Chapter 8: True Bravery
Who would hate holidays? Just a year ago Hermione had pitied Harry for not being able to enjoy them. Since Dumbledore had prohibited her to write him she hoped at least Cho would, otherwise the poor boy would probably go mad. Back home with her parents she understood now how hard living among the muggles could be. Spending her time just by reading had been always fine for her, but now she felt the need to experiment. To take the wand and try a spell, to just brew potions according to new and exotic recipes, to fly on a broom like a proud witch would - well, not the latter, if she thought about it. Flying was the most primitive of all wizard means of transportation, after all, and doing it by broom simply archaic. Who needed all that unreliable stuff, anyway? Apparation was faster, easier and for a gifted person safer. Stopping her straying thoughts, Hermione began concentrating on the problem again.
"Several wandless months await me, oh joy!", she angrily muttered to her mirror.
So how to spend them? Stalking her room like a caged animal, she pondered her possibilities.
By learning history of magic? Nonsense, the whole subject was only failures over failures repeated to no end. Catching up to her neglected studies of muggle science? A nice hobby, but overall a waste of time.
Who needed to know how gravitation worked if it didn't work that way for himself?
Outright dismissing the idea of spending her precious holidays patiently solving Arithmancy equations, Hermione didn't want to admit that her interest lay in a specific field of magic. A more adventurous although dangerous one. She finally wanted to try out some of the Dark Arts spells, but due to the narrow minded bureaucracy she simply couldn't. Whatever spell she tried, the Ministry of Magic would get an immediate notice; that was the nature of the trace placed on every underage witch's and wizard's wand.
Maybe there were ways around that problem, if she had understood Viktors teachings correctly.
She could try to perform some minor dark ritual, which hopefully couldn't be traced by the Ministry if no use of wand was involved. It was a risk, but the alternative was terrible boredom.
"Is that really enough of a reason?", Hermione wondered.
Even though compared to dark spells rituals seemed to be simple in creation, one little mistake could still have unpredictable, usually horrible consequences. Well seriously, so could nearly everything related to the Dark Arts.
Nobody used them casually, Hermione had been told at least once per lesson. Even the most insane, who dedicated their life to nothing but practicing the darkest of vile spells, had to immensely concentrate to not be their next victim themselves. The Dark Arts thirsted for suffering and it needed willpower, knowledge and practice to tempt them to inflict it not directly on the person who called upon them in the first place. Whatever the occasion, the use of the Dark Arts was unreliable and dangerous. Therefore, Hermione realized, every person who still did it had overcome a boundary once. Be it that the need for revenge was stronger than the fear of the risks or the desire for hate corrupting the primal instincts of survival: every story included a turning point, where the witch or wizard cast off his moral limitations in the search for what was kindly described as "true greatness". Probably the ideal of ambition made Slytherins especially vulnerable to the corrupting promises of power laying in the Dark Arts.
What most snakes failed to see was that the Dark Arts couldn't be just studied. They needed to be lived. To know what is right and still do the wrong was just a start, but not enough. Since Dumbledore kept an eye on the Hogwarts students it was impossible to fall so low.
According to the official history books and the DAAD teachers, the Dark Arts gave only harm, to yourself but even more to others. Hermione understood it by the example of the cruciatus curse, which was a permanent threat to your character, mental sanity and social functionality, but devastating to your enemies. You needed to be very desperate to deliberately want that power, right?
Unlikely, Hermione concluded. She knew there were more effects than purely harming ones. Maybe the secret was that intention didn't matter at all. Phrases like "evil people use evil spells" were probably just self-deception. Every wizard was dangerous, in a way. A simple cooking-charm used to boil water had a devastating effect on the human body.
Now that was a hypothesis worth testing.
Hermione brushed this thoughts away. When she was old and grey, she could spent long winter evenings ponder the philosophical ramifications of actually using the Dark Arts. Right now she just wanted to start studying and unveiling their secrets. For this purpose she didn't need to research the ethical implications of using them like an emotional maniac, that was Dumbledore's job. Right now she was only interested if and how these kind of rituals worked.
So the first question was obviously: Which of the rituals could she try?
After once more consulting her books, this question was tightly connected to a second one: Whom to target? She hardly could just experiment on some random Muggle, because obviously the target of anything dark should be an enemy. And therein lay the problem. Her most hated antagonist, top one of her list of possible practice targets, was Draco Malfoy, since she wasn't so deluded to put any powerful Deatheater or even the Dark Lord himself on it. But Draco was at Malfoy Manor now and since all pure-bloods probably knew about the existence of the rituals printed in a Durmstrang's school book, he'd be certainly protected by wards. Realizing that the same applied probably for all Purebloods, a rather frustrated Hermione nearly wanted to give up. Over her musings it had become rather late after all, the ghostly light of a pale moon being replaced by the first rays of the rising sun.
Still curiosity won over tiredness and she decided to skip the question of target and proceed to see which rituals she actually could perform with her few resources. That was how she found out about another disadvantage of rituals, the rarity of the ingredients, which made them similar to potion brewing. Unlike ingredients for a potion, which followed a complex system, it was hard to distinguish between superstition and necessity in rituals. Therefore some rituals became outright useless. Their ingredients usually seemed on first glance surprisingly easy to obtain. The devil was in the details.
For example even though her parents were dentists, Hermione had no intention to extract the teeth of her enemy and spent the bigger part of a month lightening hundreds of different coloured candles and common incense. Also the choir of chanting acolyts was hard to come by in our day and age. And seriously, was there something as stupid as violently breaking a tooth out of someone's mouth for a ritual meant to create pain for that person? Probably the non-magical pain of loosing this tooth was higher than anything the Dark Arts could provide. Most other rituals required either ridiculously expensive or rare ingredients, all unavailable to her among muggles. That left only the incredible complex rituals of enhancing herself which she didn't dare to try without understanding them completely.
So what to do? Where was Viktor when he was needed?
With a sigh, Hermione closed the section about rituals. She'd need to come up with something else tomorrow; or was it today already? Hermione fell asleep before her head reached the table already.
When their daughter didn't came to breakfast this morning, Hermione's parents shared a knowing look. They were just glad their little girl started to grow up finally and sleep healthily long at least in her holidays. Being doctors, they both understood how much a growing person suffered from the inhuman scheldure most schools still used. Puberty was the most horrible time in the life, they both would agree, and list all the mistakes they made and could laugh about now. But without it, a person would stay a child forever, unable to grasp the beauties of life. The atmosphere of a forest at night, the loneliness of an abandoned house, the fight for a place to belong in society - all this intense feelings long gone from their own life they wished for their daughter.
Both of them had worked hard for her to always receive the best education. The arrival of her Hogwarts letter had been a shock, but nothing they couldn't overcome. The hard part in it wasn't that their little daughter would learn magic, it was that Hogwarts was a boarding school.
Now that they had her back for holidays, they hoped to spend as much time as possible with her. A trip to France was planned
Hermione took in the state of her room. Books towered like mountains over a sea of parchment, which covered every inch of the floor. Tired she fell on her bed, only to notice the hard way one of Viktor's books under her pillow. Bored and sleepy as she was she took it out and started to read it. It was about history of the Dark Arts, but not the Professor Binns kind of history. Most of it sounded more like phantastical tales than history. Shining heroes and evil adversaries (sometimes hard to discern), dragons and creatures so foul their name didn't survive the centuries, magical swords and items of strange and mind-boggling powers...
Suddenly Hermione jumped, wide awake. That could be what she had been searching for! The answer to her problems could be artefact creation. Sighing, Hermione began to carefully review the theory behind it once more using the 3rd year book for Durmstrang Dark Arts class. This was going to take a long time.
Slowly the hours ticked away as Hermione studied the tricky art of binding magic to objects.
"Nothing comes for free, and the careless usually pay more than they intended. The prize is high enough usually, you really don't want to increase it.", droned Viktors voice in her sleep-deprived head.
Blindly following the recipe she had could result in success, in St. Mungo hospital or worse. The Dark Arts really encouraged their practitioners to think for themselves.
After sneaking to the kitchen to get some coffee at 4 in the morning, Hermione staggered more dead than alive back to her room and decided two things:
1. To just take the damn shortest instruction on artefact creation she could find.
2. To for sure call it a night after.
Incredously she eyed the short text. Studying it for some time, especially the attached pictures, made her laugh with recognition. She had found the wizard equivalent of a mass producable knife to cut through metal armor by some rather insidious acid charm.
'I'll remember it for my next fight against a knight.', were Hermione's last thoughts that night.
The next day saw a rather moody Hermione visiting friends of her parents, some neighbours they knew for as long as she could remember to be bored. It was a straining experience to keep polite and pretend to be interested in politics she didn't follow for a year already, especially when it was the local ones.
Ignoring the offended looks of the neighbours and her parents, she rather soon invented an excuse to leave.
Finally being back to her books! Every second away had been one second to long, Hermione felt.
Searching for another artefact to create, she skimmed through her book once more and stopped at the picture of one beautiful silver necklace with intricate engravings. Deciding to settle on this, she tried to read the text.
It would have been easier if the instructions weren't in medieval Latin, written either in a time before people agreed on spelling or by a person purposely ignoring any conventions, including grammar and spelling. And sometimes even that medieval Latin shouldn't be confused for ancient Greek. The riddles of the pseudo-alchemist text itself were surprisingly simple, Egyptian moonstone for example was obviously silver and the fame of the elephant wasn't his size, but his memory.
Actually if she got that right, this magical pendant should strengthen the memory of the wearer. Quite harmless result, quite easy to create, one would think. Probably the use of it was considered cheating in tests, but who cares? It was classified as a minor dark artefact and as such illegal in the first place. Anyway, if she wore it while learning, the effect should last long enough to enhance her knowledge before tests. Not that she needed it, of course. It was just an experiment after all.
So she read and commented the translated instructions:
First take a silver pendant ("necklace of stone blessed by the Egyptian moon"), cover it in animal blood (human one wasn't necessary, if she interpreted "juice of all life" correctly) and screw it in an at least half a century old tree counter-clockwise (in short, reverse from what was written - otherwise the "fame of the elephant" would be to have the biggest ears) until it was covered by resin. Finally speak the incantation (the only genuine correct advice of all instructions). The rest was waiting. Simple enough and most importantly, without any wandwaving.
Not willing to sacrifice one of her scarce silver jewellery, Hermione decided to later buy a cheap new chain and use a modified Sickle. Of course she'd need to put a hole in the silver coin, but that was quite easy to achieve by her fathers tools. Now her knowledge of science came in handy. Secretly preparing the coin took more than an hour, but the ideal pronunciation of the incantation came to her nearly naturally. Drawing a deep breath to calm down she mentally prepared herself for the second practical step. Couldn't be worse than what she learned in potions class, right? Indeed, chopping flubberworms in equally thin slices had been probably more disgusting, she decided.
"OK, Crookshanks. For science!"
Now her parents supply of anaesthetics came in handy...
The next day, she travelled with her family down to France by car. The summer was warm, a southern sun burning mercilessly over them, which didn't matter in the climatised car and house they had rented. Glad to stay three full weeks there, Hermione set to work on the first night already.
To procure a simple chain had be child's play and honestly she was happy to part with the vial of blood she carried all the way from home. Following the recipe, she went to the garden and embedded it while speaking the incantation deep into the bark of an old oak tree. She didn't count its rings, but calculated the age from shape and growth.
Every day, she went sightseeing with her parents. Every night, she sneaked out for checking on her project. The Pendant would painstakingly slow change form and colour, so she had to make sure it went according to the book.
The results should be visible eight nights later. 'So much for seven being a magical number', she thought.
In a moonless night, she made her final trip to the tree. What did she expect?
At worst, an army of aurors descending on her like Hannibal from the Alps. Certainly not that the tree would stand there dried out completely, a slit in the side with blood-red resin pouring out making it look like a wound. Carefully she pried out the necklace from it, covering the fingers of her left hand in red sticky resin. Curiously she observed the necklace closer. Gone was the silver sparkle of the sickle, instead a grey patina covered what had most resemblance with a Viking coin laying under water for centuries. It also felt heavier somehow and cold like ice.
Her hand shivered, involuntarily drawing the upheld unnatural piece of solid mercury closer to her eyes. Nothing at all like in the book, she registered. Reacting on instinct, she suddenly began furiously scratching the patina away, not caring for her freshly manicured nails. What she laid bare made her nearly drop it. All over the shining silver disk spread an intricate pattern, forming runes of unknown origin and purpose.
This was exactly like described in the book. Hermione put it around her neck proudly, waiting a reaction.
Often enough she had felt inferior, blind and scared. Now she felt like hovering above the ground as a rush of fresh energy shot through her body. If she had to describe that feeling, she would either need a lot of complicated metaphors or one word: Alive. Like after a long sleep opening her eyes she felt informations flooding all her senses and her mind becoming clear, her fears and worries gone like a cloud of dust in space suddenly vanishing in a Black Hole, only leaving the light from a brilliant star.
She remembered suddenly the most fundamental warning of Viktor:
"If you study only the Dark Arts, one day you will use the Cruciatus even to open doors."
"My dear Viktor, if the door stood between me and my goal, a Cruciatus might be the appropriate choice!", Hermione thought, smirking slightly.
On the way back home, just on the ferry from Calais to Dover, an owl reached Hermione. Since it didn't raise much attention, it was probably charmed. Without using her wand, she didn't have a way to test her thesis, even though the idea of charms repelling the attention of people, be they muggle or wizard, raised a bit on her priority list for research.
Bound to his legs it brought two rolls of parchment. One stated that Dumbledore expected her to take this self-activating portkey before arriving in Dover. The other parchment was meant for her parents, explaining the graveness of the situation demanding her presence with the headmaster and a request to have her stuff for Hogwarts being ready to be picked up the next day.
Thanking her parents for a wonderful holiday and trying to allay their fears of the future, Hermione hugged each of them, promised to write and stepped out of their life for nearly a year once more.
Holding his silently crying wife in a tight embrace, her father watched the unheeding grey sea.
As soon as she landed, Hermione had all but forgotten about the time in France. Cathedrals, flowers, food and smiling people seemed like a far away dream to the girl arriving infront the grim, old house placed in Grimmauldplace. Hermione wondered if street and house earned their names when they were build already.
Dumbledore himself awaited her, letting her in to the secret of the headquarters location and levitating her suitcase into the house by a wave of his hand. He curtly apologized for not introducing her to what was left of the Order of the Phoenix, since she was not a member yet, and vanished twinkling to a meeting with them in the kitchen.
Hermione was left with an over-excited Sirius Black and his house-elf Kreacher. The last mentioned needed a good cursing to stop insulting her as a mudbloods, but that was not now and then. Higher priority had the ex-convict staring at her as if he didn't see a woman for a far to long time.
With a tiny smile, she allowed him to levitate her heavy suitcase to the room she was going to use the next few days. All his attempts at small talk had to be blocked rigorously, especially when he started to talk about "a girl brightening the place up", "finally someone knowing about cooking and cleaning here" and so forth. Wondering if Dumbledore really brought a student here with an urgent message just to clean his headquarters for him, Hermione buried herself in the less suspicious books she had taken from France back with her.
Strangely two days later Harry turned up for a court session regarding his underage magic. Dementors attacking Privet Drive, seriously? Why not say that Voldemort himself chased him? Oh, he did that after the Triwizard Tournament already. Of course to cast a Patronus was an impressive feat, but why Harry needed to flaunt it in front of muggles escaped her. Question was, how did Dumbledore know that and when he would come?
Regardless of the implications of the headmasters motives, "Jean", as Hermione's self-chosen name was now, did what she could do best: She went to the library and started to read about the legal system of Wizarding Britain, especially in concern to Harry's upcoming trial. The laws about underage magic were as new as most of the Ministry. Not even 200 years old, if Hermione guessed correctly.
The meaning of the term "underage" itself had changed a lot during history. Firstly meaning a student, owning a wand and not yet set free by his mentor, later someone being younger than 12, 14 and finally 18 years old. In ancient Rome, if she remembered correctly, "underage" meant a wizard not having lived for 75 years and therefore being unable to become member of the Wizengamot, but that knowledge certainly wasn't helpful right now.
The time of the hearing came closer and her progress left a lot to be desired. Bereft of choices Jean secretly took her carefully packed pendant and hid it in her bra. At first she feared the cold biting her breast right over her heart, wondering how long she could stand it without a warming charm. Finally her pride won over her pain. Noone else would dare to put that thing on in the headquarter of the Order of the Phoenix, right under Dumbledore's nose. Jean did it anyway, against all odds defiant to the self-proclaimed leader of the light in his own lair.
Suddenly she knew the next year in Hogwarts would be her most dangerous ever. The threat of being killed by a Deatheater paled in comparison to being tortured in Azkaban for the rest of her life or loosing her soul to a dementor.
"Maybe its better to loose who you are to a Dementor than to your own cowardice.", Jean smiled.
"Now i know bravery is standing up for your own ideals in a rotten world. Gryffindor is truly my home."
AN: Less animals were hurt in this chapter than in the original books.
