Hermione POV

Hermione woke up trying to run. She couldn't move, she was trapped in place, she didn't thrash, she froze in place. Memories came flooding in, being locked in her basement room, hanging from her wrists tied above her, being slammed into a wall, stumbling to the Leaky Cauldron, Hermione allowed herself to relax as she remembered where she was and the last of the adrenaline faded from her system.

As her eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness of the room, she could see that she was lying in a large four poster bed. She could see a large fireplace beyond the foot of the bed and a few doors set into the wall to her left, to her right were three large windows with dark heavy looking blinds hanging beside them that were letting in the minimal light in the room.

Suddenly feeling the need to go to the bathroom Hermione rolled towards the side of the bed, only to be greeted by a stretching, sharp pain in her side. Gritting her teeth, she crept over to the side of the bed swung her legs over the edge. Surprisingly, walking was much easier to do without pain than wiggling across a bed. Hermione pushed through the first door and finding a bathroom, spent at least ten seconds feeling along the wall looking for a light switch before cursing the technological backwardness of the wizarding world.

Moving over to the countertop, Hermione fumbled with the shuttered light, eventually getting it open enough to illuminate the bathroom. She could relieve herself later right now, she needed to check her side. Gingerly pulling up the nighty she had on- how had she gotten into it? – she saw bandages wrapped around her midsection. Throwing caution to the winds, Hermione carefully peeled back the edge to see the edge of a large dark scab covering her side. Hermione thanked magic for its healing abilities. If she had to guess, she would say the stab wound looked about a month old although she was sure it hadn't been more than a day since it had happened.

Hermione finished her business than padded out of the room into the hallways of the manor. She knew she should probably get back in bed, rest and heal, but Hermione hated being sedentary, how long had she already been lying there, how long had she wasted being helpless in bed. Hermione took a right down a hallway, then a left; she had no idea where she was going but she needed to move, she needed to do something. As she walked down the hallways lined with sleeping portraits, occasionally stopping to inspect an interesting artifact in the dim light of the candelabras built into the walls at regular intervals.

Hermione wandered aimlessly through the house for a while before arriving at a hallway she recognized. Walking with more purpose now Hermione pattered into the library. If she had thought it was beautiful during the day, Hermione was astounded by how it looked at night. Small white balls of light hovered like stars throughout the room, illuminating the room to the level of a bright twilight, shadowy but bright enough to read by. Looking up at the glass dome was where the real miracle revealed itself, thin glowing lines connecting the constellations had appeared, turning the ceiling into a beautiful playground of mythic soldiers and creatures.

Hermione picked a book on the effect of moon cycles on potion brewing off a shelf and settled down in a large armchair to read and watch the stars.

Aurelia POV

Aurelia could not sleep. She had not been able to relax since Panpey had apparated next to her during breakfast, hysterical about how "Missus Hermione be dying in the entrance." She had immediately run and got Gwen, her governess (according to wizarding law, an underaged witch or wizard could not live alone, even with a house elf. So, after her grandmother's death, the solicitors in charge of the Burke estate had always had a governess appointed to live with her) and dragged her down to the entrance.

The image of Hermione lying on the marble floor as her blood ran away from her in the channels of the stones was what greeted Aurelia every time, she tried to close her eyes for sleep. When Aurelia was younger and her grandmother was still alive, whenever she would lose something and regret it, her grandmother would always say "You never realize how precious something is until you lose it."

That was what Aurelia was realizing, she might not have lost Hermione, but she almost had. Hermione was her friend, her only friend, sure she was well acquainted with all the other pureblood children, but among those circles, friendships were so rare, what she had with most of them were friendly alliances. They might not be the best conversationalists, but they understood how each other think and they enjoyed each other's presence, Aurelia abhorred clinginess, but she did not want to risk being as lonely as she used to be ever again.

Aurelia glanced at the clock, 3:57. She pulled herself out of bed and walked down the hallway to check in on Hermione as she had been doing about every two hours. The door to Hermione's room was slightly ajar, Aurelia stuck her head in, empty. Finally, Aurelia turned around and headed towards the library.

Hermione was right where she expected, sitting in her usual chair, reading. Aurelia sat down in the chair opposite Hermione, "Good to see you up. How do you feel?"

Hermione looked up from her book, "I'm fine, it only hurts if I stretch or twist too much." She held Aurelia's eyes though for a bit longer than usual as she added on "Thank you."

Aurelia couldn't stand it any longer, she did not know what Hermione's situation was, Hermione never mentioned it, so she never asked, but it was clear that Hermione needed help. She seemed to only get skinnier every time Aurelia saw her and now, she had shown up with a stab wound in her side. "Do you want to move here" she blurted out.

Aurelia felt a brief pang of anxiety in the split second she waited as Hermione seemed to judge to offer. An anxiety that was laid to rest by the clear emotion in Hermione's voice than she had ever seen her exhibit before. It was still controlled, but the gratitude was clear in the small nod and "Thank you."

Hermione POV

Hermione's head felt about ready to explode. She had thought she knew what complicated meant, but nothing she had learned so far was anything near the level of pureblood families. It had all started about four weeks ago when Hermione made the mistake of wearing day robes to an evening play she had attended with Aurelia. When on the way to the lavatory she ran into a wizard who really should have been watching where he was going. In response to their collision, when the man saw her mistaken choice of robes, he spat the word mudblood in her face and stormed off muttering.

After that, it really wasn't that hard for Hermione to come to the logical conclusion that since she was never going to go back to living in the muggle world and if her blood status was synonymous with ignorance and she was going to face discrimination for it in this world, there was only one answer, to stop being muggle born.

It hadn't taken much to convince Aurelia of the idea; she was pretty sure it was because Aurelia thought she was going to be a Slytherin and Slytherin and muggle born do not mix. So like Hermione had created the character of Adeline to rob rich muggles, she started building a new character for herself. She was attempting to create the background with the least possible questions but would gain her the most respect in pure blood circles.

The daughter of a half-blood and a muggle born, Hermione Granger's family was English, but both of her parents had been educated in France, which was where she was raised although she was born England, her French skill which she had been honing talking with some of the more lingual portraits still her go to lie to diffuse attention.

Determined to not get caught out in a lie, Hermione was trying to prepare for all possible eventualities by learning everything possible about pure blood educate and families. Pretty soon Aurelia had been recruited to be her crash course tutor in magical customs and Hermione did her research learning all the British and French pureblood families, an educational campaign Hermione referred to as Pureblood Camp, a task that would be much easier if the British families were not so damn incestuous and so obsessed with reusing names.

Hermione was happily taking a break from studying families to go do her school shopping with Aurelia. They stood ready by the floo as they waited for Gwen to get all her things in order. It was the only thing Hermione disliked about living with Aurelia, when going to public places, like today going into Diagon Alley for school shopping, they needed to be chaperoned and the 20-year-old witch seemed utterly incapable of getting ready to go anywhere in a timely fashion. Anyway, Hermione thought it was a small price to pay for three meals a day and unlimited library access, but it was still annoying.

Finally, the three of them flood to the Leaky Cauldron and entering Diagon Alley started to make their way down the shopping list. So far, their only issue had been when Aurelia tried to buy Hermione an owl. That was where Hermione drew the line, Aurelia was already paying for everything for Hermione, something that Hermione always found hard to stomach, she was already staying at her house and Aurelia had bought her a full wardrobe of robes. Hermione hated accepting charity, so there was no way she was going to accept a completely unnecessary gift after everything, even if Aurelia was the only benefactor of one of the richest wizarding families in England.

Madam Malkin's was one of the easiest of the day as they had both been measured about four months earlier when getting Hermione robes. It was as simple as requesting the three sets of robes they needed and the winter cloak, or it would have been had a boy their age not walked in as the Madam was resizing their robes.

The boy was tall for their age and had pale skin, blond hair, and sharp pointed features.

"Burke" the boy greeted with a small nod.

"Malfoy" Aurelia greeted back. Seemingly content having completed the barest minimum greeting he turned to Hermione.

"And who are you" he drawled at Hermione.

"Hermione Granger" Hermione sent back at him, adopting the same flat, disinterested tone of voice.

Her name or his lack of recognition of it immediately sparked something in him "You're not a Mudblood are you?" he shot at her, practically spitting out the word.

Well, this boy has some clear views Hermione thought as she pulled out her best offended airs. "Of course, I'm not one of them." She replied.

"Thank Merlin, well I'll see you two at Hogwarts" Malfoy stepped onto the stool, clearly not going to apologize for the offense he had caused. Hermione stopped herself from saying anything, but she could already see that one was going to be a terrible piece of work.

Exiting the store they saw another boy their age, clearly unfamiliar with Diagon Alley, absolutely dwarfed by a massive mountain of a man before they were whisked away by Gwen.

"Just Ollivander's left to get you two wands." Gwen told them, checking the copy of the list she had. "I already have mine" they both said over each other to Gwen, Hermione shot Aurelia a surprised glance only to find it answered by a small smirk. "Okay then back to the manor with you two."

Hermione barely managed to make it back to the hallway with their rooms before she turned and glared at Aurelia.

"Why didn't you tell me you had a wand and how did you even get it? Ollivander doesn't sell to people younger than 11 and you didn't turn 11 until May when I was here." She demanded.

"Well, I found it and I wanted to surprise you. Completely worth it." Aurelia said. Hermione grimaced than hid it, the surprise was part of Pureblood Camp, Hermione was already good at hiding her emotions, but she was not yet at a level Aurelia approved of, so Aurelia had recently been doing a lot of things to get a rise out of her. "How about we get our wands and compare" Aurelia suggested.

Hermione nodded and they both dashed to their rooms and grabbed their wands before meeting in the sitting room at the end of their corridor. Aurelia's wand was one of the coolest things Hermione had ever seen. It was aspen and one foot long. But what stood out was the silver, unlike Ollivander's plain wooden wands, Aurelia's wand had thin threads of silver following grains of the wood about eight inches up the wand, creating a shimmering matrix of silver against the white wood.

They laid their wands next to each other on the small table in the room, Aurelia's longer white and silver wand shining beautifully next to Hermione's pale yellow yew wand.

"Where did you find that and are you sure it works for you?" Hermione asked.

"Well, I found it in April when we were trying to map the cellar." Hermione remembered it well; the cellar of Burke Manor is effectively a series of catacombs filled with artifacts that were not valuable enough to warrant being put in the vault at Gringotts and were also not cool enough to be displayed. They had spent a week trying to map them until they realized that the tunnels further in shifted of their own accord and a lot of the stuff rearranged itself. "I was just mapping a tunnel and I saw it and I just felt attracted to it. When I picked it up, I waved it at that unicorn bust and almost set it on fire with sparks." Aurelia admitted sheepishly. "The silver was originally really tarnished so I polished it."

"Do you know what the core and rigidity are?" Hermione questioned.

"I know it is slightly springy, but I have no idea how to find out what the core is."

Hermione made a mental note to figure out methods of determining wand cores. Hermione and Aurelia spent the next hour talking about Hogwarts, their departure had been looming closer for months now, but with their school shopping done it finally felt within reach.