It looked as if night of dark intent

Was coming and not only a night, an age.

Once by the Pacific - Robert Frost


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The last stragglers were heading to the Great Hall when Hermione returned to Ravenclaw tower. She was going to be late to the Halloween feast, and she was tempted to skip it.

Gubraithan fire. She tingled from the secret, amazing, unbelievable knowledge of it. It made her inner swot rejoice. All those years of coming top in exams didn't come close.

But – the feast. It would be strange to miss it. She pushed open the door to her room and hurriedly pulled out a set of dress robes. Sage green velvet. That would do.

She pulled them on, gasping as the corseting spell tightened around her, still out of breath from running up the myriad staircases to her room. Catching sight of her face in the mirror, Hermione winced. Her hair was wild and windswept and she knew from long experience there was little she could do about that now. It was always wilder when she'd been doing something especially magical and tonight, well, tonight had been beyond anything she had ever done before. She found a clasp from the box of jewelry Cerdic had given her and made an attempt at respectability, pulling half the mane away from her face and hurried off to the hall.

Hermione did not know it, but those who'd known her before would have found it hard to reconcile the elegant young woman clad in traditional dress, thick dark hair pinned back with goblin-wrought silver, dusky green robes setting off both her small waist and her warm skin, dark eyes bright with excitement, with the plain bookworm she'd been as a child, or even the fierce sidekick in her Muggle jeans. Even the way she carried herself had changed – poised, upright. Assured.

Disguises can become all too comfortable.

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Late and flustered as she was, Hermione couldn't miss the tension in the Great Hall that night. Thick dark clouds still obscured the stars, billowing across the ceiling in testament to a wind unfelt inside the castle walls. The ghosts were clustered more thickly tonight, glowing silver in the dimly lit hall, reflecting the flickering light of the black candles floating above the tables. She was reminded of the significance of this particular evening.

At Samhain, her flawless recall of the written word offered, time loses all meaning and the past, present, and future are one. The dead and denizens of the Other World walk among the living.

Could she reach out and brush fingers with Sirius, she wondered, or Professor Lupin, or Tonks. Was Fred Weasley laughing at her, just there, just out of sight?

If she knew the way, could she step out of time and back home again?

The words reminded her of something Harry had once told her as she met Tom Riddle's eyes, inscrutable in the dim candlelight. He'd looked up as she walked towards the Ravenclaw table, and her gaze had found his a moment later.

Lord Voldemort is my past, present, and future.

She shuddered.

"You're awfully late," Ancha muttered, shifting down the bench to let Hermione in between her and Sophia. "Everything alright?"

The girl looked lovely, royal blue silk setting off her shining dark hair, a gold and dragonstone choker wrapped around her throat. It was oddly thrilling to see everyone dressed so richly, as though they were at a medieval feast. She half-expected a green giant to ride in and cut his own head off, then reprimanded herself for being so fanciful. Wrong holiday anyway.

"Yes, my lesson with Albus overran. What have I missed?"

"Nothing much. This farce of a festival should be over soon with any luck." Sophia this time, with real bitterness in her voice.

Hermione didn't reply, her mind racing. This might be something she was expected to get – some Pureblood tradition she'd missed. Loading up her plate to avoid answering she scanned the hall.

Muggleborns and a few half-bloods sitting grouped further down the table. That wasn't totally abnormal but the separation seemed more pronounced than usual. Oddly, though, they were more relaxed than everyone else.

As usual she'd sat facing the Slytherin table. Stupid, she thought, but refused to dwell on it. There were dark looks on their faces too.

"I mean, it's not as though our traditions are particularly barbaric. But to not even have a single sacrifice – not even a fire. They could just let us go home to celebrate instead. It's ludicrous. I'd rather not mark it than have this tame Mugglised feast," Ancha agreed talking across Hermione.

"At least we get to go home for Yule. Imagine missing that." Marcus this time, one up and across the table, warm dark eyes meeting hers. She hadn't noticed him before, and guiltily she sent her sweetest smile.

Claire, sitting next to him, kept her eyes cast down.

"When did the school stop celebrating Samhain properly?" Hermione asked, her quick mind supplying the missing pieces.

She'd never thought it odd that the Wizarding world celebrated holidays that coincided with her own upbringing before. It hadn't been mentioned in Hogwarts, A History and Professor Binns hadn't ever bothered with anything like that, preferring to wade through the minute details of centuries-past Goblin rebellions (to ensure continued mistrust, perhaps?) rather than teach them anything useful.

Even Malfoy hadn't brought this up, to her knowledge, although he'd always been gone in the holidays and it wasn't as though she were on good enough terms with any traditional families in her own time to have heard them moan about it.

She'd read about such celebrations, of course, but the books had made them seem ancient history, something that had faded out centuries before. Not traditions that were very much alive, traditions ripped away from people she'd come to think of as friends.

Suddenly it didn't sit right that Muggle Christian holidays should have replaced Wizarding traditions unless organically.

"About ten years ago, I think. They used to have a proper hazelwood fire, sacrifice an Augurey, dance a bit, honour the ghosts. You know what it's like. It's illegal now. We still do it, of course." Sophia's slate grey robes matched her eyes. She looked regal and forbidding.

"We never really bothered at home - Cerdic doesn't usually know what date it is anyway. But I did think it was odd people were calling this the Hallowe'en feast. I just didn't like to ask… sometimes I feel like I missed so much."

The lies sprang so easily to her tongue these days it scared her. It wasn't a lie, though, to say she felt like she'd missed out on so many Wizarding things. She had, in some ways. She'd never seen a true Samhain or Beltane celebration, hadn't spent her childhood learning to fly and stealing her parents' wands to practice magic surreptitiously. She'd grown up knowing she was different and wrong. Grown up not fitting but never knowing why, grown up crying helpless tears because she had no friends…

But, she'd also grown up with loving, normal parents. Parents she'd practically deserted because The Burrow and its inhabitants, even school itself, had just been so much more exciting and because even at eleven she'd known that she had magic and they didn't and they'd never really understand what that meant.

Parents whose free will she'd stolen, who no longer trusted their only daughter. Who looked at her with a fear they tried very hard to hide.

"Well, next year you should come to mine dearest. And, Hermione, we know you had an unconventional upbringing so don't be so proud about it." Sophia was smiling for the first time since she'd sat at the table and Hermione just nodded at her, trying to hide a flash of amusement that not dancing around a fire while you sacrificed an omen of death was considered unconventional.

She caught Tom Riddle's eyes again and told herself she hadn't been looking for him. His face was completely impassive, but around him the Slytherins had ugly, excited looks and she had a Harry style leap of intuition. Trouble, her senses told her and she agreed. Trouble brewing.

"Hag's get look at that," Ancha muttered, staring up the table.

It was unlike her to swear, so Hermione followed her gaze down the table, past the array of coloured velvets and silks, to what even she subconsciously thought of as the Muggleborn section. If the loss of Wizarding traditions didn't sit well with her, the unspoken apartheid was far more disturbing.

The Muggleborn prefect she'd met on the train coming up, but whose name shamefully escaped her in that moment, was standing on the bench. She wasn't wearing dress robes, but a plain Muggle knee-length skirt and blouse. That was an extremely radical choice, and as she dropped what looked like robes onto the floor Hermione realised she'd just taken them off to reveal her Muggle outfit.

She was caught in between horror at the public spectacle – and wasn't that unlike her – and admiration for the girl's bravery.

The hall had fallen totally silent by this point and Hermione could hear what she was saying.

"… it's disgusting. I've had enough – you shouldn't be allowed to treat people like this." She wasn't looking at the Slytherin table, though. She was looking right at where Hermione was sitting and then she wasn't on the bench she was standing in front of Hermione and it was so confusing and what was she saying?

"People like YOU! EVERYTHING YOU'VE DONE, I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY BECAUSE I CAN'T GO ON LIKE THIS…" she screeched, right in her face, and Hermione didn't understand because she'd barely said a word to this girl since the train and even then she'd been nothing but polite and –

"Pure blood supremacists like you should rot in God's darkest hell –" the girl screamed – and why could she still not remember her name, if she could only say the girl's name maybe she'd calm down, realise that Hermione wasn't the enemy – and was that a knife?

"I hate you for everything you've done to me Hermione Dearborn. I hate you and all your kind. Here's to your ghastly Samhain."

And then she pulled the knife across her own throat and fell to the floor, twitching for a moment and then still and quite, utterly dead, her own blood pooling around her on the stone.

It had happened so quickly, had been hardly twenty seconds and it was just so odd – she'd seen people die before, far too many really, but this made no sense and what had the girl said? She'd blamed her and then, what killed herself? It was so strange, and there was screams around her - was this another nightmare or -

The girl's blood was hot, soaking through her robes where it had splattered. Hermione brushed her sleeve across her face and it came away warm and wet.

Stomach clenched in horror, Hermione looked up and met first Claire's shocked eyes and then, past her, over her shoulder, she saw Tom Riddle walking towards her and everything seemed to be in slow motion and then he was bending beside the dead girl what was her fucking name and shaking his head and then he was beside her, arm around her shoulders, and so was Dumbledore and the man was frowning and Tom was saying something in a low, urgent voice and Sophia was standing gesturing and so was Marcus -

Hermione's never even met her I don't think -

Don't understand -

- Ridiculous -

- Should be in her room I'll take her

And then time caught up with itself and she realised that the hall was practically empty, the girl's body obscured by teachers and that she was clutching onto the man who'd probably orchestrated the whole thing. She dropped his arm quickly.

"Albus," she said quietly and they all silenced. "I'm fine. I didn't know that girl and I'm horrified to think I could have done anything to cause –" she gestured " – that. I don't… I can't even remember her name. I only spoke to her once, I think. On the train. I don't understand?"

"I think you should go to Devon tonight," he said firmly. "Jingo will take you."

"No, that would – I'll stay here. I'm fine, really. Thank you. You are probably needed elsewhere. Sophia will take me back to Ravenclaw."

She needed to sleep, although she wasn't sure she ever would again. She was so numb.

"Miss Selwyn, if a house-elf should appear with a bottle of Firewhiskey, please accept it and do with it as you see fit," he said after a moment and then touched Hermione's arm gently before joining the Headmaster and teachers.

Tom Riddle was still standing next to her. She wondered why but she was just so tired… and the girl's blood was all down her robes, the red already turning dark against the green. She would burn them.

Why had he done it? Had he done it? Or had she done something – could she had prevented this?

Marcus had gone, she saw. That was odd. She must have missed something. The Hall was empty now except for the teachers and the dead girl

"Mabel. Her name was Mabel. I met her on the train. She was kind to me." Hermione said softly and suddenly there were tears streaming down her face.

"Did you do this?" she whispered very quietly up to Tom as Sophia took her hand and tried to lead her away.

He just frowned down at her, face unreadable. He looked almost confused. It wasn't an expression she'd seen before on that marble face, so she left.

She'd worry about it tomorrow when Mabel Jefferies' blood wasn't splashed down her front. When she didn't feel like she was going to vomit and oh it looked as though someone already had, by the Hufflepuff table of course, and after she'd sleep. If she slept.

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She did.

She'd barely been in bed a moment before sleep overtook her and when she dreamt it was Bellatrix's face staring back at her in a fiery mirror. She dreamt of rubies the colour of fresh blood around a pale throat, of being burnt alive as a sacrifice to an old god whose name she didn't know. Of hot blood freezing on skin like ice.

She dreamt of a different kind of fire too, a pure and warm fire. She dreamt of twisting webs pulling around her, pulling her closer to a dark and cold pit where no fire could burn and when she woke she remembered nothing.

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She forced herself to go to breakfast the next morning. It was a Sunday but she pulled on her black school robes anyway. The Hall was less subdued than she was expecting, less than when Cedric had died, but when she walked in everyone fell silent.

He'd marked her, she supposed. Was that why he'd done it?

Dumbledore's own goddaughter, she thought suddenly. A blood supremacist.

Was that it? Or was she going mad? Had that girl – Mabel – thought they'd become friends on the train? Now she thought back the girl had smiled at her a few times but it had been early on when she'd been trying to desperately hard to be forgettable and she'd avoided the smiles, avoided her eye.

Had she done this?

She arrived at the Ravenclaw table and Sophia wasn't there and she froze because no one looked up to greet her – did they hate her, think she was cold and cruel - they should - but – no, there was Ancha, patting the seat next to her.

"Hermione! I was going to bring you a tray. You look better! Juice?"

Marcus came in moments later and dropped a kiss onto her head.

"I thought you'd be in your room." He squeezed her hand gently. "Pass the bacon?"

She sat, quietly shocked, as they breezed past the horror of the night before. She'd expected to be alienated, hated but this was somehow worse.

As though it hadn't mattered.

Only Claire avoided her gaze, but she'd been doing that so much lately Hermione couldn't tell if it was because Claire believed she was a blood supremacist or not.

Everyone was pale and a little quieter than usual but… it felt off somehow. Surely someone should look more upset.

She replayed it in her mind. She'd just sat there, she thought angrily. She could have easily disarmed the girl but she'd just sat there and let her cut her own throat.

And so had everyone else.

"Are you alright?" Marcus whispered.

"I should have stopped her," Hermione replied. "I – I just should have stopped her."

"None of us did anything. Don't dwell on it – it was just a horrible thing, but she was obviously quite mad." He shrugged as though to say what can you do.

"Excuse me. I'm not hungry after all."

"We're going for a walk around the lake later. Shall I come and find you?" he asked, oblivious.

"No," she said. "No, I think I'll go to the Library."

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Yikes.