Harry was angry with her, she knew. He was angry with all of them, but most of all with Hermione. Ron and Ginny and Fred and George could all be excused. They were influenced by their family. They had grown up with tales about the great Dumbledore and his faultless existence. Their family was a part of the Order in the last war and had joined again for this one; Hermione had no such ties. She had been the one most likely to get away with only a slight scolding, had she sent Harry a real letter. But she hadn't and it had all been a terrible mistake. Even though Dumbledore had explained to her why she shouldn't, she never should have taken his word at face value. There were more sides to this story, and she hadn't known how desperate Harry was for a real sign from them. She had made it her business not to know. And it had all been a terrible mistake.
It was a terrible, lonely feeling. She'd never quite fit in their little trio. She never played chess, instead always opting to read a book, and always scolded the two of them for getting into trouble. She was their misfit, and Harry was the only one kind enough to try and make her a part of them most of the time. Without him, it was painfully obvious that she didn't get along with Ron at all. He was an obnoxious git, and without Harry around to guide his temper into a match of Gobblestones, Hermione felt it was better to stay out of his way for the time being. So she amused herself with cleaning the house and perusing the Black library, trying not to feel the silence around her.
The Black library was another matter entirely. She had never, in her life, seen such black books. She thought there were spells so dark in this library that pools of rank, oily magic would drip out of the parchment and collect in puddles at her feet, were she ever to open one. She ignored them the best she could. They lured her with promises that were too foul to be remembered and threatened her with knowledge far too dark to ever study. She turned to the more sophisticated parts of the library, dealing with shields and charms and turning a shoe into a dress. She read. She studied. She ignored the empty room around her in favour of reading about the Erkenskine Approach to Transfiguration.
And then they found the locket. It was the first time in days anyone addressed her, and it was to ask if she knew another opening charm.
"Have you tried Patefacium yet?" She asked Tonks, and the witch shook her head.
"We've tried Aperio, though, and if that doesn't open it-"
"Of course, then neither will Patefacium." Hermione nodded. "Have you tried to simply strip the opening hinges from their power?"
Tonks seemed decidedly uninterested in the whole ordeal, but performed the spell anyway. It didn't seem to have any effect on the gaudy thing, and Tonks' shoulders drooped.
"You know what, here, you take this, I bet you're interested in this kind of thing, I mean, who isn't, this is fascinating.", the witch blabbered and pushed the locket in Hermione's hands. Though surprised, she was not unwilling to take it.
"You know what, here, you do this in school, like a project, right? That's interesting." And Tonks took off.
Halfway through the summer, something had shifted, changed, and warped inside Hermione. She could not fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundations. It was too long ago. She only knew that day by day, nothing had changed, but when she looked back, everything was different. This summer was somehow different.
Never before had she cared so little- it was almost liberating, in a way she had never experienced before. She had decided to stop caring, and it had worked. She was done. Done with them, done with this situation, done with everything in this grimy danky house. She felt lighter than she had in the past five years.
She spent the days lounging in her rooms, reading whichever book had caught her fancy at the moment. She learned by leaps and bounds, no longer obstructed by asinine comments on quidditch. She did what she wanted to do, for weeks on end, completely uninterupted and blessedly alone.
Book by book, slowly but surely, she was conquering the polite part of the Black library.
Somehow studying alone had sped up her learning curve by more than was feasible. Studying now consisted of choosing a topic of her choice, and skimming the books a bit, and then putting them back. It was so ridiculously easy, it almost took the joy out of learning something new.
It was almost as if she was reviewing the spells, instead of learning them anew. As if the knowledge of these subject was already present in her head, somewhere, and reviewing them called it to the forefront of her mind again. No hassle, no trouble, just a vague feeling of recognition and a quick understanding of fundamental aspects. The ease with which she learned was almost worrying. Something about the whole situation couldn't be quite right. Normally she would probably worry and research. And she would. Just not quite yet.
She was trying to cram as much as possible into her head before this strange aptitude ran out of steam. Transfigurational theory for the upcoming year was tackled, as was Charms, Arithmancy, and the first half of Defense Against the Dark Arts. She'd even managed some reading -just for the interesting spells- on the side, as well.
Half of the summer passed. People came and went. Hermione remained either holed up in her room, holed up in the library, or faded into obscurity at dinners. Which is exactly how she preferred it, really. People in Black house were all redundant.
On the first night of her fourth week in Black house, Hermione awoke crying an obscene amount of tears. They trailed down her cheeks and caused wet spots on her pillow case. She didn't know why she was doing it- surely she would have noticed if she felt unhappy? There wasn't anything specific about the last few days that could've set her off somehow.
Except for her partly self-imposed isolation, that is.
As she turned around and buried her head in her pillow, she wondered if that could be the catalyst for her crying fit: humans were a social species, and her last human interaction had been when Remus asked her to pass the cheese, and she had done so without comment.
So maybe she should re-integrate herself with the people in this house. But how? Harry and Ron wouldn't be going around forgiving her any time soon, that she knew for certain. Maybe she should try to make some friends other than the two buffoons who called themselves Harry and Ron?
But what if her sponge-like mind retreated back into its former shell? The strength of her mind was her priority.
No, she decided. If she was going to have some human interaction, it would have to be on a regular basis, but brief. So friendly, but decidedly not a new best friend.
She squashed her pillow just the right way, and went to sleep.
Her first thought had been the Weasley Twins. Although they were brothers of Ron, they were friendly with pretty much everyone, and often good company.
She started her new-found mission by venturing out of her room. It was lunchtime, so the entire floor was deserted, leaving her to enter the Twin's experimentation room without reproach.
The room seemed to be roughly divided into four parts, and all of them were crammed to the ceiling.
She carefully picked her way through the room, and sat down on a patch of floor free of anything. Her necklace jingled as she shifted a bit and looked at the convenient patch. It should be big enough to comfortably seat two people.
She gingerly shoved a stack of papers closer towards her, and started reading them.
When the Twins finally returned from a very long drawn-out lunch, Hermione was sufficiently immersed in all the theory to shut out all exterior factors. It took the Twins several minutes of uncomfortably clearing their throats and shuffling their feet before she noticed them. It was only when she went for another pile of parchment that she saw them standing.
"Oh," she said. "Hello. Are you done eating already? Good. See, this was what I wanted to talk to you about."
At their blank looks, she shook the bundle of papers she was holding.
"Your ideas, stupids!"
Runes were her focus of the day. They were used surprisingly much for being such an obsolete subject in the Hogwarts curriculum and library. Thankfully the Black library seemed to make up for that oversight on Hogwarts' part. She'd been snuffing around for about half an hour, and already her efforts had borne her more than three stacks of the most-interesting looking books. Gathering them in her arms, careful not to topple over, she made her way to the Weasley's room. And if she passed a ginger haired girl on her way over, well, surely that didn't mean anything? It wasn't as if she was obliged to make idle chitchat with any and everyone in this danky house.
She openend the door by walking backwards into it, and dumped the books -carefully- on the bed. Twin no' 1 was seated with potions and no' 2 was gone, presumably getting some food. Twin no' 1 gave her a smile, and opened his mouth to say something, but something chimed, and he turned back to his bubbling kettle.
Hermione smiled and made herself comfortable on the bed, book spread out, necklace cold against her neck.
They had reached an accord. Hermione was now a part of their Joke Shop Creating Team. It wasn't an easy thing to achieve. Rather than going through the pains of trying to establish some kind of emotional bond based on mutual characteristics, Hermione had bettered more than ten of their designs in the hour that they were eating lunch and that was that. They weren't necessarily friends now, but rather some kind of neighbours, or roommates. A familiarity that normally only came with a lifetime knowing someone surrounded them, but at the same time they didn't have a click as friends. There were no rousing discussions or splitting laughter. Rather there was knowing each other's favourite drink and sharing ideas, lending Hermione some clothes and a bed when it was too late for her to get back to her room without someone noticing, and some kind of protective air. Hermione now ate dinner wedged in between the Twins, and the Twins got Molly off their backs by hanging around with a straight-laced bookworm.
It worked just fine for them. The rest of the house was another story entirely, as the majority was now convinced they were a threesome, and proceeded to either gniffle at them or turn away in disgust. As long as they didn't directly bother them, Hermione couldn't care less.
The Black Library was black. Of course Hermione knew this. But it was another thing to stand there, staring at a book that explained fifty different ways of disembowling someone, and then fifty different ways of using their innards in some kind of ritual.
She shivered, and walked out, straight towards the Twins' room. She'd come back later. On her way to the Twins, she stopped by her room to grab a night shirt, a few notebooks, and her necklace.
Dinner was a raucous affair. People that had been out all day came back and were always most eager to talk about their day. This always seemed to rouse the self-importance of those confined to the house, who then explained all about their day.
Hermione no longer joined dinner. It really was not worth it. People shouted and laughed, told about their day -usually no different than the one before, or the one coming up-, and generally ignored Hermione.
House Black employed a House-Elf, a weird, bat-like creature. It -he- seemed almost an indentured servant, but was somehow most happy to serve. It was one of those oddities of magic. House-elves were not limited to wands, or brooms, or potions, or other trinkets. Instead they were limited to the wishes of those who were bound to all that they were free of.
Anyway, the Black's house-elf had adopted the views of the late Mrs Black. Walburga Black (God bless her soul) was a nasty little cretin of a woman, prejudiced to the very last drop of her superior blood. And thus, the house-elf hastily vacated any room Hermione entered.
This situation made her the only person in the house able to cook her own dinner. Not that she did- she just poached off of whatever was left.
Summer was drawing to its end. Hermione was going through the Black Library methodically. Shelf after shelf was scanned. Hermione had roped Fred and George into what she called A Mission Of Utmost Importance. They'd go to the library together, and first make sure nobody was there. Then they'd steal books.
It was against every Hermione's very principal principle. She was now a book-thief.
This was a fact she blamed on Walburga Black and her slimy conniving ways.
"No, but really," she complained aloud to Fred. She turned to him abruptly in the middel of perusing one more shelf. Her necklace clattered against her collar.
"I'll bet you she meant for this to happen. I mean, the Black line couldn't continue, right?"
When there was no confirming nod, she pinned Fred with a frown.
"Right?"
"Yes, yes," he rushed to assure her. "Of course not."
"Right," Hermione sniffed. "And with no heirs, what did she think would happen to this library!"
Summer was drawing to an end but Hermione was prepared for this. Her trunk was filled -stuffed- with texts upon texts upon texts upon texts upon texts. The books were shunken, the trunk was enchanted to hold more than it could in reality. Then she had 'borrowed' a knapsack from the Black family, and made big eyes at Remus (she'd told him the function on her trunk was wearing off. Cheap trunks did that.). 'Her' knapsack then could hold almost as much as her trunk.
Fred and George had taken care to make copies of each and every one of the books she'd taken, and put them back in the library. Those copies would only last for about a few months, but she'd be back here to replace them again before then. And even if she wasn't, it wasn't like anyone even used this library. They wouldn't miss a few -or even quite some more than a few- books missing. Plus, every single tome in her suitcase had an equivalent copy here. If anyone ever needed a book from the Black Library they could still use it. This book-stealing business wasn't stealing at all: it was merely some kind of advanced borrowing.
It didn't even occur to Hermione to pack the copies herself.
The day of departure was, once again, hectic. Half of the house had abstained from even thinking about packing until the very last second. Now the house was adrift with flurries of hurried motions, throwing, and stuffing. Ronald seemed to have lost his wand for the fourth time this morning. Some of Ginny's sweaters still needed to be washed. Percy's Headboy badge seemed to mysteriously have undergone some kind of transitions. It was now vivid purple and orange, with bold green letters declaring 'whoever reads this is an idiot".
Hermione, Fred and Goerge were holed up in their room, waiting out the pandemonium.
Hermione threw her head back and laughed. She was sitting crosslegged on the train bench, opposite Lee and George.
"No, really!" Lee exclaimed. "You shoud have seen his face!" And, trying to stiffle his laughter, he twisted his face into a mimic of a mesh between disgust and shock.
This set Hermione off again.
Her book was open on her lap, forgotten in the moment. Pretty Scottish scenery rushed by on her right, but she was focussed on the people in her compartment.
"No, we use some kind of… umm, we call it a dishwasher, and it's a kind of box, about this high, and you put your dishes in there, and it washes them for you, kind of."
Fred snorted.
"Really. You expect me to believe muggles have a magic box for their dirty dishes?"
"Well," Hermione said. "Kind of, yes."
There was a beat of silence before the compartment dissolved in laughter.
"And then," Fred snorted. "Then he asked her if she washed it! And guess what she said? Guess!"
"Of course I did!" George chortled. "That's what she said!"
Hermione was doubled over, tears in her eyes and stitches in her side. "No way," she gasped. "You made that up! No way!"
"Well, no, of course you don't. That's silly. But applying Theodare's third law of Transfiguration would amplify it, especially if you manage to work in a Xethe rune somewhere. It'd last at least five more days. And I genuinely think the Xethe rune will make the stink worse then anything you can imagine."
Fred blinked. "Okay. We can try. I mean, the dragon painting can totally contain a… what was it again?"
"A Xethe rune. It's shaped kind of like a really elaborate X, you know, with the little frrillies on the side. And a circle around it that touched all four of the frillies in a 90 degree angle. But you can mass copy that one."
Fred, frowning, turned back to his paper.
" I think we can probably draw, like, the head, but with the eyes in the frilly things, you see. Look, if you do that one over there, and then just shift them apart... like this."
He handed her the parchment. The horse-towed wagon bumped over something, and Fred's and Hermione's hands missed each other by inches. The sheet fluttered to the floor. Hermione bent to pick it up and scrutinised the painting, the ends of her necklace brushing over the parchment.
"Yeah," she admitted. "That would totally work."
Alright folks, that was it.
Alrighty, summary:
I've always found it strange that the locket they found in the summer before fifth year was somehow just forgotten by everyone involved: it was something none of them could open, and almost everyone tried, according to the books. So much magic interacting with a bit of soul: shouldn't it have interfered with anyone? In this story, it messes with Hermione.
