Title: An Inevitable Fate

Chapter Six: Pandora's Box

Author: KissThis

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Rating: R - if not now, then later. Just shut up and read it.

Pairing: By your opinions you want it to either be H/Hr or D/Hr

Setting: 6th year in Hogwarts.

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Disclaimer: I'm supposed to be standing in line RIGHT NOW waiting for Book #5 to come out at 12:01 AM. Maybe I can pretend to be the author and budge to the front...

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The trio turned into the hallway leading to the History of Magic classroom, but a large commotion had backed up the students from entering the room. Black robed bodies with varying accessories of yellow and maroon where intermingled and crowded around the tiny doorway.

"What's going on?" Hermione asked the crowd. More people turned around than normally would have, but the person who finally answered her was Hannah, ironically enough.

"There wasn't an accident, thank goodness!" The blonde muttered fervently, "It just seems like no ones moving."

The curiosity that had gotten her thrown down a trap door and petrified by a giant basilisk hadn't died down in the least, and it was driving her even now as she politely, but firmly pushed her way through the other sixth years until she reached the doorway.

"Hello."

Hermione was in complete shock. "Remus?"

He smiled warmly at her with blonde-gray hair falling in his eyes, "It's Professor Lupin now, Hermione."

Hermione barely acknowledged her mistake, "B-but Professor Binns..."

"Is meeting with the Ministry. The history experts are meeting together to try and find something from the past that might help us in the fight against Voldemort."

"That's not possible." Justin Finch-Fletchley insisted over Hermione's shoulder, "Professor Binns never misses a class. He didn't even stop teaching when he died."

It wasn't a wonder that the first people to arrive had seen the absence of their insanely attendant professor and gone into shock. It was like a sign of the apocalypse.

"Has the world started ending already?" Hermione finally exclaimed in exasperation.

This stirred a few chuckles through the students and Lupin. "I do not think so, Miss Granger. Though I assume that you would be the first to know."

When they still hadn't moved from their positions outside the room, he gave a small sigh. He shuffled over in his patched robes and pulled Hermione inside. "Come, class will be starting any moment and I don't think any of you want to be caught late lest you want House points to be taken."

There was little force behind the threat because everyone knew Lupin from their third year, and he was too kind-hearted to take points from something as trivial as being late to class. The rest of the class gradually filed in and took their seats, but not without each of them pausing in surprise at the doorway to find that their transparent Professor was amazingly elsewhere.

When everyone had at last taken a seat, Professor Lupin stood before the class and smiled. "For those of you who didn't hear me, Professor Binns is meeting at the Ministry of Magic and will be absent several days."

"Several days?!" Someone exclaimed from the back.

This was certainly odd. They must be in a frenzy about the Fate's prophecy, and have started studying this war from all angles -- nothing else would have pulled Binns from his lesson.

Lupin chuckled, "There was much protesting on his part, but the Ministry needed him so I am your substitute for the next couple of class periods."

This had to be a once in a lifetime occurrence. Most likely, some stupid planetary alignment had made everything in her life wonky.

"When Saturn in the ninth house aligns with a Mercury in Aquarius many surprises will set themselves before you..." Hermione muttered to herself in a mocking impression of Professor Trelawny.

Lupin had moved over to Professor Binns' desk and was flipping through a red book. "Looking over the lesson plan your professor left behind it seems that you're going to be learning about the inner peace treaties between different tribes of goblins."

This instantly made the students forget their shock and they gave a collective groan. Shouts of protest raised from the back, and though none were clear enough to hear accurately you could get the gist of it.

"I agree." Professor Lupin closed the planner and dropped it into a desk drawer. The class cheered. "Since it is your first class of the year and your first class of the day we're going to have rather-like a free day. You can ask me any question you wish and I'll do my best to answer it."

Oh, please don't be about me...don't be about me...don't be about me...

A student's hand rose tentatively into the air. Hermione glanced to the side -- it was Neville.

"Yes, Mr. Longbottom? Go ahead..."

Hermione like Remus' voice. It was warm and velvety. When he spoke it was always soft and encouraging -- and not just in the presence of his students. Unlike most people, the first thing that came to her mind when she thought of him was not his musky scent of cinnamon, but rather his voice.

I'm overthinking again.

"How exactly did the Sovereign of Light come to be?"

Damn.

The entire class turned in their seats to look at her. Neville shot her an apologetic glance. Remus turned to her as well, but when he found her to be just as interested in the answer he cleared his throat.

"The thing you need to know about that is, the Sovereign of Light was created and filled with total hope and purity." He waved off the Hufflepuff girl in the back who had raised their hand, "I know what you're thinking -- not even Hermione Granger can be completely pure."

Hermione didn't know whether to feel affronted or flattered, but she blushed all the same. He went on.

"And you're right -- it is impossible. But being completely 'perfect' isn't what the Sovereign is all about. Her character may have flaws and her body imperfections, but her heart and soul are filled with light. It is in this that she represents all that is pure and good -- our Champion.

"I'm sitting right here..." Hermione mumbled in embarrassed pleasure at her professor's compliments.

He gave her a sympathetic smile, "As to how she came to be," he cleared his throat, "besides the obvious, I have a theory. I believe that Hermione becoming this "Sovereign of Light" is related to Pandora."

It was a good theory, but there was one obvious flaw. Hermione spoke up, "But, Professor, Pandora--"

"Oh, the story is very much real. It was documented as a Greek myth when a wizard attempted to discreetly teach Muggles about the wizarding world. It only succeeded in making some of our oldest history seem fictional to later generations."

Hermione was shocked, to say the least that this fact had slipped past her. Why hadn't she known that?

Well....... that's annoying...

"For the few of you who don't have any Muggle cultural experience --"

Ron, who had had no idea what anyone was talking about, reddened automatically.

"--I will tell the story of Pandora's Box as it was once told to me."

Several of the students, mostly the people who had chosen seats in the back, conjured some floor cushions and filled in the aisles between tables. Once everyone had crowded at the front, to better hear Professor Lupin's storytelling, Ron had ended up next to Hermione's chair and Harry was in front of her using her legs as a backrest to lean upon.

Professor Lupin chuckled at his students, and setting himself on top of his desk, began to speak.

"After the theft of fire from the heavens by the titan Prometheus, Zeus still had intentions of punishing mankind for accepting this gift which was reserved for the gods themselves. He called on Hepheastus and had him fashion a woman out of marble. Aphrodite posed for the statue to ensure that it would be beautiful. When it was complete, Athena breathed life into the cold marble making it a living, breathing woman.

Zeus presented the woman with a box, and told her that she must never open it, or let anybody else open it no matter what the circumstances were. All of the other gods gave the woman a gift; Aphrodite taught her how to dance without moving her legs, and how to look at a man from across the room without moving her eyes. Athena gave her wisdom above any mortal standards. Apollo taught her how to play various musical instruments, and the Muses taught her how to sing. Hermes filled her mouth with lies, and gave her hands swift enough to steal a necklace from around a woman's neck without her noticing. The last gift was given to her by Hera, and this was curiosity. She was placed down on earth with all of the other mortals, and she was given the name Pandora, which means, "All-gifted".

A man called Epimetheus, who was the brother of Prometheus, soon adopted Pandora. He brought her into his home, and she stayed there with him. Epimetheus lived in a small village, and every day the people would dance and sing in the sunshine all day long. Food was provided for them by fig trees, and there was a near by river for water.

At this time, there was no such thing as people dying from old age; they would grow to maturity, and then stop aging all together. There was no sickness, no hunger, no poverty, and no misery; their lives on earth were perfect. Pandora lived with these people for several blissful years, but she always remembered the box that Zeus had given her sitting in the corner of her home, and her explicit instructions never to open it.

Years past since Pandora's arrival to the village, and she sat up late one night sitting in front of the box. Moonlight poured through the window, setting the box aglow with a dull silvery radiance. It looked ordinary enough; a simple box made of oak with a simple lock on the front, for which she had the key. She was riddled with curiosity, but she just knew that it would be wrong for her to open the box. She picked it up, and carried it out to her garden at the back of the house. She dug a small hole in the center of the garden with her small shovel and placed the box inside. She looked down at it one last time before covering it back up with the earth. She then took several large stones, and piled them on top of the hole. Satisfied, she returned to bed with Epimetheus and fell asleep.

As she slept, she began to have dreams. In her dreams, she would be sitting before the box with the key in her hands. She would careful insert the key into the keyhole and turn it, smiling as the faint click of the lock echoed through the room. As she opened the lid, she gasped in awe, for the box was filled with the most beautiful gems that she had ever seen! These were her gift from Zeus! But why wasn't she supposed to open it? With those jewels, she and Epimetheus could live like a King and Queen!

She awoke from her sleep, and sat up in bed. It was still dark, and Epimetheus was asleep at her side. She got out of bed, and ran out to her garden. She tore apart the rocks that she had set over the hole. Her hands were bruised and bleeding from the rocks by the time that she dove onto the dirt, but she didn't seem to notice. She dug with her bare hands, wincing in pain as the soil stung her wounds, but she didn't stop until her fingernails scraped the lid of the box. She pulled the box out of the hole onto the earth beside her, and dug furiously through her tunic for the key. She opened the lock and threw the lid open.

A thick black smoke flooded out of the box, and into her eyes making her cry out in pain. When her vision had cleared, she looked down to see small demons escaping from the box. They were crawling, running and flying out of the box in all directions, spreading out into the world. She grabbed one of the creatures in one hand and thrust it back into the box. As she did this, it bit her on the hand.

She immediately fell ill from the bite, and collapsed onto the ground finding enough energy to slam the lid on the box shut before anything else came out. She lay on the ground with the box in her arms panting heavily and retching with the sickness that the demon had given her.

'Please open the lid.' A small voice cried.

Pandora looked up at the box, and put her eye up to the keyhole. She saw a golden light shining within the box, and figured it must be where the voice was coming from.

'How can I? Look at the damage I've caused already!' Pandora wheezed.

'Please let me out of the box. I'm not like the others, I can help to alleviate what you have done, to lessen the suffering of mankind.' The voice whispered.

With her last bit of strength, Pandora lifted the lid then collapsed back down onto the earth. A small creature appeared before her. It radiated a beautiful golden light, and was in the form of a small woman with a pair of gossamer wings fluttering at her shoulders. The being came down to Pandora's face, and kissed her lightly on the nose. Pandora's suffering lessened at the sprite's touch, and she suddenly had the strength to sit up.

The being hung in the air before her face, 'I am Hope. I am the last of the sprites in the box. Through your curiosity, you managed to release old age, sickness, plague, misery, selfishness, greed, ugliness, and evil into the world. I am the Hope that will give the strength to mankind to battle these, but that is the best that can be done.'

Pandora opened her mouth to reply, but Hope was gone. From that day on, people began to get sick, grow old and die. Such was the punishment of Zeus upon the world for accepting something reserved for the gods, and no one else."

The entire class had been hanging on his every word. It was his voice Hermione decided. It was pleasantly comforting and hypnotic. She blinked dreamily and game out of the stoic daze Professor Lupin's storytelling had placed her in.

"What happened to Hope, Professor?" Hannah asked.

Lupin smiled at the Hufflepuff prefect and stood up, "That's where my theory comes into play. I believe that the darkness in the world became too powerful for even Hope to help alleviate so, she created the Sovereign of Light. She infused Hermione with her light and goodness in the hopes that Hermione would become a sort of powerhouse for the Hope of the world."

His small voice was filled with excitement as his thought-out theory began to come to life, "She chose Hermione because her heart was already pure...because the potential was there. And Hope jumped the chance. In addition to using Hermione to magnify the tiny bit of Hope the world had left, she can also use the human "vessel" to rally together the good beings of this world and stir Hope back to life inside of them."

"Wow...don't you feel special," Ron whispered up to her.

Either Professor had been too caught up in explaining his thoughts or he chose to ignore Ron's sarcastic interruption of his "lesson". Lupin turned to Neville and personally addressed him, another thing Hermione liked about the lycanthrope. "Does that answer your question, Mr. Longbottom?"

Neville nodded meekly, but his face was filled with awe. "T-thank you, Professor." He stammered.

"Your welcome." Lupin straightened, "We have a few more minutes, are there anymore questions."

"Why can't you be our History teacher?" A girl whined. Hermione didn't even need to look to know that the high-pitched voice belonged to Parvati Patil.

"Yeah!" Dean Thomas seconded, "You're a lot more interesting than Binns."

"You don't talk in monotone!"

The entire room laughed, even Ron whom the comment had come from.

"You actually know what you're talking about," Justin exclaimed seriously, "You didn't even look at a single book the whole time you were teaching."

That was true. Hermione had noticed that everything he had said during that class period had come from nowhere but his own mind. They hadn't even realized that they were actually learning anything while he encouraged them to ask questions. She smiled. He was a remarkable teacher.

"As I said, I'll only be teaching you for a few days. I highly doubt Professor Binns would want to hand over his job." Professor Lupin did look surprised at such a burst of affection from his students. "I am flattered that you enjoyed my storytelling, but not every class period will be this interesting."

But the students were firmly convinced otherwise and were not about to be deterred. However, they grudgingly complied when Lupin asked them kindly to "get back on track".

"We have time for one last question."

Lavender confidently raised her hand from her perch on a pink cushion.

"Yes, Miss Brown?"

"How much Hope will it take to destroy You-Know-Who?" Lavender Brown asked.

"How can there be any Hope when everyone keeps dying?!" Seamus, who had remained silent until the point, muttered angrily.

Hermione fixed her eyes on the Irish Gryffindor seated in the table behind hers. His little sister had been killed at the beginning of their fifth year; it still made him angry whenever he thought about it. Her amber eyes glowed.

His eyebrows were knitted together and the thin line his lips formed made it clear to Hermione that he was clenching his teeth together to keep from interrupting the class again. Hermione turned completely around in her chair and laid her hand gingerly on the black tabletop.

"Seamus?" Her ploy worked and when he looked up at her their eyes locked and she held his gaze. Her eyes flickered and the room suddenly dropped away from her.

A multitude of images flashed past her mind. A young girl screamed.

Unknown to her, the golden coloring of her irises had seeped across the whites of her eyes and they now glowed with an unnatural light. The golden light flowed down her arm and enveloped the table where her hand laid upon it. The entire class watched as the energy bleed outwards across the expanse of the table and that it had wrapped itself about Seamus' own arm laying across the table.

Hermione's other hand gripped her chair.

She saw a small girl no more than seven.

A group of men in black robes; Death Eaters.

Crowding around the frightened girl.

Touching her...

A blinding white light lanced painfully through her mind and Hermione's scream echoed that of the girl's. Hermione felt the hands even as she saw them. Terror filled her inside and out, and tears fell shamelessly from unblinking amber eyes.

Neither she nor Seamus moved.

Hermione's consciousness was shoved to one side and an alien presence filled her mind. It wasn't evil, of that she was sure, but it was foreign to her.

"I am here to see with eyes unclouded." A voice, not Hermione's stated with no emotion.

The voice that was not her own seemed so far away. It was faint and mumbled as if muffled by a pillow.

"Eyes unclouded?" Seamus was incredulous.

Then the entity was sucked back inside her and Hermione was once again in control. But yet she wasn't. The images still haunted her mind and the girl's desperate screams echoed in her ears.

Wands drawn.

Blinding green light.

Hollow hazel eyes.

The horrifying movie kept going over and over again in front of her eyes. Going too fast, and yet slow enough that the images were burned into her memory. The pain was gradually rising and the white light began to burn once again behind her eyelids.

Blindly Hermione groped for Seamus' hand, and when she found it she clutched to it like a starving man would his last scrap of bread. He squeezed it back and the awful slideshow of his sister's death appeared in his mind as well. Their other hands met over the table and as they clung to each other their heads flung back and their mouths opened in silent screams.

"What do we do Professor?" Harry demanded.

But Professor Lupin was at a loss for words.

Their hands began to glow, bringing their attention rocketing back to the anomaly before them. Hermione's head snapped back up and the alien voice spoke through her once again. "I am here."

The screams in their minds were cut off and the white light receded back into darkness. The violent merry-go-round of pictures flickered to a slow pace and finally stopped on one.

Whiteness filled everything. Movement made Hermione's mind focus even harder on the center. There was a sound of wings in the background and they were getting closely. Suddenly and without warning the little girl appeared in the center of the whiteness. She was dressed in gown of pure light and tiny wings sprouted from her shoulders and wrapped around her.

The little girl smiled.

She had been cleansed and her memory purified.

Hermione's mind went mercifully black and she was aware of the classroom rushing back up to meet her. She released Seamus' hands and hers instantly went to cradle her head. She was unnaturally aware of the beating of her heart, the pumping of the blood in her veins. Her own breathing, though heavy, was abnormally loud to her ears. But she was thankful to hear it rather than the screams.

"Hermione, are you alright?" Professor Lupin asked crouching down beside her. She recoiled at the sudden "shouting" in her ear and waiting until the ringing stopped.

"I'm fine, Professor. My body has just gone into "hyper-sense mode", so...I'd really appreciate it if you'd back up a little." She whispered rubbing her temples.

She opened her eyes and gave a small gasp of pain as the light bore into them and her pupils dilated to mere pinpricks. Her eyes were starting to water when she finally thought to conjure her quill into a pair of sunglasses. She slid the pink-tinted lenses on and the pain was instantly snuffed out.

She wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse, "Professor, what the hell just happened?"

This was originally one chapter, but I decided to cut it up into two so it could be read in two different sittings if someone was short on time. (It was originally 23 pages long)

Next chapter: Get ready for some action; Hermione goes into training and researching in the library is inevitable.

KissThis