ALLERFORD, SOMERSET, ENGLAND
Continued
Hermione stood stock still in the kitchen, where she had been washing dishes. The doorbell rang again.
"Hello! Hello?" an old, trembly voice called out.
Christie finished washing his hands, drying them on a tea towel as he approached the front door. His bright sea-green eyes met Hermione's startled ones as he passed by the archway leading into the kitchen. Then he was out of her sight and, she realized with rising panic, answering the door.
"Mrs. Chaikin! Mrs. Schultz!" Christie exclaimed, stepping back. "Let's get ye in out of this nasty weather. What brings ye here?" Christie led them into the kitchen, enthusiastically stomping the snow off of his heavy boots and ignoring Hermione's panicked and imploring eyes.
"Well, hello there, dear!" one of the old ladies cried as she noticed Hermione at the sink. "You must be Christie's niece, Brigidette!" The two ladies convened around Hermione and started shaking her hand after she hastily dried her hands off on her apron, asking her how she was enjoying their small corner of Somerset.
"Oh, er," Hermione paused, staring around, a bemused expression on her face, "it's lovely, of course. I am enjoying it here very much." She smiled, but her gaze fell sharp upon Christie, full of warning, and he chuckled, clearly enjoying himself.
"We were very sorry to hear about your parents, dearie," little old lady on the right said, her blue, blue eyes staring at Hermione from beneath her large-framed glasses.
Hermione managed to make small talk for a few minutes, shooting warning glances in Christie's direction every chance she got, and when the two were situated at the kitchen table awaiting a cup of tea, Hermione snagged Christie's shirt as he tried to make his way around her. Turning her back on the little old ladies, Hermione laid the full force of her darkest scowl on Christie's unrepentant face and hissed under her breath, "Brigidette?!"
Christie waggled his eyebrows at her, grinning all the while. "Aye, lass, a simple name doesn't suit ye," he whispered. "Shall I make the tea?" he asked after a moment, gesturing to the teapot held aloft in her hand.
Hermione huffed. "Never mind. I'll make it." And she shooed him away. Hermione shook her head. Christie was too precocious by half. She couldn't help but smile the tiniest smile, though.
Someone was bound to come over at some point or see her through a window; it was better to have a story in place, it was true. But, Merlin, she would have appreciated it if he had warned her. She shook her head again and sighed, then turned around with a smile as the teapot started whistling.
She and Christie were going to have a little talk later.
THE DARK TOWER, UNPLOTTABLE
Meanwhile
Jeh knelt on the cold floor in front of the fire, closing her eyes. The light from the flames reflected in a dizzying dance upon her long sheet of black hair. She began clearing her mind.
"Yessss, my queen. We will be successful this time." Lord Voldemort's encouragement came out in a low hiss and the goddess kneeling at his side allowed a silent, mocking smile in reply.
The heat of the fire fed her desperation and Jeh's consciousness drifted, travelling through the dream-world. Landscapes flashed one after another before her until she reached her destination.
Ahriman. She could feel him. The heart in her chest beat faster as her spirit walked through a vast subterranean chamber. The walls around her pulsed and thrummed and she let her hand brush against the wall closest to her, enjoying the sensation of its bitter cold weight, its dust and grit.
There was no light and yet she had no trouble seeing.
How many times had she come here? How many times had she failed? It mattered not, because she would never stop trying.
The centre of the cavern rose above her, its momentous bell-shaped space as awe-inspiring as the first time she journeyed deep within her master's resting place. The room was hundreds of feet across and black as pitch, but in her spirit form she was not hindered by human sight.
Master. Black flames licked up and around his confined body, burning her even from a distance.
Her spirit flew forward; one second she stood in the opening of the cavern and the next she was kneeling at Ahriman's side. Jeh cried out in agony as she gripped and sliced at the chains, trying to break him free, her efforts futile once again. She needed to be with her king. She couldn't bear to wait any longer.
The pain was unlike anything she had ever experienced in any of her forms, and again, it was too much.
As she was flung back to reality, the answer came to her in a flash of sudden certainty.
Lord Voldemort was shaking in rage at her repeated failure, but Jeh rose to her feet in a fluid gesture and touched his hand, smiling at him, causing him to pause. "My Lord, I know now what to do." Her bright cobalt blue eyes contrasted beautifully with the nutmeg shade of her skin as her smile widened and her face lit up with the joy of her discovery. "A sacrifice is needed. A sacrifice of the purest blood."
ALLERFORD, SOMERSET, ENGLAND
Continued
Hermione couldn't sleep, and after tossing and turning for a few hours, she finally gave it up and decided to spend a little time reading. Christie had several bookcases and the variety was fascinating to her.
You could tell a lot about a person from their library, she had always believed that, and Christie's collection was just as quirky and interesting as he was. It ranged from a large selection of Louis L'Amour, then a broad range of science fiction and fantasy novels and mysteries, some classic literature such as Dickens, and what had really touched her heart, the well-worn books that had been his wife's collection of Jane Austen, the Brontës, L.M. Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott. He had admitted that he read a few of them every year to feel close to her. And then there were nature handbooks on everything from mushrooms to wild flowers, birds, and fish, and a few books on astronomy had caught her eye, as well as biographies and non-fiction about interesting time periods of history.
It was a good collection, and Hermione was a little amused to find that after picking up a mystery for the first time in what felt like a hundred years, she was hooked.
All of the books were great, though, and she read a little bit of everything at random bits throughout each day, but especially at night as she retired to bed. There was something so indulgent about burrowing into the covers with a good book, the bed-side table lamp on, relaxing against your pillows. It was almost like therapy for her. Her emotional scars, she suspected, would always be there, but she was working through the trauma at her own pace.
Having the opportunity to be useful, to be able to relax, to feel safe...it was a tremendous thing, what Christie had done for her.
Later, more awake than ever, Hermione gave up on going back to sleep and walked through the house as quietly as she could so she wouldn't wake Christie, and headed towards the kitchen. She nicked a scone she had made earlier in the day from the bread box and carried the laptop into the living room, settling in on the couch. When turned on, the laptop's black screen faded to blue and the Windows XP logo appeared for a few seconds before fading into the traditional open grass and sky background. Hermione started the connection process while she flipped through the pages of her notebook and took a small bite of the cheese-crusted scone.
She signed into the forum and only scrolled for a few seconds when her eyes caught on a new thread. Her eyes widened and her pulse quickened as she hovered the mouse's arrow over the title: RECRUITMENT – INTERVIEWS – TESTS.
This was exactly what she had not been allowing herself to hope for, a chance to connect personally with The Order. Hope and anxiety warred.
I owe the plot-line with Jeh and Ahriman entirely to Davros Fan. I also want to acknowledge the fact that he helped to write the scene with her in Ahriman's chamber and I used some of what he sent me, word for word, with his permission, because I loved it so much.
