Regina: Big shout out to everyone who reviewed chapter one1 It really makes my day seeing, 'Review Alert!' in my inbox.
Anyway, here's chapter two. Just letting you know, an original character makes an appearance in a scene where I normally would have put Ginny. However, Ginny just didn't seem right, so, yeah.
Please review. Make me happy. Happy Regina write more fics. Writing Regina has better grammar.
Pay the Reaper
Chapter Two: Safe for Now
"Oh, Hermione, we were so worried..."
Hermione opened her eyes to see two sets looking down at her: one brown, the other a brilliant green. Behind Ron and Harry's heads, Hermione could see walls she knew belonged to St Mungo's.
Her voice cracked as she whispered, "How did I get here?"
As Ron made to get her some water from the bedside table, Harry told her. "Your parents phoned me, and I told everyone else."
"So... they're all right? Mum and Dad?" She took the glass of water Ron offered her. "He didn't hurt them?"
Harry shook his head. "No. They're fine. Now that we know that they're targets, Dumbledore has ordered them moved to a safe house."
"We should have known!" Ron muttered angrily, entering the conversation. "After what happened to the Creevys..."
"No one could have known that they would have come after them, Ron."
"Harry's right. Have you heard from Colin?"
Harry nodded, just once. "Yes. His father's started walking again. A few steps each day, but it's a start. His mother was crying with relief." He shook his head. "we were lucky, that time." He met her eyes. "Like we were this morning."
Hermione took a sip of water, choked on what she was about to say, took a breath, then said, "It was Draco Malfoy."
"What?" Harry and Ron asked together. Then, it was just Ron who spoke, "I'll kill him for this."
Hermione was silent.
How could she tell him that he would just be going off to die?
Draco Malfoy was not, by nature, a pacer, although he was seriously questioning this as he paced for the forty-seventh time along the narrow hallway.
A door opened a crack, and he muttered, "Finally."
He burst in through the door. "Nott!"
Theodore Nott looked up, although there was no surprise anywhere in his thin face.
He had changed a lot since they had left Hogwarts – not on the outside, but on the inside.
He was colder, crueller. Soulless would be a good way to describe him now.
Yes, only a soulless monster could hand write the addresses on those pieces of paper, and hand them out without batting an eyelid.
Draco knew he was soulless, too, of course. After all, he accepted those pieces of paper, and carried out the orders that came from higher above, that filtered downwards from the Death Eaters of his father's generation.
The assassination orders came from Nott's father, Avery. Nott himself handed them out because, unlike Draco, he had no real skill in the carrying out of these orders.
He lacked the power, Draco supposed would be one way of saying it.
"What is it?" Nott asked finally. "Did you complete the assignment?"
Draco thrust the piece of paper at Nott. "Did you know that Granger would be there?" he demanded. "Did you know?"
Nott's face remained perfectly calm. "It is her parent's home, Malfoy."
"You knew!" The words practically erupted from his mouth. The times Draco lost his temper, truly lost his temper, were few and far in between. But when it happened, it was like a supernova. "You sent me after her parents, without even warning me who they were? She could have been – and was – there! You know what she can do! You saw what she did to Pansy!"
Nott regarded him coolly, and Draco had to resist the urge not to whip out his wand and make that face explode. "Pansy Parkinson was weak, and a fool."
"So she deserved what she got?"
There was no reaction from Nott whatsoever, except for an emotionless, "Yes."
Draco had had enough. Turning away so that Nott would not see the way his lip twitched, he stormed from the room.
A cool hand on Hermione's forehead late that afternoon roused her from her light sleep.
"No fever. Good," said a female voice. Hermione smiled, knowing who the voice belonged to.
Opening her eyes confirmed her suspicions. The hand belonged to a Healer Hermione knew quite well, Hygeia Dioscorides. Hermione knew her from Hogwarts, although barely, as not only was Hygeia a Ravenclaw, but also the Head Girl of the year above Hermione and her friends.
Hygeia and her sister, Scylla, a Slytherin from Ginny's year, came from an ancient Pureblood line from Greece. They could trace their roots back to the sorcerers of ancient times. Their grandfather had immigrated to England as a young man, and enjoyed a great deal of success in trading between the two magical communities.
Although they were foreign Purebloods, the Dioscorides family were well looked upon by the British Purebloods – her great grandfather had been the Minister of Magic for Greece, and responsible for some of the modern ties between the two countries.This did not make Hygeia, and her family, like other Pureblood families. They were, as Hygeia liked to say, 'Liberal-yet-Traditional Purebloods, not quite like the Weasleys, but certainly nothing like the Malfoys'.
There was a time, she had confessed to Hermione, that she thought her sister would turn out like many of the other Slytherins of their generation. All Hygeia's fears were proved otherwise when Dumbledore revealed that Scylla was actually a spy amongst the ranks of the former young Slytherins, and exposed herself to save the Creevys, almost at the cost of her own life.
Hygeia stepped away from the bed, and sat down in a chair. It was then that Hermione noticed that she was not dressed for work: instead in casual Muggle clothes, black hair loose, instead of tied back like it would be for work. "I have a message from your parents," Hygeia said after a few moment's of silence. "Don't sit up," she added, before Hermione had even tried. Hygeia's ability to read people, predict their actions, was one of the things that Hermione envied about her. It was one of the things that made her such a good Healer – although Hygeia would always tell her that she was blind to people she really cared about. Take Scylla, for example.
"What did they say?"
Hygeia's black eyes were light but serious. "They're fine. They are with Scylla and the Creevys at the Safe House. Remus has ordered that a few other members of the Order be placed there to help her." Scylla was a witch skilled in combat magic, and a ruthless fighter. Both Scylla and her sister had the ability to remain perfectly calm under almost the most demanding of situations, although they had used it to different purposes. "I was on my way to see them. Well, the Creevys. I wanted to see Scylla, and Horus said he would let me do Mr Creevy's Healing instead. Horus said he and Bill could use that time to translate those Egyptian texts that Mundungus managed to get hold of."
Horus was Hygeia's fiancé, and Hygeia's parents were shocked that she had fallen in love with a half-blood, albeit one that had proven himself to potentially be an extremely powerful Healer, like their daughter. Born to an Egyptian witch, and an English Muggle, Horus was the unusual offspring that resulted. He was also a good friend of Bill's, and an important member of the Order. Hermione wished she was as lucky as they were, because, despite the several year age gap, and their coming from two completely different worlds, everyone who knew them well were convinced they were soulmates.
Hermione breathed a sigh of relief. "That's good to know. I don't want anything to happen to them."
"Harry said that it was Draco Malfoy that attacked you. Is that true?"
Hermione nodded. "Yes. I don't remember much – he used the Cruciatus curse while my back was turned."
"Coward."
She could not help but smile. "Yeah. I think I begged him to stop, and he did. He ran away while I was still coming back from it all."
Hygeia smoothed back part of her masses of black hair with a golden hand. That was another thing they had in common – afflicted by more hair than they would have liked. "Is that all? He didn't do anything in particular? Or, as a matter of fact, did you?"
Hermione frowned, and bit her lip, trying to remember. "I may have said his name."
"First or last?"
"... First... then last."
"You said you had your back turned to him. That must have been the moment he recognised you. The shock of seeing you, after all of this time, must have broken his control over the spell."
Hermione nodded in agreement. "Cruciatus does require a lot of concentration. But still... you knew Malfoy when we were younger. Outside school I mean."
"Well, yes, but the times we saw each other were at those fancy 'Pureblood-Only' parties. I hated those." Hygeia paused. "He hated them, too, come to think of it." She smiled slightly. "I remember the summer before Lucius was sent to Azkaban, and He- I mean, Voldemort, came back. We all - Malfoy, Scylla and myself - snuck out from Narcissa's summer bash, and went into the village all by ourselves." She rose from her chair. "I'll ask Scylla while I'm there – she knew him better. I mean, she practically grew up with him. And, more importantly, she's the only one who knew him after Hogwarts."
"Maybe she'll know why," Hermione replied.
"Maybe he's in love with you."
There was a moment's pause, and then both of them started laughing like small children in front of a puppet show. Hermione stopped and winced, and Hygeia immediately went into Healer-mode.
"Are you all right?"
"Yeah. It just hurts."
"It will for some time. Would you like me to order you a sleeping draught?"
"Yes, please."
"Good-bye, then," Hygeia said, and with that, left the ward.
When the sleeping potion came, Hermione drank greedily, wanting, for once, not to think at all.
How he hated that Mudblood Hermione Granger.
That was why he was searching for the perfect spell with which to destroy her.
Author's note: This is the first time that I have done an author's note at the end of the story, but there were some things that I thought I had better explain.
Yes, Hygeia, Scylla and Horus are all original characters. They were all supposed to have briefly appeared in a fic I began writing ages ago, Inseparable, about Ginny Weasley, but as the first chapter of that fic has not been completed, it made sense that they would appear in Pay the Reaper instead. They will still appear in Inseparable, but only when I get my lazy butt in gear. The basic idea was that Ginny would sometimes talk to Scylla in class (although until now, she had no name), and she mentioned once that her sister, Hygeia, had fallen in love with a half-blood, and Scylla would be absolutely scandalised by it. Hygeia would appear briefly, later on, as would Horus.
Anyway, just like J.K. Rowling, there are reasons as to why I have named them with such strange names.
Dioscorides: This was the surname of an ancient Greek physician, who wrote several books on medicine, and was physician to the Roman Emperor Nero.
Hygeia: In Greek mythology, she was the granddaughter of Apollo, god of healing, and inherited her healing ability from her father, who was killed by Zeus for using his power to raise the dead. She, like Apollo and the rest of the gods and goddesses, is sworn on when doctors take their Hippocratic Oath.
Scylla: Scylla's name has come from two places. Firstly, she was a princess who betrayed her father and kingdom for what she thought was love, and secondly, Scylla was a horrible creature with twelve feet and six long necks, each bearing a head with three rows of teeth, with which she devoured any prey that came within reach, that lived in a cave on one side of a strait. The monster version has two roots: one, that she was the Scylla who betrayed her father, and was turned into the monster as punishment, or, that she was a beautiful maiden loved by a sea god, and was turned into a monster by the jealous goddess-witch Circe.
Horus: Like this Horus, the Horus of mythology comes from ancient Egypt. He was the god of the sky, light and goodness, and killed the god of darkness and evil (Set – watch Stargate SG-1, they have done a very good spin on the whole idea of Egyptian and world mythology/history).
