Shaelune, Chapter 7 ~:~ Discoveries and Mystical Spells
A/N: I'm in serious need of a caffeine jolt right now, so don't blame me if this is too short or doesn't make much sense (or for the cheesy chapter name), okay? It's the water's fault for not having awakening properties.
As much as Hermione continued to attempt staying awake, her eyelids began to weigh down more heavily, shutting themselves against her will. She didn't really fancy having any more murderous, prophetic, or otherwise abnormal dreams tonight- not after what had happened with Malfoy in the garden...
What had happened? She stared even harder into the slightly unfocused firelight, shrouded in the darkness of her bed's canopy. All the information that he'd found... he couldn't have discovered all that in one day's readings of the Prophet! Hermione knew it was impossible. She'd tried many times to do speed-reading spells or relevance charms on her books, but none of them worked. She suspected they had been safeguarded by Madame Pince. Still, it seemed impossible to her: How could a chauvinist Slytherin pig like Malfoy have better research habits than she?
And after the unexpected outpouring of historical knowledge, there came the silence, and then the painting. Suddenly, his words echoed in Hermione's mind:
Who would kill an innocent girl? Hermione wondered in disbelief. Who would find anything to complain about in someone so good, and pretty, and well-off? Hell, she was a Gryffindor! Hermione tried to work through the clues in her mind: Who hated beautiful girls? Well, obviously other, security-challenged girls, and boys with either very deep-seated loathing or pretended dislike for them because they had... secrets, shall we say? Who hated rich people? Poor people; But no, Hermione thought in self-contradiction. You have to have a substantial amount of money to go to Hogwarts. There wasn't any poverty at the school.
Who hated Gryffindors?
Suddenly, the answer- or at least part of it- became clear to her. Slytherins! A Slytherin would absolutely detest a gorgeous, smart, caring, rich Gryffindor girl- she would be a combination of all the things he or she hated in people who weren't themselves.
Then, Hermione wavered. But would a Slytherin, even an incredibly cruel one, really go to the length of killing people? It didn't seem to quite fit together. She knew Slytherins had been graduating, only to become Dark wizards, for thousands of years, but such an act of violence, especially while still in school, felt out-of-place.
It's the only reasonable explanation, she assured herself, hopping quietly out of bed and going over to the wooden desk. Hermione deftly pulled open each drawer and then began to collect things: parchment, the time-spells book Professor McGonagall had given her for Christmas third year, quills, a pocketwatch, a small paperweight, a miniature knife, and a stack of letters she had recieved at school over the past five years. There weren't many: no one had written to her save her parents, since none of her former Muggle friends knew where she went during the school terms or had any clue about owl post.
Hermione sat down on the bed and lit the candle on the bedside-table with a bit of flame from her wand. She set the parchment and quills on the table, and arranged the watch, paperweight, and knife on the dark turquoise comforter; the heavy, dusty spellbook she opened to a page near the end.
Dark, calligraphic writing covered the page save the top, which bore, in embellished Gothic letters:
To Chronologically Alter an Illustration:
Hermione had never used this particular spell before, but had always thought it looked intriguing. Running a disappointingly unmanicured finger down the list of ingredients, she stopped directly under the last one: material painting, drawing, or engraving.
To get the portrait of Alexandria, she knew she would have to ask Malfoy, damn him...
Draco Malfoy sat pensively before the fire in his room, gazing distractedly into the flames. There were too many questions at this stage of the game: too many unsolved mysteries. He'd need to pay another visit to the Prophet stores tomorrow.
So intensely was he buried in his own thoughts that he did not hear the door open, nor Granger's quiet footsteps as she walked toward him. So much that he was extremely startled when she said, equally softly: "Malfoy? Are you quite all right?"
He whipped around in the chair, a sneer spreading across his face. "What do you want, Granger?"
She ignored him, snapping her fingers sarcastically. "Oh, damn. You know, it would have been rather nice to just walk in and find you dead, wouldn't it?"
"What do you want?" Draco was beginning to get impatient now. What did she want, anyhow?
"Oh, just that little picture you showed me earlier." Her voice was coated with a sickeningly sweet overtone. "You do still have it, don't you?"
Draco rolled his eyes and pointed to the bed, on which his cloak had been tossed. Wordlessly, he turned back to the fire and swilled the rest of his wine; the gods knew he needed it.
Hermione picked up the cloak with one hand, its silken folds flowing over her like water, as she extracted the clipping. Then she laid it back down on the intensely blue bedspread, perfectly made.
In fact, now that she thought about it, everything in his room was perfect. The stacks of spellbooks on the side-table, the pressed and hanging (undoubtedly expensive) cloaks and robes neatly lined up in his wardrobe. It disgusted her. How could someone be so sterile, so detached? It was though he had no soul, no energy.
Hermione slammed the door behind her as she left. Just being in that room, added to the fact that he was also in it, made her want to vomit.
Back in her own half of the suite, she spread the picture out on her bed. Alexandria's baleful, shadowy eyes stared up at her as the picture slowly rose to face her in the air. Hermione began to read the spell.
With this enchantment, I decree,
Bind the powers of time to me.
Bring them close- space, life, and death,
That I may quick rewind her breath...
Hermione picked up the watch and centered it in front of her, then brought down the paperweight on its crystal face. On a non-enchanted watch, the hands should have stopped running all together; on this one, they merely paused, then began to move backward, counter-clockwise. The spell was working, and the watch floated up to levitate beside the picture, leaving the jewel-shards behind on the bedspread.
Blood-red flows soul, flows death, flows time,
And with each drop my promise bind
To return here my time so spent
In enchantments unevident.
She took the knife and placed its sharp point agianst her index finger, drawing it downwards and away in a quick motion. The hot, scarlet liquid trickled down her hand, but she exchanged the knife for her wand and with a muttered "Wingardium Leviosa," had levitated it to freeze on the other side of the portrait.
With the spell-preparation completed, Hermione glanced down at the book once more before leaning back to perform the enchantment. She aimed her wand at the clipping.
"Novo Chronus!"
There was a blinding flash of light, and a magnetic force drew Hermione's wand toward Alexandria's very face. The room was cast in blue and green; the other items on the bed seemed to have vanished. There was only the clipping, which her wand now touched.
As the spell began to take effect, Hermione watched Alexandria's face grow slowly younger, her body shrinking and regressing in development, her clothes growing dark and robe-like. The sleek, elegant ringlets morphed into slightly shorter, paler, frizzier curls; the face grew less voluptuous, the lips lightening and thinning. The eyes were the only part of her that stayed the same- huge, shadowy, pools of liquid ebony.
Hermione realized that Alexandria must be at the beginning of her third year at Hogwarts by now; the point of the spell was to further investigate Malfoy's earlier comment about their resemblance. She would know for a fact that there was something beyond a mere school project going on here if, through a cruel twist of fate, Alexandria had looked like her, matured in the same ways she had... Only then would she know. Second year should be about right, Hermione thought, and with a horrible ripping sound, she yanked her wand away from the picture.
The light receded; the room returned to its original color. In fact, everything was the same, save for the Prophet clipping hanging limply above the bed.
The girl standing in the same position was recognizably Alexandria, but just barely. The wide, dark waves had become medium-colored brown curls with darker shadowing, and she had shortened and paled considerably, although she'd been pale before the enchantment. Now, Hermione couldn't blame Malfoy's acute observation on drunkenness or whatever- it was all too clear that Alexandria was meant to bear a resemblance to her.
Now to find if there was a Malfoy in her year, Hermione thought strategically. But how? She couldn't just barge into Malfoy's room and ask him if, oh, by the way, did you have an ancestor who might have happened to kill this girl who's trying to get revenge through us?
Suddenly she knew the answer.
Hermione wound her way through the corridors beneath the mansion. Surely she could remember the way to the library! Then there it was, the tall doors towering above her. She took a deep breath and pushed them open.
The librarian did not appear this time, and so Hermione had to look around a bit before discovering a bookcase that revolved to reveal the Prophet room. Her plan was to go through the papers from that year and see if he was mentioned, but as she shuffled through the neatly labeled stacks she found nothing. In fact, there was a large section of missing newspapers from the March to June months, and she knew what had happened to them. "Damn you, Malfoy," she whispered, shoving the pile back into its cabinet vengefully.
As she sat in thought, Hermione realized that if there indeed was a Malfoy in her year he might be in the birth announcements for.. what? 1599, subtract fifteen years.. 1584. She hurriedly found the end-of-the-year paper with all the magical birth listings for the previous twelve months, and ran her finger down the list to the Ms.
An excited "Yes!" escaped Hermione as she read the tiny, darkly lettered paragraph:
Malfoy, Chalybsis. Born to (father) Aduro Malfoy and (mother) Stella Malfoy, formerly Stella Lumen, on 4th January at the Malfoy Manor. Reported to have dark hair and eyes.
Although the article said nothing more, it was quite enough for Hermione. She now knew that there was a Malfoy at Hogwarts with Alexandria, in her year, undoubtedly in Slytherin... it was too well-planned out, too perfect to be true. And of course, the present Malfoy would already know....
Okay, I know it was short, but how cool is that? And I'm so happy to at least be getting another chapter out... this story is all coming together! I love, love, love it!
Lots of thanks to AHn (Sorry that this isn't that long.. hope you'll forgive me... but I love that you 'couldn't stay away!' It makes an author feel loved!), Anakah (Thank you!), Anjelika (Oh, that's so nice to hear! Yeah, I know that last chapter was a bit confusing, but I promise it'll all come out in the wash.), blood thirsty (*winces* Sorry... here you go..), Rachel Hunt (Yay! My fave reviewer! *prepares for long parentheses...* Yes, I did! And yeah, I think so about Pansy too... I really should make her less ugly in my next stories. I don't think Draco would date a girl who was. *grins mischievously* Yeah, isn't it cool? And Peashoot.. it just sort of popped into mind, since Draco isn't the sort of person who would make an effort to memorize the names of Gryffindor and Ravenclaw girls, especially if they're such.. uh.. foreign names. OMG! Gone With the Wind is my absolute favorite book of all time! That's so cool! *laughs hyper-ish-ly* Oh, fine, here it is. Hope you enjoyed it!), Lisa (Yeah, we barely ever get it here either.. that's so nice of you!), Chrissy (Well, thanks! Yeah, it is family history... as you found out in this chapter...), Draco's Queen, Nuada (thank you! I do want to be an author when I get out of college, so that means a lot to me... yeah, they are neccessary, and D/Hr is always hard to write without getting too angsty or too fluffy and improbable...), Icy Stormz (Thanks! I made that one up myself!), Meriadoc/Numantina (Whoa, what a review! Of course it was mean, that's the best part about Draco.. he's soo dreamy and yet an incredibly bad boy at the same time.. *swoon* Thanks! Yeah, and Ginny is a little out-of-character, I guess... it just seemed to fit with the story... I tried to make Hermione still sort of her old self. Draco should never fall in love with her just because of how she looks, even though that has to be one of the inclinations... he's not the sort of person to like a girl for her deep, thoughtful insights... sorry! I tried!), hemlock (thank you!), RowenaR (Thanks, and I hoped it would be!), Rosandra May (Uh, maybe because I told you? *heehee* He might be... he might not...), catherine, AngelzGaze (thanks, I do too!), Ryoko (I should hope not!), Fire Goddess (Wow.. long review... I think actually I don't like my mom and dad to know I read all this stuff... not that they'd call it crap, it's just that they'd tease me about it and what not. Ugh. Thank you, though, for everything!), Kstar74 (Perhaps...), and Dragon from the Black Lagoon (*cowers* Um... I don't know? Okay, whatever you say...).
And the winner of this chapter's Longest Review Award goes to... *opens envelope* Oh my gosh, it's a tie between Fire Goddess and Meriadoc! Both of you recieve little, nonexistent Draco-with-his-Shirt-Off Figurines! Congratulations!