Seventh Year, Part 8, 1998
They spent Christmas together in Godric's Hollow. It broke something in Hermione to realise that this was the first time Harry had ever been permitted to visit his parents' grave. Why had no one brought him here before? The cemetery had anti-muggle charms on it, so it wasn't as if the Dursleys could have brought him, but what about Professor Dumbledore? Hagrid? The Weasleys? Surely Remus and Sirius must know where James and Lily had been laid to rest! She knew James and Lily Potter's dearest friends must have been sick with grief over their deaths, but surely Remus and Sirius could have set that aside long enough to bring Harry here!
Harry had been abandoned by the wizarding world when his parents died, and it seemed that even though he'd been welcomed back and had enormous responsibility thrust upon him, no one was really looking out for his emotional well-being. It infuriated Hermione.
Harry wanted to see his godfather, to ask Sirius if he'd visited James and Lily's graves since he'd escaped the hellhole that was Azkaban prison, to ask why Sirius had never found a way to bring him here to pay his respects to his parents. Hermione thought it risky enough to send a patronus to Sirius just to set up a time to meet, and riskier still to actually show up for a meeting, given how easily a patronus could be seen and overheard, but she instinctively knew it was a hard conversation Harry needed to have with his godfather.
Harry was morose, and Hermione felt her own optimism lagging. It was more than just the burden of carrying two horcruxes with them. Weeks of life on the run, shivering together with Harry in the cold, hour after after of tedium with nothing to do in the woods but re-read her books and that absurd wizarding fairy tale book Dumbledore had left her, were taking their toll. She would give almost anything for another visit with Lucius - for the simple joys of a hot shower, properly laundered clothing, a full meal, and the warmth and security of his arms around her, the sound of his voice whispering filthy, seductive things in her ear as he fucked into the nearest flat surface. Lucius had no news for her though. Nothing else that could help, anyway.
It was not a happy Christmas.
Their spirits dipped lower still when their attempt to visit Bathilda Bagshot to question her about Dumbledore resulted in a nearly fatal attack by Voldemort's snake, Nagini. As with the flight from Grimmauld Place with Ron, she and Harry barely escaped, and they were both bitter that they'd been unable to take advantage of the snake's proximity to kill it.
They retreated from Godric's Hollow, afraid to check anywhere else that Voldemort could have possibly thought to leave a trap lying in wait for them. A despondent Harry admitted that he'd have to forgo reaching out to Sirius. He'd never be able to forgive himself if his own desire to check on his godfather, to receive some sort of parental comfort, resulted in harm coming to Sirius or anyone else in the Order. Hermione felt his grief but was relieved they would not be taking further risk.
She apparated them to the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. It was calm and peaceful here, and during the winter, it was pretty much abandoned, making it less likely they'd run into any muggles.
"Where are we?" Harry asked after they landed and she'd set the protective wards around their campsite.
"Forest of Dean. I used to come camping here with my mum and dad," she said as she rummaged in her extendible beaded bag for their tent and supplies.
Harry looked around at the trees and rolling hills. "It's nice. Peaceful."
It was peaceful. They put up the tent and set up the campsite in silence, listening to the sound of the river in the distance.
"Do you ever think about giving up?" she asked. She hadn't meant to say the words, hadn't meant to let such traitorous thoughts spill from her lips.
Harry looked surprised for a moment but then his shoulders sagged. "Yeah. I do. It's...it's...I never asked for this. For any of this. I've never been allowed to just be a normal person, you know?"
She nodded. She did know.
"Sirius wanted to leave England, to move far away from all of this. He suggested America. Can you see him on a beach?"
Hermione couldn't help but giggle at the picture of Sirius with his long hair and wizarding robes on a beach in Florida. They went into the tent, and Harry sat down beside her on the small sofa.
"I think about quitting a lot. I think about how Sirius wanted to run away, to save me from all of this. He said Gryffindors don't run from a fight, but he promised James and Lily he'd take care of me," he said softly.
"He's a good man."
"He's had a shite life," Harry retorted. "He deserves better."
"You deserve better too."
"If it weren't for him, knowing that he's out there somewhere fighting the battles we can't, I'd suggest we just stop. Live here in the woods. Grow old," Harry whispered.
She put an arm around him and hugged him close. "I know."
"You wouldn't give up though."
"I wouldn't give up on YOU."
He looked at her then, surprised at the vehemence of her words. "Really?"
"Really."
"Would you give up? I mean, if you felt like you could?" he asked.
"Muggleborns are being persecuted. Forced out of jobs. Accused of 'stealing' magic. Locked away. There's no life for me if I give up, at least, not in Britain. I'd have to go to that beach with you and Sirius."
"You'd have to give up Malfoy," he observed.
Hermione felt her heart thud painfully at the thought. "I won't give up either of you."
~oOo~
All week they scoured Hermione's stash of books, looking for something connected to Rowena Ravenclaw that Voldemort might have used as a horcrux, debating where he might have hidden it.
"I'm telling you, if Malfoy had the diary and Bellatrix Lestrange had the cup, then surely another of his followers has whatever this item is," Harry said.
Hermione frowned. "It's certainly within the realm of possibility, but the reality is that a lot of his inner circle has been picked off by the Order. If they were killed, do you think He'd retrieve it and hide it somewhere else?"
He sighed. "I have no idea."
"Okay, let's think about this," she said, laying out a fresh sheet of parchment. Harry was getting frustrated, and she wanted to be logical, to try to tease out solutions to this ultimate puzzle before he lost his temper again.
"All we've DONE is think about this!" he said in irritation, standing up to pace the short length of the tent.
"He left the diary with Lucius Malfoy. He left the cup with Bellatrix Lestrange. He left the ring in the Gaunt family home. He hid the necklace in a cave. What's significant about those places? What do they have in common?" she asked.
"Two with his followers. Two with… well, not with anyone."
"I guess I can kind of understand leaving the ring in the Gaunt home. It was his mother's family home," Harry said. "I don't pretend to understand Tom Riddle's mind or warped thinking, but according to Dumbledore, Riddle grew up in an orphanage. It wasn't just that his mother died - his mother's family never came looking for him. His father and his father's family abandoned him. That home surely had some sort of significance to him, even if he had never lived there."
Hermione stared at Harry for a long moment, silently noting the way he grasped the frayed hem of his jumper in his hands.
He identifies with Voldemort, she realised with a start. The lack of family, of a real home. Harry understands why the Dark Lord put the horcrux there.
"And the cave? What was significant about that, beyond it being a damn good place to hide something?" she asked, noting that Harry looked somewhat relieved when she moved on to the cave and did not question his theory.
He ran his fingers through his messy hair. "It was somewhere he went as a child, with the other kids from the orphanage. It was surely a special occasion, going to the beach like that."
"Okay, so it was a bright spot in a dreary existence. What else?"
Harry closed his eyes and concentrated. "It was...he did magic there. As a child. He used magic to move two of the other children into the mouth of the cave. They would not have been able to get there otherwise."
"He literally apparated other people, without touching them?"
Harry nodded, and Hermione swallowed hard at the idea of such a display of raw, untrained magical power. "Wow."
"Yeah." Harry looked uncomfortable at the reminder of how powerful his opponent was.
"Do you think…" her voice trailed off.
"What?"
"Do you think he'd done that before? To someone else?"
Harry shrugged. "I apparated wandlessly as a child too."
"You did?"
"Yeah. I was trying to get away from other kids who wanted to beat me up on the playground at school. I ended up on the school roof. Aunt Petunia was very angry with me."
She tried to draw her thoughts away from Harry's awful childhood.
"What if the cave was significant because it was the first time he'd used magic against someone else?" she asked.
Harry frowned and consider it "That's...actually that's rather brilliant. Just about every witch or wizard can tell you about the first time they did magic, especially if they did something significant like that. It's especially momentous if you're raised in the muggle world and don't know magic is real. I bet you're right! That's got to be why he chose that particular spot."
"Okay, so places of significance. Where else in the magical world would He deem significant?" Hermione asked. "Maybe the Ministry?"
"I hope not. It's not exactly easy to get in there these days," he said with a grimace.
"The Ministry is huge. I wouldn't even know where to start looking for something there," she admitted.
"I don't think it's there."
She looked up from her notes at Harry's uncertain voice.
"Why not? I mean, if we're looking for places of significance to Tom Riddle, surely the Ministry of Magic has to be at the top of the list. He wants to take over the magical world, and that means toppling the seat of power."
Harry shook her head adamantly and then sat down across from her at the table. He had a far off look in his eyes and an intensity in his voice when he spoke.
"No, no, you've got it all wrong."
She frowned. "What do you mean I've got it wrong?"
"It's not about taking over the magical world."
"Um, Harry, I have to disagree with you there. If it's not about taking over the magical world, then - pardon my language - what the fuck is He doing?"
He waved his hand dismissively, and she was reminded of the flippant way he'd acted in sixth year when he'd taken a dose of felix felicitas. He then reached into the pocket of his robes and took out a snitch, letting it loose for a brief second and then catching it in his hand in a repetitive motion as he paced and theorised aloud.
"No, no. What he's doing - the whole death and destruction and fucking up a perfectly good magical world, that's all secondary. He cares about it, at least I think he does, because he cares about power."
"Okay, and power resides in the Ministry, does it not?" she prompted, confused as to where Harry was going with this train of thought.
Harry paused for a moment and then stubbornly shook his head. "No, I mean, it does, and he needs to try to take over the world if he's going to keep the support of his racist arsehole backers who think they're better than everyone else. He craves power, not going to deny that, but I think it's more about control and having control over the most unpredictable thing of all: death."
He tucked the snitch back into his pocket so he could take the parchment from her and look over her notes. "Think about it, Hermione. He didn't know he was Salazar Slytherin's descendant when he came to Hogwarts. He was just this presumably muggleborn orphan, dropped in the snake's den."
Hermione shivered at the thought. In her experience, members of Slytherin House could be cruel under the best of circumstances. A poor orphan student believed to be a muggleborn would surely have been mistreated from the start.
"Having power, having control meant survival. He had to prove himself. He had to be better than any of them to survive in Slytherin. It wasn't just enough to show up and get good marks. He had to best them all to prove that he was worthy of being there."
Harry's words reminded her distinctly of her own girlish thoughts many years ago on a warm August evening. She'd been so young, so naive when she'd made a promise to herself that she would somehow prove herself to Lucius Malfoy, prove that she was worthy of being in the magical world. Something inside of her twisted painfully at the thought that SHE, Hermione Granger, muggleborn witch, was somehow like the Dark Lord.
No, no she wasn't like Him, she told herself. She was not a sociopath with delusions of grandeur and mass destruction, bent on the quixotic pursuit of immortality.
"That's what this is about. Survival. That's what all of this is about - the horcruxes. It's about survival, about having the ultimate power over death. THAT'S what he wants," Harry continued.
"Yes," she said slowly. "I get that. Horcruxes. Power over death. Immortality. Got it."
She pushed out a hard breath in frustration. Harry was talking in circles. Of course Voldemort wanted immortality, of course taking over the magical world was secondary to His desire to live forever. They knew this already!
"The home of his magical family, the descendants of Salazar Slytherin. The birthplace of his own magic and his ability to use it against others. The birthplace of Lord Voldemort himself."
He looked up at her with a wide grin.
"The other horcrux is at Hogwarts."
She stared at him in silence for a long moment before jerking the parchment back from his hands. She skimmed her own notes and replayed his words in her head: his mother's home and thus the origin of his magical lineage, the birthplace of his own magic, and Hogwarts.
Hogwarts.
It was the first place Harry - also an orphan - had described as HIS home, and being muggleborn herself, she could understand the school's significance. To have any success at building a life in the magical world as an outsider, you had to succeed at Hogwarts. Had war not come calling, she'd be there now, hopefully as Head Girl, with a bright future ahead of her.
Hogwarts wasn't just Tom Riddle's first real home though. It was where He'd first gathered His followers, including Lucius's father, Abraxas. It was where He'd created the precursor to the Death Eaters. It was where the persona of Lord Voldemort was first created.
She looked up at Harry again with wide eyes and then flung herself across the table into a surprised Harry's arms.
"That's… Harry, my god. That's...you're brilliant! You brilliant, wonderful wizard!"
His surprise gave way to laughter as he hugged her back.
"I can't believe I didn't think of it before!" she exclaimed. "Of COURSE it must be at Hogwarts. It all makes so much sense!"
He released her then and tugged playfully at one of her curls. "You said I was brilliant. I want that written down somewhere that on this day, Hermione Jean Granger said that I, Harry James Potter, am BRILLIANT."
She dissolved into giggles as well, the first time she'd really laughed since Ron left them. It felt good to laugh, and it felt good to finally feel like they were making progress.
~oOo~
As soon as she had time and space to herself, Hermione used her bracelet to message Lucius.
It's at Hogwarts. Unsure where.
She waited impatiently for a response that did not come for another hour.
Do you know what it is?
She replied in the negative and hoped he might have some sort of insight. She had no idea how Lucius was occupying himself lately, no way of knowing whether he'd had the time to study his extensive library of magical texts and gain any additional insight that might help them.
Suggest you find a trusted Ravenclaw to ask, but stay out of sight. Hogwarts NOT safe for you.
No riding dragons then?
She smiled as she sent the message back to him.
Absolutely no dragons, pet. Stay hidden.
She sighed wistfully at her wrist as his message faded from view. At one point in her life she would have scoffed at the absurdity of a teenage witch pining over a wizard, but she'd grown so accustomed to her desire for Lucius that it had long since become her normal. She frowned then as she took in his message. Find a Ravenclaw. Stay hidden. How were they supposed to do both? The only logical, reasonable answer was that she and Harry would somehow have to get to Hogwarts and hide within the castle itself.
Coming to the conclusion that the horcrux - something that had belonged to Rowena Ravenclaw - was hidden at Hogwarts was thrilling, but reality soon set in. They were still unsure as to what this magical item actually was, they had no idea where in the enormous castle it could have been hidden, and oh yes, there was that minor little detail about the school being under Death Eater control with Severus Snape at the helm. Oh, and they were still in possession of two horcruxes they'd been unable to destroy.
She tried to not let these enormous odds affect Harry's good mood. Instead, they spread out the Marauders' Map on the table and studied the building at length, looking for patterns to the movements of the Death Eaters, professors and students. Hermione noticed that Harry watched the little dot labeled 'Ginevra Weasley' but opted to not say anything to her friend. There was no point in making Harry melancholy over the whole situation. He'd left Ginny behind to protect her, but she could tell that his affection for Ron's younger sister had not faded.
Over the course of several days of watching the map, they discovered a few important things. Alecto and Amycus Carrow - both marked Death Eaters turned professors - had an established and predictable schedule, which would make it easier to slip past them undetected. The tunnel from the basement of Honeydukes into Hogwarts had been blocked off where it should have led into the school. Harry blamed Snape for that and Hermione was inclined to agree, although she secretly thought that it made sense for a headmaster to want to make a school more secure.
After all, Dumbledore hadn't done the best job keeping danger at bay: Voldemort had lived in the back of Professor Quirrel's head, a basilisk had roamed the building, Sirius in his animagus form got into the castle as did Peter Pettigrew, a Death Eater polyjuiced as Alastor Moody pretended to be a teacher all year and then tried to kill Harry, Umbridge had tortured students, and then Draco had used vanishing cabinets to let Death Eaters into the castle so a professor could murder the headmaster. Had it not been for the whole "Death Eater/murderer" thing, she might be inclined to think that Severus Snape was at least better at keeping the students safe from outside attacks.
She wondered then if the vanishing cabinets were still at Borgin and Burke's and at Hogwarts and if so, if they were still functional. That would definitely be one way into the castle, but it was too risky to try without knowing for sure - if either cabinet had been damaged in some way, they could end up lost indefinitely in some strange in-between state.
She was drawn from her thoughts when Harry glanced at his watch and heaved a sigh. It past time for them to split up for the night. It was her turn to sleep first whilst he kept watch.
As she did each time she prepared to sleep, Hermione checked her bracelet. She'd not felt the telltale warmth of an incoming message, but she checked all the same. It was hard to restrain herself from messaging him daily, but she did not want to risk his life just to remind him that she loved him and was thinking about him.
She'd had plenty of nightmares about Lucius, but this time, her dreams were pleasant, at least at first. She was in a room with Lucius that looked somewhat like his lodge in Scotland, and he was doing the most delightful things to her body.
She honestly couldn't say what woke her up.
One moment she was writhing against her lover, and the next she was jerked from sleep. She stared up at the ceiling of the tent, breathing hard as she stretched muscles that felt rigid and tight. She paused in her movement and listened for sounds to indicate that something was amiss.
She heard nothing, but somehow, she just knew that something was wrong.
~oOo~
When reading the books, I thought the whole 'pain and a vision through his scar' thing was used a bit much to help Harry figure out what was happening. He's not unintelligent, and I wanted him to have a chance to put the pieces together and make that connection for himself that his own upbringing and the connection he had to Hogwarts was not all that dissimilar from Voldemort's. I hope that read okay to all of you. There is something BIG coming in the next two chapters, and I am so excited to share it with you!
As always, thank you so much for reading and for taking the time to share your thoughts about this story with me! I love reading your theories about where this is all going and your thoughts on Hermione, Lucius, Draco, Harry, and others.
Cheers,
Elle