On Thursday evening, Hermione was ready.
She placed herself in the Slytherin common room openly in one of the central areas. Usually she studied or read off to the side, but today she claimed one of the main couches in the center of the room. Blaise had raised an eyebrow at her audacity – usually the nicer furniture was claimed by the older students – but had settled in next to her anyway. Tracey and Millie had claimed nearby armchairs, and they all started discussing Snape's latest Potions assignment and what a disaster class had been, with Neville nearly blowing up his cauldron.
Hermione subtly kept an eye on the rest of the room as they chatted, waiting.
She didn't have long to wait.
"What's this?"
The cold, cruel tone of an over-entitled pureblood reached Hermione's ears, ever anticipated. Gathering herself together, Hermione stood slowly, meeting the eyes of Lilian Travers with a cold smile.
"Oh dear, I forgot," she said, her tone a conversational one. "I'm supposed to be sniveling on the floor, scared and cowering, aren't I?"
Lilian's eyes flared with anger.
"This area isn't for the likes of you," she snapped. "The older students sit here, and you know it."
"Oh, of course, of course," Hermione nodded. "I'm aware. I must have forgotten my place."
Her smile was oily as she gathered her belongings, her smile slowly unnerving Lilian as she did.
"You don't know your place," Lilian snapped. She glared at Hermione's little group. "None of you. You're only second years."
"I'm sure that's all it is," Hermione said, smiling still, her eyes fixed on Lilian's. "It's just a matter of me being younger, isn't it?"
It was clear that Hermione's calm and lack of deference was enraging the older girl. A small crowd was gathering around, now – some of Lilian's friends, several whom had their faces forever emblazoned in Hermione's mind – and some of Hermione's classmates, Draco and Pansy and Daphne drifting over to hear what was going on.
"You're such a brat," Lilian said viciously. "You think you're so much better than us all — you'll get what's coming to you. You'll see!"
"Oh," Hermione said softly. "Will I, now?"
She took a step toward Lilian, and Lilian jerked abruptly, as if she had had to force herself not to take a step back. Hermione allowed her eyes to rest coolly on the little group that had gathered around Lilian – Alexia, Peter, Damon; familiar faces, all – before she allowed a cruel smile to touch her lips.
"Let's play a little game," Hermione said, smiling, though her eyes were cold and cruel. "It's called 'Which one of us will the Heir of Slytherin attack first?'"
A shocked murmur rippled through the crowd, and Lilian's eyes had gone wide.
"I'll be on my side, and you all can be on one," Hermione said, gesturing to the cluster of three around Lilian. "Whoever gets attacked by the monster first loses, okay?"
"You're mad," Lilian said, her voice shaky. "You're mad."
"Am I?" Hermione wondered aloud. "You've told me several times now that I'll be next. I suppose it makes sense, to you – you're too thick to believe that I'm New Blood, and therefore the safest out of all of you – but you're a pureblood yourself, so why would you possibly be worried that you might be attacked? Surely you're confident of your proper place in the world."
Damon Rowle shuddered once, violently, before stepping backwards.
"I'm out," he said, holding up his hands. "I want nothing to do with this. Any of it. None."
He left the room quickly, just short of fleeing, and there was a whisper through the crowd as people watched him leave.
"So we'll say this, then," Hermione said, continuing. "The Heir of Slytherin will choose which of us is the stronger witch, or the better wizard. If I'm Petrified next, clearly you're better than me. But if one of you is petrified next…" She let her words linger in the air, giving them an oily smile. "Well, then I guess we'll know who's truly unaware of who doesn't belong."
There was a murmur through the crowd, and Lilian's eyes darted around her, trapped. Hermione smirked to herself. There were around a dozen people watching, and if Lilian backed down now, she'd lose face to a second-year, and one she insisted was a trumped-up Muggle-born to boot.
"Fine," Lilian snapped. "You're on."
Lilian turned sharply to Alexia and Peter, both of whose eyes went wide. She clasped right hands with Alexia, almost as if they were going to arm wrestle in the air, and then clapped their left hands on top of their right. Lilian turned to Peter, repeating the gesture, before she turned to Hermione, her eyes burning.
"I agree to your bet," she said, fierce. "If you're Petrified next, you will leave the school and never bother us again."
"Agreed," Hermione said lazily. "But if any one of you three are Petrified next, you have to acknowledge that Magic itself has decided I'm better than you, and you have to treat me with appropriate respect and deference going forward."
"Agreed," Lilian snapped. She stuck out her arm. "Let it be so."
Hermione clasped Lilian's arm the same way she'd seen Alexia do it. "So mote it be."
When they clapped their left hands on top of their right, there as a bright flash of lime green, and a murmur went through the crowd. Lilian's eyes widened in shock, but Hermione smiled in satisfaction.
"Be seeing you around, Lilian," Hermione murmured. "Unless, of course, you're Petrified. Then you won't be able to see anything, of course – wouldn't want you to be blind…"
"Go boil your head," the older girl snapped at her, but Hermione only laughed as she walked away.
She was aware of the murmurs she left behind her even as she resisted the urge to turn around, but Blaise caught up to her a moment later, taking her arm and guiding her from the Slytherin common room. Hermione went along amicably, walking down the hallway to the abandoned classroom they sometimes studied in, Tracey and Millie's feet pattering on the stone behind them.
When they arrived, Blaise pushed everyone in before closing and locking the door.
"Want to tell me what that was all about?" Blaise demanded, his eyes flashing. "Hermione, did you just egg the Heir of Slytherin on?"
"I made a bet with Travers," Hermione said, raising her eyebrows. "We'll see which one of us the Heir attacks first."
"Are you mad?" Tracey wanted to know. "Hermione, I get that you're confident in yourself, but are you mad?"
"Not at all," Hermione said. She lifted herself up onto a tabletop, crossing her legs neatly. "Consider: if you were the Heir of Slytherin, lived in Slytherin House, and believed I wasn't New Blood, who would be the first person you would attack?"
Tracey frowned while Blaise flinched, but Millie shrugged.
"You," Millie said honestly. "You're the obvious target Hermione, really, with the controversy about your blood."
"My blood is not a controversy; there are just some people too dim to recognize the truth," Hermione said. "But regardless, consider: I haven't been attacked or Petrified yet, have I?"
Blaise frowned.
"Not unless there's something you're not telling us," he said warningly, and Hermione smirked.
"Fair," she admitted. "But no, I haven't been attacked. It's been a Gryffindor and a Hufflepuff, not me."
"So?" Tracey demanded. "If the Heir gets wind of this bet…"
"The Heir isn't in Slytherin, and the Heir believes that I'm New Blood," Hermione said, sighing. "If the Heir hears of this, which I severely doubt as I don't think word of this bet will leave Slytherin, the Heir will side with me. Either no one will be Petrified, as the Heir will think it's a silly, stupid bet, or one of Lilian's crew will be attacked."
Tracey looked worried and Millie looked skeptical, but Blaise was regarding Hermione with a careful, analytical eye.
"Some of the things you said in there," he said slowly. "They sounded awfully familiar."
"Oh?" Hermione said, tilting her head. "Did they?"
"Yes," Blaise said. "The bits about knowing your place. You said something similar to Rowle on the Quidditch pitch that night."
"Did I now…?" Hermione murmured.
"Rowle stormed out," Tracey recalled, remembering. "It almost looked like he was running away."
Blaise looked at Hermione, his eyes sharp.
"Did something happen, Hermione?" he asked. "Did Rowle and his friends do something to you?"
"Rowle and Travers and Pansy," Millie said suddenly. "Hermione said that Pansy had introduced her to Rowle. And Pansy was first – remember her getting hurt in Herbology, with her blood?"
Hermione's eyes went wide. "Good memory."
Tracey made a shocked noise.
"You did that," Tracey said in wonder. "You made Pansy's blood look like troll blood?"
Hermione tried her best not to react, but she could feel her smile tugging wider.
"And you got Rowle, at Quidditch," Blaise said, looking her in the eye. "That's two down you've gotten revenge on, isn't it? How many more do you have to go?"
Hermione held up seven fingers and looked at them consideringly, before putting two down. That left her with five on her other hand, and she wiggled three of them back and forth.
"We'll have to see, won't we?" she murmured, and Blaise took a deep breath, exhaling slowly.
"Hermione," he said seriously. "What happened to you that night?"
Abruptly, Hermione's smirk dropped from her face. The memory of the cold stone pressing into her face as she cowered on the floor roared up to consume her, and for a moment she could feel her clothes wet and sticky again, covered and drenched with blood.
She shuddered.
"Something bad," she said flatly. "Something very, very bad."
"Very, very bad?" Blaise repeated.
Hermione bit her lip, glancing around. She didn't want to go into detail – that night was a weakness and a trauma she didn't want to admit to or relive. But when she looked around, she only saw the faces of her concerned friends – not the faces of anyone who would use the knowledge against her.
She took a deep breath.
"If I hadn't learned basic healing spells from Madame Pomfrey by chance one day," she said quietly, "I might not be alive and here today."
It was interesting to watch their reactions. Tracey gasped and her eyes teared up, and she ran to Hermione to give her a hug. Millie looked disturbed and highly alarmed, while Blaise's eyes flared with anger and rage.
"They tried to kill you?" Millie asked, horrified.
"I don't think they tried to kill me, but they clearly didn't care if it happened," Hermione said dryly. "There was no way they could have missed the potentially fatal blood loss involved."
"This is what Potter was talking about, wasn't it?" Blaise said. "When 'Pansy and the others' bullied you?"
"I'm so sorry, Hermione!" Tracey cried, hugging her tightly. "I never knew their bullying had gotten so bad!"
"Of course you didn't know," Hermione said, hugging her back. "I never told you."
"Well, you should have!" Tracey snapped. "We're your friends, Hermione! We're here for you!"
"Did you tell Professor Snape?" Millie asked, looking vaguely ill. "If they… if they went so far…"
"I did," Hermione said.
"And…?"
"And he was very realistic and forthright with me," she told them. "He explained how the word of one unknown first year would stack up against the word of seven children from prominent pureblood families, all of whom arranged alibis ahead of time."
Millie closed her eyes and looked away, and Blaise looked even more furious.
"So you're doing it yourself?" he demanded. "You're extracting your revenge from them one by one on your own?"
Hermione shrugged.
"I couldn't report them because of their names," she said. "By the same notion, they can't report me, because then they'd be admitting that I'd bested them, which they can't do without shaming their name."
"No longer," Blaise vowed, and Hermione's eyes jerked to his, instantly angry.
"How dare you?" she said, incensed. "I will handle my own affairs however I deem, revenge or not, and that you would dare presume to tell me—"
"You will do it alone no longer, Hermione," Blaise cut her off, his eyes holding hers. Hermione's protests faded away as he bowed to one knee in front of her, taking her hand and kissing the back. "I vow to help you against those that would harm you, and to never do you harm. I vow to—"
Hermione's eyes widened, and she twisted her hand and grabbed Blaise's, jerking him abruptly back up from the ground.
"You are not swearing me an Oath of Fealty," she hissed, grabbing his collar and glaring, while Blaise laughed. "You are not doing it, do you understand?"
Blaise's eyes glittered with amusement.
"Whatever are you speaking of, Hermione?" he asked, his tone one of innocence. "I was only swearing you an oath of protection."
"You were not," Hermione said sharply. "I know those words, and I know the words of the other oaths—"
"So maybe I ad-libbed a little," Blaise dismissed. "You can't expect me to remember the exact words of some archaic protection oath."
Hermione rolled her eyes, and Blaise laughed.
"I'm not swearing you an Oath of Fealty," he told her. He turned her hand over in his and kissed the back of it, holding her eyes steady. "Not today, at any rate."
His eyes were molten, his pupils dilated in the dim light, and Hermione felt her breath catch in her throat.
"Well, I don't even know the Oath of Fealty," Tracey declared loudly, breaking the moment. "Is that a thing we're going to have to do?"
"I think that depends," Millie said, trying not to laugh at Tracey's indignation. "Right now, we're all Hermione's friends. But if you believe her prophecy, she'll begin to gather a following at some point, and I imagine we'll all fall under her 'followers' then."
"'Those who answer the call'," Hermione corrected.
"Whatever," Millie said, dismissive. "Call them what you like. Sounds like followers to me."
Tracey scowled.
"I don't like that," she said. She glared at Hermione. "I want to be your friend, not your follower."
"I'm not asking you to be my follower!" Hermione objected. "I'm not! I just want to be your friend too!"
Tracey looked cautiously reassured by this.
"Besides," Blaise quipped, slinging an arm around Hermione in an overly-friendly manner. "Do you really think our Hermione here would set up a worshipful dictatorship like the Dark Lord did with her followers? She'd have a careful meritocracy and hierarchy, there'd be a meeting agenda for each gathering, and there'd be a sign-up sheet of who would bring sweets and snacks each time—"
Hermione shoved him away, obviousy flustered, and Blaise stumbled back as Millie roared with laughter, Tracey dissolving into giggles.
"You would have sign-up sheets. Admit it," Millie teased. "Everything would be color-coded in a special book."
Tracey giggled.
"Being a follower wouldn't be so bad if it involved making sweets and helping plan meetings," Tracey said, reassured. "I just don't want to go out at night in the dark killing people."
"I'm not asking you to be a follower! And I'm not asking you to kill people!" Hermione threw up her hands in exasperation. "Why would you think I'd ever want you to kill people? Honestly, I've never cast a Dark spell in my life! What kind of terrible person do you think I am, that I'd send you to skulk around in the dark and commit murder?"
To her irritation, Tracey and Millie just continued to giggle, Blaise joining in on their laughter after he'd regained his balance.
"Admit it, Hermione," he said, grinning. "You've got a ruthless streak. You might not commit murder, but you just made a bet on who would get attacked by the monster of Slytherin first."
"They deserve it," Hermione said hotly, tossing her hair. "And anyway, it's not like I'm the one doing the attacking, you know?"
For some reason, that set them off again into another round of giggles and laughter, and no matter how much Hermione glared at them all, it only seemed to make it worse.