Chapter Three
Interlude
July 1st.
Ron awoke to the sound of falling rain.
It was an unseasonably cold day out in the Southern part of England. Deep, dark clouds had rolled in across the sky no less than three days prior, and had immediately began slashing down rivers of water into the collection of valleys that had otherwise been plagued with a persistent drought through the first half of the summer. A wetness now clung in the air that refused to go away, which was fine for the inhabitants of Vermilion, as they had been used to the cold and the damp for a long time. They were just thankful that rain had managed to come at all and that some of their more robust crops would be harvestable in two months time.
"Oh, dear, you're awake again," came the voice of a middle-aged woman named Cathy.
Ron just let out a guttural moan in response and blinked wearily.
"That's fine, dear. You don't move a muscle. Let me bring you some tea."
"Wha-?" Ron managed, his brain slowly piecing together what little he could remember about the last few days, or, more importantly, his life. "What? Where am I?" He ignored the sharp pains that were shooting up his arms and back and front and neck and well, just about everywhere, as he struggled to sit up on the cot that he found himself on.
Groggily, he peered about in the gloom, the shadows held at bay by a single flickering oil lamp. "Huh," he said, tapping his finger on the rough fabric of the duvet. Strangely enough, he couldn't manage to comprehend his surroundings, or put it to any memory he had. That may have been because he had never seen the place before, or it may have been because he had lost most of his memories, the only few remaining flashing by his mind's eye and forming an indistinct collage of images, none of which he could discern.
"Here, drink this," said Cathy, and there was a motherly quality in the tone of his voice that he recognized implicitly, and so he complied without question. The tea was hot and soothing, he found, and it helped warm his insides and take the edge off the pain that raked over his entire body. For the first time since he awoke, Ron glanced down at his form. From the parts that were not covered by cloth, like his arms, he could make out long tracks of scars, that looked as though they were made with some sort of rough object. Superimposed on them were heavy burns that went straight past his arms and appeared to continue under his shirt. From the pain in his torso, he guessed things were not much better there, though he supposed he should be thankful to have all his limbs and to be simply alive. Funny, though, he thought, contemplating his wounds. They don't really concern me all that much. Ron briefly wondered if he was accident prone, or if there was something sinister about his past that he wasn't quite managing to remember. He suspected with the same clinical detachment that seemed to have stolen over him that it was in fact the latter. Again, he didn't feel terribly bothered by it, though he wondered whether he should be worried about possible future attacks.
Don't concern yourself with it now, he told himself. There's little you can do and there are more pressing matters to attend to. Prioritize, old chap. That's the ticket. Prioritize.
Cathy had been chatting haplessly away about chickens, as best as Ron could tell, for the moment he turned his attention to her, he heard something about old Bathsheba having to cut off their heads. It made Ron instantly think muggle, which, after sweeping the room with his gaze, he felt was a fair assumption.
Wait, muggle?
Ron tried to latch onto that concept, but, just as before, the memories that normally associated themselves with concepts flitted about at the edge of his mind, always managing to tickle his consciousness, and to elude it at the same time.
"In a bad shape, you were," Cathy was saying as she fixed up a meal of stew. "Don't know how a poor boy like you could have survived with all them wounds, but, hail Mary, mother of God, you did. Like a miracle, it was."
Ron listened only half-heartedly to Cathy, as she wasn't telling him anything useful. He could see for himself that his wounds were serious, and he could see for himself that he was still alive. Still, from the way she spoke, he gathered that she didn't actually know him. Ron wasn't sure what to make of that little fact. Where was he? Who was he with? What happened to him? all these questions swam around his befuddled mind, refusing to be answered and refusing to go away.
As Ron set his now half-empty cup of tea down, he chanced another glance at his scars and noticed that blisters were healing on his fingers too, though, for some reason, he couldn't really feel them. Whatever happened to me, he decided firmly, it wasn't pretty. And, well, if I never go back there, well, so be it. While Ron couldn't say he was happy with having memory loss, he could also say that it wasn't the worst thing in the world. He knew he was a smart enough guy; smart enough to get by, at any rate, and that's all he needed, really. Somehow, he also knew that poverty wasn't a new thing for him.
With that decision made, Ron dissolved any forming anxieties regarding his murky past and resolved to start fresh, with a new life, to begin learning, and to adopt what a philosopher would have described as Zen Buddhist principles.
In time, Ron would become a vegetarian.
It seemed that Ronald Weasley was not alone in his process of transformation.
"Oh, fuck me harder," Hermione cried, clutching at Griffin's sweaty backside with her own sweaty hands. Their thighs slapped together wetly as they fucked. Griffin complied by pushing down harder so that his legs pressed into the soft flesh of her inner thighs. Hermione just responded by digging her fingers into his skin and squeezing her eyes shut as she waited for the continued discharge of syrupy fluids from her body to give way to the convulsions of an orgasm, which, inevitably, they did.
Hermione threw her head back down against the Zabinis' Persian carpet, her bushy brown hair matted with the warm blood that had spilt out of the Zabini patriarch's throat just moments ago. Sighing contentedly, she glanced over to one side and saw a stray eyeball floating idly in the coagulating pool of blood that she was now bathed in.
"Pure blood, indeed," she sighed, licking some of it off Griffin's wet chest. "Utterly delightful, isn't it, sweetheart?"
"Mmm," Griffin responded, rolling off her body and slapping his backside down on a gaggle of ganglia that sloshed about.
Hermione just stretched her arms and legs and gazed up unseeingly at the stone ceiling. So much had changed with Griffin's arrival into her life. She felt as though her eyes had finally been opened, as though the things that she had been looking for all her life, that place of belonging, that core of knowledge that would help her make sense of the world, it was all here, in the dark spaces of her own mind. It was the freedom from morality. Devolving into a post-sex contemplative mood, she pondered aloud, "There's no such thing as right and wrong. There is only power and those too weak to seek it." Hermione didn't think it was a terribly profound thing to say, exactly, though she felt it was a kernel of wisdom that was very important. So lost in her thoughts, she didn't see Griffin look askance in her direction, his mouth working soundlessly. Finally, he turned his gaze from her to stare up at the ceiling also, and said, "You're my hero, do you know that?"
Hermione just smiled beatifically in his direction, before rolling onto her side and running her blood-crusted fingers down his torso where they came upon his flaccid penis. She massaged it lightly until it grew hard and said, "Yeah, I know. Fuck me again, and then let's see about cutting you loose from your bonds, hmm?"
Griffin just grinned back at her and then clasped the soft flesh of her clit in his fingers while running his tongue down her neck. "With pleasure."
It would be an understatement to say that Hermione was a pretty smart girl, just as it would be an understatement to say that Tom Marvolo Riddle was a dark wizard. Alone, each of them were terrifying in their own right. Both of them had a thirst for learning, sharp, logically ordered minds with photographic memories, strong magic, an aptitude for picking up complicated spellwork, and both of them, when left alone, would surpass their peers in every endeavour, making leaps in arithmancy hand over fist. It was the reason a penniless, orphaned half-blood rose to the top of a pureblood hierarchy, and it was the reason why the golden trio had survived as long as they had. That was why it was distinctly unnerving to both the magical and muggle florae that lived around Zabini manor when the horcrux named Griffin and the mudblood named Hermione Granger began executing a ritual never before having existed; a ritual so dangerous, and which violated some of the most intrinsic boundaries of the soul, a ritual not unlike that of the horcrux, that the fabric of life itself shifted uneasily as they performed it.
The sun was setting now, and the parlor room stank of decomposing human innards, sex and maple syrup. "Bring the chalice," Hermione said in the still air, golden light lighting her hair to the colour of flames. Griffin complied and, after observing Hermione nodding her head for him to continue, grabbed it in both hands and drank greedily. Hermione, still watching Griffin, whose skin had turned chalk white, lifted her own goblet and drank from it. Immediately, she felt the almost cruel, violent twists of tortured blood that shrieked right down to her very being worm its way through her body, filling in the dark spaces, making her soul come alive.
"This is the way things are supposed to be," she murmured, though for whose benefit neither knew.
After letting the Blood of Tortured Souls potion do its thing, they both raised their left hands and slashed down deep cuts along their wrists so that their blood poured out in easy streamlets. Hermione formed a pentagram, upon the completion of which, five candles came alive, seemingly of their own volition. Simultaneously, Griffin used his freshly spilling blood to form the sign for infinity, which was nestled comfortably within the dark talisman. Soon they would be able to be together for real. Soon, they would give Griffin a real body, one whose existence did not depend on the whims of the Dark Lord and which was not tied to a mysterious object. And, more importantly, they would intertwine their souls with one another, effectively using each other as a horcrux vessel and ensuring their continued existence. It was a thing never before done, mostly because power was not something easily shared between dark witches and wizards, and because it was just really hard to pull off.
When it was complete, they both squealed girlishly in unison, Griffin briefly frowning at the sound that came out of his mouth as he absently twirled Hermione in the air and brushed her hair, which had taken on subtle changes. No longer was she plagued by a persistent bushiness, which, thankfully, never need be mentioned again. Also, her once brown eyes now transformed to that fathomless black like those of Griffin's.
"There's really only one thing left to do," Griffin said, gazing down at his life mate. "We need to kill the Dark Lord."
Hermione smiled wickedly. "And Potter. Can't have either of those two ruin our plans, and it is most assuredly the case that they will work relentlessly against us."
"I thought you said the boy was of no consequence?" "Griffin asked, half-suspicious and half-puzzled.
Hermione shrugged. "He's not, but then again, you can never be too careful. The pair of them are tied together by prophecy. It's more about putting a nice clean end to the whole Voldemort era and starting fresh. Soon, we will build a utopia. We will forge a new wizarding world out of the ashes of ruin that we will bring to the doorsteps of every pureblooded witch and wizard in this country."
"Yes," Griffin enthused, making a fist as though he were clutching at a nearby snitch. "Soon, it will all be ours."
Both of them laughed merrily before apparating away.