As though responding pettishly to the collective yearning of the student body, the Christmas holidays crawled closer sluggishly. Umbridge instituted inspections of all in-coming mail. She couldn't yet censor out-going letters but Filch spent a lot of time lurking around the Owlery spying on who was corresponding with whom.
Even the most relentlessly chipper Hufflepuffs were looking a bit abraded as end of term neared. Everyone needed a break. It was hard not to resent everything. Hermione wanted to keep a clear head not amble around in a mellow daze so she had rationed her use of the emotion extraction. She'd managed fairly well until Umbridge inspected Hagrid's class.
The Thestrals had already put Hermione on edge and she'd been hanging back with Nott at the fringe of the group as the lesson progressed. Trying to remind herself the sepulchral animals were not at fault for the associations put upon them by magical folk, she was making an effort to see them as Luna did; gentle and solemn.
Then fucking Umbridge showed up to do that baby-talk to Hagrid as though he were subhuman. Hermione thought seeing red was a literary convention. She wasn't prepared for her vision to tunnel, going crimson at the edges as her pulse thundered in her ears. How fucking dare she! Racist, fascist, despotic bitch!
"Rosier." Nott hissed, watching colour suffuse her face in an angry flush. It was shitty they had to participate in this lesson but the overgrown buffoon had brushed off his request to be excused with the hearty promise that he'd enjoy the treat. "Rosier!"
"I feel ill." Hermione ground out the words, abruptly aware she had drawn her wand.
"Professor, I'm escorting Rosier to the Hospital Wing." Theo said proforma to thin air as Umbridge taunted the half-giant. He tugged on the blonde's sleeve, towing her away across the grass before she did something unwise.
They were back in the Castle, at the base of the stairs to the second floor waiting for the steps to swing back towards them when Nott risked letting go. He appreciated her restraint in not cursing him. She still had her wand out. He considered nudging Rosier into a classroom so they could have a private chat but after what she'd done to Parkinson, he didn't want to offend her sensibilities.
"Better?" He asked generally, eyes on the staircase.
"Somewhat." Hermione put her wand away and flexed her tense hand. "I think I need a little time by myself. Thanks for getting me out of there."
Theo nodded, taking the dismissal without rancour. He'd cared enough not to want a scene but faced now with a personal conversation that would probably be about feelings, he shied. He wasn't good with other people's emotions. He wasn't even good with his own. So he took her request as a face-saving excuse to avoid talking about what had just happened.
Hermione went to her lab to spend the rest of the afternoon hardening and removing her anger. There seemed an endless font of it as though the memory of Umbridge's mockery had tapped into a wellspring from her hindbrain. The bitch would live because if Mundungus Fletcher sold the locket to someone else, the horcrux could end up absolutely anywhere. Also because she was such a control freak, while Umbridge recuperated from her contact with the Dementors the Muggle-born Registration Committee had paused trials, giving people more time to flee the country.
So it was important that she not run amok and render Umbridge into her component molecules. Self-restraint was a virtue. Hermione tried to remember all the sensible, kind things her mother had taught her about turning the other cheek after she'd come home from primary school crying. Again. Bullies were the same no matter their age.
Of course, if it were easy she wouldn't be sitting on the floor in a forgotten storeroom with her wand to her temple. After a while the fire in her blood banked and she could be philosophical about the soon-to-be Headmistress. From what she recalled of Fifth Year, Umbridge didn't stay at Hogwarts for the entire holiday break. She wasn't sure about details, vaguely recalling she'd assumed the pink menace had gone to infest the Ministry.
Hermione secured her emotions in glass vials in a lead-lined box then took a walk. Extracting the anger left her temporarily numb to irritation like Millicent with her Calming Draughts. The difference in her demeanour might be noticed so she took herself off to the girls' loo on the third floor to check the loose brick.
Someone had collected the Dittany, which was expected, but had left a scrap of parchment, which was new. Justin had taken her advice about discretion and had kept communication between them to commonplace remarks in the classroom. Hermione checked the message for curses then when it came up clean extracted it from the hidey-hole.
Hannah Abbott's writing with a request for burn paste. She frowned at the careful round letters. There had been a few injuries in DA with hexes going awry but there'd been no burns. They'd deliberately not used fire curses as they were too difficult to control in stressful situations. Anyone hurting themselves with a burner in Potions would've been sent directly to Madam Pomfrey.
Fireworks. Hermione laughed out loud when she realised who needed first aid on the quiet. Fred and George must be manufacturing their pyrotechnics at Hogwarts since the inspection of incoming post. Their Occupation Health and Safety policy was 'duck and cover'. They weren't as naturally gifted with explosions as Seamus 'No Eyebrows' Finnegan but they tried harder. Cheered, she went back to her lab to start on something that would help with chemical burns.
Hermione lay in Cathal's bed on the first day of Christmas holidays. The dorm was silent. Anyone who could find or whine for an excuse to leave the Castle had left either to their family home or to a friend's. Madam Flint had sent an apology for not being able to host her for Yule as she and her husband were going overseas for a private holiday. Hermione had written back with a polite response taken directly from an etiquette book. She hoped the Flints stayed out of the country until the end of the hostilities.
She'd been half expecting Malfoy to invite her home but he'd scurried off mumchance. While Lucius Malfoy hadn't likely shared with him the plans for the Department of Mysteries, he would've told his son something. Crabbe and Goyle had been similarly mute though neither of them were conversationalists at the best of times. She wasn't sure and couldn't ask.
"Miss, the horrid pink witch has gone." Moppet whispered, appearing in the middle of the curtained bed. Hermione sat up, fully dressed, to take the house elf's hand. She popped them out of the dorm to the statue of Gregory the Smarmy on the fifth floor. They could have taken one of the long routes navigating through the slumbering parts of the Castle but Hermione wanted to use the official secret passages while she could. Mostly in this case because with so few students remaining for the holidays, the chance of her getting caught sneaking about was high.
The passageway was noticeably well-aired, suggesting frequent use this year. Moppet led the way, checking for alarm spells with elf magic. She was a bit put out she couldn't yet cast the detection charm with her very own wand but Miss said any showing-other-people's-magic magic was fiddly. Wizards and witches were tricksy.
"The not-seen walls are holey here." Moppet waved her hand at the end of the tunnel. She could feel the openness of the defences, which Miss had asked Hogwarts about but the Voice had said it couldn't say because Miss wasn't Headmaster. Moppet thought the Castle was cross and itchy about the nasty pink witch, who was like a rash.
"Dumbledore still has control of the wards. I don't think Umbridge ever gets her hands on them. She's shut out of his office." Hermione closed her eyes, trying to feel the absence of magic. While she was in the Castle, she could tell she was inside and when she was beyond the wards she could tell she was outside but the border was fluid. "I can't sense either way."
"Miss is good at other things." Moppet consoled, not grinning at all. Her ears twitched in amusement though.
"Thanks." She chuckled. Hermione took a deep breath. She'd snuck out plenty of times before. Her hesitation now was solely a wish to avoid a confrontation with Umbridge, who was exactly the sort to leave nasty little surprises for anyone trying to get out from under her thumb. "I'll saunter nonchalantly to the edge of the Apparition boundary. Meet me by the big mossy rock."
Moppet nodded then went invisible. She wanted to stay close to her witch. She didn't like having to pretend they weren't going-to-be-bonded. Not getting caught and being made to punish herself was good so Moppet did as her witch asked. It'd be soon, she liked to think of a year and more than a half as soon so it didn't seem so long, that she and Miss would be bonded. Then no one could punish either of them.
Hermione flipped up the hood of her cloak and strolled through the egress. There was a brush of something that tasted like salt; a quiescent ward perhaps. She could pull out her Map and ask the Voice but it was beholden to the Headmaster. She'd spent years avoiding awkward questions. Her curiosity could wait a little longer.
No one and nothing leaped out at her. Crossing the Apparition line with its slight crackling shiver and reaching the old wayfaring stone didn't bring any sprung traps either. Best not to hang about though. Moppet reappeared, took her hand, and popped them to Diagon Alley. The jellied eel shop was closed for the holidays. Its odour of fish and aspic lingered stalely meaty.
A mouthful of Polyjuice later and some Transfigured clothes, Hermione headed to Wands by Gregorovitch. The clerk was still disinterested in customers. All his attention was on the Daily Prophet, on the jobs ads she noticed when she approached the counter. Moppet had trialled all the lost wands in the Castle and had sneaked goes on the wands of the First Years, which would be less attuned than those of older students. Alder with unicorn hair had been the most friendly.
"Boutique wands one third off." The twenty-something wizard spoke to the newspaper, tapping a listing with his wand to highlight it. He flicked a finger at a sign propped up next to the cash register. The simple piece of card doubled in width and unrolled to display a list of woods.
"Cumaru?" Hermione inquired. Jarrah, she recognised, and hickory. Wenge she though was a tropical hardwood. There were dozens of others.
"Muggles call it Brazilian teak." The clerk mumbled. "Used to be fashionable. Not so much now." He looked at her; a middle-aged brunet with a five o'clock shadow at nine o'clock in the morning. "The shop's closing down. The talk about You-Know-Who put the wind up the Gregorovitchs." He grumbled more than sneered. "This store was only here to annoy Ollivander anyway."
"Why just the boutique wands?" She touched the list, watching as script appeared listing cores under each wood. There didn't seem to be any pattern to the materials and some were obscure enough she'd only heard of them as references.
"They want all the odds and sods sold. No sense shipping them back to Liechtenstein to gather dust." That seemed to be the extent of his interest in conversation. He turned back to the employment section, leaving Hermione to her conundrum.
She had some money put by. She'd been careful with what she had scrounged, building up a nest egg. Barring doom, Cathal would get access to her vaults just before the beginning of Seventh Year. Two summers. Staying at Hogwarts meant she didn't have many expenses.
There would shortly be a choke on wand production in the United Kingdom after the abduction of Garrick Ollivander. The other wand shops closed when their proprietors fled, taking their stock with them. Hermione didn't know much about any black market in wands during the war. She assumed there'd been one as there hadn't been enough to go around.
There would definitely be a shortage if she bought up all Gregorovitch's discount merchandise. How would it affect the timeline? She had no damn idea and no way of finding out. If she grabbed all the wands she could, how would she get them to people who would need them? Would the purchase be logged at the Ministry? Would anyone take an interest in why some random bloke had a bushel of wands?
She compromised to stop dithering and to provide the excuse that she was a collector on a budget. She bought one of every combination of wood and core on the list but no doubles. The clerk didn't ask. He did give her a discount on the bulk purchase, wanting to spare himself the effort of having to box the remainders. Wands couldn't be shrunk or Transfigured and were temperamental if shipped incorrectly.
Hermione paid and faux sauntered out of the shop. She couldn't pretend to be casual for very long. In her bag, in the right hands she had enough firepower to level London. Moppet accepted her wand then popped them to a seemingly random field in Norfolk, following the ley lines nearest the location her witch suggested. Like other magical folk, house elves couldn't travel directly to places they hadn't been but they could iterate close to an unknown destination by following the flow of magic that criss-crossed their native land.
"Point me." Hermione used her very own spell to have her wand point north, still chuffed she'd crafted the working. It was her first real proof that her magic wasn't all books and cleverness. "Right, if we're inland north-west of Norwich about halfway east of King's Lynn then hopefully that big road over there is the A148."
They tramped across the snowy field to the two lane strip of asphalt. Moppet popped them along the road until they found a sign, confirming they were indeed where Hermione hoped they would be. She hugged her friend. As a blind jump went, they were well within walking distance. The trick now would be to avoid RAF Sculthorpe, where questions would be asked if they suddenly appeared, and not to land in any of the many rivers in the area.
"There's an Iron Age hill fort near the village. Can you sense its magical signature?" Hermione could possibly have Apparated. They were within five kilometres of where she wanted to go and mentally she was more than capable of the focus required. Whether Cathal could sustain a jump was another matter. She thought it sensible to wait until she was sixteen, take the lessons, and ensure her corpus was ready for the strain.
"It's all plowy." Moppet held out her hands as she turned in a slow circle. "There's a big, burned, oily place that way. It's eaten all the magic around. Moppet can't see well with it there all dirty."
"That'd be the airfield. We want to be due north of it about halfway between here and the sea." She did some dead reckoning. "We could walk. It's a nice enough area. With a Warming Charm, it'll be a pleasant stroll."
"Moppet might be for walking if Miss carried Moppet." The house elf made her eyes big like kittens. She didn't want to walk in the snowy outsides. She didn't want to jump around all over the places either. Once they got where they were going, she could bring them back there but until they were where is, it'd be hopping about.
"Sounds fair." Hermione loosened her cloak and kneeled down so Moppet could climb underneath for a piggyback. She wriggled a bit getting comfortable but the house elf's weight was less than a laden bookbag. Once they'd settled themselves, the witch cast a Disillusionment Charm and headed up the road to find a route heading north.
The hike along frosted hedgerows through the flat East Anglian countryside was soothing. There wasn't much traffic once she turned off onto a lane bisecting fields and the quiet gave Hermione a chance to wind down. The echoing halls of Hogwarts full of hundreds of students, the background hum of the wards, the sub-harmonics of active magic, had filled her head with noise. Crunching along through ankle deep snow, she sighed, well aware she was putting off going back.
This errand wasn't idle just unsure. Getting a supply of spare wands to the Order of the Phoenix without dealing with Snape or Dumbledore wasn't easy. The Weasleys had a lot on their plate right now with Nagini's attack on Arthur. And she had to admit to herself that she couldn't ask anyone she knew was going to die or disappear presumed dead, which were several.
Her destination was a cottage on the eastern side of South Creake village. It peeked out from under a thick thatched roof, dormer windows shaded by the straw mop-top. The house had been a mellow cream when she'd first seen it now years earlier the paint was bright yellow and she could see why Mrs Tonks had rued allowing her daughter to pick the colour.
The boundary wards were dense. Hermione stopped at the gate as the defensive magic bumped against her. Not forbidding exactly but she wasn't welcome. A tingle ran under her skin that hinted at blood magic. Andromeda's mother was a Rosier so it stood to reason she had used her own essence to protect her home from her relatives, which was inconvenient as it meant she'd recognise Cathal as kin if Hermione crossed the wards.
"Why has Miss stopped?" Moppet asked, peeking forward past the cloak's hood.
"I was going to pretend to be some random courier. I can't do that now with the blood wards." She stepped back until she couldn't feel the shiver of magic any more then cast a detection charm. A shimmery red-purple curtain glittered a few paces in front of her. The bright colour told her the ward was active though the blurriness indicated it was not currently being monitored.
It was difficult to maintain attunement with a ward as clarity of mentis and purity of corpus meant you could do little else other than quietly commune with the magic. Depending on the layering and components of the defensive spells, even smelling something taboo could disrupt the connection. Muggle technology was notorious for 'clouding' ward-tenders.
"I'm not getting through that quietly." Hermione fell back further down the lane to lurk by a neighbour's dustbins. "Shit." She commented, doubting Mrs Tonks would venture into the lane at the behest of a stranger. "Can you cross the wards?"
"Moppet thinks so." The house elf didn't feel anything that wanted to keep her out of the little house with the shaggy roof. "Does Miss want Moppet to be sneaky feet?"
"Quite the opposite, actually." She picked twenty wands out of the shopping bag then Transfigured a handkerchief into a wooden box with a Hogwarts crest on the top. "Pop in, ask for Mr Ted Tonks or Mrs Andromeda Tonks then hand them the wands with Dumbledore's compliments. Pretend to be an ordinary Hogwarts elf delivering a package for safe-keeping."
The deed was done so simply Hermione regretted not sending the wands by owl. Moppet reported she'd given the box to a wizard with a big tummy who'd said he was Ted and hadn't asked any questions. He had seemed unhappy, his mouth going down at the corners the way it did when people were trying not to frown, but he'd taken the wands without question. No skulduggery required.
They popped into Muggle London so Hermione could do some shopping mostly in camping stores for preprepared food. In the spirit of scientific experimentation, they also went to a low-end grocery store and bought the most processed of processed food in colours not found in nature. Hermione was interested to see if preservation spells recognised marshmallow fluff as edible.
Afterwards, they went to Rose Cottage, where Hermione cached her remaining supply except for the four ivy wands, which were quick to adapt to new owners and thus would be the most useful for emergency spares. Once Umbridge was out of Hogwarts, she'd retrieve the others but she didn't want to get caught with so many. The excuse of Intellectual curiosity would stretch only so far.
She and Moppet pruned the roses as something to do while they waited for the Polyjuice to wear off. Hermione readjusted her clothes once she was back in what was still difficult to think of as her own body. They cleaned up and headed back to Hogwarts in good time to pretend to have slept in. Rematerialising by the mossy rock, the house elf immediately vanished and the witch Disillusioned herself to walk back to the secret tunnel.
Hermione got exactly four paces out from behind Gregory the Smarmy before Professor Snape cleared his throat. She stopped. At least it wasn't Umbridge's puerile little cough. She turned to face her Head of House. He said nothing, indicating sharply that she should follow him. Which she did without protest all the way to his office. They sat, so civilised, as he regarded her over steepled fingers.
"Where did you go, Miss Rosier?" Snape asked, anticipating a lie. Likely a reasonable one given the girl wasn't an idiot. Given where he thought she had gone, any sort of passable fib would be acceptable.
"I went home, Professor." Hermione rapidly partitioned her memories. She could hide some but not all. The jaunt to Rose Cottage was the least suspicious so she concentrated on the roses, the bitter bare stems and frost-blighted hips.
"To the Isle of Man?" It was a question, though not one of location. Her address was a matter of record. What Severus queried was her means of transport. She nodded, eyes on his desk. "This is not the moment for a stilted dialogue. How, why, and with whom?"
"Portkey, nostalgia, and alone." She answered tersely. That should annoy him. When riled he was far more instinctively vindictive and less shrewd. Hermione didn't want to answer any sharp questions. The silence that followed her reply attenuated. Wordlessly Snape opened a drawer, retrieved a vial and set it on the desk between them.
"Veritaserum." The Potions Professor confirmed, seeing the recognition in Rosier's face. Some of his charges could lie as fluently and glibly as birds sang. This girl took the stubborn road of silence. "A blunt weapon used by those lacking finesse or patience." He could dose her and she'd never know was the unspoken threat. But that too was the method of simpletons. "The Dark Lord is gathering followers. Did you meet with any of his representatives?"
"No." Hermione said plainly. She couldn't tell if he relaxed. Snape had been playing a double game for decades. She wasn't even in the same league. "I plan to finish my schooling before I involve myself in politics."
"What you plan is irrelevant. You are a prize, Miss Rosier." Severus returned the truth potion to the drawer, shutting and locking it. "When you come of age, you will be the Head of the House of Rosier as well as the presumptive heir to the House of Selwyn and the British holdings of the House of Shafiq." He saw she wasn't surprised. The goblins would have briefed her on her expectations. "The wealth is a factor but more important is your blood." He paused. There was no way of saying the next without sounding prurient. "Your virginity."
"I'm not innocent. The unicorns avoid me." There were Dark rituals, dozens of them, that used a ritually pure witch or wizard. The older the family, the more intense the blood magic. Hermione had read a fraction of the works on the subject in her hunt for information on horcruxes. She knew more than she wanted. Snape wasn't being creepy. He was warning her of a significant risk.
"Good." He was relieved. Out of duty to his House, he gave a lecture on biological responsibilities to the Sixth and Seventh Years and trusted their parents to nag them into behaving. There were few accidents in Slytherin. Too much was at stake. "In your own time, at your own whim, I suggest your divest yourself of any physical purity. Not being untouched won't be an impediment for your eventual marriage. If you wish to remain free, you will need to take steps to avoid any state that could bind you to someone."
"There's a betrothal concord between Draco Malfoy and I." Hermione recalled the chat she'd had with the blond tosser. She couldn't be forced to marry him, the Imperius invalidated contracts, but coercion came in many forms.
"Lucius will sell that contract to the highest bidder if he thinks it to his advantage." An engagement wouldn't protect her. "You should give serious consideration to leaving Britain. Ultimately, that won't shield you but out of sight is out of mind."
"I can't do that, Professor." She watched him fold his hands on the desk, a gesture of throttled frustration. He had wondrously expressive hands. A pity they were attached to such a pillock. "But thank you for the good counsel."
