Hermione walked into her dorm room and froze, barely inside the threshold.
From her first day here, Hermione had always been rather...ambivalent, about the dorms. The furnishings were perfectly fine, she supposed — the beds were comfortable enough (if a little strange, shrouded in magically-woven cloth and surrounded by curtains), the chair at the little desk not amenable to sitting on for too long (which could be solved with cushioning charms), storage space for clothes and books and things adequate but a little on the small side (which could be solved with space-expansion charms). It wasn't luxurious, not by any means, but not particularly bad, she didn't mind.
No, it was her roommates who had always been the problem. Even just the idea of having roommates. Hermione was an only child, okay, she was used to having her own room. She did have a couple cousins around her age — Aimée was closest, at two and a half years younger — but they lived in France. The only time they saw each other was when they were both visiting their grandmother, around Christmas or over the summer, and Aimée lived close enough to go home every night, while Hermione slept in...well, Aimée's father, Rémy, his old bedroom, at their grandmother's house.
It was honestly hard for Hermione to think of times she'd ever shared a bedroom with anyone else. Her parents a few times, staying at hotels here and there. One summer, when Hermione had been...seven or eight, maybe? Anyway, the whole family had gone on a trip to Greece one year, and Hermione had ended up sharing a room with Aimée, along with their aunt Tienne and cousin Mailys. (Mailys had been the adult in the room, Hermione's grandmother had had her youngest child very late, Tienne was less than four years older than her.) That had been for about a week, and it had been very awkward — she liked Tienne well enough, but she could be a bit a much, especially in such close proximity for that long. (She hardly knew Mailys, and Aimée had been five at the time, and thus very boring.) Other than that, she couldn't really think of anything.
Honestly, if Hermione had known there was a virtually one hundred per cent chance she'd have to share a room with people — Slytherin was the only house where people got their own room, and muggleborns never went there (Rachel was the first since before the war) — she might have hesitated a bit longer before agreeing to go. She would have still gone somewhere, because it was magic, but there had been other options, even if it had taken some badgering from her parents before McGonagall would admit it.
The Academy of Caoimhe Ní Bhláithín had seemed perfectly acceptable, even if Hermione had absolutely no idea how to properly pronounce it. (Irish Gaelic was ridiculous sometimes.) In some ways, it'd actually sounded superior to Hogwarts — they had more diversity in available subjects, if nothing else. The problem was... Well, there wasn't a border on the magical side, so it didn't really matter that it was in Ireland, but the person Mum had written had said a significant proportion of the classes were in Gaelic. The Mastery program was mostly in English, but if she wanted to take advantage of that greater diversity of options, she would need to become proficient in Gaelic — the standard language the mages used, which was apparently closely related to Irish and Scots Gaelic on the muggle side, but not quite identical to either, due to a few hundred years of drift — and she would have to do it quickly. By the time she managed to close the language gap...
But Hermione had seriously considered going to Beauxbatons. She and her parents had even gone to an event at the school for prospective muggleborns and their families, it'd been a very close thing. Beauxbatons didn't use English at all, but the language barrier was actually less than it'd be at the Academy — she'd never taken a class in French, but she'd been speaking it for literally longer than she could remember, it wouldn't be a problem. In the end, she'd decided the place was...too big, to put it briefly. Beauxbatons was huge, more like a sprawling university campus than a secondary school — of course, they did have a Mastery program, so they were also technically a university — and just outside the gates was what Hermione now knew was a large city by magical standards, bustling and colourful and noisy and big. Hogwarts, squirrelled away in isolation somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, had seemed far less...distracting.
Of course, that was before she'd known how terribly Hogwarts was managed, how frankly incompetent much of the staff was, that she'd be stuck sharing a room with some of the...well, bitchiest girls she'd ever met. If Hermione had known all that, she would be in France right now.
(Aquitania, technically, she still forgot the borders on the magical side were different sometimes.)
It had been...uncomfortable, just the idea of it. Before Hermione had even known how terrible they would be, that very first night, she remembered the other girls, just, changing into their nightclothes out in the open, still cheerily chattering, while Hermione had awkwardly slunk away into the bathroom to change in private. She knew now that British magical society had very different ideas of decency and modesty — due to the lessened influence of Christianisation, she assumed — they thought nothing of changing in front of each other, even going to and from the showers without a stitch on, especially in single-sex environments like this one, it was mortifying. Apparently, in certain very specific contexts (tight-knit cliques like quidditch teams, for example), they were equally shameless in mixed-sex groups, and that was just bloody weird. Hermione had been completely blind-sided by her roommates being so comfortable, just, walking around naked, she'd never gotten used to it.
(It was still weird to think about, because mages were even more prudish than normal people sometimes. They were much stricter about what was acceptable to wear in public — a vest and knee-length skirt that might be perfectly acceptable in Oxford would be positively scandalous to purebloods. They split dormitories by sex, and they clearly thought it would be inappropriate to not...but mixed-sex quidditch teams showered together, and this was seemingly fine. It was very confusing.)
And it wasn't just the apparent disregard for whether they were properly dressed (in private) or not, no, sharing space at all was difficult. Hermione was used to having her own space she could do whatever she wanted with, and while that had still mostly been the case — they'd all generally stayed out of each other's sections of the shared room — it wasn't really the same thing. It's just... They were there, all the time, she'd always felt like she was being watched, even if she was technically alone at the moment. And even if they didn't go through her things, she was always uncomfortably aware of the fact that they could, at any time — especially after, early in second year, Lavender actually had, mockingly dismantling Hermione's entire wardrobe, the other girls giggling and coming up with cruel comments of their own, while Hermione had been sitting at her desk trying to read, but she couldn't concentrate, they'd been too loud and irritating, and she'd been too humiliated and angry and...
They'd never touched her school things. That was something, she guessed.
(She hated those girls. She didn't want to, she didn't like feeling like this, but she couldn't help it, she didn't think she'd ever hated anyone this much, they were awful.)
There were times when she'd seriously considered transferring to Beauxbatons, and the other students were a significant part of why. Once the other girls had started being truly awful, about halfway through September, right around her birthday first year — once the bullying outside the dorm had really started up, because she had the temerity to be intelligent and talented while also being a muggleborn — it'd been a constant thought at the back of her head. She didn't have to put up with this, she didn't need to be here. She could leave. But, she hadn't been able to bring herself to tell her parents how bad it was. She must have inherited some portion of Mum's stubbornness, because she hadn't wanted to give them the satisfaction, she hadn't wanted to quit, no, she'd make it through the year, at least. She wouldn't give up.
If she hadn't become friends with Harry and Ron (mostly Harry), she probably would have left after first year. She really hadn't had any other reason to come back, not when Beauxbatons was still an option. Even with them, she'd still seriously considered it, especially with the insanity going on with the Chamber of Secrets, she...
She couldn't quit. She just couldn't. No matter how much she'd hated it here, sometimes.
Third year, though, third year had been a lot better. By that point, she'd managed to make a small handful of friends — Harry and Ron (mostly Harry), Neville, Susan and Hannah (a little), Lisa and Morag (kind of) — which did make it easier to deal with people being awful. A lot of the stupid racist bullies had tired of her, with a few notable exceptions, but even they were more cautious, since she knew how to hex back now, and had a few friends behind her. Dealing with that was practically a thing of the past now, there'd been a sharp drop in people messing with her after Lyra had humiliated Malfoy in front of the whole school.
After all, people might not think very much of making the awkward, friendless, swotty mudblood miserable, but nobody wanted to mess with Lyra Black's girlfriend.
Lyra had made her living situation much more tolerable as well, even if it still hadn't been perfect. In some ways, living with Lyra was still awkward and embarrassing, but there was absolutely no doubt that it was an improvement over the year before. In most ways, anyway. Lyra might not leave her alone to read as much as her previous roommates had, but it wasn't like she was going out of her way to make her miserable for no reason, and when she did interrupt her it was usually for something interesting, at least. (Of course, for the most part, she'd rather do her classwork with Lyra around, even if it meant she got through it slower, she was always good to talk things over with.) Lyra did have less respect for her privacy — stealing the time turner and her habit of wearing Hermione's clothes (transfigured to fit) without even asking stood out — but she wasn't doing any of it out of cruelty, she simply had absolutely no respect for boundaries of any kind. It was still irritating, sometimes, but she wasn't being mean, just thoughtless.
Adding Gin in the latter half of the year had made little difference. Hermione had offered to let her move in with them as a solution to her problems with her own roommates, even while she wasn't at all certain she'd be comfortable with having Gin around, but it'd turned out fine enough. Gin very much kept to herself. Pretty much every time she opened her mouth, it was with something sarcastic — lately, about Hermione and Lyra, and what they might or might not be getting up to while Gin wasn't looking, which was embarrassing but harmless — but she spent most of her time studying or practising her dueling stuff, even when she was in the dorm she was completely inoffensive. Hermione wasn't certain they were really friends, she didn't think they talked enough to be, but it was fine, Hermione didn't mind her being around at all.
Everything else might be an improvement but, when it came to the modesty stuff, it was almost worse. Lyra had even less shame than the other girls did...which made perfect sense, when she thought about it — she was pretty sure Eris had taken away Lyra's ability to even feel embarrassment, so. Much like the other girls, she clearly thought nothing of changing right out in the open, but, unlike the other girls, she thought equally little of just...sitting around naked...just because?
Okay, no, not really just because, she meant... Like, Lyra needed a reason to do something, see. Say, if she had just taken a shower — or, a bath, actually, she seemed to prefer baths if she had the time for it — and she wouldn't be going out into the public areas of the castle, where she was expected to be at least marginally presentable, she apparently didn't think it worth the effort to get dressed. It wasn't unusual for Hermione to return to their room for the evening to find Lyra sitting at her desk or on her bed, her hair still slightly damp, quietly reading, completely naked. Sometimes she slept in the nude too, and that was new, none of the other girls had done that. Never in the colder months though — she'd stolen Hermione's pyjamas to lounge around in instead, because she had no respect for boundaries — but in the warmer months?
It wasn't like she was being intentionally...provocative, or anything. (At least, Hermione didn't think she was, it was hard to tell sometimes.) Lyra just had absolutely no shame whatsoever.
At some point, it had gotten very distracting. Since coming back for fourth year, she...
Okay, Hermione would admit that she'd had mixed feelings about the idea of returning to their dorm this year. She'd assumed they'd still have their semi-private room (shared with Gin), since someone would have had to knock out the wall Hogwarts had put in to return it to normal — if they did, Lyra would probably split it up again regardless. Which was fine, she did prefer it this way, by a whole hell of a lot. But, well, things were just slightly more complicated than they'd been last year, weren't they?
She was sharing a bedroom with her girlfriend.
Her very pretty, randomly nude girlfriend.
It was...
It was distracting, to put it mildly.
She'd been in the habit of, just, not looking, when people were changing and such — if only out of vicarious embarrassment. It was somewhat more difficult to avoid looking last year, with Lyra sometimes sitting around casually not wearing anything, eventually she'd gotten...acclimated, she guessed. It was still somewhat awkward, and just weird, but Lyra was weird, she tried not to let it bother her. But, eventually...
She'd tried not to stare, at first, toward the end of last year. It hadn't helped that she'd still been very ambivalent about the feelings she'd been developing for Lyra, she... Well, whatever, didn't matter. She hadn't wanted to...be distracted, so she'd tried to pretend she wasn't...
A couple days into this year, she'd realised... Well, Lyra didn't give a damn, did she? And they were dating now, and Lyra clearly didn't think twice about it, so it was probably fine if Hermione just...looked. A little.
More than a little, really. She'd caught herself staring, multiple times. (Gin had caught her staring more than a couple of times.)
Lyra was, just, very distracting, these days.
(Hermione was in so much trouble...)
So, when it came down to it, Lyra and Gin setting up a circle of candles in the middle of the floor was hardly the most uncomfortable thing she'd walked into her dorm room to find. But it did still take her aback, a bit.
It could be weirder. At least they were both dressed.
"What are you doing?"
Lyra glanced up from the almost-completed circle, face split with that trademark grin of hers — wide and toothy, full of such energy it was honestly incomprehensible, so cheerful it was almost fake. "There you are, Maïa. Good, we're almost ready, come on."
A corner of her lips twitched. "That wasn't an answer to my question, Lyra." She obeyed anyway, drifting further into the room. Better than standing in the doorway like an idiot.
Focused on placing her last candle, Lyra didn't respond, Gin got there first. "Black finally realised no one would have introduced you to Magic before."
Somehow, Hermione heard the capital letter on Magic, which was the only reason she wasn't entirely confused. She was still partially confused, though. "I don't know what that means."
"Old tradition," Lyra said, popping back fully upright, her hair flipping over a little with the quick motion. "On a child's birthday, the family will do a little ritual thing — barely a proper ritual, won't set off the wards. Exactly when and how varies family to family, the Blacks first do it at three, with more iterations at seven, thirteen — around the start of puberty, traditionally, but shifted to the thirteenth birthday to make things simpler — and on the eve of their wedding...and women have an extra one, actually, whenever they learn they're pregnant with their first child, it's a whole thing. But, we're big into high magic, so I'm certain we do it way more than most people. Gin actually knew what it was without me having to explain, which is weird, I assumed the Weasleys didn't do anything? Being proper, civilised light mages."
Gin shrugged. Her own arms now empty of candles, she stuck her hands in her pockets, looking strangely awkward. "Grandma Lucretia led mine, with Bill and Charlie."
"Lucretia, you mean Lucretia Prewett née Black?"
Lyra must have that right, because Gin just nodded — which was weird, they'd been living together for months and Hermione had somehow never learned Lyra and Gin were cousins...but then, most purebloods were, when it came down to it. "Did one when I was seven, and another over the summer, which was probably supposed to be the thirteen one. Bill said not to tell our parents, they wouldn't approve."
"But, if Lucy was doing it with you, she must have done them for Molly when she was a kid too. And Arthur, now that I think about it — wasn't his mother a Black too? Cedrella Lycoris, wasn't it, Castor and Nora's?"
"I think so. I don't know, Bill told me not to tell them, so." Gin shrugged.
"Wait, both of your grandmothers were Blacks?"
Lyra turned her brilliant grin back on Hermione. "Oh, sure — Cedrella and Lucretia are second cousins. I'm Gin's third cousin through Cedrella, and fourth through Lucretia. She's even more closely related to Sirius, Lucretia is his father's sister." Meaning they were...first/second cousins once removed? Hermione wasn't sure, she'd never had to keep track of these things before. Sirius's grandfather was Gin's great-grandfather, was what Lyra was saying, and that was news, Hermione'd had no idea...
Rolling her eyes, Gin drawled, "Mum likes to pretend she isn't related to the Blacks at all. I honestly didn't even know Sirius was her first cousin until he told me a few days ago."
"I'm sure Lucy loves that."
"Oh, she hates it, there are reasons we don't see the Prewetts much."
Right, they'd probably keep going off on a meandering tangent about their interrelated families if Hermione didn't drag them back on track — purebloods had an awful habit of doing that. "Okay, what is it, then, this ritual thing?"
"Just saying hello," Lyra said, simply and casually, as though that explained everything.
Before Hermione could say that was not a real answer, Gin provided one. If not a very clear one. "Basically, the idea is to call forth Magic to...well. It's hard to put it into words, exactly. It's called an introduction for a reason — just, Magic comes in to touch you for a bit. Like, wild magic, the magic of the world. I'm not explaining this very well."
"Okay." If Hermione understood correctly — which, she might not, she didn't have any experience with this sort of thing — the ritual basically just opened a connection between the subject and the Powers. Not with the intent of doing anything with it, just...well, saying hello. (As much as Lyra's 'explanations' might not be very helpful in the moment, they usually made perfect sense once Hermione actually knew what she was talking about.) It did sound kind of interesting, she guessed — an absolute beginner's introduction to ritual magic, basically. Even if the thought of playing around with high magic was sort of intimidating. "And it won't... I mean, it's not dangerous, is it?"
"Oh, no," Gin said, an odd, unreadable look crossing her face. "It's sort of... Well, it feels really good, actually. A bit confusing, but..."
Lyra shrugged. "Contact euphoria is a thing. It's a problem some ritualists run into, they can get addicted to it if they're not careful. So, no, it's not dangerous — Magic wants you to like it, it's not going to hurt you for no reason."
Hermione never quite knew what to think when Lyra talked about Magic like...almost like it was a person, with a will and preferences of its own. Though, it...kind of was? It was somewhat more complicated than that, as she understood. According to the theory books on the subject she'd been reading lately, magic was affected by the presence of living things, an echo of their feelings and thoughts carrying into it — Magic had, sort of, taken on some of the traits of living things, just on contact, including consciousness...theoretically. Not the same kind of consciousness people had, of course, but not so alien as to be completely unrecognisable as a self-aware something.
Exactly what that consciousness looked like, well, there was a lot of disagreement on that. For all intents and purposes, Magic had hundreds of more or less independent minds — the various gods and things, like Lyra's Eris — but there was also the underlying Magic of the universe, which theoretically had its own more diffuse, less colourful personality. What that Magic was like was far more open to debate. Most scholars agreed it was benevolent, if in a distant, impersonal sort of way. Which wasn't a surprise when Hermione thought about it — if its awareness was a reflection of all the life in the universe, one if its underriding impulses would naturally be to work towards the continued flourishing of life (in reflection of the reproductive drive, see), so it only made sense Magic would default to...well, benevolent but impersonal, that really was the best way to put it.
That Magic, she thought, the incomprehensibly ancient and enormous something at the centre of the universe, was what this ritual was supposed to open her up to. Which was a rather intimidating thought, but not a bad one, exactly.
She had been wondering about ritual magic a bit lately, after all. This was a good a way to get her first experience with it as any. "Right. So what do I do then?"
"You don't have to do much of anything, just sit— Oh," Lyra cut herself off, frowning. "Almost forgot, take your bra off first."
"Excuse me?"
"With the kind of power you'll be in contact with, metal can do some funny things, especially when in contact with other materials. Like cloth or skin, for example. Unless you want your clothes to catch fire, I guess, then go ahead and keep it."
Hermione huffed. "No, I don't want to be set on fire, thank you." She whipped off her robe, setting it to hang off the back of her chair. It was somewhat awkward getting at the clasps without taking her shirt off — and uncomfortable, with Lyra and Gin standing right there watching her — but she got it after a couple seconds trying. "How did you almost forget that?"
One shoulder lifting in a shrug, Lyra said, "Honestly, I forget bras exist half the time. They're a muggle thing, and a comparatively new one at that."
"I never even saw one before coming to Hogwarts," Gin added.
That...was a good point — now that Hermione thought about it, the modern bra was largely a post-war thing, they would barely have been around for a couple decades in Lyra's original time. And mages tended to be a good century behind on most trends, if they caught up at all, so it wasn't surprising they'd be new to Gin too. They were just so ubiquitous on the muggle side, it hadn't occurred to her. "Er, corsets and things would be a problem too though, right?" Not that most of them bothered with anything like that most days, and when they did it seemed to be just for fashion — Hermione had noticed that purebloods tended to be late bloomers, very few of the other girls in their year had much in the way of noticeable breasts at all.
(Hermione had tried to not be self-conscious about it back in second year, and mostly failed.)
"Muggles put metal in corsets? Huh." Lyra silently frowned for a second. "How would that even... Never mind, ours wouldn't be a problem. Unless they used metal for decoration, I guess, but that would be a weirdly fancy thing to be wearing doing a ritual. Actually, this sort of thing is supposed to be done in the nude, if we're going to be all traditional about it — that's the original reason why introduction rituals in particular are normally done by single-sex groups, Gin's much older brothers being in on hers is very unusual — but they eventually figured out it was only certain materials that were causing problems, so that was phased out over time."
Thank God for small favours, she guessed. "Is that why all the buttons and clasps used in clothing made by mages are made of ceramic or silver alloys?" She was wearing a magic-made skirt right now that had a couple buttons on it that she thought were ceramic, or maybe carved from an animal shell of some kind, hard to tell.
Lyra gave her an odd look. "House elves."
Oh, right, she'd forgotten about that — much like certain magical beings, like werewolves, had a sensitivity to silver, most elves and fae and such were sensitive to certain lighter metals. Iron, cobalt, and nickel were the primary offenders...though not copper, for some reason, which didn't quite make scientific sense, but magic things didn't always. It was interesting that the problem metals, pure and alloyed, were all ferromagnetic, but while the big three all were in their pure form, copper only was in alloys — maybe that made the difference somehow.
It was also interesting that they were sensitive to materials that every living thing on earth needed to survive — iron was obvious, but there was cobalt at the centre of vitamin B12, which was absolutely essential for all mammals, at the very least. Though, when she thought about it, iron and cobalt should always be bound at the core of complex organic compounds, and shouldn't be directly reactive at any point in the relevant metabolic processes — in the bacteria that synthesised them, perhaps, but not in complex mammals — so maybe it didn't really...
And she was letting her thoughts wander again. "Right, what do I do?"
Grinning like a maniac again, Lyra pointed at the circle of candles. "Just sit in the middle of the circle. You don't have to do anything other than wait — you're the subject of the ritual, not a participant."
Right, she knew that. Okay then. Trying to ignore the nerves setting her arms to tingling, Hermione stepped into the middle of the circle. Getting down to the floor was slightly awkward, with the skirt and all, but at least it was long and loose enough for her to fold her legs without any issue. Lyra and Gin muttered to each other for a moment, before they came to sit on the floor too, directly across the circle from each other, Lyra to her left and Gin to her right. They were silent for a brief moment, probably concentrating.
Whatever they were doing, Hermione felt something already, but it had nothing to do with the ritual. Ever since Lyra had gone on a rant about focusing exercises and magic sensing and such halfway through third year, Hermione had done some reading on the subject, and started integrating focusing exercises into her occlumency practice, which she'd already been doing by that point. It had made her spellcasting tighter than it'd been before — though the difference was small enough she might not have noticed at all if Professor Flitwick hadn't commented on it — but the big thing was she could actually feel magic now, as more than just the slight sense of static on the air she'd always had. (That might not even count, since muggles could feel it too, according to both her parents.)
She'd been surprised to learn, these first couple weeks back at school, that this magic-sensing stuff was how divination was actually supposed to work, Trelawney had just been terrible and had no idea how to teach it. To Hermione's own shock, she was near the top of their Divination class — alongside, of all people, Harry, Neville, and Susan — which was just weird. That first exercise they'd been given, drawing from a deck of playing cards (most mages still used tarot cards for their original purpose) and trying to guess the suit of the card their partner was holding? Hermione and Neville both had a success rate of over two-thirds, which was, just, statistically improbable. Especially since, if Hermione was doing it on her own, guessing the suit of the top card and flipping it over, her success rate plummeted right back down to the expected one in four — it only worked if someone else was looking at the card, which was weird.
Though, when Hermione had told Lyra it was weird, she'd insisted that should have been bloody obvious. One couldn't divine knowledge if that knowledge didn't exist — whatever Hermione was subconsciously picking up on wasn't the card itself, but Neville's knowledge of the card, an echo of it carrying through the magic around them. Seers and such didn't sense echoes of the events themselves, but people's experiences of events. There were Seers that could do what Hermione had attempted, flipping over cards on her own, but what they'd actually be picking up on would be their own experience of later viewing the card, not the card itself independent of anyone observing it. Which was strange and circular...but also made an obvious kind of sense, when she thought about it. After all, magic reacted to people's thoughts and feelings, and it was that reaction they were feeling, obviously.
Hermione was already glad she'd decided to stick with Divination, once she'd learned they'd have a new professor, even if she still didn't think the class would be particularly useful. The useful divinations — feeling out if someone was telling the truth or not, sensing danger, finding their way if lost — were actually being taught in Defence this year, Divination was really just an interesting curiosity at this point.
But anyway, it hadn't taken very long playing with magic sensing before she'd been able to feel Lyra's...well, "aura" was the word people typically used, no matter how silly Hermione felt saying it. At first, just when she'd closed her eyes and took a moment to focus on it, but now practically all the time — especially when Lyra wasn't doing a good job holding it in, her magic just leaked everywhere sometimes. It had taken a while for Hermione to put exactly what she was feeling, what the energy radiating from Lyra actually was, to put it into the proper terms and context, because it didn't really...
She meant, over her first couple years learning about magic she'd been given a rather...superficial understanding of certain things. The distinction between light and dark magic, for example, she'd been given the impression the beneficial magics were light, and destructive magics were dark. She knew now that was a massive oversimplification — Professor Lovegood and Miss Stacey were quite insistent that anyone could use light or dark magic to whatever end they wished, helpful or harmful — but it had led to some confusion regarding the feel of Lyra's magic. She would expect dark magic to feel, well, bad, unpleasant or painful or sickening or something, but it didn't, not really. In her visits to Ancient House, she'd bumbled across a few enchantments that were definitely harmful, and those felt unpleasant, like a cold, sharp knife pressed against her neck, but dark magic in general...
If she were to compare the feel of Lyra's magic to anything, it was the wind, like a cool breeze in summer, wild and playful, tugging at her hair. It did get rather sharper at times, sometimes stinging so harsh it was painful, but that was in response to Lyra's mood, not the density of the magic itself — like Lyra's anger turned the refreshing summer breeze into a biting winter wind. It had taken several weeks for Hermione to even realise what she was feeling was very dark magic, it just felt too...
Okay, it felt like a very strange thing to say, almost embarrassing, given she was talking about her girlfriend's magic, but it was rather pleasant, actually. She didn't know if that was because she'd unconsciously associated it with Lyra, or if it was just because Hermione had an affinity for dark magic herself — according to Professor Lovegood, anyway, Hermione hadn't had any idea — or, hell, if the things people said about dark magic weren't just wildly inaccurate.
Learning about the Powers and such, it'd become increasingly obvious that the so-called "Dark" was absolutely necessary — without Wisdom, without Freedom(/"Chaos"), yes, even without Destruction or Death, society would horrifically stagnate. Some people might not like to contemplate the "Dark" aspects of existence, but that didn't mean they weren't essential to existence itself.
Over the brief moment Lyra and Gin were silent and unmoving, the cool, playful dance of Lyra's magic grew more intense, powerful enough Hermione almost thought her hair should be fluttering in the wind, yes, that was expected. But, for the first time without having to intentionally seek it out, Hermione could feel Gin's magic as well. It was obviously different than Lyra's, but not particularly offensive either — it was a firm, steady heat, rather putting Hermione in mind of a campfire, a solid wall of light and warmth, without the giddy, wild energy of Lyra's, but no less pleasant in its own way.
She wouldn't want to actually touch it...but then, she wouldn't stick her hand in a campfire either, would she?
Eventually, Hermione hadn't been counting the seconds — and her thoughts had been free to idle for a good while, so it must have been a minute or two — their simple little ritual actually started. The aura of twisting, teasing dark magic around Lyra focused for a moment, lashed out in a sharp snap, the candle directly behind Hermione coming alight. (She couldn't see it, of course, but she felt the magic taking anyway.) Around the same moment, Lyra said Hermione's name, first middle and last. Then, with another snap of magic, clearly light this time, the candle directly in front of Hermione was lit, Gin repeating her name. Gin's candle-lighting charm was far tighter, without the wild wisps of giggling energy Lyra had flung in all directions, she was using her wand to focus the magic better. Lyra lit another candle with another messy freeform charm — Hermione reminded herself to remind Lyra to go back to her focusing exercises, that was just inefficient — this time casually muttering, "We invite Magic to our circle." Gin did the same, her repetition of the phrase sounding somewhat more absent — she had to focus harder to light the candles properly, Hermione guessed, not used to casting magic silently. They went around, back and forth, alternating between saying her name and that one little phrase with each candle they lit, working their way around the circle clockwise.
Or, deasil, she guessed — sunways, not clockwise. Mages preferred the older terms for these sorts of things, especially when talking about potions and ritual.
For most of the candle-lighting process, the only magic Hermione felt on the air was Lyra and Gin's, the tiny fires on the candles, sparks of dark and light so weak she could barely feel them. But, there was something else here. It built slowly, at the edge of her awareness, subtle enough Hermione must not have noticed at first. Other magic she'd encountered before had always felt localised, heat radiating out from a single source, had a direction and a motion to it, but this was different. It wasn't coming or going, it simply was — less like a sound crossing a room and more like a scent that had long ago filled it, an undifferentiated, uniform presence. And it was...
It smelled like grass and tasted of copper, the electric anticipation of an approaching thunderstorm — as it got thicker and thicker Hermione could think her gums might be bleeding, her hair should be standing up — heat coursing through her blood in a sudden thrill, she couldn't quite hold in a shiver. And it grew and grew, thick enough it was sort of surprising she couldn't see it, that she could even still breathe, but it wasn't just big, it was also deep, connected to something stretching far beyond the little circle of candles, right against her skin and deepening further and further, and...
It was, she thought, rather like the magical equivalent of walking right up to the edge of a cliff — despite the fact that she was sitting on the floor, she felt like she were teetering on the edge of an endless abyss, one that was awake, looking right at her, whispering at her to jump. It was unexpectedly exhilarating — it wasn't like Magic would hurt her, after all, she wasn't in any real danger — but it was also terrifying, enough she had to resist the urge to pop up and out of the circle.
But she didn't have to jump. The abyss reached up and pulled her down into it without her having to do a thing.
When Harry asked her about it later (apparently no one had told Sirius yet that he wouldn't have been properly introduced to Magic either), she wouldn't be able to explain exactly what it had felt like. It had been too much, washed away in an overwhelming wave of magic and feeling and memory, lost in a dancing maelstrom of light and colour she couldn't contain, flashes of experiences that were not her own. She only even remembered a little bit.
—remained at a distance, the wind shocked into existence as the shells burst tearing at her hair, the wards shining orange and white under the assault, holding but cracking, spellfire green and black lancing out to press—
—children cheered as they returned, running out to meet them, a few nearly getting themselves trampled under hoof in their excitement, she jumped down to meet her boy, sweeping him up and—
—glaring at the clinic's smooth ceiling, quite tired with the nurse's attitude, the litany of questioning equal parts irritating and humiliating, she'd known exactly what she was doing, coming here seeking an abortion, they wouldn't guilt her out of—
—ducked as the dragon made another pass at the ramparts, fire splashing against the palings Sylvi had erected over their heads, the stars temporarily obscured with flickering blue and orange, a few dribbles managed to punch through, she scrambled to banish the magical flame away, cursing under her breath—
—standing helplessly among her trunk and bags, ignoring the lady babbling away at her, she glared through the open door of the childrens' home at her father's retreating back, and for the first time in her life, fire crawling hard and hot in her chest, she truly hated, she—
—caught in her throat, she stared out the viewport, millions of stars in a dozen subtly different colours, a number and clarity she'd never before seen, the curve of the planet to her left, oceans gleaming blue, clouds afire with a distance sunset, city lights in blobs and tiny lines disappearing over the—
—Hermione giggled at the magic dancing through her veins, sparks shooting behind her eyes in a flickering rainbow of colour. It was already pulling back, she could tell — though how long it had carried her away for she couldn't tell, it'd felt like hours yet also only seconds — the few last tendrils of power touching her still enough she could barely move, barely think, lost in a sea of gentle warmth, gently tickling energy. It was still watching her, she could tell — not from the outside, but the inside, what she was thinking and feeling, not in a single moment but everything, combing through her memories behind her and the tangled threads of potential futures ahead of her quicker than she could comprehend.
And she could feel it feeling, turning her mind in its fingers, carefully, like a pretty but fragile bauble. No, that wasn't right — there was a bit of more distant fascination, like Hermione would feel over some academic curiosity, but it wasn't only that. There was something warmer, a kind of tolerant amusement. Like a parent looking on the silly antics of a small child, love and exasperation and pride and anticipation and—
It cut off, abruptly, leaving Hermione lying on her back in the middle of the circle of candles, breathlessly giggling.
While she was still trying to get her breath, her skin still pleasantly tingling with the last lingering traces of Magic's presence, she felt more than saw Lyra lean over her, magic wild and sharp and playful. "Er, Maïa, you okay? If Magic broke you, I'm going to be very annoyed at it."
"I'm fine," she managed to choke out — Lyra saying something so silly like that, being annoyed at the universe for breaking her, really didn't help the giggling situation. (Seriously, her throat was starting to hurt, she had to stop going that.) At least, she was pretty sure she was fine. That had been a lot, but it hadn't accidentally incinerated her body or anything, and her mind was clearly still working (presumably). If anything, she felt...
Well, she felt great, actually. Warm, and tingly, and, and awake, more energised than she thought she'd ever been ever, like she could do anything she liked, and excited, and, it was just amazing.
She clearly had to look into ritual magic more. The thought had occurred to her, before, that it sounded interesting, but it'd also sounded slightly terrifying. At the moment, though, it didn't seem quite so bad. She was aware she probably wasn't thinking straight right now, probably had a bit of a magic high (which she knew was a thing, even if she'd never experienced it herself), but magic was awesome, and it was fun, and it clearly liked her, and Hermione was brilliant, so she'd be fine.
(She realised that was a rather arrogant thought, but at the moment it seemed perfectly reasonable. She was brilliant, Magic did like her, so there.)
But she had absolutely no idea how to explain that to Lyra, that everything was great, and she wasn't losing her mind or anything.
So she blindly reached for her to pull her down and kiss her instead.
Hermione would admit she'd had absolutely no idea what she was doing when it came to this kissing thing, at first. She'd been distracted by the thought here and there — once or twice in second year with Lockhart, which was extremely embarrassing in retrospect, and then with Lyra in third year, increasingly over the winter until it was annoyingly persistent — but she'd never actually done it before this summer, not in any context she'd had real control over. Her first kiss ever had been Lyra, just, out and doing it, right in front of her parents, with no warning at all, because she was a crazy person, and after that was just the Walpurgis Revel, which...
Honestly, that was still embarrassing, looking back on it. She'd kind of just...walked around randomly kissing people...for practice. Because, clearly, before doing anything in any context where it actually mattered, one should get a bit of practice in first. Since Lyra had been Eris at the time and not really available, and the thought of kissing Lyra had still been a bit intimidating in the first place — not just because she wasn't certain whether she wanted to go there, she'd also been worried she'd be terrible at it, that she'd ruin everything — her Walpurgis-addled brain had thought wandering around randomly kissing people was the perfectly reasonable thing to do. She'd still been herself enough to stay away from anything too...involved, but it was still, just, mortifying, to recall how she'd behaved that night. And because Eris liked to bloody mess with people for fun, she remembered every second of it.
(Luckily, none of the other students she'd done her practice kissing with remembered, or at least hadn't given any hint they did. That would have been, just, awkward.)
The first time she thought actually counted was that day Lyra had randomly shown up in France — stepping out of the shadows in her bedroom at her grandmother's house, with no warning at all, because Lyra. They'd been sitting in a nearby park, talking about the book Lyra had written, and Lyra had revealed she'd written it for her, and... Well, she hadn't really thought about it, to be honest. She'd just...done it. And then done it some more. They'd gone on snogging for some minutes, actually, just, sitting there out in public. It'd seemed the thing to do.
That was hardly the last time they'd done it. A bit of snogging here and there was just expected for teenagers, wasn't it, of course they had. Sort of a lot, actually. Especially since they'd gotten back to Hogwarts, and so saw each other every day.
It's not like they were going at it constantly or anything, but when the thought did occur to her... Well, why not? Lyra was always around, and she was brilliant and fascinating (even if she got slightly terrifying sometimes) and annoyingly pretty, and she clearly didn't mind, so.
(Hermione was in so much trouble.)
But, for all the practice she'd gotten at this snogging thing by now, she still didn't feel like she really knew what she was doing. She was just too self-conscious, she guessed. She'd never been particularly confident when it came to any sort of physical activity at all — apparently, that same awkwardness of hers when they'd been forced into sport things back in primary translated directly to snogging, which was very irritating. She couldn't help thinking about things too hard, if she was doing something wrong, or, she didn't know...
It didn't help that...it was just kind of embarrassing sometimes. And Lyra seemed to enjoy embarrassing her. Well, no, it wasn't the embarrassment itself that Lyra was going for, she didn't think, it was the things that caused it. She would do things, like, surprise her with teeth, either catching her lip or on her neck, and she never quite managed to hold in a completely embarrassing squeak, which Lyra apparently thought was adorable (she'd actually said as much), so she kept doing it, and...
Hermione could tell her to stop, and she probably would listen, but she didn't really want her to. And that was embarrassing all by itself.
But it wasn't just surprising her that was the problem sometimes, no, sometimes when they'd been at it a little while, and Lyra was all being right there, and sometimes her fingers would slip under the hem of her shirt, and sometimes she'd be kissing her neck and...
Sometimes Hermione got a bit...aroused, was the word. A bit. And that was embarrassing all by itself.
Which was silly, she knew it was silly, it was perfectly natural and expected, even, and nothing to be feeling embarrassed about. But it just happened, she couldn't help it.
The self-consciousness and occasional embarrassment was just a normal part of the snogging thing, the bad she had to take with the good, and she'd learned to accept by now that it's just what it was like for her.
Except this time, apparently.
Maybe it was the magic high still messing with her head? Because, this time, she hardly even noticed. She just did it.
She yanked Lyra down by the collar of her shirt — Hermione's shirt, technically, Lyra had stolen her pyjamas again — hard enough Lyra had to scramble to stop herself slamming into her, her palm hitting the wood of the floor a bit away from Hermione's head with a loud slapping noise. Lyra let out a grunt of surprise, and was maybe about to say something, but Hermione's lips were sort of already in the way.
And she didn't think about it. She just did it.
After a little bit, Lyra shifted, settling her weight over her, and Hermione's breath hitched when Lyra caught her lip with her teeth again (she kept doing that), and Lyra took the opportunity of her momentary distraction to go for her neck, because of course she did, smooth black hair falling over her face, smelling vaguely of apples and hazelnuts. The tingles from the magic that had just been finally fading away were replaced with another kind of tingle entirely, soft lips alternating with sharper nips setting her skin to crawling, she clamped down on her throat, keeping the pressure building in her chest mostly bottled in, her hands fisting in Lyra's shirt and her hair.
No, that was nice, but Hermione needed to be kissing her now — she pulled at her hair a bit, not hard, but enough to draw Lyra away from her neck and up to her face again. (At least, she didn't think it was too hard, Lyra just laughed under her breath a little so it was probably fine.) Hermione pulled her closer, and pushed deeper, she could barely breathe but she wanted more, and—
A shocked eep escaped her throat — a little muffled, since she didn't have her mouth to herself at the moment — as she felt cold fingers slip up her side, pushing the hem of her shirt up to her ribs. Her heartbeat throbbing in her throat and her lips and her fingertips, Hermione shivered, Lyra breaking an inch away with a bright giggle. She shivered again, her feet shifting against the floor, when Lyra tipped up to her ear to whisper, "You make such adorable noises, you know," before attacking her neck again.
Hermione laughed.
She cut off almost right away, clamping down on her throat again (with an odd, strangled noise she barely heard), grabbing at Lyra, the one hand tightening in her hair a bit, the other had apparently gotten under Lyra's shirt at some point, clutching at her back (very warm and smooth and distracting). Lyra was going rather harder on her neck this time, biting and sucking (actually slipped and made a funny noise at one point), and it hurt, but it was also wonderful, Hermione's head was going fuzzy, heat stabbing down low under her stomach, and she had to move, she didn't really think about it, their legs had tangled together at some point, and she felt herself shifting, she needed to move, and she felt the moan drawn out of her throat before she heard it, her chest felt too full she couldn't hold it in anymore and—
Something hard slammed into her side, Lyra tumbled off of her, the force rolled Hermione all the way over once, ending up on her back as she'd started. Hermione was too dazed to do anything for a moment, too distractingly warm and tingly and lightheaded.
"What the hell was that for, Weasley?" That was Lyra's voice, sounding a little more slurred than usual. It took Hermione a second to realise who she was talking to.
Gin. They were on the floor, in their dorm room. And Gin had been right there the whole time.
Her heart jumping up into her throat (for a very different reason than it had a moment ago), Hermione pushed herself upright — which was surprisingly difficult, her arms feeling all too weak and shaky. She noticed immediately her skirt was bunched up over her waist, she smoothed it back down over her thighs, her face going uncomfortably warm (for a very different reason than it had a moment ago).
Gin was standing toward her side of the room, past the scattered former circle of candles, her wand hand shaking at her hip, her face very red, clashing with her bright orangish hair. "If you two wanna snog wherever, I don't care, but you were— If you're going to shag, do it in one of your beds behind privacy charms, okay? That's literally all I ask!"
Somehow flushing even hotter than she'd been a second ago, Hermione let out a groan, covering her face with both hands. Trying to ignore the shiver running up her spine and the tingling heat down— She wasn't doing very well, it was very hard to ignore.
And her neck still kind of hurt, a low, warm, steady ache...that was also very distracting, god damn it.
She'd like to say she would have had the presence of mind to not, just, get carried away on the hardwood floor out in the open in their bloody dorm room — it wasn't like she'd ever...gotten carried away with Lyra before (yet) — but she was clearly not in her right mind at the moment. It was the magic high's fault, she was blaming the ritual. Yes.
(Conveniently ignoring that she was pretty sure the magic high had worn off already — it was the magic's fault, yes, obviously.)
"Don't go ruining other people's fun just 'cause you're feeling neglected. Not cool, Gin."
"I will use a light hex next time, see if I don't."
"Ugh, fine. Probably wouldn't have even happened if not for the magic high, anyway. Maïa's shy, you know."
For a second, Hermione was almost surprised that the only problem Lyra had with them doing, whatever, on the floor, right in front of Gin, was that Hermione was shy, what, would Lyra not have a problem with that? But then she realised, no, obviously Lyra wouldn't care — she doubted Lyra would blink at the thought of stripping down and shagging each other silly on the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall until they passed out from exhaustion, right in front of the whole school.
Hermione broke into mad giggles as she got a mental image of that exact scenario, stopped herself in private mortification.
(Once again, she thanked god Lyra wasn't a legilimens.)
When she could finally uncover her face again — it still felt very warm, but she felt she could actually look at Lyra or Gin now without wanting to curl into a ball and disappear — Gin had put her wand away again, slinking over to her desk and muttering under her breath. A glance the other way, and there was Lyra, just out of arm's reach. Her hair was rather disheveled, her shirt a bit crooked, her face and the arc of her chest visible between the straps of her top rather pinker than usual, lips slightly puffy. The glare she'd been fixing on Gin vanished as she turned to Hermione, her face stealing over with the familiar bright grin, her charmed purple eyes almost seeming to sparkle. "I take it you like high magic."
The laugh burst out of her before she could even think to stop it. "Ah, yeah, that was... Nice, it was nice." Hermione almost said something about the bit after the ritual being nice too, but apparently her ability to be embarrassed about these things was well and truly back — she glanced away, resisting the urge to yank the hem of her skirt further down her thighs.
(Right now, it was very hard to think about how, just a minute ago, they— Hermione had literally been rubbing herself against Lyra when Gin had hexed them apart, oh god, she could just die...)
Lyra apparently didn't have a good response for that, but Hermione could see the knowing smirk in her peripheral vision, so she could make a pretty good guess what she was thinking anyway.
Once Hermione had herself mostly together again — her legs felt even shakier than her arms, she hadn't trusted her ability to walk properly — she grabbed a change of clothes and slunk off for the bathroom. She did still need to take a shower tonight anyway, but she was still feeling a bit...distracted, and she suspected if she didn't take a moment alone she'd have trouble getting to sleep tonight.
Of course, she'd been having trouble with getting too distracted to sleep easily quite often, since coming back to Hogwarts. She was sharing a bedroom with her girlfriend, okay, so she was always right there, it was distracting, was all.
She was in so much trouble...