Snape sat next to his sister as she breathed steadily in sleep, her wounds healing before his eyes. His temper flared, for he recognized the wounds and knew who did this. Each Death Eater had a distinctive way of "marking," so to speak, and these were the marks of Narcessa Malfoy. If it had been anyone else, Janelle would have been dead… as Snape was sure Narcessa assumed her to be. Anyone else would have made SURE.
She was going to pay for this.
~*~
Ginny and Jeremy sat in the Common Room at 3 in the morning the next week, staring at each other across the rug.
"Do you think this will work?" Jeremy asked softly, watching her.
She smiled. "It has to, Jeremy. This is essential. We HAVE to make it work. Now, are you ready?"
"Yeah," he said, scooting over to sit next to her and bending his head at the same time he raised his wand, reading from "Charms of Myth and Legend."
He and Ginny started to read together before splitting off and speaking in echoes. Their wands began to glow and an orange light streamed out of Ginny's wand to pool into a gem. ~It's working, ~ she thought in excitement as she allowed her voice to fade out and Jeremy's to take over, coiling his reddish gold molten metal from his wand around the gem in a type of snail pattern. They said the last verse together and sealed the spell. The now completed necklace settled to the rug.
Jeremy tentatively touched it. "Go ahead, it's cool," he said, looking up at her anxious face. She took it in her hands and watched it begin to glow. She smiled.
"It worked!"
Ginny grinned at Jeremy as he clasped the necklace and they heard it fuse.
"The Light. The prophecy pieces are in place."
~*~
The Death Eaters Elite stood in the 6th Year Slytherin Girls' bathroom, eyeing each other with apprehensive glances as Lavender Brown dropped a braided lock of hair into her modified Polyjuice Potion. Since the braid contained both Hermione and Persephone Lupin's hair, the person looking at her would see what they wanted to see. She stirred it, then took a small dipperful and downed it. She shifted to become what the girls saw as Sephie Lupin.
"Ready?" asked Loretta DeVine quietly.
"Yup!" Lavender bounced in Sephie's voice. Lavender's grimace overtook Sephie's face.
"Ugh! I can't believe I have to be this bitch."
Sahie, Loretta, Pansy, and Dariene all wished her luck as she swirled an Invisibility Cloak about her shoulders and disappeared.
~*~
"Oliver?"
Oliver Wood turned to see Sephie Lupin watching him. Her hair was down, making her look like Hermione, but it was she all the same. (A/N ^_^;)
"Yes, Sephie?" he asked quietly.
"I was thinking…" When she heard the footsteps of Ron Weasley, "Sephie" leaned forward and caught Oliver's face, kissing him.
Ron rounded the corner and saw… thought he saw… his girlfriend busily snogging Oliver Wood.
"Oh my God," he hissed.
"Hermione" turned around, and gasped. "R-ron… It's not what it…"
He spun on his heel and walked away.
~*~
Lavender quickly excused herself from Oliver, quoting Sephie and saying she was going to straighten things out with Ron, that it was a big misunderstanding. She let the Potion wear off and went running to head Ron off as herself. She knew the others were working to put everyone in the right places.
"Hi, Ron," she purred, bumping 'seductively' against him in the hall. Ron saw Hermione… the real one… coming toward him and his jealousy flared. He snagged Lavender by the arms and kissed her. Lavender kissed him back with a smile, only breaking away when a shattering of glass accompanied with the splattering of ink signaled that Hermione had seen them.
"Ron?! LAVENDER?! Oh, my GOD…." She was shaking with hurt and rage.
Ron was equally pissed. "And why not? You can go off and snog other people and I can't?!"
"I've NEVER snogged anyone else, Ronald Arthur Weasley!"
"I beg to differ, Hermione Kaitlin Lupin! I SAW you!"
"You're WRONG!"
"I'M NOT WRONG! I SAW YOU! I JUST SAW YOU!"
"YOU DIDN'T!! I WAS JUST IN THE LIBRARY, RON!"
"DON'T LIE TO ME! YOU WERE JUST SNOGGING IN THE HALLWAY!"
Hermione's eyes flared. "I don't know why YOU'RE lying, but you are, Ron!"
Lavender laughed once behind Ron, and Hermione's outraged attention turned to her.
She didn't say anything, and yet Lavender was lifted into the air, screaming.
Those who were drawn by the screaming of the two miscommunicating lovers watched with wide eyes as Hermione threw Lavender over towards the window without saying a word.
"PUT ME DOWN, YOU PSYCHOTIC BITCH!" Lavender screamed hysterically as her head almost scraped the ceiling. She noticed with panic that Hermione's eyes had no pupils and were now entirely blue irises.
She changed her tune quickly when she was hovering 500 feet above the Quidditch pitch.
"NO, NO, DON'T DROP ME! PLEASE!"
Hermione stood there, uncertain. Although her rage had taken her over, she knew that to drop Lavender, bitch though she was, would be wrong.
McGonagall and Snape came running up. Snape signaled Minerva to be ready with Windgardium Leviosa, then shouted at the top of his lungs, "HERMIONE LUPIN!"
She turned her furious concentration upon the suspecting Potions Master, leaving Lavender to begin her descent and Minerva to scramble to her aid. Hermione flung her hand outward and snarled, " Tolares faxcilisitos!"
A large outpouring of blue fire resembling a wolf Patronus came flying from Hermione's hand and struck Snape so hard that he flew backwards a good 15 feet and smacked with a audible *thwack!* against the wall to slide to the bottom. Hermione's eyes rolled back in her head as dozens of cuts and bruises blossomed on her body, and she fainted dead away into a startled Ron's arms.
To the others, the scene was startling, to say the least. An enraged Hermione was bleeding to death in front of them, and Professor Snape, who should have been dead after hitting the wall that hard, had already sprung to his feet.
"Hurry, Weasley, carry her upstairs!" barked Snape. Ron simply stared at Hermione's pale face as her robes became sticky with blood.
"Damn it, Weasley, do you want her to die?!" Snape finally yelled, shocking most of the students there.. including Ron. He shocked him enough to get him moving, scooping Hermione fully into his arms and running towards the staircase.
"What's going on, Professor?" Ron asked as Snape ran next to him.
"That, Weasley, was a display of what those girls could do if the Dark Lord ever turned them," Snape said grimly as they burst into the Hospital Wing.
"Poppy! Hurry, this is an emergency!"
Madam Pomfrey came running, and her eyes widened as she saw the limp form of the unconscious girl . "The Tolares curse," she murmured. She looked at Snape.
"At you?"
"Luckily," Snape nodded, sitting next to Hermione's new bed as Ron placed her on it. Snape bared his arm to the elbow, displaying a Dark Mark glowing in blue. Poppy took out an odd looking syringe and placed the tube protruding from it above the Mark. She then pulled the syringe up, extracting a misty blue substance. Once done, she placed the syringe quickly yet precisely into Hermione's arm and injected her magic… for that's what it was… into her body again. Slowly, her wounds began to close back up. Her eyes fluttered open… and, Snape was relieved to see, now normal.
"Lupin?" Snape asked quickly. "Do you remember what happened?"
Hermione looked blank for a second… then, upon seeing Ron, burst into tears.
"Out, out, OUT!" Pomfrey ordered Ron, shoving him out of the room. He stood there for a moment, very confused. Then he did something he had never done of his own free will before… he strode purposefully toward the library.
~*~
Ron found the curse in the book, "Curses of the 1970's" and read quickly,
"The curse Tolares faxcilisitos was a popular one back in this era, during the terrifying times of You-Know-Who. It basically took every ounce of wizarding ability from a person and threw it to someone else. Mostly it was used when Death Eaters were dying. They threw the entirety of their wizarding power into another Death Eater, making him (or her) even stronger, while the loss of their magic often resulted in the donor's death. Any wounds that have been healed with magic will reopen, causing almost instant death in older wizards who have lived in the wizarding world all their lives. Then, the Death Eaters began to force Imperio upon Light wizards and make them transfer their energy to the aforementioned Death Eater. Because of this development, Light MediWizards discovered that a Death Eater would store the energy visibly in their Dark Mark. A special sort of syringe was developed to take the magic back and restore it to the Light wizard before it was too late."
Suddenly he heard a door slam behind him. Madam Pince hollered, "Miss Weasley, that is uncalled for conduct! This is a LIBRARY!"
Ron's sister ignored her and strode toward her brother. "I don't know what you're playing at, Ron, but you'd better stop."
"Me?! I SAW Hermione making out with," here his voice dropped out to a whisper, "OLIVER WOOD!"
Ginny rolled her eyes. "Unless you're on delayed reaction… which, with YOUR temper, is impossible… you're wrong. The five of us were outside with Professor McGonagall."
Ron's eyes widened. "Oh, bloody hell. You mean that…."
"That you jumped to conclusions?"
"No, no. Someone Polyjuiced 'Mione! I would lay a bet that if you asked Oliver under Verataserum, he'd tell you he kissed ONE of them this afternoon."
"Shit."
"My sentiments exactly, little siste- what's that?" Ron asked, pointing to the necklace around Ginny's neck.
She smiled. "A gift from Jeremy." Then she gave Ron a stern look. "You better go apologize to Hermione before she cries herself sick!"
Ron gave a startled sort of yelp and took off running, ignoring the shout of, "MR. Weasley, this is a library!"