She'd taken out half of them at once, and nobody was quite sure how. That's how she'd gotten her ranking; standing priestess for the House of Gamite.
For the work of wizards ran deeper than most knew...
She remembered that day two weeks ago as if it were yesterday. Harry had just gotten into his Aunt and Uncle's car. Proffessor Moody, Tonks, and Mr. Weasley were walking back over to the group, and then...it happened.
Hermione had been the first to see them, out of the corner of her eye.
"P-Proff..." she'd taken a ragged breath. "...Proffessor Lupin...!"
He didn't hear her, and they were crawling closer...
there were...there were so many of them!
"P-Proffessor, I...w-what...are..." she couldn't breathe.
The auror, these...these fiends were putting out was enough to knock her off her feet.
"...P-P...PROFFESSOR LUPIN!!!" There was one right behind him, "LOOK OUT!!!"
Finally he spun around. His eyes widening and his mouth opening to form a small 'O' of surprise.
"He's...he's...opened it...he's...opened...the vault to demon-world (daimono, or whatever) !" hissed Lupin to Moony in an awed !!!"
Harry, was out of the car. Ron and Ginny were running towards them, wands at the ready, and those beast...were coming closer.
Hermione had never seen anything like them.
Some of them barely took on the form of air, and you could only tell they were near by the luminous prescence of their spirits, or the steady beat of their clearly visible, bleading hearts.
Others were slimy and grotesque, many missing the distingushing features of anything that lives. Their claws outstretched and their mouths open to reveal several very pointed teeth.
All of them, however, though their toungues lashed and their lips stretched wide, could apparently be heard by no one, but Hermione.
"You hit those ones!" Harry screamed, motioning towards his right and talking to Ron and Ginny.
"Hit them with what?!" Ginny yelled, rolling up her sleeves and trying her hardest to remain composed.
"EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT!" Harry was rolling up his sleeves too,
"Hermione, come on, well get the rest!"
"...I'm...I c-can't...Harry, I...d..."
"-HERMIONE!!!"
"-Ugh..."
"Inferno!" Harry screamed, causing a blast like red-lightning to fly from his wand and ignite the nearest fiend, it didn't die instantly -as most creatures would- but rather writhed and gagged upon the ground, and next second was joined by a fleet of it's fellows...all clawing at Harry's face, taking chunks of skin with them as they went.
"Harry! MOVE OUT!" Lupin shouted, but Harry wasn't listening. Ron, Ginny and Tonks were in the corner by a street post...taking turns yelling "ah--urgh" and beating the accompaning beasts with logs. Mrs. Weasley was having a hurried conversation with Proffessor Moody, and Mr. Weasley was busy shouting "OBLIVIATE" at every passing muggle.
"O...o..."
Stay away, d...don't...don't come any closer... The fiends were moving in on her now, they were at her feet...on her legs...curling around her....as if to eat her alive...
"P...Please..." She took another quick breath...this one was painful, as if needles were dropping into her lungs, one-by-one.
"P-Please...just...just...DIE!!!"
And that was it...
They were gone.
Well, at least their souls were, for their bodies still laid upon the ground. The last vestiges of sour blood dripping out of them.
And Lupin stood before them all, at the head of this horrid site.
"The nobles..." he coughed "will need to be awoken..."
And that was how it happened.
For the work of wizards ran deeper than most knew, and in its deepest pits ran the vile blood-line of the nobles, the dead royal alleigance under the strict control of the House of Gamite.
And the House, made some new members that night.
Praetor Harry Potter
Embassador Ginny Weasley
Guardian Ronald Weasley
High-Priestess Hermione Granger.
"H-Harry...please..." Hermione lowered her head and whispered "Please, just listen to me."
"I'M THROUGH LISTENING!"
Hermione choked back tears, she was shivering; but her wand hand was steady as ever. The thin wooden tip almost alligned with Harry's, as his wand was drawn too.
Ron was between the both of them, his face indifferent, these arguments occured too often for him to care much. Still though, he thought it best to return to Hogwarts with both of his friends noses intact, there would be less awkward questioning that way.
"Harry...it's...it's not..." she took a breath "...this isn't rational!"
"That's not what you mean is it, Hermione? That's not what you mean at all." Harry whispered, finally being still in Ginny's grasp as she held him back, but raising his wand even higher.
"...W-what" Hermione raised her wand to match his "what do you mean...?"
"Spit it out...what are you hiding...?!" he spat.
"YOU SPIT IT OUT! YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'S HIDING THINGS...YOU'RE THE ONE HARRY...Y...YOU'RE THE ONE!" a single tear fell and she rubbed her cheek on her shoulder "You can't..." she began in a considerably quieter tone "You can't go on living like this...keeping things in side like this...we...we can't go on living like this...keeping...k-keeping things inside..."
Ron looked at her, as if to ask what she was on about, but Harry interupted.
"THEN WE WILL DIE!" he shouted, at last shoving past Ginny and Ron, his face now inches from hers; his wand pointed at the small of her neck.
"Death..." Hermione huffed raising her wand to his chin "is not an option for you."
"...And it is not your place to tell me that..." he whispered, moving his wand so that it touched her skin.
"Kids! Get down here, now! Or well miss the early-morning sales!" Mrs. Weasley's voice rang up the stairs of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. Hermione stiffened and allowed Ron to shove her backwards into her bed, where she landed splayed upon a collection of her school things.
She stayed there, waiting for Ron to pull Harry back and then -sliding her wand into her sock- allowed Ginny to hoist her up by the shoulders.
"I know that you're hiding things Hermione..." Harry hummed, taking Ron's hint and hastily shoving his wand back into his pocket. At the same time withdrawing from it a length of tattered cloth, and beginning to clean his glassess.
Hermione waved her hand in a dismissive sort of fashion to show she had heard him and proceeded to walk out of the room and down the worn stairs.
"Hermione...dear, here..." she holds my cloak out to me "put it on." Her voice is plain and firm, but I catch that forceful sense of order in it immediately; though it is hidden from every one else. "We don't need you catching a chill."
That's an order too. To every one else, it seems that she is just carrying out her duties as my friend's mother.
But I know better. I know better than to think I have a choice in the matter. 'Do not catch a chill'.
I do not have that choice...
I may not contemplate it... I may not think of it... .
Now, while I slide the heavy leather around my neck, she looks at me like that again, and I make a face. I don't need to be treated like this. I'm not a little girl anymore....
Don't...
Don't pity me...
Harry's looking at the both of us, as if to fit together our moods, and our thoughts, and our looks. Like the pieces of a puzzle that he and Ron have been attempting to put together ever since that day two weeks ago.
He never will though...be able to put them together, I mean.
It is my game that he is playing...and he will never be good at it. I won't let him be good at it, that is not his place, and I take the cloak, quickly. So he can't fit another piece into the set.
He knows. He knows that I'm hiding things....
They all do, they just don't know what those things are, and sometimes I marvel at the craft in which I've managed to conceal the simple truth from them all of these years.
Wait... No, that's not right. It's not only me who's aided in hiding the truth from them. I couldn't have done it without the help of others. Which is precisely why Mrs.Weasley is handing me a pair of long thick woolen gloves right now.
The Order knows.
That day I murdered those Fiends they called my parents to them, and asked them all sorts of questions. Birth-Place, Hour of Birth, Weight at birth etc. It was surprising to see how many of those questions my parents hadn't known the answers to. Or maybe, they just didn't want to give the answers up....
Whatever the case, in the end, they delved out that one piece of information The Order found helpful. That one that I'd kept within myself since the day I recieved my letter from Hogwarts. The day I decided I wanted to be a normal girl --a normal witch-- one that wasn't pittied and treated differently.
I'm sick, and one day soon, this sickness will consume me...entirely; and that's the day I've been waiting for.
It's a trial, really. To keep it from my friends.
It isn't as if I'm not in pain...for I am, and it's not the kind of pain that you learn to live with, and it certainly isn't something that you become accustomed to.
It constantly keeps growing, and twisting, and tearing.
And then, when that last dose of solution that you begged Madam Pomfrey to give you even though you've taken four spoon-fulls of it already finally wears in, a new even more painful feeling arises. The feeling that when you die, somebody might actually cry for you.
I look over at Harry and Ron.
Damn, it was much easier...when I didn't have friends....
I slide the gloves on and they come up past my elbows. They're green with orange stripes and clash horribly against my red sleevless shirt and jeans. Thank Goodness my cloak is so big. It hides enough of the gloves so that if I stand still enough only the alternating orange and green tips show. I'll simply have to not lift my arms...
I look in the old vanity in the far corner of the kitchen and laugh.
Wearing normal...well semi-normal clothing, I smile to myself, isn't so bad for a change.
Ever since we were inducted into the stale blood of that horrible house it's been nothing but the strict dress preferred by the Royals.
We were hysterical the day Mrs. Weasley showed us what I -as standing High Priestess- was to wear to our first meeting with them.
It-was-beautiful....
No, georgeous.
Until she put it on me.
The under garments were hell in themselves.
An uncomfortable black bra.... Hooked to me by a thin string at my back which stretched upward and circled my neck twice. So that if I bent improperly, or rather at all, I would strangle myself.
Then a pair of matching panties tied loosely together at my sides so that the strings hung-low and tickled my knees, now covered in white nylon knee-highs.
Over my thighs came the skirts. Brilliantly coloured deep-purple silk with long slits at either side; atop two or so layersof thin, frilly white-lace. The same lace had also been sewn into the bottoms of my sleeves which ended well past my wrist but began at my elbows leaving my fore-arms exposed. And so being, adorned upon them were many coloured ties and an assortment of metal bangles which -for their lack of warmth- made the hairs on my skin stand; and despite their size weighed more than all the books in my trunk.
My top was a length of white, light-weight fabric that came around my neck and crossed afront my chest. Held together by a large, large, goldensilk tie that went around my middle and came to meet its flower imprinted self, tightly, in a gigantic bow at my back where my skin was also exposed.
It could wind an adult rhinocerous....
I sigh and rub my leg with my foot where now hidden by my pants and cloak, an assortment of angular lumps rest.
Here lay the reason why the Order put up with such a frivelous way of dress, the reason why they didn't mind so many layers of suffocating cloth at my expense.
My holsters. Where I am to keep my pistol and its amunition. My daggers, and a row of viles containing everything from antidote to poison, carefully hidden on my thighs at all times.
For the Order hadn't once and has no intention now or ever of trusting the Nobles as far as they can throw them.
Besides...Spirit attacks may happen at any given moment...whether there are muggles about or not.
By using muggle weapontry, Dumbledore muses, we can leave magic out of the the muggle mind for the moment. And so being, my wand is usually stowed in the lining of my sleeve or in the cuff of my knee-highs to be used when a gun can't take care of an untrustworthy Noble or a teething Fiend for me.
With a knowing look Mrs. Weasley hands me a purple hat, and taking it, I plaster a fake smile upon my face and slap it upon my head.
The Guard has arrived.
"It's a bit cold outside Hermione, are you sure you wouldn't like my cloak too?" asked Kingsley, already in the act of taking it off. "It's really warm. Dragon Hide an'all..."
"--No, I don't want it...!" Hermione hissed and stalked over to Ginny, pulling the hat further over her ears as she went. What it was with that woman and wool she did not know. Really, did she farm sheep in the basement or something?
"--I" Mrs. Weasley began loudly so that all of the attention was on her "made some stew for us to eat before we go" and then hurrying over to Hermione, grabbed her by the neck and so every one within earshot would hear called "Your hands are filthy, go wash up!"
The ordering tone was back.
Hermione trailed up the stairs, careful not to knock anything over...she couldn't stand one more of Sirius' mother's stupid remarks about how he had deserved his death. The top landing was dark and cooling.
She only found the door by feeling all of the different lumpy knobs until she came upon one that felt like pig-skin.
Hermione sat on the sink, leaning her head against the cool medicine cabinet in back of her.
Her hands, she removed the gloves from them and stared, weren't really dirty.
And if they were, it wouldn't be as if Mrs. Weasley could see this. They were covered afterall...
It had been...two weeks since she touched anybody with those hands. She moved them further from her face. Two weeks since she had allowed them, uncovered, to pet Crookshanks, do school work, or even to hold a friend's hand.
Because in these last two weeks, it had been these uncovered hands of hers that had sent countless beings to their deaths.
She pulled a ribbon from her pocket and tied her long-curly tendrils into a messy bun and then stuffed all the loose strands into her cap.
It happened so that because of her sickness, before or after every meal she felt the overwhelming need to vomit, and knowing this Mrs. Weasley found different reasons to send her to a toilet every day.
She hopped down and turned the faucet on full blast to cover the noise.
Her hands...
She leaned over the toilet-bowel and placed them on either side of the rim....
Weren't really dirty....
With the kind of dirt Mrs. Weasley could have seen....
But dirty they were...all the same....
With the vile blood of the countless beings...
Finished with her act Hermione took her towel from the rack and scrubbed her hands till they gleamed...
For her bare hands...
She tugged the gloves back on quickly...as high as they would go....
Had killed....
And were henceforth stained with everlasting stench...
Stench that never left....
Pulling a thin wire comb from her pocket she removed her cap and undid her bun, letting her hair fall to her shoulders.
It didn't work, it never had.
She wasn't even sure why she bothered anymore.
Still though, she worked the comb through. Tugging and pulling until there was just frizz and curls. Un-inhabited by clumps and tangles.