Title: Black and Deep Desires
By: Dr. Kim-chan
Me: (holding a glass of champagne) Didn't I say you should have been prepared? I told you the Fear Series would be no joke. And try not to hate Professor Mills too much. She just wants to take 'em and shape 'em into wizards and witches fit enough to face down the evil Voldemort. But first, she has to scare them out of their wits. Anyway, why is everyone drinking alcohol despite the fact our blood alcohol levels are dangerously high already? We're saying cheers to all the readers who've loved and kept up with my story: WE'VE REACHED OUR 100TH REVIEW! (confetti showers down from a mysterious source) OCDdegrassi, thank YOU for being the hundredth. Just for that, this chappie's for you (and for Crimson, who asked for some Hermione-y goodness).
Lucius: Also, the drunken authoress would like to clarify something else. We're aware of the 'no-changing-destiny' rule in the Pensieve, but as owner of the Pensieve (and this being no normal Pensieve), Professor Mills has some liberty. In fact, this little prop will come to explain the whole rift between Mills and Snape.
Me: I am not drunk! (hiccup) Even if I were, you ever hear of 'Drunken Master'? I am one if my fic's this good!
Plushie: (hanging from the ceiling on wires and wearing all black trying to steal my glass) So here's to a hundred more reviews…hopefully. If Kim-chan can keep the story interesting, that is. That Professor Mills is a pistol. If Seamus was scared stiff, think of what'll happen to a wuss like Neville. (Everyone goes quiet.)
Me: Uh…well, let's not dwell on that thought! This chapter we'll be dealing with Harry's gal pal…and let me just say her worst fear isn't failing a class. (cuts wires and Plushie falls down) If you want a glass, then just say so, dammit! (hands him a goblet of Courvoisier)
Plushie: Yay! (runs off with it) Rolling! (jumps on remote button)
(Begin Chap. 29)
…To temporarily direct our story to another main event, on the morning of the day when Hermione, Seamus, and Gregory Goyle were marked to take Professor Mills' test, Ron had received a response from Lucius. It had been a week of waiting and fighting personal battles and wondering if the Ministry had intercepted the letter and was coming to Hogwarts to interrogate him. Nothing of the sort happened, but the large eagle-owl which usually delivered Malfoy's packages of chocolates landing by Ron's plate brought up much suspicion.
"What is that?" Hermione screeched, scooting back along with Harry. The eagle-owl indeed looked very menacing.
"Mr. Malfoy's…owl," Ron answered hesitantly, a bit spooked himself. He never handled an eagle-owl before, much less the Malfoys' eagle-owl. As it turned out, it was very well-behaved. It stuck out its right leg and waited for Ron to untie the note, then flew off to the Slytherin Table without even waiting for a snack of some kind. What Ron didn't fail to notice was that he held a smoking Howler on the other leg…
"What's Mr. Malfoy doing sending you letters?" Harry demanded.
"Can I get mail without getting the bloody Third Degree?" Ron snapped back. Harry scowled, but he backed off, not wanting to reopen old wounds. The letter seemed to be a lengthy one; it was folded threefold. But no sooner had Ron unfolded the first crease than a shrieking wind blew across the Great Hall. For the first time in what seemed like ages, Ron heard Mr. Malfoy's voice again. However, it was the angriest voice he had ever heard. The old instincts coming back, Ron actually dove under the table. Everyone else was staring at a cowering Draco as he felt the full wrath of his father.
"WHAT BUSINESS DID YOU HAVE SPREADING SUCH SLANDER ABOUT ME AND WEASLEY ALL OVER HOGWARTS? YOU CAN ONLY THANK YOURSELF I HAVE MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS TO ATTEND TO, OR I WOULD HAVE COME THERE TO TAKE CARE OF YOU MYSELF! MY ASSOCIATION WITH WEASLEY IS NONE OF YOUR CONCERN! LET ME HEAR FROM HIM YOU'VE BEEN TELLING FALSE STORIES AGAN AND SO HELP ME I WILL SEND YOU OFF TO DURMSTRANG BEFORE YOU CAN TAKE ANOTHER BREATH!"
The letter abruptly caught fire, and the cinders fell onto Draco's plate. After the initial shock wore off, a noise was heard that was golden to the Gryffindors' ears: the entire Slytherin Table laughing at Draco's expense.
"…What was that all about?" Harry asked, not even trying to suppress his broad grin.
"I think Mr. Malfoy just saved my arse."
Ron's eyes took an once-over at the Gryffindor Table. A handful of them felt guilty, but others looked even more confused than ever. What should they take more notice of: Mr. Malfoy displacing the rumors or Mr. Malfoy sticking up for him?
Taking advantage of the confusion, Ron finished unfolding the note and proceeded to read it.
Ron,
Grieved to say, but there is only so much I can do. I have, however, sent a Howler addressed to Draco along with this owl. That should put him in his place.
As you have so diligently guessed my hands were (and still are) full with the Ministry, which explains the delay of this letter. They've cleared me of the counts of murder, but now I am preoccupied with rewriting my will and legalizing the conditions. I will confide this in you, Ron, and no one else: Narcissa's death has left me feeling much inner conflict. Exactly what she did to get herself killed was all on her own; even Bellatrix (my half-sister), helping her up until then, realized she had began to scheme something.
I feel some anger that I had not been notified before they went along and killed my wife, but certainly sadness isn't what I feel. I've told you what I felt about Narcissa countless times before. I hope you won't think of me as a bad person, or at the very least don't think that I'm more of a terrible person than you already believe me to be. Can you really force yourself to mourn someone who made your life so miserable?
You wanted me to explain why I decided to make you an heir, and I will...or at least, I will attempt to explain. To be honest, I cannot even explain my own actions. A servant you were, but I made you an heir in the hopes that our relationship might develop to the point where you would have been an heir naturally if this had happened much later in time. Now I wonder if it was simply wishful thinking. In a way, we both betrayed our vows.
On the other hand I will not tell you my motives behind wanting to see you again. I'll leave it up to you to discover; I don't care to waste my time arguing my case. I've done enough arguing with the Ministry already, and Cornelius still doesn't fully believe me.
I know it will be painful for you, but taking precedent as your former master, I order you to not send any more letters. I am sure that after Draco opens his Howler, no one will question your authority any longer. But also, it will be entertaining for me to see you crawl to my doorstep in December with pent-up frustration, yearning for the same affection you once repulsed. It is, shall we say, a bad person's greatest joy.
Lucius.
The last two sentences were meant to be taken as a joke, and Ron knew it. He grimaced at Lucius' twisted sense of humor and slipped the letter in his pocket. Since then he had been rereading it constantly, trying to decipher what he meant by saying, "…I made you an heir in the hopes that our relationship might develop to the point where you would've been an heir naturally".
A natural heir?
…But now let us leave that mystery a mystery for the moment.
We are back at the present moment, and now it was just Hermione in Professor Mills' room. After she and Seamus dropped back out of the Pensieve, Professor Mills took a moment to counsel him. It looked like he felt better after their talk, but he still walked out of the classroom in low spirits. Goyle was next then. It took quite a while for him to extract his fear, but once he did they dove inside, leaving Hermione by herself for a while. She paced for a while, then sat down in one of the chairs, then finally settled on reading one of her textbooks.
Over ten minutes passed before Goyle finally resurfaced. Hermione hadn't expected him to come out crying, and he wasn't. However, his face was as white as a sheet. Professor Mills bent down to whisper to him, patted him on the shoulder and sent him on his way.
Now it was down to Hermione. Professor Mills turned to her with that same sun-blinding smile.
"I guess that just leaves you and me, Miss Granger. Are you ready?"
Hermione nodded, hastily shutting the book and putting it in her backpack.
"You know, Miss Granger, no one's passed the test thus far. Maybe you'll be the first."
Professor Mills stood by as Hermione extracted her thought and dropped it inside the obsidian bowl. She took one big breath, clutched the teacher's hand, and plunged her arm into the liquid.
…As one would have expected from a studious witch like her, Hermione landed just as gracefully as Professor Mills. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the change in lighting—everything had turned dark while they'd been spinning out of control. She shook her head and took a moment to drink in their surroundings. In the first place, they seemed very familiar…and they were. They were standing in the yard of her house outside London. It was the hour just after sunset, a calm kind of darkness.
The word 'calm', however, didn't come close to either what happened or how Hermione felt as the events in the Pensieve began to unfold.
Four black-clad, hooded strangers suddenly Apparated at the corner of the street. Hermione jumped back when she recognized that they weren't just any hooded strangers. These were Death Eaters, one of them being Voldemort himself. One of them—the shortest one—wasn't exactly attired in Death Eater regalia. He was wearing a simple cloak to hide his face. One of the other two stared up in distaste at the street lamp that was shedding light upon them. He took out his wand and cast a spell to put it out along with all the rest along the sidewalk. Once that was done, the formal Death Eater at the far left called over the short one and pointed at one of the house—Hermione's house. The short person nodded, and they began walking.
"Oh no," Hermione mumbled. She had an urge to run into the house and warn her parents, then she remembered that none of this was true, and even if it had been they were in a Pensieve. They couldn't change the thoughts. All she could do was stand back and wait.
The Death Eaters finally advanced upon the front door. Voldemort swept out a hand, and his three followers stepped behind him. He drew out his wand and blasted the door down with a bright red light. Hermione couldn't take it anymore. She left Professor Mills' side to see for herself what was happening.
It felt horrific, moving through Voldemort's body like air. But she had to in order to reach the foot of the stairs. Footsteps barreling downstairs, then she was face to face with her parents. Poor them; it looked as if they didn't know whether to be frightened or confused. As if they didn't know enough about the magical world already, now they were looking the strongest Dark wizard in the face.
Without a moment's hesitation, the taller Death Eater waved his wand, but at the last second the memory image of Hermione came from behind them and pulled her parents away. Voldemort let out a vicious, high-pitched hiss and ordered his followers to search for them. Hermione went upstairs as well. The Death Eater who hadn't done anything as of yet now walked up to her parents' bedroom door and pulled back his sleeve to reveal a silvery hand. He touched the doorknob and crushed it to dust, then smacked it open. Wormtail.
The other Hermione was waiting at the other end of the door with her own wand. Most likely she was thinking exactly what the spectator was thinking: she could use magic outside Hogwarts if their lives were in mortal peril.
She didn't get a chance to, though. The taller Death Eater pushed past Wormtail while waving his wand in a zigzag pattern. That was an odd split second: one moment she looked at the gleaming, silver snake-head decorating the end of the wand and identified him as Lucius Malfoy; the next moment Hermione saw herself fly across the room and hit the bed, knocked out. Her father, who had been crouched near the closet with her mother, got up to try and help her, but that was a fatal mistake. Voldemort entered the room, eyes slit, and her vision was temporarily impaired by two flashes of a sickening green light…
The real Hermione was left breathless. Her eyes began to water. She didn't know what to say. She just saw her parents die at the hands of the Dark Lord. It made her think of the risks she was taking with Harry—would it be at the cost of this? And what of her other self?
Lucius turned to the cloaked one and gave a signaling nod. The short one stepped over and stood over her as the image Hermione regained consciousness.
Just then Professor Mills walked calmly into the bedroom as if she had simply walked in on a pleasant conversation over tea.
"The time has come to alter your thought, Miss Granger. We're commencing the final part of the exam. Bring your focus to that young stranger there," she instructed. Hermione closed her eyes and waited until the area inside the Pensieve became dark. When she opened her eyes again, the cloaked person was standing quite a distance away. The newfound darkness didn't make it any easier for her to guess his face.
"He's going to make a move on you. Unlike what you were just experiencing, in this altered state you feel anything which happens to you. I know I'm asking too much of you, but this is very important. I know your class has been taught the Unforgivable Curses, but have you actually learned to cast one?"
Hermione shook her head. "Professor Moody showed us them in our fourth year. He was... unusual …but even he wouldn't do that! All we learned was to resist the Cruciatus."
Professor Mills shook her head. "I hate to disagree with Mr. Moody's—or should I say Crouch Jr.'s techniques, but it's not enough to see them—or to feel the Cruciatus. I do agree that the other two you won't so much use as defend yourself against…but the last one…In these dangerous times, you have to be ready to kill as well as defend. The Ministry may not say so, but since when has the Ministry taken up for our cause lately? Death Eaters have already thrown away their lives to serve the Dark Lord; why deny them that right? Remember this always, Miss Granger: once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater."
Hermione was thoroughly confused at this point, and this 'pep talk' wasn't helping to ease her fears. She had never heard Professor Mills talk so cruelly…so seriously. She was well aware of the evils of the Death Eaters, but what personal wrong had they done her?
Before she could begin to speculate, the next sentence threw Hermione in a total state of shock.
"What I want you to do is cast the Avada Kedavra curse. It's relatively easy to perform; don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It's very similar to the Patronus Charm, but with one crucial distinction," Professor Mills said sternly. "Instead of applying your focus on the happiest moment of your life, you must immerse yourself in fear, sadness, and rage. While a Patronus draws from happiness, Avada Kedavra draws from your despair. Hate your enemy; build it all up within you. It may help you if you know exactly what your target is."
She pointed to the hooded person, who promptly clutched the hood with his hands and removed it.
Hermione gasped, nearly fainting. She remembered Pettigrew, Malfoy…but she knew him most of all.
Never in her life would she imagine Ron Weasley to join the ranks of the Death Eaters…or would she?
"Your fear stems from your current suspicions. Not only do you fear Lucius Malfoy seducing him into Voldemort's ranks, but it would be the most horrible thing to die at his hands. Your test is to strike first before he does," Mills instructed.
Hermione's eyes widened. Did she just hear what she thought she heard…?
"Yes you did hear right. If this does become the unchanging reality, you will have to ask yourself an impossible question. Do you kill, Miss Granger, or be killed?"
…The night's curfew was about to be initiated, yet neither Ron nor Harry had heard from Hermione the rest of the day, not even at study hall. One by one, the upper-year students of Hogwarts were acting as if they had come face-to-face with a Death Eater themselves. Seamus had recovered a little from his scare, but not by much. He was no longer the same, sprightly, flamboyant Irish boy he once was—and everyone hoped he would be again soon. Crabbe and Goyle appeared to be much less menacing than before, leaving Draco to fend for himself. When they attended the rest of their classes, they could hear the teachers 'tsk'-ing in disappointment. The students could tell they were thinking either one of two things: the possibility that Mills was worse than Umbridge, or simply that Dumbledore might have made a bad decision—again.
Whatever the circumstances were, Harry decided to wait up for Hermione a while longer, but not before he pulled off an extremely risky mission.
Just three minutes earlier Harry had been lying on his bed in the dormitory, watching and waiting for Ron to go to the bathroom. He always went to the bathroom before he slept, like clockwork. As the door closed, Harry decided to make his move.
"I'm going down to wait on Hermione."
"She still isn't back yet?" Ron asked incredulously through the crack in the door. Harry shook her head. "Whatever happened must've given her a real nasty fright…I really don't want to do this test anymore, Harry."
"We all agreed to do it and get it out of the way, pass or fail. You said yourself, either that or a written test."
"But…everybody's acting weird, like somebody important died or something. You saw Seamus that day. He's always the happy one, he is, and look what happened! Professor Mills says she wants to make us stronger, but everyone'll be bloody petrified before we even get the chance." Ron exhaled derisively and shut the door. "Wait for her if you want. I'm tucking in."
There were no witnesses, unless he counted Neville, who was sitting at the edge of his bed, facing the other way. Time to make his move. He slowly moved up from his mattress and tiptoed towards Ron's bed. He saw him read that note just a few minutes ago. There was only one place he had time to stash that thing. Harry thrust his arm under the pillow and moved his fingers around. The rustle of paper…yes! Quickly pushing it into the pocket of his trousers, he opened the door and went to rest on top of the scarlet couch.
The fire in the hearth was still lit. Leaning closer towards the reddish-orange glow, Harry could make out the scribbles of ink which compiled into the older Malfoy's handwriting. He read it closely…very closely.
" 'Grieved to say, but there is only so much I can do'…so he knew about the Howler?"
He read further, his doubts about his friend growing by the minute. A mentioning of relationships, him 'confiding' in Ron about Narcissa's death…but it still didn't answer the many questions swimming around his head…
Then all too sudden he saw the last sentence.
"The same affection he once repulsed?" Harry whispered to himself. "So there is something between them…"
"And I'd bloody well appreciate it you stayed out of it."
(End Chap. 29)
Me: And the beat goes on. Will Harry be shocked? Will Hermione read that letter as well? Who was it behind Harry? What will become of the friendship between them?
Lucius: I thought I told you to cease that bothersome commentary.
Harry: This might as well be a soap opera. I can just see myself looking away from Ron with a sexy, aloof, confused look on my face.
Plushie: (in a sexy, breathy voice) Tune in next time to 'As the World Turns'…oh! Wait. Tune in next time to 'Black and Deep Desires'.