Hermione emerged into the corridor in time to see Asher quickly disappear around a corner. She followed quietly but with determination. For some reason, she didn't want Asher to know she was trailing her, and though her heart was still racing from whatever had happened, she strained to keep her breathing slow and quiet.
She eased softly around the corner, watching Asher come to a halt outside the staff room, not her quarters, as Hermione had expected. She said the password to the gargoyle, which Hermione could hear complaining about the time, and slipped into the room, the door closing firmly behind her. Hermione crept closer, wondering why Asher had come here, instead of going to her room.
She paused a meter from the door, and then remembered something- she had confiscated an Extendable Ear from a student earlier that day. She searched her robes for it, hoping she hadn't left it in her desk... Yes, there it was, tucked in an inside pocket. She rolled the hearing end to the crack at the base of the door and tucked the stringy end into her ear.
"-just not safe anymore. I appreciate you giving me the position, but I don't think I should stay." Asher's voice was shaky and clouded with emotion.
"Utter nonsense," came the firm voice of Headmistress McGonagall. "You mentioned that you had an 'attack', but not what actually occurred, and I will not dismiss you until I know what it was, and who was involved. Now explain."
"I-" Asher paused for a long moment. "I went to check on Her- Professor Granger, because I heard about her first year class today and she didn't come to dinner. That was unusual, I wanted to make sure she was alright." She took a deep breath. "It wasn't quite time to take my potion yet, but I had it with me. She was very upset, and I lost track of the time. And then.. then I touched her, by accident, and I felt it..." She stopped.
"Felt what, Asher?" McGonagall prodded.
"It," Asher breathed. "That part of me.. It was happy, so happy to finally be free, and there was Hermione, just sitting there, entranced, helpless, so full of emotion..." She broke off, then said, sounding troubled, "I wanted to so badly."
"To what?"
"To let go." Asher said this very quietly.
"And did you?" McGonagall asked gently, in the same tone Hermione had heard her use Asher's first day of class all those years ago.
"No!" Asher exclaimed indignantly. "As soon as I realized what was happening, I took the potion. I would never do that, not to Hermione..."
There was a long silence.
"I think," McGonagall finally said, "that you should get some rest, and revisit your desire to resign in the morning."
"But.. but Minerva-"
McGonagall continued, quite firmly, "You are an excellent teacher, Asher, and I would be hard-pressed to replace you on such short notice. The students love you, and I am finally able to spend time with you after your- extended absence." The emotion sounding odd on her, she said, "You are the closest thing I have to a daughter, Ash, and I know that Dumbledore would want me to give you a chance, as he did in good faith when he admitted you to the school. Do you think he made a mistake?"
Hermione blinked from her position out in the corridor; she hadn't known that Asher and the Headmistress were that close.
"No," Asher said quietly, sounding subdued.
"Alright then," McGonagall said briskly, a chair scraping against the floor. "We will talk more about the implications-"
But Hermione didn't hear the rest, as she had retracted the Extendable Ear and was hurrying back down the corridor before she could be discovered. She had much to think about as she dashed back to her office. When she reached her desk, she pulled out a fresh piece of parchment and outlined what she knew about Asher.
One: She transferred to Hogwarts her fourth year, but not from Yorke Academy of Sorcery. Unknown: Is there another school in the US?
Two: She must take a potion every night that stops her from... what?
Three: Dumbledore was aware of this when he let her into the school.
Four: McGonagall also knows, and she seems to think that Asher can control it.
Five: She has an uncle named Cornelius, her father's brother.
Six: Her mother's name was different than her father's name, and she took her mother's name. Why?
Seven: She was gone from Hogwarts at the same time I was. Where was she?
And so it went, Hermione staying up later than was prudent, expanding her list and finally moving the operation to the library, using her teacher's privileges to go there after it had closed. Eleven said: She mentioned her father was a potioneer, and his work made it into a few anthologies. And so she pulled collections of works on Potions down from the shelves, running her finger down the lists of contributors, looking for something that popped out at her.
It wasn't until she opened a book called Impossible Potions for Impractical Uses that she found anything useful. This book did not have a list of the people whose work it included, so she had to go through the pages one by one, looking for the byline that listed the inventor. Knack, Josephine... Blinker, Bilius...
Hermione froze as she stared at the page before her. It listed the ingredients for a Suppression Draught, which needed, among other things, knotgrass and aconite. Under uses, it said, "To keep the darkest desire of the user bound within for a twenty-four hour period. Side-effects: Sleepiness, sluggishness of the mind." Hermione read the section at the beginning, which sounded rather like a disclaimer: "Though the idea of this potion was a popular one, the application received unanimously dreadful responses. Most reported that they only experienced the side-effects, which were rather strong, and felt no decrease in their desire to do amoral things. In short, this potion is widely regarded as a dud."
She examined the brewing instructions, marking the part at the end that said if it had been done right, it would let off a glow, the color of which was specific to the brewer. This last bit puzzled her until she reexamined the ingredient list and found Ten drops of blood, provided by the subject. Her mind flashed on the silvery light coming out of Asher's cauldron, then the scars all over Asher's palms and the fresh cut she had seen. The byline of the Suppression Draught read, "Fudge, Darius."
Hermione's jaw dropped. Fudge.. Uncle Corn.. Asher's uncle is the former Minister of Magic? Suddenly, what Asher had said to him in anger made sense: "I can't go about besmirching the family name. Besides, you did a fine job of it all by yourself." Cornelius Fudge had vehemently denied for years, despite all the signs to the contrary, that Voldemort was indeed back. His smear campaign against Harry Potter and his badgering of Dumbledore came back to bite him after it was shown that Dumbledore and Harry had been right all along: Voldemort made an appearance in front of several Ministry officials at the end of their fifth year. Fudge had been forced to resign in disgrace.
She reviewed more of Asher's words. "It wasn't his fault she didn't take it." She had been referring to her mother, obviously, which indicated that Marion Erised had been taking the same potion. But she had apparently lapsed one night, and now she was in Alcatraz.
Hermione remembered the time when the other woman had come in that very evening- ten-fifteen- and then recalled how Asher had run off to the lavatory in the Three Broomsticks at ten-thirty and come back, stashing something in her robes. Assuming it was an empty phial she had hidden, Asher regularly took the potion at ten-thirty, but she had missed her dose while she was comforting Hermione.
Revisiting how she had felt after Asher had touched her, she shivered. It had been as if she needed to be closer to her, and Asher had had that look on her face.. as if she were hungry, just waiting for Hermione to come nearer. Her cheeks went pink as she thought of how close the two of them had been. Their lips had been inches apart...
Hermione shivered, then shook herself briskly; she and Ron had been quite in love at one point, and that was incontrovertible evidence that she was very attracted to men.
All the evidence about Asher, however, indicated that she might be dangerous. Her mother, in Alcatraz; Her uncle, uncomfortable around her and concerned that she wasn't taking the potion; her father, certainly dead; Dumbledore admitting her to Hogwarts "in good faith." The more that Hermione looked at the potion and its disclaimer, the more she felt that Darius Fudge had invented the potion specifically for his wife and daughter. Despite the answers she had found, Hermione now had even more questions. Who, really, was Marion Erised, and what had she done to land herself in prison? What had happened to Darius Fudge? And what was this "darkest desire" that needed to be bound?
Her dreams that night were deeply disturbing. An Asher bathed in a silver glow loomed over Hermione's studies in the library, taunting her, "You'll never know," in a singsong voice. She reached down and stroked Hermione's forearm with a long pale finger, setting it on fire, and she broke into a high-pitched cackle that turned into Voldemort's icy laugh. Hermione watched as Asher's eyes turned red and she smiled without mirth, and felt manacles form around her wrists, to which Asher held the chains.
