Chapter 2: Eldritch Estate

7 October, 1990

"Have you got your writing paper?"

"Yes, Mum."

"Your pens?"

"Yes, Mum."

"Extra pens, just in case?"

"Sure, Mum."

"Your lunch is packed. How about a change of clothes?"

"Why would she need a change of clothes? She'll be home before supper."

"Well, you never know. She might magic them off or something."

"Why would I magic off my clothes?"

"You better not magic off your clothes. Professor McGonagall said they have a son."

Hermione rolled her eyes at her grumbling father whose large, imposing figure was looming in the doorway.

"I promise not to magic off my clothes," she deadpanned, throwing some spare pens into her old schoolbag.

There was a knock at the door. "I'll get it," Helen sang, sounding more harried than cheerful. She rushed from the room in a fit of restless energy.

Hermione sighed, shrugging her arms into her backpack and looking up into her father's wary face. He'd been worried about her lately - she could tell. He didn't worry like her mother who had been flitting around the house for the past two weeks fussing with one thing or another between chance epiphanies about everything that could go wonderfully right or terribly wrong in Hermione's future.

Her father, on the other hand, had taken to watching the weather carefully.

"It's sunnier today," Dan noted in an unconvincingly offhand sort of way.

"I'm excited to start school again," Hermione explained, taking his hand and leaning into his large, comforting frame.

Hermione's father melted into her, his thick arms curling around her shoulders. He huffed in a way that was almost a laugh.

"You've only had two weeks off, Love," he reminded her.

"Two weeks too long," she grumbled into his chest, inhaling the comforting scent of home.

"Quickly now, Hermione!" her mother called from the living room. "We've almost got the fluke set up."

"The floo," a tight voice corrected.

Hermione trailed behind her father into the living room where she found her mother inspecting the fireplace with worry and Professor McGonagall watching her with raised brows.

"I assure you it's perfectly safe, Mrs Granger," McGonagall insisted in what might have sounded like irritation if it weren't for the mild look of amusement on her narrow face.

"Of course, of course," Helen muttered, fussing with the flames she had built there with no small amount of hysteria. "After all, why wouldn't it be perfectly safe for my only child to step into a fire and magically disappear?"

Dan, calm as ever, simply approached his wife and silently took her in his arms, forcing her to still her fussing. She deflated quickly.

"Very well," McGonagall said unflappably, producing a small, velvet pouch from her robes with a flourish and beckoning Hermione forwards. "After you, my dear. Where is your familiar? Ah, Crookshanks, yes there you are. Both of you, into the fireplace then."

McGonagall took a pinch of glittering powder from the pouch and threw it into the flames which immediately turned from brightest orange to emerald green.

Hermione, who had already been told what to expect, took a deep breath and forced herself to feel calm.

She was a witch.

She could do this.

Scooping a delighted-looking Crookshanks up in her arms, she stepped them both into the warm, ticklish flames and turned to face her gaping parents with a confident smile. Her mother smiled back timidly, with a frail spark of hope. Her father smiled back proudly.

"Eldridge Estate."

And she was gone.

Eldridge Estate was set upon a sprawling, grassy plane in the country and in its centre was a cozy, light-filled manor house made of pale stone and bursting with all the comforts of home. The centrepiece of every room were large windows which displayed the countryside and easily drew the eye away from the clearly historic heirlooms with scattered the manor. The manor itself was decorated more stylishly than Hermione had anticipated given the antiquated customs of the wizarding world, and was decked out in fashionable whites and creams with splashes of strategic colour - mostly yellow. Most of all though, the largeness of the estate could not detract from its comforting homeliness and cheerful disposition, filled as it was with cushioned surfaces, walls of books, and the clutter of a well-used home.

Of course, none of the beauty of Eldridge Estate could detract from its Lady. Marianne Diggory was gold embodied with her thick waves of satin hair, sparkling grey eyes, and easy smile. Her laugh was a waterfall of bells and she laughed often and always with sincerity. It was clear that she was older by the smile lines marking cheeks and creasing her eyes, but this only added to her warm, motherly disposition.

The Lady of the Manor ushered Hermione from room to room, chattering to the shy child in her wake about anything and everything that she thought was splendid. She pronounced the dining room a "palace of conversation" (though failed to speak with or even introduce Hermione to the balding aristocrat - presumably, Mr Diggory - who smiled pleasantly and without surprise at the passing females over his late breakfast and newspaper), the kitchen a "festival of good tidings" (which Hermione assumed was a reference to the tiny, wrinkly creature - a 'house elf' named 'Snicket', apparently - who trailed them around with a lot of "How may I pleases yous?" and "Its is such a pleasure to meets the young missus!"), and the library a "distraction of the most pleasant kind" (which was not so much an observation of the room as it was a good-natured complaint made while trying to drag Hermione from the room towering with books).

At long last, they found Cedric seated in the sunroom.

Cedric, only two years older than Hermione, was tall for his age and - to Hermione's blushing observation - very handsome. His hair was the same dark shade as his fathers, but his eyes were the same sparkling, laughing grey of his mother. There was a dimple in one of his cheeks and Hermione wondered if the other cheek matched, though it was impossible to tell when he grinned quite so crookedly, as if he knew a secret that nobody else did.

"What are you doing?" Hermione asked perplexedly, Cedric's handsomeness quickly forgotten as she noticed that he sat before a chess board opposite none other than Crookshanks.

Cedric spared her a smiling glance before returning his sharp attention back to the orange feline who stared back at him with an expression of dire boredom. "I'm defending my reputation as a champion of strategy, of course," he explained, cheerily.

Hermione blinked. "Against my cat?" she queried, worried for his sanity. She looked about the room for Marianne's assistance, or perhaps a doctor of the mind, only to find herself suddenly and worrisomely alone in the company of this strange boy.

Cedric sputtered, his focus broken. "Cat?!" he repeated indignantly. "This fierce feline is no ordinary cat. He's a kneazle. Or part-kneazle, at least."

"What's a kneazle?" Hermione questioned.

"A magical feline," Cedric answered, suddenly less interested in their conversation. He returned his attention to his game.

Hermione looked at Crookshanks, who looked back at her as if to say, "Well, what did you expect?"

"Magical or not, Crookshanks doesn't know how to play chess," Hermione said, her usual bossiness making its appearance.

Cedric ignored her in favour of retracting his pawn, only to move it forward again a moment later, as if the move would prompt Crookshanks into responding. Remarkably, it did prompt something in Crookshanks who leapt onto the board and laid down upon it, using his tail to sweep away a hoard of screaming chess pieces.

Hermione watched the screaming chess pieces with wide eyes for a moment, then turned her eyes back to a beaming Cedric.

"I told you so," she told him, uncaring of how snotty she might sound.

Cedric only grinned at Crookshanks. "A marvellous move, old chum! I never would have thought up such a remarkably unique strategy."

Crookshanks purred and allowed Cedric the honour of scratching him behind the ears.

Hermione was sure her mouth was hanging open when Cedric turned to her and shrugged. "You don't like being wrong, do you?"

Hermione bristled. "I wasn't wrong-"

"Don't beat yourself up," Cedric went on, uncaring that Hermione's mood seemed to be translating into a disconcerting amount of floating vases around the room. "It took me awhile to figure it out too. No brothers or sisters to ignore everything we say, you get me? So we grow up thinking that everything we say is worth listening to."

Hermione's temper was quickly replaced by confusion. A number of vases clunked gracelessly back to their table tops.

"But I was right," Hermione argued with considerably less steam. "Crookshanks can't play chess."

Cedric only shrugged unconcernedly again. "Oh, sure. I have bright ideas from time to time too." Hermione rather doubted that. "But telling someone that a kelpie doesn't have feathers won't stop the lot of them from stuffing a pillow full of wet, snarling weeds."

Hermione stared. Had Cedric made a strange sort of sense, or was he just batty, she wondered.

"Care for a game of chess? I have to get back to school soon, but I have enough time to try out a few new strategies while we chat."

"With me?" Hermione asked, more than a little shocked. She'd been bossing him around only moments ago and he wanted to spend more time with her?

"Of course. Word has it that you're my little sister, after all." He winked.

"Oh. I guess I am. Sort of." The reminder of her circumstances had Hermione's brightening mood dimming again.

But Cedric was perhaps more observant and intelligent than Hermione gave him credit for because he quickly scooped up her hand and stepped into her personal space. "Or, if you're up for it," he said, "we could be friends instead?"

Hermione blinked up at him. Her fake brother. Her real friend.

Her first friend.

She smiled, bigger than she thought she was capable of, and he smiled back just as big, finally revealing his matching dimples.

Hermione had made her first friend. And minutes later, she had thrown a chess board at her first friend's head when he declared his victory in their chess match by executing the 'Crookshanks Strategy' wherein he collapsed bodily on the battlefield and threw her squealing King to the floor.

"We must never clink our teaspoon against our cup, Hermione," Marianne chided good-naturedly a few hours later as they sat at a small table on the balcony off the sunroom which overlooked the estate. The weather had only gotten lovelier as the day wore on and Marianne had insisted that they take their tea outside.

"Does that matter?" Hermione asked, abandoning her tea in favour of a scone but nevertheless straightening her spine to match Marianne's flawless posture. "Nobody will expect me to have been raised traditionally by an Old Family anyway."

Marianne smiled, seemingly increasingly pleased by Hermione's displays of intelligence. "Yes, but that doesn't mean we should give them any reason to think you're less than them," she explained, and her expression grew suddenly stern. "We want people to underestimate your magic, not who you are, Hermione."

Marianne was a summer rain. Her delight in life was like little splashes of warmth to counter the arid air, but if you cared to be vigilant enough, you might see the powerful thunderstorm that slept within her.

"Will they?" Hermione asked, more curious than concerned. She'd never been popular, after all. "Will they look down on me?"

"Yes," Marianne answered in a no-nonsense sort of way that reminded Hermione of Professor McGonagall who had disappeared shortly after making introductions. "They will look down on my husband for supposedly straying from me. And they will look down on you for being the product of his deceit."

Hermione frowned. The scone she was buttering no longer looked so appetising. "Well that's not fair to Mr Diggory."

Marianne's smile was kinder than Hermione thought she deserved. She reached across the table and took one of Hermione's small hands in her own.

"My dear, Amos would do anything for family, and now you are our family too," she insisted.

"I have a family," Hermione responded quickly and perhaps a bit rudely. She flushed.

Marianne just laughed and dropped Hermione's hand in favour of pouring herself another cup of tea. "Of course you do," she conceded. "I'm not talking about the lies we'll tell the wizarding world about your heritage. We muggle-borns have a different sort of bond. Eat your scone, Dear."

Hermione jumped and guiltily picked up her scone and nibbled at it.

Marianne continued, her eyes gazing out at the grassy plane. "We grow up among muggles feeling detached and lost because we aren't one of them. Then at age 11, we are plucked from our homes and our families and everything we have ever known and thrust into a new world where we are told we belong - but where we're still so different." Hermione dropped her scone again, the taste in her mouth like dust.

"But we have each other." Hermione looked up at Marianne's voice and was startled to see she was being watched closely. "As far back as wizarding history goes, there have been muggle-borns. And in all that history, we have been prised by those who lust for power and sought to own us as if we were chattel - for as powerful as we are, the lost are easily manipulated when they are promised a place to belong."

Hermione was caught up in Marianne's words as if they were lulling her into a dream she couldn't shake herself awake from, the sweet voice confirming everything she hoped was not true. The pretty blue sky began to darken as clouds rolled in with mystifying suddenness.

Marianne didn't so much as blink as the weather changed around her, but merely flicked her long fingertips towards Hermione who found her scone suddenly coated with a thick layer of jam and cream. "But they forget, sometimes, that we don't actually need them to belong somewhere, Hermione," Marianne murmured, her words floating across the table as the air around them began to mist. "They forget that we muggle-borns are our own people, even if we were not born and raised together."

Marianne finally looked up at the sky and fluttered her fingers again in a quick manoeuvre that Hermione couldn't quite follow. The clouds shifted just barely, just enough for a piece of sky to reveal itself to them.

"Even now, when there are so few of us left," Marianne murmured, watching the small hole in the clouds she was able to create, "we will always have our people. Balanced somewhere between the muggle and the magical world, we will support each other." A sliver of sunlight made its way through the clouds to shine down on the grassy plane before them. "And you are part of that family, Hermione."

Hermione watched the sky, watched how Marianne didn't plough through her magic, but tempered it with sunshine and lovely words.

"What about the bad muggle-borns?" Hermione asked. "Like the one who led the Old Families into war a decade ago?"

Marianne's face darkened, but she continued to hold open the clouds.

"Tom Riddle," she murmured, sounding less like herself and more like a downtrodden person than Hermione though her capable of. "Most knew him as Lord Voldemort. He was a traitor to our people."

"How?" Hermione asked, curious.

Marianne sighed, looking sad. "It is not common knowledge, but Tom Riddle was raised an orphan, my dear. He was treated cruelly, he was shunned for his magical talent, and so he learned to hate."

"Well that's hardly his fault," Hermione argued, frowning.

"I did not say it was," Marianne answered, seeming to think over her words and choose them carefully. "Riddle may not have been born a bad person, and likely did not deserve what happened to him. But when he reacted to the cruelty of others with cruelty of his own, his magic evolved to match that."

"Evolved?"

"Our magic is not like other magic, Hermione." Marianne sipped her tea thoughtfully, staring out at the streak of light across the grassy plane. "It is not genetic to us, like the colour of our eyes. It is not so easily tamed like other magic. It is what we need it to be and, to some extent, it is what we shape it into." She gestured at the angry sky above them. "Your magic is big, Hermione. Much bigger than mine. Bigger than even Lily Potter's. Someday, it might be bigger than Tom Riddle's."

Hermione stared at the hole Marianne had made in the clouds. "But you can do what I can do," Hermione argued, a hand gesturing pointedly at the sky above even as she wondered whether the small hole that Marianne made was the extent of what she could manage to temper Hermione's magic.

Marianne gave her a sad smile. "I'm afraid I don't come close, my dear," she said, confirming Hermione's worried train of thought. "I was born during a time of peace. When I was growing and learning and shaping my magic, I did not need to be... more. Tom Riddle was born to a miserable existence so his magic grew to be cruel and murderous. His magic grew larger to fulfil his will to conquer, just as the young and developing Lily Potter's magic grew larger to protect against Riddle's rising threat."

"But why would anybody follow Riddle, if he was so cruel?" Hermione questioned, the very idea frightening her.

"Because he offered the Old Families what they wanted." Marianne sighed. "He offered them the chance to extend their power over the non-magical world, he offered them the right to steal sacred muggle-born children from their 'unworthy' parents, he offered them prestige and power."

"But Lily Potter defeated him?"

"Yes," Marianne answered, though her tone left a lot to be desired. "Riddle came for Lily's young son, Harry Potter, on All Hallows' Eve of 1981. Lily Potter was a key leader in the resistance against Riddle, but even Riddle's followers would never stand for the murder of a muggle-born. Riddle learned where Lily had hidden her family away through a close friend-turned-traitor and intended to steal her son as a means of controlling her and attaining her allegiance. He made his move the night he got word of an attack on one of his holdings led by Lily and her husband, Lord Potter."

"But?" Hermione prompted.

"But," Marianne smirked with perplexing amusement, "Riddle did not account for Sirius Black: a powerful wizard from an ancient and formidable family, a traitor to his family's allegiances, an incorrigible playboy, and... babysitter for the Potters." Hermione blinked, confused by this turn of events. "Lily returned from the raid early when she learned of Sirius's intent to... delight a young muggle woman by showing off his charming attachment to his godson."

Hermione choked on a strange noise.

"Lily arrived moments ahead of Riddle, who was taken by surprise. She defeated him."

Marianne finished with such suddenness and firmness that Hermione couldn't help but find her words awfully suspicious. She chose to ignore the strange turn in conversation in favour of more pressing matters.

"I don't understand. If Riddle's magic grew so great because of his past, and Lily's grew to compete with him, why would mine be any different from yours?" Hermione looked up at the angry clouds again, barely tempered by the small patch of lovely blue and sunshine.

Marianne's lips pressed together. "I'm afraid I can't be sure, my dear. Perhaps you acquired greater magic because you were born at the end of Riddle's revolution, when he was at the height of his power. Perhaps it is because you are the only muggle-born to be born since Riddle's defeat." She hesitated. "Or, perhaps there is a new threat in your future."

Hermione looked at her hands, her heart rising in her throat. Marianne's long, delicate fingers with contrastingly chipped nails covered her own, prompting Hermione to meet her soft and steady gaze - the gaze of a woman with real strength and values.

"But I am here for you, Hermione," she murmured. "I may not be your family by blood, but I am your family by magical circumstance. And just are your parents will be there for you in every other way, I will be here to guide you in magic."

Hermione nearly snorted. "I can't even stop feeling sorry for myself long enough to have tea on a sunny day," she moaned, her eyes growing wet.

Marianne grinned, her delight in life making a sudden reappearance. "Well that is your first lesson! Stop trying to throw away your feelings, my dear," Marianne leaned forward. "Embrace your feelings, feel your magic, and begin shaping what it will be."

Marianne worked with Hermione for the rest of the day on the balcony. Overlooking that endless, grassy plane, feeling sad and worried and all sorts of things about her future, Hermione stopped futilely trying to push away her anxieties and used her energy instead to push away the clouds until the sky was blue once more and, at last, she smiled again.

When Hermione returned home that night in a whirl of emerald flames, she found her two parents anxiously awaiting her arrival in the Living Room.

"Well? Helen prompted, hands fluttering fussily over Hermione.

Hermione caught her mother's hands and pulled her into a hug. Surprised, it took Helen a moment to squeeze her daughter back tightly.

"I think I'll be okay," Hermione murmured into her mother's hair, meeting her father's eyes across the room.

Dan peeked out the window to the clear sky beyond and smiled lovingly back.

A/N: This was a short chapter because it seemed more sensible to break it up here than later on.

The next chapter is well and truly underway. We'll finally be meeting a few highly anticipated characters in Diagon Alley! And some... less anticipated (or likeable) characters along the way.

Reviews keep me writing ;)