A/N: This story came about as a Writer's Block challenge to myself. I wove several prompts from the awesomely amazing InsaneScriptist together and this happened. It starts rather outside-prospective-prose-ish and transitions after about a thousand words.
*shrugs*
It was mostly a writing exercise, but I thought I'd share. I wanted to write a story in which I kept the 'trio' together, but I needed to change them a bit so that I had something to work with. In case it's not clear in-story: Harry is a bit more jaded, Ron's family is causally cruel, and then Hermione's situation shatters what faith she had in the authority figures of the magical world.
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Silence of the Fall
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Summary: A few changes can make a world of difference. A perceptive Harry, a more self-aware Ron, and a Hermione who wakes up to a tragedy. One thing is for certain, this Trio won't be anyone's fools!
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It hadn't happened overnight. There was no single fixed moment that was the point of no return. Rather there were thousands of little moments sewn together with another million mis-mashed just-slightly-out-of sight sneers that culminated into the set of circumstances that led to their rebellion.
In the beginning there was a boy raised in a cupboard, introduced to a magical world filled with pretty lights and freedom. Of course something so good obviously came at a price and this was no different: freedom from the cupboard in exchange for a lifetime of expectant servitude. Forever bound to be on the frontline, being besieged by friendly fire and enemy fire alike until nothing of himself remained.
He still accepted it, anything to get out of the grey he was constantly surrounded by.
He went to school and found two friends that first year: a boy who had nothing to call his own and a girl who had no place to belong. They banded together that year, through unlikely circumstances and against the odds and in the end they triumphed.
Yet the sweet taste of victory soured on their tongues. A bit more jaded and perceptive, the boy looked around and saw how they had not so much won as they had performed to the unspoken expectations of those who claimed to know him.
And everyone else in the room resented them for it.
Something cold and unpleasant slid down his spine and when he glanced over at his friends his horrified green eyes met grim hazel and bitter blue.
So perhaps that was the first strike.
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After a summer of silence and servitude there came a rescue.
But after ten months of almost-freedom and most of a summer spent in isolated captivity, it was much easier to see the bars beneath the subtle warmth and secret smiles.
(It was then that the boy with green eyes witnessed the casual cruelty in the Weasley home and he suddenly understood how his blue-eyed friend had been able to be so cruel to the well-meaning but pushy girl last Halloween. It was simply an extension of the treatment afforded to him every day while under his Mother's roof.)
Green met blue and a heavy moment passed between them, a moment of camaraderie and shared burdens before they were jostled back into reality. Dinner passed in a blur of forced smiles and plastic laughs-
-yet it was a spark against the kindling that was their wills, lives, and yearning for something different, (better, perhaps; but at least a journey on a road they chose themselves).
That September when the Barrier refused to open for them, they merely took the Knight Bus to the Leaky and had the bartender, Tom, inform the appropriate people. Roughly three hours later Professors McGonagall and Sprout came to retrieve them.
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"I have an idea." Hermione told them as she settled down at their usual Library table, her books thumping lightly against the desk as she gazed at her two friends with frustrated, (determined) hazel eyes.
"Let's hear it then." Ron replied, stretching out his legs and leaning back against his chair, noting that he had grown tall enough that his trousers looked more like three-quarter length bottoms than actual full-length ones.
It had been several days since Hermione and the other victims of the indirect-Basilisk stare had been cured. Ron and Harry had been disgusted at how quickly the school had rallied back towards Harry once the information about the Chamber had spread. Hermione had been dealing with a personal tragedy and had been sequestered away from them most of the time, this was the first time they had seen her without one of her 'minders' since she had woken up, actually.
(And, they wondered who blabbed. For Harry and Ron had said nothing and Ginny had been spirited away back to the Weasley home.)
"Well." Hermione said, biting her lip anxiously before waving her wand in a few, precise motions. The boys felt the magic wash over them, but merely looked at her with mirrored quirked eyebrows.
(Harry was still positively exhausted from the Chamber battle and was more than willing to just listen at the moment.)
"I have an Aunt." She said eventually, her eyes sharp as she regarded them both warily. "She's kind of different." She grimaced a bit and looked down at her hands, which were twisted tightly into fists, her robes nearly ripping at their delicate seams. "She has….acquaintances, however. Ones that could assist us."
Ron put his hands behind his head, resting them casually on the chair's high back but his tone was tight. "Really?"
Hermione nodded sharply and lifted her head back up so that she could look at them properly. "My parents died while I was petrified." She growled fiercely, low and angry and vicious as the rage in her chest swelled as she thought about what she was going home to. "And the school didn't have the decency to special-order the cure so that I could attend the funeral." She took a few deep breaths and tried to will her wet eyes dry. "Because I'm just a muggleborn." She spat out viciously, trying to control her breathing so she wouldn't break down crying.
Again.
She was done crying.
The boys just watched her, eyes empathetic but knowing that she did not want nor welcome their sympathy at the moment.
She panted a little as she tried to wrestle her emotions under control. A few tears slipped out against her will, but she pushed forward anyways. "Because I, the inheritor of their estate, was not able to be contacted their house- my childhood home- has been sold and all of their things put into storage." Her robes tore a bit as her hands fisted a little too tightly and the seams finally gave way. Hermione very deliberately uncurled her fingers and purposefully placed her splayed hands against the worn wood of the table. "I am set to spend the summer as a guest with my parents' old business partners, whom know nothing of Hogwarts and magic and think that I chose not to attend my Mum and Da's funeral because I was studying." Her voice trembled with suppressed fury and her tears dripped down her nose as she bent her head, hiding her expression behind her hair.
The boys let her cry a bit. Silent as her sobs were the two boys heard the suppressed fury and anguish all too clearly.
"I will spend the summer making plans and contacting my cousin, my question is: are you two with me or not?" She head snapped upright and she pinned both of them in place with a steely glare.
"I'm in. All in. If I can find a way to take my family's money with me, all the better." Harry told her in an even tone. "I'd like to help with your preparations, but I'll be working as a slave all summer." His smile was all teeth and jagged edges, but that assured Hermione far more than the false sympathy she'd been getting from everyone else.
"I-" Ron hesitated and looked down at his feet for a moment. "I want to be in." He said quietly, firmly. "I don't want to be 'Ron Weasley, that youngest Weasley boy' forever. I want to be my own man. I don't want to go back home and hate myself and my family because they make me feel unneeded, unwanted, useless." His fingers tightened against the chair and he met both of his friends' eyes steadily. "I want to be a steadfast friend, a fellow fighter- and I know I'll just keep sliding back into my old patterns if I don't find a way to carve out my own path." Ron's blue eyes turned pained. "I don't want to cause my family pain, but at this point we're toxic for each other." He admitted, his head lolling forward and his arms coming round to hug himself tightly. "I want to be something other than a jealous berk and an extra son. Even if I only reach the level of 'sidekick' I want it to be because I've earned that title by being loyal and faithful and being there when it seems like it's hopeless without faltering because of my own self-doubts."
"I can understand that." Hermione informed him briskly, wiping her tears from her cheeks impatiently and giving Ron a level look. "You've come a long way from that boy who made me cry in First Year, but I can understand what you mean when you say that you and your family are toxic for each other." Her brows contracted as she shuffled around her books and plopped two tomes in front of them. "But if you want out with us, you'll have to work for it." Her gaze was uncompromising as she glowered at the two of them warningly.
They glowered right back at her.
A grim smirk sprawled itself across her face. "Good. I'll make up the Magical Contract while you two get started on those. Take detailed notes, or you'll just have to re-read it all to get what we need."
Both boys exchanged tired glances but gamely cracked open the worn, overlarge tomes.
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Lal Mirch was a woman of many talents and lots of patience.
(Something she desperately needed to keep on top of Iemitsu's varying levels of stupidity.)
But above all things, she understood secrets and the need to keep them. It was why she paid Viper so damn much money to weave an illusion that made her look her actual age whenever she went to visit her family.
So when her newly-late sister's daughter called her, instead of giving the brat the tongue-lashing she'd intended to she fell silent and listed once Hermione mentioned one word.
"Omertá, Auntie Lal. I'm under something akin to Omertá, but I swear on Nonna's Rosary Beads that I was not only unable to attend Mum's-" Her voice broke but Hermione shouldered on. "-funeral, but that I was not even given the knowledge of their passing until nearly two months after they had been buried." Hermione's breathing was uneven, but Lal held her silence and her patience was rewarded when Hermione continued. "The government that has me under an Omertá-esque vow also is oppressing my two friends. Both of them have untenable home situations, but for separate reasons. However, these people are incredibly backwater and there is not really anything we can do to protect ourselves."
Lal's heart started beating faster, bue her voice was even when she answered. "Mia?"
Hermione choked on a sob but she answered her Aunt's unspoken query. "I know. But it's that desperate, Auntie. Please."
"Give me their names, Mia."
Lal prayed that her niece was exaggerating, but for all her faults Hermione was incredibly pragmatic and not overly inclined to self-pity. Mia usually preferred action to wallowing, but Lal could hope.
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Lal's stomach twisted uneasily as she observed the home of Harry Potter.
This is worse than I thought. She thought grimly as she watched the obese woman's dog chew at the unnaturally thin teen's ankles.
"Lal." Viper's voice came across the earpiece.
"Go ahead." Lal ordered sharply, in a massively foul mood after spending the better part of a month running into information blackouts and bad news.
"We have a situation." Viper informed her grimly. "You're going to want to sit down for this."
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Third Year ran by rather smoothly considering the Traitorous Rat had found himself in Viper's custody before term even started.
That year there was no notable difference in the grades of the three, despite the enormous amount of time they spent in the Library. Of course, no one knew what they were truly studying for and by the time anyone caught on, it would be too late.
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"Are you three absolutely sure?" Lal asked them one last time.
"I am." Both Hermione and Harry said resolutely.
Ron glanced over his shoulder with a rather heartbroken look on his face, but his jaw tightened and he turned to face them with eyes that held nothing but resolve. "I am. Let's go."
Lal smirked dangerously. "I give the orders now, brats."
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The thing about trying to possess a magical is that it usually doesn't go so well for the person doing the possessing. Even less so when the person already had the shard of another person living inside them and the possessor tries to use that as a point of entry.
Daemon Spade needed a way to get close to Iemitsu Sawada so that he could plot out his next set of moves, so the green eyed underfed brat in the CEDEF's Initiate Course seemed like as good as target as any, given the kid's closer-than-usual relationship with Lal Mirch. That the kid was underfed and not Flame Active meant that he'd never know the difference. Daemon leapt from the back of the mind of the person he'd been hitching a ride in and drove his essence into the cut on the kid's forehead, reasoning that it would be an easy point of entry.
That was his last mistake.
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Lal Mirch sat by the bed of the brat who had suddenly started screaming last week during Orientation and sighed. At first she was afraid that he'd lost it and would need to be dealt with, but then the medics had noted the strange reactions from around his scar.
The kid's head had needed to be retrained and they hadn't dared intubate him as he kept jerking and twitching as if he was fighting something. The still-relatively-new Thyme had done his best to try to understand the issue but had merely come back out of the room grim-faced and had told them that they would need to see what the boy was like when he awoke.
Which was why Lal was watching over him, because if he was insane when he woke up she would eliminate the brat and tell the others he died of organ failure.
It still tugged at her heartstring, to see the teen so pale, sweaty, and still struggling.
She hoped, in the deepest part of her heart, that the brat won whatever war was waging inside him.
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"Seriously, Basil?" Harry asked his blonde friend incredulously, nodding amiably at Hermione as they passed by her desk.
"Yes." Basil replied flatly. "He has me learning an archaic form of Japanese and tells me thing like 'they still wash their clothes in the river'." The teen's face remained as bland as his tone, but his level of dissatisfaction was readily apparent to his mission partner.
In the eighteen months since the near-possession and his battle for his soul against two madmen, Harry Potter had changed quite a bit. He'd grown taller, gotten Sun Flame-infused contacts, and had learned how to fight. He'd been given the oh-so-creative handle of 'Mint' and had been partnered with Basil for the better part of a year.
Hermione, who had been tagged with the handle Sage, worked with the Senior Secretary. While the position did not sound glamourous or important, those ladies did far more than answer calls and file away at their nails. As a matter of fact, without them the CEDEF would likely crash within a week, as their Boss had a serious tunnel-vision and follow through problems, so those ladies handed out Missions, kept everyone supplied, and generally kept the CEDEF as an agency afloat.
Ron had been tagged with the handle Cilantro and had been partnered with Tumeric. The red-head had also changed his hair color- opting to dye it a much darker red and add in blonde highlights in an effort to remain incognito.
Tumeric and Ron were long-range support types, while Basil and Harry were infiltrators and close-combat specialists.
Basil had originally used the Dying Will Pills in order to utilize his Flame. However once Harry had ordered and sorted all the memories left behind from his battle with Tom Riddle and Daemon Spade's souls he had gotten Lal to implement some of the original Vongola Flame training to decrease their agent's dependence on such things. Lal had also been rather cruel and unusual in making the newer CEDEF agents think of at least one new application for their Flame before allowing them to graduate from her Hell Training, (capital letters definitely needed).
Tumeric was a Mist and Ron was a Storm and together they were pretty unstoppable. Harry was a Sky, but they were very much keeping that information under wraps, so he mostly pulled out his Cloud Flames. He had a pretty good grasp on his Lightning Flames, and could somewhat use his Sun Flames, but the Cloud Flames came the easiest to him. Basil's Rain Flames were particularly useful in misdirecting people's attention when Harry was actually forced to pull out his full Flame, so they worked well together.
"I still don't understand why you don't call him on his bullshit." Harry told his friend as they made their way to the CEDEF office pool, an area full of cubicles and desks reserved for pre-op or off-duty teams to do their paperwork. Post-op paperwork was done in the 'Application Room' just off the secretaries' area so that the information could be promptly filed or acted upon.
Hermione had been a right terror getting everyone to use her newly-instated system properly. But once they had gotten used to it, Hermione's streamlined templates had actually cut down on a lot of the unnecessary parts and had made the agents much happier. That the templates also helped the information coming in post-op flow instead of getting tied up in useless bureaucracy had also been much appreciated.
The two teens had just sat down at one of the desks, ready to kill some time before they were off-call when the building shuddered and the lights flickered.
Basil glanced up at the ceiling. "Well, that can't be good." He said mildly.
Harry rolled his eyes at his partner in long-suffering.
"Basil! Mint! Get your traveling gear on and get your asses down to the Garage! Now!" Lal's voice bellowed over the Mist-covered PA. What that meant was that anyone who was in the building who was not a CEDEF agent or did not have enough clearance to hear her heard nothing. The clearance that you were allowed was woven into the CEDEF token that you wore that was issued by the secretaries.
However, neither teen stopped to ponder the wonderful innovations of the Mists- even if Harry's never-actually-convicted Godfather Thyme was one of them- as they had no wish to give Lal cause to shoot at them.
With as brassed off as she sounded, she might just do so anyways.
Once they had made it to the Garage Lal scowled and shoved a box at them. "These are to be protected at all costs." She ordered. "The Varia are after them. They need to get to Iemitsu's brat in Japan yesterday. Understood?" Lal's lips were compressed into a thin, irritated line, but they both felt that it was not them that she was irritated with. "I'll cover you to get out of the Garage, but after that you're on your own, got it?"
"Yes, ma'am!" They both barked out sharply, Harry taking the box from her and taking the lead while Basil fell in behind him. Harry quickly selected the vehicle that was designated for their use- it had Mist Flames covering it that made them seem to be much older than they were to prevent them from getting stopped by well-meaning police officers- and slid in the driver's seat while Basil nimbly hopped over and quickly took up residence in the passenger's seat.
"The Varia, eh?" Harry muttered as he started the car and quickly backed out of the parking space.
"Right?" Basil said blandly, but the rather pronounced frown on his face was telling enough.
Once they were clear Harry put the car in gear just as Basil grabbed the handle. "Hang on, man!" Harry called as the sounds of Lal's favored rifle filled the Garage.
Harry put his foot to the accelerator and quickly ran through the gear, the super-sensitive steering allowing him to dodge all the nastiness the Varia had planned outside.
"Shit." Harry swore as he merged into traffic and Basil triggered the Mist Trap. (The Mist Trap was an ingenious little thing that made a mirror image of the car while the actual car changed color and seemed to alter its make a bit. It didn't last very long, but it might buy them a little time.)
By the time Hermione's text came telling them which plane they were booked on and which airport to go to they needed to backtrack- and they'd only been on the road for five minutes!
"I think we're the bait." Basil told his partner grimly, looking down at the contents of the box he'd fished out of his partner's jacket. "Iemitsu would never give the Vongola Half-Rings to anyone less than a Boss or one of the Arcobaleno. We're the fucking bait, Mint."
"Well." Harry muttered sarcastically as he spotted a tail and took up defensive action. "We always knew that our Boss was an arsehole. He probably views us as the lesser sacrifice in the grand scheme. Something major had to have changed for us to need to be the decoys, though."
Basil snorted and put the box back in his partner's jacket and checked his own weapons. "Let's just hope that his kid has half a brain and we can look forward to Iemitsu's retirement once the Decimo takes over."
"Amen." Harry muttered as he triggered a few more Mist Traps and a RainShower. "But we have to get to Japan alive first."
"Ah, too easy." Basil chuckled, tossing his partner a cheeky grin. "After all, we've survived Lal's Hell Training."
Harry snorted with amusement and checked his watch before accelerating. "Hang on, Basil. This is gonna get bumpy."
"With your luck." Basil retorted over the roar of the wind, having opened the window to try to spot any additional tails. "Everything's an adventure!"
"I rese-" A shock hit the car and only the installed Lightning Shock Absorbers kept it from frying the car's systems.
"You were saying?" Basil huffed in badly-concealed amusement.
"Rain humor." Harry muttered somewhat petulantly. "Always have to have the last word."
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