Grimmauld Place had changed a great deal since the days when it was the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. When Sirius had died, it was Narcissa who inherited the building, as neither Tonks nor Andromida were still in the will. (Nobody had quite puzzled out how the woman had not inherited it at the time of Mrs. Black's death.)
Where once it had been a clean and beautiful place, decorated in yellow, blue and red, with even a few green accents, all meant to represent the great houses of Hogwarts School. The building was now decorated in nothing but black, with the odd silver accent in the hardware. There were no pictures on the walls now, not even that of the great Mrs. Black. Only the coveted Black Family tree had been spared, and it was covered with a black cloth, which was rarely drawn back.
The only exception to this rule was what had once been the dining room. It was done up in beautiful gold and purple shades, the drapes hanging from every surface where a silky gold, the furnishings (though they where sparse) where done up in beautiful metallic purples.
There were tables lining each wall, but the only seat was on a raised platform in the center of the room. It looked more like a throne than anything else, and on the back of the wood was carved a wilting black rose.
Sitting atop the thrown was the heiress to the Black fortune. She looked regal there with her long white hair that hung just below her waist, though it was currently tied in a tight bun, not a single strand to be found out of place, with a tiara covered in tiny diamonds.
At her side, stood her sister, who had gained a great deal of her beauty that Azkaban had stolen from her. This woman had a dark smile on her face and an empty look in her eyes. Although this woman stood on the platform, she did not get a seat, she was not in charge, and it was well known that she was only number two.
People moved all around them, though each of them seamed to be in a rather zombie-like state. They where all dressed in long dark cloaks, similar to those that the old Dark Lord had once placed on his death eaters, but these were slightly different. None of them wore masks, trusting instead on the shadows of their hoods to hide their faces from prying eyes, and on their sleeve, where the Dark Mark would have marred their skin, was a black wilting rose, identical to that carved into the back of the throne.
Voldemort had been an amazing wizard, a man who knew what he wanted and had an amazing amount of power, but he had one great weakness, he was in fact a muggle born himself. The last remaining Black women were sure that this had been his downfall, but they did not have this same weakness, both pureblooded witches with every power that came with the name. They would continue their late Lord's work, but there would be one thing in his plan that they would change. The Dark Lord had always wanted to get rid of muggle born wizards, exclaiming that they where a disgrace, but the Black women intended to take this a step further, they would kill all Muggles, and ensure that Mudbloods where a thing of the past.
Hermione was back in her parents home, staring intently in the mirror. There was something different about the reflection she saw there, something that she was sure was missing.
"Do you see it?" Came a voice from behind her, and Hermione shifted her glance to stare not at herself, but at the boy behind her. He had shocking white hair, but she could not seem to make heads or tails of his face, it seemed as though it was nothing but a blank slate, with shadows for eyes, mouth and nose. The young witch was sure she knew this boy, but she could not place a name to him, or connect him to any type of importance in her mind.
"See what?" She asked, her gaze slipping back to herself. She was sure that this missing thing was dearly important, but she just could not figure out what it was.
"Can you see what isn't there?" The boy was asked.
Hermione frowned slightly at the boy behind her, trying to make sense of what he had said. "I don't understand, how can I see it if it isn't there?"
"Ah, not so clever as you thought are you. What will you do if it doesn't come back?" The boy had moved from his spot behind her, walking about her room, lifting trinkets that she had owned since she was a babe.
"What isn't coming back?" Her mind was racing, but her words where calm, as thought they where talking about nothing more pivotal than the weather. She longed to turn and look at him face on, but something in her would not let her turn her head, so she continued to gaze at him through the mirror, which she noticed was beginning to fog slightly.
The boy picked up a picture that had been taken the year before she went to Hogwarts, it was of a girl she had been great friends with as a child, the two of them had been inseparable for an entire summer, and before she left they had promised to see each other every summer. "You can't keep your promise now can you." The boy was saying, and though she could not quite see his mouth, she could somehow see a smirk on his face.
"Why can't I? Has something happened to her?" She asked, but somehow she knew this was not the case. "No, something has happened to me hasn't it." She mumbled and the boy nodded.
"You know I can't help you don't you?" He said and for some reason Hermione nodded. Yes she did know this. "You have to wake up now Hermione." He said, and even in this dream, Hermione was aware that this was a terribly odd thing to say.
"What?"
"You have to wake up now." But this was not the boy's voice at all it was,
"Ginny?" Hermione mumbled as she slowly climbed out of her sleep. The dream was slowly fading from her mind and she found herself clambering to keep it there.
"Honestly Hermione, I thought you would never wake up!" Ginny exclaimed, and her voice sounded as though it was already in the other side of the room. Hermione gave a non-committal noise as she tried to grasp onto the dream, but for some reason the only bit she could hold onto was the gray shadows of eyes.
The brown haired girl grunted as lump of cloth hit her in the chest. "Get dressed 'Mione, we are already late!" Ginny was saying, and Hermione absentmindedly began to pull the robes clumsily on, before having to pull them off again and removing her pajamas. Somehow she had a feeling that today would be a long day.
Draco glanced at the door to the Great Hall, from which his current charge had yet to emerge. It was not like her to be late, but it was even less likely that she would miss the class. He decided to wait for her a little longer not wanting to bring about the wrath of his Headmaster, or his Deputy Head Mistress, both of whom he was sure would be livid if he abandoned the girl.
Potter and the weasel had both left for class already, along with mostly everybody else, save a few students trying to finish the last bits of their essays before they absolutely had to be in class.
It was only a few moments longer before he saw Granger and the youngest Weasel all but running into the Great Hall. Draco stood, meaning to meet them at the Gryffindor table, but the two girls where heading towards the Slytherin table instead.
"Granger, you are rather late don't you think?" He said meeting her half way.
"Yah, I am, which is why we should cut out the chit chat and get to class." Hermione said. She seemed to be quite angry with herself for being late, and for some reason beyond Draco's comprehension, he did not continue to prod her, but instead took her elbow and the two made their way into the potions class, Draco did not even shove her into any walls on the way.
Professor Snape looked up when the two of them walked into the classroom. "Well, it seems as though our Head Boy and Girl do not feel the need to arrive to class on time. You were very sure that you would be able to attend all of your classes and make your N.E.W.T.S at the end of the year Mrs. Granger, I would not like to see you removed for the year."
Hermione gave a slight nod, and Draco led her to the table the two of them now shared together.
Potions class turned out to be a good deal harder than they had expected. There was very little Hermione could do to assist with the Dreamless Sleep they were making. The chopping of the ingredients was far too dangerous for her to do without sight, and she could not very well measure out the ingredients, nor could she read things to Draco off the board, and so she was more or less left to listen to Draco tell her what to do, and use the charm she had been taught so that everything Draco said to her would be jotted down. It was by far the worst class she had to sit through so far, and was sure she had never been just so happy to hear the end of class bell ring.
She and Draco made their slow way out of class, as Hermione had to stay back so as not to be stepped on. Next was Care of Magical Creatures with Hagrid, and she was hardly looking forward to the prospect of listening to Draco moan on about how horrid a teacher he was.
"'Ello there 'Ermione, feeling a'right then are yeh?" He asked, and Hermione gave him a smile.
"As best as I could be." She said with a smile. Hermione had come to enjoy Hagrid's class recently, as he began to think more and more before he let a creature loose on the class, these days all the students found the class quite as enjoyable as they ever had when Professor Grubbyplank was teaching. Draco gave a slight 'Hmph' from his spot beside her and Hermione decided it would be best to get on before the boy had a chance to say anything offensive about the half giant.
"A'right class, today we are goin' teh do a bi' abou' carin' fer sick animals. I wan' yer each ter split into pairs, and yeh will be given a diff'rent animal with a diff'rent somethin' wrong with it, yeh jus' gotta look it up in yer books and find out how to cure it."
The lesson sounded easy enough, but Hermione soon found that she could not search for one specific thing while her books where speaking to her, as they would read the entire pages.
Their animal was a niffler, who had come down with a horrid stuffy nose and was, obviously, found quite useless for sniffing out trouble. Hermione and Draco where meant to find out what had caused the stuffy nose and fix it, but Draco was speaking quietly to Goyle and Crabbe about some nonsense about the Hogsmeade weekend and first gifts, and she was having a hard time finding the right pages to have her book read to her.
"Draco," She whispered, wanting to catch his attention and his only. He continued to speak to his gooiness as if he had not heard her. "Draco!" She said a little louder, and this time she heard him sigh, and a slight scrape of chair as he presumably turned to look at her.
"What do you want Granger?" He asked."I want you to help me like you are supposed to." She said motioning to the book lying on the table. "I can't skim the book."
Draco let out a dramatic sigh and moved the chair next to her. "You are teachers pet, I don't know why you don't ask the big stupid lump to tell you the answer." He mumbled, but she could hear the rustling of the pages as he began to look through the book for nifflers with stuffy noses.
It was a fair bit of time before Draco was finally able locate the section entitled "Nifflers without Sniffers" and began reading off possible symptoms. "I think he has this one, the 'Niffle Poppers', ugh it's got snot bubbles stuck in its nose!" He exclaimed.
A disgusted look brushed across Hermione's face. "Oh. What do we have to do to get rid of them?" She asked, though she was sure she already knew the answer.
"Poke something up the noses and pop the bubbles." He said, and had Hermione been able to see him she would have seen a look on his face that matched her own.
"Well let's get to it." She said, standing to her feet. "Just hold the poor thing still and give me something to stick up there." Draco was quick to comply, and Hermione was sure it had much more to do with his intense need to not be anyplace near a niffler's snot-bubble, than actually doing what she said.
Draco grabbed her wrist and guided her hand holding the stick to the niffler's nostril, and then turned his head away as Hermione began to slide the stick into the poor thing's nose. There was a loud pop when the stick made contact and a split second later Hermione's entire arm was covered in the slime.
"Good job there 'Ermione! Didn' think you two would figure it out tha' quick." Hagrid said from someplace behind her. "Yeh can go ahead into my cabin and clean yerself up a bi'." He said, and Hermione called back a thank you before holding her arm out for Draco to take and lead her to a place to clean up.
The Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher they had gotten this year was a man not unlike Professor Lockhart of their second year. He was a tall man with perfect blond hair and a smile to melt any brainless twit's heart. His name was Professor Oramont, and although he was a pretty boy, he knew his dark arts and was more or less an adequate teacher.
Class that day was one of the less memorable times, loads of
notes, mostly on different spells that have been used directly against You Know
Who. Hermione set her quill up so that
instead of her voice, it would write to the voice of Professor Oramont, and
spent the entire class listening closely to every word the teacher said.
Most of what was learnt in that class were things that she had already known,
either from being there when the spells where used, or from hearing about them
first hand from the members of The Order so she found the class very
uneventful, but it was an hour spent without paying much attention to the
problems currently facing her.
"The Stupefy curse, has of course been used to defend against You Know Who, although it takes a powerful wizard to have this particular spell make any effect to the powerful wizard, as his magic makes certain spells much harder to make effective."
Hermione remembered the battle that had occurred last year, in which The Order Of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters had finally had it out for the last time. It had been a desperate battle, and they had lost several good members on their side, Tonks, Mundungus, and several others where now nothing more than a memory. The stupefy spell had been very effective against the wizard when she had blasted him with it, buying Harry the few seconds he had needed to cast the final "Avada Kedavra" that had ended the war, but when Luna Lovegood had tried to use the spell, it had simply rolled away when it hit him, and she had been sent flying into a wall when the spell bounced off of him.
The battle had been a hard one, hardest on Harry, who had been forced to kill a man, simply because some woman had given his birthday in a prophecy. They were all glad the war was over now though, even several of the Slytherins seemed to have had a weight lifted off of them when Voldemort was defeated. Draco had been upset at his father's imprisonment, but Hermione was quite sure that while the young Malfoy supported his father, he did not in turn support Voldemort.
"Thank you class, that will be all for today." Hermione looked up when she heard this. Her thoughts had been drifting for an entire class.
"Come on Granger, I don't want to sit around here all day." Draco snarled from behind her, and Hermione quickly grabbed her roll of parchment and the quill that had been keeping her notes, slinging her backpack over her shoulder, and carrying the papers so Draco had nothing left to complain about, the two of them left the classroom.
"Mistress, we have word from Hogwarts," said a man wrapped tightly in his cloak.
The white haired woman on the thrown smiled down at him. "Yes, and what is this news?" She asked
"Apparently the young Granger girl who captured Mr. Lestrange has come down with a slight case of blindness and the headmaster has assigned her somebody to act as her eyes." The man said, he was on his knees looking at the ground.
"Blind is she? Who have they got watching over the girl?" She asked, and dark smile spread across her face.
"Young Lord Malfoy, Mistress." He said.
"Young Lord Malfoy?" The black haired woman said, and wore a smile that matched that of her sister. "Well, this is an interesting situation isn't it? Miles, go and fetch us an owl, I think I should like to send a letter to that dear little boy."
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