A/N:
Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. I really love reading your thoughts!
Chapter Six: To See A Light
May 2000
Parkinson Manor
Pansy saw the slight tremor in her mother's hand as the older woman cut delicately into her Cornish hen. It was the only hint of her disquiet, for her features were composed, her back ramrod straight. Pansy studied her for a moment, desperately trying to mimic her composure. Flicking her eyes between Draco and Blaise, she imagined herself soaking up their cool confidence. Theo had plastered a stiff grin on his face as he conversed merrily with Marus Flint and his father. They broke into quiet chuckles every now and then.
Bellatrix sat at the head of the table, her feet propped on top of her dinner plate. She was leaning back in her chair, her head tipped over the back, long black hair tickling the hardwood. Lucius Malfoy sat to her right, whispering into her neck. His hand would drift over her collarbone and up to her ear as he spoke. Narcissa sat across from her husband, a queen amongst peasants. She ignored her husband and sister, eating calmly.
Everyone ignored the naked wizard moaning above the fireplace, nailed to the wall in a twisted parody of the Muggle Christ figure.
"Please," he squealed. "Please Bella."
Rabastan Lestrange had been sentenced to death three days ago. Pansy wondered how many meals they would have to sit through before he finally stopped pleading. Even in her bedroom, she could hear him suffer and she had not the courage to cast a muffling charm on her walls in case Bellatrix wanted to inspect her wand. She had slept little and eaten nothing but the sandwich Draco had forced upon her after dinner yesterday.
"Something wrong, Pansy dearest?"
Bellatrix's question yanked Pansy from her horrified study of Rabastan. She felt the weight of the woman's stare pin her to her seat. "I'm wondering when the fool will decide to die and leave us all in peace."
The words came out steady and acidic. Bellatrix threw her head back and laughed. Draco lifted the corner of his mouth in approval. Pansy swallowed a bite of mashed cauliflower and felt it turn to lead in her stomach.
Pansy woke that morning with a pounding headache from the mental beating she had taken the day before. Without the protections of Occlumency, the Auror had been able to waltz through her memories at will and the experience had been deeply disturbing. While he stayed away from her deeper, darker past- as promised- it was still unaccountably embarrassing. The last time she had allowed someone pick through her mind, he had smiled at her with his glowing red eyes and congratulated her on her efforts as part of the Inquisatorial Squad. The Dark Lord had also had an incredibly light touch with mind magics, only inflicting pain when he so desired. The Aurors had been awkward and rough, tearing through her thoughts like a boot through tissue.
It took a moment to remember why the room was cold, and why the sheets against her skin were rough, and why the air smelled of damp stone. Surprisingly, after the initial flicker of disgust at her lowered circumstances, all the she felt was relief; there would be no sociopathic witch waiting for her in the breakfast room, no evil betrothed and his small, slimy touches. When she cracked her eyes, she saw the light in the room from the single underwater window was faint. Pansy realized it was probably quite early. Like any civilized person, Pansy hadn't woken up before ten o'clock since school, and so was entirely ready to roll over and go back to sleep. Until she spotted Draco grinning at her from the single chair in her room. 'Room' was perhaps too generous a word for the domicile in which she'd found herself. She'd had bigger closets.
Speaking of closets, she studied the small stack of second-hand, magically altered clothing at the end of her bed as Draco talked at her. The clothes were ill fitting, and there wasn't a single skirt in the bunch. She had never worn trousers in her life. Such inappropriate Muggle clothing was unacceptable for a woman of her position. A part of her wanted to wear them because, really, an ass like Pansy's needed to be showcased, but the other part was terrified. Were there special undergarments that went with such clothing? Would Pansy be expected to walk around with seams of fabric pressed against her most intimate area? On second thought. . .
"Wait a minute!"
Draco stopped talking, looking at her questioningly. Something he had said tripped her attention. He was describing his conversation with Granger the night before, when he had let her in on their secret research, and then left her with a very precious notebook.
"You left the notebook with her?" She shrieked. "That notebook is everything, Draco!"
"I left a copy of the notebook with her." He pulled the familiar book out of his robes and showed it to her with a look of disdain. "Honestly, Pans, it's like you don't know me at all."
Pansy let a out a small huff of relief, instantly chagrined at her outburst. She blamed it on the ridiculously early hour, the lack of appropriate clothing, and Draco Malfoy's obnoxious voice grating at her.
"Theo and Blaise are showering. As soon as your exhaustive morning toilet is complete, we'll make a visit to Granger's room and see what she's made of all our brilliance."
Pansy was glad that she had used the communal bathroom down the hall the night before. She did not want to have to fight Blaise for the mirror.
"Get out so I can get dressed," she snapped at Draco.
He grinned at her knowingly and left. Ten minutes and a few curse words later, Pansy joined him in the hall. She had no makeup or hair styling products, and had settled with a small glamour charm. The trousers were not as uncomfortable as she had anticipated, and she found that the undergarments provided for her were no different than the ones she normally wore, except that they were made of cotton and not silk and were a rather unfortunate color. The shirt she chose was the least horrible of the bunch, being a lovely blue, which brought out her eyes, and only slightly too small in the sleeves and slightly too large in the middle.
There was no answer at Granger's door. Draco frowned at the handle. Neither of them wanted to touch it, for if anybody would have intensive personal wards on their room, it would be Hermione Granger. Pansy could feel the power radiating off the door, making the hair on her arm stand up. There was serious magic going on in there.
"She warned me about her magic going wild sometimes." Draco looked at Pansy expectantly.
"You want me to try and break through her wards with no wand?" His faith in her abilities was gratifying, but she had no interest in exhausting herself attempting something that was probably nearly impossible even with the help of a wand.
"Feels like an anti-intrusion charm," he mumbled, his hands out-splayed to get a feel for the ward. "A good locking charm. Possibly a painful rebound jinx for anyone who tried to step across the threshold."
"Might be able to blast it." Or they might get blown across the hall in pieces.
Draco looked at her questioningly. She shrugged. They both stepped back and aimed great pulsing balls of sheer power at the door. "This might just alert them to our. . . ability."
Draco scoffed. "These people are mostly Gryffindors. They aren't known for their perceptiveness."
Without another word, they blasted the old wooden door to pieces. Theo and Blaise came stumbling out of the bathroom at nearly the same moment.
"What the fuck?" Theo gasped.
"Knocking didn't work, I take it?" Blaise brushed wood chips from Theo's shoulder.
The room was a disaster. Papers littered every surface and drifted to the ground on a swirling, magical breeze. The painting above the fireplace was rocking back and forth as if someone were pushing on it. Something flew past Pansy's nose and she realized it was a book. There were several objects flying about the room, most of them books, flapping their covers as if they were wings. In the middle of all this mess, curled up on her bed, was Hermione Granger. Her eyes were clenched shut, her hands clasped over her ears.
Draco made the short trip to the bed, smacking a book out of his way. "Granger!" He reached for her shoulder, but quickly yanked his hand back, cursing.
"What is it?"
"Some kind of ward," he muttered, rubbing his arm. "Bloody fucking painful. Like a tiny cruciatus."
As if sensing their presence, the things in the air started zooming around anxiously. Obviously, Granger had lost her mind sometime in the night. Draco studied the curly haired woman for a moment, a crease between his brows.
"Theo, go get my mother." Theo nodded and backed out of the room quickly. "Pansy, floo Potter."
Pansy jumped over to the fireplace, a length of parchment crackling under her feet. There was a small glass bowl on the mantle filled with violet sand. "Harry Potter," she demanded of the purple flames. There was no answer. She tried again, shouting this time. Nothing. Did the floo network reach the village? She couldn't remember. She thought hard for a moment before grabbing another handful of sand and throwing it into the fire. "Neville Longbottom." It took a moment, but the plain face of the former Gryffindor appeared with a shocked look on his face. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and Pansy could just barely see the swoops of his collarbones.
"Pansy Parkinson?"
"Your princess has gone round the bend," Pansy snapped at him. "Get down here and fix it before we get clobbered by flying literature."
It was hard to tell with his face cast in purple, but she thought the man paled. "I'll be right there. Don't touch her, you'll get hurt."
"Yeah, figured that out, thanks."
He was gone and Pansy retreated to the doorway. Draco stood amongst the flying debris and stared down at Granger, as if willing her to open her eyes. His face was very carefully blank. A tiny cauldron crashed into his abdomen, breaking his gaze with a grunt. He stepped away from Granger and stalked to the small table in the corner. Blaise was perusing through the mass of parchment there, casually swatting at a fluttering sock. Most of the aerial objects were centered around the bed, so the two men were relatively safe.
"She's done the calculations." Blaise muttered. The table was close enough to the door that Pansy could hear him clearly, even over the fluttering noise of flying papers.
"I figured she would."
"So do you think we broke her mind?" Blaise said it with humor, but none of them were really laughing. It was jarring to see Hermione Granger curled into a miserable ball of destructive magic. Pansy was having a hard time reconciling the miserable sight before her with the wand-wielding-soldier-witch of yesterday.
Theo brushed past Pansy and entered the room in time to smack away a book heading straight for Blaise's head. Narcissa was now behind her, peering over her shoulder, and Pansy heard her own mother leaving the room across the hall.
"What on earth . . ."
"Stay there!" Draco ordered his mother.
"Don't be ridiculous! She could be injured."
"I want you three to stay in the hall."
"I wonder why you woke me at this ungodly hour if you intended to keep me in the hallway."
"Let Potter try to calm her first." Draco took a flapping book to the shoulder and grunted. "It's too dangerous at the moment."
"Potter's not coming," Pansy told him. "But I got a hold of Longbottom."
Draco sighed. "Let's hope he's enough to make all this stop. In the meantime, you three stay clear."
"You males seem to be doing just fine," Pansy had no intention of entering that room again, but she bristled at Draco's imperious tone. "Does having a penis make you impervious to flying objects?"
Draco shot her a look of impatience while Theo laughed. "Humor me and my patriarchal tendencies, will you?"
It felt like hours- though it was no more than fifteen minutes- before Longbottom came barreling into the dungeons, Luna Lovegood hard on his heels.
"About bloody time!" Draco barked at him.
Longbottom's normally genial face was creased with worry as he took in the scene before him. "Had to pick up some help," he explained as Luna shoved by the women blocking the door. Pansy protested loudly when she was pushed into the door jamb. The blonde witch threw her a nasty look before striding into the room as if there weren't dozens of deadly flying objects in the air. "Luna's bloody impossible to find unless she wants to be," Longbottom said as he followed Luna into the room, though more cautiously.
The blonde witch knelt at the bedside and, seemingly unaffected by the ward except for a slight wince, grabbed one of Granger's hands, pulling it away from her ear. The things in the air grew increasingly agitated. Luna wrapped her first two fingers around Grangers's first two, interlocking their hands like two claws. When her fingers were held tightly in the other woman's in this stranger manner, Granger cracked one eye open. A little ceramic otter shattered against the wall.
"I've been pondering words that begin with the letter E." Luna said calmly. Granger blinked and Luna paused. "Equipped. Exculpatory. Expectation."
There was a long moment before Granger let go of a shuddering sigh before replying, "Empty."
Several pieces of parchment, a glass tumbler, and a few framed photographs fell to the floor.
"Exponential. Elemental. Exquisite."
Pansy had no idea what the fuck was going on, but it seemed to be working. There were only a few books still flapping around. "Egregious."
"Endure. Enchant -"
"Epiphany!" Granger sat up, her eye gone wide. All the objects still flying around in the room stilled suddenly and then dropped to the floor. She looked around wildly, eyes searching. When she landed on Draco she leaned forward.
"Is it real?" she demanded. "Is it possible?"
Her eyes were sunken and red, as if she hadn't slept at all. Pansy decided she probably hadn't, judging from the mess of notes and Arithmancy equations sprawled across her table. Draco walked towards her, hands in pockets.
"It's real."
It only took a few minutes of reading through the journal for Hermione to figure out what Malfoy was trying to accomplish. The pure genius behind it astounded her. There were pages and pages of research on potion ingredients and spell work, notes on trials and errors, and Arithmancy equations to predict the effectiveness of it all. But more than the pleasure she took in dissecting all the research, was the hope that unfurled in her chest with every page. Hermione hadn't realized just how much of that precious emotion she had lost over the years. After resigning oneself to death, after deciding the fight was pointless even as she pasted a smile on her face, after knowing deep within her that the world had betrayed her, she found herself shaking with terror at this new possibility.
The tremors took hold of her entire body and she was gasping for air. They could win. Her vision was narrowing to a pin dot. She stumbled to her bed, vaguely aware of the magic vibrating across her skin, and buried her face in her pillow as she screamed. There was light at the end of the desperate and dark tunnel. It was scrawled all over that notebook Malfoy had casually handed her, as if it didn't really mean anything at all. And to him it probably didn't, beyond whatever ulterior motive he had buried deep in his psyche. To Hermione, it was everything. He was dangling a new life in front of her, and the idea that it may not work, or that they may fail anyway, made her go slightly mad. She faded into a familiar world of blank thoughts.
Nothingness was peace. It was like sliding into a warm and familiar bath. There had been so few times in the last couple of years that she had needed to leave herself in such a way. She had been getting better, she reassured herself. She only needed a moment to escape the terror swamping her. She felt her panic float away.
It could have been days later, or merely minutes, but Hermione was assaulted by a great blasting noise. She slapped her hands over her ears, not ready to leave her warm cocoon of nothingness. She felt someone enter the room and approach her. The presence was familiar, but distantly so, in the way that old clothes sometimes held the scent of a person long after they were gone. It frightened her. Then there was Luna, and their fingers were linked as they had been so many times before, and she was speaking the words that had kept them both sane for months on end.
When she was fully aware of her surroundings, Malfoy affirmed that what she had read in that book was indeed a real thing and not a figment of her tortured mind.
"Thank you, Luna," she whispered to her friend. Hermione knew how hard it was for Luna to even venture inside the castle, much less into the dungeons. The blonde witch nodded with a small smile and escaped back out into the open where the stone walls didn't press in on her spirit.
Neville and Malfoy had joined her on her side of the room, with Narcissa not far behind. Neville's face was a mask of worry, ineffectively hidden behind a grin. Malfoy was unreadable, as usual.
"That was quite an impressive display, Miss Granger." Narcissa had Hermione's wand lit up with a diagnostic spell.
"It often is," she replied, trying to hide the shaking in her voice. Had she ever been so tired in her life? Had she been more in control of her faculties, she probably would have realized that Malfoy was leaning against her dresser, listening. Again. "It's because of that potion, isn't it? The one he used to feed me to muffle my power?"
Narcissa paused. "That is very likely."
"I thought it would go away after a few months." But it hadn't.
"That particular potion was of his own making. I don't know what the long-term effects might be."
"It's gotten better," Hermione offered. "It used to be constant. Now it only happens when I'm emotionally overwhelmed."
"Emotions can be horrible little things." Narcissa handed Hermione's wand back to her. "You are physically healthy, anyway. Besides the sleep deprivation and some mild dehydration."
Hermione made no excuses for her magical display to the Purebloods. She hadn't the words to explain why she had lost her mind and imagined they might be uncomfortable by the attempt anyway. Strangely enough, she didn't really feel embarrassed by her display of weakness. The last few days had provided them with so many humiliating experiences that they could mock her for the rest of her life. Instead, they merely settled themselves into her room around the various objects scattered on the floor, and requested tea. Neville obliged by calling a house elf and ordering a small breakfast.
Hermione was settled into her reading chair, with Narcissa and Persia Parkinson seated at her small table, Pansy on her bed, Theodore and Blaise on the floor at the footboard, and Malfoy and Neville standing near the fireplace. The room was entirely too small for so many people, she thought ruefully. Everyone had tea and a small plate of bread and fruit to break their fast.
"So can I ask what's going on?" Neville piped up.
Hermione let the fragrant steam of her tea waft over her face. "If what I read was correct, they've found a way to effectively utilize human transfiguration, using a combination of a ritual incantation and a potion."
It took Neville a moment to process the information. When understanding struck him, along with all the implications that followed, he swore. "Bloody hell."
"Eloquent as always," Malfoy commented.
"Summarize your invention for me," Hermione requested, shoving bread in her mouth though she didn't really taste it.
"I assume you're familiar with the problems regarding transfiguration as a means of shapeshifting?"
Hermione nodded. The very idea of transfiguring oneself into an animal form was ludicrous. There was a reason witches and wizards went through the arduous process of becoming an Animagus, rather than just transfiguring themselves into their desired shape. The only down side of the Animagus evolution, once all the work had been completed, was that one couldn't choose one's form. It was easy to imagine oneself as a wolf or an owl, but it was just as likely that the alternate form would end being something useless like a salmon or a butterfly. Often, the animal form would be the same as the Patronus. In Hermione's case, she had never bothered to attempt to become an Animagus, since an otter was hardly useful on a battlefield.
On the other hand, Transfiguration was temporary. Simple transformations were more likely to keep over time, while more complicated ones were more likely to decay back to their original form. A candlestick, for example, transfigured into a teacup might stay the same for centuries, while a blueberry turned into a broomstick would change back within a matter of years. When sentience was added into the mix, the results were less predictable. A mouse turned into a pocket book would last no more than a few hours. Humans were terribly difficult to transfigure, and the effort required to hold the false state was enormous. Not to mention the psychological toll. Human brains were wired to accept information only from human senses. Spending prolonged periods of time with a dog's nose or a bat's ears might just scramble a witch or wizard's brain completely.
Malfoy echoed Hermione's thoughts. "If a wizard were to attempt animal transfiguration, he would need to convince his body to accept the physical change on a more permanent basis and also convince his mind to create new pathways that would allow the animal's consciousness to exist simultaneously with the human's."
"Your potion does this?" She had extrapolated as much from the ingredients, which were very similar to polyjuice.
"Yes. It prepares the body to accept the new form and softens, for lack of a better word, the mind. Makes it more amenable to new ways of thinking."
"The ritual gives the transformation weight." Narcissa interjected. "The normal transfiguration process is meant to be temporary. The more involved mechanics of a full-blown ritual aid the spell by. . ." she paused thoughtfully. "Making it more convincing."
"So it's permanent?" Hermione asked.
"Permanent until the spell is reversed, yes. And it can be recast at any point, the ritual is only necessary the first go round."
That little ball of terrifying hope trembled in her chest. "Why didn't you give this to Kingsley yesterday? We need to begin work on this immediately."
"We weren't entirely convinced of it's usefulness to the Order." Malfoy looked irritated. "I wanted to have you on our side before we approached him about it."
"But this is why you're here?" Hermione shook the notebook at them as she looked around. "Isn't it?"
"Partly." He still sounded reluctant.
"The research is impeccable." She argued. "If the work in your notebook is correct, then it's entirely possible that this will work."
There was a brief moment of silence following her words.
"The research is not the problem," Malfoy admitted. "There are only a handful of people that will be able to accomplish this, and the spellwork may very well be deadly to someone not competent enough to perform it properly."
"We'll also have to find qualified wizards willing to risk their lives in order to turn themselves into a dragon," Pansy added. "A dragon that will quite possibly be killed in battle. The transfigured form will not have the natural protections against magic of a real dragon. It's bloody fucking dangerous."
"Language, Pansy!" Persia sharply admonished her daughter over her tea cup. Pansy rolled her eyes.
"We only need one or two people to be successful." Hermione was getting desperate. "Just one or two successful transformations would be enough to turn the tide of this war. Kingsley will see that."
"This involves blood magic. It's borderline Dark and damn risky. It might not be something the Minister is willing to bet on," Theodore mentioned.
"He'd have to trust us," Blaise added.
"I trust you," Hermione said furiously. "And this," she tossed the notebook to Malfoy who deftly plucked it from the air. "Will kill Bellatrix and end this fucking war."
Persia set her tea down with a thump. "Must we continue using such foul language? It's putting me off my tea."
There were mumbled apologies.
"So you'll be coming with me to see Shacklebolt this morning?" Malfoy asked her.
"Of course." Hermione rubbed her eyes and leaned her head back. No time for a nap then. "It seems like you were all involved in this," she said, focusing on the room again.
Malfoy grinned. "Blaise is a bit of an Arithmancy prodigy, he did all the calculations." Blaise smiled serenely. "My mother and Theo developed most of the ritual." Narcissa ignored her son, while Theo gave a small bow from his seat on the floor. "Pansy did the research for the potion ingredients." Pansy winked. "Our resident potions expert, Mrs. Parkinson, brewed our trial batch." Persia sniffed elegantly.
Hermione didn't even attempt to wrap her mind around the fact that Persia Parkinson was a Potions expert. If asked, Hermione would have sworn the woman's head was stuffed with chiffon and silk thread. "And you, Malfoy? What's your contribution to all this?"
"I had my fingers in most everything," he answered vaguely. She narrowed her eyes at him. "Oh come on, Granger. Haven't you figured it out?" She stared at him, nonplussed. He gave her a feral grin. "I'm the dragon."
~8~
A/N: So you may have noticed how much I love Alice in Wonderland. I basically try to fit it into everything I write one way or another. Sorry. ;-)
Also, I wrote a poem for you guys:
Roses are nice
Violets are fine.
But reviews make me smile,
So send me a line!