Chapter Eleven

Hermione wasn't sure what to say, or even how she felt, seeing her sister's ghost before her. They only stared at each other for a few heartbeats, making her certain Helena was just as unsure of the situation as she was.

The Grey Lady's eyes—as translucent as the rest of her in the afternoon light streaming through the nearby window—at last moved from the living, breathing, witch's eyes to sweep over her, head to toe. Her jaw fell open and while Hermione knew ghosts didn't breathe, not really, a startled breath escaped Helena's lips all the same.

"I . . . I don't understand. How . . . how are you here? So much time . . . ." Helena drifted backward a bit as she went from speaking to Hermione, directly, to muttering to herself.

Hermione's heart wrenched in the chest to see the poor ghost so confused. For a few chilling seconds, she wondered if the centuries of guilt and fear and her tragic, untimely death had driven the specter of Helena Ravenclaw slightly mad.

"After—" Hermione wet her suddenly parched lips with the tip of her tongue and tried again, her gaze never once leaving the distraught, gossamer face of her sister. "After your murder, mother, well, you already know, I think, Mother succumbed to her illness, right?" Hermione honestly had no idea how much of their family history Helena knew of after her own death. It was just another thing that hadn't stirred her interest enough to ask Harry about, even after he'd confided in her and Ron that he'd sought out Helena Ravenclaw to find Rowena's diadem.

Oh, the diadem! A family heirloom she hadn't even known of until now, after it had been defiled by Tom Riddle and then destroyed by Harry. She didn't blame Harry for destroying it, but she very much blamed Tom Riddle—that snake-faced bastard, Voldemort—for desecrating her mother's diadem in the first place. If not for that, Harry wouldn't have had to destroy it. Mother's diadem, father's locket—her locket, Sabina's locket!—Uncle Godric's sword, Auntie Helga's cup. She wondered if they'd known one day their rivalry and the twisted covering of the truth would give rise to a creature like Voldemort, would that have changed anything?

It was all a moot point now, but still, Hermione understood that her lack of curiosity about what Harry and Helena had discussed during the Battle of Hogwarts was just another example of how powerful the magic deterring her from finding out who she truly was had been. It hadn't even occurred to her to wonder why she, lover of history that she was, couldn't bring herself to care about anything connected to Ravenclaw.

She'd not even felt appropriately insulted that someone as clever as she hadn't been sorted into Ravenclaw!

Oh, it was infuriating. But she had not realized she'd lapsed into silence as she stared at her sister, mulling all this over in her head. And noticing belatedly that she'd not only thought of Helga Hufflepuff as Auntie Helga, but that she'd—once again—thought of that traitorous man Godric Gryffindor as 'Uncle.' There was still so much to this story that she didn't know.

But she could hardly say she was surprised when her sister misinterpreted the reason behind her silence.

Helena folded her lips inward, nodding sharply before she managed to speak. "Is that what this is then, hmm? However it is you are here, you have come to gloat that you finally had our mother to yourself before she died?"

Hermione let out a short, harsh breath, covering her heart with her hand. As though she was once again that child longing to best her sister even as she desired said sister's love and attention, Helena's acidic words cut through her. But instead of the anger she might've felt when she'd been that child, now Hermione only felt a lonely, miserable ache in the center of her chest. "What? No, Helena, please. Nothing of the sort! I promise you! I was only quiet because I was thinking over how angry I am about what's happened to me!"

There was a suspicious glimmer in the ghost's eyes and her lips trembled a little. "Oh, of course. Pardon me as I sit and listen to another ode from the world according to Sabina Slytherin! Even coming to see me after I thought you dead for so long, and it is still all about you, is it not?!"

"No, no! It's not—"

"I know I was wrong, but I did not deserve to be murdered. I died as a result of our mother sending after me the one person in the world who could find me because he was a love-obsessed lunatic. He was an awful creature who refused to take no for an answer, and all you can think of is you? Honestly? I see a grown woman before me, yet what I hear are the words of a child!"

Hermione uttered a little growling rumble under her breath, that ache of misery dulled for a moment by a sudden rush of irritation. "I was only remembering when my friend Harry came to you about Mother's diadem, and then I thought how terrible it was that Harry had to destroy it, but he'd never have had to do that if Tom Riddle hadn't stolen it and dirtied it up in the first place, and there's no un-Horcrux'ing something, so there was nothing to be done for it after that. I don't blame you for stealing Mother's diadem—you were hurt and angry and acted rashly, but we all make mistakes, and it's okay! I'm angry now and you are not any single one of the reasons for my anger. Tom fucking Riddle, the same bastard who tricked you into telling him where the diadem was hidden stole my Basilisk! My Basilisk! Just took him and used him and then he was dead before I could even remember him! And my whole life was taken away! My sister, my mother, my father, my pet! Everything! A thousand years passed and I was kept unaware, blind to who I am so I could be carved into a weapon for someone else's use."

Hermione's lips quivered and she forced a gulp down her throat, forcing herself to go on in a shaky voice. "All I wanted was something familiar! I wanted to come here and see you and tell you things and just hear your voice again and I'm sorry I was always so miserable to you, but you were miserable to me, too, and I want to bring Tom Riddle back from the dead so I can kick him right in the bollocks for taking things he had no right to! I want to spit on the grave of a man I once held in highest esteem for stealing who I am from me!" She finished with another stamp of her heel, eyes watering, her hands balled into trembling fists at her sides and the ends of her wild hair literally sparking with her anger and frustration and sadness.

Thorfinn-as-Draco blinked, his wide-eyed gaze moving from one sister to the other, and back as Hermione caught her breath in shivering little gulps of air. He had no idea what to do about the sisterly fight breaking out. He was vaguely surprised that even in her tirade, she'd been mindful not to speak Dumbledore's name. No matter what other whispered or distant words might be glossed over by the other ghosts or any portraits near enough to overhear, the mention of prized Gryffindor student Hermione Granger wanting to go spit on his grave would've brought them trouble, for certain.

Helena shook her head, her gaze again moving over Hermione. "A thousand years?" Her voice was pitched low, barely a thread of sound against the air of the castle as she shook her head. Out of everything her sister had said, that was the thing that truly stood out to her—what a dreadful stretch of centuries she'd been alone. "Has it really be so long?"

Swallowing hard, Hermione nodded. Somehow, she forced herself to speak around the lump forming in her throat. "Yes. After . . . after mother passed, my father put me under a special stasis charm to protect me from her illness, hoping I'd outlast the curse. That's how I'm here now. I don't remember much, but it's coming back to me slowly. Once I remembered you, I knew I had to come see you."

"For what purpose?" Helena's voice had lost its venom, replaced her boundless loneliness and simple, inescapable curiosity.

A mirthless smile played on Hermione's lips a moment and she didn't bother to wipe at the tear that broke free of her lashes. "You're my sister. I missed you."

Helena sniffled, darting her gaze toward the ceiling as she waved a dismissive hand. "Rubbish."

"It's true. I even told Mother. After . . . ." Hermione drew in a deep, shivering breath and continued. "After she summoned the Baron to go find you, I told her that I sometimes hated you, but I missed you. I was worried for you. She didn't want to send him, but she didn't know what else to do! She was desperate to have one last moment with you before she died."

If Thorfinn had any question about whether or not ghosts could shed tears, they were answered as shimmering, cloudy droplets fell from Helena's cheeks, hitting the floor to splash up noiselessly and vanish into a puff of misty air.

"Why? Why would she have wanted me when she still had you?"

Hermione thought she understood, now. Her throat tight with tears as she looked at her sister, she knew—at least she hoped she knew—that Helena was stuck here, trapped as the Grey Lady, Ghost of Ravenclaw Tower because of this. Because she was so tormented by the thought of their mother dying in despair over Helena's betrayal, unable to forgive her elder daughter even upon her death bed.

That even Helena's own murder had not been something to bring peace between them.

"It was never a question of you or me for her! She was our mother, and she was a wonderful mother!" Hermione still only had those fragments of memory she'd recalled in her sleep to fall back on about their mother's demeanor toward her daughters, but it had been enough. Those fragments filled her with such a mix of joy and pain that she knew Rowena Ravenclaw had been amazing to each of them, and that as strong as she'd tried to be for her father even at such a tender age, the loss of her mother had shattered Sabina as surely as it had crippled Salazar. "She loved us both. And my father doted on you, don't pretend he didn't!"

Helena set her jaw and rolled her eyes but couldn't work up a denial to that assertion. She could grudgingly admit to herself that yes, Salazar had tried to include her as part of his family, had tried to make her feel like she could be his daughter, but she'd been too stubborn, to angry at her own lost father who'd never been particularly loving to allow such kindness into her heart. She could admit it to herself, but she certainly would not admit it aloud.

"I wanted to see you, because I missed you," Hermione repeated, nodding as she forced a sniffle of her own. "But I needed to see you to tell you . . . while mother was afraid that you would never forgive her for sending the Baron for you, she forgave you."

A strangled sob escaped Helena's lips and she clasped her hands before her, seeming not to know what to do with herself. "She did?"

Hermione felt the press of Thorfinn-Draco's hand on the small of her back, steadying her—she hadn't realized until his touch that she'd been sagging a bit, folding in on herself, and she immediately straightened up. She'd almost forgotten it wasn't only her and Helena here just now.

"Yes," the living witch said in a hushed tumble of sound. "For everything. For leaving us, for stealing the diadem. . . . For thinking she didn't love you. Mother loved you so much, her heart broke for trying to hold it all, and she forgave you."

Helena's legs went out from under her and she gracelessly hit the floor, appearing to gasp for air as she pressed her clasped hands over her heart. "She did?" she said again, her disbelief rending her unaware that she was echoing her own question from only a handful of heartbeats earlier. This was breathtakingly wonderful. A weight off—as though she'd been wandering about with a stone tied 'round her neck, wearing it so long she'd not noticed the burden of its weight until it had been removed.

She knew she'd longed for her mother's forgiveness, but she'd never expected to receive it.

Never expected to see Sabina again. That, too, was a weight off she had not realized she'd carried with her all this time.

Hermione settled on the cold stone floor before her sister, looking into the ghost's melancholy face. There was no escaping the notice that Helena's eyes had brightened with her relief, a light filling the misty slate gaze that had not been there before. "Yes. And I forgive you, too."

Letting out a scoffing sound, Helena gathered herself enough to wipe at her cheeks with the back of her hand. "Oh? And what, precisely do you have to forgive me for?"

A smirk curved Hermione's lips. "Isn't it obvious? For always being such a wretch!"

Helena burst out in laughter, the sound like the chime of bells ringing through the stone corridor and bouncing lightly back down from the high, vaulted ceiling. "As if you were not one, yourself?"

Thorfinn relaxed a bit now that he was sure the Grey Lady wasn't going to try to any . . . . nefarious ghostly things to kill them, curse or possess them. Not that he was certain the first two options were possible, but he was sure the third was a doozy, and he wasn't looking to test any of them. At his sigh, Helena looked up, seeming to notice him for the first time.

Her mouth turned upward in a sneer as stared at him a moment, and he jumped a little to find the specter's attention on him. Turning her gave back to her sister, she said in a conspiratorial whisper, "Dear Lord. Are you really being accompanied about by a Malfoy?"

Hermione's brows shot up and she failed at an attempt to hold back a laugh. Thorfinn, for his part, slipped that flask free and took an unhappy swig, clearly wishing the container held something other than Polyjuice potion. She supposed the distinctive Malfoy colouring—which was basically hardly any, at all—really was a strong familial trait if Helena could recognize a grey-eyed platinum blond pure-blood wizard on-sight as being a Malfoy.

"Well, I suppose that is sort of what this looks like, yes."

Helena's features pulled into a calculating look that actually brought to light the Ravenclaw family resemblance a moment in that Thorfinn could finally see how the sisters looked alike. "Sort of? What do you mean 'sort of'? Oh, Circe, tell me that is not your husband!"

Hermione and Thorfinn-Draco both erupted into laughter then, and Helena looked quite taken aback to hear a booming chuckle tear out of Draco Malfoy's slender throat.

"I demand to know what is so very funny," the disgruntled spirit said with a frown. "You are of marrying age, and your betrothed was left back with the rest of the family, was he not?"

Thorfinn winced, and Hermione was a little startled to realize that she was mirroring his expression. Nodding, she patted what would be her sister's knee—making a gesture in which she aimed for the air just above, so that she did not embarrassingly fumble and slap her hand against the ground, instead. "Oh, oh, Helena, there's so much I have to tell you! Wait."

Helena eyed her sister as this grown woman Sabina who sat before her leaned near and waved her close. She inclined her body and tipped her head toward the living witch, curious in spite of herself.

Hermione cupped her hand against her sister's ephemeral ear and spoke in a murmur, "Can you keep a secret?"

The ghost snapped backward a bit, visibly affronted that Sabina had to ask! Helena was the one who'd taught her the importance of keeping something to oneself, after all! "I beg your pardon? Who was the one who did not tell that useless barbarian boy of yours that you were the one who hid his sword the day of his father's hunt? Remember how much trouble he got into with the Jarl for that? And I did not make a peep!"

Hermione's eyes went wide and she clamped her hands over her mouth at the same time as the visage of Draco Malfoy went wide-eyed and Thorfinn Rowle's voice tore from his throat as he bellowed, "What?!"

Cringing, Hermione let her fingers slip from her lips as she met Thorfinn-Draco's hilariously angry gaze—of course, she was not about to let on to Thorfinn that him so very irate-looking whilst in Draco's body was quite the amusing sight to behold. "Okay, so there are some things I still haven't remembered, just yet."

Shaking his head, he huffed out a breath and folded his arms across his chest. Pivoting on his heel, he put his back to the sisters, giving them some semblance of privacy.

"Touchy your Malfoy, hmm?" Helena said in a low voice as she once more leaned close to her sister. "Now, what is all this 'so much' you have to tell me?' Spare no details!"

Hermione smiled, wide and genuine, her heart warmed so deeply at being able to help her sister put a literal millennium of hurt feelings and wounded pride behind her that she wasn't sure there were words to do the light, blissful sensation justice.

"Spoken like the witch who taught me the importance of secrets and gossip."

Instead, she focused on filling Helena in on everything that had happened to her, everything that she'd learned in the past few days, alone. There was hope that Helena could fill in some blanks, certainly, about this strange, strained love-hate dynamic between her father and Godric Gryffindor, but now as she began her tale, starting from the moment Voldemort had fallen in battle—with her sister reacting to it all just as Hermione imagined she'd have done, herself—she knew.

Hermione knew that this reunion neither of them should've been able to hope for was important for a reason all its own that had nothing to do with a bitter and ugly hidden history.


Some hours later, Hermione and the form of Draco Malfoy left the castle. She'd not learned much more of her past than she'd already known since Helena had her own life to deal with at the time, and had been caught up with schooling and suitors she actually desired—known of whom were the Baron, of course—which meant she had not paid much attention to the goings-on of the adults around her. She had mentioned, however, that she had the feeling that the motivation behind Godric and Salazar's friendship souring might've been something more, yet something pettier, than their disagreements over the running of Hogwarts. Something woefully less important in the grand scheme of things than an initiative to change the how Wizarding Britain was governed, yet still powerful enough to have ultimately cost their mother's life.

Smaller, yet bigger at the same time? Hermione had no idea what that could be. Perhaps those archived journals of the Malfoy ancestors could shed more light, especially now that she had an idea what to look for. They might also, she hoped, give an indication as to where some hard evidence of Godric's betrayal of her parents might still exist.

The true bright point of her visit, however, had been realizing that her words of their mother's forgiveness had indeed released her sister from her torment and imprisonment. She lingered, still, at the castle in her tower, because she was a Ravenclaw in the truest meaning of the name; she was clever enough to understand that anyone who might be wandering about with the knowledge of her sister's continued existence could connect Sabina's visit to Hogwarts with the timing of the Grey Lady suddenly vanishing from her tower. After waiting a thousand years for another petty yet treasured sibling squabble, she was not about to do anything to endanger her little sister.

She would pay attention to the castle, she would listen to its inhabitants, and when she knew her absence would bring no trouble, she would find Sabina for one last visit and then she would let herself go.

Hermione's throat hurt a bit and her eyes stung, as she and the potion-masked Thorfinn walked away, to think that the next time she saw her sister would be the last, but then Helena had been trapped long enough. She would not contribute to keeping her chained to the world of the living any longer than Helena was willing to stay.

As they stepped out of the station at King's Cross, night was falling. Hermione found herself looking in the direction of The Leaky Cauldron.

Ever mindful of his voice not matching his current form, Thorfinn kept his words to a murmur over her shoulder as he asked, "What's going through that exceedingly and troublesomely clever head of yours?"

Lowering her gaze to the pavement, she shuffled one foot against the ground. "Well, actually, I was just considering that if . . . ." She cleared her throat and gave it another go. "If we weren't in someone else's home tonight, we could give . . . you know, slow, spoiled, and handsy a try."

She didn't have to turn her attention to him to know that behind Draco Malfoy's grey eyes, she was getting a dirty look that was all Thorfinn Rowle. "I'm sorry, I thought we covered this problem back at the castle." He pulled himself up to his full height—which was comparatively far less impressive than normal given current circumstances—and folded his arms across his chest. "Unless you want me to start getting very concerned over your budding friendship with Little Malfoy very quickly."

Now she did turn to look at him and the moment their gazes met, she granted him an exasperated roll of her eyes. "Um, no. What I was thinking was that behind closed doors, away from the public eye, you could let the potion wear off, and then take it again in the morning just before we leave."

His brows pinched together as he said, "Oh." After a moment, though, his jaw fell open and he traded the simple version of the word for a drawn out, "Ohhhhhh."

She laughed, shaking her head at him. "Feeling better about the suggestion now, my useless barbarian boy?"

"Much." He swept his hand out before her. "After you, my betrothed."


The last thing Hermione and fake-Draco expected as they crossed the threshold of Malfoy Manor late the following morning was the very furious, very real Draco Malfoy to come storming through the main hall of the grand house toward them. He was waving a missive angrily as he neared them, his grey eyes absolutely sparking.

"What did you two do?!" he demanded when he reached them.

"Um . . . ." Hermione turned on her heel so she could look from one Draco to the other, and back. Huh. To think, for those five minutes during their school years when she'd actually thought Draco Malfoy attractive, this might've been a dream come true. "You'll have to be more specific, I'm afraid."

The real Draco gestured toward the letter in his hand. "This. My friend Theo—you remember him, Granger, yeah?—has been staying at the Leaky Cauldron since he sort of lost his family home when his father was thrown in Azkaban. And do you know what delightful message I woke up to this morning courtesy of a very grumpy and persistent owl?"

She winced, giving a half-shrug. She didn't recall seeing Theodore Nott when they'd gone to get their room, but then she'd only been paying attention for signs of the potion wearing off before they got behind closed doors. "Well, I, uh, I would imagine—"

"Draco," the irate wizard began reading aloud, "I know you won't get this until you get back home, but I didn't want to interrupt anything. Seriously, mate, you and Granger? Thought they'd be ice skating in Hell before that happened. I may not approve, but from what could be overheard, let me just say well done!"

He crumbled the letter into a ball between his palms and tossed it at Thorfinn. "Are you two shitting me?!"

Hermione clasped her hands in front of her, unable to meet her former classmate's angry eyes. "If, um, if it helps, we waited until the potion wore off last night before getting up to anything."

"If it helps?" Draco's voice actually cracked with the weight of his indignation and disbelief.

The witch before him backpedaled a step, ducking behind the impostor-Draco. And, for his part, said impostor clapped Draco on the arm and said, "That might not help, sure, but if it's any consolation, since we clearly were overheard, then by now half of Wizarding Britain is probably gossiping about you being some sort of sex god."

"Wha—?" Draco buried his face in his hands and groaned. His duplicate and Hermione Granger—of all bloody people for 'half of Wizarding Britain' to believe he'd spent the night with—used his moment of taking his eyes off them to slip away, somewhere into the expansive recesses of Malfoy Manor.