Chapter 8

She read it over and over again. The Imperious curse, cast on a living being, would create a thread between the caster and the victim. The thread was an invisible magical thread that was manipulated by the caster. Creating a puppet effect. He victim was bound to do whatever the caster of the curse bade he or she to do.

Hermione struggled with this concept. She remembered Harry having thrown the curse off while a child in school. Even as an adult, Harry could throw off the Imperious curse better than anyone. It became a joke within the ministry. "Harry is no one's puppet!" And also singing the muggle song from Pinocchio, "I got no strings to hold me down…" Hermione sighed.

Hermione paced her library and realized she hadn't eaten dinner She called her house elf to her.

"Sylvester!" POP! A tiny greenish brown creature, full of wrinkles stood before her. He wore a long blue tunic that shimmered as he stood before her. On the front of his tunic, a stitched green clover was sewn on. Hermione noticed that Sylvester was wearing purple socks.

"Yes Miss." Sylvester was a free, working elf. Hermione insisted that she have waging accepting elves in her office. Elves flocked from all over the continent to work for the glorious Ms. Granger. For she treated them well and paid them handsomely. There work was hard and sometimes required service to her over a twenty-four hour shift. But that was the stuff house elves lived for. She was surrounded by loyal, hard working, free house elves.

"I have forgotten to order supper tonight, could you please see to that?" Hermione asked while shuffling papers.

"Yes Miss. Anything else?" Sylvester was her top elf and he usually worked as her assistant.

"No Sylvester. Thank you. Nice socks by the way." Hermione smiled to herself. Most of her free elves were thrown from their families for one reason or another. The bath water was never hot enough. The dinners never tasty enough. Hermione found that she was indeed the Mecca for freed house elves and she always found a position for any elf coming to her for work.

"Thank you miss! I buys them with my earnings." Hermione smiled at him and began pacing her office, looking for a book. For books were now not placed neatly on the shelves, but thrown haphazardly around.

"Miss?" Hermione raised her eyebrows without removing her eyes from the book she was holding. "You needs some of us to come and clean. It looks like some stinky Niffler came in here." Sylvester shook his head in a disapproving manner. Hermione shook her head. "I can clean Miss! I can do that while you eat…and…maybe you let's me throw that mean 'ol mirror in the trash too?"

Hermione looked up at him frowning. "Why? I like Elmer."

"But Miss, it insults all the elves who come to your rooms. Calling us ratses and little cockroaches. It's not a nice mirror Miss." Hermione leveled her eyes at the elf.

"Alright. I will have a word with Elmer and tell him he is not allowed to speak to any elf that works for me. Agreed?" Sylvester nodded and blinked from the room.

Hermione carried her cold tea, that was once hot, and a handful of papers into her private rooms. She turned into her sitting area, passed the library and the kitchen, into her master suite. The house elves cleaned and decorated her rooms and they did marvelously. Her rooms were arth tones mixed with silver. Flowers were in every corner and on every flat surface. Past her large four poster bed, she stepped into her bathroom.

Hermione was reading as she turned the corner and didn't look up as she addressed the mirror.

"Elmer…Elmer….Elmer!" Hermione looked into the mirror and a bored voice answered back.

"Yessssss?"

"Elmer, I have gotten complaints about you. Stop attacking the elves that come to work. One day you might find yourself in the rubbish bin."

"You always say that, yet here I am . Why do you look so bad? You have circles under your eyes and your hair is a mess. Is that dirt on your face?" Elmer's voice had become annoying.

"I'm working Elmer. I can't decide how to go about this."

"Well first I would shower. Then try combing your hair and using a little blush…" Elmer droned on.

"Shut up. Worthless piece of glass. I am working on dissecting the Imperious Curse. Do you know what that is?"

"Yes." Elmer's voice was bored.

"I wonder, you're not really living, but not inanimate either. I wonder…." Hermione had pulled out her wand and was eyeing Elmer with interest.

"It won't work." Hermione frowned.

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want it to."

"You don't want it to? Well that's just…' Hermione's brain began to go into overdrive. She hurriedly left the bathroom and ran into her lab. She forgot about dinner.

The Imperious Curse works on weak minded people and people who are unsuspecting. Harry was able to throw the curs eoff, in Hermone's opinion, because he didn't allow it. It made since. Since he was well known for it, others have asked him how he had done it. She always jst shrugged his shoulders and said he felt it and told it NO! Everyone had always laughed that off, but now…

Hermione had stumbled onto, with Elmer's help, a simple and concise plan. Two days later she sat in her lab, still covered with dirt and her hair was back to being a bushy mess. She tied it up in a haphazard knot on the top of her head and wore the same lab coat as three days before.

She had made a breakthrough, about four o'clock in the morning. She devised a spell that mixed a desire for independence and also a simple potion one would drink that contained strengthening drought along with her catalyst, a stinger of a bee.

She needed a way to test the potion on one of her subjects. She had wrestled with the idea of Imperioing one of her bugs. But she couldn't get them to drink the potion. So she moved on to one of the snakes. Images of her snake dream flashed in her mind as she handled one of the darker colored snakes. It was firm and cool in her hand as she set it under the heat lamp on a table.

She cast the containment spell on the lab and then cast the Imperious curse on the snake. She made him glide in the shape of a figure eight and also made it tie itself in a knot. Ouch…that had to hurt.

Hermione, after many unsuccessful attempts, finally got the snake to drink the potion. In the end, she had to Imperio the snake to drink it. She set a timer and called for Sylvester.

Sylvester sat on a small footstool and watched as his mistress cast the first Imerious curse.

Hermione blanched and then held her hand.

The curse had not backfired, but assaulted her. Her hand stung with a fierce fire an she correctly guessed that she used too much bee stinger. However, the mixture of the potion and the spell had made it where the snake was free from being made to tie itself into anymore knots. It lay coiled under the lamp.

Every fifteen minutes, Hermione and Sylvester cast the Imperious curse and documented the effects. Each time she cast it, she was stung, bitterly. Her hand was red and swollen after five and half hours. By the sixth hour, she had cast the curse and the sting was minimal. Fifteen minutes afterwards, the snake succumbed to tying itself in a knot. The experiment worked for a full six hours.

Hermione was jubilant and she and Sylvester hugged each other and did a silly dance in her lab. Hermione's eyes clouded with tears as she realized that the first step in her vision was coming true.

The tears fell silently as she placed the snake back inside of it's cage and her heart became heavy. She had no one to share this breakthrough with. No one to congratulate her except house elves and an ornery talking mirror. (Who did not congratulate her at all. Elmer gasped at her appearance and said he would speak no more to her until she looked presentable.)

As Hermione sat copying her notes and placed the experiment in a Pensieve, her heart was like lead in her chest. It was then that she remembered that the next day was her twenty-first birthday. Though she couldn't tell anyone, she now had two reasons to celebrate.

If only she weren't so lonely.

A/N: Thanks for all the lovely reviews! I promise, Severus is coming soon.