July 24th

If Antonin was aware that his wife left their house in the middle of the night to rush off to London, he kept his own counsel. Thirteen years of marriage taught both of the Dolohovs that sometimes ignorance was indeed bliss. Or at least as close to bliss as two Death Eaters pledged to the Dark Lord were likely to ever experience. Hermione woke up the morning after her little adventure with her husband perfectly content and snuggled up behind her in bed. Her residual guilt from her late-night adventure was assuaged by being the one to initiate a pleasurable morning. Either her husband didn't know that she ever left or he was content with what she offered as her way of apology.

In the light of the morning, she knew how foolish and reckless she'd been. What if Draco had taken her to Rodolphus? What would she have said or done? She could've been in a great deal of danger. Maybe he would've even cast more charms on her to make her forget what she'd already learned. If his past was any indication, she could never trust the animagus again. Not for even a second. The next time she had the opportunity to come face to face with the man, she had to be prepared. Anything less could mean her death. She knew better than most how ruthless Rodolphus could be when it suited his means.

By the time her next session with Babajide Akingbade came around, she was even more determined to unravel the rest of the spells. If she was ever going to have the chance to confront Rodolphus and discover what it was that made him go to such extreme lengths to fulfill whatever his plan was, she had to be free from his control. Some of the books that Mr. Akingbade brought with him for her to research in the hours and days between their sessions described a possible situation where the caster of the spells could build in a switch in their victim's minds. Almost like an activation switch, it was entirely plausible that Rodolphus had some long-term goal in mind for Hermione. She couldn't afford to let him get close to her until she was certain that all evidence of his past machinations were gone.

"This evening I think I would like for us to focus on the issue you had with your parents. Will you tell me a little bit about that?"

Feeling Mr. Akingbade moving around in her brain while she talked was becoming almost second-nature to Hermione. She hated it, of course, but it was easy to get used to once she believed he wasn't there to cause her any additional harm. Knowing that each time he walked away from her she had more answers to her myriad of questions, more strategies to solve the numerous puzzles inside her mind, helped her cultivate the desire to succeed in their sessions.

"I wasn't sure until recently if my parents were alive or dead. One day I might believe that they were killed twenty years ago during the war. The next I might believe that they died of natural causes in recent years. Then I started to have flashes of memories in my dreams of them being around my son, of them knowing my husband. That couldn't have happened if they were dead."

"You said 'until recently'. What changed?"

"Antonin took me to visit them and I got to see with my own eyes that they're both still alive and living in the same house I grew up in as a child."

The whole situation with her memories about her parents baffled Hermione the most. Why did she have so many different options? In the other altered memories, she was only given a single alternate version of the facts. Why then did she see multiple with her parents? It only caused her head to pound in agony when she tried to figure out the logistics of it all. Antonin claimed that they'd spent the Christmas holiday with her parents only months before she ran away. If that was the case, when did she have those memories altered? She couldn't remember seeing Rodolphus during that time.

Of course, she also couldn't remember seeing Rodolphus on the day she tried to kill Antonin. That visit had been a major surprise. She still hadn't explained any but the barest of details to Mr. Akingbade when he asked. Each time he brought up her dreams, she was thankful that that was a memory that she was able to uncover entirely on her own. Imagining having him witnessing what she did was mortifying. It was bad enough that he'd seen her in passionate embraces with Rodolphus or that he'd seen the day she hit her husband. Having him be a witness to the debauched manner in which the animagus pushed her up against the wall of her house while her husband and child were literally just steps away would have been too much. She already feared that he thought very little of her to begin with.

When she stopped to remember that awful day, she wondered about the significance of Rodolphus' presence. She didn't doubt that he cast a spell on her or strengthened the ones that were already there. No, that much seemed obvious by the fuzzy confusion she experienced when she reentered her kitchen. What she was worried about was his potential role in the attack against Antonin. Did she do that all on her own? Did she try to kill her husband because that's what she wanted or was it because Rodolphus wanted her to end his life? None of the potential answers to those questions brought her any comfort. Either she was a madwoman who hated her husband enough to want him dead or she was being controlled by a man whose motivations she didn't fully understand.

"This will be a little more difficult than uncovering some of your other memories because we don't know specifically when it happened. Please try your hardest to relax."

Just as Mr. Akingbade suggested, the memory didn't come forth easily or quickly. She could feel her frustration begin to rise when she could feel him moving around in her mind, but she couldn't feel the tugging that she had come to associate with uncovering memories. He insisted that she keep talking about her parents, keep mentioning the moments that she could remember where she wasn't sure whether or not they were alive. Focusing on her confusion was supposed to help him pinpoint where in her brain the particular memories were tucked away.

The tugging wasn't as gentle as it had been. In fact, she cried out in pain when he latched onto one. There was a resistance there that they hadn't experienced with any of the other unravellings. When it was free, the memory came rushing at her, making her feel like she had her head underwater. It began as hazy, muddled. Much like she felt when she'd swallowed too many potions in an effort to forget the hell she was existing in.

She could watch the brothers argue from the comfort of the luxurious sofa. They were in the Lestrange Dower House. Originally built for a widowed Madam Lestrange hundreds of years earlier in the past, it was the home that all of the widows moved into when their sons were old enough to marry. Designed to keep the ladies in the family from bickering, it instead became Rodolphus' home when Rabastan married. Some of the wildest parties that the Death Eaters enjoyed happened right under that roof. When the older brother in that family wished to let loose, he could be a great deal of fun. Hermione knew there were many nights she would never forget spent tumbling naked in the large bed upstairs.

The potions were particularly strong that evening. Or maybe she'd taken too many of them again. Rabastan warned her that she was consuming far too much to be healthy. But, she didn't care. Not when her world was getting so uncomfortable.

She'd had Christmas dinner with her parents just hours earlier. They asked too many impertinent questions about the sort of quality education that could be had at Hogwarts. Worried that their grandson wasn't going to be entering the best school possible when he began the following fall, they weren't shy about wondering out loud whether or not he wasn't more suited to going to a Muggle school instead. Though they didn't know the extent of the danger and violence that existed in the world their daughter was a part of, they knew enough to worry. Antonin was calm, even patient in his assurances that there was no better education to be had than at the school both of Oliver's parents attended. Hermione had been less kind. She and her husband were only just able to keep from starting a riotous row until they got home. When they did, she stormed out of the cage she lived in in Hogsmeade and Apparated to the Lestrange Estate. She knew for a fact that Rodolphus was temporarily hiding back in his old home and he was always much more exciting than her husband.

"I don't get it, Roddy. Why are we trying to make her confused about her parents? What do Muggles matter anyway?"

"It's not because they're Muggles, Rabastan. How many times do I have to explain this? We need to make her confused, unstable enough that no one trusts what she's saying."

Rabastan snorted, drawing an eye roll from his brother. There was a reason the two of them rarely spent any time together. They struggled getting along under the best of circumstances. Hermione started to say something, to ask what they were talking about, but found she had no energy. She shouldn't have taken that additional vial.

"I think she's crazy enough on her own."

"That may be, but we've got to make it worse."

"Can I try the spell this time?"

The rest of the memory was too hazy to make out completely. All she could tell was that Rabastan wasn't nearly as capable of casting memory charms as his brother. When he failed, Rodolphus pushed him out of the way to 'clean up his mess'. It seemed that at least she could finally understand why there were multiple versions. A mistake had been made. As talented as Rodolphus clearly was, he wasn't able to fully repair the damage.

"So it appears that we are dealing with multiple people who were involved with casting these memory charms on you, Hermione. Very interesting."

"Rabastan has always hero-worshipped his older brother despite the fact that they don't get along very well. I'm not surprised that he would demand to be involved when he learned what he was up to."

"The question I'm most curious about is why. Why would they wish to make you seem unstable?"

Hermione exhaled a deep sigh. Knowing she wasn't crazy, or as crazy as she initially thought, should've been more of a comfort than it really was.

"Because they didn't want Antonin to become the next Dark Lord. No one would want to follow a Dark Lord who had an insane wife. I would be too unpredictable. They needed me to cast a shadow on my husband's ambitions."

She started to mention that she knew for a fact that Antonin didn't even want to be the Dark Lord, but stopped herself before she said too much. That was a secret he told her in confidence. He wouldn't appreciate anyone else knowing.

"I'm his weakness. I've always been his weakness."

Mr. Akingbade sighed.

"I've been testing the potions that you gave me. The ones that your husband gave you were both perfectly safe and made exactly for the purposes he used them for. He truly has your best interests at heart. His fear for your health and sanity are genuine."

She already knew that was the truth, but it was nice to have the confirmation.