Chapter 1

There was red and then there was red.

There was the red of Marylyn Monroe lipstick and Santa Claus hats and there was the red of poisoned apples and thick warm blood falling in slow motion into a bucket. Hermione liked red. She was a Gryffindor after all… red is something they paraded around with gusto but nothing brought more satisfaction to her than seeing her buckets fill with that sticky sweet liquid.

Her friends would thank her, after all, she made the best black pudding they ever had. When such a compliment came from Ronald Bilius Weasley, then truly that had to say something. It was an old recipe handed down from her great grandparents who coincidentally were butchers by trade. Blood for pudding needed to be as fresh as possible. As all those fancy chefs were saying these days… sometimes the quality of ingredients made all the difference. Sometimes she included some pork shoulder to give the sausages some body, but if the blood was stale, then what was the point. Bad blood was rather hard to hide… wasn't it?

A casual glance at her forearm served as an affirmation of her previous line of thought as she lugged her nearly full bucket of blood up her driveway and into her kitchen.

Her hog casings were washed and lay soaking in a large basin, ready for stuffing. She only had to sort out her filling and a new batch of homemade sausages would be ready for her boys.

Turning on her muggle radio she began humming to the music as she diced onions, garlic, sage and thyme. Sometimes, and this was just sometimes… she even danced a bit while cooking. Being on the run in a tent with two teenage boys was not conducive to fostering her non-existent cooking skills but Hermione had realized with some surprise and no small amount of pleasure that cooking was something that helped her relax. It was really just science, not unlike a potions class. A list of ingredients, measurements and precise instructions was really all the culinary arts came down to. And while she was no Severus Snape… she could always appreciate a well brewed potion.

She did her fair share of experimenting with her recipes, but for her blood sausages, there was not much variation from the original recipe. The tattered but still readable index card she came across one day while clearing her parents' house had lain amidst a heap of other recipes all yellow and worn with age. Memories of Harry and Ron heaping their plates with the sausage at Hogwarts had made that particular index card stand out to her.

It still stood proudly on her refrigerator door, with little magnets left over from her parents' past lives. At least she had something left from her muggle heritage to show she had not completely forgotten them.

She glanced at the little yellow card and smiled. Her grandparents really knew their way around meat. The sausage was quite extraordinary on its own, but Hermione was always determined to improve upon excellence. She only had one adjustment to make to that decades old recipe.

Blood sausage, she found, tasted most exquisite when made from the thick red blood of death eaters… and a heaping handful of fresh thyme.