Author's Note: This is the product of sleep deprivation and cold medicine, but it's by far not the worst story I've written. I also kinda want to turn it into an actual novel.
Written for…
Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. Team/Position: Montrose Magpies, Chaser 1. Task: write whatever I want. Prompts: "Never bring your heart to a witch fight" – Once Upon a Time, evasive, dystopia!AU
Advanced Potion Making Challenge. Prompts: Azkaban (setting), abstract, distance, jaunty, What are the names of Hermione's parents?
Book of Fairy Tales Challenge. Prompt: Write about a character's journey to win something he or she desires above all else.
Unworthy
Hermione had no reason to believe she was special until the summer before her eleventh birthday. That was when it became clear that the strange bursts of magic happening around the house were, at least in part, coming from her.
There was a period of uncertainty in the Burrow, where Hermione lived with her parents in a small, three-room house of their own in the backyard. Even as a child, she could sense that something was wrong, but couldn't pinpoint what.
It wasn't until the Diggory boy from down the road came over to play and saw Hermione showing off her newfound abilities to Ginny that she knew she was the reason her mother seemed so worried all the time.
"You can't do that!" Cedric cried as the girls hurried to cover the suspiciously pink pebbles. "You're a muggle. Muggles aren't allowed to do magic."
Ron came to her defence, putting himself between the girls and his friend as the twins tried to hold Cedric back. "Hermione's special."
"Yeah, she's allowed to do whatever she wants," Fred added.
Hermione stayed partially hidden behind Ron, confused by the conversation. Why was everyone making a big deal about her magic?
Cedric left the Burrow in a huff, and the kids didn't give the encounter another thought until the knock at the door two hours later.
For the rest of her life, Hermione would remember the imposing man that entered the Burrow and effectively put an end to the jaunty mood of the older boys' last night before going off to school.
"There's been a report of unqualified magical use at this address," the man explained.
Hermione kept her distance from him, getting a bad feeling from the way he eyed her and how angry he was making the adults.
"Everyone in this household is entitled to use magic," Arthur told him as Hermione felt her father tugging her out of the room.
The stranger caught the movement and quickly maneuvered his way through the crowd of Weasleys to seize Hermione's free arm.
"Let her go," her father demanded.
"This girl has illegally performed magic and must be punished. Who owns her?"
"She my daughter."
Molly stepped forward, and Hermione could tell from the red of her cheeks that she was about explode, like she did when Fred and George destroyed her flower garden.
"Henry and Karen work for us, and Hermione is their daughter. They're not our slaves."
The man scoffed but released Hermione's arm. The girl ran to hide behind her father's legs.
"Someone will be held responsible for giving this girl magic. As she's an underage, the blame will go to her parents."
Hermione stood guarded by her six pseudo-brothers as they watched her parents be taken away by the stranger and two monsters draped in darkness. Afterward, Molly and Arthur would sit her down and explain all that had been kept hidden from her.
Muggles were meant to serve those with magic, as they had for four centuries. Hermione was one of the lucky few, born to a family given a salary and freedom; no longer slaves but servants. In her parents' absence, her care – and her expected punishment – was left in the hands of their employers.
"We're not going to hurt you," Molly assured her. "You've done nothing wrong, Dear."
"Some people don't understand that magic can be found in muggle-born children too," said Arthur. "They think people like you steal the magic, as if it's something that can be abstracted. Molly and I know differently."
"Does that mean I'll have to go to school like Fred and George?"
"Something like that, yes," he said evasively. "But you have to promise not to show your magic to anyone outside of the family. It's very important."
And how could she deny the very people who had baked her birthday cakes and healed her cuts, even if they were her new employers.
:-:
Under the guise of being the Weasley's maid, Hermione remained at the Burrow. She moved from the servants' quarters into Ginny's room to better conceal her magic, and would sit with Molly each day to learn how to control her powers.
It was years before she learned where her parents had been taken. It was tucked away in an illustrated drawing in the back of a sixth-year textbook she was studying for her lessons.
The description beneath the detailed drawing of sickly prisoners behind barred windows read 'Magic thieves at Azkaban fortress, 1842.'
"That's where I'm going to go," she told Ron that night, tightly gripping her hand-me-down wand like a security blanket. "One day I'm going to break my parents out of Azkaban."
"You can't! They'll kill you, or lock you up too," he argued vehemently.
"I'm not going to let my parents rot away for something I did."
She wouldn't hear any arguments against her plans for the rest of her days at the Burrow, though everyone in the family tried desperately to dissuade her from going. It wasn't long after her seventeen birthday, newly legal in the eyes of the government that deemed her unworthy, that Hermione stole away in the middle of the night to rescue her parents.
It was weeks before she reached the spit of land on which the fortress sat. Though she had plenty of money from the years Molly and Arthur insisted on paying her for making up beds, she still had to pawn her mother's few jewels to pay the prison ferryman to sneak her onto the island.
Azkaban was divided into two buildings. The first one – the fortress – was even taller than the Burrow and circled by the dark creatures that had featured in so many of Hermione's nightmares. The second was much smaller and more modern, with no protection that she could see. This, she quickly surmised, was where they kept the muggles.
It was eerie to be sneaking around in the quiet darkness. There were neither guards nor protective wards on the muggle prison. Hermione supposed they would have all been overkill in guarding people too helpless to break through the iron bars, though the fact that she was able to walk right in gave the prison a creepier, abandoned feeling.
The building was like a maze inside, often leading her to dead ends. When she finally stumbled onto a corridor of cells, the people inside stared at her with vacant or disinterested stares, and she knew there was no point in asking if they knew where her parents were.
Twenty more twisting rows of cells gave her the location of a staircase, but not her parents.
The next floor was the same as the first: dark and confusing. The people here watched her with interest as she walked by, but didn't say a word. Hermione followed suit, keeping quiet until she heard a scream from far away and let out a small squeak of surprise.
The screams continued to echo through the halls, breaking only for a few seconds a time, until Hermione found the pained woman, not much older than herself, lying on the floor of her cell. Standing above her with wand outstretched was an older woman with a tangled mass of black hair and pale skin. The torturer grinned and laughed wildly as she uttered her curse over and over again and Hermione was left staring at horror, unable to help the poor woman without giving herself away.
Eventually the mad woman left with a promise of returning later on to finish the job, and Hermione dashed through the cell door, left wide open. In whispers she used the few healing spells Molly had taught her, hoping they would be enough to save the prisoner.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" Hermione whirled around to face the torturer, casually leaning in the doorway.
"I-I'm here to visit my parents, but I found this woman and-"
"You should mind your own business, girly. " The woman stomped over to her to grab a fistful of Hermione's hair and proceeded to drag her into the corridor, where a dozen sets of eyes turned to watch the show.
"Ought to lock you up, too," the woman continued as she threw Hermione to the stone floor. "Another filthy muggle. And what've you got there, a wand? A thief just like your parents, are you?"
"No," Hermione said forcefully, standing. Inside she was just as afraid of this woman as she was the monsters outside, but she refused to show it. "I am a witch, the same as you."
"And you've come to break your parents out of their cells, have you?"
"Yes."
"Well then, a little lesson for you, dearie? Never bring your heart to a witch fight."
Hermione didn't see the woman pull her wand. The attack only registered a moment later when she was lying flat on her back in seconds.
"You were better off forgetting your parents altogether. What a nice little life you must've had before, where you managed to acquire a wand. Not many of your kind make it that far, you know," the cruel woman ranted as she took Hermione's wand and broke it in two.
Defenceless, Hermione locked eyes with the woman and braced herself for whatever came next: death or torture. She had gotten herself into this mess despite numerous warnings, and she would face her punishment like the proud witch she was.
She saw the wand pointing down at her. She could read her attacker's lips and saw the crucio forming.
"Get away from her."
Both women startled and looked into the darkness at the approaching figures. Hermione breathed a sigh of relief at seeing Ron flanked by the twins. She stumbled up from the floor once more and ran to them. Ron immediately shielded her, as he did all those years ago.
"More mudbloods?" the evil woman sneered, her face twisting into an ugly smile.
"Weasleys," George muttered, waiting for the flicker of recognition to pass the woman's face before continuing. "Just come to collect our girl here." He nodded to Hermione. "We'll just be on our way now."
"You don't really think I'm going to let her go after she intended to perform a break-in."
"As far as we're concerned, she hasn't broken any laws yet," Fred said, but the woman wouldn't hear it. She sent a curse aiming at him, but Ron blocked it, and suddenly Hermione was ducked down behind the men as a duel erupted between them all. It only lasted a few moments before the woman was lying unconscious and the twins were pulling Hermione to her feet and through the corridor once more.
"But my parents-" she started when she realized they were taking her home instead of deeper into the prison.
"We'll come back, 'Mione, I promise," Ron said from behind. "We'll get them out."
The unfamiliar sureness in his voice put Hermione at ease. It might take her longer than expected, but she would free her parents someday.