Act II: Render
:The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep: Robert Frost
In which respite for Hermione does not mean rest, and the things that grow thick in the dark forest are harvested.
Content warning: graphic depictions of violence, and torture, and character death scene.
Chapter 17: Opia
When Hermione could not be negotiated out of her objectives, Kage listened to her speak about her experiments with magic.
Kage responded with a tour of her estate's many occupations. The estate consisted of separate buildings, plotted along a forest and a large hill. The living quarters were connected by outdoor hallways, the rectangular structure sequestered by the edge of the forest. A flat area, lined like a garden bed but filled with stone, edged the North and West of the living quarters. A pond with flowers trimmed the Eastern side of the residence hall, winding along the path to the stair and courtyard Hermione had climbed up to when she first arrived.
"Most of your time is centered here. I will show you the borders where you may walk. Also, where I may be." Kage took her along the pathway back to the main stairs. It was chilly, and lightly snowing, but the moss grew a grey green in the bark and the leaves of the trees caught many of the flakes.
They approached the first courtyard that Hermione had come to. The two attendants, who Kage had introduced indirectly, Moriko and Fuyuko, had been nameless and silent when they greeted her. Behind the small shrine, she saw again the well she had been instructed by Fuyuko to wash her hands and feet from.
Hermione asked, "What was the purpose of washing from this?" The well was inset between stairs that led North to the main hall.
Kage responded, "Often my estate is open to the public for certain functions." Kage gestured to the South. Painted pillars with black inked wood tokens lined the Southern stairs down into the forest. She then pointed to the West and North pathways and walked past the well, dipping her fingers inside of the water.
Hermione wondered how big 'the public' was that Kage referred to and went to take a closer look at the well.
"The well is used for cleaning. It is important to do so before they approach the main house." Kage turned to her at the top of the stair, nearly a vertical slope.
Hermione looked into the water. It was clear, but growth and small plants with dirt lined the stone and still water. From the open mouth, the teeth holding a sphere,water slowly drizzled into the trough. She put a hand to her chin and tried to lessen the sound of doubt, "Hmm, I see."
Kage said, turning, "It is not important to understand everything, but during your time here it is important to learn a few things and act accordingly."
Hermione said, "I suppose…" she quickly went after Kage. Her wand was in her room, set inside a box when she had dressed in her kimono. "I'm still not sure I understand what you have told me so far."
Kage continued, her voice getting lighter with the distance, "We must work to make things pure."
Hermione was very glad that Kage's back was turned to her so that she could express her doubt on her face, at least but then she saw what could only be a castle. She approached, bowing when Kage did, taking off her sandals before reaching the wooden platform that marked the inside. Kage showed her two large rooms with dark wood and bright light, what she explained as a dining hall and an audience chamber with a single cabinet. There was a room that looked like an office, with scroll cases neatly tucked into their own case, and then a practice hall with weapons on racks. Hermione felt that she hadn't been shown every room but could not understand what part of the hallway could be moved and which panels were stationary.
Kage showed her where to cook her day meals. Each day she would learn how to cook and what, and working towards purity would extend here, too. She would learn from Fuyuko a new philosophy of food, and understand a concept of what a meal was. Kage told her what cleaning she was responsible for and that her attendant, Moriko, would instruct her and show her how and what to clean.
Even bathing was specific. She saw three seats, each with their own bucket, near the rinsing station in the natural hot spring. During instruction, Hermione blushed as she realised that bathing was intended to be communal. Hermione quickly promised to follow verbal instructions. Sensing her discomfort, Kage had stood just outside the doorway and graciously aquiested to her time for solitary bathing, much to Hermione's relief.
Most of her day would be spent on cleaning, and food preparation, and her remaining time would be spent with Kage, beginning with dinner. Kage left her to prepare for sleep, explaining that her small bag of personal items should be placed out so that they could find appropriate houses for them.
At this, Hermione thought it was a matter of word choice. She learned from Moriko, later, in front of her small cabinet, that she was wrong, and there were many things that she did not know about her items. Like they needed houses. That her objects were to be honored as beings- all her objects, not just her wand. It was a novel idea that she sort of accepted as folklore, her tongue firmly held.
Hermione lay awake, looking at the faint moonlight palming the paper of her walls, and glassing the floor and wished she had brought more than the one book, though Kage had insisted she was to only bring fifteen items total. Crookshanks was at the castle, unable to be brought along and unable to go back with Lily without raising questions. She felt alone, and worse, guilty about it.
Hermione covered her eyes with her hands and pressed back the tightness that built in her, longing for the dreamless sleep draught. Eventually she slept, though she could not tell when. Vulnerability and anxiety waking her. Her dreams were cinematic, the shadowy cloaked figure a presence behind her as she went from sand to silt, teeth tearing into flesh.
She woke and the sound of a bell vibrated the chill of her room. She didn't know if she woke because of the bell or the bell had rung because she woke, though she snorted at how silly it would be if it rang because she awoke.
Half-way through trying to wrap her obi, there was a sprightly voice, saying a phrase in Japanese.
"Ye-ess?"
And the door opened and Moriko slid in, and shut the door, bowing to her before rising and quickly helping her with her obi.
"Moriko, right?"
"Mm," Moriko nodded.
Moriko attended her when she would wake and before she slept, assisting her with her with new clothing, laundry, and her room's light and heat. Moriko had refined features, and appeared youthful despite Hermione having no idea of her actual age.
"If you don't mind me asking, how long have you been… working here?" Hermione asked, as Moriko adjusted the knot.
Moriko said, "A long time." and tugged on the obi, ensuring it was tight enough but loose enough that Hermione could breathe.
Hermione asked, "Oh, how long?" Moriko pressed the stiff white foot wear into Hermione's hand. She tilted her head, and watched Hermione put on her socks.
The silence made Hermione pink a little, "I didn't mean to be rude. You don't have- I didn't mean,"
Moriko said coyly, "Many years."
"Can't be that many, you seem very young." Hermione tied her hair back.
Moriko knelt by the door, her eyes bright, "So do you." Moriko then opened the door and bowed.
Hermione wanted to ask what she meant, but Hermione knew she was done speaking, however, when she remained bowed and silent.
Caught between her desire to do well, and her desire to do something else, Hermione struggled with finding peace in her tasks.
There were separate squares of cloth, each with their own names. Moriko had tried to introduce one cloth and task at a time, but Hermione asked the names of all the cloth's, once she understood that the cloth's had a name tied to their singular purpose. Moriko obliged but haltingly.
Hermione asked, "What needs to get cleaned today?"
Moriko gestured vaguely.
Hermione bit the inside of her lip, "What's our itinerary today?"
She pointed to the wall supports.
"Yes but what is everything we are doing today?" Hermione pressed.
But all Moriko said was, "The next step will be."
Her habitual nature had demanded that she move, do, and be, or at least feel productive, even if she could not measure her success. A clean floor was satisfying, though Moriko had not been particularly interested that she was done, and Hermione could not help but feel a lack of validation. Hermione thought it very tedious, not very efficient, and tried to swallow resentment as the cleaning wore on, and then the cleaning of the cloth wore on longer. She tried not to think of it as a punishment, but it was difficult when Filches detentions involved manuel cleaning.
Moriko took her to Fuyuko. Fuyuko was sharp, more directive and seemed cold. But when Fuyuko took her to pull up large white roots and showed her how to hold a knife, which knife to use, she seemed to possessed a grace that Hermione found dissuaded her from asking questions. By then she was so hungry, she wanted to just drink the broth.
More cleaning after breakfast, then after lunch Hermione asked to see Kage.
Kage met her outside of a hallway with large scrolls of powerfully rendered characters hanging on a wall.
"Is this all I am to do? Clean and cook? I just- thought it would be a little, well- different." Hermione asked, trying to sound polite.
"You are to learn a new way of being." Kage said.
Hermione shifted, she understood the words, understood some related concepts but could not actually bring herself to think that she needed to be a different way.
"Your mind must be put into the present. Cleaning is the instruction for a new way of being, this way is… pure." Kage taught as she walked her back to Moriko.
Yet, as the day wore on, She could not find purchase in what Kage termed as instruction for a new way of being.
On her second day, the first of her exercise, the snowflakes fell quickly and flurried with the wind. She felt as if her eyes were open even when she squeezed them shut. After what felt like hours, she asked Kage, "I thought that meditation was directive, an exercise in thought, so why must I focus on my breath?" The sound of Hermione's voice did not travel as far as she thought it would project.
Kage did not answer, and moved silently in the snowy garden.
Hermione thought Kage just as incomprehensible as Astrifer, but she tolerated it less because Kage appeared to be like her, a witch at least. Already frustrated and anxious, she regarded the practice of 'watching herself breathe' with an atheistic suspicion. She had read through the books on Occlumency that her room of requirement provided her, but this was more similar to the things she had read about in the muggle library and had discounted in her pursuit of magic. She already knew how to breathe, she thought, if she didn't she wouldn't have made it very far in life. Kage had not yet instructed her at all like the books designs and guidelines to what she expected of mental magics. At least Astrifer structured their meetings in a way that made learning eminent, and Hermione resolved to think more tolerantly of their meetings.
Kage, for all her shaped words and good manner, was still unavoidably alien to Hermione, no matter how she tried to set herself at ease with her. It didn't help, as she waited for an answer, that she observed that her mentor made no noise, and left no imprint as she bent to lay a stone the size of her arm on the snow covered white gravel.
Kage placed the black rock, it's surface like the negative spaces of a sponge, in such a way that the placement revealed a hole. Her long black hair curtained over her face as she smoothed the sand like gravel around the stone's placement.
Hermione, uncomfortable with no answer and unwilling to raise her voice, got up, stiff and awkward in her kimono. She went to her outside sandals, left out for her.
Hermione's movement towards Kage made crunching sounds, distinct to violating driven snow on rough sand. She seized.
Kage watched her. Before Hermione could retreat, ashamed of her unexpectedly deep footprints and sound, Kage said, "You are trying to locate yourself. This is not the same as finding a solution or reason, like many of the philosophers that you refer to." Kage gestured to the small stone garden. "You must have room to observe in order to decide and create."
"It doesn't feel like it's working." Hermione tried crossing her arms, cut and cloth resisting her.
Kage smiled, a close lipped expression that sharpened her eyes, "It is not only time we lack for our pursuits."
Hermione wasn't sure, but thought Kage found her amusing in ways that made her feel as young as she looked. "Follow me." Kage turned towards the forest.
Hermione pointed around her to the stones, "You're finished, then?" Hermione did not want to say that the garden looked strange and felt empty, but also desired to show Kage that she was trying to be polite and did not wish to push- she had come all this way for help, it would do her no good to alienate the one adult who knew her situation exactly.
Kage did not look back, her kimono and voice blended into the dark of the forest shadow. "It is never finished, only tended to. I rearrange to suit my purposes."
Hermione bit her lip and crunched forward, unsure of going into the forest with her new style of dress that shelled her in ways that her school robe never did. Her sandals required more thought than her boots and school shoes she had stomped through the Forbidden Forest with.
Hermione followed Kage on a thin path, just wide enough to place a foot in front of the other, to a hill. She watched as Kage lit a thick stick of incense, using a fire cantrip without a wand. She fought the questions that she longed to ask, the silence of the forest an eerie weight on her ears which resisted breaking. The hazy smoke from the incense was thin, ghost-like, and smelled of bold reverence and meticulous thought. Kage made precise movements that whorled the smoke and shaped it.
Hermione watched the pattern snake, then hold. She was nearly kept warm with her desire to understand how Kage performed the spell. She knew from her work with ancient runes and arithmancy that there were some similarities to what she had done to treat the time sand before she had ... but as with many things she couldn't quite remember, she wasn't sure she had known.
Kage bowed over the mound, turned to Hermione briefly, then walked through the forest, in a direction they had not come. Hermione felt a humming in the beck and call of the wind, and her lips, toes and fingertips began to tingle, though she had felt them go numb long ago. The silence was a spell. She felt the tightness of her being within the air, and began to see what Kage meant about 'the texture of the air', as it began to change walking the circle of power around the estate.
They reached the mound again, and Hermione implicity knew they were done as she stood by Kage's side, facing the structure. The mound was tall, a rough hewn altar set into its front. Kage bowed and Hermione reflexively bowed with her. She felt slightly embarrassed, but understood that deference was required, in the same way that Kage had spoken to her in her head while traversing her memories. The incense had burned out, but the sky had not changed color, and the shadows remained where they were.
Kage led her back to the house, but she stopped a step away from a bank. Hermione stood on a smooth, flat, and dry river stone. The stone divided the clear, small, shallow stream she had barely noticed when they passed over it to the mound. She frowned, but joined her.
Kage caught her as knowledge forcefully slammed into Hermione. The sense of grief and desperation she had felt when she was building a new future by creating a new past, drenched her thoughts which had lingered like a tinkerer on the ritual spell that Kage had cast. Hermione's shoulders bent and her stomach roiled.
"That there would be an easier way, I would make it so. I have slowed us as much as I am able, and I have asked the goddesses that bind you to release their protection now." Kage said.
Hermione was shaken, weakened and feverish, the memories in her peeling and blooming too quickly, rotten and fresh like they had been on the day she rode the small boat into Hogwarts.
But much worse. Bloody and bare forests, blind dragons, glowing caves, a gleaming ruby sword, jeering faces in a crowd as she knelt over Luna. Ron's back turned as he left, Ron's face as he came back. Sirius as he fell through the veil, Harry's screams. The way that the centaurs looked as they dragged Umbridge into the depths of the forbidden forest. The way her breath felt as she stood, watching. How Draco glanced, the vein under his eye visible, his voice manic. Pain stinging her arm and ripping at her back. The library in Alexandria, it's halls more beautiful than she could have imagined, books darker than she wanted to know. The deep of the starry ocean, the force of her vow filling her up until she was empty. Three figures, in an ocean. It was as if she had stepped foot on the isle of Merlin's tree yesterday.
Kage with surprising strength, moved her back into the house.
In the blurry days that followed, Kage had tried to ease her mind into memories that were formative. She took her to a small inner courtyard with a bent pine. Kage would sit across from her, and then Hermione would feel the brush.
Like the turning of a page, a sense of a person very near but not touching, the memory fell open into reality.
It was similar to when Kage had opened the memory of her standing at Shell Cottage. It had been fractured, the edges in the passing of time clean. The mental magic she bent within Hermione's mind had grown, like a tide, it was as if every detail, everything that she had seen, was brought to the forefront in poignant repetition.
Painful, often traumatic, Hermione retreated into the vague and peaceful recollections of the Evanses life.
Her mummy was made of glass and sunshine, she smelled like… not sweet mint. Her Da asked questions about magic, and for the hundredth time said they were blessed, blessed by the green- not concerned that magic was just a way for people who didn't have proper work ethic to get by. She felt resentful at times, of the strange flaws her mum and da possessed, but at least it wasn't the feeling of abandonment she had forced upon herself.
The Grangers stood, nervous and awkward as Arthur Weasley asked them silly questions she suspected he knew the answers to. They were quite vocal on the way home about what they had seen, noting that things were strange and seemingly made both too easy and too difficult. She remembered when she had stopped writing them letters. It was her third year. They hadn't been too concerned, afterall, they had thought she was caught up in her studies in her second year, petrified, and her grades reflected that theory. It was a cold connection she felt with her parents, but the memory of her mother reading her a bedtime story, her father tucking her in tight was strong, binding her like the comforter over her arms. She had a great argument with them when they had taken her camping, and they were proud, though irritated she had disagreed with them on some random policy.
She had wiped away her parents memories and sent them to Australia. She took away her parents, and she would never get them back, but at least she hadn't seen them die. Though wasn't it the same as burying them? Then, what was this betrayal of loving this other set of people? She hadn't known them for very long, really, so how dare she feel this way?
"Breathe." Kage would interrupt, and redirect her thoughts, retraining them. "Let us see your life in your being."
With Kage's help, both magical and prosaic, she was able to acknowledge emotions, examine them and decide what to do with the ineffable that spawned in her.
Feelings that she had never wanted were now given names and allowed to be. Minor difficulties in life were given reasons, her trouble with sleep and body illuminated through pathways in her mind to her physical being.
In these beginning stages, Kage smoothed the shame, self-loathing, hatred she had been incubating in her head for years with a sculptors touch. Her trips to the bathroom, and her appetite steadied. She was able to sleep deeply, and dreams did not plague her, cocooned as she was in Kage's presence.
It was many rests before she was able to purposefully revisit a memory of horror with intent to defeat it. The torture that she endured in the Malfoy manor was excavated. The box that Draco had helped her lock away, her terror, was vivisected from her.
Draco led her through an Occlumency lesson that he warned was patch work. Draco had told her, "It's easier to hide things where you feel familiar, something that you could easily get back to and can control."
"I don't think I ever want this back."
Draco was close, sitting forward in a chair, his knees almost touching hers. She looked away. Solemnly, he said, "Some people bury their thoughts and memories in an unremarkable field." He pressed his lips together, "Snape strongly warned against that." He imitated the silty voice, complete with posture and looking down his nose at her. "That way lies only insanity- don't be lazy, Draco."
Hermione's mouth twisted, wry.
"Shall we?" Draco lifted his hands to her head, a wand in one hand.
She breathed in and looked him in the eye.
"Legilimens."
With his help, his eyes in hers, she had summoned up the image of her room, a week before the decision to change her parents' memory.
'All your memory and feelings about the event is to be poured into a suitable container,' Draco said, looking around the room awkwardly, his corporeality fading in some places.
She had selected a box that her great aunt had given her. She had not particularly liked it, but she could not get rid of it because her mother had said it was exceedingly valuable. She had cast Evanesco on it with great feeling before she cast the memory spell on her parents. Søkene Endringa, a ritual spell she had researched with the help of Viktor- she hadn't been able to contact him after the wedding, and couldn't bring herself to wonder what had happened to him.
She reached under her bed and temporarily relieved the unwanted gift from it's banishment. The boxes polish was not as clean as Hermione preferred but it had a lock. It played a melancholy tune and she summoned the memory to it, and tensing like she was going to retch, she poured all of the terrible memories of helplessness, hatred, fear and self loathing attached to her torture into it, heaving and ripping it out of her like weeds.
Draco had to help her, holding the box, guiding the strands. He had moved in her head very clumsily in comparison to how Kage came into this memory, he could only help her lock it. He threw the box under the bed, sweating, breathing heavily as Hermione rocked herself on the floor of her childhood bedroom.
Draco looked around the room and said, 'You can't get rid of it entirely.' She nodded. He had told her. His voice and face was frowning in a way that said he wished he could.
She returned to that room with Kage, and bent down to reach under her bed. Only to find the box had long since been shattered, pieces cutting at her under her nails.
Her exercises and daily work were fraught with a latching fear.
The pale sun on the snow of the grounds glittered like the chandelier. The glint of the knife as she pared thin green tubes of onions, seeing the blade Bellatrix used to carve into her skin. Then, if she was not able to catch herself, unprompted, the feel of the thick plush rug between her fingers, its roots making the cuts under her fingers shine with pain, as she was dragged through the drawing room.
She had approached Kage, intending to ask her to take these things away, she felt as if she couldn't function, and the exercises she had learned were constant work. It felt like she was at a stand still, fighting to move forward. She wanted to escape.
To discuss this further, Kage had invited her to play a game with black and white pebbles, and partake in an after dinner treat.
During the game, Hermione spoke about her difficulties, as plainly and as matter of factly as possible. "In short, I am not able to have a spare moment of wandering thought without it intruding." She asked Kage, "Is this how it will be from now on?"
Kage sipped from a small cup, "I cannot say."
Hermione flatly, no longer worried about being polite "I would prefer to learn Occlumency, then." Kage's face shifted.
Kage moved her white pebble, sharply clicking it in place with her index nail and middle finger. "I cannot teach you Occlumency." Kage set the cup down and from a little bottle, poured more fragrant warm liquid into another cup in front of Hermione.
Hermione hurried to hold it with both hands, not expecting Kage to have poured her alcohol at all. She knew what sake was, but she wasn't sure she liked alcohol, remembering the time she had downed two brandy's that Draco poured for her in a stolen living room.
"Mm- I am capable, but I am not interested in teaching you how to dominate yourself and others." Kage shrugged and moved her leg up, resting an arm on her knee. She sat wide, but she wore pants that Moriko had explained were hakama when Hermione had requested a pair.
"That's Legilimency-" Hermione was concerned that Kage had gotten it incorrect, holding the cup in her hands delicately, liking how it warmed her fingertips.
Kage's hair, bound up and tied together, swung like a rope, "Ah- but you mis-understand. Occlumency is not concerned with the performers feelings as much as their thoughts and it's primary purpose is occlusion. It hides the truth from those who would seek it, and enables the truth to be hidden from the performer."
Hermione sat and contemplated her next move, thinking about what Kage said.
As Hermione placed a black pebble and captured Kage's stones, she looked at Kage's pleased face and asked, "I assume that there is a difference between control and domination in your eyes, but does it not amount to the same?"
Kage made a petulant face, and then slyly placed a stone that caused Hermione to focus once more on the game. Hermione cautiously placed her response on the board.
Later, when the gambit Kage had put in play finished, Hermione said, "You've won, and I- I thought I was doing so well. I suppose domination and control are denotatively different, and their effects may be different as well." Then, with something akin to the panic she had felt in second year having missed most of her classes, "Are all my activities this metaphorical?"
Kage covered her mouth and her laugh was silent as she bent forward, in stitches, then seeing Hermione's serious face, placed her hands together in front of her forehead and bowed in apology. Kage hid her laughing face, "You are extraordinary for a person who has played only a few times."
Hermione huffed, "I didn't even know that was in the rules, and you did such an advanced play. I thought it was meant to teach me something."
Kage nodded, sleeves covering all of her lower face. "Tell me what you have drawn parallels to."
"The same goes for any form government." Hermione pointed to the areas where she had thought Kage made mistakes. "Those that allow for dissent must be strong enough to address it, but to allow no dissent is tyranny, and thus susceptible to the very strength it wields as weakness." She referred to her own defeat.
Kage looked at the board with interest and then tapped her chin. "Very good. It was a very close match."
"So, how do I get better?" Hermione asked, despondent over the possibility she may never regain a peaceful moment.
Kage's dark eyes were playful, "Continue to fight, of course." She finished the rice wine and continued, "It necessitates practice, but only when you can structure your battles in such a way that you can learn from them."
Hermione took in a breath, like she just remembered what she had forgotten.
"Observe," Kage said, a bright lilt to her tone, "What mistake did you think I made- here?" Kage pointed to the board.
The next day Kage met her on the patio in front of the rock garden, outside Hermione's chambers.
Kage did not need to ask her if she was ready.
They sat down and faced each other.
She would fight to remain calm, fight for control, though an icy terror ran hot through her and the memory snapped open.
Her tenuous strength she had kept, a tight pinching grasp on reality, the mantra of never giving up Harry, never giving into that dark moment that Voldemort would take over was the only solid thing in her scattered thoughts.
Kage walked in the Malfoy drawing room, her feet barely visible as her robes dragged on the floor in front of Hermione's vision. Kage grasped her arm and drew Hermione awayfrom where she was pinned.
Hermione was then able to conclude the memory. She was able to understand it was no longer happening. She recalled Kage's words about implementation of knowledge, said to her what felt like ages ago.
She walked around the room and moved to observe Bellatrix over her, and then she examined Draco's face as she lay on the ground, until Bellatrix finished her brand. She turned to look at herself, silently crying, still pinned by chandelier fragments, held down with nothing more and Hermione swallowed, disgusted and ashamed.
Kage pushed into her, more intrusive than her usual thoughts, you were never broken. The thought and will of Kage to see herself as she did was a boon, that eased the iron in her throat and the hatred in her teeth.
Hermione saw Draco decide, she saw him move, and then the calvary broke out of the dungeon and she was rescued. Dobby died for it.
Yet, Bellatrix and Death Eaters were still loose. There was no telling herself they were dead, or it was over and the cost was tragically high. It became difficult to breathe in the memory, she began to suffocate, overcome with rubatosis.
Kage was there, a word of water, a muscle of breath. Hermione regained her present, and then Kage drew her outward, asking a simple question, "What is a pastime you enjoy?"
"Reading." Hermione said automatically.
"You give your entire being to the words when you read."
"Most of the time, yes."
"Then let us see if we can find that once more. Come, there are a few things that I think you will find interesting."
Memories from the last two years, and the dread weight of what she had orchestrated would find new ways to slither into her skin.
Breath became paramount so, she re-learned how to breathe. As she returned to independent exercises, she often struggled, but Kage's voice was lyrical, and she would sometimes play an instrument with a long neck and wistful notes.
Hermione didn't ask the name of the instrument, because she started to understand that she was meant to be introduced to items. Kage seemed to be uninterested in her language acquisition and was more concerned with how she interacted with objects. She focused on matters she deemed more important, like what was her favorite story, a meal that she enjoyed, what games she enjoyed playing?
Her answers, it felt, were not adequate. Though honest, she felt like she was halfway between what she was and what she wanted to be.
"My favorite story is one that's...practical but had a happy ending, I can't seem to remember a particular title. Maybe a tale from Beetle the Bard?" or "I liked crempogs- I mean, pancakes, but, no, they're too sweet. I prefer fruit- but that's not a meal." And, "I don't play games, I learn them. Then, play them when other people want me to participate."
Kage had remained quiet for a long while before she asked "What activity presents a challenge for you?"
Hermione told Kage about her lessons with the bow with Astrifer and Cassiopeia. She told her how simple it had sounded, but how unused to controlling her breath and connecting her hands and eyes in the ways she needed to be successful. Kage then took her to her training hall, and Moriko dressed her for Kyūdō practice. She resumed archery, and began to practice daily, as a form of active meditation.
Kage would sometimes dress and join her, instructing her in different forms.
Hermione had felt better once she understood that there was to be a sort of energy of invocation that she was ritualistically performing with each action. She felt more confident in who she was as she valued the process and the work that it took.
She wondered aloud to Kage, stretching her forearms and looking at her hands bleed and callous, "How long will it be once I am ready to leave?"
Kage looked strong, though her powerful body was folded and curtained in the same wide linens that Hermione wore. She was still as she rose her yumi hankyu style bow and released an arrow to the far target.
Hermione asked, "Time's not passing as it usually does here. Will I grow unusually quickly?"
Kage smiled her small sharpening smile that Hermione had grown to recognise as some secret amusement, and Hermione responded, "I mean, will I have to come up with a reason why I'm more grown?"
"Do not worry. Not only will you grow unusually quickly, any changes are easily illusified if one is clever enough."
Once the hardest of finding order in her was done, and her internal focus second hand, Kage was there as Hermione healed a splinched Ron.
Hermione, despite the fear and urgency of the situation,felt a sense of rightness. Ron's flesh, freckles as prominent as the specks of blood, melded together. She examined the pearly sheen to the new skin and was not sickened. Hermione remembered the sense of relief, and the nagging tick of what if, the drive to know more dug into her own skin. What if, sat under the moment of setting up camp.
Kage walked forward with her, following the thread, and came into Shell cottage again.
Ron's hesitant brushes of his hand over hers, his presence close, face angry as he watched her heal by Draco's hand. It hurt, this closeness, this tender vulnerability and comfort. It hurt deep in her chest and in the palms of her hands. Draco bent over her, the circles dark under his eyes, his skin waxy and tight over his fine features. Ron's blue eyes too watery and reddened as he stood over her and behind Draco, a bruise forming under his eye from where Draco had struck him.
Standing with Kage in that small room, she watched as Ron scowled at the way Draco had sighed self deprecating remarks, how he guarded the space around Hermione jealousy, and continued to do so whenever the schoolboy enemy turned ally came near. She saw Ron come into the room, angry when he found Draco teaching her to lock away painful memories.
She had not let herself remember Ron, that loss she had felt too greatly. She had not let herself remember the way that Ron had leaned in for a kiss. Too startled and too preoccupied with the heaviness of a kiss goodbye, she had leaned away. Shame and regret was a molten ache in her head and she fought to cover her own eyes at her memory.
Kage reached out and wiped a tear away from her cheek, and with that touch the memory steadied.
Ron and Draco were going to see if they could gather information. It would be a dangerous outing, more dangerous than they knew at the time.
Harry was upset, jealous of their freedom and angry over the decision that Ron's life was less valuable than his. It was necessary, Bill had agreed with Dean, to watch Draco's first chance at proving himself. Ron leaned in for a kiss goodbye and she had recoiled. After they left, she had sat with Harry. His hand on hers was clammy as he stared at the sea. She could smell the seaside heather and the salt of the ocean. They had waited past dinner, retreating as the night became too dark and the sound of the high tide too much like a creature beyond their vision. Bill, Fleur and Luna had stayed up waiting with them, the silence sticky at the blank kitchen table.
They reappeared with a slap against the air and Hermione had run to them. It had turned into a rescue for Draco's parents. It was all Ron could do to convince Malfoy to return to Shell cottage, he had relayed grimly, wolfing down food at the table.
She had never seen Draco so utterly devastated. Ron had shown empathy to Draco, approaching him with a plate of food as he stared into the fire, and for the first time she thought that they could be friends. The four of them sat in silence by the fire late into the night.
Kage ebbed away. She asked about dinner and when Hermione did not answer, she told her a tale about a particular fish that would only let themselves be killed by a willow stick, and that for dinner they would have such a gift.
After dinner, they returned to the library where Kage had first taken her to peruse her modern collection of books. Kage opened the illuminated scrolls and read her the philosophies of the material plane and their being, and the root of Buddhism from where it was written far beyond the ocean and Hermione listened.
"The words are not only an expression of the spirit, but our connection." Kage said as she hovered her hands over the words.
Hermione involved herself in admiring the letters, looking at the illustrations, "It's a masterpiece." But the longer she looked, the more her eyes caught on a blot, a mistake in the line.
Kage asked, soft, "Do you still think it a masterpiece?"
She had always loved books for what they were to her, and the subsequent feeling of them. The smell, the feel of the pages. The older the book, the more powerful the magic of it, regardless of whether it was about magic. But the process of creation had been lost to her, and those that chose to labor for five years over a reproduction of words were a mystery.
"Yes." Hermione said.
"Look at the energy of the movements. You must sense magic in them, not for what it is, but for how it was made. You told me of your invocation, how you made flour and water and childrens colors into magic. That is all of life. It is our choice to make it pure, to decide what is honorable and to live by those choices."
Hermione practiced her physical training, her breath still as she lined her sight and sunk her arrow into the target. In the stoney sauna, she stared at the lines on her arm, faint but real.
Ron was the gateway that had held up the loss of others, compounded with what she had done. Hermione's feelings for Ron were deep and complex. She knew she loved him like he was a part of her. For the longest time she thought he was a better part of her. She had admired him in many ways, and yet… in the end, there were bitter notes. The fragile glass blown remembrances showed their flaws as she kept a steady eye on them and melted them into strands for sorting.
When that was settled, and she had new questions to ask, she went to find her teacher once more.
Kage brushed her paint across a mulberry paper. As the ink bled into the paper and spread Kage's word, Hermione watched the day that they had left the cottage for the horcruxes, as Ron left her and Draco in the forest, as they all entered Hogwarts castle. It slowed for just a moment when Ron had mentioned the elves and she felt like she would kiss him, but Draco had cut in and said that they would be useful.
She had met Draco's eyes, disgusted but unflinching in his advice. She agreed, but did not want to. The elves would be given a choice she told herself, but the truth was that if they chose wrong then the loss would be great.
Kage paused, seated with her bone white brush and Hermione felt a word, here. This is a moment of division.
Filtered over the hall she saw Neville's once round face, now strong, jaw tense. He handed the sword of Gryffindor to Harry before they left Hogwarts to retreat and disappear in Europe. Their escape to cold hearths and vicious waiting. She saw an imprint of Luna, who had come to them with heavy eyebrows and her eyes wide outside of London. Then, blood seeped and washed over the floors and hands and arms and silhouettes of bodies lay on the ground.
Flesh was torn, and opened with unhurried torture. She heard screaming and realised it was her own.
Kages ink poured over everything, a silky inky black that washed away the moment. On the darkness, snow fell. Hermione regained her breath as white covered the ground and all that she could see and emptied her mindscape once again.
Kage placed a lacquered wood tray before her. She rolled out a long piece of thick paper, thin in parts where she could see the natural fibers. She smoothed down the paper with two stones. Kage's hand took Hermione's and placed her fingers around the stem of the brush. Hands shaking, tears silently gathering and sliding down her face, Hermione let her movements be guided by Kage's hand.
When Kage released her, she felt like she had control over her own breath and practiced the strokes of ink, dab, tip, trail.
She woke. She had not needed Moriko's help, but she still greeted her. She tied her sleeves up and ran floor cloth along the floor and used another to clean the walls. What had taken her all of one morning the first day was done quickly, but better.
Then, she went to the kitchen, thinking of only making a meal. She cleaned the rice, rinsing with steady motions that she learned like wand movements and spells Ron had cast. She dug roots, like how she had done for herbology when Neville talked especially kindly with her about a plant. She presented her first breakfast to Fuyuko and Moriko and they accepted.
Moriko told her she was to walk the path. Hermione did not press her for details, and accepted this new task. She was given thin wood, smelling of crisp cedar, a warm bundle of rice wrapped in dark leaves, and bottles of perfumed sake. Fuyuko asked for her to bring back three flowers.
She walked the trails along the estate into the mountains and left one of each at various shrines. Hermione found some beauty in each flower that she collected and carefully uprooted.
She made food, absorbed in her selection of the vegetables and the washing. The order of things, as she waited for the steam to smell right.
Kage at dinner that night asked what was the silliest fashion trend she knew of. Hermione told her that she thought that branding was vapid, thinking of the 90's trends she had seen, but then retracted when she remembered what Petunia's hair looked like. Kage told her of how blackened teeth were once a symbol of beauty, but that Kage thought it was just a good way to cover rot and black sesame stain but in all practicality it made humans look like demons.
The next day, Kage arranged the stone garden and opened the question again.
The images and memories cycled onto each other as the time folded.
Draco had spent time with Luna at Shell cottage, perhaps in a way that only Hermione had spent time with him. Hermione peered around to the garden, where she had stood in the doorway, drying a dish. Luna was encouraging Draco to blunt the thorns on the rosebush in the center of the small garden. Hermione approached as she was now easily able to do, leaving herself behind in the cottage, the invisible screen between herself and those she watched finally permeable.
Luna was often the only one able to get Draco to sound cheerful, if not positive. He was grumbling about how creatures should harm themselves, so they learn not to do it again. Luna said something that Hermione could not hear though she stood just above them. Draco launched into a speech and perhaps an impression of a garden gnome that caused Luna to humm a laugh here and there as he angled the cuts on the thorns just so.
Kage tucked a hair behind Hermione's ear and peeled back the odd memory that lay between Hermione's knowing and uncertainty, her regret and shame.
A lake lay below them, the moon a white press on a strong blue above. Beyond, the pale of a mountain ridge. Ron and Harry staggered away from Draco. Draco grabbed her arm as she slipped on a stone. They had escaped Hogwarts after a clever mis-direction that Draco had performed, requiring most if not all of the elves to use their magic, and they had fled to a lodge in Switzerland. They were safe, but Hermione felt torn. She ripped her arm away from him, and Draco's mouth tightened and he looked away, pale and sweating from exertion. She hadn't thought apparition across the sea could be done let alone with four of them.
They were supposed to have split up, but Hermione would not leave Harry. Ron, after leaving once already, would not leave again. Malfoy had been to the cottage with Zabini and Madame Zabini, and took them here. He hung back, unsure now that they had arrived. Harry broke in.
Draco approached her that night, his steps a dampered click on the stone of the kitchen hearth. He stood just outside the glow of the gas stove and small candle she worked by so they would not alert any eyes that watched for smoke. She conjured and transfigured food in the kitchen, a demanding process of duplication and creation that required concentration. The bread deflated under her wand and she pressed the handle of her wand atop the table.
"What." Hermione heard the cold in her voice and knew that it was not a coldness just for Draco. She felt like she had betrayed her principles. Letting Draco command the House Elves had saved Hogwarts, letting a few others battle the Death Eaters that had laid siege bought time, and they had prevented Harry from leaving. Draco had made an excellent case and combined with Hermione's reluctant recital of the old magics of Hogwarts, had made an impenetrable argument. They wouldn't be able to hold the castle, not for long, but long enough.
She felt responsible for the deaths, the ones they found and the ones they didn't. The disappearance of Luna was an icy and heavy stone in her chest.
Neville was grim, he handed the blade of Gryffindor, still wet with Nagini's blood to Harry. Severus Snape was missing as well, but that wasn't a concern to them, not yet. It felt like the first slip into a compromise that put her one step closer to the dark edge.
Hermione watched as Draco crossed his arms and peered at her. His expression was shadowed, as she had been turned towards the deflated bread. He said, "I lost her, it was my fault. You were right to be reluctant about the keystone- I was arrogant and shouldn't have forced Potter."
She refused to look at him.
Hermione turned to the shadows and for the first time dismissed the memory herself.
Kage's string instrument faded. In contrast to her usual quiet distractions she gestured to a bucket with ice and asked if Hermione would like to learn something new, or if she would like to return to her work at the bow.
Hermione soaked her fingers in ice, cooling a hot sense of shame that had slapped her. Kage handed her an instrument, naming it erhu, and Hermione felt introduced. She didn't think that she would ever be good at it though it was patient enough with her clumsy tries.
After dinner, she and Kage returned to the lakeside house in her head.
The days passed quickly, Hermione determined to see the tense negotiations between the four of them and acknowledge their pettiness. She flicked past the decision to go to the South of France, her blush betraying her discomfort and causing Kage to bend the string of her instrument in a note of inquisitiveness, though she never asked.
It was to follow the thread of the problem they had come to initially, Hermione reassured. They had been doing so well, Hermione looked to Kage, but then- something had changed. Ron and Draco and Harry had made some sort of treaty, Hermione tried to explain.
The sun rose and set over the small muggle villa in the South of France.
Harry, Ron, and Draco went out for a pint and had smuggled information had been lucky, she told Kage, as they stood beside the family sized table where she was growing further huddled in timidity. The family at the Switzerland vacation home could have returned and said something, she echoed her words she had said to the three at the table. The anti-muggle sentiment was still strong in the mainland. She had read about the history.
But their risks and forays into Muggle villages became adventures into Magical ones, and the need soon returned to all of them to be in the thick of it. Harry's call to arms was eating at him, he felt he had abandoned people. It was he, afterall, that needed to slay Voldemort- and there was no clever trick or assassination that Draco could plot and Ron to plan to prove him otherwise.
The countryside greyed and blackened and trees, sparse and bearded stood about. Hermione added, by way of explanation, they had remained undiscovered getting back in the country only because she had suggested Muggle transport.
The trend of going out for a pint was discontinued in the small backwater towns, Hermione had put her foot down and their campsite up. Hermione played this moment out a little longer, dreading what was next, but curious, and wanting to see again something that she hadn't quite understood.
Draco's hair was long, in his face, the white of his shirt dulled his complexion.
Ron picked back up the empty bread bag, his mouth full. "London would be good."
"Hermione told you not to eat all of it-" Harry admonished Ron.
Draco said again, "Not only for food, but because magical signatures are harder to track."
Ron shrugged, "I didn't know she needed more than a slice.'Sides, if she needed more than that it wouldn't hurt to eat the rest of it, right?" Ron looked towards Draco for support.
Harry looked at Draco suspiciously and then sighed heavily, rubbing his eyes under his glasses and pushing them back to the righted position.
Draco was still locked in a battle of wills with Hermione, and had not turned away. He sucked in his lower lip, teeth tight. She looked at him and his face moved in an odd way, like he was fighting not to smile. Then he stepped closer, eyes more magnetic than usual, "No, you're right. You're always right. Our next goal is getting close- close enough, at least. I didn't eat mine- wasn't hungry."
Hermione had been confused, and stepped back, towards Ron, intending to break away from this eye-contact battle. The observing Hermione hurriedly reached out and ripped the scene into a swarm of nightlife.
Kage blinked and her music stopped, the chatter and sounds of the city edges of London rose. Hermione stood, looking at herself in a winter scarf wrapped around her face and her hair under a cap, and a disguised Harry beyond the doorway to the shittiest hotel they could find.
She would have gone out, except- the blush returned, hidden by the scarf. Ron had gone anyway, and Harry remained behind, sensing her upset- but that wasn't important.
They came back too quickly, and almost as soon as her memory had shut the door, it was open again. Someone had recognised Draco, out with Ron, and they ran. They escaped their pursuers and found an abandoned cottage.
Luna had come to them, as if she had just escaped herself from fallout afterward. They did not question her, the blood dried dark on her pastel and floral clothes in ways Hermione could not acknowledge then.
Luna moved slowly, and Hermione felt her eyes burn and her temples waver and she struggled to move the memories forward smoothly. It stung, this concentration, as she saw Draco greet Luna and Harry go to her as well, and then stuttered as Luna led them into the trap.
Luna took them to another small cottage, one that she said she had been surviving in after her escape. Luna's wide set blue eyes were open and her voice so small that Draco's voice nearly broke in turn. It was Ron who was able to get the bloodstains out, Hermione could not. Harry was set into a mood for days, and could not seem to speak or look at Luna.
The sweet and intuitive girl would sometimes seem like a window with gauze curtains left open, where she would move but nothing would come through. Other times she seemed to be her old self again, mentioning riddles she once knew and talking of creatures they hadn't heard of in her dreamy cadence. They stayed until they needed to re-provision. Making their way. Luna their guide into some shops, avoiding other places. She had placed a strong hand on Ron's chest and Traver's passed them, stalking along beside a man with glass green eyes and curly hair whom he was having a one sided argument with.
It was after this that Luna suggested they go to see Ron's family in the light of news that twelve children were killed as punishment, with an official announcement of a coronation event. The blow to their hopes was crushing, and made them vulnerable to emotional decisions, even then, Hermione knew. Ron was too hopeful, desperate to see his family again and so they went. Luna took them to the Weasley's lopsided house.
Hermione stood on the grounds where she had first returned to the house. She watched her old self move forward, cautiously with her wand held aloft, Harry near her. Ron was ahead.
Luna trailed somewhere between them but held out her arms on the doorstep and did not enter. Hermione stood, stiff as Kage remained beside her. She did not need to go in the house again. She remembered. She remained on the grass as she heard her screams.
She walked the grounds, turning away from the house and looked at the sky.
That is when Ron changed.
She stated, whispering, Draco knew enough to clear blood and lay- she felt the word crawl in her mouth- flesh properly. Harry tried to wrap the bodies, but they rose. The memory presented itself like its grisly puppets with no strings. Hermione shut her eyes and ink poured over everything.
She told Kage in that dark, We had no where else to go except forward and closer. Luna was to send her patronus to Neville, but she no longer could summon one. Draco did not want to try. It was Harry, then, Hermione continued.
The love for her friends strength allowed Hermione to brighten her mind enough to finish the memory. It was not over, but at least, she thought, she had already faced Ron's death.
Luna took them again back to the castle. On the way she had told them three stories, the seven cursed brothers, but she had told two of them strangely, three dogs with mirror eyes became seven, and the twelve dancing princesses became seven. She did not seem to be frantic, her voice did not quail with urgency or fear.
She stopped however and sat, somewhere past Hogsmeade and began the next story so abruptly that Ron had moved forwards and Harry had to retrieve him.
Ron and Harry were conversing beyond, Ron quickly becoming explosive. Luna's back was towards Hermione and Draco, her shoulder blades lifting her loose robe and dress. She was muttering something Hermione didn't recognise as English and only now looking again recognised a word- Tuath Dé. Luna started on a story of Irish mythology. Hermione had perhaps read something of it in passing, but had not found it to be academically sound, and had written it off as a children's tale.
Draco stood, his face glossy and his eyes too wide, he looked over at Hermione. Then, he, Kage, and all of Hermione, flicked their gazes to Luna's movement.
Like a wind blew through her, Luna sagged into one of her silent spells. Her head gently tilted as she stood and her steps grew lighter, as she moved forward, her thumb twitching, twitching.
Draco, pale, grabbed Hermione. He pressed her against a tree so they would not be seen by the others and whispered into her ear the thing he suspected, 'she's cursed, but it's not Imperious, there's something wrong- it's like possession.' Hermione held onto his robe and shirt because she too was afraid. Luna was calling for them in a voice that was thin and reedy.
Ron had decided that the castle would be the way they would go, and that Hogsmeade was too dangerous. "I don't care." Ron had lowed, and Harry had punched him.
There was no right answer, but there was no decision that Ron could not make anymore.
Harry dragged Ron back up but a Thestral appeared, neighing and approaching curiously. A Disillusionment and a Patronus on the ground made their journey back to Hogwarts as safe as it could be. Neville had greeted them, gaunt, behind a shimmering barrier and a stone wall of knights.
Luna writhed as they landed, muscles wavered like water beneath her skin. She stuck out her tongue and bit down. Hermione tried desperately to hold her down, to heal her, but she scrabbled and clawed and screamed, as some dark thing stretched in her. Ron pulled Hermione off of Luna, shouting. Neville was ripping down the barriers. Harry was there on his knees with her. It was all a shouting chaos to Hermione's eyes.
Luna then eased, and swayed. She clutched at her mouth and crumpled.
"A Geas," Draco had to explain, "-a curse that binds someone like a contract. Imperius curse is a con man's short hand in comparison."
Harry held Luna, on her side so she wouldn't drown, Hermione beside him as Draco tried to heal her mouth to staunch the flow. Neville was on his knees, the castle opened, Ron seething, standing above them. Luna extended her shaking hand, still with remnants of pale green nail polish and her rabbit patronus, a small silver wisp sighed out. "Tried to say. He wanted me to get in, so I could say the word of power, can't say it if I don't have my tongue."
And that is when figures descended from the dark. They were whisked away, like a net thrown over them, dragged like a portkey to a stage.
The roaring crowd was deafening.
Her shock froze her as she stared at the motley crowd. Some did not cheer, others were fanatic. She could not register the faces as they jeered.
Voldemort stood before them, contained and malignant. He smiled. Sinister, charismatic, and insidious, he turned towards the people and spoke. "Your Dark Lord Voldemort knows all."
Ron lunged.
The battle erupted. She dragged Luna behind a bench. But Luna laid face down, still and bleeding. Draco whirled to Harry, and Harry's wand blurred at the speed of his casting. Ron was by sheer force of will and determination holding off Voldemort. Hermione leapt into the fray, stunning, freezing, silencing and blinding as she could with pinpoint precision. Harry disarmed and shattered wizards wands as they tried to seize him for their Lord. Allies hidden in the crowd came to their aid.
The sight of Draco's wand, the Hallowed Wand, enraged Voldemort, and somehow she was struck, she cried out in pain. Draco pulled her to cover, quickly trying to undo the spell, but they were losing. In his fit of rage, Voldemort had abandoned pretense of using a wand. A monsterous tentacle, a snake, a bolt poured from the abyss that Voldemort opened and directed at Harry, and Ron pulled Harry back, flinging him behind him, but the curse found its mark.
Ron spun in place, the dark bolt searing through him and winding back to Voldemort whose facade of humanity had melted away.
Harry, roaring, his wand blurring, locked Voldemort with his wand. A phoenix began to burn around Harry as the cacophony of the war became a sound of silence. Draco dragged her forward, grabbing Ron. They crashed out of existence.
Her memory stuttered like tinder failing to light.
Small spurts of the three of them on the bluff. Their journey to Egypt. Their quests after the library of Alexandria. The lonely isle.
She pulled away.
Without words, she retreated. It was the moment before her epiphany. Her decision to remake the world.
After cycles of rest and activity, Hermione had let the sediment of conflict and the disruption of death settle.
She asked Kage a question at dinner that was not their usual, on poetry, stories, history.
"Have you ever- known that something needed to be done, but felt that it was an evil thing to do?" Hermione asked.
Kage stilled and set down her bowl of rice. Her small hand brushed her lips and said, "Is it truly the thing that you are in conflict with, or is it the thing that you perceive?"
Hermione furrowed her brows, "I am genuinely asking about-"
Kage laughed, her eyes delighted half moons and her sleeve over her mouth. "Oh Hermione, must everything be certain for you?"
Hermione felt her ears heat and again was embarrassed, but resolute she responded, "Yes."
Kage placed her hands down on her lap, and Hermione watched what passed for contemplation on her face. She did not know what Kage was thinking, or if she were deciding, but must have been a weighty choice as Fuyuko came and cleared their places and left before Kage continued. "When your morality is rigid, your capacity to deal with ethics also becomes limited. The answers you seek from me are the ones you must create yourself. Nothing can be done about that- as I am not in the same opinion."
Hermione was once again frustrated at the confusing riddles she was given instead of results. She knew that in the story archetypes the person seeking to change and move forward had some sort of conflict with their lesson, but she didn't think that it was a part of her reality. She had prided herself on being cleverer than the characters in her books, and had left behind fantasy and mythological Odyssey's years before her first visit to Hogwarts.
Kage said, brightly, "What is the true question?"
Hermione breathed in sharply and tried to watch her feeling of anger as Kage had said she should.
"Ah," she held up her hand. "I do not need to know, I let myself get carried away with curiosity."
Hermione scrunched her nose, and looked down at the empty table, feeling irritation and then she pressed her lips together and performed the exercise of observing her feeling. She breathed in and out and understood it was frustration about time.
The edge of Kages face and by her hair line was raised, though her lips were straight, Hermione thought she recognised a smile. "It is time I think I told you how to enter as I do- a new skill now that you have shown to have a strong base."
Kage stood and went to the door that opened to the exterior patio that led to Hermione's chambers, and asked, "Hermione, you wield a wand but do you think that it is a sword or a key?"
Hermione did not quite know, at this point, what Kage meant, or expected her to say. She had sought magic as if it were a hammer, to bend the shape of the world to her will and fend off those who would make it otherwise.
Later, she would know it to be a proverbial question, meant to show her that it was one and the same.
But she followed her, hammer, key or blade or songbird.
Hermione watched as Kage knelt, and opened the door in that way that took two hands and three movements. She stepped through and Kage gestured out into the grey winterscape, the cold brushing on Hermione's face.
"What I must teach you next is to... carve a door. Once this door is carved, it cannot be uncarved."
"Is this another thing that has to do with my head? The protections you had been talking about earlier have been cleared. I can remember everything now." She said with uncertain finality.
Kage hmm'd, "Your mind. And it is not a protection, but rather what I am able to do. You see, I do things in a way that requires a different… a different viewpoint that-" Kage gestured to Hermione.
Hermione supplied, "Perspective."
"It is beyond where you stand, beyond one concept, one decision. It is a series of things that relate to one another to hold together reality."
Hermione thought of the next word to offer, world view, but thought it would also be turned away.
Kage took a long clear thumbnail and placed it just under her front tooth, and turned to Hermione as they reached the step that led to the annex where Hermione practiced her Kyūdō and asked with an expression.
The word, like the way that Kage had first made contact with her mind, blossomed, and Hermione said aloud, "Ontology, the metaphysical nature of reality and all the concepts that relate to it." She sniffed. Then, she realised that while Hermione Evan's had thought about the importance of interpersonal connections, and dealt with those ideas sensitively, Hermione Granger with all her doubts and bias towards more reliable means of measuring the world, was a stronger force in her head. She was somewhere in the middle.
Kage led her into a small hut beyond the practice room, on another hill down past a break in the forest. They passed a stream and the dim grey light of the forest grew dark and the moonlight plunged them into patina.
Kage opened the door to a modest hut. Inside there were woven natural brush mats and small tables, herbs hung over an empty fire pit. Bowls and braziers stood on footed shelves placed along the walls.
Kage told her that Hermione would have to make the decision, but explained how she would need to find her name, possess the power of herself and soul. Then, Kage would make an incision in her head so that she could open and close it like Kage had been able to do.
A tooth from some great beast Hermione did not know was set before her on a tray, along with a black lacquered writing desk Hermione recognised from her lesson in Calligraphy.
Kage explained the dangers, how this was not usually attempted. How the incision, she gestured to the tooth, once made could not be taken back, and if she was not vigilant would make her weak to the types of mind magic she had done before. Occlumency was created for control and power, and its teeth would be sharper for her.
Hermione hesitated, a bone brush in her hand, the ink ground and wet, the thick paper laid before her set down by two stones. Hermione felt quite useless, running her fingertips along the brush that she didn't feel like she knew how to use fully, still confused and wary of what this process meant to her progress towards gaining a hold over herself and her magic. Somehow, it did make sense, in a way- she felt better anyway, more whole. A sudden thought struck her, "But I can't even get my animagus form to come to me, how am I going to find my true name?" Then, thinking in the space of Kage's smooth faced apathy, an accusation, "I thought you said that there was no certainty, so how is finding a true name even a legitimate addition to your philosophy?"
"Something's inside of us we cannot decide upon when there are eyes upon us." Kage started on another path of explanation. "I will not always be there, but this is the way that I know and so you must be sure you will keep the way."
Hermione was concerned, but a thought, strong in her, asked what was one more vigilance when this was the path she had created for herself?
Kage whispered into her pause, "I will not force you."
"I understand." But unease and fear fluttered under her collarbone again. This time she did not quash it, but understood it. "I will try not to fail. Why is this not attempted, well, I mean to ask why is it that you have this ability then, if it has it's dangers?"
Kage closed her eyes and gave Hermione the first true bit of information about herself, beyond her favorite fish, the games she enjoyed, the things she liked learning about in history.
"Humans- witches and wizards, included, sorcerers, warlocks, shamans, priestesses, are not usually naturally equipped with my ability." Kage bent her head forward and her hair ran with white, like water bubbling away. Kage seemed to grow, and was more, radiating a soft glow that reminded Hermione of the way the moon looked on a snowy night.
Hermione started, twitching backwards and holding up the brush like it was her wand. Kage looked up at Hermione, parting the curtain of gossamer hair. Hermione swallowed as she took in eyes a velvety twilight indigo, skin a ghostly white.
Kage's voice was still clear, but the cadence was robust, rounder and the Kage that was not the same whispered to her in her head, 'I am not as you are.'
Hermione wet her lips, many things made sense to her now, and curiosity brimmed inside of her. "I suppose, back when you said goddesses, you actually meant... beings of immense power as referred to as goddesses. Are you a goddess?"
Kage smiled, and it was not close lipped. Sharp teeth flashed in the shadow. "Sometimes." Kage pointed, her nails longer, sharper and black. "Go to the stream, make your mark and I shall -carve the door, so. We can't wait all century for you come into divinity, can we?" Kage's amusement was plain, but Hermione dismissed it as an incessible joke, one of many that Kage had made throughout their dinners.
"How? I've never read about this before, and I am sorry, but sometimes your instructions are quite lacking." Hermione hated the way her voice sounded in the shade of Kage's being and the thrum of the new voice.
Kage cocked her head. "Do you truly see the way I have shown you to be?" It was not a question, and Hermione did not repeat herself for further clarification, whether out of stubborn pride or acceptance of a challenge.
Kage changed again, black running down her hair and she shrank on herself, "I am to go to the village." Hermione had known of the village but did not think that Kage left the grounds. "I am expected."
Hermione had also known that while their time was lengthened, it was not at a standstill- but had no idea of the real time outside the grounds. Hermione did not know if she would need Kage, and struggled with the confidence that Kage seemed to feel that she warranted.
Kage bent the cloth of the exit, and nearly left before turning back, "Be prepared for death." Dressed in clothing quite different from her usual, Kage looked changed. Her face looked stronger from this angle where Hermione sat, knelt still with her brush hovering over the ink.
Hermione's face must have shown her sudden trepidation and Kage clarified, "Not all death is an end, but as we know it, a change." She stared at Hermione for a moment more, and then without any comfort, left her.
It was in the hotspring, the streams end, that Hermione was able to look at herself. Moriko and Fuyuko set hot coals and potent herbs in the natural rock and left Hermione to sit and meditate. Though Kage was absent, she settled into her breathing and had let her mind create a peaceful place. Her eyes were half open and closed. She then thought of her division, in no mystical manner she was able to see the rift.
A girl, sort of hollow save for a flame of another's purpose. Reddish curly hair, bright green eyes and a connection. She was holding Lily's hand. Lily shone with kindness, and all of the small comforts that hope and security gave. There was a string between them, a thread, that Hermione knew was there but was unable to observe.
Hermione thought that the best thing about her had been her moments of courage. They were so few, she felt, but she told herself, that wasn't true.
Another girl, bushy haired, bucktoothed, a book in her arms, and a few more in her bag. Sure and strong that wanted to work to make the world better, but a little lost, awkward, and a little too ready to let authority make decisions. Then, a young woman, taut, solid, her face hard and manner driven. Curly hair, floating around her head, eyes dark and hands covered in dirt and blood. She had bent the world, but she was responsible now for it being better.
There were things that she had done, that she knew required sacrifice. She had thought she couldn't live if she hadn't changed the rules, and now she knew that she had to abide by them, she understood that she could make rules anew. There was always a sacrifice. As unafraid as she was to create, the fear of destruction ruled her.
It was this that she had wrought. And she needed to recognise the destruction, so that she could rule it. But this good… this gentleness inside of her would have to be extinguished she feared. She could not keep it alive if she was afraid to become.
There were things that could not abide to be singular and in that she knew. She could not cut part and parcel all of that which made her, her.
The name then, was just a decision of acceptance. A symbolic realisation of all that she accepted and what it meant.
She opened her eyes, sweating. In the steam she thought she could see blue green copper and mahogany wings and molten irises. The heat pressed at her and had formed a symbol from one of the illustrations of sacred text Kage had shown and taught her about. An Antahkarana, a hovering cube, drawn as a gate, rigid and spiraling within a sphere.
She reached out and a lions paw slammed down upon the sigil, keeping the box.
A golden face, the one she remembered from when Sirius and James Potter pulled her from the Lake, her dreams of Alexandra, emerged from the steam.
"Unique until known, finite after infinite, singular and because of plurality, not alone but the loneliest be, neither there nor here and here to be."
Heart beating fast, frozen in place, Hermione felt her face stretch in intensity as the face smiled, stretching like a lions maw, lips and mouth black and red, fangs a yellowed ivory. The hot breath of mana on her skin.
The library of Alexandria had a guardian, a sphynx that asked a riddle. The answer Hermione had been clever enough to say she had been cast away from knowing. Always still, it was a part of her.
A being, the state of the human condition, and Hermione answered, mirroring the Sphinx. "A me."
Raw from the heat, heady from the herbs and feeling ethereal from the realisation, Hermione walked and as she approached the courtyard, she saw lanterns, glowing yellow. People were everywhere, walking through a circle she hadn't seen before. It was a perfect circle, woven out of grass.
She walked through it as if in a daze, and the sensation tingled like heat along her skin and inside of her mind. Moriko and Fuyuko stood on either side and they escorted her back to the hut. Bells and song and smells all one smear. Hermione saw how Moriko's eyes were gleaming, her tails thick, teeth needle-like. Fuyuko's skin shone like snow, eyes and hair like the shine of a ravens wing.
There were things in the forest that she saw clearly now, the line of the estate. There were tree spirits, little forest sprites with shadowy faces and spindly fingers. Ghost like beasts, tall and wide. Paper figures, running with ink drifted down the stream she crossed.
Stepping into the hut it was an emptiness she felt she had fallen into, then steading herself, weightless Hermione dipped her brush into the inky square and then drew her name.
The fire lit, and Kage was before her, Hermione cast the paper into the fire and knew that she would see the steam in the smoke.
"This is the gate." Kage then stood before her, the tooth in her hand.
Hermione's back was straight.
Kage scraped the tip along the top and center of her forehead. Hermione felt a brief bright pain. The wet trailed up, in its wake a sensation like mint and incense.
Then, nothing.
AN: Updated after submitting chapter due to small errors. Sorry! Please let me know if you see anything or think of anything I didn't address! I don't have a beta reader for this, so if you're interested, let me know.