Harry Potter: The Rise of the Technomancers
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. If you believe that I do, please send me all your cash and check yourself into your nearest mental health center, thanks :)
AN: Hey guys, after a long Hiatus, Agent P's back! Life's been good for the past year, i've gotten situated in my new job, paying off my college loans, saving up for a new place, and playing a little on the side. It hasn't been all fun and games, but I think I'm comfortable right now to continue writing. I know it's been a long time, but i promise I'll begin to upload more chapters and a few new stories I have floating around by computer. I know you don't want to hear more about my life, so without further ado, here we go.
Chapter 35: Hermione Granger, Pride Before the Fall
"But what if I get stuck or something, or forget a patrol?" Ginny asked as they made their way down stairs for breakfast.
Hermione laughed and pat her friend on the shoulder, "Don't worry Gin," she said in a genial, yet slightly arrogant tone, "If you get stuck, all you have to do is call me. Since I'll be Head Girl this year, I need to be on top of things, and I have a system figured out that will help me keep in contact with everyone, so we can all get things done exactly on time, ok?"
Ginny smiled at her confident bushy haired friend, "Thanks so much Hermione, I really appreciate the help."
"No problem Gin," Hermione said with a smile.
Hermione had made plans to come to Grimauld Place thanks to the increase in the number of attacks on the populace over the last year, yet surprisingly, the attacks seemed to disappear after the Magitek Corporation began its efforts in the UK. The speed at which the new company, only a year old by her estimates, was astounding and the kinds of technology that had been produced was incredible to say the least. The impossible feat of melding magic with muggle technology was finally discovered by this Evan Magius, a name she had never heard before nor came across in her studies. How he did it she absolutely did not know, and nothing she did to discover the method came to fruition. She had begged her parents to let her purchase a few of the new items, the essentials, a cell, a laptop, a few appliances, and several of the larger items that she could tinker around in. She figured she could discover the secret of the technology, she was the 'Brightest Witch of her Age', after all. Even though her OWL results weren't the best, she still thought that she had earned the title. Those results that Harry had gotten couldn't have been real, she reasoned after thinking about it for several months, he had to have cheated somehow, or had someone, namely Dumbledore although he denied it, cheat for him. He was an idiot. Nothing he had done so far was of his own skill. She had helped him, she had literally done everything for him along the way, and besides, no one was smarter than Hermione Granger. She had proved just that by her actions this year.
Although originally a social pariah, her leadership of the DA, despite the traitors that were ferreted out and dismissed, and her subsequent power and prestige in Gryffindor house proved that her skill and intelligence was the deciding factor that allowed the 'Great Harry Potter' to be so successful. Of course there had been some naysayers when she explained to everyone that she had been the reason for Harry's success throughout the years. That was dealth with swiftly and now, she, not Harry, was the Golden Child of Gryffindor. Her success this year galvanized the idea that she had been harboring since second year, that Harry had simply caused her to be seen as a know it all, had taken her light, had consumed her time with his moronic quests when she could have been leading Gryffindor for all that time. And now, she would be leading the entire school as Head Girl! She was so excited for the up comming school year. McGonagall almost assured her that her status as Head Girl was set in stone, and McGonagall did not lie to her, not her favorite student.
Of course, in the beginning, she did feel a little remorse at what she did and what she said to Harry. But later on, when she thought it through, when she analyzed the situations they went through she realized that Harry had been trading on their skills, Ron's tactical brilliance and his natural leadership, and her astronomical intelligence. He really did nothing on his own, and almost got them killed, despite the twisted things Dumbledore said in order to protect his little weapon. Harry was a bane to their happiness. They were better off this year thanks to his absence. Sorry? Ha! He should have been sorry that he dragged them into those horrible situations, forced into obscurity when she could have ruled Gryffindor house. It was his fault, all of it his fault. Thankfully they wouldn't have to deal with him anymore.
Now, if she only could have solved that problem with the new technology. She knew magic, she knew muggle technology, but some devious trick, prevented her from discovering the mechanism that made the technology work. Hermione tried to open the damn things to see what they were like, despite the large warnings, and was almost blown up thanks to the safety spells. Yet she still tried. After about ten near misses, and a large destroyed window in her parent's house, she realized that the muggle world was not a place she should be messing around with sensitive Technomancy. So she figured she could look into it at school. Besides, many of the Gryffindors would be ecstatic to 'donate' their technology for her research, so she wouldn't have to spend so much money on new tech. It would be better that way.
So despite the relative decrease in Death Eater activity over the past few months, she decided to spend some time here anyway. The Weasleys were back once again, having so many people in the Order made them prime targets for Death Eater Raids, and she hated not being able to be around magic, so she opted to come several days early for the Order meeting scheudled for today. Making it down the long dreary corridors of Sirius Black's old house, she observed her younger friend.
Originally, Ginny had been infatuated with Harry, but, for so long he had been ignoring her, never giving her the time of day, never making time to talk to her, and that was a criminal offense in the strong willed red head. Sure he asked things of her, she wouldn't say what, but from the blushes, Hermione thought that maybe Harry had used Ginny's infatuation for something not very…kosher…and that was the reason why she did not question or try to dissuade Ron when he 'converted', so to speak, his sister to the right side. Harry's destiny was to die, there was no other way around it, the prophecy even said that he would have to die by You-Know-Who's hand. The other alternative was that Harry would take out the Dark Lord, and that, as she knew Harry and what a moron he was, was something that would never happen in a million years.
"Morning mum," said Ginny as she plunked herself down on the long table to eat, "What's for breakfast?"
As Hermione sat down next to the red headed girl, she saw Molly walk into the room with three big plates of food, each bearing one of assorted breakfast meats, the other a pile of scrambled eggs, and the last a heaping mound of mash, "Good morning dears," Molly said in a jovial tone as she set the plates down on the table in front of them, "You'd better dig in before Ronald comes down, you know how enthusiastic he can be when it comes to food."
They smiled knowingly as they filled their plates. A few minutes later, the aforementioned young man, bleary eyes and hair still messy from sleep, plodded down and dropped into a chair across from them. Immediately, his eyes caught the food, and he perked up. Dragging the plates over, he began to shovel mounds of food onto his own, disregarding how many other people still needed to eat, and began to stuff his face with grease. After the girls were through, they sat up and took their plates to the sink where Molly was cleaning them with magic.
"Thank you for breakfast Mrs. Weasley, it was fantastic as always," Hermione said as she placed her dishes in the sink.
Ginny did the same, "Thanks mum."
Molly beamed at the compliment, "You are quite welcome Hermione, it is always a joy to cook for people who express their gratitude," she said, then looked disdainfully at her ignorant son, "so much better than just a pile of filthy dishes," she murmured under her breath and turned back to the sink.
Hermione rolled her eyes, "Ronald Weasley! You tell your mother how much you enjoy her cooking and stop acting like a bump on a log!" she said sternly, in her best Head Girl approximation.
Ron didn't even turn around, all he did was grunt around a mouthful of food, and go back to his eating. Hermione heard Mrs. Weasley sigh and say something about how 'Harry always complimented me and thanked me for my cooking'. Hermione ignored the comment and retreated back to the Black Library where she spent most of her time while at Grimmauld Place.
Although Sirius was not able to access his family fortunes, he did have access to the home as well as legal ownership of the property and items within the property. It was a good thing that the ex-convict did not have the foresight to leave Harry any of it, since the Ministry would have surely confiscated everything and liquidated the assets of the house, as they did everything else. Hermione did find a letter addressed to Harry when she first arrived in the Black Library. Unable to open it, she would have simply binned and forgot about it, Harry really wasn't worth the effort of finding and delivering any mail to, that is until Tonks discovered that she found a letter for Harry. That had not been a pleasant experience. The irritated and overstressed Auror had discovered Hermione as she was about to toss the letter, and summarily 'tutored' Hermione on interrogation techniques as well as her study of mind magics, which she had to admit from her own study of the mind arts that year, was not as easy as she first thought it was when Harry began taking lessons.
The woman was a skilled occlumens as well as a legilimens, and used her influence to hide the incident from the rest of the Order, implanting an impulse that prevented her from telling anyone, but suffice to say, the little session they had was very enlightening, and from that day on she avoided Tonks like the plague. Still, even if the place was laced with bad, some very terrifying, memories, it was still a library, and a very good one at that. Books on every subject imaginable lined the walls and it fascinated her on how all of this knowledge could have gone untouched for so long. For the past two weeks, ever since she got here, she sequestered herself in the library in an attempt to figure out how to recreate several of the spells she saw both the Order members and the Death Eaters use at the Department of Mysteries that faithful night when Harry's recklessness nearly got the lot of them killed.
She learned how to conjure objects in the path of deadly spells to intercept the killing curse or any number of powerful hexes, but was still unable to duplicate some of the more complex spells in the Black arsenal. She asked several of the Order members to teach her, but thanks to Dumbledore's earlier admonishment, the stories that French bint Fleur told before she quit the Order, as well as the nasty words she had with a few of the other members, none of them would teach her a single thing. Hell they wouldn't even talk to either her, or the Weasley siblings. Even Daedalus Diggle and a few of the other right wing members who were all for dragging Harry back, just laughed at her and told her to go home and play with her dolls. That was the straw that broke the camel's back and forced her to start her own research. The simple spells were easy, as most were Hogwarts curriculum and could easily be found in the Hogwarts library, but the others, especially that interesting dueling spell Sirius had been using in his fight, were impossible to find.
Finally, after a week of searching the Black Library, she discovered a reference to a dark spell that would mimic the effects of a lost charm, something they called the Iron Burner. The fact that one of the people on their side was using a dark spell was surprising, but really not that surprising. Sirius was from a dark family and it would have been expected that he learn a few dark spells and this one was no exception. It was called the Siphon Spark. The dark spell used the caster's own life energy and turned it into a form of magical force that could be expelled like a blade from the tip of the wand. It could only be used for short periods of time and required constant concentration as well as a strong will as the spell literally siphoned off the force that gave you life in order to give the caster a magical weapon. Despite being dark, she reasoned that even if it was a dark spell, she could still learn it and use it in emergency cases. So she attempted it.
And failed miserably.
She almost died that first time she ignited the spell matrix, pumping too much of her life force into the spell, and of all the people to find her, it was Nymphadora Tonks. The young Auror knew exactly what she was doing, being a member of the Black family, her mother taught her the powerful and dangerous spell when she entered the Auror Academy. Initially, she had been furious that some 'traitorous bint', as she frequently called her, was trying to steal Black family secrets, but then, a flash of insight hit the Auror, and for some reason she smiled maliciously at her. She let her go and even gave her a manual on how to use the spell. Hermione had been wary at first, but indeed it did teach her how to wield the Siphon Spark, if not with ease, and even then at least for short bursts of time. Still, it was dark magic, and Tonks had been taking jabs at her while the others were around, reciting laws against the practice of dark magic, asking Moody if he felt anyone using dark magic in the home, and even asking her if she knew if anyone was using dark magic. It was two weeks of pure horror for the girl yet she persevered.
Hermione spent the rest of the day in the library with the books of the ancient Black family, reading and learning facts and spells, if not how to do them. It was an interesting few weeks. Ron came in for a little while begging her to do his homework for him, which she refused, and Ginny came in to keep her company while she read, but later walked out in favor of playing quidditch with Ron. After a while, her eyes became sore from the reading and the dim light, so she decided to go down stairs.
As she descended the stairs, she overheard three people talking, "-can't be, Professor! It just can't!"
Molly, she thought to herself. What can't? It must be something bad, she though as she crept closer to the door, making sure to pick up her feet and place them slowly as to prevent the echoing that usually accompanied foot falls in the rickety old home.
"I'm sorry Molly," it was Dumbledore, "But the evidence was there, and we need to find out if it was true. It will only take a little while and he won't remember or feel anything after that," he explained to the distraught woman.
"Th-Th-Then Veritaserum? But-But what then? If it is true!? Will he go to…to…-Oh Arthur! Where did we go wrong! It just can't be true, it just can't be can it!?" Molly nearly screamed.
A scuffle and some crying occurred next as Arthur calmed his wife. The red haired man's fatherly voice came next, "If…If it is true…and he did it…will you help him Albus? At least…At least…"
"I will Arthur," Albus said next, his voice sad yet firm, "I will do the best I can, but he will be punished, and I don't thi-" the voice cut off in mid sentence.
Bugger, Hermione thought, as she quickly tried to escape soundlessly down the corridor. Halfway down, she heard a spell being incanted in back of her, and quickly blacked out.
Hours later, when she woke up, all she could remember was being sleepy from her time in the library and going up to take a nap.
AN: Not all that great, but it's a start. Like I said, i've got a bunch of chapters waiting for revision and I'll post them as soon as they are. Please review!