Notes: This is a rewrite of the fic Temperance and the Tower, which I cowrote with my best friend years ago and was on hiatus. However, I got permission from him to write this on my own (with him as my beta) so I am very excited to see this unfold! This is the first book in the Temperance and the Tower series titled Death and the World. No specific triggers for this chapter, but there will be graphic triggers later such as non-descriptive rape by one of Grindelwald's generals in the next chapter, eating disorders, violence, etc. If you want me to summarize a triggering chapter for you so you can avoid it, feel free to message me.
Full summary: In 1941, Hermione Granger and her father came into the possession of a journal that held the secrets to being the Master of Death. Grindelwald's men took her father and left her to be tortured and murdered by one of Grindelwald's generals, a perverted man named Emmerich Hesseline. However, Hermione survived and escaped with the journal.
She spent nearly two years traveling across Europe and gathering information about the Hallows before going to Britain to meet the family that rejected her squib father and trace the origins of the Hallows Quest. However, quests are full of fateful meetings and when Hermione decided to escape her intense security by going to Hogwarts she had no idea she would be meeting a teenage Dark Lord possessing one of the very Hallows she had dedicated her life to destroying.
Hermione and Tom learn to reluctantly work together on solving the mystery of the Hallows Quest in order to ensure their survival. Whether they can learn to trust each other, however, is a completely different matter.
Her pockets were lighter than they usually were on Sundays. Usually Mayor Heiland and his wife paid Hermione a bit of money to watch their three (spoilt) children while they went and volunteered at the local church in cleaning and setting up for the services. However, they had come back early. Their serious expressions told her all she needed to know.
"Times are getting harder, Hermione," said the mayor, handing her a smaller bit of money than usual as she watched the wife wrap the kids in light sweaters due to the unusual August chill "We're all having to make sacrifices."
"I understand," she said, working very hard to keep a straight face. It didn't help that, when putting on her old cloak that was now too short for her, Mrs. Heiland wrapped up some loaves of bread and salami to take home with her. Not that it wouldn't be useful, but it seemed like she and her Papa had to live off less and less as the Muggle war went on.
She headed home, ignoring the looks of regret that Frau Heiland gave her as she left, heading out onto the dirt road. She hated how dirty her boots were and missed the old stone streets of Tubigen. It was mostly known as a university town for the Muggles-but to the wizards it was a research hub and home to most of the magical academic societies in Germany.
Her father was disowned by his mother as soon as he turned seventeen but it had not stopped him from studying wizarding particularly Arcane Studies and having knowledge of many different languages. It was studying languages where he met her Muggle mother, Maria. She had taught him German and High German even as she prepared to give birth to Hermione. She'd died when Hermione was two, but she and her father had made due-especially once it became clear that Hermione was magical and could help her father tame and open the books locked by magic that he could not access.
But as Grindelwald rose to power he'd quickly begun censoring and rounding up researchers and academics of all stripes. She had her father had finally fled to a small house in a remote area of the Black Forest after a brutal murder of a Muggleborn couple occurred and they were left bleeding in the wizarding section of the city.
That was three years ago, and she'd be fifteen in a month. It seemed like so long ago, however, since she'd lived in the city and yet she still felt out of sorts here.
She opened the door to their hideaway home, thinking that maybe she'd have sandwiches for lunch and dinner and save the food to cook till her father came home. However, when she opened the door she found him reading on the couch.
"Papa!" she said, hurrying over to him and giving him a hug.
He squeezed her back. "You are back early," he noted, but he sounded more pleased than upset.
"You need to shave," she chided when she pulled back from the hug.
"I was gone and didn't have you to remind me," he said. "It was nice seeing fellow colleagues again-your old Transfiguration tutor, Hans, is still alive-but I missed you too much. I'm glad it wasn't long."
Her father was part of a small group of academics that were on the "people of interest" list by the Hallowed Guard due to their academic work, their blood status, or both-except for those still in society who brought their secret works to the council. It was a small resistance for them to meet and discuss any work they had done. Her father and her still did what analysis they could even with the few materials they had. Luckily her father still got translation jobs from Muggles and he occasionally had access to new texts to study.
"I can't wait till I get to go," she said, a bit wistful. "I think I might do warding and arithmancy research though. Or maybe create new spells."
"That's my girl," he said, proud. He noticed the wrapped articles she'd set aside on the side table to hug him, and reached over to unwrap them. "Went to the store?"
"The Heilands came back early. They're running out of money too, though Mrs. Heiland pitied me enough to give me this," she said.
Her father's face looked a bit grim but he quickly put on a smile. "It's all right, we'll make do. And we have some meat and bread! It'll hold us over for a while, and that's all that matters." He went and put up the food and she put the money in their money jar, miserable at how empty it was.
"Don't fret," he said, giving her a kiss on the top of her head, his hair brown and bushy as his own. "Someone gave me a journal you might be interested in. He was on the run and could only stay a little while, but he had to leave his things so he could move more quickly without being detected. The books weren't in my areas of expertise, but I figured you'd like this. From what I can tell, it's the journal of a priest in training from the tenth century."
"Really?" she asked, turning around and taking his hands. "Where is it? I want to look at it!"
He chuckled. "Come then, I put it in the library. It's on the table waiting for you." He laughed even more when she hurried past the staircase and entryway into the library.
Technically, it was supposed to be a sitting room, but as they had no need of one it had been converted into their library and study. It was, to be fair, far too cramped, but it had a beautiful window and a fireplace that was never used and far more decorative. It was cozy, and he came in to find Hermione puzzling over the journal already with a piece of paper in hand to begin translating.
"I'm glad you like it," he said, and he sat down in the worn but very stuffed chair in the corner to begin some of his own reading. The two of them descended into silence as they read, each focused on their own project.
Hermione was always the type to quickly become focused, so it was no surprise to her that at some point it became too dark for her to read without lighting so she lit some of the candles to do so.
The journal's writer was very boring and rather pretentious. He was a twenty-something wizard who was the most sacrosanct priest-in-training she could imagine. Sneaking out to sleep with nearby local ladies, drinking, stealing-he seemed to really have no morals at all. It seemed that he was the stepson of a man locally feared along with his two brothers and he clearly worshipped the ground his stepfather walked on.
However, at about ten that evening, she was reading and then stopped as she turned the page of an entry. Gideon Uther was discussing how his stepfather and his brothers were making a symbol for themselves and they had finally succeeded in doing so and his father had planned to tell him much more about their "plans" once he returned home-his father, apparently, in a local magical war that was having a lot of casualties. She didn't remember it discussed in any history she'd read, but she'd look again later to see.
She turned the page, however, and saw a symbol that had become hauntingly familiar to her: a triangle with a line vertically down the center of it and a circle around the line but within in the triangle, the Deathly Hallows symbol that had been adopted by Grindelwald and his Elder Squad.
She stopped at first, thinking it had to be a forgery or something added at a later date. There was no way that this had just been left behind for her father to find.
And, at that, she paused. There was no way it had been just left. The symbol itself was very obviously in the text, even if someone could not read Latin. Was it a forgery? In this era it probably would have done well for Grindelwald to legitimize himself with documentation. Had this been the reason the scholar had to flee so quickly?
This symbol was far older than Grindelwald-connected to the story of Death and the Three Brothers from The Tales of Beedle the Bard and were connected to the old legend of the Deathly Hallows. Any historian or researcher has heard of it-an old conspiracy theory that searching for these elusive items would make them the Master of Death.
It had been assumed that he'd just taken the symbol for the fear factor of death it represented and its old origins. However, the man who had left it had been forced to flee...and left this behind, something potentially incriminating...
She hurried out of the makeshift library and to the kitchen, where her father was cooking up some eggs for them for dinner.
"I know why he left the journal," she said. "I also think I know why he was fleeing."
He turned off the stove and came over. "What is it?"
She flipped to the page, for once not careful of the very obvious age of this text, to the page in question showing the Deathly Hallows symbol. "I don't think this is a forgery. This journal belong to the stepson of the man who created this symbol-for him and his two other twins."
Jace's eyes got big, and he went and washed his hands, carefully dried them, and came back to carefully touch the paper. "It's not a forgery. This really is really old. The dates said the tenth century?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "I haven't finished it yet but what if Grindelwald believes in the Hallows? What if he is one of those questers?"
"Nonsense," he said. "No one with sense believes in that old fairytale. It's the product of people too afraid of death to face their mortality."
She looked at the journal. "This is real, though. And this symbol is real and he's saying nothing of death. He's acting like it's a family symbol. Papa...there are stranger magical things in the world. They may not be quite as mythical as they say, but there may be something real enough for Grindelwald to search for..." And that made her pause and hurry to their stack of newspapers that they managed to have brought or sent to them much, much later than they appeared.
"Hermione?" he asked as she dug through the papers. She put three of them on the table.
"Look, here is says that these historians-perfectly respectable pureblood historians who followed him-are taken into custody for suspicious traitorous activity. But Lorimer researched old magical objects and Reichard studied magical places in Germany as old as you can get till recently. Maybe they didn't do anything at all!" And she put that newspaper aside and showed him another one. "And this is Grindelwald cleaning out the Munich magical museum. Why would he do that? Unless he's looking for something. He's been taking researchers and looking at old magical historical sites!"
Her father, normally a cheery man, suddenly looked very grim. His recently-appearing wrinkles were deep in his face as he looked at the old newspapers. "This means, then, that we have an item that the guard are looking for. No one saw me take it so we, luckily, are safe, but we must make sure that no one knows that we have this."
"Maybe we should move?"
He shook his head. "No one knows that we are here. We'll be fine."
She bit her lip but nodded. "Okay. But if he wants it why don't we look at it together and see what it's about?"
"Food first," he said, serving them a very late dinner-but they were always far more interested in studying than keeping regular meal and sleeping hours. She quickly downed her meal and anxiously waited for her father to finish his before she cleared the table and cleaned the dishes in record time.
By the time she was done, her father was looking over her written translations and had begun looking over the book too. They both worked from where she'd ended, at the Hallows symbol.
Quickly, they learned that this was the symbol for Gideon's stepfather and his stepuncles, who, in two entries later, boasted as the most powerful men in England-Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus Peverell. And as they translated more, it became more and more apparent the tale of the three brothers was about these men.
"There is a grave in Godric's Hollow for Ignotus Peverell," said Jace. "The dates don't match, though. It's listed as a century after this. Perhaps it is a forgery."
"Or perhaps the date on the grave is inaccurate," she replied. "If there is some real Deathly Hallows quest as they say some of the legends may have become inaccurate but accepted as fact."
Her father looked very troubled in the candlelight. "Hermione, quests are not things taken lightly by witches and wizards. They're rare and if you go on a quest then it's believed that you have forces of destiny and bigger magics working on you-Arthur, Merlin, Beowulf, and many mythological stories discuss them. Not all of them are false, and many of them are far more true than Muggles are aware of. I know you're not a big fan of divination, but the prophecies that preemptively prepare for these sorts of things are true. If there is a quest then we want no part of it. We need to rid ourselves of this thing"
She snorted. "I can believe in quests but not the idea of fateful journeys. But it's likely the story of these powerful men was turned into a legend."
"Either way, let's translate this and see what it says. We can keep the translation but get rid of this thing," her father said.
"What if Grindelwald gets it? Whatever he wants I would rather him not get," she said, looking seriously down at her notes.
"It matters little, really," said her father. "No one knows we have it."
They agreed that they would do something about it, but her father began quietly connecting the dots about why these men may not have been in history.
"There was a lot burned in those years as well as after when the Muggles began looking to burn wizards and witches. Some of it was to hide information to protect themselves, some of it was by Muggles trying to destroy our knowledge, but also some of it was opportunistic to erase certain people from history. A lot of unsavory history of various families and people were burned to try and legitimize things. This may have been one of them-larger things were destroyed by burning and erasure in those years. But there were signs in some areas of Normandy and England of war. There is written reports of wizards and witches fearing for their safety in this era, especially in England. Some places were supposedly under siege but no one knew why. We had assumed Muggles but, of course, that is wizards and their fears. It makes so much more sense for it to be other wizards."
"We shouldn't jump to conclusions, but it makes sense," she said.
"Also, the Hallows Quest is a very old tradition and it has a bit of a cult status," said her father. "It's not taken seriously anymore as much but there are very famous historians, and even one now, Jemina Highland, is famous for swearing up and down that the Hallows are real. Grindelwald clearly believes it if he's tracing documentation. Questers wear the Hallows symbol on them to identify themselves to other questers, who often got into duels over supposed artifacts. There's rumors that it's connected to the Fountain of Fair Fortune and there are clues and hidden secrets to finding them. It was considered knightly to go on it in the sixteenth century. There are rumors that the wand has been passed around in history, and I can believe, Hermione, that there is a very powerful wand around that is being duelled for and killed for. However, no cloak that hides you from death or a stone that calls back the dead have ever been found."
Hermione paused. "A wand?"
"The Death Stick, or the Elder Wand, as it's called, is a historical wand that you can trace through several people. It's one of the only things that really historians or questers can swear by to make their work legitimate," he said. He went and brought back a few books and showed her passages mentioning it.
She and her father had this thing that gave the details on how to commit such horrors. And Grindelwald wanted to be the Master of Death and do these things as well? She felt sick at the thought of it.
Then she reached a passage where Gideon returned home to his stepfather's home and visited his uncles.
"The dead things were guarding the gates and doors, and while they looked living their eyes gave away that they were Inferi. I confess that while I am moved by the skill of my father and uncles in combining their powers to be necromancers of such great talent, these things terrified me. Clearly I was not alone, as the servants avoided them too."
"Your mother is in the sitting room," said one of the things as I passed. I startled, and while I knew he had been commanded to tell me, the sheer lifelike reality of these things were haunting. But I quickly headed to the sitting room, and found my mother and my uncles there..."
She stopped. "Inferi? Lifelike Inferi? There's so many of them" she said. "He described a dozen of them a few lines down. No one has the skill to raise that many, and you can't get inferi raised by different people to work together." Even though Germany and other parts of Europe were far less fearful of Dark Magic than in Britain, she could tell her father didn't like discussing it. However, it was fairly common knowledge that the most Inferi ever raised was six. It was one of the only known lines that the Dark Arts had not really been able to cross yet.
"It's concerning," he said. "Deeply."
Her father's eyes became too tired to translate by candlelight, so she did it on her own. It only got worse. A week into Gideon's visit to his family, his stepfather came back and took him to the battlefield.
"Gideon, let me show you the greatness that we have made. There is a reason I sent you to the priesthood-we will be seen as evil soon enough but I wish you to speak well for us. You should, however, see what we have done before you return," my father told me.
He took my arm and we Apparated to a field. There were dead all around and the smell of flesh and blood overwhelmed the smell of the wildflowers.
"Watch," father commanded, and went to his brothers who were waiting for him.
It began with my Uncle Ignotus holding the cloak in front of my Uncle Cadmus. He turned the stone three times and then touched the stone to the cloak. The cloak shimmered and darkened and then shades rushed out, wailing, as if the cloak were a gate from Hell calling sinners forth.
"As they just died, it is easy to call so many," said father. He then raised his great wand, the wand made of wood of the elder tree, and pointed it at the wailing and whirling shades. There was no spell that I could tell, and the glowed blindingly bright...and the shades were forced forth into the corpses before us. The bodies on the ground jerked, shuddered, and began slowly rising. And my father and uncles laughed and father ordered them to take up arms. After his command, the dead all raised their wands to the sky and their triangular symbol flashed brightly up the sky.
'It is an ugly business,' said father, coming back over to me. 'But we will make a great kingdom with soldiers that can merely be reborn again. Any enemies those at the castle send will merely be used to make our army grow. You will be great as well, Gideon, as my stepson. I could not have asked for better than in you.'
I think he knew me afraid, because he took me back and they gave me drinks and fed me well. I am ashamed that I cowered in the fact of the great power they had made…I had no real belief in God despite my vocation but I wondered, in those moments, if this was an abomination against the creator. I was glad that my work was to be talking and speaking in their favor, not living with this. I deeply pitied my cousin Vivienne, who lived with Uncle Cadmus and his dead wife in their manor."
The Master of Death isn't immortality," she said, shaking. "It's to build an army of Inferi."
"If this is true, then this may be the only thing that actually tells how to get the Hallows to work." She reached out to him and took his hand. "We can't stay here with this. He probably knows it is important and people are looking for it. We need to move elsewhere and lay low for a while. Maybe even destroy this thing."
He took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. "Hermione, no one saw me take this. No one knows I have it, let alone where we are hiding. We will be fine, all right?"
"I'm scared," she said. "What if he did get this?" She turned the page and found another drawing. Gideon liked to illustrate, and he'd drawn the scene-it was awful and grotesque. He also had drawn the three items-the cloak, the stone, and the wand. The cloak and the stone didn't look like much of anything, but the wand...
Hermione reached and grabbed the newspaper that they'd set aside in order to translate. On the cover was Lord Grindelwald in full regalia talking to someone, and his wand was out in a respectable salute-a false truce he'd break in less than a year. However, the wand looked just like the one in the journal: long with knobs that looked like berries and a triangle handle end rather than a usual square one.
"Merlin," said her father when she pointed to Grindelwald's wand with the journal opened up to Gideon's drawing. "He has the Death Stick. No wonder he's been rumored to do such impossible things.."
"He's looking for them," she said. "Clearly, and who knows what he might do to get this."
He sighed, but gave her a small smile and petted her hair a little. "Hermione, go to sleep. This will be less anxiety inducing in the morning. It's dark out, late, and we just learned something very big. But we are far, far away from danger. All right?"
"Yes, Vatti," she said, a term she used less often than Papa, usually when she disagreed with him.
"Regardless," he said. "I am going to bed," he said. "So if you stay up be quiet, as I have things to do tomorrow morning in town, a project to begin, and you have to prepare your lesson for the children for Tuesday. Not sleeping isn't going to help with that."
She smiled but she took the candles and the journal to the library table. She heard him chuckling as he went upstairs. "When you're done with it, since it's important, put it in the hiding place, all right?"
"Yes," she said absently. They had a secret cupboard in the living room that opened up by touching a secret place in the baseboards. It led to a hiding place in the wall behind the bookshelf where they stored some of their more valuable documents in the event that the house was ever raided. She knew she would be putting it in there-but she had no intentions of sleeping yet.
It was good for her that she did not sleep, as she saw outside first, late at night just before sunrise, the soft lumos lights in the trees outside. She almost didn't believe it at first, thinking it was a trick of her candle-but as they began moving she realized no. There were wizards outside. They were here.