A/N: I'm so sorry I haven't updated, I honestly am. I've been writing a lot of spoken word poetry (if you're unfamiliar with this concept, I wholeheartedly urge you to check out Andrea Gibson or Lauren Zuniga or any other slam poet on YouTube; it's an incredible, emotional, unbelievable form of writing.) So I've been a bit distracted by some original stuff, as well as by school, unfortunately.
Like I warned earlier, my updates will be a bit sporadic; I'm more likely to post five chapters in a day and then not update for two months than to write like a normal human being. Anyway, I apologise for the delays, and here is Chapter 7. Fair warning: Hermione's POV turned out fucking weird. I incorporated a couple of way, way back pureblood characters I encountered on HP wiki and I just…they're actually characters; I'll leave their links at the bottom. I'm going to be using a lot of these deceased purebloods throughout…well, you'll see. Enjoy!
Hermione's POV
The night seems unusually eerie; Malfoy Manor reminds me of the haunted mansions of my childhood lore, complete with bone-chilling frigidity and soul-shaking creepiness. I wonder how everyone's doing with their pairings. I couldn't help but watch Fred and Cho as they left the Burrow, awkward in each other's company, Fred bewildered and Cho almost disappointed. I could have sworn I saw her dark eyes turn down angrily at him.
I turn on my side, pulling the silky sheets and charcoal comforter over my shoulders, catching another glimpse of one of the two portraits hung up in this bedroom. The subject is a young woman with her narrow, pale, aristocratic features set in slumber. The stick-straight platinum hair hanging to her shoulders seems to accentuate the cruel sharpness of her high cheekbones and pointed nose. Every contour of her face screams Malfoy, and I wonder if every Malfoy is like a Malfoy, if perhaps I could find a single one able to accept me for the things I can't change.
The second picture frame on the opposite wall is empty, as though its subject couldn't even bear to be in a frame placed in the same room as me.
The morning comes with a sense of impending reality; for the first five seconds I expected to find myself asleep in the bedroom I shared with Ginny, but as soon as I open my eyes to dark green walls, I know with a sinking feeling that everything is real.
"Poor girl, marrying into this family," I hear a soft, creaking voice say. The words seem to float from their own soft tone. I sit up, confused, looking around for the source of the noise while trying to flatten my incorrigible hair.
"I highly doubt it was her choice. Look at her; does she look like the type Draco would fall for? I'm not saying she couldn't be a lovely girl, but you know the Malfoy men. Superficial brutes, I say," a second voice chimes in, stiffer than the first, though both sound quite old. It's matronly, motherly, almost like Molly's but with a sort of disapproving sniff.
"I suppose that's a good point, Misapinoa," the first voice replies. "Ooh, she's awake!" she exclaims, smiling an ancient-looking smile, crinkling her features even more.
"Isla!" the second woman hisses. "Let her breathe!"
Both women are elderly, far older than Molly. The one with the soft voice, Isla, has her head wrapped up in a dark coloured, elaborately patterned scarf, reminiscent of Professor Quirrel's turban, or a towel a girl might wrap around her hair after a shower to dry it, and I can see locks of grey hair falling out. The second woman, Misapinoa, has her white hair in a tight bun, accentuating her wrinkled yet sharp features. Their eyes are hauntingly grey, almost vacant from their paleness. Vaguely, I wonder where the young woman I saw the night before went. The second frame is still empty. The portraits around here must be in constant motion.
"I—I'm not quite sure what's going on," I admit in a small, quivering voice. I sit up but keep the comforter over myself, partially because the room is cold but also to hide the way my t-shirt hangs loosely over my shrunken frame.
"Well, why don't you start by introducing yourself?" suggests the grey haired woman in her kind voice. Her robes are velveteen-looking and a dark shade of brown, plain and modest.
"I'm Hermione Granger…have you heard of the marriage law that was passed?" They nod together. Portraits can move to the frame of any other portrait in the same building as well as visit their own portraits in other buildings. This is one of the reasons why news travels incredibly fast in the magical world.
"Well, I was assigned to marry Draco—"
"Yes, yes, we know, but tell us about yourself," the woman named Isla urges.
"I—I'm eighteen…a Gryffindor and a Muggleborn," I admit quietly, bracing myself to be yelled at by the typically self-righteous, prejudiced purebloods.
"Oh, really? I married a Muggle, you know," Isla tells me with a note of pride in her croaky voice. "That's why you'll never find my name on the Black family tree."
"You're a Black?"
"How rude of me!" she exclaims. "I'm Isla Hitchens, formerly Black, and this is my aunt, Misapinoa Blishwick, formerly Black. You'll see portraits of the entire Malfoy family around here, along with the Blacks, the LeStranges, along with some others."
I nod dumbly. Misapinoa continues where her niece left off. "Even the earliest of us, you know. I've been dead for around seventy-two years now," she says. The comment catches me off guard and I realise I've never truly acclimated to the strange meddling of time this world is capable of. I'm talking to someone who has been dead for seventy-two years, which means that this painting of her depicts her at around the age of one hundred.
"And—and you, Isla?"
She sighs heavily, her eyes glazing over in thought. "I lose track sometimes," she says wistfully. "I was born…1850, died when I was ninety-one, so…1941…I've been dead for fifty-seven years," she concludes with a sense of proud finality.
The haggard women smile at each other, then at me. I won't find peace with the living inhabitant of the Manor, but perhaps some of its deceased will be more tolerant.
Ginny's POV
Harry's still fast asleep when I wake up the next morning with a pervading sense of emptiness. I know it could be worse but something about this situation is so strangely awful; the woman I love is living in this very house, being forced to marry my brother while I am forced to marry one of my closest friends…it's like a child being made to sit in front of an endless stack of Chocolate Frogs, then being told not to so much as touch a single one.
Sure, they know I'm lesbian, but they don't have a clue about Luna and I, and I'm not sure how they would take it…my thoughts are muddled and discursive with the remnants of sleep. I'm grateful for the curtains drawn over the portraits as I make my way through the winding corridors with their unlit gas lamps and squeaking floorboards. I don't feel like being screeched at by two hundred year old Blacks, which reminds me: I wonder how Hermione's doing at Malfoy's. I cringe in vicarious disgust at the thought of Malfoy being within fifty feet of me, and the nausea is followed by a wave of fear for her sake. Malfoy can be an unsavoury character, but I hope he isn't directly violent toward her.
The house is silent. I sit at the head of the long table in the dining room, covered in a thin but building layer of dust. Kreacher has been relocated to Hogwarts, and no one has lived in the house for some months now. Not since Harry, Ron, and Hermione were forced out of it during the Hunt. I run a finger along the ancient wooden table, coating my fingertip in dust and remembering the Order meeting we eavesdropped on, how Sirius's voice kept a note of humour in it even when the topic got heavy, morbid, even. How Remus tried to make him more mature but only regressed in the process, the two of them becoming teenagers again, and Tonks caught in the middle with her longing for Remus and her endearing klutziness and her bright personality that matched her bubblegum hair.
When Harry finally wakes up I've lost track of time. My palms are covered in dust and all I can think of is who we've lost.
A/N: They're not OCs, seriously.
Misapinoa Blishwick (née Black): wiki/Misapinoa_Black
Isla Hitchens (née Black): wiki/Isla_Black