Chapter Twenty Four
"I'm telling you," Ron hissed in a hushed tone, glancing around for any sign of Madame Pince, "she's up to something!"
Hermione rolled her warm brown eyes and folded her arms, laying down her open book onto a low table.
"Will you give it up?" she replied exasperatedly. "She's not up to anything, as you put it."
"Well, you're the one who saw her knocking back that potion," Ron said darkly.
"It was probably just something for a headache," Hermione countered, plopping down into an armchair in the deserted library.
"Why on earth would Snape give her something for a headache?" he asked in disbelieving tones. "You said it was his handwriting on the label, didn't you?"
Hermione frowned at the gangling red-head. "Yes, but that doesn't mean it's anything suspicious!"
Ron snorted. "It's Snape isn't it? That's suspicious enough for me!"
"Oh for God's sakes Ron," Hermione replied, her voice brittle with irritation. "How many times have you suspected Snape of something, and then he turns out to be perfectly innocent?"
"Innocent, my arse," Ron muttered incoherently into his hand.
"What was that?" the annoyed girl asked pointedly.
"Nothing," Ron replied tonelessly.
"And if she was 'up to something' then Professor Lupin would be onto her. That's why he's back after all: To look out for Harry."
"Maybe she's just really hiding it really well," he answered, shrugging.
"You're being silly," she told him rationally, "She's Dumbledore's god daughter for Merlin's sakes."
"And what does that prove?" asked Ron scornfully. "Sirius is Harry's godfather yet everyone thought he was trying to kill Harry."
"Yes! And they were all wrong weren't they!" she replied tersely, shutting her book with a loud snap. "Just like you are now!"
"All right," Ron replied undeterred. "What about that nutter Barty Crouch? Look who his father was, yet he was still an absolute head-case!"
Hermione shook her head in disbelief, two flags of angry red colouring her cheeks.
"I cannot believe you sometimes," she said angrily. "You have absolutely no reason to suspect Eleanora of anything, and yet you're acting like she's been trying to assassinate Harry or something equally ludicrous!
"Where was she that night last week then?" Ron shot back immediately, his voice jarringly loud in the silent library. "She bolted out of the common room without telling any of us where she was going, didn't get back 'till after curfew, clutching a broken wrist, and still wouldn't tell us where she'd been!"
"Is it really any of your business?" Hermione asked. "Maybe she just needed some time on her own or perhaps she was meeting somebody!"
"Yeah – like Volde….."
"Ron!" hissed Hermione fiercely. "You're just being ridiculous now!"
The boy forward in his chair, a challenging look etched on his face. "Fine, whatever you say 'Mione. Then when she tries to push Harry off the Astronomy tower, we'll have you to blame!"
"Oh, just shut up, Ron!" Hermione shouted vehemently, ignoring the shocked look on the redheads face.
"You're just feeling redundant because Harry's getting all the attention again, so you think that you'll make yourself look good by accusing Eleanora of all kind of outlandish things!"
Ron's mouth gaped, as he stared in awe at the irate girl, who despite her petite stature, towered over him as he sat dumbly in his arm chair. Recovering himself, he stood up suddenly, forcing Hermione back down into her own chair as he leant over her, his face just inches from her own.
"So, you think it's perfectly innocent that she hasn't told us that she can do wandless magic? Is that just nothing to worry about too?"
Hermione blinked, and swatted Ron away, a frown furrowing her brow.
"Eleanora can't do wandless magic surely," she said quietly, more to herself than to Ron, who was now standing before her, a triumphant look upon her freckled face.
"Oh yes she can," he replied assertively, still smarting at his friends harsh words.
"But I've never seen her do anything out of the ordinary," she said, but the assured pitch of her voice was gone now, replaced by one of doubt and uncertainty.
"Yeah well, she'd hardly broadcast it around now would she?" Ron scoffed.
"How do you know?" she asked, regaining her dominant tone, her hands placed confrontationally upon her hips.
"Yesterday, after breakfast, I was coming down the staircase from our dormitory into the common room – I'd forgotten my gloves for herbology and was a few minutes late, and it was just Eleanora in there – nobody else. She didn't know I was there obviously, because she was just on her way out of the portrait hole when she must have realised that she had forgotten something too. She checked her watch, sort of looked around, probably to make sure nobody was in there, then held out her hand, and said "accio wand," and it came flying down the girl's staircase and into her hand."
He stopped for breath, a self-satisfied look in his eyes.
Hermione drew a hand over her mouth, her eyes narrowed in thought.
"Yesterday," she repeated contemplatively. "We had Numerology first thing. She was late, said that she'd forgotten her abacus."
"Well, it was her wand that she summoned," Ron emphasized.
"Well," Hermione pondered with a pensive laugh. "She could hardly say that she'd forgotten her wand could she? What witch would honestly forget her wand – that's the kind of thing that only Neville could do!"
"Unless of course, she doesn't need it," added Ron pointedly.
Hermione appeared lost in thought for she did not reply, and instead abruptly turned away, and walked hurriedly to a far shelf, and began quickly scanning the aged volumes, running her finger over the cracked leather of the spines, eliciting throaty sighs of satisfaction from some of the enchanted tomes. Selecting one, she pulled it carefully off the shelf, absently dispersing the cloud of dust it created with a wave of her hand. Chewing on her bottom lip in concentration, she flicked through the yellowed pages, finally stopping and silently reading, seemingly unaware of Ron peering curiously over her shoulder.
"Just as I thought," she muttered to herself, snapping the book closet abruptly, nearly catching Ron's nose in it.
"What?" he replied, as he flowed her back to the chairs, a look of extreme bafflement spreading over his face.
"Oh, nothing," Hermione replied airily, gathering up her books, and pulling on her working robes.
"You believe me then?" he called out, as the brunette was already halfway to the library doors, as he collected up his ragged assortment of parchments and quills.
"Yes," she replied lightly, as he ran to catch up with her, "about the wandless magic at least. But not about her wanting to kill off Harry – I still think that's a load of rubbish."
Ron frowned. "Alright; fair enough. But why not tell us about it then? Why should she keep it a secret? We're meant to be her friends after all."
Hermione stopped short, so that the long legged boy nearly tripped over her. Turning around she fixed him with a stare. "Yes, we are meant to be her friends, yet I distinctly remember that not five minutes ago you were practically accusing her of being in league with Voldemort!"
Ron reddened slightly and rubbed his nose embarrassedly. "Yeah, well. I still think there's something funny going on though."
Resuming her pace, Hermione made for the common room, negotiating the labyrinth-like corridors with a deep rooted sense of familiarity.
"So, are you going to tell me what was so interesting back there?" Ron pressed as they neared the portrait hole.
"Warbling cockatrice," Hermione enunciated clearly, standing back as the Fat Lady nodded approvingly at her and swung open, knocking Ron sideways.
"Oof!" he gasped, rubbing his side. The Fat Lady merely smiled smugly and slammed behind him, nearly catching his trailing ankle. A deep hostility had existed between Ron and the Fat Lady ever since he and Dean had accidentally let off a box of Filibuster's Indoor Fireworks in the corridor outside the common room. The large, fragile-tempered woman had spent the next hour or so attempting to stamp out an inordinate number of smouldering sparks from around her frame, and still bore a large scorch mark on the hem of her garish cerise dress.
"Go and get Harry and meet me up in your dormitory," instructed Hermione, as she ascended the stairs to her own room.
Ron stood for a moment, just watching the dainty girl until she disappeared into the darkness of the girl's corridor.
"Oi, Ron!" came a loud voice from the other side of the common room.
He whipped round, embarrassed to be caught mooning over Hermione.
"Pick your jaw up, mate!" Lee shouted, a wide grin spread across his face.
"And make sure you mop up that puddle you've just drooled all over our nice clean floor!" George added.
Ron scowled, made a crude hand gesture, then hurriedly climbed the stairs, two at a time to his dormitory, slamming the door behind him.
Harry was lying on his bed, absorbed in the latest copy of Quidditch Monthly.
"Alright, Harry," Ron greeted him.
A vague mutter was his reply, as Harry studied the rapidly moving diagrams on the page in concentration.
"Where's Eleanora?" he asked, as he flung his books down onto his own bed.
"Dunno," Harry said after a pause. "She was down in the common room about half an hour ago, and then she went out. Parvati said she saw her going down to the dungeons. God knows why."
Ron frowned, but had no time to ponder, as the door was flung open and Hermione strode in, clutching a pile of books and parchments.
"No need to knock or anything," said Harry sarcastically, sitting up and laying down his magazine.
"I thought not," replied Hermione briskly, ignoring his acerbic tone.
"Hey, I could have been naked in here!" he protested.
Hermione stared at him. "Whilst talking to Ron?" she asked, smirking. "
Harry reddened. "Well, no……..……I just meant that …….…..."
"Well, whatever you two get up to in your own time is none of my business!" she replied, a sly glint in her eye.
Ron punched Harry on the shoulder.
"Really smooth, Harry!" he hissed crossly.
Hermione had opened one of the books and was again quickly flicking through the desiccated pages.
"Right," she began, looking at Ron. You can start – tell him what you told me."
Ron stared at her blankly. "But I thought you said that it was all rubbish?"
"Just tell him," she repeated, her nose buried in another dusty volume.
"Tell me what?" asked Harry curiously, swinging his feet off the bed.
"Right," began Ron, throwing a sideways glance at Hermione's back. "We thought that -"
"Not 'we' Ron," she interjected over her shoulder. "Just you."
"OK, I thought that Eleanora might be, you know, up to something," he continued hesitantly, gauging Harry's reaction.
Harry looked at him blankly. "Something like what?" he asked.
Ron appealed to Hermione for help with a beseeching look.
"Ron thought that Eleanora was obviously harbouring some deep desire to do you in," Hermione explained candidly, her own smirk matching the one that lined Harry's face as he glanced back to Ron.
"Glad you're looking out for me mate, but come on – Eleanora? Not exactly threatening now is she? Well," he conceded with a grin, "not unless you're Peeves and she's in a really bad mood."
Ron blanched a little, even his vivid freckles fading in his recollection. Harry referred to when Peeves had rudely swooped into the fifth year girl's dormitory early on Sunday morning, a saucepan stolen from the kitchen perched at a jaunty angle atop his head, which he was noisily banging with a soup ladle. According to a faintly traumatised Parvati, Eleanora, having been abruptly roused from her slumber had sat bolt upright in bed, a thunderous expression on her sleep creased face, pointed a vague hand at the infuriating poltergeist, now in the middle of a rousing chorus of some particularly bawdy song, and all but knocked him straight through the stone wall with a violent blasting curse. The damage done, she sank back down onto the bed and was sound asleep by the time Filch and Professor Flitwick came running to remove the offending spectre from his uncomfortable position, irremovably wedged three feet within the wall. Lavender's distraught sobs could be heard echoing throughout the Gryffindor tower, as she vainly attempted to magically piece back together the ripped fragments of her poster boy, who had been the regrettable victim of the ricocheting remnants of Eleanora's curse.
He frowned, the colour slowly returning to his cheeks. "Exactly – that's my point. It's always the person you least suspect." He paused and fleetingly glanced at Hermione. "Like when it turned out to be Quirrell who was bent on topping you off and we all thought it was the Greasy Git."
"Why did you think that she was trying to do me in anyway?" Harry asked, puzzled.
Ron paused. The evidence that had seemed so damning in the confines of his own mind not half an hour ago suddenly seemed rather flimsy and unconvincing.
"Well, she was drinking a potion that Snape had given her. That seemed sort of odd."
Harry seemed unimpressed. "OK, that means that she's either stupid or has a sure death-wish for trusting anything that he's given her but it doesn't instantly strike me as a particularly murderous activity." He grinned as Ron continued lamely.
"And she disappeared that night last week and came back ages after curfew with a broken wrist. You can't tell me that's not suspicious."
Harry frowned. "Yeah, that was a little odd. She never told us where she was did she?"
Ron shook his head vehemently. "Exactly – she could have been anywhere."
Hardly 'anywhere" Ron," Hermione cut in. "Anywhere in the school grounds."
"She could have apparated," replied Ron.
Harry groaned and fell back onto the bed, as Hermione whipped around, fixing Ron with a disproving look.
"How many times do I have to tell you?" she asked exasperatedly. "You cannot apparate or disapperate inside the school boundaries."
Harry quickly changed the subject, sensing a storm brewing between the two friends.
"So, she disappeared one night and she trusts Snape. Hardly makes her my arch enemy, does it?"
"She can do wandless magic," added Ron conclusively, glancing at the door to make sure it was closed.
Harry's vivid green eyes widened in disbelief.
"Are you serious?" he asked incredulously.
"Yeah, I saw her yesterday. She summoned her wand from the dormitory." replied Ron, scratching his flame red head.
"Why didn't she tell us?" Harry asked. "That's one bloody cool ability!"
Hermione broke her silence, as she dumped the heavy volume down onto Harry's bed, narrowly missing his bare feet.
"This is why she didn't, or couldn't tell us!" she said confidently, pointing at a antiquated drawing of a young man in a flowing white robe, holding two wands, one in each outstretched hand, as he gazed reverently up into the night sky. As they observed with interest, sparks issued forth from the tip of each wand, creating a shimmering arc around the statuesque youth, who seemed to glow with some sort of innate power.
"Cool," breathed Ron, his eyes alight with awe. Then, in a puzzled tone, "what's he doing?"
Hermione moved her finger to point at the ornately decorated intertwining script of the words, "The Unspeakable."
"Unspeakables," muttered Harry. "That rings a bell."
"It should do," asserted Hermione in censorious tones. "Professor Binns set us an essay on the myth of the Unspeakable last year."
"Yeah, I remember," exclaimed Ron indignantly. "No one knows what it is they do, yet Binn's still only gave me three out of ten!"
"That's the whole point: No one is meant to know what they do," continued Hermione, tracing a finger down the page.
"The only thing that we know for certain is that an Unspeakable possesses abilities for wandless magic, and -"
"Why does he have two wands then, if he doesn't need either of them?" asked Ron, jabbing his finger at the faded picture, now unmoving.
"Even if you can perform wandless magic, you still carry a wand, Ron," reminded Hermione. "Usually, only vague magic can be produced without a wand, so a wand is still used for more specific, powerful spells."
"Fair enough," replied Harry. "What's the other one for then?"
The three peered closely at the dusty tome, squinting to get a better look at the second wand. It appeared not to be made of the usual wood, but instead of a pale, rose-coloured stone, which bathed the young man in a warm, blushed, light.
"That is the healing wand," read Hermione from the text. "It's made of rose-quartz, which apparently has healing properties. They use their power to heal other people who have been affected by dark magic."
She suddenly paused, as if unsure whether to continue reading.
"Go on," urged Harry, nudging her shoulder.
"A powerful Unspeakable can even counteract the effects of the illegal killing curse, Avada Kedavra."
Her voice was small and hesitant and she let the sentence hang in the air between them for a moment, not daring to look at Harry, who was still bent over the book, his black hair falling over his eyes.
Ron spoke up first. "I thought they said that nothing could fight that?" He sounded bewildered, as if a childhood belief had been cruelly dispelled before his very eyes.
"They did." Harry's tone was brittle, and his eyes shone suspiciously brightly. He blinked hard.
"It's probably only the really powerful ones who can do that, Harry," said Hermione quickly, biting her lip in concern as she looked at her friend.
He looked at her, as if he were about to make a cutting remark, then thought the better of it and managed a tight smile.
"Yeah, probably."
"So, this is why she couldn't tell us?" asked Ron, changing the subject quickly as he glanced at Harry.
"I think so," replied Hermione, flicking over the yellowed page. "The reason why we know nothing about what they actually do, apart from heal the odd person, is because when they become an Unspeakable they have to renounce their name and their identity so they can't be traced or tracked down. They become …….….well, nobodies really."
"That sounds awful," said Harry quietly. "Is that what Eleanora will have to do?"
Hermione frowned. "I'm not sure. Not everybody who practices wandless magic becomes an Unspeakable, but if she could have told us, she probably would have."
"How do you become an Unspeakable anyhow?" asked Ron. "Do you get a letter saying 'Congratulations – here's your white robe?"
"I doubt it," replied Hermione, giving him a reproachful look. "But nobody really knows. There's bound to be some sort of training involved though."
"Couldn't we just ask her?" said Harry simply. "Tell her that we know?"
Hermione shook her head. "Not yet. She obviously doesn't want people to know."
The three friends stood in silence, mulling over the discovery in their minds.
Finally Ron spoke. "These Unspeakables; they're on the right side aren't they?"
Hermione nodded, immediately understanding what he meant. "Yes, from what Professor Binns told us, they were very active during the defeat of Grindelwald."
Harry managed a weak grin. "So, happy she's not trying to bump me off now?"
Ron frowned. "I was only trying to look out for you mate!"
Harry laughed. "I know. Thanks."
"S'OK," Ron mumbled, punching Harry lightly on the shoulder, and receiving a friendly punch in return.
Hermione sighed resignedly. "Carry on with your male bonding session – don't mind me!"
Extracting himself from Harry's grip, Ron lightly pulled on her braid, smiling indulgently at her. "Come on 'Mione. How do you think we feel when you and Eleanora are prattling on about hair straightening charms and whether dragon hide shoes are better than -"
"We do not 'prattle' thank you very much!" exclaimed Hermione, swatting his hand away.
Ron shot a glance at Harry for back up.
"Sorry, 'Mione," he said with a smile, his green eyes twinkling. "You do a bit."
Hermione opened her mouth to respond but at that moment the door flew open and Eleanora appeared in the darkened doorway, her face oddly glowing, dark eyes shining in the gloom.
"They said you were all up here," she greeted, her voice breathless, its bright tone strangely forced.
"Umm, hi!" Ron exclaimed loudly, awkwardly stepping in front of Hermione as she hastily hid the heavy book under Harry's pillow.
Harry said nothing, just smiled far too widely at her, glancing desperately at Hermione for help.
"Eleanora!" she greeted her cheerfully, bounding off the bed. "They said you'd gone down to the dungeons. We were waiting for you!"
Eleanora's eyes widened. "The dungeons?" she repeated uneasily. "No! No! I just had to…..ummm…...go and see Professor Sprout. About my Mimbulus Mimbletonia: I over-watered it last lesson and wanted to check if it was still alive."
Her garbled explanation and uncomfortable expression provoked a pointed glance from Ron to Harry, who shook his head warningly. Eleanora appeared not to notice this odd, silent exchange, as she appeared quite absorbed in flattening her tawny hair, which appeared even more chaotically dishevelled than usual, stray tendrils curling over her vividly flushed cheeks, as if they had been roughly pulled out by roving hands.
"Is it alright?" asked Hermione, attempting to make normal conversation.
Eleanora appeared somewhat flustered. "Is what alright?" she asked, pulling her robes straight, absorbedly brushing dust from her back.
"Your Mimble-bimble-tonia thing," said Ron, who was looking at her with some concern.
She gave him a blank, inquiring look, then quickly recovered. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Yes, it's fine. A bit on the soggy side, but apart from that…….."
She trailed off, running her thumb absently over her lips, which looked tender and swollen.
"I think I heard the dinner bell!" she exclaimed far too loudly after an awkward silence, quickly changing the subject, as she ducked out of the door.
Harry, Ron and Hermione started after her, confusion etched upon their faces at her strange behaviour.
Ron opened his mouth as if to call her back, but was stopped short by a glance from Hermione.
"Don't," she mouthed. "Whatever it is, I'll find out later."
Eleanora's voice rang out from the bottom of the staircase. "Are you three coming or what? I'm starving!"
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A big thank you to all my lovely reviewers! Keep 'em coming! The next chapter will contain just a hint of the long-awaited lemony goodness – you have been warned!