"Did you make friends with the magic?"
Hermione twitched, fingers tingling.
"It's curious and clinging. Has it tried speaking with you?"
She tilted her head with down-turned lips and exhaled slowly.
"You've been spindling it. I can barely tell it apart from your own-"
Oh, that was concerning.
"But that may be due to the pixies-"
"For goodness sake, Luna," Hermione growled, while she ignored the backdrop of hissing whispers some way off to the darkness at her left - laughter, if she didn't know better - from the beast-snake beyond them who lazed idly upon a nearby slab of rock semi-curled and far too introspective.
"Careful, the circle must be perfect."
"I'm aware," Hermione groused, fingertips stained black from the coal-chalk mixture held in a sweat-slick grip.
"It's a bit shaky - here," Luna twitched a foot in her direction, wiggling toes exposed due to a lack of cover, "due to your trembling. Are you frightened?"
Hermione cursed softly, shifted a bit, corrected the mess, then answered, "I'm terrified."
And a far bit more than just that.
Because never, in all her life, had she predicted the Dark Lord would gift her with this sort of knowledge and demand.
"It won't change you… Much. It's been refined, the process. Better, if it's done this way."
Hermione grimaced, focused, anxious, apprehensive, excited, filled with the eager hum of her magic stirred by the rapid thud of her heart -
"Blood is next. Yours."
Hermione tossed Luna a blithering look. Here she was, among the muck and grime of their space while she sat upon a taken tree stump, legs folded beneath her, and the key that held the instructions to their purpose upside down in her grip. Merlin, she hoped she was reading that right.
"You're still trembling. Wound up? We could bond again -"
"N-n-no, no… that's fine." Hermione mumbled, face flushed as she squirmed a bit and took a deep breath, "We're still… connecting, right?"
Connected… she could still feel the hum of Luna's magic against her skin. The soothing pressure just begging to be twisted and manipulated.
"Absolutely," Luna chirped, her smile mischievous, "I'll give you all that you need."
"I don't need anything right this moment," Hermione rattled, quick and distracted, "I just wanted to make sure."
Because one wrong step. One carving out of place. One rune not perfected. One sliver of power not given… and everything was ruined.
She refused to fall here, no matter how wicked the act she sought to commit.
Luna bobbed her head and went back to the bound parchment in leather, bottle cap earrings swinging. "Make sure you mark the runes for joining and conquering."
Hermione nodded and went back to work.
They were in a spacious grove, a ritualistic area the Malfoy's often used for purposes like the one she attended. It felt off, currently empty of magic and life. It was a void, hard soiled and barely recognizable from the rest of the grounds considering the lack of gothic architecture or greenery, hidden behind the illusion of a fairly Muggle shed. But upon opening the door and crossing the threshold they'd been transported, placed in a space beyond reach so that they could experiment with the most dangerous magic without other metaphysical interference… and the lives they were about to manipulate. Hermione had been preparing it for the bulk of the day, pushing Andromeda from her mind so that she could focus on her task.
The absolute corruption of her daughter.
"It's fortunate that the sun is setting."
She briefly chewed on her bottom lip, curious as to how Luna could tell the time in a place that seemed timeless. She thought about entertaining that statement, about striking up some horridly mundane conversation while she shuffled along the ground like a dog with her nostrils nearly touching the intricate rune grooves she needed to fill with her blood. Which, at least the Malfoy's suspicious collection of Blood Quills had been good for -
"They were originally made for that purpose, though," Luna interrupted her thoughts, almost causing Hermione to jerk and slice through the damn rune she was trying to trace. Instead - thank goodness - her hand only twitched, causing a particularly nasty slice across the back of it and a trickle of blood that the greedy quill metaphysically slurped up. "It's much easier to write in blood with a device meant for writing… ah, in blood."
"Of course, of course," Hermione drawled, ignoring the deep ache of pain the Quill had created to instead focus on dotting the odd curly swoop she'd crafted in the dirt. She mentally compartmentalized it, Luna's oddities and the burn in her body, to hyper-focus on the task at hand. A task she intended to complete within, Merlin please, the next hour or so.
Naturally, that meant she hadn't finished until sometime thereafter, when an odd chill had settled over the sunless space and the thick umbrella canopy of the trees had stopped swaying in a long-gone breeze. When the final shape was filled, and her body pulsed with the ebb and flow of superficial torment from the Quill she felt something click. It was like some tight band within her body had eased, and while tension still threaded her limbs from the lack of a snap there was no longer a heavy nervous weight settled over her shoulders. Now she could breathe past the cloying sense of raised magic, magic that now blanketed her form in an unusual warmth and think upon the next step.
"Luna?" Hermione croaked, peering past her circle, past the long slab of rock - stained in red and browns - toward the stump her companion had once occupied.
"Yes?"
Hermione leapt to her feet, startled by the sudden appearance of her companion behind her, instead of in front of her. And, had she the time, she might have begun a rather important lecture on proper behavior within an ancient magic circle - and the idea that one does not toy with their friend's perception while they are coated in manipulative magics. Instead, she swallowed thickly, and turned a narrowed gaze from the girl at her back to the long slab of rock.
Now occupied by two bodies, one of which was twitching.
"You move quickly." Hermione mumbled, though her attention was no longer upon the nodding Luna.
"I do," Luna replied, nonetheless. "Apparition doesn't disturb the circle, not for those who were within it when it was sealed."
Though it baffled Hermione how quietly Luna had been able to bring in her… bundles.
"Can someone else get out, then?" She paused, "Or in?"
"Not unless that someone is me." Luna answered, though she had already turned away, stalking toward the edge of the circle with a skip in her step that seemed unusual against the knowledge of what was to come.
Hermione didn't bother to question Luna's information or ability. This was not Luna's first circle of sacrifice, that much was clear. But, she could also feel the idle hum of something else, something so distinctively Luna, coating the hidden doorway beyond them. A ward that buzzed at the edge of her consciousness, strong and humming and so very clear in its intent.
Just like the other magic suffusing the space.
And yet, she found it difficult to move to action. The short distance between her position and the slab - with its bounty - was suddenly insurmountable. Her vision stretched, twisted. The sudden banging of her heart against her chest and the thunderous pattern of her thoughts as they swept past her mind made her dizzy with the onslaught. There were too many 'what ifs', too many different variables that could interfere and overwhelm and this magic was so terribly olde and wicked that one lack of intention would see the lot of them dead, splattered and scattered to the wind as their own forces tore them into little more than dirt and bloody bones.
So, how could she move? How could she act? When so much could happen due to her inexperience? When, despite the curling eagerness that made her fingertips tingle and her belly clench, her very body still trembled?
"Too much thinking in there." Luna's voice cut across the darkness, somewhat warped and yet still entirely too clear. As if it had come from within her, instead of near her. "There is nothing left to do but to do."
And suddenly, as if Luna held more control over her body than she did, she was moving. One heavy foot before the other. Mind devoid of little else but the instruction she'd memorized and the conviction of her goal. I'll save them, she thought, even if I must conquer them first.
Because, ultimately, she was a Gryffindor, and overanalyzing held no place here.
Either she controlled, or they failed. There was no other option and she was no longer willing to take any other offered.
The crunch of her feet upon far too fresh grass faded, absorbed by the sound of a struggling body upon the two-being slab. There, bound in rope far to black to be anything other than unusual, was the bare flesh of one unknown Muggle - and briefly, she wondered who he might have been, what with his sweat slick hair of brown and freckled shoulders.
No, best not to think of it, because it didn't matter. Doctor or lawyer. Criminal or saint. He was nothing now, among those of the dark. Nothing but flesh for the flesh gods and blood to quench the aching thirst of her magic. Oh, how Bellatrix would have been proud, proud to see her square her shoulders and swallow old convictions. Proud to have seen her shed her mortality like an old waistcoat, never to be wore or hung upon her person again.
All for the taste of ultimate pleasure, for the praise of another, for life bound in different chains.
I want it, she thought. I want this. And, it wasn't a lie. No, her body burned with a sense of otherness, that something slick from Andromeda's house and the pulse of the scar, raised and hot, on her arm.
She twisted her gaze from the body, the Muggle meant as fuel and settled it upon the other, upon the bound but relaxed form of Nymphadora Tonks. Bound and gagged with a gaze so… black that there was no mistaking whose blood ran through her veins, or the madness that thumped through her mind. Hermione had expected… anger. Fury. A sense of betrayal. But when their eyes met, all she got was a deep sense of amusement.
With a strange sort of fervent urgency.
Slowly, Hermione lifted a hand, if only to lightly touch it against the pale bare skin of her… friend. Skin that peeked between those so tight ropes, skin of a belly that tightened when she rested the deeper copper of her own flesh against it. Skin that felt… hot, as if there too raged a fire where meat should only sit.
And maybe this act was suddenly more kindness that cruelty.
She wasn't the only dog looking for a new master.
"Hello, Tonks." Hermione whispered, no longer unnerved as she caught the reflective gleam of her gaze within the endless pits of hunger that made up Tonks' own. "I think you've been looking for something."
Because, she knew that look, that grimaced tense expression that had everything to do with the unknown than the Muggle straining in his bindings next to her.
"I have it, the relief you seek." Hermione's lips moved in a manner that made her feel… possessed. And suddenly she was aware of so much more, so much magic against her flesh and buzzing along her brain. She was floating again, being carved from the inside out by the steady pound of the circle she'd written and the intention that tugged and pulled slumbering magic to move. "I will give it to you."
Hermione shifted slightly, kept one hand upon the twitching belly of her prize while the other trailed across the chilled but softly glowing stone. She felt her fingers curl around the hilt of a blade, something simple and ceremonial and yet still she shivered at the implications of holding it.
Because it brought her one step closer to her obsession.
"We will share it. This gift." She brought the blade forward, laid the flat of it against a nearby pale thigh and observed Tonks reactive quiver. "But first I have to…"
Break you.
She swallowed her words, picked others instead. "Free you."
With a shuddering breath Hermione considered the structure of the blade, the way the tip curved slightly into a super-fine point and the thickness of the handle - which had finger groves impressed into the material, to provide for a precise grip. Soon, it would be coated in the essence of her friend and more in an overall effort to keep them safe. But, in the end, would Tonks see it that way?
Did it matter?
No, it didn't.
She leaned forward, stared at the rise and fall of Tonks bound chest - nipples erect in the chill of the space - and brought the blade closer. The rope that bound her writhed, moving away as she came closer to make room for the work to come. With its pointed tip she made the first slice and felt the magic within her sing from the action. Tonks gave a jerk on the slab and the Muggle twisted wide-eyes to watch Hermione work, but neither Muggle nor witch were enough to draw her from her task. Her only response was a grunt and a sudden open-palmed slap to the clenched belly of the woman she drew upon-
"Don't move."
She didn't want to mess up her work.
Focus drove more action which led to the haunted clawing of magic on the inside of her skull. The sound beyond her was pushed outside of mind, leaving only her steady breathing and Tonks sudden hitch of breath, breath that quickly devolved into a ragged sort of panting when Hermione made her second carving. The bubbling of blood that came in thick tendrils thereafter, and the knowledge that she was willingly causing Tonks… pain, stirred something so dark within her that it was somewhat jarring once she'd recognized that she'd produced it.
The groan she pulled from Tonks throat thereafter, when she made her third… fourth… and fifth perfect semi-circles, only caused that something to tighten and it was dizzying, the call of it and the beauty she wrought, all for ritualistic purposes. Was it the magic that made her warm and Tonks pretty skin so flush? Or the monster that beat at her ribs, begging for more, and more, and more?
That little piece of her that was so intricately wrapped around Bellatrix and warped just the same.
She couldn't think of it, didn't want to think of it, but thought was becoming difficult either way. Her arm ached, though not from her carving, and her mind felt more suppressed under a need for action. She had to keep going, no matter the appetite that grew within or the darkening twist to Tonks gaze as she tried, and failed, to arch in her bonds. The circle hummed with purpose, the magic became her thought. She needed to do little more than carve and absorb the thick scent of copper that spilled over, leaving room for Hermione to implant agony in its place.
But, as she began to cover more and more of Tonks body, moving down from her heaving chest to her belly, then down past her sex to exposed thighs, she knew that a connection was forming as well. She could feel it, some portion of Tonks confusion, a heady mixture of pain that kept slipping just so into something else, something corrupted by that house and Tonks own unleashed darkness. She felt a bubbling, churning restlessness underneath her skin - Tonks need to do anything other than become Hermione's canvas - but more than that, she felt the heat of madness, of perverse need that had everything to do with the searing ache left behind after Hermione's cuts and little else. How much more would they share beyond Hermione's wicked masochism? So. Much. More.
So, it understandably took her some time to remember herself, when there was so much of someone… something else inside once she'd finished her work. And she stared, as if awe struck, with flared nostrils and a gaze too glassy, once she saw the combined runework of the circle now painstakingly repeated upon Tonks' no longer flawless skin. Only the ebb of soft light, something that slithered under Tonks' skin like magic veins, kept her moving. She was not done.
She shook off the… intimacy of the act, the primal abnormality of it, of the strong thunk, thunk, thunk of dominance beneath her skin and the odd fearlessness of power to instead turn to the Muggle.
To him she should be sorry.
She wasn't.
"Do you intend it?" Came Luna's voice, a soft inquiry on the wind, so clear beyond the howling of Hermione's blood. "To take his life?"
"I do." She stated, surprised when she found no hesitance, only the addictive ambrosia of magic tugging her along, driving her, pushing her forward… she would do anything for a single drowning taste.
The command was left unsaid, for her to do it and seal the magic, the purpose, between them. And yet, for a time, she found herself rooted before the Muggle. She watched him with tilted head as he wiggled his toes, as he stretched in his metaphysical bonds, as he fought to screech and scream beyond the gag that had been stuffed into his mouth and the spittle that dripped down his chin because of that. She watched all of this and the reflection of her eagerness in the animalistic gleam of his eyes and wondered, not for the first time, where her parents were.
But that thought bled into another. This is the turning point. Then another after that. The Dark Lord wants this. And another after that. She wants this.
For the Firstborn to be grand, if only so she can reign down on the rest. For her power to appear absolute, so that she could have them kneel. It was all so very symbolic, the perfect action to ensure the continued survival of a tool. He would claim she could do great feats. He would make her feel like Merlin and prove the value of His own words. All so He could later say 'Look at this, I was right about this, so I'll be right about that.'
And… and she didn't mind.
Because it was different, the monster within her belly, the thing that rattled her chest, the magic that drugged her.
And great Godric, how she wanted.
She thought it again, that sliver of sense that screeched this is the turning point. It'll start with this, the embrace of everything she should not have known, and end with…
-The vision of it took her suddenly, forced a gasp past parted lips, but she could not push aside the idea of it. Her hands twitched, tightened their grip on the blade, and she swore she could feel Bellatrix flesh yield to her beneath the steel of it. She wanted her beneath her, writhing, drunk on her own pains and pleasures, begging for the release that only Hermione could grant and screaming her praises into the ether until she became her entire focus. Her Lord.
Her God.
Until she could be elevated before Him in such a way that He allowed her absolute ascension.
For, who didn't wish to be addressed in the capital sense? For a lowly she to become a revered Her?
She bit her lip from the heat of it, tried to repress the twist of her lips that displayed shiny teeth, but she knew from the frantic bucking of the Muggle that it was too late, that he could see the seductive glint of the future in her gaze and it did not include him.
She climbed atop the slab and sought his lap, sat heavily without grace upon it and lifted the blade. From beyond her she heard a frantic hissing, and perhaps, in the wildness of her mentality, she thought she heard Nagini whisper…
Do it, do it, do it, do it!
So, she did. Tonks, hazy with her own pains, didn't seem to notice the sudden plunge of the blade into the body at her side until blood splattered, showering the front of Hermione's already stained white frock. But it wasn't until the wailing activation of magic hit that the girl screamed beyond her gag.
It wasn't with fear.
The blood that spilled from the Muggle thickened, twisting into tendrils that leapt forward and stabbed through Hermione's own flesh. She felt something within her fracture, felt her splitting of self so acutely that the suffocation of magic and the pain of its invasion was minuscule in comparison. Her mind stuttered to a halt, and for one hauntingly long moment she was nothing.
And yet, everything.
She heard the rhythmic song of power and felt the decadent intention spill out of her. She had taken life to prolong her own and it was wicked and awful, but the magic did not judge. It had a reason to move, as wilde as it felt, and it moved through her, from the Muggle, leaving behind the explosive taste of metal at the back of her throat.
And then it tore from her something precious, a kaleidoscope of colors that writhed and devoured itself. Her hands moved to cup it, to put it back because that something was missing and-
But it would not return, because the otherness of magic was there now, a rapidly thudding piece of her own heart.
It moved elsewhere, spilling between her desperately clutching fingertips to drive itself into the only nearby body, the seizing Tonks.
And there was laughter after that, crazed and manic and high. It took Hermione sometime to realize it was her own chilling cackle, pushed past her chest by the pressure of the same madness that so thoroughly infected the Black family proper. She had more than inherited it, through Tonks corruption and Bellatrix curse, and yet this felt all her own.
Her own brand of wickedness, a curse in her blood, something to push into the Firstborn legacy of Granger.
Behind her she heard a squeal - Luna's pure joy, she surmised - but Hermione could only fathom at her own success.
She had done it, she had done it.
She had created her first Horcrux and corrupted another being with its bite. It was something all her own, something meant to be beyond her power - mudblood or otherwise. She had proven she could ascend. She would be more than just a Lady, and while she may wear His collar and be His tool, they would soon know her as a God of her own chaotic design.
If she were to be contained and controlled, she would build her own chains and bars.
And lock in Bellatrix with her.
Because, a good God will need a priestess.
A/N: It's been a long time.