TW: Blood and self-inflicted wounds (without the intent of self-harm).
Draco and Hermione walked for what felt like a rather significant amount of time. Hermione supposed she should have figured it'd take a while. Narcissa had said it was the edge of their wards, and this was the world of the absurdly rich. If you could afford the line, you may as well keep it, eh?
Eventually, a fire came into view. The flames cast just enough light to illuminate the robed figures standing around it. For a brief second, Hermione expected they were about to cross some campers getting an early start to their day. Only for a brief second, though. Even as she thought it, the smarter bit of her brain was reminding her of what they were there to do and that the wards would undoubtedly be cast with the provision of diverting muggle campers.
The smell of burning wood burned, tickling her nose and calming her with the memories of burnt marshmallows and not so scary ghost stories. As she relaxed, Draco suddenly gripped her arm tighter, and she realized he'd thought she was going to faint. He was keeping her upright - maintaining her posture of confidence. Hermione squeezed his arm and smiled up at him. She tugged him forward then. She knew where they were going now.
When they were close enough to feel the heat of the flames, the gathered group turned to face them in creepy unison. Voldemort stood on the other side of the flames and his followers spread around the fire to either side of him. Hermione blinked as she realized Narcissa already stood beside Lucious Malfoy. Interestingly, Narcissa was placed closer to Voldemort than her husband, and Hermione realized just how much power Narcissa must hold within the organization.
Not only did she stand beside the Dark Lord, but she had also been the one to usher Hermione into her meeting with the Dark Lord, and she had been the one to prepare Hermione this morning for the ritual.
She had been the one to traffic her the book that set Hermione's plans down a different path. It was impressive. Narcissa was smart, and she could respect that even if it slightly terrified her.
And it did terrify her.
Hermione thought she had maintained a reasonable distrust of the people who had come into her life in recent months and yet here she stood, lead like cattle to slaughter. But this wasn't a slaughter. Not yet and certainly not hers.
But Narcissa wasn't watching Hermione. She was watching Draco's every move as he gently dislodged Hermione's hand from his arm and gave Hermione some instruction she didn't really hear before walking around the fire to join his parents.
Hermione's friends stood around their fire with their own families looking fairly confused. Their parents hadn't told them. Perhaps some of their parents weren't even aware. Despite what they knew, the fact that remained was that everyone had their eyes on her, waiting to see what she would do. Hermione found herself wishing she'd listened to whatever Draco'd whispered to her before he'd abandoned her here to stare at her with the rest of them.
She'd thought that the first time she'd been called a mudblood had been the worst moment of ostracization she'd ever experienced. This beat that. Then she had been a little girl experiencing her belief that she'd finally found a place she'd fit in crushed. By then she'd not had any friends, save maybe Neville who was the only one people thought of as pathetic as she was. Even then, it was a tacit connection.
This was different. The friendships Hermione had formed with these slytherins had been formed and was continuing to be shaped by the immense pressure they were all under. Given enough time they could become valuable - diamonds so fine they could stud a crown.
Hermione tried to keep her breaths shallow as she began to walk towards the fire, but she noticed at least two puffs of cool breath spiral out and away from her. Everything seemed unnecessarily vivid in that moment. She stopped short of falling into the circle with the rest of them. She stared at the fire and let the smoke burn her throat as she breathed in and out steadily. For just a second she hoped she might see something in the flames that give her some hint that everything would work according to her plan.
But divination was bollocks, and it wasn't some vision that caught her attention but a hand hesitating before her to lead her to the group. Her lips twitched into a little smile as she took it.
"Welcome, to our most esteemed guest!" Voldemort's voice boomed louder than Hermione had thought him possible of.
Eyes moved from her to Voldemort then back to her. Ah. She was the esteemed guest.
"We have spent the past several years building - building plans and forces and connections. Unfortunately," his raspy voice hesitated with practiced gravity, "we have also discovered many failings in ourselves."
His eyes slid over the group, pausing to assess some of the attendees more closely than others. Whether this was a good or bad sign for those people he hovered on, Hermione didn't know.
Suddenly Voldemort's tone took an ominously positive tone. "But there is no stopping what the Fates have deemed necessary, and they have laid a solution at our feet."
Voldemort's yellow eyes snapped to Hermione. She had to grit her teeth to keep from challenging his notion of any sort of fate. The Fates as an entity were long-established myths to whom only seers, the traditional, and the superstitious paid any mind to. She was none, but the rest of those gathered were definitely traditional and most likely superstitious. If they believed Voldemort's claim that the Fates had a hand in this, it would serve her well to keep her mouth shut. It would make her look like a bloody saint if they believed the Fates had chosen her above all other options for this adoption.
Hermione took a mental inventory of herself: straight spine, chin up, and what she hoped was an air of confidence. She stepped closer, acknowledging that she was the solution being presented passively, an object to be bandied around at his will. A defiant wave of anger welled up inside her, and the flame before them roared up suddenly, reaching far into gray sky.
Hermione smiled when she saw Voldemort take the tiniest step back. The flames had shocked him.
Hermione heard a quiet voice a little to her right. "Accidental magic? Is she a toddler?"
Daphne's snide voice responded, "You think that was accidental?"
A whisper of a hiss spread along the circle, a demand for silence. Voldemort had allowed a twisted smile on his face, and Hermione's stomach turned. She knew she should be relieved she hadn't upset him, but she had hoped the flame would at least be enough to show that she wasn't some footnote in the history they would write about him.
But he seemed pleased with her.
"And there is no candidate more worthy than the one who has been brought to us. Despite her unfortunate birth and upbringing, she has shown herself to be one of the most powerful witches we have seen in some generations and her grades from her earliest days at Hogwarts."
Hermione conjured the image of her parents in her mind. They were not unfortunate. Not to her. She imagined how they'd feel hearing this praise despite the disparagement on their names. She felt almost as if he was recommending her for university admissions. Were he an admissions adviser, her parents would currently be nodding vigorously. The takedown would be done privately in a restaurant of their choosing at a later hour.
She shook her head just the tiniest bit. Her parents weren't alive, but she was their living legacy. She smiled and nodded in the way she imagined her parents would have. She would get her say later, even if it was just a mad rant to Malfoy between whatever their winter duties ended up being.
"Let this be the last time she is known to you as Granger. After tonight, she will be the young mistress Hermione of the esteemed House Goyle."
If Hermione thought the gathered crowd was quiet before, she didn't know what to call the silence following that. She thought even the crackling fire, sensing the tension, had quieted itself. Hermione glanced at the sky. Still a dark gray meant to shroud what they aimed to do.
Greg and his parents stepped closer to her, shielding her from some of the nastier looks she was receiving. So this ritual wouldn't be the smooth path to acceptance she had naively hoped. She couldn't be bothered by that at the moment, though. What Narcissa had told her about the diaries still jangled around in her head.
They could fake it if all else failed. They'd help her fake it. The Goyles were looking at her with a tenderness she'd done nothing to earn. There was no way she could ask them to fake it. They'd do it and put their whole family at risk. Even with Voldemort's announcement and support of the adoption, there was clear disdain for her around the circle. If she was going to fake it, she'd have to fake it herself.
She glanced up intending to find Voldemort's face for more instructions and instead met Draco's eyes. His family being favored by Voldemort, they stood close by his side and it was reasonable that she might catch his eye while searching for that of the Dark Lord, certainly.
The muscles of Draco's jaw were tense, but he tried to smile at her in what she imagined was meant to be encouragement rather than the almost pained expression it appeared to be.
Despite her recent experiences with so called friends and all of her better judgment, a small part of Hermione's brain amended her previous thoughts. Perhaps she would not have to fake it by herself. Not completely. Hermione's shoulder's relaxed as Malfoy held her eye contact, and she wondered briefly if he was exerting his own family's gift.
Something cold was pressed into her palm, and she dragged her eyes away from Draco's to look at it. An athame was pressed into her hand by her father, and her mother turned her just slightly so she was facing the small altar that had appeared. Hermione walked to the altar and began dicing and flaying the ingredients before her without thought just as Professor Snape had taught in potions class.
She set aside the blade for a mortar and pestle set, muddling the ingredients like she was about to make the world's shittiest cocktail. When they were ground to a pulp, she hesitated. The first steps had been intuitive. Now she was at a bit of a loss.
The dagger. It took restraint she didn't think she'd had at that moment to avoid looking at Draco as his voice brushed up against her auditory cortex. It was as if he'd just whispered in her ear.
Slowly, Hermione let her hand move to pick the recently discarded athame back up.
No, Malfoy sounded off snottily again. The dagger. The athame isn't meant for drawing blood under any circumstance.
Hermione's pride stung a bit at forgetting that detail. Altar and ritual rules always seemed like etiquette: Pretty but nothing that couldn't be replaced with something more practical, and a multipurpose blade would be more practical. Had she her swiss army knife - a gift lovingly bestowed from her grandmother as a tool of self-defense when she'd first gone off to school - she could have prepared the herbs, drawn blood, and still had blades to spare. For self-defense, that is.
She found the dagger laying below a folded, plum colored cloth that Hermione assumed was to stem the cut she was about to make. Before Draco felt the need to but into her mind again, Hermione sliced open her palm, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from flinching at the pain.
Hermione set the blade aside and, having no other receptacle handy, allowed her blood to drip onto of the muddled herbs. A few seconds passed and then Mr. Goyle pulled her back gently, turned her palm towards the sky and pressed the neatly folded cloth onto her cut as he murmured a healing charm. As Hermione dabbed the blood away, Mr. Goyle picked up the dagger and cut his hand in the same fashion but was unable to conceal his flinch as well as Hermione had. Mrs. Goyle reached a hand out towards her, and Hermione handed over the quietly scourgified cloth.
Mrs. Goyle did the same thing for Mr. Goyle that he had done for Hermione, healing his would before taking the dagger into her own hands and repeating the slicing action. Greg followed her, performing the same steps with the cloth, spells, and dagger with concentration so fierce his forehead wrinkled. Hermione took the cloth from Mrs. Goyle and held it to Greg's hand, healing the would and completing what she realized was a family circle of blood and trust.
The four of them shared a small smile before turning back to look at the Dark Lord. They had no more clue as to what to do then than Hermione did.
"The gods and goddesses have witnessed this adoption, as well as your peers," Voldemort announced, stretching out his arms to either side to indicate the people around them as if they might have forgotten they were being watched. "But have they - they being the divine - have sanctioned the addition to this family. The fire will reveal the truth. Miss Granger, if you could pick up the basin and step up to the fire."
Hermione did as she was told, carefully picking the bowl up and standing at the edge of the flames. She'd assumed this mean that she would be throwing the bloody mixture into the fire, and let herself relax her shoulders a bit. She had the fear, no matter how unlikely it was, that she might be forced to choke down the mixture. There were many unsavory parts of magic that Hermione couldn't help but question if all of it was totally necessary or if it had simply never been done any other way. Consuming bodily fluids in some backward idea of how traits may be absorbed seemed just he confused sort of logic that permeated much of the old and outdated methods.
But her relief was short-lived. She was not told to toss the unholy mixture to burn.
"As we all know, fire is the great purifier, and this is a purification that, if successful, will only prove the power and knowledge that is held by those of a pureblooded history," Voldemort announced, throwing his arms out in a grand gesture. There was stilted clapping around the circle. It was clear no one had fully understood his implication. Hermione surely hadn't. "Miss Granger, you shall enter this fire, but when you exit, you will be the esteemed Miss Goyle. Or you will be dead. Shall you proceed?"
He was taunting her now. Walk through fire? Hermione knew the icy fear radiating through her wouldn't be enough to keep her safe in an actual fire. She wanted to look at her friends or at Narcissa. She wanted to look at Draco. She wanted to know if he'd known - if he'd kept this from her. Partners.
But she wouldn't look. When she turned away from Voldemort, it was to stare directly into the flames. Purification. Perhaps. Fire had the power to annihilate. It could level cities in a matter of hours. But that was a new beginning. A clean slate.
She stepped into the fire. What choice did she have? She focused on creating a barrier between her and the fire. It kept her skin from burning, but she could still feel the heat all over her. It was unbearable. She wanted to drop the bowl, but she was afraid that even the slightest movement would fracture her shield.
Just over halfway through, her legs gave up on her. She didn't collapse, but she simply couldn't pick them up. The heat was crushing her. Angry tears poured from her eyes and almost immediately evaporated from the heat. She wasn't ready to quit. She could handle the pain. It was her body that was betraying her. Her body refused to handle the pain she'd made peace with.
A cool blanket fell over, and the heat dissipated a fraction. She recognized the magical signature of Greg, and knew the following two would be his parents. The relief was minuscule but it was enough to get her moving again. Her body suddenly understood that it had a fighting chance. More layers of cooling magic fell over her - magical signatures she knew. Daphne, Pansy, Draco, Theo. Then there were ones she couldn't identify at all. Silent and invisible, the cold layers piled up until she thought she might be just the slightest bit on the chilly side.
She stumbled out of the fire, shaking and covered to cool sweat. Voldemort stood before her. Thankfully, he offered no support which meant she wouldn't be forced to hold on to him as if she were grateful. After several shaky breaths, Hermione stood up straight and tried to still her shuttering body.
Voldemort took the bowl from her, swirling its contents around with a greedy stare before walking around the circle to show it off. Everyone was silent. The sky was a light gray with pink and orange tinging the horizon.
When Voldemort returned to his spot before her he returned the bowl to Hermione. He stepped back and announced her new heritage, pure and respectable, making a glib comment about how she may be even purer than many of those standing there, as she was proven so in front of a crowd of her peers and the gods themselves.
Hermione did not hear him. She was staring down at the bowl of silver-blue liquid that had accompanied and transformed beside her in the fire.