public denunciations of Voldemort’s rule as proof of their loyalty to the democratic authorities of wizardkind across Europe. Some houses — most notably the influential French family Delacour — joined enthusiastically in condemning Voldemort’s regime as “barbaric” and “ideologically toxic.” The majority of aristocrats, however, took the pressure as an insult; many of them began to regard the Dark Lord as a potent ally and his government as a model to be emulated in their own domains.

The Morozov family stood out above all in this respect. A powerful and far-flung dynasty of necromancers with enormous sway across Russia and Eastern Europe, the Morozovs openly worshipped Voldemort as the Herald of Chernobog — the ancient god of ruin — and offered to raise legions of revenants in his name. These legions were to march into western Europe provided the Dark Lord launched a simultaneous campaign of conquest from the Isles. The younger branch of the Bulgarian house associated with Krum openly sympathised with this idea, though their elders remained more cautious.

Fascinated admirers of the British model could also be found in Western Europe. Members of House d’Aubigny secretly visited England to study the new order and enjoyed lengthy audiences with the Dark Lord in his private chambers. The German house von Drachenfels, while publicly affecting neutrality, harboured great sympathy for the British regime; its elder sons served as attachés in the Magical Legions.

All of this complicated the Privy Council’s political dilemma. Should the government attempt to defuse the hostile rhetoric of continental capitals by demonstrating peaceful intent? The prospects of such conciliation were unclear — the Council had not been able to agree on the root cause of the sudden deterioration in relations. It was, however, plain that any appeasement would offend and drive away powerful potential allies such as the Morozovs, the d’Aubignys, and the von Drachenfels.

Conversely, should His Majesty take an aggressive stance — perhaps even initiate war — and, relying on the aid of these continental houses, crush his enemies by force? What, in that event, were the chances of success? The Privy Council could, in principle, assess the military potential of a coalition of continental wizards, but a vast unknown remained the question of any possible alliance between the enemy and the Muggles. Could such a union materially alter the balance of power? No one could say even how to begin to answer that question.

The last parchment was of heavy vellum, edged in black and sealed with the Serpent and Crown — a royal edict written in the language of kings.

“By His Majesty’s Command. Be it known that We, by the Grace of Magic, Sovereign of All Britain and Protector of the Realm, do hereby authorise Draco Malfoy, Earl of Winterbourne, to take into his charge the Freedwoman Hermione Granger, of Our Gift, and to employ her in such inquiries as he shall judge meet and necessary touching the counsels of foreign powers and the perils that may arise should the Muggle nations be drawn into arms against Us. She shall serve under his supervision, within the limits appointed to her, and render faithful account of her findings to him and, through him, to Ourself and the Privy Council. So is Our pleasure, and so We have set Our Hand and Seal this day.”

Hermione leaned back in her chair, hands clasped behind her head, and let her thoughts drift. An intellectual challenge — the building of intricate models in the mind and their subsequent testing until they yielded a conclusion — always awakened in her a peculiar sensation that ought, perhaps, to be called inspiration, yet felt more akin to the first stirrings of love. There came a faint ache in the chest, a quickening of expectation, the sense of approaching something unknown and therefore desired; then the world would narrow to a single point, and all power of distraction would vanish. It was a rapture of its own kind — all the more exquisite because it unfolded in the realm of the mind, the only realm in which she remained free. Thought was the one province of her being untouched by the will of those who commanded her body and her fate. Reflection — on any subject, great or small — was the only way of escape from a world where bondage, in one form or another, had become her destiny.

She turned her thoughts to the question set before her.

Indeed, the sudden change in the attitude of foreign governments toward Voldemort’s regime during the last three years would have seemed strange to anyone who had lived through the war itself. Hermione had lived through it — not only as a fugitive and a fighter, but as Potter’s chief strategist, tasked with a duty that had proven more exhausting than any duel. She had written, pleaded, argued. She had reached out to foreign ministries of magic and Auror commands across the Continent, trying to impress upon them that what was happening in Britain was not a local aberration but a threat that would, sooner or later, spill beyond its borders.

Fleur Delacour, drawing on her family’s formidable web of connections, had even managed to secure a meeting with representatives of the French Ministry. Hermione still remembered the long table, the polished courtesy, the careful smiles. Many of the most influential posts were held by Delacour relatives — sympathetic, at least in manner — alongside a scattering of d’Aubignys, whose indifference shaded easily into quiet hostility.

The meeting took place. And yet, from the very beginning, it was clear that nothing decisive would come of it.

They listened. They expressed concern. They asked questions that led nowhere. When Hermione pressed the point — when she spoke of enslavement, of purges, of a regime built on terror — the conversation cooled. Any suggestion of coordinated resistance was dismissed at once, removed from the table as if it were an indiscretion. The unspoken conclusion emerged with chilling clarity: the British resistance must, somehow, come to terms with the new order.

Terms of what? she had demanded, scarcely trusting herself to remain civil. The terms of our enslavement?

No one answered that directly. No one needed to. There had not been a single Muggle-born among them; every significant voice belonged to an old family, secure in its blood and its distance. Sympathy, where it existed, was abstract. Risk was another matter entirely.

That had been the end of it. As for the other continental ministries, most never replied at all.

And yet now — now, after years of silence — those same governments spoke with sudden moral clarity. Slavery was unacceptable. Voldemort’s regime was immoral. Britain had crossed a line.

Hermione could not help but wonder what, precisely, had changed.

Of course, the sudden and seemingly unprovoked hostility of the foreign powers had little to do with the liberation of slaves — though, had war broken out, that would almost certainly have become its noblest slogan. The Dark Lord’s predicament, stripped of ceremony and terror, was easily recognizable to those who studied the history of Muggles: the logic of power binding itself into a trap of its own making. Every step taken to secure the realm — new legions, new wards, new decrees — appeared to every neighbour as a prelude to conquest. In the language of Muggle statecraft it was called a security dilemma: the more one sought safety, the less of it one found. Voldemort, who claimed to have mastered all forms of knowledge, had never studied this particular kind — or, if he had, he had dismissed it as a Muggle triviality.

The difference, Hermione thought, was one of scale. The Muggles numbered in millions; the wizards, perhaps in tens of thousands. In the Muggle world, every discipline possessed not merely a handful of scholars but a multitude — a whole species thinking at once, and correcting itself. Each discovery bred another; knowledge multiplied by the simple arithmetic of countless minds. Wizardkind, isolated and few, could never compete in the fields of reason, organisation, or invention.

She would have to find a way to explain it to those who ruled her now — to translate a logic born of the Muggle world into terms wizards would accept. They despised Muggle history, but they understood power, rivalry, and fear well enough. The names changed; the pattern did not.

And what of the threat that the enemy might seek alliance with the Muggles? Could Muggle weapons pose any serious danger to wizards? As the books on wizarding history remind, three hundred years earlier wizards had sealed themselves away from the Muggle world to escape its violence. The Statute of Secrecy had not been born of pride but of fear — a desperate effort to vanish from the mobs and pyres of the seventeenth century. In those days, the magical community found the Muggles and their growing powers dangerous enough to choose concealment and withdrawal over open war. True, the British wizards of that age valued solitude and secrecy above all else, whereas today they stand united under a single and formidable leader. Yet the Muggles, too, have changed — and, truth be told, their world has evolved far more profoundly than that of the wizards.

If the pikes, arrows, and primitive muskets of the seventeenth century had seemed dangerous enough, what could be said of modern weaponry? Could protective enchantments truly deflect the hail of a machine gun? Perhaps — but only if the wizard had time to cast before the weapon began to fire. And what then of a bazooka shell? An artillery barrage? A ballistic missile? An atomic bomb, at last? Surely even the strongest magic must meet a threshold beyond which no shield can hold. And there was every reason to believe that this threshold was narrow — even for the magic of Voldemort himself.

She did not need to speculate. They had tested it once.

It had been early in the war, before the resistance learned how narrow the margins truly were. Desperation still carried the illusion of choice. Someone — Hermione could no longer remember who — had proposed using a Muggle weapon, and the suggestion had split the room. There were voices raised in outrage, warnings about escalation, about crossing lines that could not be uncrossed. The Imperius Curse was named aloud, and with it the Unforgivables. Hermione had listened, arms folded, until the arguments began to circle themselves into paralysis.

Those who wish to die morally pure are welcome to do so without me, she had said at last. It was the first time she remembered hearing her own voice sound so cold.

They infiltrated the base at night. The soldiers on duty never raised an alarm; later, Hermione would remember their faces only as blurs of uniform and confusion. The Imperius came easily to her then — too easily. That, more than anything else, unsettled her afterward.

The bomb itself was monstrous in its simplicity: weight, casing, promise. Two thousand pounds of carefully shaped inevitability. They smuggled it through King’s Cross, through the hidden archway between platforms, past wards that had never been designed to imagine such a thing. The Hogwarts Express carried it north like any other cargo. In those days, the resistance still controlled the line. Later, that too would be taken from them.

Arthur Weasley, long known for his uncanny talent in adapting Muggle devices to magical use, did the enchantments. He was methodical, almost reverent, as though afraid to offend the object by misunderstanding it. He adapted broom charms, stabilization spells, guidance — nothing elegant, nothing theoretical. Just enough to make the thing fly.

The technicians armed it under watchful eyes, their hands steady, their faces pale. When it was done, they were sent back and obliviated, their knowledge buried as carefully as it had been borrowed. Secrecy was survival.

No one volunteered to carry it.

Hermione understood why. Even the Muggle-borns were uneasy, as if the bomb radiated a kind of wrongness that magic did not recognize. So she took it upon herself. Ron insisted on coming with her; she did not argue. Ron followed close behind on his own broom, carrying a second lashed across his back, silent and pale as she mounted the weapon and felt its impossible weight respond beneath her.

They climbed higher than she had ever flown. The air thinned, bit at her lungs, froze her fingers numb. She did not dare warm herself with magic; the bomb felt too alien, too final, to risk disturbing. She focused on breathing, on the rhythm of ascent, on not thinking of what she rode.

The Death Eater camp lay below them at last — vast, sprawling, confident. They had assaulted it before and failed every time; the enemy always sensed them coming, always prepared. This time, they did not.

Hermione released the bomb.

She took the spare broom from Ron, and they circled once — only once — as it fell. The sound was unlike anything she had heard — not a spell, not a curse, but a tearing, concussive roar that seemed to rend the world itself. Fire bloomed where the camp had been. Wards failed not gracefully but violently. Screams followed — brief, panicked, unmistakably human.

They did not stay to watch.

Later reports spoke of dozens dead, hundreds wounded. Had the Death Eaters been prepared, the toll would have been far lower. That was the lesson. Surprise, not power, had done the work.

Still, the conclusion was unavoidable. Muggle weapons were not irrelevant to wizarding war. They were crude, limited, fragile — but under the right conditions, they were devastating.

It was the night she learned that the boundary between the two worlds was thinner — and deadlier — than anyone wished to admit.

But war is not merely a clash of arms — not a succession of battles — but above all the art of gaining advantage before the fighting begins, while denying the same to the enemy. The wizards possess one immense advantage over the Muggles: they can perceive them, while the Muggles cannot even conceive of wizards’ existence. According to the Hogwarts professors, this blindness is maintained by a multitude of enchantments combining several effects — intricate multisensory illusions, subconscious aversion implanted in the Muggle mind to keep them at a distance, and Obliviation for those who, despite every barrier, happen to stumble too close. Of course, foreign wizards might attempt to lift these enchantments and expose the truth to Muggle eyes; yet their success would be uneven at best, and the restored vision partial. One cannot strike what one cannot see. Moreover, the Muggles would hesitate to unleash their heaviest weapons, for any conflict fought on such ground would burn amid their own cities and their own people.

Yet did the professors’ explanations truly correspond to the truth? The question had troubled her since her early teens, when, during the summer holidays, she had travelled with her parents to the Scottish Highlands — to the region of Lochaber, precisely where Hogwarts was said to stand. To her astonishment, the majestic castle was nowhere to be seen. There were only a few scattered ruins, long decayed and overgrown. Nor could she discern the Black Lake or the vast sweep of the Forbidden Forest that, as she remembered, should have stretched for miles around the citadel.

At the time, young and credulous as she was, she concluded that the same enchantments which deceived Muggles must have blinded her as well — for she was underage, and had come in the company of her parents. Yet another detail continued to puzzle her: it was a popular tourist region, and Muggles wandered everywhere — along the paths, across the hills, even over the very ground where the castle ought to have stood. The charms that were meant to repel them seemed not to function at all — and what was truly incomprehensible was that they could pass so freely without colliding with walls that, to Hermione’s memory, had once risen solid and unyielding before her eyes.

And when she returned to Hogwarts, she could never quite stop wondering how it was that neither students nor professors ever encountered a wandering Muggle. How was it possible that no hiker had ever fallen prey to an Acromantula or any of the other beasts that prowled the Forbidden Forest? It should have happened daily, at least during the tourist season — and yet not a single case was known. Nor could anyone explain why the students never saw an airplane overhead, though dozens must have passed above the Highlands each day.

Later, when she resolved to attend a Muggle online school — partly in search of answers that Hogwarts could not provide — she discovered there was no cellular signal at all. Not in the castle, which she later learned from Arthur Weasley was to be expected, nor anywhere in the surrounding countryside. Even in places that seemed utterly remote — where no one would imagine magical interference — her phone remained mute. It was as if the very air repelled Muggle technology. In the evenings she had to slip beyond the wards, crossing secretly into the nearest Muggle town to reach the network. And the most unsettling detail of all was that, when she flew there by broom, she had to pass through an invisible corridor no wider than a few yards. Even now she could remember the faint, thin pressure in her ears as the broom slipped through the unseen seam between worlds. If she missed the mark by only a little, she could fly for hours through mist and emptiness, with no sign of habitation in sight.

With time, Hermione came to believe that the official explanations simply didn’t hold water. Why the professors clung to them, she could never be sure. At first she supposed that the true nature of the division between the worlds was knowledge forbidden until a certain age. But later she realised that her teachers probably had no idea how it worked at all; they had merely invented a convenient story, dressed in the trappings of scholarly authority, to satisfy curious students.

There could be no real doubt that the wizarding world was not merely hidden from the Muggles but set apart from them — separated physically, spatially, and joined only by a limited number of portals: the invisible corridor she had flown through so many times, the famous Platform Nine and Three-Quarters at King’s Cross Station, the passage through the Leaky Cauldron into Diagon Alley — and doubtless many others, some well known to the general public, others concealed in ways she could only guess.

What did the nature of the separation between the worlds imply for strategic planning? On the one hand, it offered a formidable defensive advantage: the portals could, in principle, be located, mapped, and guarded against infiltration. Yet on the other hand, that very separation carried a latent peril. If, aided by foreign wizards, the Muggles ever succeeded in smuggling a nuclear device into the British wizarding realm through one of these gateways, they could annihilate its population in an instant — without inflicting the slightest harm upon their own world. The portals, therefore, were not merely points of passage but the most critical strategic assets in any future war.

At last, any responsible strategic planner had to confront the possibility of blockade — a danger linked, first of all, to another question that had long fascinated Hermione and had returned to trouble her mind since the outbreak of hostilities: where did the wizarding world’s food actually come from?

During the war, wizards had often gone hungry, and they had learned through bitter experience that magic could not conjure food out of nothing. It could summon it, yes — but not create it. Some believed that food might be multiplied, that a single loaf could become many, yet in practice such attempts had always failed. If food could not be created, then where did it appear from in the first place?

The most logical conclusion was that it flowed, by one means or another, from the Muggle world through the hidden portals — purchased perhaps, or simply taken without leave. But that dependency revealed a grave vulnerability: should the Muggles ever discover and sever those channels, they could starve the wizarding realm into submission without casting a single spell. Of course, it was only a hypothesis — one still waiting to be proved.

All this led to a paradoxical conclusion: wizards did not truly know their own world and scarcely understood the nature of the magic they wielded — a force they had used for centuries but never tried to study in depth. Their knowledge, vast yet unsystematic, resembled alchemy more than science. And by a cruel irony, it was Voldemort’s regime — devoted to the consolidation and expansion of power — that now required a systematic investigation of magic. The very regime that had enslaved Hermione was also the one that could offer her the opportunity to employ her scientific mind to its fullest.

Hermione closed the folder and sat motionless for a long while. The logic was inescapable, and the path before her clear enough. If she wished to survive — and perhaps, in some distant way, to serve truth itself — she would have to turn her captors’ demands into her own experiment. To understand the foundations of magic was no longer merely an academic pursuit; it had become a condition of life, and the only form of agency still open to her. And so, with a strange mixture of dread and exhilaration, she realised that her real work was only beginning.

For two days Hermione scarcely rose from her desk. The elves had to feed her almost by force, and when she fell asleep over her notes, they would gently undress her and carry her to bed, covering her with feather quilts that she threw off in the morning, hastily dressing and washing before returning to her place. She drafted hypotheses, designed experiments, and composed strategic memoranda. Her mind was aflame; her back and hands ached — yet she felt, with something like guilt, profoundly happy, as though thought itself had become a refuge she was no longer willing to surrender.

Chapter Text

Draco arrived in the evening, when rain whispered against the windows and the last grey of daylight thinned into shadow. Hermione had known the hour before the knock came; she had been ready for some time, seated at the narrow desk with her papers aligned, her back straight, her hands folded loosely in her lap, as though posture itself were a form of rehearsal. There was nothing hurried in her manner now. Whatever urgency had driven her through the preceding days had already been spent; what remained was precision.

When he entered, she rose at once.

His eyes scanned the room briefly, assessing the disarray that hinted at urgency, but his expression remained unchanging, an unreadable mask. She wondered, for a moment, if he knew the toll it had taken to keep such order in the chaos.

The curtsy was deep, exact, held for the proper span of breath — not too long, not too brief. Her knees bent smoothly, skirts gathered with practiced economy, spine kept straight, chin lowered but not bowed. She had learned, long ago, that obedience performed sloppily invited correction, while obedience performed too eagerly invited inspection. This was neither. It was simply correct.

She counted the moment internally, feeling the balance of her body settle, waiting not for permission but for acknowledgment — a subtle distinction, yet one on which much depended.

Draco inclined his head in return. The gesture was slight and formal, executed with the controlled economy of a ritual learned by repetition rather than instinct.

“You may rise,” he said, his tone even, neither softened nor sharpened by command.

Hermione straightened at once. The movement was smooth, contained, finished in a single breath. He did not speak further during the interval; he did not watch her hands, or the line of her shoulders, or the controlled recovery of her posture. By the time she was upright again, his attention had already shifted, passing beyond her to the room itself — the scattered parchments, the candles guttering unevenly in their pools of wax, the faint disorder that betrayed both haste and exhaustion.

“Good evening, Mistress Granger,” he said.

“My lord,” she replied.

The titles settled between them like established facts. There was no warmth in them, but neither was there humiliation. Mistress Granger was not a name of possession, nor an endearment twisted into a leash; it marked her function, her competence, the narrow territory she had been permitted to occupy. The title no longer stung as it once had, though it still carried its weight. It had become a marker of something else — something Hermione wasn’t sure she entirely understood. A place she could not yet leave, though she had learned to occupy it with careful precision. It mattered more to her than she would have once admitted.

She crossed the room and extended the bundle of parchments. It was not thick — deliberately so — yet it carried the weight of many nights. Each sheet was written in a quick but careful hand, the margins disciplined, the arguments compressed to their essential form. This was all that could safely be offered: not speculation, not ambition, but usefulness.

For a moment, as she held it out, she was aware of the quiet risk contained in the gesture. He could have waved it aside, demanded revisions, questioned her authority to write at all. He could have taken it without comment and never read it. She did not brace herself against any of these possibilities; bracing was wasted effort. She simply released the parchments when his fingers closed around them.

Only then did she allow herself to breathe fully.

The cover page bore a single heading, written plainly, without ornament:

“Executive Summary.”

The quietness of the room seemed to press in on her, the weight of her own breath sounding almost too loud. She focused on the parchment in her hands, feeling the familiar weight of it, yet aware of the distance between her present self and the woman she had once been — before all of this, before the bonds of obedience had become her daily reality.

“You managed all this in my absence?” Draco said, looking around in surprise.

The uneven light of many candles wavered across the sheets that lay scattered over nearly the entire floor.

“My father keeps a collection of enchanted quills,” said Draco after a pause. “One only needs to dictate, and they take it down. I shall try to borrow one for you.”

“Thank you, my lord,” said Hermione softly. “That is very thoughtful of you.”

Draco’s gaze lingered for a moment on the candles alone. There were many of them — more than Hermione usually allowed herself — arranged wherever a flat surface could bear them, their flames wavering faintly as the rain tapped at the glass. They did their work imperfectly. Shadows pooled between the desks and shelves, and the far corners of the room receded into suggestion rather than form.

“And the light,” he said at last, with the faintest crease between his brows. “We must find you some way to strengthen it — without a wand.”

The words were practical, almost incidental. Yet Hermione felt them register with a quiet precision.

Without a wand.

The phrase had become a constant qualifier in her life, appended to every task, every plan, every thought of capability. It was not despair that accompanied it, nor resentment. Only a careful accounting of limits.

“Thank you, my lord,” she said. “That would be… most helpful.”

He drew his wand then, not with ceremony, but with the casual economy of habit, and raised it slightly.

“Lumos.”

A clear white glow bloomed at the tip, steady and untroubled, bright enough to overwhelm the nearest candles. The light from Draco’s wand was brilliant, unmarred by shadows or flickers, unlike the faint glow of the candles around them. Their flames continued to burn, but they were diminished now, their soft gold paling beside the wand’s clean radiance. For a brief, unsettling moment, Hermione felt the weight of her own inability, of the things her body could no longer summon on its own. The reminder was sharp, but she tamped it down quickly, pushing the thought to the recesses of her mind. The room changed shape at once. Edges sharpened. Ink gleamed faintly where it lay on parchment. The disorder that had seemed diffuse a moment before resolved into something almost precise.

Hermione watched the transformation without expression.

She had learned, long ago, to keep her body still when the world shifted without warning.

Draco moved to the desk and set the wand down in a shallow dish, angling it so the light fell evenly across the workspace rather than into her eyes. It was a small consideration, executed without comment. He did not ask whether the brightness troubled her; he adjusted it as one adjusted an instrument, until it served its purpose.

For an instant — brief, unwelcome — Hermione was acutely aware of the asymmetry between them. The ease with which he summoned illumination; the way the room bent itself around his presence. The fact that she could not reciprocate, not even symbolically. There had been a time when such imbalance had carried other meanings: spectacle, dependency, invitation. She had long known that power, in its most basic form, was neither given nor taken — it was granted by those who understood its terms. In this moment, Draco’s casual authority over the room only underscored the vast gulf between what she could command and what he could.

This did not.

Here, the light was not a test, nor a lure. It did not demand gratitude beyond the polite acknowledgment already given. It existed to make reading easier, nothing more.

She found, to her own faint surprise, that this distinction mattered.

Draco pulled out a chair and sat down. With a brief motion of his hand, he signalled for Hermione to take her place opposite him.

She obeyed without a word, smoothing her skirt as she sat. The gesture was automatic, precise, stripped of all unnecessary flourish. Her attention returned at once to the desk, to the papers now clearly visible under the wand’s glow.

The light did not belong to her. But neither did it diminish her.

If anything, it clarified the terms under which she now operated. Power could be lent. Function could be shared. Dependence, in this context, was not humiliation but circumstance — a technical problem awaiting solution.

The thought settled quietly, almost dangerously, in the back of her mind.

Draco bent over the parchment, the wandlight tracing a pale line along his cheekbone as he began to read. Beyond the desk, the candles continued to burn, their lesser flames steady but subdued, holding back the dark where they could. He read with an intensity that belied the simplicity of the words on the page. Hermione could see the slight tension in his shoulders, the way he leaned forward ever so slightly, as though trying to extract something more than what was there.

Hermione sat very still, her hands folded, her posture exact. She did not look at the wand again.

She was already thinking — not of what she lacked, but of why such simple effects depended on a wand at all.

As Draco continued to read the report, his silence a kind of unspoken judgment, Hermione allowed her thoughts to wander. The girl who had once dreamed of revolution, of fighting for a better world, was long gone. In her place stood a woman who understood the necessity of power, who understood that change could not be achieved with naivety or kindness alone. There had been moments in the past when she had clung to the idea of saving everyone, of changing the world for the better. Now, she saw things differently. Change could be brought about — but it came at a cost. A cost she was willing to pay. Her survival, after all, had never been about holding on to old ideals. It was about adapting, about finding a way to thrive in a world that had already left her behind.

“The wizards do not truly know the world they live in…” he read aloud, then raised his eyes to her. The enchanted light cast a steady halo over the desk, while farther off the candles still trembled, their weaker flames warring with the cold radiance.

“A bold claim,” he said. “Are you not afraid the Council will find it presumptuous?”

As Draco set the report aside, Hermione found herself briefly considering the ease with which he dismissed it. It wasn’t a dismissal of her work; no, it was a dismissal of her challenge to their entire worldview. And yet, his authority in this moment felt absolute, like a door that would never open to her.

She hesitated before replying — a heartbeat too long for comfort.

“I am, my lord,” Hermione said quietly. “The language is risky — but I wanted it strong enough to pose an intellectual challenge. Accurate knowledge of geography, of the spatial relation between the wizard and Muggle realms, is essential for any sound military planning.”

“During the war,” she went on after a pause, her gaze lowered to the papers gleaming in wand-light, “we relied on the Ministry’s maps, and they proved disastrously inaccurate — at times, simply wrong. I tried to use Muggle maps instead, but could never establish any true correspondence between Muggle and wizard locations. I have come to believe there were none.”

She drew a breath, steadying her tone. “That blindness — our lack of spatial awareness — was among the reasons we lost.”

Draco remained still for a moment, the light tracing a thin line along his cheekbone. Then he said slowly,

“You lost because from the beginning you were outnumbered — you never had a chance.”

He set the report aside; parchment crackled faintly. “But tell me, Granger — what would you have done to us, had you, by some miracle, won the war?”

Silence settled. The candles guttered in the corners, their light restless under the stronger glow of his wand.

“It would not be for me to decide, my lord,” she said at last, choosing her words with care, “but one thing I know for certain: we would not have enslaved you, paraded you for humiliation, and sold you like livestock.”

“Yes,” he said, his voice calm but flat. “I suppose you would not. Instead you would have sent us all to Azkaban — left us there to rot for the rest of our lives, losing a fragment of the mind each day, until madness took every one of us.”

His tone darkened as he spoke; the wandlight wavered faintly. For a moment he seemed to listen to something only he could hear, a memory stirring behind his eyes.

“My mother says Bellatrix’s mind was always… volatile. Yet she was the most brilliant, the most quick and full of life among the three sisters. Azkaban broke her — turned her into the berserker the world knows. It is a miracle she remained sane at all.”

He glanced at Hermione. “But she grew better, you know, after she got you.”

Hermione said nothing. Her fingers tightened on the edge of her chair. Draco waited a moment longer, then turned back to the report and resumed reading. Only the mingled light of wand and candles moved across the parchment, alive and uneasy.

He read in silence.

The wandlight lay steady across the parchment, its pale glow sharpening the lines of ink, the margins Hermione had kept so scrupulously narrow. He did not skim. She could tell that much from the pauses — the way his eyes halted, returned to a line, lingered over a paragraph before moving on. Once, he frowned faintly and turned a page back, comparing two passages against each other.

Hermione remained still, her hands folded in her lap. She did not attempt to anticipate his questions. Anticipation invited error.

After several minutes, he set the report aside, though not yet out of reach.

“You propose,” he said, “that the wizarding and Muggle realms are not merely concealed from one another, but spatially misaligned. Two worlds occupying the same geography in name only.” He tapped the parchment lightly with one finger. “That is… an unusual claim.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Unusual enough,” he continued, “that I must ask what evidence you have beyond your own experience with maps.”

Hermione felt a flicker of impatience rise, but she held it back. She had expected him to question her. In fact, she had hoped for it, for it meant the theory had weight. But now, as she met his steady gaze, she realized the cost of challenging the very foundations of their understanding.

Hermione inclined her head slightly. “There is little else available, my lord. That is part of the difficulty.”

He regarded her for a moment, expression unreadable. “That is not an answer I would normally accept.”

“I know,” she said. “It is not sufficient on its own.”

He waited.

“In the absence of reliable cartography,” Hermione went on, “one must look to patterns of movement. During the war, our attempts to coordinate maneuvers using Ministry maps failed repeatedly — not only in execution, but in conception. Units arrived late, or too early, or from directions that should not have been possible. At the time, we attributed this to chaos, to poor communication. In retrospect, the errors were too consistent.”

Draco’s brow furrowed slightly. “You believe the terrain itself was misleading.”

“I believe,” she said carefully, “that the terrain we believed ourselves to be navigating did not correspond to the terrain we were actually in.”

He did not respond at once. Instead, he leaned back in his chair.

“And yet,” he said, “you were not the only side to rely on those maps.”

“No, my lord.”

“Then explain to me,” he said, “how our forces managed to maneuver at all.”

The war had been full of uncertainties, of unseen forces that could shift a battle’s outcome in moments. Yet, as she recalled those instances, it wasn’t the unseen that had bothered her most — it was the realization that perhaps they had been fighting an enemy that knew the very landscape of their struggle better than they did.

Hermione hesitated before answering, her mind racing through the various explanations she could offer. She could feel the weight of his gaze, patient but demanding, as if he knew she was holding back something more — something that had been brewing in her mind ever since the war’s strange twists.

“May I ask, my lord, whether you can recall any instance during the war in which our movements surprised yours?”

Draco considered the question for a long moment. His gaze rested on her with a new, sharper focus.

“One time, perhaps,” he said at last. “A small force, concealed in the clouds. The attack came without warning and ended quickly.”

He paused.

“The losses were severe.”

His eyes did not leave her face.

“But aside from that,” he went on, his voice returning to its previous evenness, “I cannot recall a single case.””

“And can you recall,” she continued, keeping her voice even, “whether your own forces were often able to strike from directions we did not anticipate?”

His gaze returned to her.

“Yes,” he said. “Frequently.”

She nodded once, as if confirming something already known.

“We did not navigate the same space,” she said quietly. “At least, not in the same manner.”

Draco exhaled through his nose. “We made use of guides.”

She looked up.

“Not Aurors,” he went on. “Not Ministry-trained personnel. Others. They knew routes the rest of us did not — passages through Muggle regions, transitions that did not appear on any map I was ever shown.” He paused. “Their knowledge was… compartmentalized. They did not share it freely, and I never learned how it was acquired.”

Hermione absorbed the information in silence, noting the guardedness in his tone. It wasn’t so much the existence of these guides that unsettled her; it was the secretive, compartmentalized nature of their knowledge — the kind of knowledge that was passed down in whispers, not charts.

There was something in the Earl’s voice as he spoke of the guides — a trace of vulnerability, hidden beneath the precision of his words. She wondered if it was the first time he had spoken of something he didn’t fully understand, or if he was simply revealing more than he intended to.

There was a pause, long and heavy, before Draco spoke again, his voice almost hesitant. “You think they knew more than we did... about the very ground beneath our feet?” he asked, as if testing the implications of her words. Hermione nodded, watching him carefully. For a moment, the room seemed to shrink around them, as if they had arrived at a shared understanding neither of them had fully anticipated.

“In hindsight,” he said, “that would support your hypothesis rather than undermine it.”

But there was still something in Draco’s demeanor that resisted full acceptance. His gaze remained sharp, his posture slightly guarded, as though he were weighing the consequences of agreeing with her more than the merit of her argument.

“Yes, my lord.”

Draco’s words acknowledged her hypothesis, but his tone remained measured, as though he were still weighing its broader implications. The pause between them felt like a subtle distancing — an unspoken reluctance to fully embrace her theory, even though he couldn't refute it.

Silence fell again. The candles flickered faintly at the edges of the room, their lesser light steady but subdued.

He turned another page of the report, slower now.

“There are sections here,” he said, “where your claims about Muggle capabilities are… imprecise. You speak of communication networks, computation, coordination at scales we do not possess. The Council will demand clarification.”

“I wrote those passages from memory,” Hermione replied. “To be precise, I would need access to Muggle networks.”

He looked up sharply. “Which you do not have.”

“No, my lord.”

“And the remedy for all this,” he said, gesturing faintly at the stack of parchment, “is systematic study. Observation. Measurement. What you call —” his mouth tightened almost imperceptibly, “— computerization, digitization, and other Muggle terms that, as you admit, few among us understand.”

She couldn’t help but feel a flash of irritation at his tone, the mockery implicit in his words. But she tamped it down. There was no place for defensiveness here. Instead, she focused on the task at hand, allowing the irritation to fuel her resolve. She would not be dismissed so easily.

“Yes,” she said. “That is the essence of the project.”

Draco turned the page with deliberate slowness, as though weighing each word before moving on. Hermione could see the skepticism in his gaze, the reluctance to fully accept the breadth of her project. “You know,” he said, his voice almost contemplative, “if you truly intend to use Muggle craft in the wizarding world, you’ll face a far more insidious challenge than mere skepticism from the Council. The old families will fight you at every turn.”

Hermione met his gaze steadily. “I’m aware, my lord. But… if you throw the power and influence of the Malfoys behind this project, their opposition probably won’t be that fierce... my lord.”

The Earl did not respond immediately. The tension between them deepened, but Hermione was no longer daunted by it. She had long since stopped fearing the opposition she would face. What mattered now was the work — the research, the theory, the future they were both starting to shape, whether they wanted to admit it or not.

“Indeed,” he said, his voice steady, though a trace of something unreadable flickered in his eyes. “That may have an impact on them... But I cannot just throw influence... You weren't raised in a manor, it's difficult for you to understand... Even if I want to, I must consider it carefully.”

“Of course, my lord,” she answered quickly, “I realise my limitations.”

Draco was silent for a long moment.

“By the terms of my assignment,” he said at last, “I am instructed to guide your work. That implies correction where necessary.”

He met her eyes.

“I can tell you where the Council will object. I can advise you on which arguments will unsettle them, and which they will dismiss as speculative fancy.” He paused. “But as for the substance itself…”

He set the report aside, this time decisively.

“There is nothing here I would dare alter on grounds of competence.”

He paused, eyes still on the parchment. “I must admit,” he went on at last, “they called you the brightest witch of our generation for a reason.”

“It is a great exaggeration, my lord,” Hermione replied, colouring faintly in the wandlight. “I merely possess a kind of knowledge uncommon in the wizarding world.”

“Aye,” he said, inclining his head. “But the knowledge that is common — you excel in it as well. That is what makes you so… unique.”

Draco’s words acknowledged her intellect, but Hermione could feel a subtle pressure behind them. He hadn’t just praised her knowledge; he had underlined her difference, her function, the space she now occupied in this strange new hierarchy. She wondered if it was a compliment — or a reminder. A reminder that, for all her brilliance, she was still within the walls of his world, still subject to its rules.

A flicker of frustration rose, but Hermione quelled it swiftly. She had long known that power, in its most basic form, was neither given nor taken — it was granted by those who understood its terms. In this moment, Draco’s casual authority over the room only underscored the vast gulf between what she could command and what he could.

A silence followed, filled only by the faint hiss of the candles. Then he rose suddenly from his chair. Hermione began to stand, but he checked her with a raised hand.

“Please — remain seated, Granger.”

She froze midway, then obeyed, folding her hands neatly in her lap. Her heartbeat quickened; obedience was reflex, yet his tone had carried something almost gentle.

“I must make copies and send them to the Council,” he said. “But this title sounds too Muggle; they won’t like it.”

“Nox.”

The wandlight faded, and the gentler glow of the candles reclaimed the room. Shadows lengthened, drawing across Hermione’s face like a veil.

Draco erased the heading with a flick of his wand, took the quill, and wrote the new title in a firm, deliberate hand: “Digest for the Lords and Ladies of the Council.”

Then he gathered the sheets into a neat pile and tied them crosswise with a scarlet ribbon he had brought for the purpose.

As the report left her hands, the weight of it did not lift. No, it had merely shifted, transformed into something else: a symbol of her survival, yes, but also of her ongoing battle with the world she had once believed she could change. For now, it was enough to have survived. For now, that was her victory.

“Gemino,” Draco murmured. The script rippled outward like water disturbed by a breeze. Eight copies appeared — delicate shapes of thin light, already beginning to blur. Within seconds they faded and vanished.

Draco sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Gemino Stabilum!”

This time the duplicates looked more solid, though still faintly translucent.

“Do you think they are stable?” he turned to Hermione.

“I cannot say, my lord. Without a wand I cannot test them — though there are spells—”

“I know.” Irritation flickered through his voice; a faint tremor of magic stirred the candle flames. He cast a testing charm. The copies shuddered, their edges curling inwards, and then they crumbled to dust.

Hermione’s lips parted, but she said nothing.

The next attempt proved more successful. The parchments held their form, endured several tests without visible damage. Draco exhaled — quietly, almost a sigh — the tension leaving his shoulders.

He went to the window, unlatched it, and a draught of cool air carried in the scent of rain. He summoned the owls. Four landed upon the sill, their wings stirring the air so that loose sheets fluttered across the floor. Four more circled just outside, awaiting their turn.

Draco handed each owl a copy; the birds gripped the parchments in their talons and took flight. Their places were taken by the next four, and the procedure was repeated.

“Now all we can do is wait for an answer,” he said, his gaze following the departing birds. The candlelight trembled in their wake, as though reluctant to let them go.

Draco stood by the window, his figure framed by the dim glow of the candlelight as he dispatched the owls with deliberate care. His movements were measured, each action steeped in the same precision he had carried throughout their conversation. The finality of the moment hung between them, and Hermione could sense the weight of it as clearly as she felt the lingering tension in the air.

‘I will see this to the Council,’ he said, his voice calm but carrying the weight of a decision made.

Hermione rose from her seat, ready for the parting ritual. She lowered her head, her knees bending slightly as the silent exchange of authority, of acknowledgment, passed between them once more.

Draco did not linger for more than a moment. With a final inclination of his head, he turned toward the door, his footsteps echoing faintly as they faded into the hallway beyond.

The door closed softly behind him, and the silence that followed seemed almost oppressive, as if the room itself had grown heavier with his departure. Hermione remained standing for a moment longer, her eyes fixed on the empty space where Draco had stood. His absence felt like a presence in its own right, a reminder of the fragile, uncertain nature of their dealings.

She sank back into her chair, the weight of the moment pressing down on her. It had been a good conversation, perhaps even better than she had dared hope. Draco had engaged with her theory, considered it, and even offered tacit support. But it wasn’t enough. None of it was enough.

Now her fate was no longer hers to shape. It lay in the hands of the Council, a body she knew too well to trust. Their decision would be the first of many tests, and it was not a forgone conclusion that they would back her. They had their own interests, their own fears. And Draco — she had secured his interest, but she could not count on his full support. What if he withdrew? He had never been known for his courage, not at Hogwarts. Would he stand by her, or would he retreat when the stakes were raised?

And why would he wish to stand by her at all? She had saved him once, and he promised to never forget it. But he also knew — it was quite obvious — who had led that sky charge from the clouds that killed so many of his comrades. She was his enemy, and it would be only logical if he wished her dead.

Her mind raced with the possibilities, each one darker than the last. What if the Council rejected her proposal outright? What if they saw her ideas as too radical, too dangerous to entertain? What would she do then? She could feel the chill of those uncertainties creeping into her bones.

And what would be her fate if they turned her down? Would they permit her to die with dignity, a quiet exit after all the years of survival and struggle? Or would they return her to Bellatrix’s bondage? The thought, so horrific once, now seemed strangely… merciful. Bellatrix’s control would be a return to a familiar, brutal form of power, yes. But at least there would be clarity. At least she would not have to bear the weight of failure alone.

She closed her eyes, forcing herself to take a steadying breath. It was no longer just about her. Her work, her theory, even her survival — all of it was tied to the choices others would make. It was a familiar feeling, the loss of control, but it didn’t make it any easier to bear.

For now, there was nothing left to do but wait. The world outside this room, the decisions of those with power, would decide her future. And in the end, no matter how much she wished otherwise, it was out of her hands.

Chapter Text

The next morning Draco, faithful to his word, brought an enchanted quill that would write of itself at Hermione’s dictation, and a bewitched lamp that gave forth light without the need of oil, its brightness governed by a small screw at the side. Hermione thanked him with genuine warmth; both instruments eased her labours greatly. Yet for the time being, there was little to employ them upon — they were still awaiting the Council’s answer.

The following day, an owl arrived bearing an official notice: the Lords and Ladies of the Council summoned before them the author of the report, the Freedwoman Hermione Granger, and requested that Earl Draco Malfoy escort her to the Council chamber in the Ministry of Magic for the Council’s consideration at the appointed hour.

“Time is pressing — please, make haste, Granger,” said the young aristocrat, glancing at his chronometer.

Hermione did not keep him waiting; she only cast a hooded grey cloak over the reddish-brown gown in which she had left the Black Manor. It was not needed for warmth — etiquette prescribed such observance when appearing before the Lords and Ladies of the Council.

Together they went to the hearth. The Floo Network was closed to her; the restriction applied to her alone — the only freed Muggle-born in the realm. Draco touched the runic seal upon the mantel and murmured a brief countercharm. The emerald flame stirred, rising higher with a hollow hiss.

“After you,” he said.

They travelled by Floo; no one could apparate within the Ministry. The wards that sealed the building were older than the war itself, strengthened since. Every visitor arrived through the Atrium and passed the inspections.

The green fire rose around her in a brief roar, and the drawing room vanished. A moment later, Hermione stepped out into the Atrium of the Ministry. The air smelled faintly of ash and polish; the black marble floor reflected the torches like dark water. Above, the vaulted ceiling shimmered with shifting wards — slow, spectral patterns of runes that guarded against apparition.

Two sentries stood by the line of Floo grates, motionless beneath the serpent-and-crown emblem of the realm, their duty to examine every arrival — though neither dared question an Earl, nor the Dark Lord’s adjutant, whose rank was marked by a silver epaulette bearing the golden letter V. Draco inclined his head slightly; the guards answered with identical bows. Hermione followed a step behind, her hood drawn low.

The Atrium was quieter than she remembered — the murmur of clerks replaced by the soft echo of boots on stone. The old fountain was gone; in its place rose a column of black crystal carved with the names of the fallen — names she did not know, his dead, not hers — yet for a heartbeat she felt the chill of belonging among the dead.

They crossed the hall toward the inner corridors, where the inner chambers of the Privy Council lay sealed behind heavy doors of oak and iron.

“When the Privy Council sits in full quorum,” Draco said without looking at Hermione, “it stands in the Dark Lord’s stead.”

A brief pause followed.

“You will kneel. I will indicate when.”

“Of course, my lord,” the girl replied meekly.

The doors of oak and iron opened soundlessly.

Beyond them lay the Council chamber — a hall of dark stone, high-ceilinged but unadorned, its proportions exact, almost severe. There was no attempt at splendour. The walls were bare save for a single emblem set into the stone behind the Council table: the serpent entwined about a crown, wrought in dull silver, unpolished by design. No banners hung there, no house colours, no shrines. The chamber belonged to no House and acknowledged no god.

A long table of blackened oak stood upon a shallow dais, its surface clear of ornament, its edges worn smooth by generations of use. Behind it stood seven high-backed chairs, identical in height and form, set at precise intervals. Before the dais, the stone floor was left bare.

Light fell evenly from above, white and steady, without visible source. Nothing flickered. Nothing breathed.

The Lords and Ladies of the Council were already seated. None rose. None shifted. Their presence filled the chamber with a stillness that was not expectation, but assumption.

Draco halted at the edge of the dais. Without turning his head, he made a small motion with two fingers — no more than a flick at his side.

Hermione, several paces behind him, sank at once to her knees upon the cold stone and lowered her gaze.

Only then did Draco bow — deeply, formally — lowering his head until his eyes rested on the floor. He held the posture, unmoving. The silence stretched.

At last, Alecto Carrow, Baroness of Beckley, spoke — not loudly, not sharply, but with the flat precision of one reciting a prescribed form.

“You may rise, Earl of Winterbourne.”

Draco straightened and stepped forward to stand before the table. Hermione remained kneeling. No instruction was given to her.

No acknowledgment followed.

It was as though her presence had already been accounted for — and dismissed.

She knew them — not intimately, but by structure, by office, by the shape of power they represented.

At the centre sat Lucius Malfoy, Marquis of Wiltshire, Archmagus of Blood, his pale hands folded upon the table as though upon an altar of lineage. His expression was composed, impersonal, his gaze fixed on Draco with cool assessment rather than curiosity.

To his right sat Corban Yaxley, Baron of Fenridge, Archmagus of Order. There was nothing ornate about him; his stillness had the quality of law long enforced. Hermione had seen that same stillness in courtrooms and holding cells alike.

Beside him, Pius Travers, Earl of Dunrobin, Archmagus of the Exchequer, watched with the measured patience of one accustomed to weighing costs rather than lives. His attention did not waver, but neither did it sharpen.

On Lucius’s left sat Severus Snape, Lord of Spinner’s End, Archmagus of Alchemy. His black robes drank in the light; his face was as unreadable as ever. He did not look at Hermione once.

Two seats farther sat Rabastan Lestrange, Earl of Arundel, Archmagus of Secrets. His eyes were half-lidded, unfocused, as though turned inward. Hermione felt, without understanding why, that his attention was the most dangerous in the room.

At the far end sat Alecto Carrow, Baroness of Beckley, Archmagus of Ritual and Wards. Her posture was rigid, exact, as though the chamber itself were an extension of her craft. Hermione had the fleeting, irrational impression that if she moved without sanction, the floor might answer.

And beside her — unmistakable even in stillness — sat Bellatrix Black, Duchess of Gravenhurst, Archmagus of War and Supreme Commander of the Magical Legions.

Her presence did not dominate the room. It did not need to. She sat at ease, hands loosely folded, her expression unreadable, her uniform subdued by the chamber’s austerity. For a single heartbeat, her eyes flicked to Hermione’s bowed head — no more than that — and then turned away.

The contact was brief, and devastating.

Hermione lowered her head further, her fingers curling into the fabric of her skirts.

The Council began to speak.

The questions were addressed to Draco alone. They came not as discussion but as sequence — measured voices rising in turn, each precise, each complete in itself. Hermione caught fragments without context: precedent… strategic utility… risks of foreign mediation… stability of lineage… fiscal exposure… jurisdiction…

She remained kneeling, motionless, her knees already aching against the cold stone. No one instructed her to rise. No one instructed her to remain.

Her body obeyed the ritual without thought. Kneeling on the cold stone, the familiar weight of humiliation pressed down on her shoulders, but it didn’t feel quite the same. Not anymore. She wasn’t a slave — and yet, here she was: still beneath their gaze, still beneath the weight of their expectations.

Her hands rested on the floor before her, cold against the stone, but it was not the stone she felt. It was the hollow silence that filled the space between them — the Lords and Ladies of the Council, seated at the table, discussing with Draco the matters she had set down in careful lines of ink, as though she were not there at all, as though her presence did not require even the courtesy of acknowledgment.

Draco was the one who answered now. Draco, who repeated her conclusions in another voice, stripped of the labour and risk that had produced them. She had become a conduit — a vessel emptied into his hands. Her body burned with the quiet, familiar heat of injustice.

But did she truly expect anything else?

Her gaze remained fixed on the floor, the stone a cold reminder of everything they refused to see. They would not lift her up, even though she held the very solutions they sought. Even though she had, for so long, been the one to carry their burdens, the one who could save them with nothing more than a thought, a calculation, an idea. And yet, she was made to kneel before them, like a creature unworthy of their attention, their respect.

She could feel the sharp edge of resentment settle in her chest. It wasn’t directed at Draco — not directly. He was a part of this world, and she had come to understand his own struggles with the weight of the power he represented. But he wasn’t the one being ignored. He wasn’t the one made to kneel while others spoke over her, as if she were a mere piece of furniture.

She clenched her fists on the floor, a small act of defiance. The Council could ignore her as much as they liked. They could leave her kneeling, dismiss her as a lowly Freedwoman — but she knew the truth. She knew the power she held, the knowledge they would need when the time came. And though they would never acknowledge it, though they would continue to treat her as if she were less than them, she was more than they would ever realize.

Her spine straightened a fraction, a small act of rebellion against the weight of their disregard.

She had a purpose; she kept reminding herself. And they will need her. They will all need her.

“…just make sure your Mudblood remembers her place…”

She caught the fragment of a phrase — no more than that — and felt it strike with a dull, familiar force, as though it had been waiting for her thoughts to form. The voice might have belonged to Yaxley. Or it might not have.

In the end, it hardly mattered.

Eventually, the voices fell silent.

The stillness that followed was deeper than before — not absence, but completion, as though the matter had been sorted and set aside. For a moment, nothing happened at all.

Then Alecto Carrow spoke again.

“You may rise, Granger.”

It was the first time anyone in the chamber had acknowledged Hermione’s existence.

She obeyed at once, rising carefully, the stiffness in her knees flaring and subsiding as she steadied herself. She did not lift her gaze fully; etiquette did not permit it.

“Your Highness,” she said, inclining her head — not to a person, but to the office that spoke.

Alecto’s expression did not change.

“Lord Severus Snape, Archmagus of Alchemy,” she said, “and Her Grace the Duchess of Gravenhurst wish to examine you privately in their chambers.”

Her eyes shifted then, fractionally, to Draco.

“My lord Earl,” she continued, “you may withdraw.”

Draco bowed — deeply, formally — and held the posture until dismissed. Hermione followed suit, sinking into a low curtsy, her head lowered, her hands steady despite the lingering ache in her limbs.

Neither was addressed further.

They stepped back in silence — one measured pace, then another — before turning as one and leaving the chamber. The doors of oak and iron closed behind them without a sound.

Only then did Hermione realise how tightly she had been holding herself.

They had gone no more than a dozen paces down the corridor when Draco spoke.

“Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

The question was controlled, almost neutral — yet it carried an effort she had not expected. He did not look at her as he spoke.

“Yes, my lord,” Hermione replied at once. “Thank you.”

The words came easily. Perhaps too easily. She found herself wondering why.

After a moment, she added, more cautiously, “Do you think the Council will approve the project?”

Draco considered this as they walked.

“It is not decided,” he said at last. “But no one spoke against it. That, in itself, is not nothing.”

She nodded.

For reasons she could not quite articulate, the answer steadied her more than she had expected.

Draco halted before a plain, closed door.

“Lord Snape will receive you first,” he said. “He is within.”

Lord Snape awaited them in his chamber, motionless beside a high desk strewn with scrolls and crystal phials. Behind him, shelves climbed the walls, crowded with stoppered vials and the dry smell of parchment and crushed herbs. The light came from a single suspended globe that burned without flame, casting an even pallor over stone and glass alike.

His robes were black, yet not the glossy black of the guards or courtiers; theirs shone like armour, while his drank the light, dull as drying ink. Beneath the outer layer Hermione glimpsed a scholar’s gown of fine, worn wool. Around his throat lay the silver chain of the Council — a narrow collar of interlinked serpents that glimmered faintly against the dark fabric. A smaller clasp, also serpent-shaped, held the collar close. The only colour about him was a faint lining of green, visible when he moved, as if shadow itself remembered Slytherin.

He was as she recalled him from Hogwarts, though time had pared him thinner still. His skin was pale, almost sallow, the sharp planes of his face thrown into relief by the candlelight. Greasy black hair fell to either side of a long, hooked nose; his mouth was narrow, his eyes black and depthless, like two small pools that reflected nothing. When he turned, his robe followed in a slow ripple, whispering over the flagstones — less a movement than the displacement of air around something too self-contained to stir it. The air around him seemed cooler; that old, effortless stillness had not changed since Hogwarts, though now it bore another kind of power — the authority of knowledge rather than discipline.

He inclined his head slightly in greeting — not warmth, not contempt, merely an economy of motion that served for both. His eyes moved from Draco to her and back again, assessing, measuring, as though continuing a calculation begun long before they entered the room.

“My lord Earl,” said Snape, pausing faintly after each word. His voice was soft, precise, almost deliberate in its restraint.

“Would you mind leaving me alone with my former student?”

“Your Highness.” Draco inclined his head, the gesture exact, and withdrew without another word. The door closed behind him with a quiet click.

“Granger.”

The sound of her name in that voice — dry, level, unmistakable — made her spine tighten. She sank into a curtsy, the movement quiet, deliberate.

Snape made no sound — only a brief motion of his hand, as though dismissing an equation already solved.

Hermione rose, keeping her gaze lowered. “Yes, Your Highness.”

For an instant she almost added Professor, and the effort of swallowing the word felt sharper than any reprimand.

He regarded her in silence for a few seconds, then said,

“I have read your report.”

The tone was flat, almost disinterested, yet something in it made her feel as if the walls themselves were waiting.

“It appears,” he went on, “that your conclusions revise nearly every principle we have taught for the past three centuries. A bold undertaking for someone whose academic career was — let us say — interrupted.”

Hermione lifted her eyes a little. “I did not mean to revise, Your Highness. Only to test.”

“Test,” he repeated softly, as though tasting the word. “And what, precisely, do you propose to test? Reality?”

“No, Your Highness. I merely propose to test our perception of reality.”

“Perception of reality,” Snape repeated slowly, as though turning the phrase over in his mind. “And what does that suggest? That for centuries witches and wizards, poor blind creatures, perceived reality wrongly — until one Hermione Granger appeared from nowhere to open their eyes?”

“Your Highness,” said Hermione, fighting to keep any hint of defiance from her tone, “that is what happens when faith in authority blinds one to what lies plainly before the eyes. The ancient Muggle philosopher Aristotle—”

She faltered and looked up. Snape inclined his head slightly, a gesture that told her he knew the name.

“He once wrote that a fly has four legs,” she continued, gathering courage, “and for centuries no one dared correct him — not because they could not see the truth, but because they feared to see it, and thus to challenge his authority.”

For the first time, Snape’s mouth twitched — not a smile, more the faint recoil of amusement. “You compare our scholarship to the errors of ancient Muggles?”

“It happens among us too, Your Highness,” she said quickly. “For generations Hogwarts students used textbooks filled with errors, until someone calling himself the Half-Blood Prince appeared, challenged the accepted scholarship, and corrected them.”

She felt the words rushing ahead of her and reined them in with effort. “But what then? His book vanished into the shelves, and no one even knew it existed — until another student, Harry Potter, found it, understood it, and used it to his advantage.”

Snape regarded her for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “A fair point,” he said at last, “yet here we speak of matters far more significant than a few spells and potion recipes. Your hypothesis of spatial separation — even if true — implies an act of unimaginable power. Such divisions cannot have arisen by accident. They must be the work of the greatest wizards, and it is hardly likely that a heritage of such magnitude could simply be forgotten.”

“Perhaps it is not forgotten,” Hermione answered. “Perhaps a systematic search of the wizarding libraries might uncover descriptions or even formulae of the spells that created those effects. The search would be worth undertaking regardless of whether my hypothesis proves correct. That is among my recommendations.”

“I must admit,” said Snape, his tone thoughtful, “your report was intellectually stimulating. But one thing troubles me still — I have never known anyone moved solely by academic zeal. There are always deeper motives. I wonder what yours are.”

“Your Highness,” said Hermione, feeling her heartbeat quicken and a strange tension rise in her chest, “my motive is survival in a world that has ceased to be generous to me. I can survive only by excelling in the service of the Dark Lord — and this work is the only thing in which I can excel. There is nothing else, Your Highness.”

“Nothing else…” Snape repeated, his black eyes fixed on her. “Look at me, Hermione.”

She flinched but obeyed. A cold pressure brushed against her thoughts, then sharpened into probing threads of force; but her Occlumency walls rose, solid and silent as carved granite, and the pressure broke upon them.

“Really,” murmured Snape — and then he moved too swiftly for sight, a surge of black vapour sweeping across the desk; in the next heartbeat he stood before her, hands closing hard around her temples. The assault redoubled. Hermione trembled, her whole body quivering, yet her defences held. He pressed again and again, but each attempt broke upon her unseen walls and fell away.

At last he stepped back, releasing her. “Remarkable,” he said quietly. Hermione, still shuddering, could scarcely stand. Later she would understand that Snape had tested her as he tested a potion — heating the mixture until its surface trembled, then withdrawing the flame before it boiled over.

“My mind remains open only to the Dark Lord, whom I loyally serve,” she managed to say, her voice breaking.

“Aye,” said Snape. “But do not ever resist him. He will crush your walls, and the consequences for your sanity will be… irreversible. It would be a shame to lose such a mind.”

He was silent for a few moments, studying her, then waved his hand: “Off you go.”

Hermione stepped back, curtseying deeply, her eyes lowered. “Your Highness.”

He inclined his head slightly. “Mistress Granger.”

Still facing him, she withdrew several paces toward the door before turning, as etiquette demanded. The air behind her seemed colder, and the sound of the door closing felt almost like relief.

When she stepped out, Draco, who had been waiting in the corridor — outwardly composed, though the delay had no doubt tried his pride — gave her a quick, conflicted glance: sympathy shadowed by irritation. His voice, however, was formally cold.

“We must hurry, Granger — my aunt is already waiting. She occupies the corner chamber, over there.”

“Yes, my lord,” Hermione replied softly, keeping her eyes lowered.

The corridor ahead was dim, its stone floor reflecting the greenish light of enchanted sconces. Their footsteps echoed between the walls, and Hermione felt the air grow heavier as they approached the corner door. A faint vibration of magic pulsed from behind it — a presence old and restless, like a heart beating through stone.

Draco halted before the door of black oak, carved with a pattern of thorns and serpents. For a moment he seemed to hesitate, then knocked once and stood aside.

“Enter,” came the voice from within — low, melodic, and mesmeric in its calm.

“You should go in alone,” Draco said quietly. “It will be better that way.”

Hermione nodded, understanding at once. Before turning to the door, she dropped a shallow curtsy — a gesture of gratitude as much as obedience. The Earl inclined his head in return but said nothing.

As Hermione stepped inside, she almost gasped, struck by the astonishing vastness of Bellatrix’s office. Here, too, as in the Dark Lord’s own chambers, the bounds of space had clearly been widened by magic. Yet unlike the throne hall of Voldemort, where twilight always reigned, the chamber of the Supreme Commander of the Magical Legions was bathed in a soft, opaline light that left no shadow anywhere, whose source seemed to be the enormous luminous orbs suspended at an incredible height — perhaps beneath the ceiling itself, though one could not be certain, for the ceiling was nowhere to be seen.

There were no windows. In their stead, the walls were hung with vast, moving paintings depicting the decisive battles of both ancient and recent wars. The largest showed the Duchess herself at the final battle of Hogwarts, casting whole legions of enemies to the ground. The artist had captured well the terror she inspired in her foes, though he had somewhat exaggerated their number — the army of resistance had never, even in its best days, been so vast. Yet the likeness was true enough. Hermione remembered that day — the shrieking spells, the scent of ash, the figure of Bellatrix stepping over the fallen, advancing through ruin like a dancer through flame — terrible in her grace. The memory still set her nerves alight.

Between the paintings, and above them as well, hung a host of weapons once wielded by the great wizards of history. Some were priceless treasures in their own right: the slender, silver-white longsword of Godric Gryffindor, its surface rippling faintly with the shimmer of enchantment, the hilt inlaid with rubies the size of dragon’s eyes, and a fine line of goblin runes — precise as coin engravings — running along the blade’s fuller; the narrow, curved silver dagger of Morgana le Fay, its blade like frozen moonlight tapering to a needle point, the guard wrought as spread raven wings in blackened silver; the Sword of Serpents, once belonging to Salazar Slytherin, forged of black goblin steel, the blade slightly curved like a fang, the guard forming two entwined snakes whose emerald eyes flickered with captured light; a fragment of the Staff of Merlin — a gnarled section of elderwood, blackened with age, set in a crystal mount where faint veins of silver pulsed as though the magic still circulated within; and an ancient goblin axe, double-bladed, heavy yet elegant, its metal gleaming like moonlit water, patterned with rippling lines that seemed to move when one looked too long. And there were many others besides, less renowned yet no less remarkable to behold.

Hermione took a few steps forward. Some fifty paces from the door stood a crescent-shaped oak desk — of ordinary height but vast in breadth. With her arms folded across her chest, Bellatrix stood at ease, the back of her thighs just brushing the table’s edge, as though drawing strength from the solid wood; her stance conveyed both repose and the readiness to strike.

She was dressed in the uniform of the Supeme Commander of the Magical Legions: a short-tailed black jacket trimmed with crimson, double rows of gold buttons gleaming down the front, a high collar embroidered in gold, and cuffs worked in silver, all set off by epaulettes heavy with golden fringe. From her right shoulder hung a gold aiguillette, and on the left glittered two eight-pointed platinum stars, each bearing in its centre the emerald head of a viper — the Orders of the Serpent, the highest decorations for service to the Dark Lord. Around Bellatrix’s neck hung the silver chain of the Council, which seemed dull beside the splendour of her uniform. The ensemble was completed by crimson satin breeches with gold side stripes, tucked into polished black riding boots. A wide-brimmed black hat, adorned with a plume of scarlet phoenix feathers, lay carelessly upon the desk, while the witch’s thick black hair fell freely over her shoulders.

Utterly dazed, Hermione crossed the distance separating her from the Duchess and almost dropped to her knees before Bellatrix, but at the last instant remembered that such a gesture of complete submission was reserved for the Dark Lord alone.

“Your Highness,” she breathed, sinking into a deep curtsy.

“Rise,” said the elder witch with a faint smile. She regarded the girl with the pride of an artist gazing upon her masterpiece. Hermione obeyed.

Bellatrix turned to the table and picked up a stack of parchments. The sheets had yellowed, and the first signs of decay had begun to show — the usual fate of copies produced by the Gemino spell.

“Well done, pet—no, they’ll hang me if I call you that now, won’t they? Very well—Mistress Granger.”

“You may call me what you please, Your Highness,” the girl replied meekly, keeping her eyes fixed on the floor so as not to meet the gaze of the woman who had owned her so completely only a few days before.

“Brilliant logic and brilliant conclusions! So recognizably you in every paragraph,” Bellatrix went on, glancing through the pages. “Especially the political and strategic parts — it’s astonishing that no one before managed to explain it so clearly, so convincingly. Snape was irritated, of course; one could have guessed as much. But leave Snape aside — I’d wager even the Dark Lord himself felt a twinge of envy, and that doesn’t happen to him too often.

“And the technical section — fascinating as well. I suppose we’ll have to smuggle in some Muggle weapons to test them against our magical defences. In any case, it appears that a direct, open confrontation might prove dangerous for us — that’s your conclusion, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Your Highness. An open physical clash might lead to a result not in our favour. But there is one area in which wizards hold a tremendous advantage over Muggles — mind-control magic. If we can seize the minds of their commanders, they will be powerless to harm us. Of course, matters will become much more complicated if foreign wizards shield the Muggles from our spells. Preventing such interference must become our primary strategic goal.”

“Certainly. We’ll need to develop that further, and you’ll have a great deal on your plate — but that doesn’t concern me much. I know you’ll manage. There’s something else I wanted you for…”

“Yes, Your Highness?”

Bellatrix remained silent for several long seconds.

“Lower your hood,” she said at last. “And stop studying your boots — look at me. In the eyes.” Her voice carried a note of irritation, quiet but unmistakable.

Startled by the sudden command, Hermione obeyed, pushing back the hood and lifting her gaze to meet the Duchess’s eyes.

“I long for your touch, whelp — madly. And what of you?” said the elder witch, drawing out each word with deliberate slowness.

Hermione fought the old reflex with all her strength, but her body betrayed her: a fierce, unbidden heat gathered low in her abdomen, a sudden pooling that made her feel heavy and weak. The tightening in her throat was a desperate attempt to seal off the sensation. A sheen of sweat broke across her brow, and her gaze wavered, the tremor she could not master starting deep in her thighs.

“Your Highness…” she whispered pleadingly.

Bellatrix tore the Council chain from her neck and flung it onto the table.

“Your Grace…”

“Try again,” the Duchess said, her tone edged with warning.

“Mistress…”

“Good girl.”

Hermione drew several deep breaths, struggling to steady the frantic beating of her heart.

“I asked you a question, pet,” Bellatrix pressed.

“Your Grace,” Hermione said, her voice hoarse but unwavering. “My longing for your touch is a constant torment... I dream of your skin against mine every single night. Yet, you yourself decreed when we parted: our bond is now of law, not flesh. That law binds us both. With your blessing, I must serve the Dark Lord, and no thought can stray from that singular purpose.”

The Duchess stood very still. The flicker of emotion that had crossed her face — anger, hurt, or pride — vanished as swiftly as it appeared.

“Of course,” she said at last, her voice once more composed. “The law. You’re bound by it now. Well, it’s hardly a great loss — you’re not the only pretty Mudblood ass in this place. I shall find another soon enough. It’s you who will likely spend the rest of your life in celibacy — which is only fair; you won’t be distracted from your service.”

She turned away, lifted the discarded chain from the table, and fastened it once more around her neck.

“Then serve him well, Freedwoman. And remember who taught you how. Now, when you leave this room, call in my nephew, if you please — I have a few words for him.”

Hermione bowed her head. “Your Highness,” she said softly.

The Duchess gave no reply. The only sound in the chamber was the faint clink of the silver chain as Bellatrix adjusted it into place.

Hermione sank into a deep curtsy, her hands steady despite the trembling in her chest. She held the posture for a moment, then rose, keeping her gaze lowered. Two measured steps backward carried her toward the door. Every motion was precise, ceremonial — a discipline stronger than fear.

She opened the heavy door and stepped into the corridor. The air outside felt cooler, thinner, as though the world itself had exhaled. Draco was waiting where she had left him, composed but watchful. Their eyes met for an instant; he seemed about to speak, then only inclined his head.

Hermione answered with a faint nod, gathering what remained of her composure. Behind her, the door closed with a soft metallic click that sounded almost like the sealing of a vault.

“My lord,” she said, turning to Draco, “Her Highness wishes to speak with you.”

The Earl opened the door in silence and stepped inside.

The few minutes of Draco’s absence felt like an eternity. For the first time in years, Hermione had dared to contradict Bellatrix — and from her early months in captivity, when traces of the old, pre-war Hermione, uncompromising and unafraid, still surfaced, she knew well how dangerous that could be. The elder witch could be generous with rewards whenever one pleased her, but she tolerated not the slightest disobedience. Hermione understood perfectly that her life might end before the day was over if Bellatrix, in a fit of anger, chose to veto the project — and that no brilliance, no past merit, not even the memory of their fierce, twisted devotion, would save her.

When the Earl at last returned, the girl lifted to him a look full of hope, though in her heart she was already prepared to accept the verdict of fate.

“My lord?”

“Everything is splendid — even better than I could have imagined,” Draco replied with genuine enthusiasm. “The Council has not yet issued its formal decision, but it will certainly be favourable, for the Dark Lord was deeply impressed by the report. No one expected that; his attitude toward Muggles, and all that concerns them, is well known, and he was most likely prejudiced from the outset.”

Hermione felt her knees weaken. The words reached her like the lifting of a sentence — she was saved. The air itself seemed easier to breathe; even the corridor, with its chill and dimness, no longer felt oppressive. She drew a slow breath, steadying herself, unwilling to let the relief show. Only now did she grasp how absurd her terror had been — Bellatrix could not truly decide her fate, however much power she still seemed to hold in Hermione’s mind.

Chapter Text

Hermione listened in silence as Draco spoke, aware that he was not asking for her assent but informing her of a decision already set in motion — and aware, too, that he derived a certain pleasure from it, as one does from a venture whose scale flatters both ambition and intellect.

“The very fact that the Dark Lord changed his mind — something that has almost never happened before — speaks to the extraordinary quality of your work, Granger.

“So the opinions of the other Council members, including my aunt’s, can hardly alter the outcome — though she too is delighted. For that matter, even Lord Snape, though he grumbled as usual, rated the report extremely highly.”

“Her Grace…” Hermione spoke after a moment, her voice carefully neutral. “Wasn’t she angry with me, my lord?”

Draco glanced at her, a flicker of curiosity crossing his face.

“Angry?” he repeated. “Possibly. Bellatrix is seldom anything else for long.”

He paused, then added, more coolly, “But she was impressed — and that carries more weight than temper. She wishes us to proceed. That is what matters.”

“My aunt has given me a few instructions: we are to resume work at once, as though permission had already been granted. The departments of the Privy Council will begin drafting operational plans tomorrow, and we are instructed, among other things, to assemble our own small team of assistants — people who can address questions lying outside the competence of any existing department.

“For example, the supply routes of food and other goods that may come from the Muggle world — no one actually knows how that process functions, and this ignorance, incidentally, caused considerable embarrassment at the Council meeting. A ridiculous oversight, really. By the way, Granger — do you have any suitable candidates for such a team?”

“Me, my lord?” murmured the girl in some confusion. But then, recalling her suspicions regarding the identity of one of the Council’s covert agents, she told Draco of them — adding that if Rita Skeeter was indeed being used to gather intelligence within Lord Rabastan Lestrange’s department, it might be useful to borrow her for their own purposes. Skeeter’s unique abilities as an Animagus could prove most valuable, and Earl Lestrange, being a member of the Council himself, would hardly object.

It turned out that Draco was already well informed about Skeeter and her service to the Crown. She had been arrested back when Bellatrix commanded the Aurors, yet no public trial or sentence had ever followed. It had been decided instead that an unregistered Animagus, unknown to the general public, was ideally suited for covert reconnaissance missions. Thus Skeeter had been tried and sentenced in secret, and then offered employment with the Department of the Inner Eye, her term to be reduced in exchange for service.

According to Draco, however, she remained officially imprisoned in the cells of the Auror Bureau, which placed her under the authority not of Earl Lestrange but of Baron Yaxley. It was with Yaxley, therefore, that they would have to speak regarding Skeeter’s transfer into Draco’s charge. Since the Baron too sat on the Privy Council, no serious objections were anticipated.

“The Baron will have returned to the Bureau by now,” Draco said, glancing at his chronometer. “We should find him there.”

They set off together down the long corridor, their footsteps echoing softly between the stone walls. The sound was curiously uneven: Draco’s stride measured and unhurried, hers lighter, quicker — her body still calibrated to another pace, another presence. From time to time a shadow crossed their path — a clerk hurrying past with eyes carefully lowered, an enchanted lamp dimming as they passed beneath it — but no one spoke.

Hermione was acutely aware of how she walked. Old habits lingered: shoulders held a fraction too tight, gaze lowered just enough to avoid challenge, her hands clasped before her in a posture that was no longer required, yet had not quite loosened its hold. The corridor itself had not changed. It was the same place where she had once been dragged past, in torn rags, barefoot and bleeding, to be presented as an example. The stone remembered nothing; it never did.

Yet something was different now. She felt it in the way the clerks avoided her eyes rather than meeting them with open contempt, in the brief hesitation before doors were opened, in the way no one thought to bark an order at her as she passed. It was not respect — she knew that well enough — but it was no longer pure licence to abuse her either. The distinction was small, almost theoretical, and yet it set her nerves humming.

Presently they reached the circular lift that connected the upper offices with the Council’s lower departments. The metal gates slid shut with a hiss, enclosing them in a narrow cage of brass and iron. The platform lurched, then began its slow descent, chains clanking faintly somewhere above.

Hermione stood beside the Earl, close enough to feel the warmth of his sleeve through the heavy fabric of her dress. Draco did not look at her, yet his presence was oddly steadying. He occupied the space with the ease of someone to whom it belonged by birthright, his hands resting loosely at his sides, his expression unreadable.

There had been a time when his composure had felt performative — too deliberate, too brittle, betraying itself in sudden flashes of temper or awkward bravado. Now, she could find no such fissure. Whatever uncertainty had once driven him to posture had been burned away, replaced by a calm that did not seek approval. She found herself wondering, not for the first time, whether he was always this composed — or whether composure itself had simply become his armour.

The thought of facing Yaxley tightened her throat. Baron Yaxley was not Bellatrix; he did not delight in spectacle. That, in some ways, made him worse. His authority was bureaucratic, procedural, and therefore harder to resist. Still, beneath the unease, she felt a steadier pulse of something else now — a cautious, unfamiliar confidence.

She had been heard.

Her work had not been dismissed, nor laughed away, nor reduced to a curiosity. It had been weighed, argued over, and accepted. The machinery of power that once seemed only to crush her was beginning, almost imperceptibly, to respond — not to her person, but to her usefulness. It was not dignity, and it was not safety. But it was movement.

And for the first time in a very long while, she realised that when the lift reached the bottom, she would be stepping forward — not being pushed.

When the lift came to a halt, Draco turned to her.

“I shall speak to the Baron alone,” he said quietly. “Wait here; it will be simpler that way.”

“Yes, my lord, of course,” Hermione replied quickly. “Thank you,” she added in a whisper, after he had already turned his back to her.

The gates opened, and Draco stepped out, leaving her in the narrow antechamber where two guards stood watch by the entrance to the Bureau cells. They did not avert their eyes as the clerks had done upstairs. They watched her openly, their gazes slow and deliberate, as though taking measure of something they disliked but were permitted to observe.

Their eyes followed her with undisguised contempt — not the cold, professional scrutiny of wardens accustomed to indifference, but the older, instinctive hatred reserved for her kind. Clerks learned caution early. Guards did not need to. Their authority did not depend on favour or fashion, and contempt, here, was not dangerous. It was customary.

She kept her gaze lowered, as habit dictated, the hood of her cloak drawn low so that it nearly covered her face. It was an old reflex, ingrained long before she had learned to distinguish between those who looked away and those who looked on with satisfaction. The stone floor might as well have been a familiar path beneath her feet.

Yet she felt the heat of their regard like a brand upon her skin. It was not curiosity, and not fear — it was recognition, of a sort. To them, she was not a woman who had addressed the Council, nor an intellect whose work had been debated behind closed doors. She was a category, long established and deeply resented, and no pronouncement from above could erase that entirely.

The brief, buoyant sense of worth she had carried from the Council chamber ebbed away. Here, among iron doors and the smell of damp stone, she was reminded once more who she was — and who she would never quite become. Authority could shield her, perhaps, but it could not yet make her belong.

Draco remained with Yaxley for at least half an hour. At last he reappeared, carrying a small jar filled with leaves and grass.

“What is it, my lord?” Hermione asked, puzzled.

“Rita Skeeter, as you requested,” he replied with a faint smile.

Hermione stared at the jar for a moment too long. She had imagined imprisonment — a cell, a guard, at least the outline of a human shape. Not this. Not reduction. The object in Draco’s hand was too small, too ordinary, as though what it contained had already been decided, settled, made manageable.

“Oh no… may I?” she asked at last, pointing to the jar.

“Of course. Take a good look,” he said, passing the glass container to her.

Inside, amid the tangle of green stems and leaves, sat a large iridescent beetle — its emerald carapace veined with gold, and the dark rings about its eyes recalling a pair of spectacles. Unmistakably Skeeter, even in disguise.

“But why — why do they keep her like that?”

“Well…” Draco gave a slight shrug. “The Bureau’s cells are overcrowded, so the Baron decided to save some space this way. Besides, it’s convenient — she’s always close at hand when Lord Lestrange needs her for a mission.”

The word convenient settled uneasily in Hermione’s mind. She had used it herself, once, of spells and schedules and supply lines — never of people. She forced herself to say nothing.

He paused, a note of amusement in his voice. “Though I must say, I’m surprised it troubles you. I was told the idea of keeping her in a jar was originally yours — back at school, wasn’t it?”

“Mine…” Hermione began, then stopped, guilt tightening her throat. She had known this question would come sooner or later. What unsettled her was not that Draco asked it, but that he did so without accusation — as though responsibility, once assigned, simply endured. “I was a frustrated, insolent teenager, not the Servant of the Crown…” She broke off again, then added more quietly, “But yes, my lord — it was my idea indeed.”

“If I recall correctly,” Draco said, not looking at her, “her arrest followed information you provided.”

The young woman’s cheeks coloured faintly.

“She made a habit of attending public humiliations,” Hermione said after a moment, her voice measured. “She mocked me openly, and then wrote about it. When I was given the opportunity, I told Her Grace what she was.”

She hesitated, the jar warm in her hands, its faint hum suddenly intrusive. “I wanted her punished,” she said quietly. “I did not intend this.”

Draco considered that in silence.

“She had made herself enemies,” he said at last. “Your information merely hastened matters. Though,” he added, with a slight tilt of his head, “without it, she would almost certainly not have ended up in a jar. Whether that would have spared her much is another question.”

Hermione did not answer. The distinction offered her no comfort.

“Anyway,” Draco went on, his tone turning more serious, “we can’t bring her to His Majesty’s castle — we’ll need another location. I think my estate in Winterbourne is the most convenient, if you have no objection.”

“Of course not, my lord! It isn’t for me to object to your decisions…”

Speaking thus, they reached a Floo grate — an arched hearth of black marble set into the wall, its runes pulsing faintly with green light. Draco took a pinch of powder from the silver bowl upon the pedestal.

“Winterbourne Manor,” he said clearly, and stepped into the flame. The fire roared upward, wrapping him in emerald light, and in the next instant he was gone.

Hermione followed, clutching the jar tightly against her chest. The world spun around her in a whirl of colour and noise — the rush of wind, the flash of passing hearths — until at last she stumbled out onto a stone hearth of quite different proportions. The air was cooler here, carrying the faint scent of pine and damp earth, as though the house stood closer to the open land than to any seat of government.

Draco was already waiting, brushing soot from his sleeve. Behind him stretched a spacious hall with dark-beamed ceilings, old banners hanging between tall windows, and the quiet, echoing stillness of an ancestral home long accustomed to command. This was not the heavy, oppressive silence of Voldemort’s castle, where power pressed in from every wall; it was a deeper stillness, settled and unhurried, as though the house had little need to prove itself.

Hermione looked about as she stepped from the hearth. The entrance hall was vast and shadowed, its oak panels gleaming in the firelight, the Malfoy crest worked in silver above the mantel. There was no sense of recent conquest here — no proclamations, no symbols of victory hastily imposed. Whatever authority resided in these walls had been growing for centuries, layer upon layer, and had long since ceased to announce itself.

She became aware, almost absently, of movement at the edges of her vision: the soft rustle of fabric, the brief glimmer of eyes before a figure withdrew into an alcove. Elves, she realised distantly — present, attentive, and yet unobtrusive, as if the house itself were staffed by habits rather than by people.

Yet Draco did not linger there.

“This way,” he said, turning toward a smaller archway at the back of the hall. “The servants’ wing lies beyond — we’ll keep her there for the moment.”

They passed through a long passage lined with portraits whose painted eyes followed them in silence. The faces were severe, reserved, disinclined to spectacle; generations of men and women who had ruled without needing to shout. Hermione felt their regard not as judgment, but as appraisal — as though they were weighing her relevance rather than her worth.

They descended a short flight of stone steps. The air grew cooler, carrying the scent of soap and damp linen. Lamps burned low in iron brackets, and somewhere in the distance came the faint clatter of kitchen work winding down for the night. It struck her then that, for all the house’s size, she had not passed a single human servant — a detail she registered without yet understanding its significance.

Draco opened a narrow door and stepped aside for her to enter. The room beyond was plain but tidy — a servant’s chamber with a narrow window, a cot, and a small table. It resembled closely the quarters where Hermione herself had lived at the Dark Lord’s castle, except that this one possessed a small hearth; the lack of such fireplaces elsewhere explained why they had arrived in the main hall rather than directly here. The similarity unsettled her more than the differences. It suggested not imitation, but convergence — two forms of power arriving, by different paths, at the same practical arrangements.

“This will do,” the Earl said quietly. “We’ll make better arrangements once we decide what use to make of her.”

Hermione nodded, setting the jar carefully on the table. The faint rustle within reminded her that even a place of rest could feel like a cell, once one remembered who was inside.

“My lord, may I ask you a few questions?” she said, a faint frown betraying that something troubled her.

“Yes, of course — please do,” he replied readily.

“If they shut her in the jar every time she returned from a mission, how could they be certain she would return at all?”

“Well, that’s simple.” Draco smiled faintly. “They bound her by magic to certain places and certain routes. She was to gather information precisely where she was sent and to return at the appointed hour. Otherwise she faced the prospect of a most painful death.”

“That’s exactly what I assumed,” said Hermione, “and that’s precisely what we cannot do. We don’t know in advance where we shall need to send her, nor what route her mission will take. We must grant her freedom of movement — and that will only be possible if she knows that what awaits her on returning are decent quarters, not this.” She gestured toward the glass container on the table.

“Could you, my lord, use your influence to arrange her release?” she asked, meeting Draco’s eyes.

“Well,” he said with a slight shrug, “an official release — hardly. But keeping her out of the jar — easily enough, since she’s now in my charge.”

He paused for a moment before continuing. “However, not binding her would be risky. If she escapes, it might cost me my position — a little. For you, the consequences would likely be far more severe.”

“Oh, my lord, I understand that perfectly! But binding her will certainly doom the mission, and then those consequences for me will be assured, not merely risked. Besides, if she’s given a relatively comfortable life here, running away would be the stupidest thing she could do. Trying to hide from an experienced Auror trained to sense a person’s magical aura is pure madness. She must understand that.”

“As to that last point — I’m not entirely convinced,” Draco said with a small smile. “She never struck me as the brightest witch of her generation. But if you’re willing to take the risk, I’ll support it.”

“Oh, thank you, my lord!” Hermione said, her face brightening with relief.

Draco inclined his head and went on, “We’ll need to find her something to wear. She’s larger than you — I think my mother’s old garments may fit.”

With a wave of his wand, he summoned the house-elves and instructed them to bring suitable clothes. Within moments they returned with two modest dresses and several sets of undergarments neatly folded upon a tray.

“Well then — I suppose you can release her,” said Draco.

“Yes, my lord. And this may not prove the least challenging part,” Hermione murmured, taking the jar and the bundle of clothes before heading toward the bathing chamber.

It was narrow and long unused, its stone walls darkened by damp. A single lantern flickered weakly in an iron sconce, casting a wavering reflection across the basin half-filled with cold water. Dust clung to the corners of the floor, and the air smelled faintly of old soap and mildew.

Hermione set the bundle of clothes on a bench and placed the jar beside it. She was aware, with a sudden clarity, that this was the last moment in which Rita Skeeter remained an object rather than a person — an idea rather than a consequence. Once released, nothing that followed could be undone, softened, or reimagined as necessity. For a moment she stood still, watching the faint shimmer of movement within the glass. It was strange to think that the same creature had once been her prisoner — a year of tiny scratching sounds, of wings brushing against confinement. She had promised herself never to play gaoler again, and yet here she was, repeating the act in another house, under another name.

“Well,” she said quietly, “let’s hope you’ve learned as much as I have.”

She drew a deep breath and loosened the metal clasp. The lid came away with a soft click, and at once the air inside seemed to shimmer. There was a brief green flare and a low crack, like the splintering of ice — then Rita Skeeter stood before her, dishevelled and frantic, blinking in the half-light. Hermione did not step back, though every instinct urged her to; she held her ground as one holds it before an oncoming tide, refusing to give the moment more than it demanded. Rita struggled to cover her nudity, her blonde curls in wild disarray. The faint sheen of her beetle form still clung to her skin, as though she had not entirely shed it.

Hermione handed her the clothes. “Wash yourself first, and then you’ll need these,” she said evenly. “His Lordship wishes you to make yourself presentable. Then we’ll talk.”

Rita stared at her for a moment, then gave a short, incredulous laugh. “Granger,” she said hoarsely, “of all people…”

The name sounded different now — stripped of its old sneer, its practiced contempt — no longer an insult or a memory, but a position. Hermione neither accepted nor rejected it. She simply let it stand.

She met Rita’s gaze steadily. “Yes. Of all people.”

As the water in the bathing chamber was only cold, Rita’s ablutions did not take long. Within a few minutes she reappeared before Draco and Hermione, her hair still wet and the borrowed dress sitting somewhat awkwardly on her frame.

“My lord,” she said, attempting a deep curtsy toward Draco — but the result was rather clumsy. A long confinement in a jar, it seemed, had given her little opportunity to practise the forms of address proper to the nobility.

“Rise,” said the Earl, barely suppressing a smile.

“Rita, we need to discuss a few matters—” Hermione began.

“I’m not taking orders from you!” Skeeter spat. “You filthy Mudblood!”

Draco’s voice cut in at once, sharp and level, as though the interruption had been expected.

“Let me clarify the situation, Skeeter. You are a state prisoner. Your legal status is equivalent to that of a slave. Granger is a Freedwoman placed in my charge who intends to employ you. That makes her your mistress. You will kneel before her and seek her forgiveness. From this moment, you will address her as Mistress. Those are the terms under which you will remain in my protection.”

“What?!” Rita shrieked. “Kneel to her? This is against every rule. Mudbloods kneel to us — not the other way around.”

Draco did not bother to answer that. He stepped forward. The movement was unhurried, precise. He raised his wand until its tip hovered just short of her brow.

“Kneel,” he said.

Rita’s lips trembled. She shook her head once.

“No, my lord,” she said, her voice brittle but stubborn. “This is unlawful. You know it.”

“Crucio.”

The word was spoken softly — almost without inflection.

Skeeter’s body seized as if struck from within. She collapsed with a broken cry, her limbs folding beneath her as she hit the stone floor. Every muscle seemed to betray her at once: her back arched, her shoulders jerked violently, and her hands scraped at the ground as though searching for purchase where none existed. Breath tore from her in ragged gasps, too sharp to become a scream, her throat working uselessly around the pain.

For Hermione, the room constricted. Sound dulled, then sharpened painfully; the smell of damp linen and cold stone vanished, replaced by a remembered sensation — sudden, total, annihilating. For an instant, there was only pain recalled too vividly — and a voice she had once known too well, low and coaxing: you can make this stop, whelp…

Her fingers went numb. Her breath caught.

A sound escaped her — raw, broken, unrecognisable even to herself.

Draco turned at once.

The spell broke instantly.

Rita collapsed into stillness, then began to sob — not loudly, but in harsh, shuddering breaths that shook her whole frame. Her limbs trembled as though the command to move them no longer quite reached its mark.

“You will kneel and seek her forgiveness,” Draco said coolly. “Now.”

Rita tried. Her arms folded beneath her. She dragged herself forward in short, desperate motions until her forehead struck Hermione’s shoes, then lay there, shaking, unable to form a single word.

“Please,” Hermione managed hoarsely. “She can’t. Not now.”

For a moment, Draco said nothing. The only sound was Rita’s uneven breathing, too loud in the small room.

At last, he inclined his head.

“Very well.”

With a brief gesture of his wand, he summoned the house-elves.

“See that she is tended,” he said. “I want her fit by morning.”

The elves bowed and moved at once.

Draco turned back to Hermione.

“We are leaving.”

She followed him without looking back, aware only of the persistent trembling in her hands. The chill followed her the length of the corridor, a rhythmic shudder she could not suppress. In her chest, a strange pressure gathered — not surprise, not fear. What unsettled her was not that he had done it, but that she had not been ready for it.

When they reached the hall, Draco turned toward her, clearly intending to continue the conversation. Hermione lowered her gaze, fixing it deliberately on the stone floor.

“Are you all right?” he asked, a trace of surprise in his voice.

“It is nothing, my lord,” she replied evenly. “The air is cold. It will pass.”

“Look at me,” he said, dissatisfied.

Reluctantly, she obeyed.

“What is it?” he demanded. “Speak.”

The inner restraint that usually forced her to weigh every word flared too late; the sentence escaped before she could stop it.

“They say the one who casts the Cruciatus must truly enjoy the pain,” she said quietly. “Did you?”

Draco went very still.

He took a step toward her before he seemed to realise he had moved at all.

“Do not,” he said, his voice suddenly sharp, “speak to me as if you stand outside this.”

“Are you judging me, Granger?”

The tension she had been holding through clenched muscles and measured breath slipped at once, and with it the habit of caution that had governed her words.

“Judging you, my lord?” she said. “How could I possibly presume? I am in no position to pass judgment.”

“Oh, spare me,” Draco snapped. “You may present yourself as meek now, but I know exactly what you are.”

“And what is that, my lord?”

“A murderer, for a start. Have you ever even counted how many lives ended by your wand? I could have the numbers brought to you, if you like. Given time, Granger, you would have rivalled Bellatrix herself.”

“I have killed in open combat,” Hermione replied, her voice tight but controlled. “With my own life at risk. Does that weigh for nothing?”

“You executed Vincent.”

His voice rose on the name. He caught the flicker of shock in her expression and gave a short, mirthless laugh.

“Oh yes. I know. Your comrades were very forthcoming once they surrendered. I have read the protocols. Every word.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. For several seconds, neither of them spoke.

“At least,” Hermione said at last, her tone calm and edged with bitterness, “I have never tortured anyone. You will not find that in your records, my lord.”

“No,” Draco said, nodding once. “You did not.”

Then his gaze sharpened.

“You didn’t need to. Potter did it for you. Potter wielded Legilimency to a degree few ever reach — and he used it exactly as you required. He tore answers from minds while you stood beside him, directing him toward what mattered. Wasn’t that how it worked, Granger?”

She did not answer.

“No one remained whole after Potter was finished with them,” Draco went on, his voice now low and even. “Some never recovered at all. If you like, I can arrange for you to meet their families. You could explain to them how necessary it all was.”

It occurred to her then that explanations for why they had to suffer were a privilege of the victorious, not the defeated — and she remained silent.

Draco did not speak either.

He turned away from her instead, taking a few sharp steps before stopping near the tall windows, his back rigid, his hands clenched briefly at his sides before he forced them still. The anger had nowhere to go. It lingered in the air, unresolved.

Hermione remained where she was. The echo of her own words still rang in her ears, sharp and ill-judged. The clarity she had felt moments earlier was already fading, replaced by something colder, more familiar.

She had forgotten herself.

Worse — she had forgotten him.

He held her fate in his hands. He had chosen restraint once. There was no reason to assume he would do so again. Her shoulders tensed, bracing instinctively for what usually followed such silences.

A voice rose in her mind, soft and knowing, as if spoken at her shoulder.

Someone has been a very foolish girl today…

Hermione lowered her gaze and waited.

At last, Draco moved. He crossed the space between them and sat down heavily in one of the high-backed chairs, his expression grim, his posture closed. He still did not look at her.

Nothing happened.

Seconds passed. Then more.

The silence stretched, expectant — not empty.

Hermione’s thoughts raced, seeking procedure, correction, mitigation. Perhaps this was the moment. Perhaps what he wanted was acknowledgement. Submission. An apology. A gesture that would allow him to reassert control without escalating further.

Her breath caught.

Before she could reconsider, she stepped forward.

She took two measured steps toward him and began to lower herself, her knees bending, her hands already drawing together —

“Don’t, Granger.”

The word was sharp enough to stop her mid-motion. Draco lifted one hand, palm out, a clear, abrupt gesture.

“It’s not what I need from you.”

Hermione straightened at once.

Now she truly did not know what to do.

She stood before him, awkwardly upright, her hands hovering uncertainly at her sides. She did not know where to look — whether to lower her gaze in deference or meet his eyes in search of instruction. The familiar rules no longer applied.

Draco exhaled sharply.

“Don’t stand there like a statue,” he said. “Take a chair.”

The nearest chairs stood some distance away, set along the wall of the vast hall. Hermione hesitated only a moment, then walked to one of them. She grasped its back, lifted it with care, and carried it across the stone floor. She placed it opposite him, leaving a narrow distance between them, and sat down on the very edge, her back straight, her feet planted firmly on the floor.

Silence fell again.

This time, it was different.

Hermione spoke before asking permission.

“About Crabbe,” she said quietly. “Vincent.”

Draco inclined his head a fraction, neither assent nor refusal.

“He was tried,” she continued. “By a tribunal. Found guilty. Sentenced to death.” She paused. “After Harry interrogated him, he was… helpless. I took responsibility for carrying out the sentence myself. I did not want to place that burden on anyone else.”

Draco regarded her steadily.

“I know,” he said at last. “And for what it’s worth — it was a decision someone had to make.”

She nodded once. She did not apologise.

After a moment, she went on.

“My lord, I realise something now that I do not think I understood before. You were right.” Her voice was steady, but unguarded. “I do not stand outside this. Still less above it.”

She stopped, as if testing the truth of the words, then continued.

“I see now that there is no principle I would not break, no line I would not cross, if I were convinced that a sufficiently greater good would be achieved by doing so — and that terrifies me less than it should. Only those who have never borne responsibility for fateful decisions can afford to object to that on purely moral grounds. None of us can.”

Draco listened without interruption.

After a pause, Hermione added, more slowly, “The real question, then, is not whether we employ questionable means — but whether the ends we pursue truly justify them. Whether the same result could be achieved without resorting to the most radical measures first. Whether the damage we choose to inflict is the least among the options available.”

Draco’s expression tightened.

“Do you suggest I should have tried something less radical?” he asked. “Prolonged her suffering? Applied pressure gradually?”

“Of course not,” Hermione said at once. “Not if you put it that way.”

“In my experience,” Draco said, his voice even, “if you intend to break someone’s will, you do it swiftly and completely. Nothing good comes from drawing it out.”

He paused.

“About the Cruciatus,” he added slowly. “You don’t need to enjoy it. You need discipline.”

Hermione nodded, once.

“Skeeter cannot be permitted to defy you,” he went on. “That much is clear. She takes orders from you. Whether or not you choose to acknowledge it, she is — for all practical purposes — your responsibility. If she refuses to obey, she must be corrected. One way or another. You cannot excuse insubordination simply because you do not feel inclined to punish it.”

Hermione remained silent, realising all at once that he was doing precisely what he had just warned her against — tolerating defiance because he did not wish to punish it.

Draco rose from his chair.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said, “you will explain her assignment and dispatch her accordingly. Since she is here, you will remain at Winterbourne tonight. A room will be prepared for you.”

Hermione rose at once and made the proper curtsey.

“Yes, my lord.”

Draco inclined his head — brief, correct.

“Good night, Mistress Granger.”

He turned away and left her standing there.

The matter, it seemed, was settled.

Chapter Text

Morning had already entered Winterbourne by the time Hermione descended the narrow stair from the second floor — not the bright, declarative morning of summer, but the pale, diffused light of early hours filtered through tall windows and old glass, laying itself gently across stone and dark wood, as though unwilling to disturb what the night had left behind.

She entered the Hall expecting, not quite consciously, to find it empty.

Draco Malfoy was already there.

He stood near the long table, one hand resting idly against its edge, dressed not in the formal black and silver of his office but in a long, loose robe of dark fabric — silk, Hermione thought, or something equally soft and yielding — unstructured and plainly domestic, its sleeves falling open at the wrists. His feet were bare, or nearly so — sandalled, at most — the pale stone cool beneath them, as though he had come down early and without ceremony, before the house had fully woken into its public self; and for a fleeting moment, absurd and unwelcome, the thought crossed her mind that she had seen another wizard stand so, unadorned and unhurried, as though authority itself required no uniform. There was nothing careless about him, but there was also nothing performed; the authority he carried seemed, in this hour, unadorned and habitual, as though it required no visible reinforcement.

Hermione halted for a fraction of a second — not enough to be discourteous, but enough to register the incongruity.

She stepped forward and curtsied.

“My lord,” she said, and though the words themselves were correct, the smallest note of surprise escaped her despite herself, light but unmistakable, as if she had addressed a man she had not quite expected to meet so early, or in such a guise.

Draco looked up at her then, his expression unreadable, and inclined his head in return.

“Good morning,” he replied, with the same evenness he might have used in court or council, as though neither the hour nor his attire altered the structure of the exchange.

“Please,” he said, with a small, habitual motion of the hand.

Hermione straightened. She was wearing the same dress she wore for everything now — plain, dark, properly cut, clean but softened by repeated use — a garment that belonged neither to ceremony nor to rest, but served equally for both, as though she herself occupied a similar interval. She became suddenly, acutely aware of it, and of the fact that, between them, he was the one dressed for a private morning, while she remained clothed for duty.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

The Hall, vast and orderly, seemed to hold its breath with them.

“Have you had your breakfast, Granger?” Draco inquired, his tone indifferent.

“Yes, my lord,” Hermione replied. “The elves brought food to my room.”

She hesitated for the briefest moment, then added, “Thank you.”

The Earl inclined his head slightly and continued.

“Skeeter should be fit for use by now. If you know what you require of her, you may send her on a task at once.”

“Tracing the sources of food and other supplies,” Hermione replied. “It is precisely the sort of work suited to an investigator.”

“Indeed,” Draco said. “I know the merchants who provision this house — and those who supply my parents’ estate in Wiltshire — but I have never concerned myself with where their goods originate.”

“They would not have told you,” Hermione said, with quiet certainty. “I tried more than once during the war. It was always treated as their most closely guarded secret.”

“Very well,” the Earl said. “My presence will not be required. I trust you can manage alone.”

He looked toward the window, just long enough for the words to settle.

“If she disobeys you, she disobeys me. That must be understood.”

“Yes, my lord,” Hermione said at once. Then, after a moment, “Since she is already here, it would be most efficient to begin with your own suppliers — discreetly, of course. If you would be willing to provide their names.”

“I will instruct the elves to assist her,” Draco replied. “They know considerably more about such matters than I ever have.”

With the matter settled, Hermione turned to leave.

“My lord,” she said, sinking into a curtsey.

The Earl inclined his head in response.

She straightened, took a measured step backward — then another — before turning and moving away, her pace unhurried, her posture precise, as she passed out of the Hall and into the long corridor leading toward the servants’ wing. The stone there was older, the air cooler, the light thinner; this part of the house had never been meant for ceremony.

She stopped before the door she had been shown earlier.

For a heartbeat, she hesitated.

Hermione had not yet learned how one summoned elves here. She glanced about, then lowered her voice, experimentally.

“Hey,” she whispered.

Nothing happened.

She snapped her fingers.

There was a soft pop at her elbow.

“Yes, Mistress?” said the elf, appearing with its head already bowed.

Hermione suppressed a start.

“Please,” she said, instinctively, as she always had, “tell Mistress Skeeter that I’ve come to speak with her.”

The elf blinked once, large eyes flicking up and down Hermione’s figure, as though committing the request — and its phrasing — carefully to memory.

“Yes, Mistress.”

It vanished.

The corridor fell silent again.

After perhaps a minute — no more — the elf reappeared in precisely the same place.

“Mistress Skeeter is ready, Mistress,” it said.

Hermione nodded.

“Thank you.”

She raised her hand and knocked.

At her touch, the door opened.

She had not yet fully crossed the threshold when Rita Skeeter moved.

The motion was abrupt, misjudged — too early. Rita stepped forward and dropped to her knees at once, the movement sharp and practised, but imperfectly timed; she caught herself on the way down, corrected the angle, straightened her back too quickly, as though afraid of being found wrong even in submission.

It was not painful.

It was worse than that.

“Rita,” Hermione said at once, more sharply than she had intended. “No. Enough.”

Rita froze.

For a heartbeat she remained kneeling, uncertain, eyes fixed somewhere near Hermione’s shoes, as though awaiting correction.

Hermione crossed the last step into the room.

“Stand,” she said, and then, catching herself, added, “Please.”

Rita rose immediately.

Up close, Hermione could see the strain more clearly: the rigid shoulders, the careful stillness, the way Rita’s gaze flickered, searching for instruction where none had yet been given.

Hermione gestured toward the small table and the two chairs beside it.

“Please, sit, Rita,” she said. “We need to discuss some important matters.”

Rita hesitated again — and this time the hesitation was unmistakably confused.

Hermione realised, a fraction too late, what she had done: she was still standing.

“Oh — sorry,” she said, and took the nearest chair, sitting down with a decisiveness that left no room for correction. “Be seated, Rita. Please.”

Only then did Rita comply, lowering herself carefully into the chair opposite, as though it might still prove the wrong one.

For an instant, neither of them spoke.

Hermione folded her hands on the table, once, deliberately.

“All right,” Hermione said. “Let us begin.”

“I want us to speak calmly,” she continued. “The truth is, we have both wronged one another — grievously. But whatever the past may have been, it has already exacted its price. What matters now is that we are both still here.” She lowered her eyes, then added, more coolly, “That gives us an opportunity to proceed differently.”

She outlined, without embellishment, what Rita’s life might look like beyond confinement: no jar, no isolation, a room of her own, freedom of movement within limits — and, if she proved useful, a degree of comfort that few in her position could now expect. She spoke just as plainly of the alternative. Escape, she said, would be folly: her movements would be observed, the Aurors experienced, the consequences predictable. There was no need to threaten; the arithmetic spoke for itself.

As for the future, Hermione was careful. She did not promise what she could not guarantee. She spoke instead of possibility — of the chances that might open if the task succeeded, of the value of demonstrated usefulness in a world increasingly governed by necessity rather than sentiment.

Rita listened without interruption, answering only occasionally, and always softly.

“Yes, Mistress.”

Then Hermione turned to the assignment itself.

She described it in measured terms: the tracing of supply routes by which food and other essential goods entered the wizarding economy. Goods that, by all appearances, could not be produced entirely within it. If food was not drawn from the Muggle world, then where did it originate? Magical farmland was spoken of in theory, but no one had ever seen it; no wizard farmer had ever been met. And if food could indeed be created by magic alone, ex nihilo, then the silence surrounding such knowledge was itself significant.

Whatever the answers proved to be, Hermione said, they were of direct importance to the Crown.

As she spoke, Rita’s posture changed almost imperceptibly. The fear remained — but beneath it, something else stirred. The old instinct, long dormant but not dead. The scent of a story.

“May I ask a question, Mistress?” Rita said at last.

“Yes,” Hermione replied. “Go on.”

“Will I be permitted to publish any of the findings?” Rita asked — and then, quickly, “Only what you approve, of course.”

The question caught Hermione unprepared.

“That decision is not mine to make,” she said slowly. “But I will raise the matter with His Lordship.” She considered it briefly, then added, “Presenting yourself as a journalist would, in any case, serve as an effective cover.”

What would serve just as well, Hermione reflected, was the fact that Rita would now have her own interest in the success of the mission.

“The elves have been instructed to provide you with all the information they possess,” she said, bringing the conversation to a close. “Once you are done with them, you may begin. You will have freedom of movement as required.”

She rose from her chair.

Rita stood at once as well, too quickly — the old reflex asserting itself again.

“Please,” Hermione said, lifting her hands, palms outward. “There’s no need.” She checked herself, then added, more evenly, “I’m leaving.”

And with that, she turned and went out.

When Hermione returned to the Hall, she found the Earl seated in a deep armchair, his attention apparently absorbed elsewhere. With small, precise movements of his wand, he was assembling in the air before him a lattice of translucent, multicoloured crystalline forms. They shifted and reconfigured at his touch, folding into one another with quiet elegance, like the internal patterns of a vast kaleidoscope suspended in midair.

“Did everything proceed as you expected?” Draco asked, without looking up.

“Yes, my lord,” Hermione replied. “She accepted the conditions.”

She hesitated, then continued.

“She made one request. She asked for permission to publish some of her findings — only such parts as pass inspection, of course.”

Draco adjusted the angle of the structure. The colours flared briefly, then settled.

“And if she publishes something she should not?” he asked. “Out of carelessness, or vanity, or simple stupidity. Why take that risk?”

“Because then,” Hermione said evenly, “she will be working not only from fear — of punishment, or of losing what she has been given — but also from her own ambition. She will have something to gain by succeeding.”

The crystalline figure dissolved at once, vanishing without a sound.

Draco looked at her then.

“Fair,” he said after a moment. “I’ll see what can be arranged.”

Silence followed — not an uncomfortable one, but long enough to be felt, as though he were considering whether to leave the matter there.

“You have had to command people before,” he said at last. “But not in this way.” His tone was calm, almost conversational. “You have never owned someone. Skeeter is, for all practical purposes, your slave.”

He let the word stand.

“So tell me,” he went on, “how did it feel — for a change — to have another person so entirely in your power? To be responsible for their obedience?”

Hermione did not answer at once.

She stood very still, as though measuring the question the way one measures a delicate instrument — turning it carefully, testing its weight, its balance, its tolerances.

“At the risk of disappointing you, my lord,” she said finally, “I cannot offer a simple answer.”

She held still.

“It was a complex set of emotions,” she said at last. “Different. That much I can say with certainty.”

Draco regarded her for a few moments, as though weighing not only her answer, but the manner in which it had been given.

“Take a chair,” he said at last. “We have several matters to discuss.”

She fetched one, placed it opposite him, and sat.

“An owl arrived while you were away,” he continued. “As expected, the Regents now demand more comprehensive — and more precise — information on Muggle capabilities. Tactical as well as strategic.” He stopped. “Do you have any thoughts on how best to approach this?”

“The information can only be accessed through Muggle networks,” Hermione replied. “That cannot be done from here. We would need to travel to a Muggle location.”

“I see.” Draco inclined his head slightly. “Do you have a particular place in mind?”

“The town to which I used to slip away from Hogwarts,” she said after a brief hesitation. “Fort William. If nothing has changed too radically over the past years, it should still be possible to connect there.”

“Then we must prepare for the journey,” the Earl said. “First and foremost, we will need Muggle clothing, if we are to move about a Muggle town without drawing attention. It may prove… inconvenient, given the state of things after the war. Still, my house-elves should be able to manage it.”

He glanced at her.

“Yes, my lord,” Hermione said. “That seems a sound plan.”

Draco brought his hands together once.

The air filled with a rapid succession of soft pops, like bursting bubbles, and five or six elves appeared before him. He gave a few concise instructions; they vanished at once.

“May I ask a question, my lord?” Hermione said, continuing after he nodded.

“How are the elves able to procure Muggle clothing — or anything else not already in the house?”

“Frankly,” he replied, with the hint of a grin, “I have no idea. But they are quite capable of it. I assume they communicate with elves in other households, and summon what is needed from elsewhere.”

And wizards send messages by owl, Hermione noted inwardly. The abilities of house-elves may prove a promising subject of study.

“It will take some time,” Draco added, thoughtfully. “Until evening, most likely. I doubt we will be able to leave before tomorrow morning.”

“Shall I retire to my room, then, my lord?” Hermione asked.

“You may,” he said, “if boredom does not deter you. But you needn’t. I could grant you access to the library. It is smaller than the one at Black Manor, but still respectable.”

“If I begin reading now,” Hermione said, with a faint, embarrassed smile, “I may find it difficult to stop. I think I would rather not start.”

“Fair enough,” Draco replied. He reconsidered, then added, “In that case, we can simply talk. You may ask whatever questions you wish.”

Hermione let her gaze wander through the vastness of the Hall. Heavy curtains veiled the windows, so that the daylight entered only grudgingly, thinned to a dull pallor. The glow of countless candles lingered among the darkened beams like amber trapped in wood, and the banners stirred faintly overhead, though no breath of air touched them. Along the walls she now noticed mirrors — tall and narrow, set deep into the oak panelling between the windows. Their surfaces did not quite reflect. They held the light instead, as though reluctant to release it, offering not her image but a pale, uncertain shimmer, as if another chamber lay just beyond.

For an instant, she had the uneasy impression that the Manor was watching — remembering — every face that had ever crossed its threshold.

“Do you live here alone, my lord?” she asked at last.

Draco glanced at her — not with suspicion, but with mild surprise, as though the question had simply not occurred to him as one worth asking.

“For the moment,” he replied. “Yes.”

After a brief silence, he went on.

“My marriage is scheduled in a couple of months. After that, the house will no longer be mine alone.”

“Astoria Greengrass,” he added, catching her look. “Viscountess of Ashcombe. The younger daughter of the Marquis of Northumbria.”

“Please accept my congratulations, my lord,” Hermione said at once.

He inclined his head.

“Winterbourne was prepared for a household,” he added, almost idly. “It has simply been underused.”

Hermione looked about the Hall again — and this time, saw it differently.

“That explains the emptiness,” she said.

The word struck her more sharply than she had intended. In all the time she had spent within noble houses during her years of servitude — accompanying Bellatrix from one estate to another — she had never known such stillness. There had always been movement: human figures hurrying to anticipate a master’s need, heads bowed, voices hushed.

“Where are your slaves?” she asked before she could stop herself. “I mean — the Muggle-born, my lord.”

Draco did not react at once. Then he said simply, “I have none.”

She stared.

“They are of little use,” he continued, calmly. “Except, perhaps, for certain… diversions. I have no taste for that. My parents keep none either.” He glanced at her. “I take it this surprises you.”

“I had thought,” Hermione said slowly, “that keeping human slaves had become — a matter of prestige. That noble families displayed them to one another.”

“Not an unreasonable conclusion,” Draco replied. “But the prestige of my House does not require such demonstrations.”

“But your father—” Hermione began, then faltered. “Forgive me, my lord. I’m forgetting myself.”

“I know what you mean,” he said, with something like a weary half-smile. “It’s a role. One he learned to play very well — the severity, the rhetoric, the uncompromising devotion to purity. He even taught me the performance.” His voice cooled. “At home, it is unnecessary. Authority there does not depend on fear.”

He studied her face for a breath.

“And as for you,” he went on, “he does not hate you as much as you imagine. He believes something was taken from us — knowledge, inheritance, the ordering of magic itself. He wants it returned. That, in his mind, is what the war was for.”

“But I was born with magic!” Hermione burst out. “I took nothing from anyone.”

“You were born with power,” Draco said quietly. “Not with knowledge. That was never meant to be shared.”

They remained where they were, the weight of the words settling between them. For a long moment he said nothing — and then something in his expression shifted, as though he had reached a decision.

“There is something I want you to see,” he said. “Come. Will you follow me?”

Draco rose and turned away without waiting for her reply. The hem of his robe stirred the air as he moved, and Hermione followed.

The corridor beyond was narrow and silent. Their footsteps awakened a faint, delayed echo, as though the stone retained the memory of older voices and released it reluctantly, a breath at a time. Once or twice Draco lifted his hand toward doors that opened soundlessly before them — oak, then iron, then glass — each passage colder, dimmer, more withdrawn from the ordinary life of the Manor than the last.

The air itself seemed to thin.

At the end of a long gallery they reached a small archway veiled in pale, unsteady light. The scent here was unfamiliar — sharp and clean, like frost laid upon metal. Hermione hesitated at the threshold without quite knowing why.

“Where are we?” she whispered.

“The heart of the Manor,” Draco replied. “Only the heir is meant to come here.” He waited for a breath, then added, almost lightly, “But rules of that kind were written when the world was smaller. I doubt the Domina will object.”

They stepped inside.

The chamber was circular, open to the sky beneath a dome of enchanted crystal veined with faint, shifting lines. A pale light filtered through it — cold, delicate, and curiously intimate — a light that seemed not merely to fall, but to remember. It carried the faint suggestion of snow, though no winter had touched this place.

At the centre stood a figure.

Neither goddess nor woman, but something suspended between the two, she was shaped from translucent glass that caught the light and held it within itself, as though illumination were not reflected but contained. The face was smooth, almost unfinished — not blank, but expectant, as if awaiting recognition rather than worship.

At the base of the pedestal, carved into pale stone, ran an inscription:

DOMINA VITREA, CUSTOS LUMINIS.

The letters glimmered faintly, lit from within. For an instant, Hermione had the disquieting impression that the light in them trembled in response to her gaze.

Her throat tightened.

The silence in the chamber was deeper than absence; it did not merely surround them — it listened.

“This,” Draco said quietly, “is what my father, and his fathers before him, guarded. The shrine of our House.” He inclined his head toward the figure. “Domina Vitrea. The Lady who watches.”

He stepped forward, and for a heartbeat the habitual assurance of his bearing fell away. What remained was not arrogance, but something closer to reverence — the posture of a pilgrim rather than a lord.

Before the statue, Draco sank to both knees.

The movement was sudden, but not impulsive. As though guided by memory rather than choice, he pressed his palms together and raised them slightly toward the glass figure. When he spoke, his voice was low and measured, carrying through the stillness like a fragment of forgotten liturgy.

“Domina Vitrea, ecce filius tuus vocat te.”

The words echoed softly beneath the dome. The statue remained silent; the light within it stirred, but did not move.

“Should I kneel, my lord?” Hermione asked, her voice unsteady. He had dropped so abruptly that she stood frozen, uncertain what the gesture required of her.

“No,” he said, without looking up. “Here I kneel. And you do not.”

He remained kneeling.

Hermione stood at the edge of the chamber, her gaze fixed upon the glass figure — and began, without quite realising it, to feel something she could not yet name.

The light within the statue seemed unchanged — pale, steady, without flicker — yet the air around it grew subtly dense, as though it had thickened by a degree too small to measure. Hermione became aware of it not through sight, but through pressure: a faint resistance against breath, against thought itself. The candles burned as before, and yet the space between them felt charged, taut, like a string drawn almost to the point of sound.

Then the air trembled.

Not audibly — there was no sound she could hear — but with a vibration that passed through it, as though something vast had shifted far away and the movement had reached her only as an echo, delayed by centuries. It was as if the chamber had briefly opened into a deeper volume of time, and the residue of innumerable voices — not speaking, not addressing her — stirred within it, layered and indistinct, like surf heard through stone.

She did not understand the words. She was not certain there were words.

And then came the sensation of being seen.

Not from before her, nor from behind, nor from above or below — not from any direction her body could turn toward. It was a gaze without distance, without angle, one that did not arrive at her but seemed to emerge within her, passing through surface and depth alike, indifferent to the boundary between skin and thought.

For an instant — no longer — she had the disquieting impression that nothing in her was opaque: that her memories, her fears, even the quiet structures of her mind lay exposed, not examined, but simply present, as though seen from a place where inside and outside were meaningless distinctions.

The sensation did not judge.

It did not welcome.

It merely registered.

Hermione’s heart began to race. She drew a shallow breath, uncertain whether she was imagining the pressure, the resonance, the impossible intimacy of the moment — yet the feeling did not fade. It lingered, steady and impersonal, until Draco shifted beside her, and the tension in the air loosened at once, like a held breath finally released.

Draco rose at last, slowly, as though reluctant to break the posture, and turned toward her.

“This is the Patron of our lineage,” he said. “From the days before Merlin was born. Every great House had one.” His voice was calm again, measured, returning to familiar ground. “They withdrew from this world when it grew too narrow for their presence, but they left us behind — as custodians of magic. When our ancestors gave that magic away, they betrayed that trust. The Patrons fell silent.” He paused. “Perhaps they will speak again now. For the first time in centuries, the tide has turned.”

He stopped, studying her more closely.

“What is it, Granger?” he asked. “You’re shaking.”

Hermione drew a breath that did not quite steady her.

“I—” She hesitated. “I think I felt something. Her presence. Or… something like it.”

For a moment he only looked at her. Then he shook his head, once.

“No,” he said, not unkindly. “You’re overtired. Or chilled. This place unsettles people who aren’t accustomed to it.” His tone softened into certainty. “If anything were to be felt here, I would feel it first.”

He turned away from the statue.

“We should go,” he added quietly. “Prolonged presence serves no purpose — and reverence is not improved by lingering.”

He did not look back.

“Are you all right?” Draco asked as they stepped back through the shimmering threshold into the dimmer corridor beyond.

“Yes, my lord,” Hermione replied quickly. “Thank you.”

They walked on in silence for a few paces. Then she spoke again.

“You said that every great House has a Patron,” she said. “Yet Her Grace has never mentioned the Patron of the House of Black. I found that… curious.”

Draco gave a short, almost dismissive breath.

“My aunt is not a believer,” he said. “I doubt she has set foot in the shrine since the day she took possession of Black Manor.”

“But the Manor has one,” Hermione persisted. “A shrine. And a Patron.”

He glanced at her, measuring the implication.

“Yes,” he said. “It does.”

“What is her name?”

“It is not her,” Draco corrected calmly. “It is him.”

He reconsidered, as though weighing how much to say.

“Mara d’Avadon,” he said at last. “The Lord of Destruction. The name comes from a language no one speaks now — perhaps no one has for millennia. Some claim it was spoken when the first men still walked the earth.”

He continued more quietly.

“The Black family is very old. Older than most. Older than is comfortable to remember.”

Mara d’Avadon, Hermione repeated inwardly. The Lord of Destruction.

Even the sound of it carried a chill — sharp, terminal, unyielding. It echoed, uncomfortably, the cadence of the killing curse itself. She found herself wondering what kind of legacy such a Patron might leave to those who claimed to guard magic in his name.

The thought made her shudder.

She did not try to imagine what she might feel in that shrine.

“So you see, Hermione,” said the Earl, “no matter how skilled you are — how powerful, how clever — it can never truly be yours. You may wield it only through us, if we choose to lend it, because we wish you to refine it. But it remains ours. It is like giving gold to a goblin: he may handle it better than we ever could, but the ownership is still ours. The same with magic. It must belong to us — not to the nouveaux mages.”

“Nouveaux mages?” she asked, astonished. “Is that what you call my kind?”

“That was the fashionable term once,” he replied. “Hardly anyone uses it today.”

“A pity,” Hermione said. “I find it rather elegant — far preferable to mudbloods.”

“Indeed.” Draco’s mouth curved in a faint smile. “What was meant as an insult now sounds almost like praise.”

A silence followed.

“Do you understand our cause better now?” the Earl asked, studying her face.

“You’ve stunned me, my lord,” she said softly. “I need time to sort it out.”

It had to be a myth — yet who was she to say that all myths were lies? Muggles dismissed witches as superstition, and they had been wrong for a thousand years. Draco claimed the ethereal presence in the shrine was meant for him alone, but Hermione could swear that what she had experienced there felt real — too real to be explained away by the cold air alone. Was Domina Vitrea truly present? Was she one of those ancient powers the old families whispered about — beings who had once walked among mortals, before the world grew too small even for them?

And if such visitations were real… had they indeed bestowed fragments of their dominion upon a few chosen lineages, leaving every other soul outside the circle of miracle? Where did that leave her — Hermione, born millennia too late, born outside every sanctified genealogy, yet born with magic all the same? What was she, then? A mistake? A trespasser? A thief of power she had no right to claim?

She had bowed to the victors because survival demanded it; she had submitted because there had been no other path. But must she now believe that her chains reflected not merely conquest, but some older, deeper justice, inscribed into the very order of the world? Must she praise her misery as fate, and call it righteous because the gods had decreed it so?

What gods?

She had been raised an atheist, and had always thought that an advantage. But if what she had felt in the shrine was real, then perhaps disbelief, too, had its limits.

The reflection chilled her more than the shrine’s cold marble.

“I understand,” Draco said at last. “But still—” He hesitated, then continued more quietly. “Even if your opinion is not yet fully formed. I would like to hear it. Whatever you have to say… Hermione.”

She looked up at him.

He was not seeking confirmation, nor the language of submission. What he wanted — though he might not have admitted it even to himself — was resolution. An answer to the doubt he could not quite silence.

She drew a slow breath, then another, arranging her thoughts with care.

“My lord,” she said, “I can accept that your cause may rest on foundations far deeper than I once believed.

“That does not mean I approve of it. No one can be expected to approve of their own enslavement. But approval is irrelevant. The rights of conquerors do not — and never have — depended on the consent of the vanquished. You won the war. What you claim as yours is yours, so long as you can defend it with sufficient force.

“The real question is whether, by guarding magic from those who were not born into the ancient families, you make yourselves stronger — or weaker.

“Power grows when magic grows. And magic grows when many practise it, test it, refine it, and exchange their experience. When few practise it, magic contracts. Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Helga Hufflepuff understood this. Salazar Slytherin did not.

“I believe all four founders knew of the Patrons, and sought to honour their covenants. But three of them may have understood those covenants differently than the fourth. What if the will of the Patrons was not only to preserve magic — but to increase it?

“You place gold in a goblin’s vault, sealed and guarded, and its value does not grow. It may even diminish. Muggles invest their wealth. It creates risk — but over time, it multiplies.

“Today, when your enemies gather their strength and devise means to oppose you, the question is this: do you still choose to hide the source of your power from those you deem unworthy — even if granting them access would make you stronger than your adversaries?

“That is the question that matters, my lord.”

Draco listened without interruption, his attention fixed on her. He did not pace, nor did he reach for his wand or the crystal constructs he had abandoned earlier. He simply listened.

When Hermione finished, he said only, “I see.”

Then he fell silent.

The pause stretched — long enough that it ceased to feel deliberate and became instead a space in which thought was visibly at work. Hermione waited, motionless, until at last the stillness grew heavy enough that she dared to break it.

“My lord,” she said carefully, “may I retire to my room? It is nearly evening, and tomorrow will be a long day.”

He did not answer at once. When he did, his tone was even.

“If reading does not appeal to you,” he said, “then yes. Of course.”

She inclined into a curtsey.

“My lord.”

“You have given me much to consider, Mistress Granger,” Draco said as she straightened. He inclined his head in return, precisely, as etiquette required. “I will need time.”

She accepted the words without reply, turned, and withdrew — leaving him alone with them.

Chapter Text

Hermione entered the hall as though stepping into a space held apart from the rest of the castle.

The morning had arrived, but it had not yet claimed the room.

Draco appeared a few minutes later.

They observed the ritual without deviation: the curtsey; the titles; the exchange of words that fixed each of them precisely where they belonged.

“The food here is excellent, my lord,” Hermione said once silence had settled between them. “Please accept my gratitude and my admiration.”

The Earl inclined his head, visibly pleased.

“My elves are among the finest,” he replied. “Their preparations should be complete by now.”

He did not move.

“But before we depart,” he continued, “there is a matter we must settle.”

Draco took a chair and, with a slight gesture, motioned Hermione to sit opposite him.

“You see… Mistress Granger,” said the Earl slowly, “my instructions in such a case require that I use spells to bind you to specific places, routes, and times. Any deviation would result in… a painful experience.”

“I understand, my lord,” she answered with a sigh. “It shouldn’t be a problem. We only need to visit a few very specific places that I remember well, and I can plan the time precisely.”

“If nothing has changed indeed during these years, as you just said…” he continued, his tone thoughtful, each word carefully weighed. “On the other hand, I am inclined to use this journey as an opportunity to study Muggle life more closely. That would require a certain freedom of movement — for me, of course — but I shall need a guide.”

Hermione’s lips parted, but she said nothing.

“The reasons against running — the ones you explained yesterday to Skeeter — apply to you as well,” he continued.

“Besides, I know at least one example when you could have run, but didn’t. I mean — when I fell wounded at your feet from the Floo grate in Black Manor and immediately lost consciousness. I must say, the memory has troubled me all these years.

“A captive girl — a slave — tends to a wounded enemy: the man she might have met and killed in battle, or who might have killed her two years earlier. And she uses his wand to heal his wounds, instead of taking that same wand, and the Floo powder from his pockets, and escaping — leaving him to die on the floor. The thought that her moral code could compel her to act that way… it sickened me. It was unbearable to think she might be not only intellectually but also morally superior.

“But yesterday I began to wonder whether it had been cold calculation all along. Was it, Granger?”

“It was, my lord,” she said quietly. “I was calculating. You needn’t feel you owe me anything.”

“Yes… except for the fact that I’m still breathing,” Draco murmured. “But that’s beside the point. The point is — if it had been your moral code, I’d better not create opportunities for you to escape, because today I’m not dying. But if it was calculation, then you must also see that your situation now is even less favourable for an attempt. You have more to lose, and less to gain. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I don’t know what to say, my lord,” she replied after a silence. “I don’t think you could rely on my words in this situation, whatever they were.”

“Indeed.” The Earl nodded. “Which is why I’ve decided not to bind you for the journey.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Hermione exclaimed, her voice bright with a warmth she failed to conceal. “Thank you — indeed.”

“Well, this is settled,” said Draco, rising from his chair with a note of satisfaction in his voice. Hermione stood at once.

He turned then to summon the house-elves.

They arrived immediately, bringing with them several sets of Muggle clothes.

“Oh…” Draco murmured, the delight in his voice unmistakable. “Trousers, shirts, and sweaters in every set… coats all cut to the same length… and no visible distinction between male and female dress? Are we meant to choose only by size?”

“Women’s clothes tend to use brighter colours,” Hermione replied with a small smile. “And the shoes differ as well, my lord.”

“Very well — then you may choose for both of us,” the Earl decided. “Once we have changed, we shall meet before the mirror—” He stopped abruptly, frowning as he opened a flat leather object and examined its contents. “What is this?”

“That is a Muggle wallet, my lord,” Hermione said. “And inside it — Muggle money. We will need it.”

“Papers?” Draco repeated, incredulous. “They use papers as currency?”

“Yes, my lord,” she answered gently. “I will explain later.”

He closed the wallet with a resigned gesture. “Then let us prepare.”

“Mistress!” one of the elves called just as Hermione was about to step away with her bundle of clothes. “It was written that Muggle women use this—” he said, holding up a small cosmetic bag in his tiny hands.

A faint flush rose to the girl’s cheeks as she took it. She had not touched cosmetics since the day she left Black Manor — not once, not when she no longer had to look pleasing by command. It was not merely freedom that made her avoid such things, she realised; it was safety. Since the war ended, even her own beauty felt like a weapon — and never one she could claim as hers.

The elves vanished at Draco’s command, leaving the corridor quiet. Hermione stepped into the small dressing chamber, changed quickly, and returned to the appointed spot.

Draco was already waiting before the tall mirror, studying his reflection with a mixture of curiosity and faint disdain. The Muggle coat hung awkwardly on his shoulders, as if resisting the indignity of its unfamiliar cut.

He turned at the sound of her footsteps.

For a heartbeat Hermione saw herself only through his eyes: hair loose around her face, the plain dark coat falling in straight lines, no badge of service — just a young woman in Muggle clothes, her features unexpectedly clear and striking in their simplicity.

She froze.

Something in the mirror did not belong to her past, nor to her present.

Draco’s brows lifted, just slightly. Not admiration — that was forbidden by law and instinct — but a moment of disorientation, as if he had expected a servant and found a stranger.

“It will do,” he said at last, voice steady but a shade quieter than before.

Hermione inclined her head. “As you say, my lord.”

Draco let the silence stretch for a moment, his gaze still fixed on her reflection. Then, in a tone deliberately light, almost conversational, he said:

“While we are in the Muggle town, we must not use court etiquette.”

Hermione looked up sharply. “My lord?”

“No curtsies. No titles. No Ancient Language,” he said. “If a Muggle girl bows to a Muggle lad, someone will certainly stare. And I have no wish to hide behind glamours today.”

He studied their reflections again — two figures in unfamiliar clothes, stripped of rank and ritual.

“We must pass as equals. Just for the day.”

A flicker of unease crossed her face. “Equality is not… a role I can assume easily, my lord.”

“Yes, I know.” His tone softened by a fraction. “But it is necessary for the mission. When we arrive in… what did you call it?”

“Fort William,” she said quietly.

“Yes. When we arrive in that Muggle town, you will not call me ‘my lord.’ It would draw attention.”

She clasped her hands behind her back, discipline settling over her like a practiced cloak. “My function is obedience. If you command it, then I will… attempt it.”

Draco’s gaze lingered a heartbeat too long.

“Very well,” he said softly. “I do command it. Hermione Granger, for this one day you will stand on equal footing with me. And nothing you say or do there will be held against you here.”

Her breath caught — not relief, but the sharp shock of stepping into an unfamiliar danger.

“As you command,” she whispered. “My lord.”

A faint smile touched his mouth. “Not in the Muggle town.”

For him it was a diversion; for her, a risk.

Hermione drew a careful breath. “My lord, may I propose a mode of travel for reaching Hogwarts?”

Draco nodded once — the familiar gesture that meant continue.

“If we go by Floo or Portkey, we will bypass the land entirely. Wizards usually do. But for the sake of understanding how the Muggle town lies in relation to Hogwarts… a direct flight might be more informative.”

She kept her eyes lowered. “By broomstick, I mean.”

Draco considered this with the calm, almost administrative detachment of a man weighing input from a valued subordinate.

“It is reasonable,” he said at last. “And it will allow me to see the lay of the land.”

He turned toward the window. “Very well. We fly.”

They rose from the grounds of Winterbourne Manor with a soft rush of wind, the ancient ash trees bending slightly beneath the force of their ascent, and at once Hermione felt the familiar tug of gravity surrender to the clean, cold pull of the upper air. Below them the estate shrank to a pattern of pale stone and dark lawns; above them the sky opened in a great indigo sweep, cloudless and sharp. Draco flew a little ahead, his posture straight, almost regal upon the broom, while she kept slightly to his left, guiding the pace without seeming to do so.

The land unfurled beneath them like a map drawn by a hand that had never seen a plough. Here and there the remnants of human settlement clung to the earth — a hamlet of five or six wizarding cottages, thatched and shimmering in protective wards; a lonely watchtower half-swallowed by ivy; the ruins of some forgotten stronghold, its stones warped by old spells and the long, slow violence of time. But there were no towns, no roads, no rail lines carving through the fields — nothing of the ordered geometry Hermione would have expected in the Muggle world.

It struck her anew, with the almost painful clarity that came only from high places, that the wizarding and Muggle realms could not possibly occupy the same space in the same way. The shapes matched — the slope of hills, the bend of rivers, the general curvature of the land — yet everything else was wrong: the silence, the vastness, the untouched swaths of wilderness stretching mile after mile in every direction, as though Britain had leapt centuries backward into a wilder age.

They swept northward. Great forests rolled beneath them, dense and unbroken, the deeper parts so ancient that even daylight seemed reluctant to enter. Herds of horned creatures — far larger than deer — moved slowly between the trees, their hides catching the sun like polished bronze. Streams glinted like broken silver. Occasionally a shimmer in the air marked the boundary of some enchantment, a curving distortion Hermione’s eyes caught only from this height.

Far ahead, a mountain ridge rose like the jagged spine of the world. As they drew nearer, a sudden roar split the sky, and a shadow — enormous, sinuous — crossed the peaks. A dragon. One of the smaller breeds, thank heaven, but still vast enough that its wings cast a shifting twilight across the rock. Before the war such sightings had been rare; wildlife control squads kept the creatures to their remote preserves. Now they roamed freely, emboldened by the collapse of Ministry oversight. Draco slowed instinctively, not from fear — he would never permit himself that — but from caution learned in childhood tales.

They passed the ridge at a careful angle, the air turning colder, the wind sharper. Beyond it lay more forest, then moorland — endless undulating heather, purple and brown under the pale afternoon light. Hermione felt a strange ache in her chest at the sight: this was Britain as it might have been a thousand years ago, raw and unclaimed, and yet here it endured, untouched by Muggle industry or wizard ambition.

The cold bit at her cheeks, thin and clean as a blade, and something in her tightened at the touch — an old reflex she could no longer name.

Draco glanced sideways at her as they flew, watching in silence the woman who had once led the sky-charge that broke an entire wing of Voldemort’s forces. She knew he remembered. The tight, disciplined wedge of Death Eaters advancing on Hogwarts at dawn; the sudden shadow falling across them from above; the impossible sight of no more than a few dozen fighters plunging onto the formation like a falling storm. Panic spreading through ranks that had seemed invincible only heartbeats earlier. Bodies dropping through the pale morning light. And at the point of the descending strike — her.

Hermione, wreathed in the gleam of layered protective spells, casting death with the terrible precision of a battle-saint, a Valkyrie torn from some forgotten saga and hurled into their war. Draco had survived that slaughter by chance alone.

Years of captivity and loss had carved deep hollows in her soul, yet the core of the warrior — disciplined, relentless, incandescent — still lived beneath the quiet composure of her face.

At last the land began to change. Valleys deepened; cliffs rose in broken teeth; the air thickened with that faint, unnameable pressure she remembered from her school years — the old wards, fractured but not wholly gone, drifting like ghosts over the mountains. Hermione guided her broom lower, and Draco followed. They made a slow, widening circle over the ridge, and then the castle came into view.

Hogwarts.

What had once been a crown of towers and spires rising in serene confidence above the loch now stood half-ruined, its silhouette jagged and unfamiliar. The tallest of the towers still rose, proud and stubborn, but its higher windows were blackened with soot, and whole sections of its stonework bore the pale, raw scars where curses had struck and torn through ancient masonry. Other towers leaned at impossible angles, held upright only by the remnants of defensive spells cast in the final hours of the siege. One had collapsed entirely; its broken stones lay scattered along the slope like the bones of some fallen giant.

The Great Hall roof had never been fully restored. Portions of the enchanted ceiling flickered weakly, revealing glimpses of the grey sky above; the shattered beams beneath sagged like the ribs of a burnt cathedral. The Quidditch pitch was little more than a flattened stretch of scorched grass, the stands half-rotted, their banners long gone. Even the lake looked darker than she remembered — still, heavy, as though grieving.

Hermione felt her throat tighten. She had known what had happened here — not from stories or second-hand accounts, but because she had stood on these very grounds when the wards shattered and the sky turned black with curses. She had fought, and fallen, and been taken. Yet the ruin itself — the silence, the abandonment — was harder to face than any memory. Hogwarts had not fallen to Voldemort’s armies alone; it had fallen to years of indecision, to the slow, grinding neglect of a society unsure whether the castle should stand as a school or as a relic, unsure whether children ought to be taught together or hidden away in their ancestral homes to preserve the purity of their bloodlines.

No first-years had crossed the lake in boats since the war. No house banners had been raised. No Sorting Hat had sung.

They circled once more. Draco kept his distance beside her, his face unreadable in the wind. Whatever thoughts the sight stirred in him were his alone. The castle’s presence was enough; it drew its own silence from anyone who looked upon it, like a great wounded creature still breathing in the ruins of its former strength.

They circled lower, skimming the ragged silhouettes of the towers. Hermione narrowed her eyes, tracing the broken geometry of the castle until she found the shape she sought — Gryffindor Tower, its upper floors blasted open, the stones exposed like ribs. The window of her old dormitory was gone, but the place where it had stood was unmistakable to her, fixed in memory like a landmark carved into the heart.

She lifted one hand briefly from her broom, pointing toward the fractured eastern face. Draco followed.

A downward sweep of her arm set their course. She angled her broom toward the long slope that ran beneath the tower, letting instinct take over — the same instinct that had guided her night flights years ago, when she had slipped from her dormitory and vanished into the highland dark. The ridge lay ahead, then the narrow valley, then the long, heathered plain that led westward toward the fold of land where Fort William lay hidden.

Draco adjusted his flight to match hers. No words passed between them; the wind would have eaten them anyway. The landscape moved beneath their brooms like a map unfolding, familiar and changed all at once. Hermione did not look back at the ruins of Hogwarts. She leaned forward, hair whipping behind her, and let the cold air pull her toward the world she had once glimpsed in secret.

The ridge fell away beneath them. Hermione slowed, scanning the air ahead — gauging distance, angle, memory. Then she dipped her broom a few feet, veered slightly to the left, and held that line steady. Draco drew close behind her.

A faint pressure gathered in her ears, thin as the tightening of altitude. The light seemed to contract around them — not dimming, but narrowing, as though the world itself were holding its breath. She felt the broom resist for a heartbeat, as if brushing against something unseen, and then the tension gave way.

They were through.

Sunlight struck her face with sudden warmth. The sky here was clearer, washed in a bright, almost fragile blue, and the air carried the soft heat of an early autumn day. Below them the land rolled out in gentler lines: wooded hills dropping toward a wide gleam of water, the long finger of a loch stretching westward toward the sea. A few white-walled crofts shone on the slopes like scattered shells, and farther down the roofs of Fort William lay in full daylight, half embraced by a drifting wisp of cloud.

Hermione levelled her broom. The world here felt larger, brighter, unmistakably Muggle.

She raised one hand to signal the descent.

Hermione slowed her broom as the first rooftops of Fort William came into view. Draco drew nearer. With one hand he reached inside his coat, produced his wand, and traced a series of quick, precise arcs through the air. Thin threads of pale light snapped outward, dissolving at once into nothing. Hermione felt a brief shimmer against her skin — the faintest tingle, like mist brushing past her — and knew the spell had settled.

They were invisible now to any Muggle who might glance upward.

She angled downward, choosing a narrow stretch of hillside where gorse and heather grew thick enough to hide movement. They touched down lightly among the shrubs. The air was warmer than one would expect for this season — the kind of bright, tentative heat that came only a few days each autumn in the Highlands.

They stepped behind a low outcrop of granite. Hermione set her broom gently on the ground; Draco followed suit. They stripped off their thick wool sweaters and folded them with brisk efficiency, laying them beside the broomsticks. Draco raised his wand once more, casting the same concealment spells in a tight sweep; the air shimmered faintly, and the small pile of belongings vanished from sight. The coats they kept — Scotland might show a pleasant face for an hour, but the sky could change in minutes.

For a moment they stood in silence, listening. No voices, no footsteps — only the quiet hum of insects and the distant rush of water somewhere below.

Hermione cleared her throat softly. “I think you can make us visible to them now, my lo—” She stopped herself, catching the title too late. “Sorry.”

Draco’s mouth curled in a brief, amused smile. He lifted his wand and traced a small, efficient gesture; the concealment dissolved at once, leaving them fully visible against the sunlit hillside.

Without a backward glance at the hidden brooms, they set off along the narrow path that wound toward the outskirts of Fort William — appearing for all the world like two Muggles returning from a solitary ramble in the hills, unaware of anything but sunlight and stone.

They entered the town. The streets were not empty, yet they breathed an ease Hermione had almost forgotten — people moved unhurriedly, drifting rather than pressing, as though the whole place kept a gentler rhythm than the world she had left behind. Clusters of young tourists in bright outdoor gear passed now and then, their backpacks and cameras marking them at once; they threaded quickly among the older, slower locals, whose clothes favoured quieter, weather-worn colours. A handful of people lingered at café tables under the mild sun.

Draco’s attention lingered on a group of tourists in brightly coloured sports bras and tights.

“Why are these girls dressed like that?” he asked, plainly puzzled. “Are they slaves?”

“Oh, no — of course not,” Hermione replied, a flicker of astonishment in her voice. “Quite the opposite. This is how they choose to exercise their freedom. No one dictates to them what they must wear.”

Draco frowned.

“It makes no sense,” he said quietly. “The day is mild, but not warm. Look at us.” He gestured to their own coats. “A free person in sound mind would choose a little more protection.”

Hermione hesitated.

“Well… they are not slaves,” she said at last. “That much I can say with certainty.”

“Ah,” Draco said after a moment. “Just Muggles.”

Draco slowed for a moment as a car rolled past, watching the machine with a wariness Hermione recognised from battlefields; then his attention was caught by a tall screen on a shopfront, where coloured images shifted and moved in unnatural silence. He said nothing, but she felt rather than saw the tension in him as he tried to reconcile these sights with the world he knew.

Another car drove by, its brief growl disturbing the soft hush that seemed to rest over the town.

“These things… these carts—if that is even the word,” Draco said, pointing at the passing car, “can they fly as well? I vaguely recall a piece in The Daily Prophet about a Muggle craft soaring over a town. You were involved, if I remember correctly…”

Hermione stopped mid-step. For a heartbeat she only stared at him — and then the laugh escaped her before she could stop it, bright and unguarded, a sound torn from a place she had not visited in years.

Draco turned sharply, astonished. “You can laugh, Granger,” he said softly, as though he had stumbled upon some rare creature. “Merlin’s bones… you truly can. It must be something in the local air.”

She pressed a hand to her mouth, still fighting another ripple of mirth.

“It was Arthur Weasley’s enchanted car,” she managed. “We did… more or less… steal it. And we certainly didn’t mean for it to fly — not like that. Muggle cars don’t fly. Muggles have flying machines, but these aren’t among them.”

Draco watched her a moment longer, as if committing the sound to memory, before falling back into step beside her.

Then Draco asked what powered the cars and how the animated pictures — so strangely akin to certain magical displays — were made. Hermione explained in broad strokes: internal combustion engines, electricity, electronics. She kept it brief, careful not to drown him in technicalities.

“So,” he said after a few seconds of reflection, “we are speaking of invisible forces that make objects move and create moving images on enormous plates. Why is it not simply called magic?”

Hermione looked at him, startled. The question had never quite occurred to her in that way.

“They call it technology,” she said slowly. “And you’re right. Our magic and their technology often achieve the same ends. Usually, Muggle devices are less elegant and less powerful… but not always.”

“Yes,” Draco nodded. “I remember what you wrote about their weapons.”

“Right,” Hermione agreed.

“But the crucial difference, in my view, is this: wizards use thousands of spells without understanding how they work. Some exceptionally gifted individuals — like Professor Snape or… His Majesty — could create new spells, but even then the change was narrow, incremental, never a true expansion of knowledge. Most Muggles don’t understand their own technologies either — but some do. Some know the theory, the principles, every stage from idea to mechanism. They can explain, and they can improve.”

She drew a quiet breath. “And that is what I hope to achieve with magic. To know precisely how it works. And how to make it better.”

Draco said nothing, but inclined his head. There was something almost formal in the gesture — respect, appreciation, and a hint of wonder.

In a few minutes they reached the doors of the electronics shop — a bright, glass-fronted place filled with the soft hum of machines. Hermione had explained that they needed to purchase several Muggle devices essential for her work; Draco followed her inside with a mixture of caution and fascination.

He slowed as they entered, his eyes drawn at once to the array of strange objects arranged on the counters and walls — devices of every size and colour, their purpose wholly opaque to him. Screens glowed everywhere, displaying moving images in crisp, vivid colour. The quality, he noted with surprise, was not inferior to certain magical projections; of course, wizards could conjure such illusions onto any scrap of parchment, whereas Muggles seemed to require large, rigid plates to achieve the same effect.

Draco stepped closer to one of the displays, intrigued. As he neared it, however, the image on the screen flickered, distorting as though the device had sensed something foreign, something other. He paused, his brow furrowing. The screen seemed to react to his presence, warping for a second before it returned to normal. Unnerved, he quickly stepped back, unsure what had just occurred or whether there was any connection between him and the strange fluctuation.

Hermione, meanwhile, moved with quiet efficiency. She exchanged a few brisk sentences with the shop clerk, selected a laptop and a set of spare batteries, indicated two external storage drives, and completed the transaction with an ease that left Draco blinking.

“So soon?” he asked, genuinely astonished. Among wizards, the purchase of magical artefacts was accompanied by rituals, long discussions, and elaborate courtesies. Buying a single wand could take half an afternoon.

“Yes, my—sorry,” Hermione caught herself and made a faint apologetic gesture. “I studied all the models and specifications beforehand. I knew exactly what I needed.”

Draco nodded slowly, a respectful expression settling on his face.

“And what is the purpose of these… things?” he asked, gesturing toward the devices in her bag.

“Oh, this is one domain in which Muggles absolutely surpass wizards,” she replied. She took one of the external drives from her satchel — a small, unremarkable box in a metal casing. “This can store the contents of every magical library in Britain — Hogwarts and all the great houses together.”

Draco’s eyebrows rose.

“Well,” Hermione amended, “only the text and diagrams. Truly magical books — artifacts with enchantments woven into their pages — cannot be digitized. But there are far fewer of those than wizards like to believe.”

“That is… remarkable,” Draco said quietly, turning over the thought with evident seriousness.

They stepped back onto the street, the shop door clicking shut behind them. For a moment they simply stood still, the town drifting around them in its unhurried rhythm — the murmur of conversation, the distant cry of gulls over the water, the soft rush of passing cars.

“So,” Draco said at last, his tone thoughtful rather than commanding, “what comes next in your plan?”

“Now I need to go to the local library and connect to the Network,” Hermione answered. “I’ll have to search for quite a lot of information. It will take time — two hours, maybe three.”

“Let’s make it four,” he said. “To be certain. Meanwhile, I’ll explore the town. There’s little point in my following you into a library.”

Hermione turned to him, visibly startled. “You mean… I should go alone?”

Draco looked genuinely puzzled. “You object? Why? Do you expect danger there?”

“Danger?.. no…” she murmured, eyes lowering. “Of course… if this is your decision…”

“It is,” he replied, something quiet but unmistakably firm in his voice. “We’ll meet here, at this corner, in four hours.”

He left without another word, turning into the slow-moving current of townsfolk with surprising ease, as though the Muggle world had already begun to soften the edges of his presence.

Hermione watched Draco walk away until the slow drift of the townsfolk folded around him and he vanished into the movement of the street.

She stood still for a moment, her satchel dragging at her hip, the borrowed coat pressing warm and strangely protective around her shoulders.

Then she began to walk — and the thoughts she had held back for years surged up like water breaking through a cracked dam.

Who was she now?

What exactly had she become?

Once they had feared her — feared her enough to bind her in iron collars, spell-forged chains, wards layered thick as fortress walls. They had known what she could do if she were free.

Now she was harmless.

No — worse than harmless.

Tamed.

A dog whose teeth were still sharp, but long unused. A creature that no longer lunged at the leash, only felt its weight and adjusted.

And he did not even bother to watch her.

Four hours.

Four hours, and she could be gone — dissolved into heather and stone, salt marsh and fog. She knew every technique: aura-thinning until she felt like smoke, path distortion, trace-breaking, misdirection pulses. She did not even need a wand. A wand would only betray her, flaring across Auror maps like a beacon.

She could run.

The thought came cleanly, without panic or drama. Like checking the weather.

But running no longer meant freedom.

It meant ditches and ruined barns, constant hunger, the gnawing vigilance of the hunted. It meant living as a rumor, a shadow, a story told to frighten children — until someone cornered her, bored of the chase, and finished it.

No blaze of glory awaited her there.

No vengeance.

Only disappearance.

And for whom would she vanish?

For Harry, who was gone?

For Ron, who had promised loyalty and then turned away when it mattered?

For a world that had collapsed the moment it required courage rather than slogans?

No one was waiting for her on the road.

If she stayed — if she endured — she would at least remain present. Visible. Counted. A piece still on the board.

Influence, however small, grew only where one could be seen.

She understood that now.

Running was not defiance.

It was abdication.

She closed the thought carefully, like a door that would not be opened again.

She blinked, the weight of her thoughts crashing back into silence, and found herself standing before the low stone steps of the town library — the glass doors bright with afternoon sun, the quiet hum of air-conditioning spilling through the cracks.

Hermione drew a long, steadying breath, lifted her chin, and stepped inside.

The library was nearly empty — as libraries in small Scottish towns often were in early autumn. A faint hum of climate control hung in the air, mixing with the familiar scent of paper and dust. She found a vacant table near a window, set down her satchel, and opened the laptop. The quiet chime of its awakening felt almost foreign after years in a world where magic sang instead of machines.

A moment later she connected to the Network.

And, as always, the work took her.

Lines of data, charts, reports, models, patterns — she fell into them with a hunger that felt almost like relief. Each fact she gathered steadied her. Each page she saved pushed the turmoil of the walk farther from her mind. Thought became method. Pain became order. In this realm — the realm of knowledge, numbers, principles, systems — she was whole.

Outside, the sun shifted. Inside, hours dissolved without her noticing.

When at last she closed the laptop, the weight inside her chest had quieted — not healed, perhaps, but arranged into something she could carry.

She rose, slipped the devices back into her satchel, adjusted her coat, and walked out.

When Hermione returned to the meeting place, the sun had sunk lower, gilding the pavement in a soft amber haze. Draco was already there. He stood at the corner, pacing a short line back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back in a gesture far too controlled to conceal the tension in his stride.

He looked up — and froze.

“Hermione Granger,” he said, and the relief in his voice was far too genuine to hide. A faint, sincere smile touched his mouth — the expression of a man whose hope had won out over doubt. “So. Here you are.”

Hermione felt something loosen in her chest — something she hadn’t expected. She answered his smile with one of her own, quiet but unmistakably warm.

“Draco Malfoy,” she said softly. “How could I not be?”

For a heartbeat, neither moved. Then the smallest shift passed between them — an unspoken recognition that something had changed, almost imperceptibly, yet undeniably.

For a few moments they simply looked at one another, the quiet of the street settling between them. Then Hermione lowered her gaze.

“The mission is accomplished,” she said softly. “We can return.”

“But the day is still young,” Draco replied. “Would you accompany me to a place I found earlier? I’d like to share a few observations… and to ask you a question or two.”

“Yes, of course, as you wish…” She hesitated — a small, visible faltering — unsure how to address him in this strange Muggle equality he had imposed. “Sir,” she settled on at last.

Draco’s brows lifted. She caught the look at once.

“This is how a Muggle would address someone of higher standing,” she explained quickly. “I thought it appropriate.”

“Oh. Very well,” he said, amused despite himself. “Follow me.”

They set off together toward the loch, its surface silvered by the westering sun.

“This place,” Draco said as they walked along the road, “radiates a kind of tranquility I can’t quite describe. They move as though nothing in the world can touch them. Such confidence… I cannot understand what it rests on.”

“It rests on illusion, Sir,” Hermione answered at once. Her voice was quiet, but her certainty cut cleanly through the air. “They feel safe only because they choose to look away from the danger. They convince themselves that all threats live somewhere far beyond their borders.”

Draco glanced at her, but she continued before he could speak.

“If they knew what we were… if they even suspected the truth about the two of us walking here among them, their calm would vanish in an instant. Today they don’t believe in magic, or in those who wield it; it’s the only reason they tolerate us in their midst.” She paused, her gaze drifting across the peaceful street. “But a few centuries ago, they hunted witches and burned them alive. Their ignorance was less dangerous than their fear.”

A heartbeat passed.

“And, of course,” she added quietly, “they hardly need wizards to endanger one another.”

Draco walked in silence for a moment, taking in the easy pace of the passersby, the unguarded voices, the complete absence of caution in every gesture around them.

“And yet,” he said, “I feel apart from them — and, in a way, lighter for it.”

Hermione looked up, startled by the tone.

“I was raised to believe this world was beneath us,” he continued. “Crude. Chaotic. Mindless.” He gave a faint, humourless exhale. “But here… no one stares. No one judges. No one bows. They do not look at me with fear — or hatred — or expectation. They do not expect anything of me at all.” His eyes flickered over a couple strolling by, laughing freely, oblivious. “It is… disorienting.”

He did not say liberating.

Hermione said nothing, but a strange understanding passed between them.

Two people shaped by a world that had given them no choices — walking through another that asked nothing of them at all.

Meanwhile, they had reached the shore of the loch. A row of wooden buildings stretched along the waterline — narrow fronts, pointed tiled roofs, crooked chimneys rising like little turrets, giving the houses the air of toy palaces from a children’s tale. Across the water, a hill lifted its soft coat of pale green grass toward the sky; its twin mirrored it on the opposite bank.

It was not a breathtaking view. On the contrary, it was almost plain — especially when set against the majestic, blazing landscapes of the wizarding world. But those vistas, for all their splendour, shimmered with the sharp colours of a poisonous creature, a warning of danger veiled beneath beauty.

Here, instead, everything exhaled a quiet, idle peace. The stillness of the water deepened it, mirroring the gentle green of the hills. A mild breeze drifted off the loch, cool and clean, carrying with it the faintest trace of the distant sea.

“You know,” Draco said, glancing at Hermione as they walked, “I noticed something curious while I wandered through this town. Muggles seem to eat in public places — perfectly logical, of course; since they cannot summon food to themselves, they must go where it is served. And then they pay for it, which is equally logical.”

He paused, his brow creasing slightly.

“But what puzzled me is this: men and women quarrel over who pays. Each insists on doing it, as though the matter carried some great honour. I cannot imagine why it should be so important.”

Hermione let out a small, involuntary laugh — quick, bright, gone at once.

“Oh—Sir… forgive me. It’s simply part of their culture. For centuries, men held most of the power in the Muggle world. They cast themselves as protectors, caretakers… and masters. Today, women insist on paying for themselves to show they don’t need protecting. To show they stand as equals.”

She hesitated, then added, “Among wizards it was different. Magic is the source of power, and witches can master it just as well as wizards. So no such inequality ever developed.”

“Fascinating,” Draco murmured, the corner of his mouth lifting in quiet amusement.

A heartbeat later he nodded toward a terrace perched above the water.

“Speaking of dining — there is a place here that seems pleasant. Would you join me for a meal before we return?”

“Sir?!” She stopped, startled, her eyes widening.

“What?” he asked mildly. “Are you not hungry?”

“Oh… Sir, I’m starving, but—” she flushed faintly. “Illustrious Draco Malfoy taking a meal with a… well… nouveau mage — that would make quite a headline for Rita Skeeter.”

“Well,” he said with a small, amused breath, “Rita Skeeter is nowhere near Fort William. And you’re right — it could not happen in our world.”

His gaze drifted toward the loch, soft with evening light.

“But here… everything is different. So why should we not behave as the people of this world do?”

Hermione lowered her eyes. “Sir… I don’t know what to say. But of course — if this is your command…”

“It is,” he said, firm but not unkind, a faint smile touching his voice.

“And besides… I have no idea how to order food here — nor how to pay for it with this ridiculous paper money. So I must rely on you to play the part of a wholly independent Muggle woman to the very end.”

They entered the café and stepped onto a small veranda paved with cool stone, overlooking the quiet sweep of the loch. No other patrons were there. They chose a table at the far end, its weathered chairs faded by wind and sun. After a brief, murmured exchange over the unfamiliar menu, Hermione signaled the waiter and placed their order with practiced ease.

The sun still shone, though it had begun its slow descent toward the hills, gilding the water in a soft, wavering light. A gentle breeze drifted across the terrace, brushing lightly against their faces with the elusive scent of the remote sea.

For a while they spoke only of the surface of things — the colour of the sky, the shape of the clouds, the muted green of the hills — as though these small, harmless subjects were precisely what both of them needed before approaching anything deeper.

The waiter set the plates before them and withdrew. Draco tasted the first bite, paused, and let out a quiet breath of pleasure.

“Oh… this is good,” he said, a look of genuine delight softening his features. For a few moments they ate in companionable silence, the breeze brushing lightly against their faces.

Then, without preamble, Draco added, “You know… back at school, there were several times I wanted to speak to you. To actually speak. But I never did.”

Hermione looked up, startled by the admission. “I always assumed you hated me,” she said quietly. “It seemed logical. All the… differences between us were already there.”

Draco shook his head slowly. “Hatred?” He gave a small, wry smile. “No. I thought I did, because that was what I was supposed to feel. But it wasn’t hatred.”

He hesitated, searching for the right word.

“What I felt toward you was… a complex set of emotions.” He flicked his fingers lightly in her direction, acknowledging the phrase as one he had borrowed from her. “But now I think envy was the strongest of them.”

Hermione did not respond. She lowered her gaze to her plate, her silence not cold but unreadable.

Draco’s gaze drifted toward the loch, its surface trembling with the last gold of the sun. For a moment he said nothing, his fingers resting lightly on the stem of his glass — not fidgeting, merely steadying whatever thought he was about to release.

“When I return,” he said at last, calm but not unburdened, “I will be expected to begin preparations for my wedding.”

Hermione waited. He had not mentioned this casually.

“It is not a matter of affection,” he continued, his tone carefully neutral. “In our circles it never is. Bloodlines, alliances, expectations — those things decide for us before we are old enough to understand the decisions being made.” A faint breath escaped him, not quite a sigh. “Astoria is a good woman. But she suffers from a hereditary blood curse. It will shorten her life — no one pretends otherwise. And still the pressure grows that the wedding happen soon, while she is still strong enough to bear an heir.”

Hermione felt something tighten under her ribs — pity, sympathy, uncertainty; she could not name it.

Draco gave a small, wry exhale. “I am told it is an honour. A duty. A privilege.” His fingers stilled. “But I do not know what I feel. Or what I am supposed to feel.”

“Do you love her?” Hermione asked softly.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I’m not sure I even know what the word means.”

A pause.

“I love this meal,” he added, gesturing lightly. “I want more of it; I will likely ask you to order it again. But Astoria… she is beautiful. Truly. And yet I always find a reason to leave her company. Does that mean I don’t love her? Or that I don’t understand what love is meant to ask of me?”

Hermione lowered her gaze.

“I don’t think many people understand it,” she murmured. “Not really.”

A quiet fell between them — not tense, but strangely gentle, a stillness in which neither had to measure every word for danger.

“Sorry,” Draco said at last, voice low but sincere. “I… needed someone who would listen.”

He cleared his throat, drawing the cloak of composure back around himself.

“In any case, that is the life set for those of us who inherit old titles. Duty. Legacy. Appearances. No one escapes it. Even my aunt — for all her reputation — would have been expected to marry and bear children, had she been able.”

“Why wasn’t she?” Hermione asked.

“Her body was badly damaged during her fifteen years in Azkaban,” Draco replied in a muted voice. “It is a miracle she survived at all — and remained sane… relatively.”

“But her body…” Hermione protested, almost involuntarily. “I knew it well. She was flawless. She was — beautiful.”

“On the outside, perhaps,” Draco said, shaking his head. “But not inside. She is… unwell. Physically and mentally. She hides the damage with magic, but everyone in the family knows.”

He paused, then asked abruptly, “Did you love her?”

“Me?” Hermione breathed, the question striking her like cold water. “I was her slave. It was my duty—”

“Yes,” Draco interrupted, impatient but not unkind. “I know. But did you love her? Because she believed you did.”

Silence stretched — not awkward, but heavy with truth Hermione hadn’t planned to ever utter aloud.

“Love was something she desperately needed,” the young woman said at last, each word deliberate. “But she needed to control the object of her love entirely. So I submitted to her. Completely.”

A thin breath.

“And in time… I wanted more of her. I adored her. Every part of her. So if wanting more is the measure, then… yes. Love. Or something that looked like it.”

Her voice wavered only slightly.

“But would I have loved her had I been free? I don’t know. Can it be true love if it only grows in captivity? I don’t know. She was my only experience. I have nothing to compare it with.”

Draco turned back toward the sinking sun.

“She spoke about you constantly at family gatherings,” he said. “My gorgeous, brilliant pet — that was what she called you. She talked about you as if you were something she had crafted with her own hands.”

A faint shake of his head.

“And yet, with every meeting, she became more alive. Her mind sharpened. Her humour returned. I watched it happen and wondered — who was shaping whom?”

He fell silent for several seconds.

“And I cannot help but wonder,” he said finally, “what will become of her now that you are gone.”

Hermione’s lips parted — but no words followed.

They sat in quiet for a moment, the clinking of silverware and the low murmur of distant conversations fading into the background. The breeze had turned cooler, and the warm glow of the evening sun was now a memory, leaving the air tinged with the cooling chill of twilight.

Draco stirred first, breaking the silence with a low murmur, but then fell back into a quiet, pensive state. The weight of their previous conversation hung between them, unspoken but undeniable.

Finally, Hermione’s voice cut through the stillness, her tone a little more formal than it had been moments ago, though not entirely distant.

“Sir… My lord?” She paused, as though measuring her next words carefully. “We need to head back before the darkness falls.”

Draco nodded slightly, his gaze lingering on her face, studying her carefully for a moment.

“Of course,” he said softly, inclining his head a fraction; Hermione answered with a stillness that was almost a bow.

They both rose from the table, the evening slipping back into its expected pattern — the warmth ebbed from the space between them, leaving the room suddenly larger and more orderly. Hermione called for the waiter, settled the bill with the casual ease of someone who had mastered this routine, and they prepared to leave.

They left the café without ceremony.

At the edge of the town, beyond the last row of houses, Draco paused, drew his wand, and restored the concealment that hid their brooms from Muggle sight. A moment later they were airborne again, the town folding quietly back into itself beneath them.

The journey back was quick, the still streets now a distant memory as they made their way back to where they had entered this strange, different world.

Once they arrived at the manor, they exchanged no further words, each of them changing swiftly into their wizarding robes. Draco paused before Hermione, a single, quiet glance exchanged between them.

Within moments, they were at her quarters, the dark stone looming before them like a quiet sentinel. She stepped out of the Floo first, her gaze meeting his as she turned to face him.

As custom required, Hermione immediately sank into a curtsey. But before she could complete it, Draco's voice cut through the silence.

“Rise, Hermione.”

His tone was warm, the formal command softened by something unspoken between them. The formality was still there, but the silent connection in his voice made it feel different from the cold, distant farewells they once shared.

“My lord,” Hermione said softly, and as the words left her lips, it felt like the last thread of their old roles.

“Mistress Granger,” Draco replied, his tone equally careful, but now with a hint of something else — respect, perhaps.

The silence that followed stretched briefly between them, neither one speaking for a moment longer than necessary.

Hermione stepped back slightly, a fleeting smile on her lips.

“Thank you, my lord,” she said softly. “For an unforgettable evening.”

Draco’s expression softened, though only for a moment.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, his voice settling into a register that admitted no further reply, yet carried something more intimate, unspoken.

He paused again, just slightly, before he added:

“We could repeat it, should you wish.”

She looked at him, something flickering in her eyes.

“No,” she said quietly. “Some things should not be repeated.” A small, almost wistful smile touched her lips, and she turned away. “It’s better this way.”

The door clicked shut behind him, and for a brief moment, Hermione stood still, allowing the silence to settle over her like a soft cloak.

Chapter Text

The next afternoon, Draco approached Hermione’s residence as he always did — on foot, never by Floo, and with the quiet formality proper to a nobleman visiting a subordinate of delicate status. He knocked once, then again, waiting for the usual soft footfall and the small ceremony of invitation that had, in time, become their unspoken ritual.

No answer came.

Instead, a house-elf materialized at his elbow with a timid pop.

“Master,” the elf whispered, bowing low, “Mistress Granger is very sad.”

Draco’s brows drew together.

“Is she decent?” he asked, in the same careful tone he always used — the tone that ensured no elf or servant would ever breach a woman’s privacy on his behalf.

“Yes, Master. Decent… but very sad.”

That was enough. He opened the door himself and stepped inside.

For a breath he stood motionless, struck by the devastation that met his eyes. Books lay scattered across the floor in untidy heaps, as though they had been swept aside by a sudden gust; loose papers had slid from the table in a pale drift; and on the desk, the small Muggle machine she had so proudly brought into the Realm flickered with a weak, spasmodic light, its screen trembling between life and extinction as if it were a candle struggling against an invisible storm.

Hermione sat on the floor amid the disorder, her back bowed as if under an invisible weight, her hands lying limp in her lap, her face drained of colour, staring at the malfunctioning laptop with the bleak, unblinking expression of someone watching a hope die..

For a breath she did not even look up at him; and when at last she did, there was a moment — a single, awful moment — in which she clearly forgot she was meant to rise and curtsey. Then awareness flooded her eyes, and she pushed herself up from the floor with sudden haste, nearly stumbling as she bowed her head.

“Do not trouble yourself, Granger — simply tell me what has happened,” Draco said, lifting his hands in a brief, calming gesture before letting them fall again.

“It will not work here,” Hermione said, her voice trembling with thinly veiled despair. “This place is saturated with magic… I should have foreseen it… electronics simply cannot function.”

Draco frowned, genuinely stunned.

“Why? What possible connection could there be between magic and these Muggle contraptions?”

“Oh, my lord, I don’t know the reason — not precisely,” she replied quickly, “but the fact is well recorded. This is why we have no electrical devices of our own. Why we send owls with letters instead of calling one another on mobile phones, as Muggles do. Arthur Weasley documented dozens of cases before the war. No Muggle technology works properly where wizards reside. Even a single magician in an agitated state can disrupt something as delicate as a computer… and His Majesty’s palace is…”

She gestured helplessly at the flickering screen.

“…flooded with magic. Nothing functions at all.”

Draco’s eyes narrowed in recollection.

“Yes… in that Muggle shop, the moving picture on the plate went awry when I approached it — though I do not believe I was in any particular agitation at the time.”

Then another thought struck him, sharp as a blade.

“But wait — how could you work in the library?”

Hermione swallowed.

“I… my lord… I can suppress my aura. Temporarily, my lord.”

Draco’s expression changed at once; something cold and dangerous flickered through it.

“Temporarily,” he repeated, “For hours… Show me.”

“My lord, this is not the place—”

“Do it now.”

The Earl’s voice cracked like a whip. His wand was in his hand before she had time to blink, and in an instant he closed the distance between them.

“Do it. I want to feel the change,” he whispered, his face inches from hers.

Hermione lowered her gaze.

“I can, my lord, but you will not sense it — not here. The air is thick with magic.”

A tense breath passed. Draco exhaled sharply and stepped back.

“Very well.”

He turned away, forcing composure back into his voice.

“But you told me nothing.”

“I thought… no, I didn’t think at all, my lord,” she said softly.

She hesitated.

“Am I in trouble now, my lord?”

Draco said nothing for a moment. He crossed to the table, drew out a chair, and pointed to another.

“Sit.”

She obeyed, settling on the edge of the seat, hands folded tightly in her lap.

“Had you told me earlier,” he murmured, “it would have influenced my decisions. Naturally.”

A pause.

“But I am… not displeased that matters developed as they did. And, under the present circumstances, your loyalty becomes even more valuable.”

Relief broke across her face.

“Thank you, my lord. You always show kindness and understanding, even when I have not earned them.”

Draco looked at her steadily.

“You must not hide anything from me. There is no point — the Dark Lord will know all your secrets in time, but he expects me to know them first. Your honesty will serve us both.”

“I understand, my lord,” she whispered. “There are no secrets left.”

He studied her another long moment, then shook his head slightly.

“And still… I find it remarkable. The technique is part of Auror training, yes, but it requires hours of meditation every day and years of practice to reach any usable level. In months I achieved only the basics. How did you manage it? You were never an Auror.”

“I had years, my lord,” she replied. “At school, I practiced every evening. Mad-Eye trained me.”

“That rabid dog,” Draco muttered with clear disgust.

Hermione’s voice softened.

“I remember him differently, my lord. He said I had a natural talent for it.”

Draco gave a short, dry laugh.

“If only for that.”

For a few moments, neither spoke.

“Well,” the Earl said at last, “yesterday’s mission has failed… not a tragedy in itself. Muggle devices cannot function in His Majesty’s castle — fine. But could they work elsewhere?”

“I think not, my lord,” Hermione replied. “They fail anywhere wizards reside and practice magic. I would need a secluded place, far from magical activity. And even if I find one… how will I present the results to His Majesty and the Lords of the Council? Write everything down and send it by owl? That is not what I intended. And the machine cannot run on batteries forever. I was planning to bring proper power lines and, eventually, to build a true data centre. Now I am not sure any of it is possible.”

Her voice wavered, then broke.

“And what truly kills me, my lord, is that I write about strategy and power politics and weapons and technologies — I form hypotheses and design experiments — and somehow I forget the simplest, most obvious constraint right under my nose. What does that say about me?”

Draco laughed aloud.

“Merlin’s beard, Granger, you cannot expect even yourself to be perfect at every moment. If you truly were that flawless… well, you might have chosen very different people for your friends.”

Hermione stared at him, startled; her lips parted as though a retort rose to her tongue, but no words came.

“I understand very little of these matters,” Draco said at length, “but surely there must be ways to shield this Muggle craft — something akin to suppressing one’s magical aura, only on a far greater scale?”

Hermione lifted her head slightly, thinking.

“There might be, my lord. The very fact that electricity is affected by magic means they both obey the same underlying laws of nature. And Muggles already know how to protect their devices from electromagnetic interference. If the principles are similar, perhaps the same methods — or something inspired by them — could shield electronics from magical impact. It is… a very bright idea, my lord.”

She fell silent for a few moments, her brows drawn in concentration.

“But the problem is that I cannot discover these methods alone. I would need assistance — not only from wizards who know something of Muggle machinery, like Arthur Weasley, but from actual Muggle scientists and technicians who understand these systems in detail. I would need to bring a team of Muggles here. Do you think, my lord, His Majesty would permit such a thing?”

Draco considered this carefully before answering.

“To the best of my judgment,” he said slowly, “His Majesty is very invested in your project and willing to expend considerable effort to see it succeed.

“As for Arthur Weasley — yes, the man has disgraced himself, but precisely for that reason no one will object if you employ him. And bringing a group of Muggles into the Realm… unusual, certainly, but far from impossible. In the past, Death Eaters did occasionally abduct Muggles — not to employ them, of course, but the method exists. The point is: it can be done.”

Hermione leaned forward slightly, hope quickening her voice.

“Then would you, my lord, petition before the Dark Lord on my behalf — and for the sake of the project?”

A faint smile touched Draco’s lips.

“The project is not yours alone, Granger. My career is now somewhat bound to its success — although, admittedly, your own stake in it is far higher. But yes. I will speak to him, and I will present your considerations faithfully.”

“Thank you, my lord!” Hermione breathed, the relief unmistakable.

“You are my only hope.”

Draco nodded, a brief, decisive gesture that implied he would do all that lay within his power. Then he rose. Hermione stood at once, almost by reflex.

“Mistress Granger,” he said, inclining his head in parting, and turned away without waiting for her to complete her curtsey.

“My lord…” she whispered as the doors closed behind him.

A numb apathy settled over her as the door closed. She walked to the bed, lay down without undressing, and stared up at the ceiling, her eyes unfocused.

Nothing depended on her now.

Her fate lay entirely in Draco Malfoy’s hands.

Draco Malfoy.

Once merely another Slytherin boy — pale, arrogant, unremarkable except for the weight of a name that had seemed absurdly trivial then, and so terribly important now.

He claimed he had always wished to speak with her. She believed him.

She had never wished the same.

He claimed he had never hated her for her blood.

She had despised him for his.

Then.

Now she called him my lord. She sank into a deep curtsey and remained lowered until commanded to rise, stood until permitted to sit, remained silent until invited to speak.

And yet — and yet —

He valued her.

He guarded her dignity where he could. He minded her decency. He loosened the leash whenever it lay within his power to do so, and arranged what small comforts were permitted when it did not.

He did not humiliate her.

He did not silence her voice.

He did not crush her simply because he could.

Who among her former allies had ever cared for her so precisely?

Not Ron — who admired her brilliance only until it demanded loyalty in return. Who had stood watching while she lay in the dust, chained beneath Bellatrix’s heel.

Not Harry — consumed by prophecy, by the conviction that the world turned upon his singular courage. To him she had always been indispensable, but never irreplaceable.

Even his love of Quidditch betrayed him: the seeker who won or lost alone, rendering the labor of the entire team irrelevant. He had carried that belief into war — insisting upon a final duel with Voldemort, rather than exhausting the enemy as she had urged.

He had believed the prophecies.

The prophecies had been wrong.

Draco, too, had been a seeker — never the chosen one, never the hero. Always in the shadow of his father, and then of the Dark Lord.

Perhaps that was why he learned to value those who stood beside him.

She asked herself then — not for the first time — whether she would have done the same, had their positions been reversed.

If he had been her prisoner.

Dependent upon her mercy.

Entirely at her disposal.

The temptation to answer yes came easily.

Honesty stripped it away.

Had she won the war, she would have called him a criminal. She would have punished him in the name of law, of justice, of righteousness — and told herself that the cruelty lay not with her, but with necessity.

She would not have spared him.

Not because she was wicked — but because she had been certain.

Certain that power, once earned, must be used.

Certain that mercy was indulgence.

Certain that history would absolve her.

Draco had possessed absolute power over her — and had chosen restraint.

That difference mattered.

It frightened her more than cruelty would have.

The heavy thoughts drifted through her mind, circling slower and slower, until at last she slipped into a deep sleep, moaning and sobbing now and then, but never waking.

She woke to the sensation of something tugging, gently but insistently, at the edge of her blanket — the blanket some caring elf must have laid over her in the night.

A small voice spoke at once.

“Mistress, His Majesty is waiting for you.”

Hermione blinked, dazed, and saw a house-elf standing beside the bed, pointing towards the wide-open door.

“His… Majesty?” she repeated, still half-dreaming.

“Yes, Mistress! Please, Mistress must go to the castle at once!”

The elf nodded excitedly, his oversized head bobbing, his long nose trembling.

The words hit her like cold water.

“Oh — no!”

She shot upright and hurried to the mirror. Her hair stood in all directions, her dress was wrinkled from a night of restless sleep, and her face bore the traces of tears.

“You!” She turned to the elf. “What is your name?”

“Bimby, if it pleases Mistress!” he squeaked with earnest pride.

“Bimby, do you have another dress for me?”

The elf spread his tiny hands in despair.

“No, Mistress — but if Mistress wishes, Bimby can clean and iron this one in less than a minute!”

“Please — do!” she exclaimed, already pulling the dress over her head.

“And bring me a fresh set of underwear,” she added, calling over her shoulder as she disappeared into the bath chamber.

Inside she splashed cold water over her face and neck, scrubbing away the traces of sleep with frantic, trembling hands. She caught a glimpse of herself in the small mirror — eyes swollen, hair tangled — and seized a brush, dragging it through her curls with quick, impatient strokes.

A soft pop sounded behind her.

A female elf — tiny, pale, and wide-eyed — held out a neatly folded set of underwear.

“For Mistress,” she squeaked.

“Thank you,” Hermione breathed, snatching the garments and pulling them on with hurried, graceless movements. Her skin was still damp, her hair only half-tamed, but there was no time for better.

She stepped back into the room.

The dress lay on the bed, restored to perfect order — clean, pressed, immaculate.

Without waiting to dry fully, she slipped into it, fingers fumbling at the fastenings, and forced down her rising panic.

Bimby stood by the door, nodding urgently.

Hermione drew a single breath to steady herself, looked back at the mirror for one brief, uncertain moment, and then walked out.

The servants’ wing in which she lived stood at the far end of the vast inner courtyard of the castle, a courtyard enclosed by a towering curtain wall. Nearby rose several other low, squat buildings of similar purpose, clustered like humble satellites around the citadel’s immensity. Beyond them, at a distance of several hundred yards, the main mass of the fortress ascended into the sky, its colossal towers piercing the drifting clouds.

The day was unexpectedly bright, and the Dementors circling high above the battlements — like dark, drifting crowns upon the towers — were clearly visible against the pale blue. A broad path of dark granite, gleaming sharply in the sunlight, led toward the castle gates, and Hermione, attempting to steady the growing anxiety in her chest, hurried along it, fearing to incur the Dark Lord’s displeasure by keeping him waiting even a moment longer than he wished.

The citadel gates stood wide open, and immediately beyond them began a broad staircase of black marble, flanked on either side by the towering stone warriors who kept eternal watch. Once they had guarded Hogwarts and had fought in the last battle; now, like many of Voldemort’s former adversaries, they served him without question.

Hermione began to ascend the marble steps. As she passed each successive pair of stone sentinels, they struck the hafts of their halberds against the stair in a solemn double blow, saluting her. The first time, she flinched at the deep, resonant echo of the twin strike, but she mastered herself quickly and continued upward at pace, mounting the staircase and entering the building.

Inside, the air grew cooler, touched by the faint scent of ancient stone and something darker that lingered beneath it. Hermione stepped into a long, vaulted corridor whose walls were lined with angels wrought of white marble and gold. Their wings swept upward in graceful arcs, and their faces, serene and impassive, were framed by curling serpents carved in the same pale stone — serpents whose gilded eyes glimmered dimly in the shifting half-light.

As she walked, the angels began to sing.

It was barely more than a whisper, a thread of sound woven from distant, ethereal voices — a soft, mesmerizing chant that echoed along the corridor like a memory of divine music. The melody was hauntingly beautiful, its harmonies delicate as spider-silk, and for a moment Hermione felt her steps slow, drawn by the quiet enchantment of it.

She forced herself onward.

Her footsteps reverberated faintly against the polished floor, merging with the subdued chorus on the walls. The angels’ gentle song accompanied her like a benediction or perhaps a warning, their unseeing eyes following her progress deeper into the citadel, toward the chamber whose great doors stood already open, awaiting her — and within them, the Dark Lord himself.

She entered. The great doors closed behind her without a sound.

It was not the throne hall of a monarch, but rather something between an alchemist’s laboratory and a scholar’s private study. Jars and flasks of every colour and consistency stood in meticulous rows along the shelves that lined the walls; bowls for mixing ingredients and cast-iron cauldrons for brewing lay scattered across the tables; ancient books and brittle parchment scrolls lay open here and there, as though consulted only moments before.

The Dark Lord stood with his back to her, robed in his customary black, bare pale feet in simple sandals, leaning over a table as he read a manuscript by the light of a single suspended flame.

Hermione sank upon both knees, folding herself into the full posture of submission, her head bowed and her gaze fixed upon the floor at his feet.

“Your Majesty,” she whispered.

He did not move. For several long seconds he remained as he was, utterly still, as though unaware of her presence or simply indifferent to it. Then he turned — slowly — and regarded her from above without a word. A few more seconds passed in a silence so complete she could hear the soft hiss of the lone flame burning behind him.

“Rise,” he said at last.

She rose from her knees and stood, her head still bowed and her eyes fixed upon the floor.

With a faint movement of his wand, he conjured a chair behind her, its legs settling onto the stone without a sound.

“Sit,” he commanded.

A small pause followed.

“I dare not, Your Majesty,” she answered, her voice trembling.

The Dark Lord made another slight gesture. A second chair appeared at his side, and he seated himself with deliberate calm.

“Sit,” he repeated.

This time she obeyed.

“Look me in the eyes,” the Dark Lord said.

The girl shuddered but obeyed at once. She remembered only too well what had followed the last time he had uttered those words. Yet, eager to demonstrate absolute submission, she let the Occlumency walls fall and left her mind open, exposed, unguarded. But the expected assault did not come. Instead, she felt only the lightest brush of his presence — a cold, gliding touch across the surface of her thoughts. Probably he did not wish to shatter her composure before the conversation began; apparently the mere sight of her yielding herself so completely was enough to satisfy him, at least for the moment.

He had changed little since their last encounter. His noseless, serpentine face seemed even narrower now, the bald scalp drawn to a sharper point, and the faint bluish cast of his skin had deepened into something colder, more cadaverous. Only the eyes remained as she remembered them — two mesmeric crimson fires burning in that thin, inhuman mask.

From beneath the table, the great serpent uncoiled itself with a soft, silken rustle. It slithered forward, looped its heavy body around the legs of the chair, then raised its head and settled it upon his lap with the slow, deliberate trust of a cat seeking its master’s hand. He stroked it absently, pale fingers sliding over iridescent scales that shimmered green and black in the dim light.

Hermione felt the first tightening of fear coil low in her stomach — not the sharp terror of pain, but the colder dread of memory. The sight of Nagini’s heavy body, the whisper of scales on stone, the quiet stroke of his hand over the creature’s gleaming hide — all of it pressed against the back of her mind like a half-forgotten nightmare returning. She lowered her gaze, trying to fix it on the floor, and steadied her breath so he would not hear it quicken.

“Don’t look away.”

The command cracked through the silence like the snap of a whip.

A tremor passed through her shoulders. She lifted her eyes at once, forcing herself to meet the hypnotic crimson gaze that held her as surely as a hand around her throat.

Another second slipped by in utter silence before he finally spoke.

“A curious thing caught my attention the last time I looked into your mind…” His voice was quiet, almost contemplative. “I was always rather eager to meet your parents. Yet I discovered that you yourself no longer know where they are. How did such a circumstance come to pass?”

“Your Majesty…” Hermione swallowed; the words caught in her throat before she forced them out. “I… obliviated them. I gave them new identities, new memories, and an irresistible desire to travel. I made them forget they ever had a daughter. I left them money to keep them safe on the road and… and then I left. That is why I don’t know where they are.”

“Pity,” he murmured. “It is such a pity you did not trust me enough to confide in me then.”

She did not speak. Under his burning gaze, she trembled.

“But I value sacrifice,” he continued slowly, each word measured. “It is an uncommon virtue. Still… what precisely did you achieve with this noble offering?” He tilted his head slightly, studying her as one studies a specimen. “For them, you never existed at all. And for you, they are as good as dead.”

“They live, Your Majesty,” she said softly. “Only… they live in a different reality now. And I hope they are happy.”

He regarded her for a long moment, fingers motionless on Nagini’s scales.

“An unusual choice,” he said at last. “Most people cling to their attachments. They chain themselves to blood, to memory, to sentiment. They make themselves predictable.” His eyes narrowed, the crimson light within them sharpening. “But you, Hermione… you were willing to erase yourself from the lives of those you cherished most.”

Hermione forced herself to breathe evenly, though her pulse hammered in her throat.

“Tell me,” he said, tilting his head once more. “Did you grieve them?”

“I… I did, Your Majesty,” she whispered.

“And yet you acted.”

A faint, cold smile ghosted across his lips.

“That is what matters.”

Another long second passed in suffocating silence.

“What do you think of Potter?” the Dark Lord asked at last, the question falling with almost casual cruelty. “You were his first lieutenant, were you not?”

She swallowed convulsively before she dared to speak. Still keeping her gaze fixed upon the Dark Lord’s crimson eyes, she tried to shape an answer that was honest enough to satisfy him, yet careful enough not to provoke his wrath.

“I remember him, Your Majesty, as a leader of extraordinary charisma… I trusted him, and believed in him… and everyone else in the resistance did as well. As long as he lived, people were willing to fight and to sacrifice. And when we understood that he was dead… it was as if the very glue that held us together simply evaporated. All that we believed in seemed suddenly without meaning… the prophecies proved false… and that is why your victory over him in the duel was so fateful, Your Majesty.”

The Dark Lord said nothing for a moment, merely watching her — and she could not tell whether he found her answer adequate, or merely convenient.

Suddenly, a wand appeared in his hand, and with an almost imperceptible motion he caused a silver urn, resting on one of the shelves, to lift, glide through the air, and settle upon his lap. Nagini shifted, her head tilting inquisitively, and touched the cool metal with a slow flick of her forked tongue.

“Do you know what it is, Hermione?” he asked, his voice soft, almost tender.

“No, Your Majesty… I do not,” she whispered, fighting to keep her voice steady.

“It is Potter’s ashes,” he said.

She stifled a cry, swallowing it back with painful effort, but the horror that flared in her eyes seemed to amuse him. A faint smile — so rare on that serpentine face — curved his lips.

“I keep them here,” he went on in his unhurried, deliberate cadence, “so that I may, from time to time, reflect upon him… and mourn him. Yes — mourn.”

Her breath faltered.

“You doubt it, no doubt. You expected hatred.”

He shook his head slowly.

“But I never hated him. Part of my soul lived within him.” His hand drifted to Nagini, stroking her scales with idle affection. “It bound us. Like brothers — no… closer still. We felt each other across great distances; we could exchange thoughts as easily as words. I offered him alliance more times than you can imagine — offered him the role of a younger brother, the chance to join me, to unite our strengths.”

He exhaled lightly, a sound almost like regret.

“But he refused, in his pride and his delusions. Such a waste… If you understood how much we might have accomplished together.”

His crimson eyes dimmed to something unreadable.

“So yes — I mourn him.”

Hermione said nothing; she could not trust her own voice.

Lord Voldemort lifted the urn once more, studying it in a long, contemplative silence. As he guided it back toward its place on the high shelf, she heard — faint but unmistakable — the dry whisper of ashes shifting inside. A moment later, with another soft gesture of his wand, the urn settled into its original position, gleaming coldly in the dim light.

“But he was a miserable strategist,” the Dark Lord said at last, a thin grin curving his lips as he re-established eye contact with Hermione. “Without you, his little army would not have lasted a few months — perhaps not even a few weeks. It was only thanks to your strategic abilities that the war dragged on for years.”

Her eyes widened; her lips parted, though no sound escaped. A sudden, icy realization broke over her: he was not merely taunting her. He was right. Judging by the outcome — by the ruin of the Realm, by the terror and devastation of those desperate years, by her own place now at the feet of the conqueror — it would indeed have been better for everyone if the resistance had fallen swiftly. And all of that suffering, all those years… had been her doing.

“Speaking of strategy,” he continued, his voice calm again, “you know well enough the difficulties I have with the Continental magical governments. What would you advise? Should I appease them? Perhaps release all the slaves as a gesture of goodwill? Or, on the contrary, should I demonstrate my full strength — strike pre-emptively and decisively?”

“Your Majesty,” Hermione said after a heartbeat of reflection, “I am certain you overestimate my abilities. You defeated Potter despite all the counsel I gave him, which proves your talent is far greater than mine.”

“I appreciate your modesty, Hermione Granger,” the Dark Lord replied, his crimson gaze sharpening, “but I insist that you speak your mind.”

She drew a long, steadying breath and began.

“If Your Majesty were to show great mercy and free my unfortunate brothers and sisters from slavery, suffering, and humiliation, thousands would bless you now, and generations of their descendants would glorify your name for centuries. Foreign governments would praise this decision; their rhetoric would soften, perhaps even grow favourable to you and to your political order…”

She inhaled again, careful to steady her voice, careful to keep her inner turmoil from spilling into her words.

“But… it is not ideology or morality that drives their hostility, but Your Majesty’s might. Your power terrifies them, and as long as you remain strong — or are perceived as strong — they will remain your enemies and will continue to devise plans against you. Their language may change, but their purpose will remain: to destroy your power. I wish I could offer Your Majesty a gentler answer, but intellectual honesty leaves me no choice.”

Lord Voldemort inclined his head with deliberate slowness and made a slight, rolling gesture with his hand, inviting her to continue and unfold her strategic vision before him. Hermione obeyed, striving to maintain a tone that was confident enough to be useful yet respectful enough not to offend. He listened with an attentiveness she had not expected; from time to time he interrupted her with brief, precise questions, the kind that revealed genuine interest rather than mere politeness or cruelty.

She explained that a direct assault upon the Continent had little chance of success. Even if His Majesty’s potential allies there remained loyal in his hour of need — a doubtful assumption in itself — the combined strength of the hostile powers would still be far greater. Muggle history, she continued, was rich with examples of such ventures: campaigns launched in confidence, meeting at first with swift victories, only to collapse under the accumulated weight of superior numbers and united opposition. Success in such circumstances was exceedingly rare; failure was far more common.

Why should the Lord of Wizards concern himself with Muggle history? Simply because Muggles, by their sheer numbers and their ancient divisions into countless rival states, had produced a far more extensive record of wars, coalitions, betrayals, and miscalculations than the comparatively narrow chronicle of wizardkind. A wise ruler, Hermione said, could profit by studying the errors Muggles had committed, especially the most fatal of lessons: one must never fight one’s enemies while they are united. They must be divided — separated by fear, ambition, jealousy, or conflicting interests — before any decisive action can be taken. This was easier said than done, of course, but that, she added softly, was the essence of strategy.

A prudent leader must cultivate strength, yet never appear overwhelmingly strong, for the perception of great and growing power is what compels enemies to abandon their quarrels and unite. He must not appear weak either, for weakness invites attack. But beneath this careful balance of appearances, every act, every policy, must quietly increase his real power.

And this, she said, was why her project mattered. If it succeeded, it would open the path to a systematic study of magic — to an understanding of the ultimate source of wizarding power. It might lead to refinements of existing spells, perhaps even to the discovery of entirely new ones. In this way, the Dark Lord would accumulate capabilities that no foreign ruler could match, becoming stronger than all of them together, and when the moment came, he would strike — not into uncertainty, but into inevitable victory.

To her quiet astonishment, the Dark Lord showed genuine interest in Muggle technologies. She had always assumed he despised Muggles and everything connected with them, yet he questioned her at length about their advances — in weaponry, in transportation, in their methods of transmitting information. Most unexpectedly, he inquired in great detail about Muggle medicine. His questions grew increasingly focused, almost intense, as if the topic concerned him personally, though it bore no obvious relation to the geopolitical issues they were discussing.

There was, beneath his curiosity, a certain tension in his voice she had not noticed before — a faint roughness, a slight pause between breaths, so subtle she might have missed it had she not been watching him so carefully. It was then that an uneasy thought began to take shape within her: something was wrong with him. Something he was trying, with great effort, to conceal.

At last he fell silent. His questions ceased, and his gaze, once so piercing, seemed to drift past her, unfocused, as though he were contemplating something far beyond the walls of the chamber. For a long moment neither of them spoke. She could hear nothing but the faint rhythm of his breathing and the soft, sinuous rustle of Nagini’s scales as his hand moved absently over the serpent’s coils.

Then, with a slight shift of his fingers — a gesture no more than the turn of a wrist — he signaled that the audience was at an end. Behind her, the great doors swung open without a sound.

Hermione rose at once. She stepped backward as etiquette demanded, her head bowed, her eyes lowered but not cast abjectly to the floor. When she had withdrawn the proper distance, she sank into a deep curtsy — not the terrified collapse of a slave, but the precise, formal obeisance owed to a sovereign. The Dark Lord acknowledged the gesture with the barest inclination of his head.

Only then did she straighten, turn, and depart.

The doors closed behind her with a heavy, final certainty.

She walked down the long corridor on unsteady legs, her steps echoing faintly against the polished stone. The air outside the audience chamber felt sharper than before, almost wintry, and only then did she realize how tightly she had been holding herself. Her dress clung damply to her back, the fabric cold against her skin, as if the fear she had kept so rigidly contained had finally seeped out through her flesh the moment the doors closed behind her. Yet beneath the ebbing tremor of terror, another sensation troubled her more profoundly: the memory of a slight hesitation in his breath, a thin roughness in his voice, the way his gaze had drifted unfocused for a heartbeat too long. She replayed those fragments as she walked, each recollection settling over her with increasing weight. Something was wrong with him. And if the Dark Lord was weakening — or merely believed himself to be — it would change everything.

The corridor stretched before her, empty and dim, lit only by the cold gleam of enchanted lamps whose pale reflections trembled in the polished stone. The carved angels along the walls — the same solemn figures who had sung softly as she walked toward the audience chamber — now kept a reverent silence, their stone lips closed, their wings folded in stillness. Even the serpents entwined at their feet seemed subdued, their granite coils unmoving, as though the entire corridor were holding its breath.

Hermione walked until her legs would carry her no farther and then, with a shudder she had not permitted herself inside the Dark Lord’s presence, she let her back rest lightly against the wall. The stone felt cold through her damp dress — a sharp, bracing cold that steadied her thoughts and made her aware of how violently her heart was beating.

For a moment she closed her eyes.

Not to rest — she did not dare — but to gather the fragments of her mind, which felt scattered and sharpened to painful edges. The silence of the corridor seemed vast enough to contain her thoughts, and into that silence her conclusions formed with dreadful clarity.

The Dark Lord was supposed to be immortal.

That belief had survived the war intact — among his followers and his enemies alike. A certainty so deeply rooted that no one dared question it aloud.

But belief was not evidence.

All his inanimate Horcruxes — the eternal anchors meant to outlast centuries — had been destroyed. Only Nagini remained. And Nagini was flesh. Bound to blood, to hunger, to aging, and at last to death.

Everyone assumed that, now that he had triumphed, he could fashion new Horcruxes at will.

But what if he could not?

Harry Potter had been his Horcrux as well — though neither of them had known it until the final moment. The killing curse he cast then must have torn through his own soul as surely as it destroyed Harry’s body.

A soul already fractured beyond all precedent.

Perhaps that blow had weakened him beyond repair. Perhaps the victory they all feared had cost him more than any of them understood.

If he could no longer split his soul, then he could no longer anchor it.

And if he could not anchor it —

Then he was aging.

Then he was decaying.

Like everyone else.

She saw it now: the faint bluish pallor of his skin, the subtle erosion of its texture. It had not always been so. It was changing — and not for the better.

He was dying.

That was why his manner had shifted. Why he had spoken to her differently. Why he probed her mind but refrained from entering deeply. Why he hungered so openly for Muggle knowledge — Muggle science, Muggle medicine — anything that might prolong what magic no longer could.

His interest was not curiosity.

It was desperation.

And she — with her project, her rare ability to move between worlds, her understanding of Muggle knowledge — she had become his most valuable asset.

Perhaps his only one.

But value cut both ways.

If she had seen what he sought to hide, then she was not merely useful — she was dangerous.

When he next entered her mind, he would decide her fate on a single question.

Was she loyal?

Loyalty was not love.

Love entangled body and soul. It demanded reciprocity, illusion, hope.

Loyalty required only the soul.

She had learned that difference long ago.

Bellatrix had not wanted her love. She had wanted her alignment. The precise responses. The readiness to give what was needed before it was demanded.

That had been the lesson of those nights — conditioning, refined into habit.

Bellatrix had called it love.

Hermione no longer knew what she would have to deny to say that it was not.

Loyalty could be constructed.

Belief could be cultivated.

And the mind, given time and necessity, could be trained to inhabit its own fictions.

When the Dark Lord looked into her thoughts again, he must find loyalty — complete, unquestioning, absolute.

Not because it was true.

But because it was necessary.

She would make it real.

She had learned how.

When at last she opened her eyes again, the corridor looked the same, but everything else had changed. She pushed herself away from the wall, smoothed the front of her dress with unsteady hands, and forced her breathing into something resembling calm. Whatever awaited her, she would need all her strength — and those necessary lies which must be forged, polished, and finally believed, even by herself. To live, she would need to reshape her mind as deftly as others shaped magic — shaping truth, shaping belief, shaping herself. It was a dangerous skill… and perhaps the beginning of something far more dangerous still.

Then she continued walking, each step carrying her farther from the Dark Lord’s presence and toward the outer halls of the citadel. She passed beneath the high arches of the main corridor, crossed the echoing antechamber with its silent angels and coiled serpents, and descended the broad stairway leading toward the gate. As she stepped onto the first stair, the stone guards flanking the descent stirred to life, striking the hafts of their halberds against the stair in the same solemn salute with which they had greeted her on her way in. Their granite faces revealed nothing, yet the ritual gesture seemed to reverberate more coldly now that she walked away rather than toward her peril.

At the foot of the stairs the great gate opened at her approach, its iron doors parting without a sound. Beyond it lay the dimly lit path leading to the servants’ quarters. The night air met her like a cold hand as she crossed the threshold, and for the first time since the summons she allowed herself to breathe without fear of being overheard.

Her small house stood only a short walk away. She entered it in a daze, stripped off her trembling, damp garments, and let the elves take them without a word. The bathwater steamed faintly in the dim light; she sank into it as though into another world, letting the heat loosen muscles she had forgotten she possessed. When at last she lay upon her narrow bed, exhaustion swept her instantly into a dreamless sleep.

Hermione slept until noon, and even after waking she remained motionless for a long while, staring at the pale light that crept through the narrow window. Her body felt heavy, as if the night had pressed a stone upon her chest, and for a time she could summon no strength to rise. At last she pushed herself upright and dressed without thought, pulling on the garments the elves had folded neatly on the chair beside her bed. There was nothing left for her to do. Only wait. And she waited in a kind of muted stillness, her mind circling the same dark conclusions until the hours blurred into one another.

Chapter Text

Draco arrived near dusk, a large bundle in his arms and a triumphant gleam in his eyes.

“My lord?” Hermione murmured, startled, forgetting even the greeting ritual in her confusion.

The Earl of Winterbourne did not seem to notice. He strode inside, unwrapped the bundle with quick, excited movements, and laid out on the table a set of garments — pieces of clothing that unmistakably belonged to a military-style uniform, though unlike any uniform she had seen before.

Draco unfolded the garments with deliberate care, spreading them across the table as though unveiling a relic of some long-forgotten order. The first piece was a coat of immaculate white, tailored with near-military precision and fastened with a single row of heavy, gold-polished buttons that gleamed even in the dim light of her modest room. Gold braid traced the high collar, curling into an intricate pattern that seemed almost ceremonial in its severity. Upon the shoulders rested ornate epaulettes, rich with layered cords and tassels, their deep gold catching every flicker from the lamp.

Beside the coat lay the matching white breeches, cut with the same disciplined elegance, the fabric smooth as new parchment beneath Draco’s hands. The cuffs of the coat, where the white met a band of stark black, bore elaborate gold embroidery arranged in sharp, commanding arcs — patterns that suggested rank and authority Hermione had never imagined claiming.

Then he placed the hat upon the table: a white, close-fitting military cap with a subtly curved crown and a narrow brim, its trim worked in fine gold thread. It bore no insignia, remaining stark and unadorned, yet even so it seemed to possess a quiet gravity of its own — as though the very shape of it knew the purpose for which it had been fashioned.

On the floor beside the table stood a pair of black boots — tall, gleaming, and sharply defined, as though carved from midnight itself. Their dark severity grounded the brilliance of the white and gold, completing the ensemble with a solemn, almost martial finality.

“Who is this for?” Hermione asked, astonishment softening her voice as she looked at the garments spread before her.

Draco folded his arms, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Well, let us consider the possibilities,” he said lightly. “I could present it to one of the house-elves as a freedom gift, of course… though don’t you think it a touch oversized for any of them? In fact”—he gestured toward the coat with a little flourish—“it ought to fit you precisely. The elves took your measurements, and they never err in such matters. So…”

“I… my lord… never in my life have I worn anything like this,” she whispered.

“Well, you must wear it now,” he replied, his tone shifting from playful to authoritative with practiced ease. “This is the Dark Lord’s command. And make haste, Hermione — they are already waiting for us.”

Hermione let her fingers glide over the smooth white fabric of the coat, marveling at its unfamiliar weight and texture. Then she glanced uncertainly toward the small bath chamber.

Draco followed her gaze. “Right,” he said, his voice brisk. “You’ll need space. I’ll wait outside.”

He stepped out before she could reply, closing the door behind him with quiet finality.

She dressed quickly, almost mechanically, guided more by instinct than thought. The uniform settled on her shoulders with surprising ease, as though tailored not merely to her measurements but to the shape of her presence. When she opened the door at last, Draco straightened at once.

For a heartbeat, his composure cracked. Admiration flickered — unmistakable, involuntary — before he mastered himself and looked away.

“It suits you,” he said, his tone returning to its habitual calm. Then, after the briefest hesitation: “Indeed, Hermione.”

A faint, unfamiliar warmth stirred in her chest at his words, though she forced her face to remain still.

“Please, allow me,” Draco said, extending his gloved hand toward her.

She placed her own gloved fingers into his, the white fabric whispering softly against his palm. Almost at once the air around them thickened, as it had on the day of her first arrival at the citadel; the world tilted, slowed, and gathered itself into a spiraling column of wind. Pale motes of light, shaped like drifting runes, flickered into existence and circled them like fragments of half-remembered spells.

In the next breath the floor dissolved beneath their feet. The spell lifted them gently, unthreading them from one place and stitching them through space toward another. They drifted past the wide-open inner gates, where the stone giants raised their halberds in solemn salute, and then through the long, echoing corridors and upward stairways of the citadel.

When the motion ceased, they stood before the great doors of the Dark Lord’s throne hall.

The great bronze-grilled doors sighed open, their hinges groaning like something ancient roused unwillingly from rest, and Draco stepped across the threshold with the measured confidence of one who belonged here. Hermione followed, her breath shallow; just before they crossed into the hall he had taken her cap from her hands with a quiet, reassuring nod, and she had let him, grateful for even that small certainty in a ritual whose shape she did not know.

The throne hall opened before them like the nave of some forgotten temple. Its walls, wrought of darkened gold, caught the torchlight high above in restless glimmers that slid along their surfaces like the strokes of an unseen brush. Serpents and angels crowned the upper arches, their hammered forms flickering in the shifting glow, so that the eye could not decide whether they truly moved or whether the vast chamber merely breathed around them. The ceiling, lost in shadow, seemed impossibly far; the height of the space was a thing stretched by magic beyond any earthly proportion. A dim half-light pooled in the air, mingling with the chill that clung to the stones and lending the whole hall the air of a crypt consecrated not to death, but to the worship of powers older and more ruthless than any earthly sovereign.

Along the central aisle, the Lords of the Council stood in two silent rows, their full regalia gleaming faintly in the gloom. The narrow collars of interlinked silver serpents rested against the dark fabric of their cloaks, each chain glimmering coldly with every faint movement of the torchlight. Their gazes followed Hermione as she passed between them. Cold, aristocratic, measuring. Bellatrix’s eyes burned with a mixture of admiration and jealousy and something far closer to threat than welcome; Snape watched her with a curious, almost thoughtful calm, as though filing away her every breath; and Yaxley’s contempt was so transparent it might have coated the very air around him. The others, though displeasure flickered at the edges of their expressions, kept their faces smooth — for the Dark Lord’s will shielded her today, and none dared openly question it.

At the far end of the hall, upon his throne of dark gold, the Dark Lord sat motionless, as though carved from the chamber’s own substance. Nagini lay coiled at the foot of the dais, her scales catching stray glints of light as she breathed. Voldemort’s face, pale and inscrutable, revealed nothing — no weakness, no impatience, no trace of the private truths Hermione alone now suspected.

Draco halted at the foot of the steps, and Hermione sank immediately to both knees, bowing her head so low that her white cap, held in the Earl’s hand behind her, seemed to hover like a pale ghost in the shadows. The hall held its breath.

For a few heartbeats, Voldemort did not move. Then, with a slow deliberation that sent a ripple through the assembled Lords, he rose. The soft rustle of his robes echoed strangely in the vastness of the space, and Nagini tightened her coil around the base of the throne. The Lords of the Council bowed their heads in unison, acknowledging the moment.

Alecto Carrow, Baroness of Beckley, Archmagus of Ritual and Wards, Custodian of Ceremonies, and Keeper of the Royal Sigils, stepped forward, took from an attendant the parchment sealed in red wax, and unrolled it with solemn precision. Her voice, when she spoke, carried clearly through the hall:

“By His Majesty’s Command.

Be it known that We, by the Grace of Magic, Sovereign of All Britain, Lord of Wizards, and Protector of the Realm, do herewith take notice of the uncommon prudence, fidelity, and discerning intellect displayed by Hermione Granger, Freedwoman of Our Gift, in matters touching the safety of Our dominions and the secret arts whereby the mysteries of Magic may be better apprehended.

And whereas the inquiries now entrusted to her concern not only the strength of the Realm but the very foundation upon which all wizardry doth stand, and are of such weight that delay or error therein may imperil both Crown and country,

We therefore elevate the said Hermione Granger to the dignity and office of Envoy of Our Will, to act in Our Name wheresoever necessity shall require, and to pursue, unhindered, the investigations and experiments by which new understanding may be won and Our power increased; and We do grant unto her the style and precedence belonging to that estate, that she be addressed by all as Your Excellency, in accordance with the honour now conferred upon her.

To this end, We grant unto her full authority to command the service of any wizard, witch, or subject of Ours, of whatsoever rank or blood, whose aid she shall deem needful for the advancement of her charge; and We enjoin all who hear these words to obey her lawful directives as though they issued from Our own mouth.

She shall report directly to Ourself, rendering faithful account of her progress, her discoveries, and all dangers foreseen or arising; and We do bind Our Privy Council to afford her every assistance and protection, that her work may proceed without impediment.

Know further that the enterprise committed to her care is held in the highest esteem by Our Majesty, touching closely upon matters of singular import to the future of Our reign and the stability of the magical foundations upon which it rests.

Thus do We affirm her new estate, and thus do We set Our Hand and Seal upon this decree, in the sight of the Lords of the Council, this day proclaimed within Our Throne Hall at the Citadel.

So is Our Pleasure.

So do We command.”

Carrow lowered the parchment. Her voice rang once more:

“So is His Majesty’s Pleasure. So does He command.”

Voldemort descended a single step and paused, the hall tightening around him like a held breath. Nagini’s head lifted, tongue tasting the air.

Carrow stepped forward.

“At His Majesty’s command,” she intoned, “rise upon one knee.”

Hermione obeyed, lifting herself with care, left knee touching the floor, right knee raised. Her gloved hand braced the stone for balance; her heart hammered.

Voldemort raised his hand, and something shimmered into being within his grasp: the Sword of Serpents, Salazar Slytherin’s ancient blade. Forged of dark, near-black goblin steel, it caught the cold light in muted flashes along its curved edge; the guard curled into twin serpents, their emerald eyes glinting as though some faint hunger lived behind them still.

The Dark Lord touched the flat of the blade to her left shoulder.

Then to her right.

Then, for a moment that stretched unbearably, rested the sword above her bowed head.

When he lowered the blade, an attendant stepped forward with a velvet cushion bearing a wand. Voldemort took it and held it before her.

A silver serpent — its coils wrought with impossible delicacy, its head forming the grip — encircled the wand’s base. His insignia gleamed at the creature’s throat. But the wood, the grain, the quiet warmth that stirred at her fingertips even before she touched it — she knew. A shock ran through her, sharp and undeniable.

It was hers.

The wand that had chosen her at eleven.

The wand taken from her when she was captured.

Returned.

Her breath caught; she felt suddenly unmoored.

Carrow’s voice broke the silence, low and resonant:

“Swear by wand and magic to wield your strength only for the glory of His Majesty and the fulfillment of His Will.”

A pause — tiny, but unmistakable.

Then Hermione answered, her voice trembling despite every effort to steady it:

“I swear.”

She marked the oath as a tool, like any other — dangerous if misunderstood, indispensable if held with care.

Voldemort’s gaze fixed her, unreadable.

“Rise, Hermione Granger, Envoy of My Will.”

She rose.

At once Draco and Carrow stepped forward from opposite sides. Draco affixed the sapphire “V” to her right epaulet with a firm, precise movement; Carrow attached the matching insignia to her left. Then Draco stepped forward once more, and, as she held the cap before her, he affixed the final insignia to its front.

Along the ranks of the Council, one or two figures shifted their stance almost imperceptibly, as though adjusting to a new line of force they had not expected to feel so soon.

They withdrew a step.

Voldemort’s voice cut through the stillness:

“Envoy Granger. My lord Winterbourne. You may leave us.”

Draco bowed deeply.

Hermione curtsied, the movement steady and exact.

The great doors opened behind them.

Together, without another word, they turned and departed the hall.

Behind them the doors closed, and with that sound the path before her narrowed, set now in lines she could no longer step aside from.

The same magical whirl that had delivered them to the gates of the throne hall now returned them, no less gently, to the door of the servant house. The door opened as they approached.

“Your Excellency,” Draco said, inclining his head in a shallow bow as he gestured toward the threshold.

Hermione hesitated, then looked at him oddly, but entered without comment. He followed.

“You will be leaving this place,” the Earl continued, his tone matter-of-fact, as though stating a point of logistics rather than consequence. “A residence has been prepared for you in Hogsmeade. This house, however, remains reserved for your use. You may arrive here by Floo whenever His Majesty summons you. Your new residence is likewise accessible from here — but as it is yours, only you may enter it freely. All others will require your explicit permission.”

He produced a small box and placed it in her hands.

“Floo powder,” he said. Then, after a fractional pause: “If you please, Your Excellency, lead the way. The property is registered as the Envoy’s residence at Hogsmeade. When you arrive, you will need to grant me leave to enter. There are several matters we should discuss, and it will be more convenient to do so there.”

“My lord,” she murmured, closing her fingers around the box as she stepped toward the Floo grate.

She pronounced the destination, cast the powder, and stepped into the green flame. An instant later she emerged into a spacious room with tall, curtained windows, the light softened by heavy fabric. At its centre stood an elegant ebony table, surrounded by matching chairs; along the walls were cabinets, low sofas, and deep armchairs arranged with deliberate symmetry. Above, a chandelier crowded with candles hung from the ceiling, its light steady and unhurried.

A creaking voice broke the stillness.

“Draco Malfoy, Earl of Winterbourne, requests permission to enter.”

Hermione turned toward the fireplace. Set above the Floo grate was a sculpted goblin’s head, its features exaggerated into a permanent expression of wary attentiveness — the house’s gatekeeper, it seemed.

“Yes,” she said at once, then, catching herself, added more evenly, “Admit him.”

A moment later, Draco stepped through the grate and into the room.

“Your Excellency,” he said, inclining his head in a shallow bow.

Confused, Hermione started to respond with a curtsey, but Draco stopped her with a brief, open-palmed gesture.

“No,” he said quietly. “You needn’t. I bow. You acknowledge.”

They stood in silence for a moment. Then he continued, his tone measured and practical.

“It’s a sharp change. It isn’t easy. But you must internalise the rules, because this dignity is not yours. You represent the Dark Lord’s will before his subjects. You cannot alter or soften the protocol; to do so would be an insult to His Majesty.”

“Before the Dark Lord, or before the Privy Council assembled in full quorum, you kneel on one knee — as a Dame of the Serpent would.”

“Individually, members of the Council outrank you only when acting in their capacity as Regents. To them, you bow or curtsey shallowly.”

“In all other circumstances, you outrank everyone else.”

“The nobility — from Dukes and Duchesses down to Earls and Countesses — bow or curtsey to you shallowly. That includes me.”

He hesitated, then added, evenly, “And my aunt.”

The last words left Hermione visibly unsettled. Draco noticed, and allowed a brief pause to settle before continuing.

“All ranks below that — from Barons to free commoners — bow deeply, and remain lowered until you permit them to rise.”

“Slaves kneel before you. Only you may permit them to rise.”

He paused, studying her expression, then produced a narrow slip of parchment and held it out to her.

“I’ve written it down. For reference.”

He hesitated, as if checking something off in his mind.

“One last matter,” he said. “This house will serve as a meeting place for your agents. No one should see them arrive or depart. They will come through the Floo grate — provided you grant permission.”

He gestured briefly toward the tall doors.

“The exterior entrance, the perimeter, the walls and windows are all heavily warded. No one can enter by any other means unless you explicitly invite them.”

“That’s it,” he added, as if concluding a list.

They stood facing one another in silence, neither of them quite willing to be the first to move.

“So,” Draco said at last, “how do you feel about it?”

“I feel, my lord…” Hermione began, then stopped, as though testing the weight of the words before allowing them to proceed. “Those whom yesterday I could still call my people must now kneel before me. I no longer belong with them.”

She drew a breath.

“The nobility must bow to me — and yet, as a mudblood, I would not be permitted to share a meal at their table.”

She hesitated, then added more quietly, “I feel… alone.”

Draco met her gaze directly.

“Yes,” he said. “You stand alone.”

After a brief pause, he went on, his voice steady. “Because there is no one else like you in the entire world, Hermione Granger.”

Silence settled between them again.

“As for dining with nouveaux mages,” Draco said eventually, with a faint shrug, “that is not a law — merely a social convention. It would be unwise to challenge it in public. But you will always be welcome at Winterbourne for dinner. And you know how well my elves can cook.”

“Thank you, my lord,” she said, allowing herself a small smile. “But if I recall correctly, Winterbourne will soon cease to be yours alone.”

“That need not concern you,” he replied at once. “Lady Astoria will be delighted to meet you. She is… different. You will see.”

He inclined his head.

“I must take my leave, Your Excellency. My business here is concluded.”

“One question, my lord — before you go,” Hermione said quickly. “My wand. It truly is my wand — the one taken from me when I was captured. How did you retrieve it?”

“They are stored in the Ministry’s warehouses,” Draco replied. “With sufficient time — which I had —”

“But why?” she pressed.

He paused, momentarily nonplussed. “Because what you are doing is evidently of great importance to His Majesty,” he said carefully, “and my task is to ensure that you do it with the greatest possible efficiency. In my experience, magic functions best when one wields the wand that chose them. Olivander was quite firm on that point.”

“Yes,” Hermione said, a faint smile touching her mouth before she mastered it.

“On the subject of efficiency,” she continued, “I understand that you no longer supervise my work. Nevertheless, dealing with the pure-blood aristocracy may prove… challenging. Your explicit support would make the process considerably more efficient. May I rely on it, my lord?”

“Of course,” Draco replied without hesitation. “It is my duty to assist you in any way that serves that end.”

“Your Excellency,” he said, bowing.

“My lord,” Hermione answered, inclining her head in accordance with the new protocol.

He turned, stepped into the Floo grate, and vanished in a rush of green flame.

When Draco had gone and the Floo grate had settled back into its ordinary, expectant hush, Hermione remained where she was for a moment longer, standing in the centre of the salon as though the moment itself had not yet released her. Nothing moved. The chandelier burned steadily above her, its candles untouched by draught or flicker, and the tall curtains hung in disciplined folds that softened the afternoon light without quite admitting warmth.

At last she moved, slowly, not toward any particular purpose, but simply because the house was there and she was within it.

The salon revealed itself more fully as she crossed it: the ebony table polished to a dark, depthless sheen; the chairs placed with mathematical care, equidistant, as if anticipating councils that had not yet convened; cabinets whose doors bore discreet enchantments against dust and time. There were no personal touches, no idle objects left to suggest habit. Everything spoke of preparation rather than occupation. It was not a home awaiting its owner so much as a space awaiting function.

She paused briefly before the exterior doors Draco had indicated, their heavy wood reinforced with ironwork worked into sigils she recognised only partially. The wards lay thick over them, layered and precise, humming faintly at the edge of perception. She did not reach for the handle. The knowledge that she could was sufficient.

Beyond the salon she found a smaller room, plainly intended for utility rather than ceremony. The air here smelled faintly of straw and polish. Along one wall stood a rack of broomsticks — well-made, unadorned, each secured in its place as though already accounted for. Opposite them were two owl cages, clean and spacious, each with a small brass plate affixed to the front.

Ludwig, read the first, beneath which a white owl regarded her with solemn, pale-eyed attention, feathers pristine, head turning with measured curiosity.

Louis, read the second. Its occupant was grey, mottled softly along the wings, less imposing but no less alert, shifting its weight as she approached.

Hermione found herself studying the names for a moment longer than necessary. Someone had chosen them, had thought them fitting, had written them down in a careful hand. The owls themselves watched her without fear, as though her presence had been expected.

A narrow staircase led upward from the rear of the house. She climbed it without haste.

The upper floor was quieter still, the air carrying the faint scent of linen and beeswax. The master bedroom occupied most of the space, its proportions generous without excess: a wide bed dressed in pale fabrics, a desk placed near the window, a low hearth warded against smoke. Light filtered in here more freely, unimpeded by heavy drapery, and she found herself standing by the window for a moment, looking out over rooftops she did not yet know how to name.

Two additional bedrooms lay beyond, prepared but untouched, their beds neatly made, their wardrobes empty. Guests, perhaps. Or staff, should the need arise. The rooms did not speculate.

The bathroom was larger than any she had used in years, tiled in pale stone that reflected light rather than absorbed it. The fixtures gleamed softly, enchanted for warmth and replenishment, everything arranged for ease. She registered the fact distantly, as one notes the availability of air or water.

It was the closet that gave her pause.

The walk-in space was deeper than it first appeared, shelves and rails set into the walls with deliberate symmetry. Along one side hung her uniforms—several of them—each a variation on the same uncompromising palette. White coats with gold braid and epaulettes, paired in one instance with tailored breeches, in another with a long skirt cut to fall without flourish; a third was a single-piece dress, severe in line, its regalia integrated rather than applied. The insignia were consistent across all of them, the same language of authority rendered in different grammatical forms.

She stood very still as she took them in.

There were, she noticed, no alternatives for public wear. No gowns. No colours beyond those sanctioned by office. Without the epaulettes, without the insignia, such garments would have been meaningless — or worse, inappropriate. The choice had been made for her with impeccable logic.

Further along hung her old dress, folded and rehung with care, as though someone had deemed it worth preserving even if it no longer belonged to the same life. Beside it were a small number of silk robes, plainly intended for the privacy of the house: soft, unmarked, free of rank.

Hermione reached out and brushed her fingers once along the sleeve of one uniform, then let her hand fall.

She had almost turned away when she became aware—faintly at first, and then unmistakably—of movement elsewhere in the house. Not footsteps exactly, but a subtle displacement of air, a sense of presence adjusting itself to her awareness rather than announcing itself.

She stopped, listening.

The wand was in her hand almost before she had consciously decided to draw it.

She turned and went down the stairs quickly, her steps light but unhesitating.

“Who is there?” she called. “Show yourselves.”

Four elves appeared at once with soft popping sounds — two male, two female — arranging themselves instinctively into a neat line before her.

“Who are you?” Hermione demanded, her wand steady in her hand.

Four figures stood before her where the air had folded a moment before — two male elves and two female, small and spare, their large eyes lifted toward her with an attentiveness that did not read as fear. They answered together, their voices overlapping into a single utterance.

“We are the elves of the house.”

Hermione stared at them, momentarily disoriented. Of the house. Not of Voldemort. Not of the castle. Of this place.

Her gaze moved from one to the next—and then stopped.

“You,” she said slowly. “I know you. Bimby?”

One of the elves stepped half a pace forward, his ears twitching with unmistakable excitement.

“Mistress remembers Bimby,” he said, his voice brightening. “Bimby is very glad.”

She lowered her wand at last.

“How did you come to be here?” she asked. “I was not told—no one said you would be transferred.”

The elves exchanged brief glances, a silent communication too quick to parse. Then Bimby spoke again, matter-of-fact.

“We decided to come with Mistress.”

Hermione blinked.

“You… decided?” she repeated. “This was your choice?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“But—” She stopped herself, then tried again. “How can you decide such a thing? No one ordered you.”

Bimby tilted his head, considering her.

“The old house has many elves,” he said simply. “Too many. This house needed servants. Someone had to move. So we chose.”

The simplicity of it struck her harder than any open defiance might have.

“But masters—” she began, then faltered. “Masters usually decide where elves serve.”

Bimby hesitated, as if selecting words.

“Masters usually do not remember which elves serve them,” he said at last. “They do not see difference. Elves go where they are needed.”

He looked at her then, directly.

“Mistress Granger sees.”

The statement was not offered as praise. It was spoken as a fact, no more remarkable than the number of rooms in the house.

Hermione felt something tighten in her chest.

“So you belong to me now?” she asked quietly.

“We serve this house,” one of the other elves said, speaking for the first time. “And the Mistress of the house.”

A pause followed — short, but weighted.

Hermione drew a slow breath. There were questions pressing at the edges of her mind, too many and too sharp to be asked all at once.

“I see,” she said finally. “We will… speak later.”

The elves inclined their heads in unison.

“Yes, Mistress,” Bimby said. “There is much to prepare.”

Without further ceremony, they vanished, the air closing neatly where they had stood.

Hermione remained where she was, wand still in hand, staring at the space they had left behind, acutely aware that something fundamental had shifted — and that she did not yet know what it would demand of her.

She lingered in the quiet of the house a little longer than she had intended, not resting so much as allowing the accumulation of the day to settle into something she could carry. She did not feel tired in the ordinary sense; her body was steady, her mind clear. And yet everything in her felt full, as though too many doors had been opened at once and none yet closed.

It occurred to her, almost with surprise, that nothing now compelled her to remain where she was.

For the first time in five years, there was no schedule to observe, no summons to await, no corridor she was expected to follow at another’s pace. She could stay inside the house, or she could leave it. She could walk, or sit, or do nothing at all. The choice, trivial as it might once have seemed, pressed upon her with an unfamiliar weight.

After a brief hesitation that had no clear object, she opened the exterior doors and stepped out into the street.

Late afternoon had softened Hogsmeade into motion rather than bustle. Shop doors stood open, voices carried across the cobbles, and people passed one another with the small, unremarkable urgency of daily errands. For a moment, no one noticed her.

Then someone did.

A woman coming out of the apothecary caught sight of the white and gold at Hermione’s shoulders and stopped short, colour draining from her face. She bowed deeply, so deeply that the basket in her hands tilted and spilled its contents across the stones. A man beside her followed suit at once, lowering his head and remaining there, motionless. Further along the street, another figure faltered, then bent, and another after that, the movement spreading in uneven ripples as recognition took hold.

Hermione slowed, then stopped altogether.

She had known this would happen. Draco had told her as much. And yet the sight of it—of people interrupting their lives, their gestures, their conversations to fold themselves downward in her presence—struck her with a sharp, physical disorientation.

“Please,” she said instinctively, the word escaping before she had chosen it. She stopped, uncertain of what should follow.

There were too many of them. Three, four at once. Some merely bowed and waited; one, a boy scarcely old enough to have mastered the restraint of fear, had dropped clumsily to one knee and now remained there, eyes fixed on the ground. Hermione’s mind raced uselessly through the rules Draco had given her. To address them one by one would be absurd. To speak generally would be imprecise. To hurry past them without acknowledgement felt wrong in a way she could not yet articulate.

She took a step forward, then another, moving more quickly than she had meant to, as though speed alone might dissolve the moment. As she passed, heads remained lowered. No one rose.

A cold thought struck her mid-stride: that to flee her own authority was not humility, but discourtesy — that by rushing past she might be diminishing the dignity she had been charged to embody. The idea stopped her short, her foot catching on the uneven stone.

She could not remain here.

The awareness came with sudden clarity: what she needed was not distance from her rank, but distance from eyes. From bodies compelled to respond to her presence in ways she could neither soften nor refuse.

She turned down a narrower lane, then another, walking faster now with purpose rather than confusion. The sounds of the village thinned behind her, replaced by the softer hush of open ground. Without quite deciding to do so, she slowed and stopped at the edge of the path.

She knew where she wanted to be.

The image rose in her mind without effort: a stretch of meadow near the forest’s edge, the grass uneven and resilient, the air cooler there, threaded with the scents of earth and pine. A place she had once sought out simply because it was quiet, because it asked nothing of her beyond presence.

For an instant, a practical thought intruded — that something living might occupy the exact space she remembered, some grazing creature or straying deer — and she weighed it. In her experience, the clearing was almost always empty. The risk was real, but small. Remaining in the village, by contrast, had become unbearable.

The village fell away.

When the world reassembled, it did so with a gentleness that felt almost deliberate. Grass bent under her boots; the forest stood at a respectful distance, dark but not oppressive; the late light slanted low across the clearing, catching on leaves and long stems.

Hermione stood still for a moment, orienting herself — not to danger, but to permission.

Then she drew a deep breath of the cool air, sharp with pine needles and forest herbs, and felt a long-disused sensation return to her body: a purely physical joy, precise and irrepressible, as if every cell had abruptly remembered how little weight it truly needed to carry. It occurred to her, with mild surprise and a trace of curiosity, that gravity had begun to behave more like a suggestion than a rule. She realised, a heartbeat later, that her boots were no longer touching the ground; she was suspended a few feet above it, quite steadily. The discovery startled her, and she moved at once to descend — only to find that returning herself to the earth required more deliberate effort than leaving it, as though the air offered far less resistance to release than to restraint.

She let herself rise further, first cautiously and then, as nothing resisted her, with increasing confidence, until the trees fell away beneath her and the forest opened into a broad, shadowed pattern, and only then did she understand what made this unlike any flight she had ever known: there was no frame, no posture imposed upon her, no narrow axis of balance to be maintained between fear and velocity, but only her own body, upright and unencumbered, moving as it wished through open air that answered not to pressure or speed but to intent. On a broom, flight had always been a negotiation — hands clenched, muscles braced, attention divided between direction and survival — exhilarating, yes, but never quite effortless; here, by contrast, there was nothing to grip and nothing to correct, no instrument interposed between thought and motion, and the absence of mediation was itself the source of joy. She turned slowly, experimentally at first, tracing a wide, unhurried circle above the treetops, then another, tighter one, adjusting not her balance but her expectation, until movement ceased to feel like action at all and became simply a change of place, as natural and unremarkable as walking had once been, before walking itself had been taken from her. A brief laugh escaped her — sharp, incredulous — and was gone almost before she realised she had made a sound at all.

Only then did she bring up her wand, not with any sense of ceremony but almost absently, as one lifts a hand while thinking, and with a small, economical motion traced a thin circle in the air before her, a line of pale light that shimmered into being, precise and complete, and vanished almost at once, as though embarrassed by its own simplicity. She tried again, altering the colour without conscious effort — a colder blue this time, edged faintly with silver — and watched it dissolve no less readily, leaving behind not disappointment but a growing attentiveness, the quiet sharpening of perception that had always accompanied her better moments of thought. Encouraged, she allowed the line to divide and multiply, drawing out a brief architecture of interlocking planes and rotating figures that hung together for a few seconds in obedient equilibrium before collapsing inward and fading, dismissed with a flicker of impatience; and then, as if rejecting geometry altogether, she turned the wand in her fingers and let it describe a slower, more indulgent curve, from which there unfolded, petal by deliberate petal, the form of a great red rose, impossibly vivid against the darkening sky. This one she did not unmake at once. It hovered before her, rich and complete, the colour deepening rather than dimming, and she found herself holding still, absorbed by the sheer fact of its presence — by the unnecessary beauty of it, sustained by nothing but attention — until several breaths had passed and the world beyond it had grown distant and inconsequential.

What followed unfolded without plan or sequence, as though once the first restraint had been set aside the air itself invited elaboration: the rose dissolved into a scattering of embers that reassembled into spirals, lattices, brief arches of light that bent and re-bent upon themselves, growing denser, more intricate, their colours shifting through registers she had never bothered to name, until the sky around her seemed less an expanse than a surface upon which thought might be written directly. She moved her wand more freely now, no longer watching her hand but the consequences of its passage, and with each new form her attention narrowed, the forest below retreating into abstraction, the passage of minutes losing its ordinary meaning as creation supplanted chronology. Only dimly did she register that some of the shapes lingered longer than others, that certain configurations drew the eye outward as well as inward, asserting themselves against the dark with a persistence that felt almost indiscreet; once or twice she paused, suspended among her own constructions, with the faint, detached impression that she had made something too large, too legible, and then dismissed the thought as easily as it had arisen, unwilling to break the rhythm. When at last she allowed the last of the figures to unravel — light thinning, lines withdrawing — the air seemed suddenly bare again, and she realised, with a small start of belated awareness, how completely she had been alone with what she was making, and how much of herself she had permitted to be visible in the process.

She noticed them only when the air at the edge of her awareness shifted: two figures, then a third, approaching on broomsticks from the south, drawn no doubt by the improbable geometry hanging above the forest. They slowed as they came nearer, circling once at a cautious distance, their attention fixed not on the structures themselves but on the empty space between them, and then on her. For a brief moment nothing happened. Then one of them checked his broom too sharply, another drifted wide, and without a word exchanged they turned and withdrew, accelerating away from her with a haste that sat oddly with their earlier curiosity. Hermione watched them go, thoughtful rather than alarmed, and only then did she allow the shapes she had been sustaining to thin and dissolve, the sky closing around her as if nothing unusual had ever disturbed it.

She decided, without reluctance, that this was enough. The moment had been private in its making, born of impulse rather than display, and it ought to remain so; yet she could not quite suppress a brief, almost amused acknowledgment that someone, somewhere, had looked up and been compelled to look again — a reaction any author, however unwilling, might recognise with a certain reluctant satisfaction. The thought did not linger. She let it pass, and with it the last impulse to add or revise. One by one, the structures she had sustained thinned and dimmed as her attention eased, lines loosening, colours paling, until the sky reclaimed itself without effort or resistance, as though nothing had ever been written there at all. Only then did she allow herself to descend, slowly and without correction, the ground rising to meet her rather than the other way around, until her boots touched earth again with a gentleness that surprised her by how much of her it was willing to bear.

She remained in the meadow a little longer than she had planned, not because there was anything left to do there, but because leaving meant choosing another destination — and choice, she was learning, had acquired a new weight.

The house rose easily in her mind: its rooms, its stair, the wide salon with the Floo grate. And just as easily, the objections followed. She did not yet know the exact limits of the wards; even if they recognised her authority, she could not assume they would tolerate apparition directly into the interior. More practically still, the elves moved through the house without announcement. The risk of arriving where someone already stood was small, but unnecessary.

She shifted the image slightly.

The space before the front doors was open, paved, and rarely occupied. Judging by the village’s earlier reaction, it was unlikely anyone lingered there at all. It was, by any reasonable measure, the safest point of entry.

The decision satisfied her.

The meadow dissolved.

She reappeared on the stone path before the house, the air settling around her with familiar smoothness. The building stood silent and composed, its windows dark, its doors closed. No one was in sight.

She crossed the short distance to the entrance and opened the doors.

The house accepted her.

Hermione set her gloves aside and crossed the sitting room — and then stopped.

Upon the table lay a small, dark velvet case, open. Inside, arranged with meticulous care, rested a collar of pure gold, worked so finely it seemed almost fluid, its surface broken only by the cold fire of gemstones set at measured intervals. Diamonds caught the lamplight and returned it without warmth.

It might have passed, at a glance, for a piece of extravagant jewellery made for a woman of rank. Hermione knew exactly what it was.

She did not move closer. For a fraction of a second — no more than that — her attention caught on the object with an intensity she had not summoned, registering the precise curvature of the gold, the way the hinges had been disguised, the balance of weight implied by its construction. The recognition came first; understanding followed after.

She drew a slow breath.

Beside the case lay a folded card, the handwriting neat, angular, unmistakable.

Accept my admiration, Your Excellency.

Hermione stood very still.

Her eyes moved, not to the collar again, but to the room: the doors, the windows, the corners where wards lay threaded into stone and wood. She became acutely aware of the house as a volume that could be entered, not merely owned — of the distance between the threshold and the table, of the unseen passages through which elves moved.

How—

She did not finish the thought.

The door behind her remained locked.

She did not reach for the collar. She did not close the case. For a moment longer than was comfortable, she simply stood there, aware of her own stillness, of the unwanted clarity with which her body had recognised what her mind refused to accommodate.

Then she straightened, as if adjusting to a posture she had momentarily lost, and looked away.

“Elves of the house,” she said, her voice even. “Come here.”

They appeared at once — not with the abruptness of surprise, but with the smooth coordination of those already attentive. Four figures took shape near the far wall, arranging themselves instinctively, eyes lifted toward her.

“Yes, Mistress,” Bimby said.

Hermione did not turn back to the table.

“Has anyone entered the house since my departure?” she asked.

The elves glanced at one another, quick and silent.

“No one has entered, Mistress,” one of the others said.

“No one requested permission,” Bimby added.

“And no one was admitted?”

“No one,” they said together.

Hermione nodded once.

“That will be all,” she said.

The elves vanished.

Only then did she turn back toward the table.

The collar lay exactly as before, the gold catching the light with indifferent precision.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, without sound or warning, a voice formed where thought should have been — intimate, amused, unmistakable.

You cannot hide from me, pet.

The word settled into her like a touch remembered.

Chapter Text

Sitting back in the armchair, Hermione found herself returning to the same uneasy thought. The house was not nearly as well protected as Draco had claimed. That, or protection itself had ceased to mean what it was supposed to mean. She could not decide whether Draco had been lying, or whether the elves — earnest, precise, and entirely sincere — had simply been describing a kind of safety that did not apply to everyone. After all, who would dare to enter the residence of the Dark Lord’s envoy without invitation? Who would even consider it? The question answered itself. No one did — except those for whom questions of permission and resistance had long since become irrelevant.

Perhaps the wards were not flawed at all. Perhaps they were simply meaningless against someone who could not, in any practical sense, be stopped. Who could claim to know the full reach of the Duchess of Gravenhurst’s magic, or the limits she herself observed only by choice? She would not trespass upon the Dark Lord’s own citadel — that boundary was clear, deliberate — but beyond it, no fortress truly stood. Many had learned that too late, their defenses collapsing not with drama, but with the quiet certainty of something inevitable. The wiser ones had learned sooner. They had not fought. They had stepped aside. No one who wished to survive challenged her; no one who still valued their sanity attempted resistance. Bellatrix was not an adversary to be overcome. She was a condition to be adapted to.

And it was there, unbidden and persistent, that the thought returned to Hermione and refused to be dismissed: that perhaps she herself had not merely failed to oppose Bellatrix — but had, at some level she still found difficult to name, chosen not to.

There had been a time when she had fought her. Hermione did not linger on it; those memories rose unbidden and were dismissed just as quickly, pressed down by habit before they could gather shape. She had learned long ago that examining them accomplished nothing except to make them sharper.

Breaking that defiance had taken only two forms, repeated until distinction blurred: pain, inflicted with methodical precision, and exposure — being brought out, stripped of everything but the chains on her wrists and ankles and the iron collar at her throat, made to stand on display among the mocking crowd of Death Eaters as a living proof of conquest. She remembered less the acts themselves than their aftermaths, the moments when Bellatrix bent close and whispered in a voice so gentle it was almost pleading, Stop resisting, little lion. Losing you will break my heart. The words had unsettled her more than the pain. They returned even now, unwelcome, carrying with them the echo of a tenderness that did not absolve what surrounded it.

By the time the end came, it arrived without effort. There had been no strength left to kneel. She had simply fallen, breathless and shaking, at Bellatrix’s feet, and given the only answer that promised an end to the struggle. Please let me serve you, Mistress. Teach me how. Even now, Hermione did not examine that moment closely. Some truths, once named, did not need to be revisited to retain their power.

Serving Bellatrix, Hermione learned quickly, was not a task that could be completed by obedience alone. That, at least, was familiar ground. She committed herself to it as fully as she had once committed herself to study, to planning, to the long discipline of fighting. She learned to anticipate demands, to carry them out with exactness and care, leaving as little room for error as possible. Precision came easily to her; diligence even more so. Very soon, she could satisfy every explicit requirement placed before her, and do so flawlessly.

And yet it was not enough. Compliance, she discovered, could still be wrong. Bellatrix’s dissatisfaction did not announce itself in words — she herself seemed unable, or unwilling, to articulate what was missing — but it revealed itself unmistakably in its consequences. Punishment followed not disobedience, but something subtler: the absence of what Bellatrix truly sought. It took Hermione time to understand that what was demanded was not accuracy, nor even devotion in the ordinary sense, but something less tangible and far more exacting. She was expected not merely to act, but to align — to give not just what was asked for, but what was wanted before it was named. Until she learned that distinction, the lessons continued.

Understanding what Bellatrix wanted did not solve the problem of how to give it. Hermione could submit; she could fear; she could anticipate punishment with sufficient accuracy to reduce its frequency. None of that produced what Bellatrix seemed to be searching for. Love could not be manufactured by effort, nor summoned by obedience. Bellatrix remained her captor, her tormentor — a force that took relentlessly and returned nothing she could rely on. Hermione understood, with a clarity that offered no comfort, that knowing what was required did not make it possible to provide it.

And then, without warning or apparent cause, something shifted. It might have been chance — a touch made in the right order, or an eagerness that overreached itself — but instead of the familiar violence, Bellatrix drew her close and held her, simply, without demand. Come, love, she said, and there was no command in it. Let’s talk about something. It was a Bellatrix Hermione had not encountered before: attentive, unguarded, willing to listen not as a master correcting a servant, but as a mind engaging another. They spoke, and the pain did not return. Hermione did not understand what she had done differently — only that a door had opened, briefly, onto a state she had never known and could not forget. After that, she found herself willing to do almost anything to reach it again.

Bellatrix’s attitude changed, not abruptly, but decisively. Iron chains were replaced by bracelets, anklets, and collars wrought of gold and set with stones. The cramped, windowless room was exchanged for the run of the manor; silks replaced rough cloth; confinement gave way to a freedom that remained conditional but expansive enough to matter. It was during these wanderings that Hermione discovered the vast library of the House of Black, and there, without instruction or permission, began to read. She read with the same fierce absorption that had always defined her, long before captivity had taught her what endurance meant, devouring volume after volume, tracing arguments, systems, forgotten genealogies of magic. Bellatrix noticed. More than that, she approved. When Hermione succeeded in pleasing her — an art she learned with increasing precision — the elder witch would draw her close, kiss her lightly on the forehead, and ask, with a tone that held neither mockery nor expectation, What did this brilliant head learn today? And in those moments, Hermione understood that she was no longer being merely kept, but attended to.

Bellatrix — that ferocious demon of war who inspired terror in enemies and allies alike, a witch whose only passion, according to the world, was murder and torture — proved to be endowed with a formidable intelligence and an ability to cut to the heart of things at a depth Hermione had never before encountered in any interlocutor. For the first time in her life, she had met someone who matched her fully in mind, and their conversations became a source of intensity and fulfillment she had not known existed, let alone missed.

During the day, Hermione found herself waiting for the moment of her mistress’s return, when a soft voice — almost a whisper, yet magically carried to every corner of the vast house — would call, Come, gorgeous, where are you hiding? She rushed to it without thinking. It was then she discovered, to Bellatrix’s evident amusement, that she could levitate and fly, though the walls and ceiling of the manor never allowed her to rise very far. More disquieting still was the realization that her body now responded not only to Bellatrix’s touch, nor even to her voice, but to the mere anticipation of her presence. Hermione did not search long for a name. Love was the only one that did not require her to lie.

But Hermione also knew, with a clarity that hurt, that this love would not accommodate her other passion — the one that now possessed her mind: the passion of a discoverer who had been given a glimpse behind the veils that concealed the fundamental secrets of magic. What she had been offered by Lord Voldemort was not merely a task, nor even an ambition, but a direction — a work that demanded her full attention, not as devotion, but as engagement with the world itself. Bellatrix would never have tolerated that division. She could love only what belonged to her entirely, and Hermione had learned too well what that belonging entailed. To remain near her was not only to risk being consumed again, but to risk abandoning something that, once glimpsed, could not be set aside. She did not doubt Bellatrix’s love. What she doubted was the possibility of loving anything else in her presence — and she knew enough not to test that truth. Bellatrix could not be stopped; but there were powers even she did not lightly defy, and Hermione allowed herself the cautious hope that this would be one of them.

Hermione let the thought rest where it was. There was nothing more to be decided now. What remained was to set her mind to the work before her — and begin.

Not tonight.

The day had already slipped beyond her without her noticing. The light outside the tall windows had dimmed to indigo and then to black, and the house, so recently disturbed, had settled into a quiet that was not quite peace. Whatever resolve she felt could wait until morning. She knew better than to test herself against exhaustion — not after what had been given, and not after what had been taken.

Sleep did not come easily. When it came at all, it was shallow and fragmented, broken by images that refused to order themselves into dreams. Still, she rested, and that was enough.

By morning, the decision remained.

Hogsmeade lay close to Hogwarts, a fortunate arrangement, since the castle itself presented an unexpected possibility: it might serve as an ideal base for her research centre. Once, the place had been saturated with magic to the point of hostility toward any Muggle apparatus; now, in the aftermath of the war, it stood abandoned, its wards likely dismantled, its halls shunned by wizards who preferred not to test what lingered there. Whatever magic had once permeated it had thinned — perhaps dissipated altogether. Draco had likely reached the same conclusion when he proposed Hogsmeade as her new residence.

She decided to explore the castle that day, but paused over the question of how to reach it. Her newly tested ability to levitate and fly would have been the most direct — and the most conspicuous — option. Such magic was rare enough to invite attention, and attention, in her position, had a way of curdling into rumor and myth. Apparition would have been quicker. More efficient — and irresponsible. Whatever remained of Hogwarts’ wards was not something she intended to test with her own body. That left the only sensible choice: a broomstick.

Remembering her recent walks through the village streets, Hermione took the hooded cloak from the wardrobe and drew it over her shoulders before leaving. The choice proved sound: the few passers-by she encountered that early paid no attention to a hooded figure carrying a broom.

She rose from Hogsmeade at a measured height, keeping low enough that the ground remained legible beneath her. The village fell away quickly — clustered roofs, narrow lanes, the thin line of the road — and beyond it the land opened into the familiar slope leading up toward the loch. The air grew colder as she gained distance, thinner somehow, as though the absence she had sensed from afar deepened with proximity. It was not the hostile pressure of wards resisting intrusion, nor the charged density of active enchantment, but something closer to fatigue — a place where magic had once been expended and had not yet returned.

Hogwarts emerged gradually rather than all at once, its outline resolving itself tower by tower as she approached. From this angle, the damage read less as catastrophe than as subtraction. Whole sections were simply gone, removed from the castle’s grammar, leaving behind abrupt endings where lines had once continued. Walls that should have carried ornamentation ended bluntly; stair towers stopped short of their intended height. The tallest spires still stood, dark against the pale sky, but even they seemed diminished — not broken so much as hollowed, their upper windows blind and unlit.

She adjusted her course slightly, skirting the lake. From above, its surface lay unnaturally still, heavy and opaque, reflecting neither sky nor castle with any clarity. No boats cut its water; no ripples marked the approach of students. The absence was complete enough to feel intentional, as though the lake itself had withdrawn from use.

As she drew closer, individual scars became visible. Sections of masonry bore the pale discoloration left by high-impact curses; other areas were darkened, scorched so deeply the stone itself appeared bruised. A tower on the western side leaned at an angle that defied comfort, its continued existence owed less to design than to whatever residual spells still clung to it. Another had collapsed entirely, its remains scattered downslope in a rough arc that suggested the direction of the final blow.

Hermione did not circle. She had seen enough.

She guided the broom toward the inner grounds, descending slowly as she assessed the terrain below. The main courtyard lay open, its flagstones cracked and uneven, sections lifted where something violent had passed through them. The central fountain was dry, its basin choked with debris. Wind moved freely through the space, unimpeded by wards or barriers, carrying with it the faint scent of old smoke and damp stone.

She chose a landing point near the edge of the courtyard, where the ground was clear and the stone intact enough to trust. The broom dipped, responded smoothly, and she touched down without ceremony, boots meeting cold stone that held no answering hum of magic. For a moment she remained where she was, hand still on the handle, listening — not for sound, but for resistance.

There was none.

Hermione dismounted, drew the broom in close, and stood facing the castle at ground level. From here, Hogwarts no longer loomed. It simply waited. She entered through the great doors without ceremony.

The Entrance Hall received her with indifference: no banners stirred, no torches flared to attention, no latent magic reached out to test or greet her. Dust lay undisturbed along the stone, not thick enough to suggest abandonment through neglect, but settled in the way of places no longer expected to be used. The Great Hall beyond confirmed the impression. Benches stood where they had always stood, but the space no longer asserted itself. It did not resist her presence, nor acknowledge it. Whatever authority the castle had once exercised over those who crossed its threshold had thinned to something inert.

She did not linger.

The path toward Gryffindor Tower drew her onward with a force she neither resisted nor indulged. She knew the way without thinking, her feet carrying her along corridors her mind had not consciously summoned. Yet when she reached the tower’s base, she stopped.

The entrance was no longer whole. Stone had sheared away, leaving the ascent broken, its upper reaches exposed to air and light where walls had once enclosed them. She did not attempt to enter. The absence itself was sufficient. The place where her dormitory had been was no longer a destination, only a fact — one to be acknowledged, not reclaimed.

It was there that Nearly Headless Nick drifted into view.

He inclined his head to her, grave and courteous, his expression composed in the way of those long accustomed to bearing witness rather than consolation. He did not speak at once, and neither did she. Around them, a small gathering lingered — ghostly shapes barely distinct, standing where a stair or landing must once have been. They had not been there when she was a student — not then. They faced an emptiness with the patience of those who had nowhere else to be. Unlike Nick, they did not acknowledge her presence. They were not bound to a House, nor to a name, nor even to a room that remained. They waited for something that no longer existed.

Hermione felt no urge to approach them. Some losses did not invite engagement. She inclined her head briefly to Nick, then turned away.

The library lay ahead.

On the corridor that led toward it, she heard a voice she knew before she recognized it — thin, measured, unwavering in cadence. The sound carried from a doorway whose threshold still stood, though the room beyond had lost much of its former shape. She paused, then stepped inside.

Professor Binns hovered where he always had, lecturing steadily to a small assembly of translucent figures. The students sat or stood in loose approximation of desks that were no longer there, their attention fixed upon him with an intensity Hermione had never witnessed in life. They did not fidget. They did not whisper. Time, for them, had ceased to press.

Binns did not alter his tone when he noticed her. He turned slightly, as if responding to a movement registered long ago.

“Take your seat, Miss Grant.”

The words settled into the room without emphasis. Hermione found herself almost complying — the habit rose unbidden — but she remained standing. After a moment, she stepped back into the corridor. Binns resumed without pause, the lecture continuing as though nothing had interrupted it.

As Hermione continued down the corridor, she heard a strange, elusive melody, thin and mournful, that seemed to rise from the stones themselves. Almost at once, the sound faded, and she found herself wondering whether it had been nothing more than the wind moving through the cracks in the walls.

The library received her in silence.

The shelves still stood, long ranks of them, their contents largely intact. Books that should have burned had not. Volumes that should have warped or dissolved under spellfire remained whole, their spines dulled but unbroken. Whatever protections had once enclosed them had done their work — and then withdrawn. She felt no active resistance as she touched a shelf, no hum of warded space. The knowledge remained, but the magic that had guarded it no longer asserted itself.

She took note. Nothing more.

From there, she made her way downward, toward the service levels. If Hogwarts was to house others — if it was to function again — the kitchens mattered more than towers or classrooms.

They were immaculate.

Every surface was clean. Stores were orderly. Fires were banked, not extinguished. The systems of preparation and provision were intact, awaiting only a signal they had not yet been given. Hermione was registering this when movement caught her eye — a small figure at the edge of her vision, still for a fraction of a second, then gone. She noted the absence of covering without dwelling on it, her puzzlement sharpened by the speed of the retreat. Whoever was here had not wished to be seen.

She did not call out.

As she turned away, the melody reached her again — the same thin, distant tune she had heard earlier in the castle. This time, she could distinguish voices, faint and fragile, weaving together in a slow, elegiac cadence. She could not make out the words — if there were words at all —they did not seem to belong to any language she knew. Yet the shape of the song was unmistakable. It carried the weight of mourning. After a few moments, the voices fell silent, and the castle closed around the sound as if it had never been there.

Beyond the kitchens, along the lakeside lower annex, the castle changed character. This wing had escaped the war almost entirely. Rooms lay unused but unharmed; passages showed little trace of sustained magic. Storage chambers opened into deeper levels where stone and earth provided natural insulation. The dungeons below were dry, stable, and quiet — suited to equipment that required isolation rather than enchantment. There was space enough here for work, for habitation, for a small team to live and operate without disturbing the upper castle.

She walked the length of it, counting doorways, measuring distances, committing the layout to memory.

When she turned back at last, her survey complete, the castle did not oppose her departure. It did not ask her to stay. Hogwarts had been a school, a fortress, a relic. Now it was something else — something that could be used.

Hermione left as she had entered, without ceremony.

For a moment, she wondered whether there was more she ought to examine — towers left standing, common rooms reduced to shadowed hollows, classrooms whose names still echoed faintly in memory. But the thought passed without urgency. What mattered had already declared itself. The lower wings lay apart from the castle’s ghosts and its reminders, untouched enough to be used, quiet enough to be shaped. Whatever remained above could be left to memory and stone.

The lakeside rooms would suffice — more than suffice. Light spilled generously through their windows, the water beyond lying open and calm, and she found herself thinking, with a certainty that surprised her, that the view alone would be enough to soften the strangeness for those she meant to bring here. They would not need stories. They would have space, silence, and work.

That was enough.

She turned back toward Hogsmeade, the path already clear in her mind.

Hermione returned to the house as dusk settled into evening. She shed the hooded cloak at the door and exchanged her formal uniform for something softer, meant for solitude rather than ceremony. The change felt necessary, almost instinctive. One could not move through ruins and ghosts all day and remain encased in symbols of office.

Only then did she allow herself to sit.

The image of Hogwarts lingered with a persistence that surprised her. The broken towers, the silent corridors, the figures that waited where rooms no longer existed — all of it weighed on her more heavily now than it had while she walked among them. Hogwarts had once been a place of noise and motion, of youthful intensity, of hopes that had not yet learned their limits. Its fall was not merely a strategic victory or a conquered stronghold. It was a loss — not only for those who had defended it, but for everyone who had ever passed through its gates. Even the victors. Even the Dark Lord himself. There was no wizard of his generation who had not once belonged to that school — and in the generations before, scarcely any who had not.

And yet, beneath that sadness, another, more troubling question pressed at her mind.

The kitchens had been immaculate. Maintained. Alive.

By all logic she understood, the elves should have left. An abandoned castle implied freedom; a dissolved household released its servants. And yet someone remained. Someone cooked, cleaned, kept watch. Someone sang.

The song returned to her memory — thin, distant, unmistakably mournful. If it had been elves, whom were they mourning? Their masters? That made no sense. And if it had not been elves, then what? The idea that some other hidden inhabitants lingered in Hogwarts, unknown even to its professors, strained credulity.

She remembered Draco mentioning, once, that house-elves possessed means of communication beyond wizard notice — networks that did not rely on owls or Floo or spells she could name. The thought settled into place.

Bimby would know.

“Hey,” Hermione called, clapping her hands once. “Attend me.”

There was a soft series of pops, and all four elves appeared before her, aligned with habitual precision.

“Oh — I don’t need all of you,” Hermione began, then paused as another thought occurred to her. “Actually… Bimby, would you introduce me to your comrades?”

Bimby looked at her for a moment without expression, then extended one small hand in a vague, inclusive gesture.

Hermione inclined her head slightly. “Do you have names?”

“Liby,” said one of the elves, her voice thin and high.

“Loli,” said the other, no louder.

“Runch,” said the third, his voice catching partway through the word, rough with the instability of early adolescence.

“Very well,” Hermione said. “Liby. Loli. Runch. You may go.”

The three vanished at once.

“Bimby,” she added, turning back to the remaining elf, “I would like to speak with you.”

“How may Bimby please the Mistress?” he murmured, bowing low.

Hermione did not answer at once.

There were questions to be asked — and, for once, she intended to ask them carefully.

Hermione hesitated, then spoke.

“Bimby,” she said, choosing her words with care, “I was once enslaved.”

The elf’s posture shifted at once, his eyes lowering, his hands drawing together.

“For years,” she continued. “I did not belong to myself. I was ordered. Controlled. Punished.”

“I wasn’t allowed…”

She stopped, then forced herself on.

“I didn’t… have things that were mine to wear.”

She paused, then added, more quietly, “I did not live as a free witch.”

Bimby looked up at her then, his expression tense, uncertain.

“Does that make me… like an elf?” Hermione asked. Not challenging. Almost hopeful. “In that respect?”

Silence followed.

“Bimby understands,” the elf said at last. “Mistress suffered. Wizards harmed her. That is heavy.”

He hesitated, as though searching for the proper form.

“But Mistress is not like elf.”

Hermione did not interrupt.

“Why?” she asked finally. “What is the difference?”

“Elf is born to service,” Bimby said. “Elf belongs to its House. Service is elf’s life.”

He bowed his head.

“Mistress does not belong. Mistress was taken.”

He raised his eyes again, earnest and apologetic.

“We are not the same.”

Hermione said nothing at once.

It occurred to her, with a quiet unease, that she had made this mistake before — not in cruelty, but in certainty. She had assumed that suffering created sameness, that injustice alone was enough to define a shared condition. She had tried to translate others into her own language, and called it understanding.

But Bimby had not rejected her pain. He had simply placed it elsewhere.

Hermione hesitated, then asked quietly, “Bimby… don’t you want to be free?”

The elf recoiled as if struck. His eyes widened, and for a moment he seemed unable to breathe.

“No!” he cried at last, the word breaking from him with naked fear. “Please, Mistress — never do that. Never.”

Hermione frowned. “Why? Why would freedom frighten you?”

Bimby twisted his hands together. “Bimby belongs to the House,” he said, as if reciting something too simple to explain. “The House belongs to Mistress. And Bimby belongs to Mistress because of that. This is how Bimby’s life is.”

He looked up at her then, earnest and terrified all at once.

“Cut one of these,” he said softly, “and Bimby’s life isn’t.”

Hermione drew a slow breath and let the thought settle. If she was to ask further questions, she would have to learn how to ask them without beginning from herself.

“Cut one of these…” Hermione repeated quietly.

She looked up at him. “That’s what happened at Hogwarts, isn’t it? Parts of the House were destroyed. The masters are gone. And the elves…”

She hesitated. “What happens to the elves?”

Bimby’s ears drooped. “They are unheld,” he said.

Hermione frowned. “Unheld?”

“The House does not hold them anymore,” Bimby explained. “They are not bound. But they are not free.”

“Why wouldn’t they go to other Houses?” she asked.

Bimby shook his head. “They cannot. They are in disgrace.”

“Disgrace?”

“Other Houses would not want them,” he said simply. “And they would not want other Houses either.”

Hermione studied him, puzzled.

“Hogwarts was not like other Houses,” Bimby continued. “It was a forever castle. Masters changed, but the House stayed. Century after century.”

His voice thinned. “Hogwarts elves were proud.”

He swallowed. “Now the castle is broken. The masters are gone. The elves are… shamed.”

Hermione exhaled slowly. “That’s why they sing,” she said. “The songs I heard.”

Bimby nodded.

“They mourn the House,” she said. “And the masters.”

Another nod.

Hermione glanced at him. “I didn’t know elves sang.”

“Elves sing,” Bimby said. “When they are held. And when they are lost.”

Silence settled between them.

Then Hermione spoke again, more quickly. “But if masters return — what then? Who counts as a master? A Headmistress? Someone appointed by the Ministry?”

Bimby’s eyes widened. “Bimby does not know,” he said anxiously. “Bimby does not belong to Hogwarts.”

Hermione leaned forward. “But elves speak to each other. Between Houses. You told me that.”

He hesitated.

“You need to find out,” she said gently. “If there can be masters again. If the House can hold its elves.”

She met his gaze. “This matters.”

Bimby bowed deeply. “Bimby will try.”

And he was gone.

It occurred to Hermione then — not as a revelation, but as a convergence of facts — that her position at Hogwarts was not incidental to her work. It was foundational.

If the elves were unheld, they could not act. If they could not act, the castle would remain as it was: intact in parts, but inert. No repairs, no restoration, no renewal — not because it was impossible, but because no one had the right to ask.

There had once been hundreds of elves bound to Hogwarts. They had maintained it, fed it, repaired it, sustained it — quietly, tirelessly, and with a kind of magic that required neither approval nor funding. That labor had not vanished. It had merely been suspended.

If she became Mistress of Hogwarts, she would not be claiming the castle for herself. She would be restoring a chain that allowed it to function at all. And with it, a workforce capable of rebuilding what had been lost — without drawing on the Crown’s coffers, without inviting scrutiny, without waiting for permission that would never come.

The conclusion was uncomfortable in its clarity. Her project did not merely benefit from her authority at Hogwarts. It depended on it.

An hour later, Bimby returned.

He appeared without sound, already bowed, his thin shoulders drawn in as though the knowledge he carried weighed upon him.

“Bimby has spoken,” he said softly. “With elves who remember.”

Hermione set aside the parchment she had been staring at without reading and turned fully toward him.

“The Headmaster,” Bimby continued, “is the master of the House. So it has been since the Founders. When Headmasters change, the old master gives the keys of Hogwarts to the new one. Then elves know whom to serve.”

Hermione closed her eyes for a moment.

Of course.

Elves did not read decrees. They did not weigh legality or consult the Ministry’s archives. They recognized continuity where it was shown, not where it was declared. Authority, for them, was not proclaimed — it was passed.

She remembered now, dimly, ceremonies she had once dismissed as empty formalities: Dumbledore, grave and reluctant, surrendering the keys to Dolores Umbridge under Ministry pressure; Umbridge, white-lipped with fury, returning them months later with equal reluctance. The ritual had been brief, almost perfunctory — but it had been done. Always done.

Severus Snape remained the last official Headmaster of Hogwarts. When the war began, he had been forced from the castle, and for the four years that followed — years in which Hogwarts became a citadel, a refuge, and finally a battleground — Minerva McGonagall had ruled it in all but name. There had been no formal transfer, no ceremony. And yet the elves had followed her without hesitation. They remembered. Deputy, successor, continuity of command — that had been enough.

But memory alone would not suffice now.

If Hogwarts was to be held again, there could be no ambiguity. The old masters would have to pass authority to the new.

Hermione drew a slow breath. That meant securing the presence of both of them.

She dismissed Bimby gently and returned to her desk.

The first letter was easier.

Severus Snape was a Regent of the Crown, explicitly charged by the Dark Lord to oversee and support her work. Hermione could address him formally, without apology — and yet not without respect. She wrote carefully, letting the language carry both authority and appeal.

To Lord Severus Snape,

Regent of His Majesty’s Council, Archmagus of Alchemy,

By His Majesty’s command, I have been entrusted with a project whose scope requires the reactivation of Hogwarts as a functioning institution.

You remain the last formally recognized Headmaster of Hogwarts. For the castle to be held again — and for its internal structures, including its house-elves, to resume their proper function — a ceremonial transfer of authority is required.

I therefore request your presence at Hogwarts, at a time of your choosing, to pass the Headmaster’s charge to me in accordance with ancient custom.

I do not make this request lightly. Hogwarts has been the centre of wizarding learning for centuries, and it is my intention that, under altered circumstances, it may yet become so again — first as a place of research, and in time, if the world permits, of teaching.

Your participation would ensure continuity where rupture has already cost too much.

Hermione Granger

Envoy of His Majesty’s Will.

She read it once, then sealed it without revision.

The second letter took longer.

Her authority allowed her to command Minerva McGonagall outright. The thought made her stomach tighten. McGonagall had taught her. Protected her. Believed in her when belief was costly. To summon her like a subordinate felt wrong — and yet to disguise the order would be dishonest.

Hermione drafted and discarded several openings.

Professor McGonagall — no longer accurate.

Mistress McGonagall, former Headmistress — too cold, too final.

Minerva — impossible.

Hermione hesitated over the honorific. Minerva McGonagall had never been raised to the peerage, nor formally knighted — a fact Hermione knew all too well. But titles, she had learned, were not merely rewards. Sometimes they were acknowledgements long overdue.

She wrote Dame and did not revise it. Some recognitions were overdue.

To Dame Minerva McGonagall,

Former Headmistress of Hogwarts,

By the will of the Crown, I am to assume stewardship of Hogwarts. For that stewardship to be recognized — by the castle itself and by those bound to it — the ancient ceremony of transfer must be observed.

You held Hogwarts through its darkest years, when no formal authority could be given and no safety guaranteed. The elves obeyed you because they knew who you were, and what you represented. That memory endures.

I therefore require your presence at Hogwarts, together with Lord Severus Snape, to witness and affirm the transfer of authority. This is not a request that can be declined.

It is, however, one I make with full acknowledgement of what you have already given to that place — and to all who once called it home.

Hermione Granger

Envoy of His Majesty’s Will.

She sat with the letter for a long moment before sealing it.

Only then did she allow herself to name what she had been avoiding: that becoming Headmistress of Hogwarts was no longer optional. It was not ambition. It was not privilege.

It was the condition under which the castle could live again — and under which her work could begin at all.

Hermione extinguished the lamp and gathered the letters.

She crossed the salon and went down the short corridor to the utility room just beyond it. The space was plain and orderly, shelves stacked with practical supplies, the window set low and wide.

Ludwig stirred at her approach, white feathers ruffling softly; Louis followed more sedately, grey head tilting as if in inquiry. Hermione opened the window, letting in the cold night air, then unlatched the cages.

She fastened the first letter and said quietly, “Severus Snape, Lord of Spinner’s End.”

The second followed. She hesitated only a fraction of a second.

“Minerva McGonagall,” she said at last. “Wherever she may be.”

The owls accepted the parchments without fuss. A moment later they were gone — one pale shape cutting sharply into the night, the other following with quieter certainty.

Hermione closed the window and stood for a moment longer, listening to the silence settle again around the house.

The words were no longer hers to revise.

The threshold had been reached.

The next step would change everything.

Chapter Text

Lord Snape scheduled his arrival for the second day at noon. Hermione notified Minerva McGonagall at once, proposing that she come earlier, so they might arrive at Hogwarts together.

The intervening days disappeared into work. Hermione set herself to drafting the request for budget approval — a task far more intricate than she had anticipated — and by the time she surfaced from her parchments and calculations, she realised that two days had passed almost unnoticed.

On the morning of the third day, a cautious knock sounded at the door.

“Yes?” Hermione called, looking up.

An elf materialised near the table.

“Loli?” the witch asked, half-questioningly.

“If it pleases Mistress.” Loli nodded vigorously.

Her small body was wrapped in a linen tea napkin, once white, now stained and worn, secured with a care that suggested habit rather than comfort.

“Please see who it is,” Hermione said.

Loli vanished and reappeared a moment later.

“Mistress Minerva McGonagall requests permission to enter, Mistress,” she reported.

“Thank you, Loli,” the young witch said quietly, and the elf vanished at once.

Hermione rose from the chair and opened the door with a flick of her wand.

“Please, Professor McGonagall,” she said, her voice carrying.

Minerva McGonagall stepped inside.

She wore dark green velvet robes — once her formal attire, the very ones she had worn to Hogwarts on special occasions. Time had dulled the fabric; in several places, careful repairs had left faint variations in shade, visible only on close inspection. Her pointed hat sat squarely on her head, its edges softened by years of use. The clothes were clean and carefully maintained, yet worn beyond what care alone could restore — and for a moment, Hermione had the uncomfortable sense that this was one of the places where magic had always stopped short.

Minerva curtsied deeply, precisely, her gaze lowered.

“Your Excellency.”

“Please, Professor, rise,” Hermione said hastily — too hastily — and before McGonagall had fully completed the motion.

“It is good to see you standing where you are, Miss Granger.”

“Thank you for coming, Professor McGonagall.”

“Be seated, please.” Hermione gestured toward the table and chairs.

McGonagall approached the table, but did not sit.

“A new world, Your Excellency, comes with new rules,” she said, catching the young woman’s puzzled glance. “You may as well begin.”

“Sorry,” Hermione said, moving quickly to the table and taking a chair.

Only then did Minerva sit.

For a moment, Hermione hesitated before offering her former professor food and drink.

“Would you like something to drink — perhaps some breakfast?” she asked at last.

“I would,” McGonagall replied at once, to the young woman’s quiet relief.

Hermione brought her hands together lightly.

An elf appeared.

“Runch,” she said, recognising him at once. “Please prepare some breakfast. Something simple — nothing that will take too long.”

“Yes, Mistress.” The elf vanished with a soft pop.

McGonagall watched the exchange with a thoughtful air.

“It is striking, Miss Granger,” she said, “that you recognise them — and remember their names.” After a brief pause, she added, “You always paid them a certain attention.”

The young witch did not answer. What struck her instead was how easily the words had come — how naturally she had given the order, as though this were not something she had once resisted, but something she had always known how to do.

While waiting for breakfast, Hermione attempted to draw her guest into a casual conversation by circling cautiously around what she thought of as safe topics, only to discover almost at once that there were none — except, perhaps, the weather, which itself resisted discussion beyond a few perfunctory remarks. Eventually, she asked what the professor was occupied with at present.

McGonagall replied that aristocratic families — the only ones still able to afford their children’s education in the post-war world — increasingly preferred home instruction, passing on magical knowledge from parents to children, as had been done in ancient times before the founding of Hogwarts. Not all aristocratic parents, however, were sufficiently learned, and fewer still possessed any real aptitude for teaching; as a result, former Hogwarts professors sometimes found temporary employment as private tutors or governesses. This occurred less often than one might wish, but it did occur.

Hermione then asked, with deliberate caution, whether the professor might be open to potential offers of employment — as a magical research assistant, for instance. McGonagall replied that, should such an offer be made, she would consider it with the utmost seriousness, though she could promise nothing in advance.

At that moment, the elves materialised near the table, balancing small trays upon their heads, laden with plates of fragrant food and glasses of brightly coloured drinks, and the conversation lapsed naturally into silence.

“This is very good,” Hermione said, taking a mouthful of salad. “They are remarkably skilled.”

McGonagall inclined her head, a faint smile acknowledging both the quality of the breakfast and the observation itself. For a time, they ate in silence.

“As for the ceremony,” Hermione said at last, “there is one detail I did not include in my letter. You should be aware that Lord Snape now holds the title of Archmagus of Alchemy and serves as a Regent of the Realm. When acting in an official capacity, he is to be addressed as Your Highness.”

“Highness?”

McGonagall paused, fork suspended for a fraction of a second. “Dragon and his wrath.”

She remained silent for several seconds, then said, more to herself than to Hermione, “I would not have predicted such an outcome.”

The young witch did not reply; she set her spoon aside and met Minerva’s gaze, waiting.

“After the Dark Lord gravely injured him,” McGonagall went on, “there was, of course, a vanishingly small chance of survival — one could ascribe it to luck, if one wished.”

She paused, considering. “In that light, granting him the dignity of a lord was intelligible enough: his mother’s lineage is ancient, and blood has always weighed heavily with the new authorities.”

“The settled account after the war held that Voldemort had to strike Severus himself in order to secure mastery of the Elder Wand,” she continued. “Taken together, it formed a coherent explanation: he survived, and was compensated for what he endured.”

McGonagall fell silent once more, then said quietly, “But regency is something else entirely.”

“According to rumours,” Minerva went on, “the Dark Lord did not merely curse Severus, but set the snake upon him as well — though I never took the story seriously.”

“It is true,” Hermione said. “I was there with Harry and Ron just before Professor Snape lost consciousness. He had been bitten more than once; there was no doubt of it.”

“Only Voldemort knew how to neutralise Nagini’s venom,” McGonagall said slowly, as though weighing each word. “Which means that Severus’s survival was contingent upon the Dark Lord’s return.”

For several moments, neither of them spoke. Then Hermione said, carefully, “Before he lost consciousness, Professor Snape extracted a memory from himself. Harry preserved it. He never disclosed its contents. I believe now that he learned, at that moment, that he himself was a Horcrux — that a fragment of the Dark Lord’s soul resided within him. His Majesty does not conceal this fact.”

She paused for a breath.

“Harry hoped that by allowing Lord Voldemort to strike him down, the Dark Lord would destroy himself; the reasoning was consistent with the prophecies as we understood them. Lord Voldemort, however, believed he could still survive — and, in the end, he was right. Neither of them could be certain. But Professor Snape’s survival was the least probable outcome of all.”

Silence settled once more.

“I sometimes ask myself,” McGonagall said at last, “whether Severus merely endured events — or whether he arranged them so that they might end.”

“I cannot avoid the same question,” Hermione replied. “The willingness to fight on both sides depended heavily on the presence — the charisma — of their leaders. The death of either would have concluded the war, one way or another. Could that have been Professor Snape’s true aim?”

“If so,” McGonagall said thoughtfully, “I doubt he would ever admit it. And I am not certain I would wish him to.”

After this, they paid their respects to the meal, which had already begun to cool, and some time passed in silence.

“We should probably leave soon,” Hermione said at last. “I have to change into the official dress.”

With that, she left McGonagall, who was still finishing her meal, and went up to the second floor, only to return a few minutes later in the full splendour of her regalia.

“It suits you very well, Miss Granger,” Minerva said, nodding with quiet approval.

“Thank you, Professor,” Hermione replied. “I have a feeling the person who oversaw the design of this uniform was quite concerned with how it would look on me…”

She paused, then gestured toward the door. “Shall we?”

“Yes, of course,” McGonagall said, rising from the table.

“We will have to fly,” Hermione warned. “I have not yet established which areas of Hogwarts might be safe for Apparition. I’ll be using a broomstick.”

“So will I, these days,” Minerva answered evenly. “I left mine outside.”

The young witch took a broomstick from the utility room, and they left the house. The door closed behind them with a muted click.

There was a fleeting sense of dislocation in seeing Professor McGonagall mount a broom, as though something fixed had been set briefly in motion — but there was no time to dwell on it. They took off and set course for Hogwarts.

They did not circle above the ruined castle, but headed straight for the viaduct courtyard, where they landed. Five years earlier, the war had ended here, and for a moment the images forced themselves upon Hermione’s mind — blood-dark stone, bodies of the fallen, the press of enemies closing in from every side. A sense of helplessness followed, sharp and immediate, and with it the memory of a mad, gleaming gaze she did not allow herself to name.

She made an effort, and the images withdrew, sinking back into the depths where she kept them.

It was impossible to tell what Minerva McGonagall was thinking. Her face remained composed, her expression unreadable. She, too, had stood here on that final day, and the fate of the defeated had awaited her as well. She crouched and let her fingers rest briefly on the stone, as though testing its solidity, then rose and crossed to the shattered entrance gates, laying a hand upon the ruined threshold.

When she turned back, she said nothing.

For a moment, Hermione thought she could hear again the elegiac singing of the elves mourning the castle and its masters; then the wind carried a different sound altogether — the measured beat of powerful wings overhead.

From the overcast sky above the ruined towers, a dark shape descended — not swiftly, but with deliberate steadiness. Four thestrals emerged first, their skeletal wings moving in slow, disciplined rhythm, drawing behind them a fully enclosed carriage of darkened wood and iron, its matte surfaces unadorned, absorbing what little light the day offered. No reins were visible, no driver perched upon a seat; the team advanced as though guided by intent rather than command. The carriage angled smoothly toward the viaduct courtyard, wheels aligned and motion controlled, until the thestrals folded their wings and it settled onto the stone with a muted, final thud, as solid and unmoving as if it had always belonged there. For a brief moment, nothing followed — the thestrals stood still, the doors remained closed — and then the air itself seemed to wait.

As both women approached the carriage, its door opened and Lord Snape stepped down from the footboard. He wore a robe of black velvet that shimmered green and silver with each movement, as though the shadow of House Slytherin were straining beneath the folds. The regent’s silver chain rested against his chest; in his right hand he held a parchment scroll and a large gilded key.

Hermione inclined herself in a shallow curtsey. Beside her, Minerva McGonagall lowered herself far more deeply.

“Professor—” Snape began, then broke off.

“That will do, Minerva,” he said sharply, lifting his free hand in a brief, arresting gesture.

McGonagall straightened at once.

“Your Highness.”

Only then did Snape turn to Hermione.

“Your Excellency,” he said, with equal formality.

“Your Highness,” Hermione replied, and there was an almost imperceptible smile upon her lips.

“Shall we?” Snape said half-questioningly, indicating the ruins of the entrance gate.

Hermione nodded, and the three of them crossed the Entrance Hall, passed through what remained of the Reception Hall, and entered the Great Hall, which had largely survived the destruction, save for sections of the roof whose fallen fragments still littered the floor. There were no banners, no students — not even the ghosts that wandered other parts of the castle.

In the hall, Lord Snape halted near the centre, unrolled the parchment he carried, and read aloud without preamble. The language was formal and spare, recording the appointment as a matter of record rather than honour: Hermione Jean Granger, Envoy of His Majesty’s Will, was hereby confirmed as Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, with all authorities and responsibilities pertaining thereto, to act in His Majesty’s name and at His discretion.

When he had finished, Snape folded the parchment, stepped forward, and placed the large gilded key into Hermione’s hand. Its weight was real enough, though the locks it once answered no longer were.

“Congratulations, Headmistress,” he said.

“Congratulations, Headmistress,” Minerva McGonagall repeated.

Silence followed, as though nothing more remained to be said.

“Will it do the job?” Hermione asked at last.

“The ceremony was carried out as it should be,” Lord Snape replied. “That must suffice, Your Excellency.”

Hermione turned to McGonagall.

“I would presume so, based on experience and historical record,” Minerva said. “Though one might argue that the present circumstances are unique, and that the outcomes of even the most traditional actions may prove unpredictable.”

“Anyhow,” Lord Snape said, “there is nothing more we can do.”

After a brief pause, he added, “Your Excellency, Professor, I must take my leave.”

“Of course, Your Highness,” Hermione replied. “Accept my gratitude for your readiness to come here and conduct the ceremony.”

They left the Great Hall together and retraced their steps through the silent corridors, emerging once more into the viaduct courtyard. Hermione slowed her pace almost imperceptibly, allowing Minerva McGonagall to draw level with Lord Snape as they approached the waiting carriage.

McGonagall halted and lowered herself in a formal, measured curtsey.

“Your Highness.”

“Mistress McGonagall,” Snape replied, with a slight inclination of his head.

Only then did Hermione step forward. She inclined herself briefly, correctly.

“Your Highness.”

“Your Excellency,” Snape answered.

Without further ceremony, he turned, ascended the footboard, and the carriage door closed behind him. The thestrals stirred, wings unfolding in unison, and moments later the carriage rose smoothly from the courtyard stones and vanished beyond the broken towers.

For a short while, Hermione remained where she was, looking up at the sky as though the carriage might still be moving through it.

There had been a moment — five years ago — when the end of the war had depended on one man’s willingness to be erased. She did not know whether that counted as courage, obedience, or despair. She only knew that it had worked.

But was it the end he himself had hoped for?

She turned back as Minerva McGonagall approached her.

The former professor curtseyed deeply once more.

“Your Excellency.”

“Professor McGonagall,” Hermione said.

They exchanged no further words. McGonagall stepped back, summoned her broom, and mounted it with practiced ease. A moment later she rose into the air and flew away from the castle, her figure soon lost against the grey sky.

Hermione remained alone in the courtyard.

The Headmistress. Hogwarts belonged to her now. Perhaps one day she would succeed in bringing life back into its walls; for the moment, she was mistress of ruins, ashes, and ghosts. And of elves. The house-elves — the only living beings who had remained loyal to the ancient castle, though even they no longer knew what such loyalty was meant to require of them.

The elves were now expected to obey her commands. At least, that was how it was supposed to work. Hermione listened, straining for the sound of elven singing on the wind — and heard nothing. If they had fallen silent, it was likely a good sign: something had indeed changed.

She walked to the centre of the courtyard and spoke clearly, her voice carrying across the stone.

“I require the elves of Hogwarts to attend me.”

Nothing happened. The silence remained unbroken.

“I am the Headmistress of Hogwarts,” Hermione said, and raised the large gilded key so that it caught the light. “By right of office and by authority of the castle, I require the elves of Hogwarts to appear before me.”

The courtyard remained motionless.

Something was wrong. Perhaps the ceremony had not produced the effect it was meant to — or perhaps she had simply been addressing the wind, mistaking form for substance.

It occurred to Hermione that if there was any place in the castle where the elves were most likely to be found, it would be the kitchens. Someone, after all, had kept them in exemplary order, preserved amid the surrounding neglect and ruin.

She walked back through the ruined gates, passed the Entrance Hall, then the Reception Hall, and descended the broad stone staircase leading to the kitchen level. Hermione found the kitchens immaculately kept, just as she had expected. It was as though someone had been working there moments earlier — and yet the space stood empty and still.

“I require the elves of Hogwarts to stand before me,” she said, looking around. For a moment, she thought she caught a flicker of movement.

“Stop hiding!” she demanded. “I am your Mistress. Speak to me.”

A thin, creaking voice came from the corner, where towers of polished pots of various sizes stood neatly stacked, one inside another.

“Elves obey the Mistress. Elves may speak to the Mistress. But elves are not fit to be seen.”

“Not fit?” Hermione repeated — startled less by the answer itself than by the sentence it had taken to reach her.

“Elves have nothing to cover themselves,” the voice replied. “Elves cannot stand before the Mistress as they are. It is not proper. It is forbidden.”

“But why can’t you take something?” Hermione asked, bewildered. She knew the store-rooms still held bolts of fabric, untouched since the fall of the castle.

“Elves may only take what the masters cast aside,” the voice said. “The masters are gone. Nothing is cast aside anymore.”

Hermione fell silent.

She was experienced enough not to measure elvish reasoning by her own standards. She set aside the impulse to dismiss the answer as absurd and forced herself to treat it for what it was: a system, consistent within its own rules.

If she was to make use of the elves, she would first have to understand them — and then find a solution that did not violate what they themselves could not cross. That conclusion did not surprise her. During the war, she had learned that command was exercised not only through orders, but through attention to the limits within which others were forced to operate.

Learning those limits would be easier elsewhere.

“I shall return,” Hermione said aloud. “And we will speak again.”

With that, she left the kitchens and made her way back toward the viaduct courtyard, where she had left her broomstick.

Some time later, Hermione landed on the strip of ground before the porch of her house. The street lay empty; the villagers, it seemed, had little inclination to linger near the residence of the Dark Lord’s Envoy. The wards recognised her at once, and the doors opened at her approach.

Inside, she sat down on the sofa and remained still for several minutes, turning over the problem before her in silence.

When she had finished ordering her thoughts, Hermione spoke clearly.

“Attend me.”

An elf appeared at once.

“Bimby,” Hermione said, recognising him, and the elf brightened visibly. “I will need all of you.”

Loli, Liby, and Runch materialised with soft popping sounds and stood before her, their expressions faintly anxious.

For several seconds, Hermione regarded them in silence.

“I understand,” she began at last, “that wearing ordinary clothes is out of the question. What I require you to explain to me is why the rags you do wear are so worn and unclean.”

The elves exchanged uncertain glances.

“Elves must not take care of themselves,” Bimby said at last. “It is not done.”

“Not done,” Hermione repeated. “Why? What is forbidden in it?”

“Elves must care only for pleasing the Mistress,” he replied.

“Pleasing the Mistress,” Liby, Loli, and Runch echoed, nodding in unison.

Hermione considered them for a moment.

“And you believe,” she said slowly, “that this pleases me.”

She paused.

“It does not. On the contrary — I find it repellent. Especially you, Runch. Your rags are excessively worn and unclean. How long have you been wearing them?”

At the sound of the rebuke, Runch stiffened. His ears drooped; his hands flew up, and he struck his cheeks sharply, once, twice—

“No. Stop,” Hermione said at once, more sharply than she had intended. Then, catching herself, “Don’t.”

There was a brief silence.

“When I am displeased,” Hermione said, each word measured, “you are not to punish yourselves. You are to remove what displeases me. Is that understood?”

The elves did not answer at once, only looked at her in evident confusion, blinking rapidly, their ears twitching.

“I see,” Hermione said. “You cannot replace your rags unless I first cast something away, so that you may use it. Is that correct?”

“Yes, Mistress,” all four answered in unison.

“And how, precisely, is something cast away?” Hermione continued. “It would not suffice merely to drop it.”

“If Mistress instructs the elves to dispose of some waste, the elves may use it,” Bimby replied.

For several moments, Hermione regarded them in silence. Then she said, “Follow me.”

She led the elves upstairs to the master bedroom. With a single motion, she pulled the bedspread aside and said,

“These sheets displease me. They are too plain. I want them replaced — with something floral. Can this be done?”

“Yes, Mistress, of course,” Bimby answered, and the others nodded at once.

“Very well,” Hermione said. She gathered the sheets and let them fall to the floor.

“Dispose of this waste,” she added after a pause. “Or make use of it.”

The elves vanished together with the sheets. Less than a minute later, they reappeared, wrapped in lengths of white cloth, draped in a manner faintly reminiscent of Roman togas. Runch’s covering shone with a particular brightness, which led Hermione to suspect that in that brief time he had managed not only to cut the fabric to shape, but to starch it as well.

A barely perceptible smile flickered across her lips — and then was gone, replaced by composed severity.

“That will do,” she said, to the visible relief of the elves.

After a pause, she added, “I must attend to matters outside the house. I intend to make this bedroom safe for Apparition. While I am absent, you are not to enter here. I would not be pleased to arrive inside one of you. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Mistress!” the elves replied with one voice.

“Very well,” Hermione said, inclining her head. “You are dismissed.”

She took her broom and returned to the air, setting course for Hogwarts. She had no precise plan, only the certainty that she needed fabric — something she could declare waste, and thus make usable — and that the castle’s storerooms were the likeliest place to find it. Her first thought was the Room of Requirement, which in better years had produced whatever the school required, and so she angled toward the Astronomy Tower.

The tower was gone. Not ruined, not breached — gone, collapsed almost to its foundations. The seventh floor no longer existed.

Hermione landed amid the broken stone and stood still for a moment, uncertain where to turn next.

“Headmistress?”

Hermione turned toward the voice and saw the dimly gleaming outline of a young girl — a third-year, perhaps — hovering a few steps away.

“I’m late for Charms,” the ghost said plaintively, “but I can’t find the classroom. It should be here, but it isn’t…”

“The Charms classroom…” Hermione repeated slowly, choosing her words. “That tower is closed. For reconstruction. Classes there have been cancelled.”

The girl’s face fell.

“Instead,” Hermione continued, “you should attend Professor Binns’s lecture. It’s scheduled, as always, in his usual auditorium.”

“Professor Binns?” the girl murmured. “He’s so boring…”

“He was…” Hermione said. “Before the change… I think you’ll find him fascinating now.”

“And they won’t take points from me for being late?” the ghost asked anxiously.

“No,” Hermione replied. “They won’t.”

“Thank you, Headmistress!”

The girl hurried off, her form thinning into the air. Hermione watched until the ghost was gone, then turned back to her own task.

She decided to examine the dungeons, where Argus Filch — the perpetual caretaker and keeper of the castle until the very moment of its inglorious fall — had organised numerous storerooms, hoarding everything that might one day prove of even the slightest utility. Many of them, and much of their contents, had survived the destruction; they held mostly tools and equipment, stacked and catalogued with obsessive care, but little that could serve her present purpose. She found several rooms filled with student uniforms of every conceivable size, but those, she knew all too well, would be perceived by the elves not as a gift of freedom but as the curse of rejection. What she was looking for were bed linens — sheets, blankets, pillows — yet for reasons she could not immediately explain, those seemed to have vanished entirely.

In the dungeons beneath the Great Hall, she came upon a large repository of the banners of the four Hogwarts Houses. For a few seconds she stood still, recalling how, on feast days, the colours of the winning House would ripple beneath the enchanted ceiling, accompanied by the cheers of the students. Those feasts, like all the other traditions of the school, now belonged to the ghosts.

The thought came to her all at once. She reached for a Gryffindor banner — not out of sentiment toward her own House, but simply because it lay on top of the nearest heap — and turned toward the kitchens.

“Whoever is here, speak,” Hermione said as she entered.

“Yes, Mistress,” a familiar, rasping voice answered.

She dropped the banner onto the stone floor.

“This is waste,” she said. “It is no longer needed. Dispose of it. And I wish to see you.”

With that, she turned her back to the stacked towers of pots from which the voice had come.

For a while there was the soft sound of movement behind her, then nothing. Nearly a minute passed in silence.

“Yes, Mistress. How may Eldrasen serve?”

Hermione turned.

The elf stood before her, wrapped in a crude toga fashioned from the banner. It took her a moment to recognise the House colours beneath the folds. Age showed plainly in him — in the deep lines of his face and the thin, careful movements of his hands.

“Eldrasen,” she repeated. “That is your name.”

“If it pleases Mistress,” he said.

“There is more of the same waste stored in the dungeons beneath the Great Hall,” Hermione went on. “You will see to it. All of it.”

“Eldrasen understands, Mistress.”

“Good. I will return soon. We have a lot of work to do.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

She paused.

“Before I go, I require a room where Apparition will be safe. No protective wards are to remain there. Can you be trusted with this?”

“Yes, Mistress. Eldrasen will do as commanded.”

Hermione inclined her head once and turned away.

By the time she apparated home, the sky had already darkened, the day slipping away almost unnoticed. There was still enough time to finish her work and go to bed with her thoughts in order before the visit to the Ministry in the morning. The budget plan lay nearly complete; she made a few careful adjustments now that the obedience of the Hogwarts elves was no longer in question, recalculating what could be accomplished without further recourse to the Crown. A significant portion of the castle’s restoration, it turned out, could proceed quietly and independently.

Only then did Hermione return to her bedroom. She changed into the nightgown and drew back the covers — and paused. The sheets were new, pale fabric patterned with small, orderly flowers. For a moment she let her fingers rest against the cloth, noting its softness, the faint, clean scent of it. A brief smile touched her lips, unguarded and fleeting, and then was gone.

She lay down and turned off the light.

The next morning, Hermione woke early, rested and alert. After washing and a light breakfast, she paused before the wardrobe, considering which uniform to wear — breeches or a skirt.

She chose the skirt. The day ahead would require curtseys rather than kneeling, and a skirt answered that need more gracefully.

She dressed, gathered the parchment, and stepped into the Floo.

A moment later, she entered the Ministry’s Atrium. The guards on duty at the grate — their medallions a testament to their knightly dignity — bowed low to her almost simultaneously, each pressing his right fist, wand clenched, to his chest in a military salute.

“You may rise, knights,” Hermione said, inclining her head slightly, and passed between them.

For the first time in years, she walked these corridors with her head held high, choosing her own pace rather than keeping step behind someone else. Clerks and guards, Knights and Dames of the Serpent, bowed deeply and saluted her; even high-ranking officials inclined their heads and murmured, Your Excellency.

At the same time, she felt the gazes at her back — cold, measuring, filled with contempt. They bowed and saluted not to her, but to the epaulettes bearing the Dark Lord’s monogram. She herself remained as outcast and untouchable as ever.

Hermione did not care. She had a purpose now — and that was enough.

Her first scheduled meeting was with Pius Travers, Earl of Dunrobin, Archmagus of the Exchequer, Master of the Treasury, and Keeper of His Majesty’s Coffers. She entered and, as required by etiquette, curtsied shallowly.

“Your Highness.”

The Earl inclined his head slightly without rising from his desk and gestured toward an empty chair.

“Your Excellency. Please sit.”

The Regent’s office was quite small and conspicuously devoid of luxury, as if determined to demonstrate that the economy, above all, must practise restraint. A black oak table, at which the Earl sat, and a pair of additional chairs constituted the entirety of its furnishings. Travers himself, however, was dressed with markedly greater care: in addition to the silver Regent’s chain at his chest, silver trim adorned the lapels, cuffs, and stand-up collar of his traditional veteran Death Eater’s black doublet.

Hermione placed her parchments on the table before him and took the offered chair.

He skimmed the introduction, then slowed, his attention fixing on the final sheet where the estimates were summarised.

“Merlin, Morgana, and Arthur.”

He looked up at her.

“What is this?”

“How did you arrive at these figures?”

Hermione, trying to make her voice sound as convincing as possible, outlined the basic principles of her plan, though all of it was already set out in the introduction. A small group of Muggle scientists would be stationed at Hogwarts. Their task would be to manage magical research, plan experiments, and develop theories. They would build a data centre to store all available magical knowledge and allow for the systematic analysis of magical phenomena.

Obviously, a research centre of such limited size could not conduct all the necessary experiments. These would be carried out by enlisting — ideally willingly, by Imperium if no alternative remained — Muggle research institutions, which would receive carefully framed research assignments. Maintaining secrecy would require the periodic involvement of Obliviators, to erase memories should Muggles begin to suspect anything. All of this required funding. In addition, a number of wizards would need to be retained for the experiments, and they would have to be paid.

“Your Excellency,” the Earl interrupted impatiently. “Let us dispense with the elaborate Muggle terminology, which I confess I do not follow. I will refrain from commenting on the usefulness of the activities you propose. I do, however, have a great deal to say about the principles of fund allocation you appear to have adopted.”

He leaned back slightly.

“You may have grown accustomed to the standards of the House of Black, Your Excellency, but His Majesty’s Coffers are not so indulgent.”

“I presumed, Your Highness,” Hermione replied, choosing her words with care, “that since this project is of the utmost importance to His Majesty, I might expect the Treasury’s full cooperation.”

“Indeed, Your Excellency,” the Regent answered. “And you do have my full understanding.”

He tapped the parchment lightly with one finger.

“You propose, for instance, to retain several wizards. Although you neglected to specify an exact number, I am prepared to approve this request.”

He glanced down again.

“You also note the need to employ a cook to supervise the kitchen elves. While I question whether such supervision is truly necessary, I am prepared to approve that as well.”

He paused, then looked up.

“However,” he said evenly, “where you propose to compensate Muggles with wizarding gold, I must decline to authorise it.”

“Your Highness,” Hermione said, “it is crucial that Muggles work conscientiously, not out of fear. I need their creativity and enthusiasm. They must be invested in the results of their work. This is precisely why compensation is necessary. It is essential to the success of the entire project — a project so important to His Majesty.”

“Well, Your Excellency,” the Earl replied, “your reasoning is sound. It still does not, however, justify removing a single galleon from the Crown’s coffers. If you require funds to be transferred to your Muggles, take them from other Muggles.”

He spread his hands slightly.

“You have correctly identified the need to employ Imperium and Obliviation from time to time. Then employ them more often. It is as simple as that.”

“I had assumed, Your Highness,” the young witch said quietly, “that magical deception and violence would be used only as a last resort — not as the primary method.”

“And why is that, Your Excellency?” Travers asked, a faintly ironic smile touching his lips. “I appreciate that your… heritage may influence your sympathies. But you are with us now, are you not? You will adapt. I am quite certain of it.”

He inclined his head slightly.

“After all, they used to call you the brightest witch in the world.”

“Only of my generation, Your Highness,” Hermione replied.

She paused.

“I gratefully accept your correction.”

“And I am pleased to approve your revised budget,” the Earl said, satisfaction evident in his voice. “You will, of course, need to consult Lord Lestrange regarding the expanded use of his agents. The cost of such operations is negligible — as you have correctly calculated.”

Hermione rose and gathered the parchments marked with the Regent’s annotations.

“Your Highness,” she said, with a curtsey.

“Your Excellency,” the Earl replied, inclining his head in return.

Hermione stepped back, turned, and left the office.

Rabastan Lestrange, Earl of Arundel, occupied an office entirely unlike that of Pius Travers — unsurprising, given that he was Archmagus of Secrets and Warden of the Inner Eye. The room was steeped in darkness, which gathered densely around the table where the Regent sat, obscuring the ceiling and walls alike. It was impossible to judge the room’s dimensions, or even to discern the source of the dim, indirect light that seemed to exist without origin.

A portrait of the late Rudolphus Lestrange stood upon the table. From the moment Hermione entered, the painted eyes fixed upon her and did not look away. They remained trained on her throughout the exchange, unblinking, attentive, as though attention itself were the portrait’s only remaining function.

The conversation was brief, almost perfunctory. Lord Lestrange raised no objections: the temporary seizure of a Muggle institution would require no more than half a dozen adequately trained agents. He asked only to be notified several days in advance. The approval was granted at once, with no questions asked and no conditions added.

Hermione took her leave. She did not look again at the portrait as she turned away.

She returned along the same corridors, nodding automatically in response to bows and curtsies, but her head was no longer held as high as it had been before she met with the Regents. She had achieved her goal — but had yielded, even without noticeable resistance, on something she had not intended to surrender at the outset, accepting the inevitability of compromise for the sake of a greater purpose. Another step along a road she had never wished to take, yet one she would apparently have to follow to its end if she truly meant to finish what she had begun.

Her thoughts were abruptly broken when she saw what awaited her at the far end of the corridor — and felt herself tremble.

With the springing grace of a panther, the Duchess of Gravenhurst was walking toward her through the narrow passage. Dressed in black velvet with a blood-red lining, without regalia or ornament, Bellatrix looked exactly as she had been burned into Hermione’s memory on the day of the final battle among the ruins of Hogwarts — invincible as Death, inevitable as Fate.

Hermione forced herself to keep moving, betraying no sign of agitation.

When only a few steps separated them, the Duchess slowly lowered herself into a curtsy — fluid, deliberate, and far deeper than protocol required. Her mesmeric gaze, however, never wavered; it remained fixed on the young woman’s face.

“Your Excellency,” Bellatrix said as she straightened.

“Your Grace,” Hermione whispered in reply.

The Duchess took a few more steps. When they were level, Bellatrix brushed Hermione’s wrist with her fingers — a touch tender enough to be unmistakable — and leaned close, bringing her lips to Hermione’s ear so that the girl could feel the heat of the elder witch's breath against her neck.

“Beware of climbing too high, little lion,” the Duchess murmured.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Hermione replied, just as softly. “Your advice is always invaluable.”

She took a single step forward, then turned and added, without raising her voice,

“Just as your gifts.”

They held each other’s gaze.

A smile touched Bellatrix’s lips; she inclined her head almost imperceptibly. Hermione returned the gesture.

Then they turned and went their separate ways.

Chapter Text

The following morning, Hermione began identifying candidates for the Muggle scientific team the project would require. Access to professional Muggle networks made Fort William the only practical base for this work. She rented a small, carefully chosen room in a local hotel — quiet, anonymous, and reliably connected — suited to the conduct of remote interviews. The arrangement was temporary, functional, and sufficient.

The team, she concluded, would have to involve physicists working across several theoretical domains; Hermione remained convinced that the mechanisms of magic were rooted in the fundamental properties of matter. Electrical and electronics engineers were essential to develop protection against magical interference in Muggle devices, while specialists in computer science and data processing would be needed to design and maintain a secure data centre. Biologists and medical professionals would also be essential, particularly for the systematic study of healing magic.

At the same time, Hermione was acutely aware that scale itself was a liability. A large team would be difficult to manage, politically exposed, and slow to coordinate. The optimal solution, therefore, was a small group of unusually broad specialists — individuals capable of operating across disciplinary boundaries. Such people were rare, but not nonexistent. The compensation she was prepared to offer made the search feasible, and experience would later confirm that assessment.

For the purposes of initial contact, she decided to present the project as a classified NATO research initiative, a framing that would allow her to decline detailed explanations without appearing evasive. Questions about scope or funding would be redirected automatically toward presumed security constraints. Where persuasion proved necessary, she planned to rely on a different register, emphasising that the work lay at the outer boundary of contemporary science and would be accessible only to a very limited number of researchers. For most of those she intended to approach, the prospect of proximity to unsolved foundational problems would be more compelling than any formal disclosure.

In outlining the project’s urgency, she also intended to draw on the most frequent headlines picked up from the Muggle press: “rising China”, “insurgent Russia”, “embattled Ukraine”, “volatile Middle East”. The references were imprecise by design, functioning less as analysis than as context, and requiring no elaboration. For her purposes, they served only to establish plausibility and priority — a shared background against which extraordinary measures could be taken for granted.

Hermione understood Muggle culture well enough to know that a young woman would not be trusted to front a major intergovernmental project framed in terms of alliance security. To minimise friction during initial negotiations, she would therefore need to appear as a Muggle man at least twice her age. Polyjuice potion offered a straightforward solution, provided a suitable physical template could be obtained — a real individual whose appearance carried the necessary signals of authority and reliability.

A suitable template presented itself almost immediately in the form of the hotel’s concierge: a tall man in his fifties who, despite the modest position he occupied, possessed the kind of unremarkable authority that invited confidence. His face would not be out of place at the head of a large organisation. Acquiring a usable sample proved uncomplicated. Hermione obtained his comb, prepared a sufficient quantity of potion to last through multiple interviews, and moved on.

Finding and interviewing candidates demanded time she did not have. As the prospective team began to take shape, Hermione grew increasingly concerned with how quickly meaningful work could begin. The most immediate bottleneck lay in protecting sensitive equipment from magical interference; without that, even preliminary experiments would be impossible. By the time the Muggle researchers arrived, at least the measuring instruments she had already conceptualised would need to be procured, shielded, and delivered to Hogwarts. Ideally, this preparatory phase would also involve a wizard with practical experience of Muggle technology. In practice, only one such person existed: Arthur Weasley.

But how could she approach him at all? During her years of captivity, Hermione had known nothing of the Weasleys’ fate. Only after her release did she learn, through Draco, that Ron had survived and was even building a promising career under the new authorities, and that Arthur, too, was alive. Of the others she knew nothing. She did not know what had become of Molly, or of the twins, or of Bill — and least of all of Ginny, who, as Hermione remembered with a sudden tightening of thought, had been gravely wounded in the final days of the war and might well not have survived.

Percy and Charlie troubled her less. Percy had never joined the Resistance and, by temperament and position, had every reason to expect survival rather than martyrdom. Charlie, meanwhile, had been abroad throughout the war, in Romania, working with dragons. At one point Hermione had even attempted to explore the possibility of using him to supply the Resistance with battle-trained dragons; the effort had failed early, undone by logistical constraints and by the quiet obstruction of the Romanian magical authorities.

She briefly considered asking Draco for information, but decided against it. What if Draco — or someone close to him — had harmed or even killed a Weasley? He was not a friend, but a triumphant enemy. It was faintly unsettling that she had to remind herself of that.

Hermione finally decided to write to Arthur and Molly, assuming that Molly was still alive, and ask for a meeting. She hesitated briefly over the form of address, aware that the familiar might no longer be appropriate — then wrote Arthur and Molly all the same.

She wrote the letter carefully, keeping it brief and impersonal. She informed them that she had recently returned and asked whether it would be safe and convenient to visit, making it explicit that she would understand if it was not. She offered no explanation and no assurances; anything that mattered could wait until she stood before them in person.

She reached the end of the page and hesitated over the signature. For a moment she considered adding the title she now carried, knowing that it would clarify everything at once — and foreclose something just as decisively. In the end, she signed only her name. She sealed the letter before she could reconsider.

Ludwig, the owl entrusted with the letter, returned the next morning with a brief note signed by both Arthur and Molly, inviting Hermione to come to the Burrow at her convenience.

She paused before changing, fully aware of what the uniform meant — not merely authority, but authority bearing Voldemort’s insignia. It would wound them to see it; she had no illusions about that. For a moment, the thought of arriving unmarked crossed her mind, and was dismissed just as quickly. The plain servant’s gown she had worn before her elevation was no longer hers to claim, and wearing it now would be neither modest nor honest. She was going to make an offer that required power to be believed. The uniform, with all that it implied, was the price of that honesty.

Hermione remembered well that the Burrow had once been connected to the Floo network and tried it first. To no particular surprise, the destination proved inaccessible, as the sculpted goblin head above the grate announced dispassionately. She retrieved her broom and set off for the Burrow by air.

A few hours later, she reached her destination. From a bird’s-eye view, the Burrow looked even more incongruous than it had been imprinted in Hermione’s memory: rising solitarily in the middle of a meadow encircled by sparse forest, it was a narrow, unstable, stubbornly vertical structure — boxes of all sizes piled one atop another, held together, no doubt, only by magic. Despite the owners’ evident efforts to keep the house in decent condition, the structure had darkened with age and looked noticeably more dilapidated than it had a decade ago.

She landed on the grass before the main entrance and paused at the foot of the crooked steps, just long enough to straighten her gloves and allow the wards to register her presence. She then climbed the steps and knocked.

The door opened almost at once, and Hermione stepped inside, white, gold, and sapphire catching the light of the narrow hall.

Arthur and Molly Weasley stood just inside the doorway, close enough that Hermione could see the wear in the threshold boards and the careful mending along the doorframe. For a moment, none of them moved. Arthur and Molly regarded their guest with a mixture of surprise, disbelief, and distress. The silence stretched — not awkward, but stalled, as though habit and memory had both reached for the same gesture and failed.

Hermione broke it herself.

“Well,” she said evenly, taking off her hat. “It’s still me.”

Molly crossed the remaining distance in a few steps and drew her into an embrace. It was quick, instinctive, and imperfect; Hermione accepted it without returning it in full, her arms resting where they were placed. For a second there was a sharp intake of breath against her shoulder — a sobbing sound, immediately stifled — and then Molly stepped back, already gathering herself.

“I serve the Dark Lord now,” Hermione said quietly, as though stating a fact that required acknowledgement rather than defence. “That is why I can move freely.”

For a few moments, Arthur studied Hermione’s face rather than her regalia. Then he inclined his head — not a bow, not quite — and gestured inward.

“Come in,” he said. “It’s cold out there.”

Together they entered the living room, which Hermione remembered well from her youth. Everything was recognisably the same, yet it looked markedly shabbier: time had left its mark on the walls, the furniture, and the smaller objects, though thanks to Molly’s constant care and her talent for household charms, everything remained orderly, if faintly fragile. Their clothes told the same story — clean but worn, with careful mending that concealed nothing so much as it testified to long use. Hermione even had the unsettling impression that Arthur and Molly were wearing the very same things she remembered from before the war.

On the far wall hung a large portrait of the twins in a mourning frame. Beneath it, on a bookcase converted into a makeshift altar, memorial candles burned. George and Fred in the portrait were making faces in their usual manner and performing all sorts of magic tricks — a sharp, almost defiant contrast to the solemn arrangement surrounding them.

On the adjoining wall, another large and apparently more recent portrait depicted Ginny grown and radiant. Even in her school years she had been considered striking, the sort of girl whose passing glance could still a room of older students; but that had been the promise of adolescence, tentative and unformed. During the four years of the war, her appearance had been hidden behind a military uniform, rendered almost invisible. Now, from the portrait, a mature woman in an airy dress gazed out with a mocking smile, her allure fully realised. There was no doubt that Ginny had completely recovered from her injuries, a recognition that brought Hermione an unexpected surge of relief.

The remaining portraits were smaller and clearly older. Ron’s was unmistakably pre-war; Hermione had the sense that she had seen it before. Percy appeared younger still, shown in his school uniform with a prefect’s badge. Bill was shown in a wedding portrait with Fleur in her bridal robes, surrounded by guests — among them a seventeen-year-old Hermione, recognisable at once. Charlie, by contrast, was painted against a foreign mountain landscape, with two dragons circling high above him.

The silence, and the absence of its once picturesque disorder, weighed oppressively on the house that had been filled with voices and constant movement.

“Tea with sweet biscuits!” Molly exclaimed, with just a little too much enthusiasm in her voice, and without waiting for Hermione’s reaction she waved her wand. A pot-bellied teapot, three cups, and a large plate of crackers dusted with powdered sugar floated out of the kitchen and into the room.

Hermione sat down on the sofa, setting her hat beside her. Arthur took the armchair opposite. Molly, having poured the tea and passed the biscuits, sat at the other end of the sofa. The biscuits were delicious, despite their plainness — a quiet testament to their maker’s skill.

“I’m sorry about Fred and George,” Hermione said.

“Thank you,” Molly whispered.

Arthur nodded, his expression sombre, but said nothing.

For a while they exchanged a few inconsequential remarks, separated by long stretches of silence — the kind that gathers when people circle around what cannot yet be spoken.

“What about the others?” Hermione asked at last.

Arthur paused for a moment, then began, his voice carefully neutral. Charlie remained abroad, apparently in Romania; little was known about him. Bill and Fleur had escaped to France in the final days of the war and survived. There was no contact, but Bill was said to be working in wizarding finance as a representative of House Delacour. Percy had recently married a noble pure-blood — a baroness. Arthur added, after a brief hesitation, that neither he nor Molly had been invited to the wedding.

He hesitated again.

Ron had joined the Legions and had been knighted not long ago. There were rumours, Arthur said quietly, that he had also received the Dark Mark. He preferred not to believe it, but could not say.

“I’m glad he’s making progress,” Hermione said evenly.

Arthur nodded. After a pause, he added that since becoming a knight, Ron no longer visited the Burrow; it had been made clear to him that this was expected.

Arthur fell silent. Hermione waited. On the wall, Ginny’s portrait caught her eye: the young woman winked, lifted her hand, and gave a small, irreverent flutter of her fingers, as if in greeting.

After a moment, Arthur continued. Ginny’s injury had been grave; it had taken years for her to recover fully. In time, she had healed completely and had even begun helping her parents about the house.

“We don’t hold permanent posts,” he said, carefully neutral, “but we manage. She helped us a great deal.”

Then a Ministry official came to the Burrow. Ginny had been offered a commission in the Legions. During the war, Arthur said, she had acquired a reputation for tactical skill.

“Well deserved,” Hermione said quietly. “I can attest to that.”

Arthur inclined his head. “In all likelihood she would have been knighted within the year,” he said, “made a Dame of the Serpent. A proper military career.”

He hesitated.

“But her answer,” he continued, “was that she could kneel before them, but she would not kill for them.”

A few weeks later, a letter arrived from the Ministry. It was an ultimatum. Ginny was to choose an aristocratic husband from an enclosed list, marry him, and produce an heir within two years of the wedding. Failure to comply would bring consequences.

“What consequences?” Hermione asked.

“We were never told,” Molly said, her voice breaking into the silence. “Only that they would be severe.” She drew a breath. “Ginny wanted to refuse this as well — you know how she is — but I begged her. And in the end, she agreed.”

She swallowed. “She chose Antonin Dolohov. Said he was the least repulsive of them.”

Arthur nodded once. “We were not invited to the wedding,” he added. “We have not seen her since.”

Silence settled again, heavier than before.

“’Mione,” Molly said suddenly, reaching for Hermione’s hand. “In this new position of yours…” Her gaze flicked, briefly and unwillingly, to the epaulettes bearing the Dark Lord’s insignia. “Maybe you could ask someone. Find out what’s happening to her. Whether she’s still in danger.”

“I’ll see what I can learn,” Hermione said.

They fell silent again, uncertain how to proceed. In the portrait, Ginny folded her arms across her chest and regarded them mockingly, her head tilted slightly to one side.

“Well,” Hermione said at last. “There is something I came to discuss with you.”

She paused, then continued, conscious of how strange the words must sound to them.

“By His Majesty’s orders, I am about to begin a major research project at Hogwarts.”

She did not elaborate.

“It will involve the study of interactions between magic and Muggle devices — a subject in which you, Arthur, are the most knowledgeable wizard in the kingdom. I would like to offer you a position as a research assistant.”

Arthur did not speak.

“A small group of Muggle scientists will be stationed there,” Hermione went on, acknowledging their surprise with a brief inclination of her head. “I intend to create for them an environment in which they can work effectively. That includes food.”

She turned to Molly.

“Muggles are accustomed to a greater variety of cuisine than wizards. I will need someone who can study their habits, adapt recipes, and instruct the kitchen elves accordingly.”

She hesitated — just enough.

“I cannot think of anyone better suited to this than you.”

She let the offer stand for a moment.

“You need not answer now,” Hermione said. “If one or both of you decide to accept, send me an owl. I will know I may call upon you when the time comes.”

Hermione waited, hands folded in her lap, as she might once have done at their kitchen table. Then she added, more quietly,

“There is one further thing I must make clear.”

She touched the epaulette on her left shoulder.

“This rank is high. In public, it requires deference. Its bearer must be addressed as Your Excellency. That cannot be avoided.”

She met their eyes.

“The dignity is not mine. It belongs to the Dark Lord.”

Hermione waited a moment, picked up her hat, and said, “I have to go. Time is running out.”

With that, she rose from the sofa. Arthur and Molly followed suit.

“Your Excellency,” Arthur said, inclining into a deep, formal bow.

“Mister Weasley,” Hermione replied, inclining her head.

Molly curtseyed and, straightening, echoed him. “Your Excellency.”

“Mistress Weasley,” Hermione said in acknowledgement.

But before she put the hat on her head, Molly added, almost lightly,

“The uniform suits you, ’Mione.”

“Thank you,” Hermione answered, suppressing a smile that threatened to reach her lips.

Then she put on her hat, turned, and left.

Hermione returned home after dark. The visit had left behind a weight she could not name, and therefore could not examine — a failure that irritated her more than the feeling itself.

Later, one thought surfaced with unwelcome clarity: throughout the day — from the first calculations to the final exchange at the Burrow — she had not once thought of Bellatrix.

The realisation unsettled her. There were, it seemed, places in the world where Bellatrix did not exist. She could not yet decide whether that knowledge brought relief or loss.

The next morning, Hermione apparated directly from her bedroom to the room the elves had prepared for her at Hogwarts. She appreciated the speed of the journey; it felt as though the castle had become an extension of her home — or perhaps her home had been absorbed into the castle.

Apparition, however, could not serve as a general solution. Equipment would need to be moved in quantity, and Muggles would need to be brought in — bodies unfamiliar with magical travel and far less forgiving of error.

Hogwarts would have to be connected to the Floo Network. She noted it as a necessity, though not an immediate one. Until a reliable method of shielding electronic devices from magical interference was established, any such connection would remain theoretical.

It became clear almost at once that the Hogwarts elves possessed an internal organisation of their own. Not all of the castle’s several hundred elves answered their mistress’s summons; only a small group did — a dozen elders, by Hermione’s rough estimate. She noticed, in passing, that their names were longer and more elaborate than those of the younger elves, as though they had accumulated syllables with the passage of time.

That morning, Hermione issued instructions for a thorough cleaning of the lakeside lower annex, which, according to her plans, was to house the future research centre and the living quarters for the Muggle team. She stressed one requirement repeatedly: the work was to be done with the absolute minimum use of magic.

Separately, she considered accommodation for the wizards she intended to employ. To limit interference, they would need to be housed at a distance from the research facilities.

Once the necessary orders had been given, she returned home without delay. Rita Skeeter was due to report after lunch.

As she was leaving, Hermione caught the sound of the elves’ song again, drifting faintly through the stone corridors. It was no longer mournful. Nor was it cheerful. The cadence had shifted, as though something had loosened — a note of expectation, restrained and patient.

She did not stop to listen. She noted the change and went on.

The moment Hermione materialised in her bedroom, she heard the familiar creaking voice of the sculpted goblin’s head, loud enough to carry up from the first floor.

“Draco Malfoy, Earl of Winterbourne — Heir Apparent to the Marquessate of Wiltshire — awaits permission to visit.”

“Yes — of course, let him in,” she replied too quickly, as though afraid the head might not hear her, and hurried down the stairs.

The surge of gladness that rose in her chest caught her off guard. She moved faster than she meant to, with a haste that felt unguarded, almost eager. The realisation followed a beat later, unwelcome and undeniable: she had missed him. The thought irritated her — and yet the feeling refused to be dismissed.

Draco entered the room from the Floo grate, dressed not in uniform but in the formal regalia of his houses. Black velvet, severe and unadorned in cut, set off the weight of lineage rather than rank. Across his chest lay two chains: the heavier worked in gold and bearing the arms of Winterbourne, the lighter in silver marked with the sigil of Wiltshire, subordinate but distinct. The metal caught the light as he moved, not ostentatiously, but with the quiet certainty of symbols that did not need explanation.

“Your Excellency,” he said with a bow.

“My lord,” she replied, inclining her head. “You look splendid.”

He smiled but said nothing.

“A drink, my lord? Perhaps something to eat?” Hermione asked.

“A drink would be nice,” he said.

“Two drinks, please,” she announced, and Loli appeared immediately out of the air with a small tray. Draco glanced at the elf’s snow-white toga in surprise.

“Thank you,” Hermione said, taking the glasses from the tray. The elf vanished at once.

“Please, be seated, my lord.” She gestured toward the table.

“You have changed,” Draco said, taking a chair.

“Haven’t we all,” Hermione replied, taking a seat opposite him, “with time.”

After taking a sip from his glass and nodding in quiet satisfaction, Draco produced a folded parchment and handed it to Hermione. It was an invitation to the wedding of an illustrious couple — Draco Malfoy, Earl of Winterbourne, and Astoria Greengrass, Viscountess of Ashcombe — to be held in two months’ time at the estate of the Marquesses of Wiltshire, the groom’s parents.

“I would be honoured if you would attend my wedding, Your Excellency,” the Earl said.

“The honour is all mine,” Hermione replied. “I gladly accept your invitation, my lord.”

“There is a favour I would like to ask you for,” Draco continued after a brief pause. “At such occasions, guests of lower rank usually arrive first. Those of higher standing come later. His Majesty will be the last to appear. Your rank is… considerable.”

He hesitated. “Nevertheless, I would ask you to arrive early — before the others.”

“To spare proud aristocrats the humiliating necessity of bowing to a mudblood,” Hermione supplied.

Draco was silent for a moment. “Yes,” he said at last. “I see no gentler way to put it.”

“There is no need for gentler words, my lord, if they obscure the truth,” Hermione replied evenly.

“It would avoid unnecessary political complications,” Draco said.

Hermione nodded, without comment.

“Your early arrival would also allow my mother to meet you privately,” he went on. “She has long wished for it. I assume you understand why.”

“Whatever her reasons may be,” Hermione said, “meeting the Marchioness of Wiltshire would be a great honour for me.”

Draco watched her for a moment, as though weighing whether to continue. Hermione met his gaze without expression. Whatever he was looking for, he did not find resistance.

“My father,” the Earl continued, “is preparing a proposal for a legislative change. The intent is to place those of quarter-blood status on the same footing as half-bloods — or, if not entirely, then at least to elevate their position sufficiently to remove them from bondage.”

Draco met Hermione’s gaze, attentive to her reaction.

“He wonders, Your Excellency, whether your knowledge of Muggle history might offer precedents worth examining,” he went on. “Though I doubt, of course, that Muggles ever devised anything quite as… systematic as our doctrines of blood.”

Hermione was silent for a long moment.

“Actually, my lord,” she said at last, “they did — and quite recently, by historical standards. But I doubt their example could guide your father directly. Their system was exclusive rather than expansive. They did not merely subordinate those of lesser ancestry; they expelled them. Even half-bloods were cast out.”

She paused.

“They were so convinced of their own purity that they took arms against a coalition vastly more powerful than themselves. They lost the war, and with it their state.”

Her voice remained level.

“Worse, they drove away those who might have strengthened them — minds capable of developing more advanced weapons. Those people did not disappear. They went elsewhere, and they helped the enemy instead.”

She looked at Draco steadily.

“So yes. Your father is on the right track. That is precisely what Muggle history suggests.”

Draco considered this. “We are, I think, generally more inclusive than the pure-blood Muggles you describe,” he said slowly. “At least in one particular case.”

“It may not be enough, my lord,” Hermione replied. After a brief silence, she added, “They did, however, have one mechanism your father might find instructive. On rare occasions, when they found it useful to elevate someone of mixed origin, they granted that person an honorary standing — treating them, for all practical purposes, as one of their own.”

Draco’s expression sharpened.

“That,” the Earl said, “is interesting. I will tell my father.”

“Well,” Draco said, setting his empty glass on the table, “I should take my leave.”

“I beg your pardon, my lord,” Hermione said, “but could you remain a few minutes longer? There is something I need to ask.”

He inclined his head slightly. “If I can be of assistance, Your Excellency.”

“Ginny Weasley,” Hermione said, meeting his gaze directly. “Is she in danger?”

Draco was silent for a moment.

“You mean Lady Dolohov,” he said at last. “She is… well. For now.”

“Please,” Hermione said quietly. “Tell me everything you know.”

Draco answered with care, as though weighing each word.

“After she declined the offer to follow her brother into military service, her continued acceptance within pure-blood society became conditional. Specifically, on the success of her marriage to Sir Antonin — and on the production of an heir within a fixed term.”

“And?” Hermione pressed. “Is the marriage succeeding?”

“I have no direct knowledge of that aspect of their lives,” Draco replied. “Only rumors.”

He paused.

“According to those rumors, the marriage has not been consummated. Moreover — again, if they are to be believed — when Sir Antonin attempted to press the matter, Lady Dolohov drew her wand. After that, he wisely chose to withdraw, and has not renewed his efforts.”

Draco looked at her steadily.

“I cannot vouch for every detail,” he said. “But I would not be surprised if the account were accurate.”

“So the marriage is failing,” Hermione murmured. “What will happen when time runs out?”

“Lady Dolohov will face the consequences of her choices,” Draco said harshly.

“What consequences, my lord?” Hermione asked. “They can’t truly send her to Azkaban for being a bad wife.”

“Azkaban no longer exists, Your Excellency,” Draco said almost solemnly. “It has been levelled to the ground. No soul will be broken there again.”

Hermione stared at him, astonished.

“But… my lord — what do you do with those who break the law?”

“If the offence is not grave enough to merit death,” he replied evenly, “as in Lady Dolohov’s case, the punishment is enslavement.”

“Enslavement?” Hermione echoed, shocked. “But she is a pure-blood noblewoman. Her family belongs to the Sacred Twenty-Eight.”

“Her family belongs to the traitors of the Sacred Twenty-Eight,” Draco said grimly.

He paused, then went on.

“And you know perfectly well, Your Excellency, that her offences are far more serious than merely failing as a wife. She was an enemy combatant. Potter’s lover. His shield. His sword. She killed scores of people — His Majesty’s loyal subjects. My friends.”

He fell silent for several long moments.

“And still,” he continued at last, “because of her lineage, she was offered a full pardon. Everything forgiven. Everything forgotten. All she had to do to remain a noble pure-blood lady was to behave like one.”

He hesitated, then added more bluntly, “Pure-blood status is not immunity. It is a contract. Privileges on one side. Obligations on the other.”

He looked at her, his expression unreadable.

“Why does this trouble you so much, Hermione? She was given, without effort, everything you were denied. Everything you struggle for, she needs only to accept. If she discards it, that is her choice.”

He paused.

“She does not deserve your compassion. Nor does any member of her family.”

“I cannot agree with you, my lord,” Hermione said, bitterness threading her voice.

For a while, they remained silent, each absorbed in their own thoughts. Then Draco spoke again.

“She still has time. If you wish, I could speak to Sir Antonin and arrange a meeting. That way, you would have an opportunity to talk to Lady Dolohov. Perhaps she would listen to you.”

“Oh, my lord, that would be splendid,” Hermione replied, a note of genuine eagerness breaking through her composure. “Do you think Sir Antonin would agree?”

“I believe so,” Draco said. “From what I hear, he is deeply infatuated. He would seize any chance to influence her.”

He paused, then added more carefully, “Still, it would be preferable to have an official pretext.”

“Of course,” Hermione answered at once. “Sir Antonin is one of the very few wizards capable of creating new spells — an area directly relevant to my research. I would need to meet him sooner or later in any case.”

“Good,” Draco said, inclining his head. “I will speak to him at the first opportunity.”

“Thank you, my lord. Truly,” Hermione said, with quiet warmth.

“Then, with your permission, I shall take my leave, Your Excellency,” Draco said, bowing.

“My lord,” Hermione replied, inclining her head.

The Earl turned, stepped into the Floo grate, and vanished in a burst of green flame.

After Draco left, Hermione remained standing where she was, her eyes fixed on the empty grate. Ginny, as she had appeared in the portrait at the Burrow, rose before her inner sight and looked upon her with silent challenge.

Ginny had refused to comply. Not loudly, not heroically — but absolutely. She had drawn a line and stood behind it, even as the ground beneath her narrowed.

Hermione had drawn no such line. She had stepped across every one placed before her, deliberately, consciously, telling herself each time that survival was not surrender, that endurance was not consent.

Ginny waited. Hermione acted.

She could not yet decide which of them had paid the higher price — or which of them still would.