Anon Reviewer who questioned Hermione's observation about Narcissa's Squib House Keeper (and who's review I'm sorry to say I accidentally deleted DX)
Hermione's inner narration at that moment was not doing anything BUT acknowledging that some Squibs, not all, some Squibs—like Filch—"believed" that pure-bloods being in charge was the way things were supposed to be, that was all. She wasn't condoning it, she wasn't accepting that some Squibs think that way, nor was she agreeing with the sentiment, she was simply observing that this particular house keeper was one of the people of his same blood status who also upholds that belief.
Chapter Seven
"What you must first understand about your father," Lucius said when they were all gathered around the dinner table that evening—apparently pure-bloods weren't so different from Muggles, in that their brains worked best when food was involved—and the housekeeper had excused herself to tend to other duties around the manor until she was called, "is that he was, as the motto for his House dictates, a traditionalist. Before the Statute of Secrecy was enacted, it wasn't unheard of for pure-blood families to intermingle with the upper crust of Muggle society. The divide between the two was not so great during the Founding as our world would have you think. He did not, however, believe Muggle-borns should be taught magic . . . by pure-bloods."
"But then who would we learn it from?"
Every head at the table turned to look at her then. Hermione shrugged as she met each of their gazes in turn, aware their collective attention had been captured by her including herself as a Muggle-born. "Look, I've only known I'm not a Muggle-born for a day, and we already agreed not to let on to anyone else about who I am. So, maybe for the time being, it's best I don't yet consider myself a pure-blood."
The pale-haired wizard at the head of the table nodded, frowning thoughtfully. "Fair point. Besides, I believe it will take a bit of time for any one of us to grow accustomed to calling you anything other than Miss Granger. I'm sure you realize, it isn't that there's no truth to the terrible things believed about him—in his older years, mostly—more that what is said and 'known' about him are selective truths. It's those selective truths that have been bandied about for centuries as both ways to malign House Slytherin and its founder, and ways to justify the goals of the more self-serving among us, like Voldemort. At the very least, it gave weight to those who put pure-blood idealism above all else."
"Like your family?" she asked, her brows shooting upward.
"Miss Granger," Narcissa said, her tone a bit brusque as she dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin and then carefully laid it back across her lap. "We can all appreciate that you are angry, and still confused, and desire information on everything that has been withheld from you, but patience is required on your part."
"Patience?" Hermione could just feel both Thorfinn and Draco wincing as her voice climbed in volume with that single word. "I've literally been waiting a millennium, and the truth withheld from me for another eleven years on top of that. You don't think that perhaps, under those circumstances, I'm entitled to a little impatience?"
The elder witch sighed, looking across the table to her husband. "There'll be no talking to her when she gets like this, I can see it already."
Rolling her eyes in a quelling manner—that only made Thorfinn and Draco wince harder, she was sure—Hermione took a deep breath and let it out slow. "Fine. I'll try to be a little more patient, but you've got to be a little quicker with your explanations. If you can appreciate that I'm angry and confused, then you should also be able to 'appreciate' the frustration I'm feeling."
"The Malfoy family, admittedly, had long forgotten the man Salazar Slytherin had been before he become so enraged with world," Lucius said, stabbing a bit aimlessly at what was left of his filet mignon with his fork. "We only held onto the belief that one day, an heir of Slytherin would emerge, that their goals should be our goals. When Tom Riddle proved himself able to control the Basilisk, it seemed proof-positive that he was the one for whom we'd been waiting. That his notions of pure-blood supremacy were a bit extreme didn't seem to matter so much as his espoused views lined up with what the Wizarding world had always been told about Salazar."
Hermione shook her head, suddenly grateful pure-bloods weren't that different from Old World Europeans and served wine with dinner to everyone seated at the table. She reached for her glass, not caring if the long, draining gulp she took that emptied half of it in one go was deemed unladylike by Mrs. Malfoy.
After setting her glass back down and exhaling loudly, Hermione said, "I've already realized that my father was two very different men, depending on when in his life you're looking at, and that, like him, there are two distinct branches of those who seek to uphold his legacy—a realization you just confirmed, actually. How did you come to understand Voldemort wasn't who you hoped he was?"
"I'm sure you've had what seems like a long day, already, so I'll save showing you what I found until tomorrow, but I can tell you exactly the event that made me think I should perhaps look elsewhere to find the heir of Slytherin. It was when he offered Lily Evans the chance to join our side, something in that felt wrong."
"Because she was Muggle-born?"
"To be perfectly frank, yes." Lucius shrugged. "You must understand that first and foremost what Voldemort promised his followers was a peaceful Wizarding world. That the only way to make that vision a reality would be if pure-bloods were in charge. So, you can see at least part of your father's original goal was carried in Voldemort's sentiment. But it was because the only purpose in trying to sway Lily would be for her intellect and magical prowess while completely disregarding that her blood status should deem her unworthy to wield magic at all by his standards, that I started to question. Such a move flew completely in the face of everything he claimed to stand for. I came to believe he was using our beliefs simply to amass power for himself and did not truly hold to anything he claimed. I began digging though our family archives, searching for accounts of the heir of Slytherin as far back as the founding of Hogwarts. I had no choice but to keep up appearances as being loyal to him in the meanwhile or my family would've paid the price."
"There was a sketch in one such account, a copy of a long-since destroyed portrait of Salazar and his family. Well, his first family." Narcissa nodded, her eyes on the remnants of dinner on her plate. "All obvious markers of your existence at that time had been hidden away or disposed of for reasons which are likely evident, you understand. All but a few key people thought you'd contracted your mother's illness and had passed on, and that it was simply too much for your father to speak on losing you both in such a manner, so it was never questioned, not even discussed."
Hermione took another long sip of her wine, not really wanting to revisit her own painful considerations of what Salazar's losses had done to him. She would never excuse his later ways of prejudice and shortsightedness, but she could at least understand the path that brought him there. He might not have lost her the way he'd lost her mother, but he had been willing to sacrifice having her in his life, to sacrifice the opportunity to watch her grow up. So, in a way, she supposed it was worse—knowing she was still alive, that she'd long outlive him but never being able to hear her voice or even touch her hand ever again.
Blinking hard to keep her eyes clear, she gave herself a shake and set down her now-empty glass. "Go on."
"Though the spell your father cast to send you and Rowle into that bronze sleep was not recorded—he feared someone might reverse-engineer it and pull you out of sleep too early, or that someone might use the information to track you both down and find a way to end you in your sleep—the event, itself, was mentioned, as was the expected outcome. After Voldemort died in the First War, I carried the hope that Slytherin's true heir, the little girl in that sketch, would yet one day awaken and come to set our world to rights."
"I'm never going to espouse pure-blood supremacy, if that's where you're headed."
"That's a disappointingly close-minded guess for one such as you, Miss Granger. It's as though you've ignored precisely half of everything I've said."
Thorfinn stood up, then. The Malfoys and Hermione all turned their heads to look at him. The Viking wizard held up his hands, clearly feeling a need to remove himself from the spike in tension pressing on the room. "Seems like this is as good a time as any to break out something a bit stronger than wine. I'm going to go dig up some Fire Whiskey. In that cupboard in the drawing room, I'd imagine, yeah?" He didn't wait for Lucius to answer before he disappeared through the doors.
"In reading those ancient accounts," Lucius went on, as though Thorfinn hadn't just proved himself a walking distraction, "there was much mention of your father in the days before his losses. The timeline is fuzzy, and I daresay the lack of proper records might've well been part of the attempt to cement Gryffindor as some sort of hero, just as you've already deduced, and what is a hero without a villain? So, being that Godric and Salazar were sort of naturally opposed to each other, that left no one else who could fill that role. Hogwarts was established, Houses that favored bravery, friendship, tradition, and intellect. During that time, your father had brought up the initial idea of establishing a monarchy to give Wizarding Britain a more stable governing body. Godric hated this idea, vehemently, but Salazar thought it was worth consideration at least. Your mother was a widow when she and your father fell in love. They had you, of course. A handful of years later, when Salazar again broached the idea of creating a fiefdom, which she came to believe was a good idea, as well, the more she saw the failings of the Wizard Council—and which I believe was considered an especially grievous blow by Godric, as she was a good friend of his—she became ill and died.
"You had half-siblings, of course. An older sister from your mother's first union who, sadly, met an tragic and early end sometime after your mother took ill—a loss which I believe is what made your mother so vulnerable to Godric's curse—and then the children your father would go on to have after his disposition had changed. But it was not the same. You were his first child, the only child of their union, and were, in his words, special. He became so bitter, so hateful, so wrathful, and all of that negativity was directed at Godric, and—by extension—Godric's ideals. A belief that pure-bloods shouldn't be in charge of educating Muggle-borns became warped into the argument that they were less-than. I think it should be fairly evident how things further devolved from there."
Hermione rubbed her hands over her face. She couldn't think about the horror that her mother's final days must've been just now. Certainly it seemed clear that she must've witnessed as least some of her mother's physical decline, and she could only hope those memories hit first, before she had the chance to remember the woman, herself—before she had the chance for the recollection of losing her to truly hurt. It really had been a long day, so far, and she chose to return her focus to the question that had been inadvertently evaded this entire conversation.
"I still don't understand that part. If it began as simply 'pure-bloods should not teach Muggle-borns,' then how did it go from that to 'Muggle-borns do not deserve to possess magic?' Seems a fairly wide margin there. Who was supposed to teach us, then? And why shouldn't pure-bloods teach Muggle-borns?"
"This discussion is jumping around a bit," Draco said, sagging back in his chair. "Starting to feel like I should be taking notes with columns and line items."
Scowling, Hermione fixed a narrow-eyed gaze on him. "That's actually not a bad idea. Now go back to being quiet before I make you go fetch a quill and some parchment."
Draco's brows drew upward and he held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Lucius, who'd been watching his son since the younger wizard had piped up, pursed his lips before returning his attention to Hermione. "It was during my research that I came across the true-held beliefs of Salazar Slytherin. Beliefs I knew I had to keep secret, because no one likes to learn that they were not the chosen few meant to have control. I, and my family, might've been in mortal danger from those I thought of as my brethren just for possessing such knowledge, let alone choosing to follow it. We had seen you that day in Diagon Alley, before the messy situation in the bookshop. You looked striking familiar to me, and I thought 'is that the girl from the portrait?' You were already in your Hogwarts robes, so I found a way to get the information about the plans for uncovering the Chamber of Secrets to you without tipping my hand to the others."
Hermione nodded. "By having Draco slip me that book page."
"I couldn't be sure that you were you, but as the world believed you a Muggle-born, you were in danger from the Basilisk. I thought the best way to protect you was to prepare you for how to deal with encountering the creature. When you became petrified, I lost hope. I thought I was wrong."
She refused to let her mind turn that over for very long—how lonely and sad the poor creature must've been, and how terrible that it was killed knowing she was there, and yet that she had been afraid of it the very last time they'd ever meet. "And then you nearly Avada'ed Harry over losing your house elf."
Lucius gave a languid shrug. "I was very angry that year. And the loss of a house elf is a very serious thing. When you've been raised all your life with them, it's a bit like losing a limb. I'm sure you considered it a matter of wounded pride, or something equally superficial."
A sneer curled Hermione's lip. "Could you blame me?"
"Given the more recent portion of your upbringing, I suppose not. Regardless. I went back to consulting the archives. You looked so much like the girl in that portrait, that I was conflicted on how you could be her if you were unable to command the Basilisk. There it was, though, in the notations. That your memories would be barred from your conscious mind so long as they posed a danger to you. Clearly, Tom Riddle's potential resurrection was deemed exactly that; the magic must've somehow understood that though he had died that night he attacked the Potters', there was a way he might return. So, we had to simply watch and wait, and keep up more than a few unsavory behaviors for the sake of appearances. And then there came the name of your guardians."
"The Grangers? They were mentioned?"
"When one of their ancestors first traveled to Scotland from France. The name was slightly different—Grangier. The man who came into Salazar's service was a Squib. He changed his name to differentiate himself and no longer despoil the name of his pure-blood family—" He held up his hand, cutting off a protest he simply knew she was about to voice. "I am quoting from those archived accounts, Miss Granger. This new 'Muggle' family line went on to keep just close enough ties to the Wizarding world to know what was happening without actually making themselves known. They handed down their own records of what had happened, of what was to be done when you awoke from the bronze—likely they disposed of those records once you were conscious to further safeguard you. I believe, were we to investigate your adoptive mother's maiden name, we'd find a link back to this same family line."
"Hector Dagworth-Granger," she said suddenly, her brows pinching together.
The Malfoys all exchanged a glance. "What?" Narcissa asked, seemingly speaking for the three of them.
Hermione waved dismissively. "Oh, it was just . . . Professor Slughorn had once asked if I was any relation to Hector Dagworth-Granger, founder of The Most Extraordinary Society of Potioneeers. I said no, because as far as I was aware, it was just coincidence, as 'Granger' is not an entirely uncommon name. I thought there was a chance it was possible, of course, that maybe some distant relation to the Dagworth family was where my magic had come from. But if my . . . my guardians kept close to the Wizarding world, then I suppose it made sense that at some point there was intermarrying. Draco was right, this conversation is all over the place. How was educating Muggle-borns about their magic supposed to be handled and why did my father think pure-bloods shouldn't be involved if not for the notion of Muggle-borns being beneath them?"
Lucius sighed. He should've just dragged her down to the archives, thrown her at the books, and let her suss this all out for herself. "He believed that given their backgrounds as part of the Muggle world, the very way they related to magic was different than that of pure-bloods, and so pure-bloods would not be able to teach them adequately given their lack of understanding. But, as with any child born possessed of magic, it was still necessary to teach them. Still the responsibility of the Wizarding world to do so. Half-bloods were deemed the ideal candidates for such positions, because they were of both worlds."
Hermione felt disconnected from the moment as she listened. That made sense, actually. It was still a hair elitist, but it was completely logical. Even in modern Muggle schooling, it was considered ideal to have students taught by mentors who could understand the world in which they lived—not only were the students more likely to listen, but the teacher was more likely to construct their lessons in a way that accommodated their particular needs.
"We keep saying it, but . . . it's true. My father was two different men. There was the Salazar Slytherin who actually cared and was sensible, and then this Salazar Slytherin who was so hard in his views that how history sees him has never been questioned. I can't abide that second man, but I also can't pretend the first didn't exist now that I've gotten some of my memories of him back."
"You need to take time with this, Miss Granger," Narcissa said, her voice low and gentle. "You've been made to absorb a lot of information over this last day, alone—information at odds with much of your long-held beliefs. There is no hurry, here. That is why Lucius suggested you not look at the archives, yourself, until tomorrow, but if you wish to go there now, I'll gladly take you—"
"No, Mrs. Malfoy, you're right. I appreciate the offer, but I do seem to be trying to soak in everything at once and it's just too much. I should be going slower with this, or at least at a rate that doesn't make me feel like my brain might combust at any moment."
"I suppose this goes without saying," the elder witch went on, "but you are welcome to use of the Hollyhock Room while you conduct your research. I imagine that might be easier than traveling back and forth to your home."
Nodding, Hermione forced a smile. "That's very kind of you. These accounts in your family archives . . . could they be the proof I need about my father?"
"Unfortunately, none of it is so ironclad." Lucius shook his head. "They are personal accounts, and while normally that would likely be enough, in a matter as potentially volatile as proving Salazar Slytherin not a demon and Godric Gryffindor not a saint, I'm afraid they would not be considered evidence enough. We are going to need something more solid to act as support of what we have in our archives before coming forward with even a word of this. Also, I am troublingly certain that were we to make any of what you've learned known to anyone in the Ministry before we have that solid proof, your life might be in danger."
"You really think—"
"What I think is that Godric Gryffindor was not a man to be trusted. His most staunch follower in our time, Albus Dumbledore, was not a man to be trusted beyond what he needed to do to accomplish what he saw as right. I think there are those who would consider killing one witch—even war hero such as yourself—a small price to pay for protecting Gryffindor's legacy."
She pushed aside her plate and braced her elbows on the table, letting her face drop into her hands. Her brain was definitely ready to burst into flames, even as a chill curled along her spine.
"Seems like I came back just in time." Thorfinn rounded the table and uncapped the whiskey bottle, pouring a generous helping into his betrothed's empty wine glass. "Anyone else?"
All three Malfoys nodded, polishing off their wine and setting their glasses back down for Rowle to fill.
