I do not own Harry Potter, Hermione, Malfoy, Theo... Etc. I just play with things that aren't mine.
Thank you for all of your support and Reviews!
Shout out to Green Eyed Lana Lee for reviewing every chapter!
CHAPTER FOUR - MAYA JEAN NOTT
"I think I'm going to be sick." Hermione was pacing back and forth in Theo—her brother's—room. The letter hadn't flat out said anything about Theo being her brother, but she had no doubt about it. Her mind was racing. "Maybe-maybe I'm wrong. Maybe my mother adopted another little girl and passed her along to someone else." She mumbled. "No, mother wouldn't do that."
"Hermione, shut up." Theo barked, running a hand through his hair. "Your freaking out is making me freak out, calm down."
"Calm do—Calm down?!" She pivoted to yell at him. "I just found out my mother isn't my mother! I'm your sister! I'm not sure what I'm more upset about. That I'm the daughter of a bloody death eater or that my mother so willingly gave me away. Or that my brother has been non-stop hitting on me!"
Theo flinched at the mention of his parents. "In my defense, I didn't know you were my sister! I take back every innuendo and seductive comment I've said about you. Actually I take back every negative thing I've ever said about you!"
"You're only taking it all back because we're related." She scuffed. "You wouldn't be saying that if we never found this out."
"You're right." He said, throwing all emotions out there. "I wouldn't be because I'd still be hitting on you." He snarled. "You wonderful and amazing… and you're my sister."
Hermione was hyperventilating, and decided to sit where she stood before she passed out.
"If it's any consolation, at least you know you're not a mudblood anymore." Theo stated encouragingly.
Hermione snapped. A book came flying at him, and he barely dodged in time as it clattered against the wall. "THAT MAKES ME FEEL WORSE!" She roared. "That-that crazy woman carved into me for something I was… that I'm not!" She stormed out of his room and into her own. She slammed the door shut, causing the walls to shake. She hid in her bed and sobbed.
Theo chased Hermione out of his room only to get her door slammed in his face. He banged on her door over and over again. "Hermione. Hermione get out here. I'm sorry okay?"
"Finally piss her off, eh?" Theo turned to see Cormac leaning against his own door, completely amused.
"Piss off ya old sod." Theo sneered.
"Well, if you're done with her, lemme have a go. Got close sixth year. Would love to try—" He never finished his sentence before he yelped and scampered away. Theo had whipped his wand out and laid a nasty curse that caused his face to break out in an itchy rash. Theo huffed and stomped back to his room.
He landed face down on his bed and screamed into his pillow. He didn't know what to do, and he was completely indecent to his own sister—a thought that didn't go through his head easily.
There was a soft knock at his door and he shot up. "Look Hermione I'm so—oh."
"I'm not Granger." Draco drawled, leaning against the door frame. "Can I come in?"
"I guess." Theo huffed, curling up and placing his arms on the top of his knees to make way for Draco to sit next to him on the bed.
"What did you do to piss her off so bad? I heard her all the way to my room, though I assume some sort of ward was up since I couldn't make any of it out." Draco gave his friend a knowing scowl.
Theo's mask he normally wore was completely shattered and he looked like he was about to cry like the little bitch he was being. "I-I don't know if I should tell you." He admitted.
Draco's face contorted for a brief second, but fell back to a blank slate. "Fine if you don't want to you don't have to. I'll just find out the hard way." He threatened.
"You are not using Legimens on me." Theo barked, bracing himself for it.
Draco shook his head, with an evil smirk across his face. "Nah you're too good at pushing me out, Granger on the other hand… not so much."
"I swear to Salazhar if you mess with her I'll hex you till next week."
"What are you in love?" Draco asked, disbelief washing across his face.
"No—I don't know. Not in the way you think." He corrected. Draco gave him a look that screamed 'I'm not stupid.'
"No seriously, she's my… hold on." Theo stood up and peered out his door. Luckily no one was there, so he closed the door and recast the privacy and silencing spells on his door.
Draco just watched Theo pace back and forth with an amused look on his face, waiting patiently for an answer.
Finally, Theo took in a deep breath and just let it out. "She's my sister."
Draco looked at him like he was crazy. Theo sighed in frustration and started tossing different pieces of paper revealing the truth about all of it at him. Draco carefully read everything and look up at Theo.
"How do you know it's Granger?"
"She found this in all her stuff… and look here. That's my mum and her mum. And that baby is definitely Hermione." Theo explained.
"How can you tell; all babies look the same to me." Draco stared at the picture.
"Look at the eyes. The hair. It's all the same." Theo pointed to each aspect of the picture.
"So let me get this straight. Granger is actually a pureblood witch." Draco said slowly. Theo nodded. He watched Draco's jaw set. "That bitch."
"Hey, that's my… sister." Theo growled.
"Not her. Aunt Bella. She… well you know she tortured Granger right?" Draco started carefully. Theo nodded. "She did it all in front of me, ya know. I watched her carve the word 'mudblood' into Grangers arm." He finished softly.
"Son of a—I kinda told her that she should be happy that she's actually not a mudblood." Theo said full of guilt.
"You're an idiot."
"Well no bloody shit!" Theo said, practically kicking his door down. "Hermione. I'm sorry, I didn't know! Come out here please? You can curse me, hex me, whatever just come out and talk to me."
Hermione opened the door, slowly. Her eyes were red and puffy, and she looked more sad than angry. Theo's arm shot out and he grabbed hold of her, wrapping her in his arms. For the first time he noticed how short she was, burying his face into her hair (which, he admitted, the more he looked at the more it looked like his mother's hair). "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm stupid, and a git." He mumbled into her hair.
After a few moments of both of them on the edge of sobbing, she finally wrapped her arms around his middle. "I know." She said softly.
"I'm proud to have you as my sister." He said, looking her straight on.
She laughed. He raised his eyebrow—or tried to, he didn't have the muscle control to do so and instead made a weird face of confusion—at her. "I never noticed we have the same eyes." She pointed out.
"And the same facial expressions." Draco drawled. "Can I get by now?"
"You told Malfoy?" Hermione squealed, pushing Theo away from her.
"Well, yeah! He's my best mate. He has a right to know. Plus, I needed to talk to someone about it. But a certain someone we know wouldn't talk to me!" Theo defended himself.
"Look, mouth's sealed. I'm just trying to get to dinner." Malfoy said, acting completely uninteresting in the subject. "Plus, we have company."
No sooner than the words slipped out of his mouth, Pansy and Tracey came barreling up the stairs. "There you are! You said you'd find us ages ago." Pansy complained but stopped in her tracks. "What's going on her. Have you been crying?"
"What did you do, Nott?" Pansy said, threateningly, as she yanked out her wand and pointed it at him.
"Yo, I've been crying too! I haven't done jack shit!" Theo said in his defense.
"He didn't do anything; I'll tell you later." Hermione said sheepishly. "Let me go change, and we can go to dinner."
"Come on Theo. Give her space." Draco ordered, pushing Theo ahead of him.
Pansy grabbed Draco's arm, and stared him down. "What's going on, Drake?"
"Not my place." Draco said, shrugging her hand off him before following Theo down to dinner. By then everyone was starving and no one wanted to talk about it.
Hermione refused to sit with the boys. Instead it was Pansy and Tracey's turn to sit at the Gryffindor table. Pansy was situated next to Neville, and Hermione sat between Tracey and Ginny.
"'O P'nsy, 'ow'd 'er 'ate 'o?"
"Ginevra, stop talking with your mouth full!"
Ginny swallowed. "Yes mother." She mumbled back to Hermione. Ginny finished another large bite before speaking again. "So, Pansy. How'd your date go?"
"We rescheduled for next weekend so we can go to Hogsmeade." Pansy explained after taking an elegant bite and patting her lips with a napkin.
"See, learn how to eat from her. She has proper table manners." Hermione pointed out. Ginny huffed.
"Are you going to tell us what Theo and Draco did to make you cry?" Pansy finally asked. Hermione shrunk in her seat. She had hoped that were going to forget about it.
"They did what?!" Ginny shrieked. She stood up, wand out and acted as if she was on her way to the other side of the room. Hermione grabbed the red headed witch, forcing her to sit back down. She must have made enough of a scene, since the boys at the Slytherin table had visibly paled.
"They didn't do anything!" Hermione clarified. "I just found out… some news… about my parents. If anything Theo was consoling me." Hermione trailed off. It wasn't a total lie.
"Want to talk about it?" Tracey offered. Hermione shook her head. This wasn't something she wanted out yet—if at all. She couldn't stand to admit that her father was one of them. A Death Eater.
So instead they talked about everything else. Hermione barely participated, instead her eyes wondered to the pair on the opposite side, whispering to each other. Hermione's brows knitted together in thought. The more she thought about it the more she realized she didn't know about Theo and his—her—family.
"I'm going to the library." Hermione stated, leaving her untouched plate.
Pansy looked like she was about to argue, but Ginny shook her head. Hermione was already making her way out the Great Hall as Ginny was trying to explain that Hermione spent more time in the library than in her own dorm.
The library had little in the way of information on the Nott family beyond the sacred twenty-eight (which she found was written by her Grandfather). She found little information in a book titled Familial Magicks and Tomes by Edgris Bulthalamute and another reference in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Lord; The Second Wizarding war by Professor Garius Tomkink—which she discarded immediately.
She checked out her book (along with another that had a detailed explanation of the workings of the Accio charm, and the things you could do with it, and three on memory charms) with Madam Pince, who cooed at Hermione's selection of books. "Edgris Bulthalamute is a wonderous historian, but dear, why would you need to know about Familial Magicks and Tomes?"
"It's just an interesting topic." Hermione said sheepishly. The vulture like librarian gave her a knowing look before waving her wand over the books, which vanished, presumably to Hermione's room (Pince was funny like that; didn't want books accidently falling or getting ruined in route).
It was after curfew by the time Hermione was making her way back to the common room. She was heading up towards the third floor corridor when the bloody stair cases decided to move on her. She yelped in shock, trying to keep her balance as she watched her stop grow further and further away. She was lurched backwards when the stairwell finally halted. Groaning, she made her way off the stairs before they decided to take her even further away. She would have to go up a floor to make it back down and around if she didn't want to wait for the stairs to move again. She waited for a moment before the stairs shifted, now leading to the fifth floor. She mentally cursed the stair case and spun on her heal, heading down to the other set of stairs, grumbling to herself.
She rounded a corridor, and right into a body. Papers and books flew everywhere.
"Merlin's balls, I'm so sorry I wasn't quite paying attention." The other girl scrambled an apology. With a wave of her hand, everything flew neatly back into an organized pile. Only then did Hermione notice that it was Madame Sieme that she had barreled into. She hadn't recognized the Transfiguration professor in such casual clothes.
"Oh, I'm sorry professor." Hermione offered her hand out to the absent minded professor, helping her to her feet.
"Oh it's all good, and don't call me professor please. It's just odd. Rix will do just fine." Madame Sieme stated as she gladly accepted Hermione's help up. She seemed flustered.
Hermione glanced at the pile of papers and books. To her surprise, none had anything to do with Transfiguration, and instead, everything with the Dark Arts. Hermione froze. What was a Transfiguration professor doing with notes on Death Eaters, a book on dark curses, and was that a book on creating spells?
Madame Sieme seemed to not notice Hermione's sudden change in attitude, as she levitated the papers and books and hurried down the hall, disappearing down another corridor.
Hermione wasted no time getting back to the common room after that, panting as she pushed her way past a begrudged Snape.
Academic research. That's what it had to be. Hermione berated herself for thinking anything else as she made her way past a common room full of Eighth year students, and towards her room. "-ne." She started to think about all the tattoos that Madame Sieme seemed to have caked on her. "-ione." She could have sworn she had even seen one or two move! Even the one on her neck, which eerily resembled that of a particular skull and snake…
"Hermione!" Neville practically yelled. That snapped her out of her trance. It must have been an odd sight to see, Hermione frozen with one foot in the air, hovering over a step, her hand not quite reaching the rail, and her face contorted in both shock and deep thought.
"Yes?"
"You okay? We're playing exploding snap, wanted to see if you'd join." He said, giving her a weary look.
"Oh, uh, I have some reading to do, but I can bring it down he—eep!" The sound of the cards exploding a little too zealously made her jump. Seamus was missing his eyebrows again, but he had a huge grin on his face. Neville smirked, and went back to his card game.
Hermione had made it up the stairs, and down the hall, but was stopped by a door swinging open and an arm blocking her path.
"We need to talk."
A scowl etched its way onto Hermione's face as she turned to face the platinum haired teen. "Do we now, Malfoy?" She sneered.
"I won't say anything if you don't. Not even to Theo." He said, his jaw set in place.
Hermione's brows knitted together in confusion. "Uh, hate to point it out, but Theo already knows about it. He's the one who told you."
"Not that. I know you saw."
It took a moment to remember what he was talking about. "Oh."
"Deal?"
"No deal, what you know is far more valuable. Tell me what they're from, and then we'll have a deal." Hermione stated as she tried to stand tall against him. It didn't work very well when he had at least a full half a foot on her.
If he had any opinion on the matter, his emotions were carefully concealed. Except, a flicker of… fear? Even standing this close to him she couldn't unmask him.
"Fine, come by later." And suddenly, he was gone behind a closed door.
Hermione huffed, and continued to go fetch her book on charms. Reading up on repelling an Accio seemed like a really good way to push all the weird stress going on around her. Chasing Horcruxes was starting to seem easier than attempting to sift through the weirdness occurring around her.
To be completely honest, I have no idea how I feel about the ending of this chapter and the beginning of the next. Don't be surprised if I go back and change it. The more I look over it the more I hate it but it's completely necissary... which is frustrating.
Also; Familial Magicks and Tomes probably won't be completely canon, but not far off. I will be tying Familial Magicks in with Genetics. Should be fun! I wrote several excepts of Familial Magicks and Tomes and I'm excited to use them!
Chapter Five should be out in less than a week!