This is one chapter I changed slightly. None of the plot differs, just some dialogue in the first scene.
Happy reading :)
Albus Percival Wulfric Dumbledore clasped his fingers together and peered down at Filius Flitwick. "A charm, you say?"
"And a fair bit of transfiguration as well, if I'm to be called a professor," Flitwick added. "A more complicated spell I have rarely seen, especially bound to a student!"
Dumbledore frowned. While it had piqued his interest that a muggleborn had been sorted into Slytherin, he hadn't given Hermione Granger much thought. Then, reports from all of her professors had come flooding into his office. She had proved bright, exceptionally so. Even Snape, a notoriously difficult man to impress, had made murmurs of her possibly being a magical prodigy. And now, Filius Flitwick stood before him, claiming the bright young witch was encased in such spell work that he believed Dumbledore himself should investigate.
With a wave of his hand, two silvery phoenixes spilled from the tip of his pale wand. "Go to Professors McGonagall and Snape. Tell them to report to my office immediately." The patronuses took off, wispy shapes a blur as they sped from the room. "Soon we will have a master of transfiguration and the girl's head of house, then we may devise a way to handle this situation."
Flitwick nodded, seemingly mollified by Dumbledore's call to action. The short professor quite liked Miss Granger; he had never met a more studious, driven student, not even among his own Ravenclaws. Despite the obvious difficulty of being a muggleborn among Slytherins, the girl stood up for herself and held her head high. He greatly respected the temerity it took to ignore the venomous looks he noticed many of her classmates directed at her.
Quickly, Miverna and Severus arrived. "Is there a reason for such… urgency?" Severus Snape drawled, distinctly unamused at having to traverse the winding stairs to Dumbledore's office.
"One of your students is bespelled," Dumbledore informed.
Severus straightened in thinly veiled surprise. "Which one? Why?"
"The muggleborn, Hermione Granger. I have no idea as to why, but according to Filius, the charms and transfiguration work is decidedly suspicious."
Flitwick began to explain as his fellow professors looked to him. "The charms are interlocked in a foundational lattice that stretches over her entire body. The skill it takes to cast a three dimensional field over a moving, growing object is phenomenal! Each regular space within the charms work is fixed with an anchoring transfiguration spell. I can't even imagine the intent of a spell like this, unless Hermione is secretly someone else in disguise, which is much more easily accomplished by polyjuice potion."
"Which brings us to the question: did Hermione cast the spell herself, or is she unknowingly enchanted?" Dumbledore queried.
"She does not know," Severus immediately answered. McGonagall quickly agreed.
"She's certainly intelligent, but this spell work is mastery level charms," Filius added. "No student, no matter how capable, could cast that kind of enchantment."
"So then the question remains, who enchanted the girl?"
None of the professors had an answer for the headmaster.
"I can't imagine why any wizard would bespell a muggleborn," Severus ventured. "It would require an adult wizard intentionally finding the girl before she entered Hogwarts. It means that either the girl is keeping secrets about her previous involvement in the magical world, or she is a victim of some wizard's experimentation."
"She's not necessarily a victim," Minerva rebutted. She had a hard time imagining Hermione as a cowering victim; from what she had seen of the young witch, Hermione may have even participated in an experiment. She was very analytical in her approach to magic. "But that still serves the question of how she attracted an older witch or wizard, and managed to become bound in such an enchantment."
"Is there anything about her that would pique another wizard or witch's interest?" Dumbledore asked thoughtfully.
McGonagall sighed. "There is something I have noticed about the girl."
"Well?" Snape asked, quickly losing his patience. He did not like that one of his students was bespelled; it was a precarious position to have such a young girl in, especially when no one had any idea as to why. And, he was loathe to admit, Professor Snape... liked the girl. As much as he could like a sniveling, swotty student, no matter her house affiliation.
"She looks like a former student, disturbingly so."
Severus quirked an eyebrow, unimpressed with theatrics. "Well?" he demanded again. "Which student?"
Minerva sighed. "Bellatrix Lestrange."
Hermione plunked all of the library books on the table with a resounding boom, earning a glare from Madam Pince. Ignoring the old woman, Hermione pulled a book on wizarding genealogy from the stack.
Quickly, she began to flip through the pages of old, illustrious magical families, dating all the way back to the discovery of the British Isles. The book was in random order, much to her chagrin. She was fast discovering, flipping through the pages, that going off of similar looks was not a good way to find her father in a genealogy book, if he was even in one to begin with. So far, she was having less than no luck in the hunt for her father. The only reason she believed he was a wizard was a simple gut feeling, which she deeply mistrusted. But she had nothing else.
Sometimes, though, she caught her professors giving her the strangest looks. Flitwick was the most common offender, but she had caught McGonagall numerous times, and had even spied Snape looking at her aghast, like she had some creature affixed to her face. She wondered desperately if maybe they recognized her features from a wizard, but she couldn't bring herself to ask and reveal her suspicions. She would rather no one know what she was researching. If her fellow Slytherins discovered her personal project, the teasing could turn more vicious. Even if her father was a wizard, she had no idea what she was going to do about it.
Letting her head fall to the table with a thunk, she groaned in frustration. She knew it was a longshot to discover her father's identity in the first few weeks of school, but she had still hoped. Unfortunately, wizarding schools did not have magical yearbooks. She had been sorely disappointed to learn this, but Hermione wouldn't give up. She had to know who he was, like a burning in her stomach. She knew asking her mother would only upset her greatly, but she was running out of options and patience; she would give in soon if she didn't have any breakthroughs.
Hermione just needed to know.
"Hey, Flint!"
Marcus Flint turned to look, catching sight of Draco Malfoy. The blond heir strolled up to the fifth year casually, pointed face pinched in eagerness. Their fathers were friends, if it could be said a Malfoy had true friends. Marcus had known the arrogant Malfoy scion since the whelp was in nappies.
"What is it, Malfoy?" Marcus demanded. He didn't have time for sniveling pleasantries. Quidditch started soon, and he needed to practice to try out for the beater position.
"You know that first year with all the bushy hair?"
Marcus vaguely remembered some skinny first year girl with wild hair, but he honestly didn't pay much attention to first years if he could help it. "Yeah, what about her?"
And then Malfoy began speaking, and made Marcus realize he should pay very, very close attention to the particular first year.
"Is that right, then?" Marcus sneered. "A mudblood?"
Draco Malfoy smiled and sealed Hermione's fate.
In the several weeks since school had begun, Hermione had settled in nicely. Some of her fellow Slytherins were frigid, but there was yet to be a confrontation about her blood status like she had waited for during the first few days. Malfoy cast her smug looks every so often, but she didn't bother to try and puzzle them out. His sense of superiority wasn't worth her acknowledgement.
Dinner, the night of Halloween, witnessed her rather scatterbrained Defence teacher trembling and fainting over a mountain troll. With a grouchy sigh at the explosion of noise following this announcement, Hermione obediently trundled down the stairs with the other Slytherins, sent back to her dorms by the headmaster's bellows.
Thankfully, the common rooms cleared out quickly, students choosing to sit up and gossip in the comfort of their beds. The young witch claimed the chair closest to the blazing fire, her book by Morgan le Fay at hand. Since the room was empty, she could enjoy the read in rare silence. She had just cracked it open when a feminine chuckle interrupted her. She had thought she was the only person in the room, so where—
"I see my theories interest you, witch," the feminine voice laughed again from just over her shoulder. Hermione looked up to the portrait on the wall beside her. A tall, black-haired witch robed in deep black leaned on a hand and smiled. Startling amber eyes curiously observed the young witch looking up in bemusement.
"Yes, witch, I was reading over your shoulder. It gets boring up here sometimes. Come into the light of the fire so I may see better, if you will."
Hermione tugged her chair closer to the blaze, the heat nipping at her toes. "Is that better?" she asked, tilting the book so the face was open to the light.
"Ah, yes. I am interested to see a translation of my work. Look at me so I may see the face of the witch who reads what I discovered, and tell me your name."
"Hermione Granger," she answered, looking directly at the portrait with the firelight shining on her face. Hogwarts continued to surprise her; now, she was introducing herself to a painting. She knew portraits were personality and memory fragments magicked into static life, but she had still never considered holding a conversation with one.
The portrait of Morgan le Fay grew completely still, eyes flitting over Hermione's face voraciously. Then, she threw back her head in a great laugh, black hair swinging. "To think, my eyes would be seen again a thousand years after my death!"
Hermione blinked in confusion, staring at the laughing portrait. She was very rarely shocked into silence, but realizing the portrait of Morgan le Fay had been in the common room the whole time Hermione read her book and questioned the theories had set her head spinning. And now, Morgan le Fay was laughing at her, body shaking from the force of her humor.
Morgan le Fay finally began to calm, gathering her robes to kneel at the edge of her frame. "My dear Hermione," she said, suddenly very serious, "I am very keen to see your eyes more closely. Come stand before me."
Hermione, feeling stupid in her confusion, set down her book and went to stand before the portrait. "Salazar," Morgan le Fay breathed, eyes flickering between Hermione's own. The fog cleared from Hermione's brain when she understood Morgan's astonishment: Morgan le Fay had bright amber eyes, backlit by gold. Identical to her own eyes.
"Merlin surely twists in his grave to know my blood survived," Morgan said, still gazing at the young witch. "And here I see myself, a thousand years after my death, standing where I stood in the house I called home."
Hermione and Morgan le Fay favored strongly, sharing the same serious brows, golden eyes, and lithe frame. It was stunning, amazing—it had to be impossible.
"Your line died out five hundred years ago," Hermione said in confusion. "My book mentions it in the preface. Your line ended with a squib girl who married a muggle named— "
Hermione froze, brain whirling. She thought back, to when she had questioned McGonagall the first time in her own living room. She had asked if it was possible that magic was just a recessive gene, and that muggleborns were the lucky reappearance of the magical gene following a long time of inactivity. If she was correct, and she suspected she was, then a squib was not the dead end of a magical lineage. The squib could pass down magical genes, and eventually, a muggleborn could appear.
Morgan le Fay's squib descendant had married a muggle man named Thomias Miller.
After the marriage, the magical community had disowned the squib, forcing her into the muggle world and disallowing any of her descendants from magical society. Thomias Miller. Hermione's mother's maiden name was Miller.
"My mother's side," Hermione whispered hoarsely. "My grandmother had the same eyes. Your descendent was a squib who married Thomias Miller, my ancestor."
Her mind was in a tailspin. She had expected to discover her father was a wizard; she had never even considered that her mother's side could also be magical. After going through the family records in her home, she had written them off, unable to find anything that could possibly link to magical society. But it was impossible to deny how similar she looked to the witch in the portrait.
Morgan le Fay smiled. "Hello there, little daughter of mine."
"So I do have magical blood," Hermione whispered to herself, stunned. Did that mean that her father wasn't a wizard after all, and her power came from Morgan le Fay? No, it was something else as well. A pull in her gut still insisted that she needed to find her father.
"Are you the only one of my blood alive?" Morgan asked. Her stare was so intent that it made Hermione shift a bit in her seat, discomfited by the intensity. Is that how people felt when she questioned them herself, eyes piercing as an eagle's?
"I'm the only witch," Hermione answered, tucking an irate curl behind her ear nervously. "My mother is a muggle."
"Then you are my heir," the older witch nodded in satisfaction.
A snicker tore Morgan's gaze from the young muggleborn. "So it turns out the mudblood has some noble in her after all."
Hermione whipped around at the voice, Morgan hissing behind her at the slur. "Born from muggles or not, I claim this witch as my blood and my lawful heir. The headmaster will see to it."
Marcus Flint shrugged brutish shoulders. "I don't honestly give a shite what a painting of a bint whose been dust for centuries says."
Behind Flint, Malfoy came forward, pale hair glinting in the firelight. He smiled at her in triumph. "Not so fierce now, mudblood?"
Morgan snarled in indignation. "It matters not her parentage. She is of my line, which is steeped in more power than you petty fools know!"
Flint gave Morgan a bored look. "What are you going to do about it, stupid bint? You're a painting now. Not even a real person, just a collection of magic and memories some half-blind swot smeared on a canvas once. Now shut your bloody mouth up, or I'm going to rip your portrait to shreds."
"Daughter," Morgan whispered as the two boys began to stalk closer, eyes blazing. "I must trust you to defend yourself until I return with aid. My blood sings in you. Do not be afraid to use your power against them. Do not be afraid to hurt them." The famous witch swept her cloak around her body, transforming into a black eagle before soaring beyond the frame of her own painting.
Hermione had always been ruthless; it was her fatal flaw, besides perhaps the arrogance inherent in being young and exceedingly intelligent. While she had postured and pranced around the other Slytherins like she would inflict great harm on them at the slightest breath, she had never actually imagined the follow through. Now, she was confronted with these boyish, brutish imbeciles, and she knew she had to fight to escape them, or to at least survive. And, while she freely admitted (to herself only, in the quiet sanctity of her mind) that she had not thought she would be truly and viciously targeted, she was willing to use lethal force.
Disturbingly, she looked forward to it.
"Don't worry," Hermione whispered, drawing her wand. "I'm not."