Chapter Two
Hermione came awake with a start from the silence. It was the eerie sort that could rouse someone from a deep sleep. The kind that made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end as adrenaline flooded her veins. There was no cooling lull as she hoovered in the small existence of space between being not quite asleep but not quite awake either. It was the sort of silence that had made her shoot up from where she was laying, her heart racing and her eyes wild as she surveyed her surroundings, trying to recall the details of everything that had just happened.
Squinting against the contrasting brightness from when she had lost consciousness in the darkness of the Death Chamber, she sat back on her heels and ran her fingers over her throat. Feeling her filleted flesh and muscle, she yanked her hand back with a gurgling scream, frantically wiping it on the hard ground to remove the blood that wasn't there. Looking at her shaking hands as she was on the verge of hyperventilating, she slowly brought it back up to her neck.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you. It takes a few minutes for your body to knit itself back together after arrival."
Jerking her hand back as she desperately looked around for the owner of the voice she hadn't heard in five years, she curled the balls of her feet to the ground and stood up.
"Harry?"
"To your left," he chuckled, though the sound was strained.
Raising her hand over her eyes as her left one squinted closed in protest, she was able to focus her vision enough to make out the messy mop of his hair and the tattered blue shirt he had been wearing the last time she saw him.
"Harry!" She choked, running for him and throwing herself into his arms.
They stumbled as he caught her, her toes barely touching the ground as she clung to him in a rib crushing hug. Clutching the back of his shirt, she sobbed into his shoulder letting go of her anger and grief for him. She hadn't seen him alive since the night they had stormed Hogwarts, bringing the fight to Voldemort. He had slipped away from her and Ron after collecting Professor Snape's memories and wasn't seen again until Hagrid was dragged from the Forbidden Forest by a leash made of rope. In his arms, he had clutched Harry's limp body to his chest as he cried and yelled a string of silenced obscenities at Voldemort.
While Voldemort and his followers had relished in their victory and those around her wept or waited on bated breath for the Boy-Who-Lived to produce another death defying miracle, she had been startlingly detached. Hermione couldn't recall a time in her life when her mind had been as clear as it had been seeing her lifeless friend's body. In those moments she felt nothing. Her fear was gone; sorrow at her friend's death was absent; she didn't even possess a small flickering flame of rage or anger.
There had only been a quiet void of serenity in her mind as she extracted her wand - the very wand she and Harry had been sharing since Christmas; the one he had summoned to him and used to best Draco at Malfoy Manor which had earned him the command of the Elder Wand - and leveled it with Voldemort's chest. The only thought in her mind as she whispered, "Avada kedavra," before anyone was the wiser to her movements, had been a question of whether or not two people could be the Master of Death and as his body fell backwards under the force of her curse, dead before he even knew who killed him, she had her answer. In the shocked silence that followed as both sides of the war looked around for the culprit, she had then turned her vine wood wand on the snake, killing Nagini with the same cold, effortless manner she had used on Voldemort.
Then with the reckless abandon of a Gryffindor with nothing to lose, she had crossed the invisible line that separated light from dark and snatched the wand that was rightfully hers from Voldemort's already cold hand and snapped it in half. Incinerating the wood fragments as she went to free Hagrid, she had been keenly aware but uninterested in the Death Eaters that scurried to get out of her way. Some had looked at her with reverent awe, almost bowing as she graced their line of sight, while others had looked truly terrified and unnerved by her presence but were too transfixed to look anywhere else.
It had been hours later when her emotions had finally begun to return to her and with them, an unquenchable thirst for the understanding of death and all manner of magics surrounding it. Her actions had terrified her, not for what she had done but for the ease with which she had done it. The Unforgivables were supposed to be extraordinarily difficult to cast for the way one had to allow their anger and baser emotions to consume them. Yet Hermione had brought death with them twice in rapid succession feeling less emotion and little more magical exertion than what was required to levitate a feather. That, combined with the peculiarity of being unaffected by the insidious whispers of the locket and later the silence of the Veil, she had known she was different in a way that she couldn't draw attention to.
Things that were different were always approached with a healthy degree of fear and caution. That fear and uncertainty of not knowing what exactly made her different could even be a possible explanation for why Kingsley had chosen to ambush her with the ritual instead of including her in its planning. However, she wasn't so different that she could find it within herself to forgive him for his wrong choices. He had willingly gambled her life for the betterment of the world at large and had tried to do so without her knowledge. And had it ended there, she probably could have forgiven him after looking at the bigger picture, but it hadn't.
Kingsley had thought himself untouchable as Minister of Magic and one of the elected heads of the Sacred families. He had thought that he could use her lack of knowledge about the ritual to manipulate her into the role of a pawn. That was what she couldn't forgive. He had been so afraid of losing his power and control to her upon resurrection, that he had been willing to leave her in the dark and even dictate who she bonded her soul to. Had it not been for Draco and the sense of righteous indignation he felt on her behalf and the fury at having had to listen to them discuss bastardizing such a sacred rite in order to control her and the others she brought back with her, she wouldn't have even known about her true significance as the Resurrection Witch.
It was as if after all these years Kingsley didn't know her at all. Power, control, and fame had never been motivators for her. She wanted knowledge, justice, and peace. That he could think she would have used the influx of power and standing she would receive from the ritual to usurp him was an added insult to list of injuries. It was an insult she wasn't going to allow to pass either. She had never wanted power but now that he had proven that he was just as corruptible as the previous administrations, his time of having control over the Sacred Twenty-Eight and Wizarding Britain was at an end. Things needed to be rebuilt from the ground up and the first step was swaying the wizards she and Draco had selected for her resurrecting soul bonds into joining her in burning the world down.
Feeling Harry try to pull back from her, she held him even tighter, tearfully mumbling, "Just a second longer." Giving him a final squeeze that made him grunt after holding him and breathing him in for an extra minute, she released him and looked up at his face as she began fretting over his unruly hair, trying to get it to behave even though she knew it was a lost cause. "Even in death, your hair is as stubborn as ever," she commented, finding her words were easier to come by than they had been when she first awoke.
"You're one to talk," he responded, pulling off his jacket and handing it to her, feeding the buttons through the holes before she was even fully shrugged into it. "Only you would show up in limbo naked and summon the eternity of the afterlife to you. You always did have to be the best at everything."
"This wasn't entirely by choice I assure you."
"Figured that much out for myself, thanks," he quipped, nodding to her neck. "What happened?"
"It's… it's a long story."
"Does it have anything to do with the mass summons your arrival sent out? Sirius was the first to feel it and was starting to explain what was happening when I got pulled away and sent here."
"'He greeted Death as an old friend-'"
"'-and went with him gladly,'" he finished, pulling her arm through his as he started to lead her from the room.
With her eyes finally adjusted, she could tell she was in a well lit version of the Death Chamber. It was a precise replica of the one she worked in, complete with a Veil of its own; this one even emitting the calling voices that she didn't hear from the other she had been studying. The only things missing were her work notes, the circle of runes she had been sacrificed in the center of, and her pile of clothes that Draco had reluctantly stripped from her, repeatedly apologizing under his breath as he exposed her.
"I've missed you, Harry. It isn't the same with you gone."
"I've missed you too, Hermione. It's great being with my parents and Sirius and Remus but seeing you and being a part of your life without really being there is hard."
"You watch me?"
"Well when you say it like that you make me sound creepy."
Laughing as she nudged his shoulder, she said, "It's only creepy if you're watching me pee or charge or - Merlin, please tell me you haven't seen me do other more… personal things."
"Oh God Hermione, no!" He shouted, grimacing as he shuddered. "I just watch you work sometimes or when you and Malfoy eat takeaway on the floor of your living room watching the telly. I swear!"
"Oh sweet Godric, thank you," she sighed in relief. "In that case, it's rather comforting to know that you check in on me from time to time."
"I wish I had been checking in on you when…"
"When I died," she easily supplied when he couldn't bring himself to say the words.
"Yeah… that."
"You couldn't have done anything."
"I could have at least been with you, holding your hand like my mum did for me when I went to see Voldemort."
Tugging on his arm to stop him as they crossed the threshold into the labyrinth of corridors that made up the Department of Mysteries, Hermione turned to face him and stressed, "What happened to me is not your burden to bear, Harry. It would have happened whether you had lived or not, so do not feel guilty for even one second." Rubbing the arm that wasn't holding hers as his face pinched at her words, she soothed, "Besides, Draco is confident that this is only temporary."
"It's death, Hermione. Not even you are brilliant enough to find a way out of it. It's like taxes: completely unavoidable."
"This is… different," she slowly responded, wondering how she could put his mind at ease when she herself still wasn't completely convinced and was relying on little more than hope that she wouldn't remain dead and forgotten in the bowels of the Ministry.
"How?" He demanded, resuming their walk up from the depths of where she worked.
"You know how there's this supposedly great importance on being a member of the Sacred Twenty-Eight?"
"What does this have to do with anything?"
"Just humor me, okay?"
"Fine," he grumbled, rolling his eyes. "Yeah, I remember your pointy boyfriend bragging about it in school. They're supposed to be the purest of the purebloods."
"Draco is not my boyfriend."
"Only because you're oblivious and he's too much of a coward to make a move."
Knocking her shoulder into his, Hermione brushed aside his words. Whether they were true or not, made no difference anymore. Perhaps if they had been given more time, they could have developed something deeper than friendship but as it was, she would either awaken in a pool of her own blood, resurrected in the Death Chamber with anywhere from four to fifteen - twenty if she counted the non-Sacred wizards she was going to attempt bringing along - soul bonds in place or she would become a permanent resident of the afterlife with Harry. Either way, any ship she and Draco could have been on had sailed without them the night he had come to tell her of the resurrection ritual.
"Regardless, that's not important. What is, is that Draco wasn't just posturing with self inflated importance. The twenty-eight families are actually vital to the magic that feeds Britain.
"At all times there has to be a minimum number of patriarchal heads of families, as well as matriarchal to keep things running smoothly. When the matriarchal numbers begin to decline, so do all things associated with the feminine power. Things like fertility and birth rates," she explained, slipping into the lecturing tone she had used in school and still used during her meeting to explain her theories.
"What about Mrs. Weasley? They had seven children," he asked.
Smiling at her friend as he tried to follow, she said, "I'm glad you asked that because it leads into the other half of the Twenty-Eight's purpose, which starts to explain why I'm here.
"Mrs. Weasley is an exception. She is the elected head of the matriarchal half of the ancient magics. As the head, a kernel of power is transferred to her from each of the other matriarchs to ensure she had the depth required to lead them through the seasonal rituals.
At the time she started to have children, there weren't enough witches in the heads of families to properly tend to the rituals that would spread the feminine magics throughout Britain. One of the magics that suffered was fertility magic, the power in the earth that blesses all families with magical children. Most chose not to abuse the power imbalance they had from not being able to pour into the earth as was their duty and elected instead to have only one or two children hoping the next generation they birthed would have enough daughters to fix things before a crisis arose.
"According to Draco, that's the root of the ill will between the Weasleys and the rest of the Sacred families. The others sacrificed their reproductive rights for the betterment of magic, so as to not take the blessing of children from other families. Molly and Arthur didn't do that, brewing anger and resentment which only grew with each additional child that they couldn't afford. You had people like Mrs. Malfoy and Mrs. Nott who could afford seven children doing right by magic and limiting themselves to one child no matter how much they wanted even just one more. Then during both wars, the Weasleys sat on their high horse condemning the other members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight for their political leanings when they had been so selfish previously. They took from the limited resources of Britain's magic and went against everything they were supposed to represent as magical pillars."
Holding the gates of the lift back, Harry motioned for Hermione to step in ahead of him. Standing in the center of the boxed in space, she watched as he slid the gates closed and locked them in, hitting the button for the afterlife's version of the Ministry's atrium. Leaning against the corner, he lifted his glasses and rubbed at his eyes in the manner that had always given him away as not wanting to accept something he knew to be true.
She understood his reluctance. She had felt it when Draco had not only pulled the curtain back on what it meant to hold the name of a Sacred Twenty-Eight family but ripped it down. The Weasleys had always been good people and the story he told sounded so selfish and out of character for them. However, she had witnessed and personally experienced the less than favorable traits of Molly Weasley herself. It was upon Draco's gentle prodding for her to recall such things that she dejectedly accepted what he was telling her. And if she was being honest with herself, she had been a fool for waiting for Arthur to tell her about the ritual. Part of the reason they were in the mess they were in now, was his and his wife's doing. Of course he would do whatever it took to rectify it, even if it meant quite literally leading her to slaughter.
Righting his glasses, Harry crossed his arms and snapped, "Okay, putting aside the long standing hostility between the Malfoys and Wealeys, that doesn't explain why you're here in limbo, with your neck sliced open. Nor does it explain whatever it was Sirius was telling my mum and dad about before I got pulled to you."
"But it does, I just haven't gotten there yet," she protested, raising her eyebrow at his tone.
"Right, sorry. Go on."
"Thank you. So around thirty or so years ago when everyone started birthing the coming pillars of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, the matriarchs of magic were so few they couldn't even scrape up enough power between them to do their part and that's when the birth rates started lowering, the amount of squibs began increasing, and a whole host of other things began to become problematic. However it wasn't completely alarming yet, because there's still the patriarchal side. Checks and balances, you know how magic is all about not being able to have one without the other.
"When the first war was starting, all Twenty-Eight families had at least one son, most had two, so that half was alive and thriving. The hope was that they would go on to marry, reproduce, and hopefully put out an even balance of sons and daughters. That the issues they knew they would face back before Molly even became pregnant with Bill would only last for half a generation because there were so many sons to go around."
Seeing the light bulb go off in Harry's head as he started to follow what she was saying, made her beam at him. She lived to see that face. The one that said someone was finally understanding a concept. It made her glow and warm with a sense of pride, so much so that before she had been recruited for the Department of Mysteries, she had been finalizing what subject she wanted to get her first mastery in with the ultimate goal of replacing one of her professors at Hogwarts upon their retirement or move to curriculum writing.
"But then the first war came and a majority of those sons were either killed or imprisoned," Harry excitedly filled in.
Pointing at him in the affirmative, she said, "Exactly. Prior to Voldemort's first fall, the Burkes were already extinct, as were the Fawleys, Selywens, and the Shafiqs. After his fall, the Blacks had one son dead and the other in prison; the Crouches had a patriarch with a dying wife and a son in prison; the Lestranges were in prison; the Prewetts had become extinct as did the Rosiers.
"And then the second war was even more devastating to the Twenty-Eight. The Crouches became extinct during our fourth year and the following year the Blacks joined them. After Sirius, the dominoes just kept falling: the Carrows, Flints, Gaunts, Lestranges, Rowles, Traverses, and Yaxleys, all of them gone. But the patriarch was still hanging on, if only by a very thin and frayed thread. At least they were until four months ago when Theo died.
"His sudden death was the final blow to the Twenty-Eight. The patriarchal side of the magic is no longer able to sustain the rituals needed to keep the magic flowing through those that already possess it. The original families created a fail safe for this though in their joint grimoire. A doomsday ritual if you will and that ritual is why I'm here."
The lift came to a screeching halt, blessedly interrupting the rest of her story about the ritual that brought her to limbo as Harry had called it. Jostling forward under the jarring force of the sudden stop, she collided with the interior cage, giving a soft grunt as she made impact. It wasn't enough that she had just bled out surrounded by people she thought she could trust or that she was going to have to ask a bunch of wizards who five years ago wanted her dead because of her blood status to join her in a soul-bond. No, limbo wanted to go out of its way to make everything as close to the living version as possible, to include the wretched Ministry lifts that she still was unused to riding on.
Pushing a chuckling Harry ahead of her into the lift bank, she stepped out right behind his stumbling legs to the carrying sound of dozens of conversations. Crossing through the funneled opening, they were greeted by hundreds of gathered witches and wizards. Stopping in her tracks, Hermione grasped his hand and held him back with her as she watched them all turn one after the other to look at them, their conversations rapidly dying off.
With her knees beginning to shake while her hands started to sweat and her breath clawed at her throat seeking release, she found herself unable to move. Draco had told her that her arrival through means of the ritual would send a beacon out through the afterlife, summoning generations of deceased Sacred Wizards to her but she hadn't imagined just how many of them there were. Nor could she have fathomed how many people would have followed wanting to witness the cause of the disturbance.
"Harry, I can't do this," she warbled.
"Hermione, don't be ridiculous, of course you can. You broke into Gringotts Polyjuiced as Bellatrix Lestrange. Addressing a few hundred dead witches and wizards should be no problem for you."
"I wasn't naked then nor had I just had my throat cut open," she hissed. Reminding herself of her ghastly wound, she slapped her hand over it ready to hide it from view only to find it healed just as Harry had said it would be the longer she was there. "Not to mention, I need to convince several wizards who five years ago wanted me dead for an accident of birth to soul-bond with me so we can get the hell out of here."
"You have to what?" He blurted.
"Yeah, I need to soul-bond with at least four Sacred Wizards from different families in order to be resurrected. But there's more to it than that."
"Well come on, let's address your gathered public so you can tell me the rest of whatever the hell is going on instead of giving me a crash course in pureblood politics and history," he ordered, tightening his own hold on her hand as he started to drag her behind him.
With the people easily parting for them, they reached the golden fountain of unity much sooner than she would have preferred, having been counting on that time to gather her anger back to her so she could bolster herself for what she and Draco had planned. Manhandling her to stand on the precise tile that would allow for the acoustics to naturally carry her voice through the atrium, Harry patted her shoulder in support and took a step back to give her the floor.
Pulling at the skin between her fingers, Hermione took several deep breaths as she looked for points in the back of the room to act as her focal. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she closed her eyes and forced herself to relive the moments between Draco arriving at her flat in the middle of the night six weeks ago and the final moment before she accepted his sworn oath to be in her service as the Resurrection Witch on fast forward. Feeling the raging anger and betrayal wash over her with a renewed sense of hatred and injustice, she crossed one leg over and in front of the other, bringing her spine up tall as she opened her eyes, her fidgeting hands settling at her sides.
Forgoing the points across the room that would have made it appear as if she were looking at those gathered and not at details on the walls, she slowly met them all one after the other. Sweeping her gaze back through the crowd, she spoke clearly for all to hear.
"The Resurrection Rites have commenced. The remaining eight Sacred Patriarchs have selected me, Hermione Granger, as the sacrificial witch to raise extinct lines of the Twenty-Eight with House of Malfoy as the noted first to bow in service. Not all whom I call will hail from one of the ancient and noble houses but please spare all passing judgements until we have spoken.
"As the Resurrection Witch, I summon the following to the Minister's office for further, private, discussion: Sirius Black, Regulus Black, Marcus Flint, Rodolphus Lestrange, Rabastan Lestrange, Lucius Malfoy, Theodore Nott, Fabian Prewett, Gideon Prewett, Evan Rosier, Thorfinn Rowle, Antonin Dolohov, Fenrir Greyback, Gregory Goyle, Remus Lupin, Harry Potter, James Potter, Lily Potter, and Severus Snape."
Turning on her heel, she held her hand out for Harry and linked their arms back together as she headed for the lifts without looking back to see who followed. A majority of those she was concerned about knew exactly who she was and the ones that didn't had friends among her list who would inform her. The quaffle had been handed off and now it was time to see how right Draco was about blood status not meaning anything when called upon by the Resurrection Witch.
