Gellert stormed from the room, ignoring the angry shouts of the fat lady as he slammed her portrait open. He couldn't remember whether he had done that with his hand or his magic, which was usually a bad sign but he couldn't bring himself to figure out why that was so bad. That pink cow deserved everything she got for putting Hermione's friends in danger. He would destroy her, no maybe he would torture her first. The Cruciatus? Or maybe he could transfigure her into a toad. Apparently a teacher had gotten away with turning a student into a ferret last year.
He slammed open the door to her office and the woman managed to look condescendingly at him, he raised his wand and cast a powerful silencing charm. Several kittens in the plates around the walls mewled and fled behind painted furniture, perhaps sensing his broiling magic better than their owner.
'Mr Abernathy, just what do you think you're up to?' She demanded, pushing back her chair and coming around her desk. Her expression was patronising but lacked the glee it had when she was taunting Harry.
'What do you think you are up to, Delores Umbridge?' He snarled back. She looked shocked and outraged as he levelled his wand at her, hundreds of options running through his mind. She reached behind her, knocking over a pile of essays as she scrabbled for her wand. He watched with bemusement as she found it and brought it up to level. He disarmed her with a flick of his spare hand.
'Crucio.' He hurled the spell at her, just as something collided solidly with him through the still open doorway.
He crashed into the chair in front of the desk, dropping Umbridge's wand but keeping a firm hold on his own. The elder wand would not lose him so soon. His spell splashed harmlessly against the wall, shattering several kitten plates.
He whirled around, levelling his wand at the person who'd knocked him, then let it down when he saw Hermione standing with her hands already raised. Somehow, seeing her seemed to magically make his fury manageable.
'Please, Gellert. You can't use an unforgivable on her. It's not worth your soul.' She was begging him and he almost wavered before movement in the corner of his eye snapped it back to Umbridge who had managed to grab her wand back from where it had fallen.
He swiped his wand in her direction to deflect her curse, then he cast a quick protego to deflect her second. He disarmed her before she'd even finished the incantation of her third and his fourth spell had her stuck to the wall like a starfish.
'Surely you can't object to me simply returning the favour?' He asked (definitely didn't beg. He was not a child) the young witch and Hermione shrugged.
'Nothing she wouldn't do.' She decided.
'We need to find the quills then. They will be black with a metal tip, probably decorated and with no ink on it. It's probably in a box.' She told her and Hermione nodded, seeming much more comfortable with this option.
He tried a summoning charm for good measure which unsurprisingly didn't work. It was fairly standard to have anti-summoning wards on any object of value, which generally included most dark aftifacts. Hermione began rummaging in the chest of draws whilst he quickly plundered the desk. She shut the door as she rushed past on the way to search the shelf.
He shoved past stacks of pink parchment and mauve ink in the drawers, the draw below the ink held a bundle of ordinary quills. He pulled them out and cast a revealing charm on them, disappointed when none turned out to have more than the most basic enchantments to not make a mess.
It was Hermione that hit the jackpot, eventually uncovering a small chest with five red and black quills cushioned on a contrasting pink silk cushion. He wondered if they'd been custom made, or maybe just the box. He didn't think he'd ever known anyone actually find a use for blood quills, especially since the invention of the promise quill, the scar was considered rather primitive.
'Is this them?' She asked curiously and if Umbridge's squeals from the wall were anything to go by she would probably be correct. He picked up one of the quills, feeling the weight and balance before putting it to a piece of parchment and drawing a single straight line. A matching one scored its way across the back of his unblemished hand.
'Good, put them on the table.' He ordered, drawing the knife he carried on the inside of his robes. It was a rather nice one that he'd picked up in the room, it was certainly goblin wrought with a series of celtic knots worked into the handle and engraved with intricate patterns down the centre of the blade. It had no useless enchantments messing with the magic he used it for but had the kind of savage beauty he could appreciate. It had been designed for blood magic, with razor sharp edges that made clean, delicate cuts.
As he drew nearer the bound ministry witch, she began to thrash and whimper. He wondered briefly if she knew anything about the kind of magic he was about to perform or whether she just feared the concept. On second thoughts, maybe she was just afraid of him. He'd already made it very clear he was no student.
He had to do every quill separately; it was a very complicated enchantment to change but he imagined it was significantly easier than changing them back. Buy the time he was done, five crimson tallies marked the back of her hand. Hermione waved her wand over the marks, healing them to white lines whilst Gellert set the room to rights, parchment books and pieces of china whirling around him in a maelstrom as they magically flew to where they had come from.
Once everything was done, Hermione carefully put the blood quills back in their spot in the dresser whilst Gellert prodded life back into the mended kitten plates. One looked a little more alley cat than it had before, and he had no idea how the original artist had managed to get a cute temperament from another but he doubted Umbridge would notice. When they were both done, he paused by the door and pointed his wand back at the teacher.
'Obliviate.'
The two of them hurried back upstairs, but despite working together earlier it seemed as though Hermione was now pointedly ignoring him. She almost jogged ahead of him, throwing doors open for herself despite knowing that he preferred to hold them for her. Surely she couldn't object to him obliviating Umbridge? Attacking a teacher would have them both expelled which would devastate her.
He doubled his pace until he was striding next to her, his long legs easily keeping up with her shorter steps. She looked firmly down at her feet as they walked, pointedly not even glancing at the corridors they passed through. He looked upwards, running the rest of the route through his head, figuring out the spot where he could stop her with the least chance of resistance. It was humiliating enough to be ignored by the schoolgirl, let alone having to seek her forgiveness for whatever he'd done wrong. He did not want to have to do this twice.
When they reached the seventh floor corridor, he roughly pushed her sideways. Surprised, Hermione stumbled into a gap between bookshelves. She let out a cry of protest, then crossed her arms and glared stubbornly at him when he blocked the exit.
'Why are you acting sullen, I did what you asked.' He demanded, unfazed by her outraged gaze.
'You were going to torture her.' Hermione emphasised the torture, as though that explained everything.
'Well yes, she had been torturing your friends.' He couldn't understand the issue, of course, he understood that she didn't want him using an unforgivable, they were illegal after all and it was probably likely that the school had a way of tracking such spells. He had easily agreed to her terms and the resultant punishment was really rather fair, in his opinion.
'You can't just go around torturing people.' Gellert felt as though they were just going around in circles, with both of them getting more and more agitated. He fought to keep his face expressionless; to not show how frustrating he found their situation. Hermione glared at him from the shadow of the bookshelf, her eyes narrowed and looking strangely as if she were about to cry. It was this more than anything that made Gellert determined to somehow end this confrontation that wasn't going at all the way he had planned.
'I exacted a fair punishment, fit to the crime. It is nothing worse than writing lines for a rules infringement at school.' He said desperately, realising almost as soon as that last point left his mouth that he'd said something wrong. Hermione spluttered indignantly, before finally gathering herself up to her full height.
She was by no means tall and was certainly not of strong stature like some of the pureblood ladies he'd met, but surprisingly she could be rather intimidating. Her magic crackled almost visibly around her in time with her fury, lending her a hot, fiery aura that was the polar opposite to the controlled, icy reactions he was famous for.
'Torture is never a fair punishment, it's never acceptable to put someone in pain and responding with more torture makes us as bad as them.' She screamed, then barged past him and ran off up to the common room. He heard the Fat Lady's shrieks echoing down the hallway as the young witch slammed the portrait behind her. For several long minutes he stood in the dark, deserted corridor, then he turned on his heel and strode out of the castle. Deep in the forbidden forest, he disapparated with a sharp crack.