Menteur: Chapter 1: Everybody Knows
September 13, 2001
"So...ladies first!" announced Harry and stepped aside from the slime-covered rusty sewage's entrance. Hermione poked her head over his shoulder to get better view.
Her nose wrinkled in disgust when her eyes landed on the small dark opening. It was just big enough for them to crawl through, that is, if they got on all fours and tucked their heads.
"Oh, no. A gentleman should always go first, to make sure that it's safe for the lady to enter." she replied back with the sweetest smile she could manage. Harry rolled his eyes teasingly at his friend, but kneeled down anyway, and within next few seconds he disappeared in the darkness of the sewage.
"Coming?" Harry hollered from inside.
Hermione scanned the filthy ground in front of her and realized that she probably shouldn't have worn her favorite jeans. She sighed.
"Do I really have to?"
"Well..."started Harry, his voice echoing throughout the stone pipes, making it sound even more distant than it actually was. "If you know about some other way, you should have told me before I got in!" He chuckled lightly, but then continued in serious tone: "The main entrance is still caved in and I don't know of any other way to get in...Plus this seemed to work for the Basilisk just fine..."
"Alright, alright." Hermione raised her hands in surrender, even though Harry couldn't see, and after ending her lumos spell and pocketing her wand, she also crawled into the opening. To her horror, there were at least three inches of water on the floor and soon enough the legs of her jeans were completely soaked. She tried really hard not to growl, as she swiftly followed Harry through the labyrinth of sewers and pipelines.
After a couple minutes of dragging silence, disturbed only by their breathing and sounds of running water, Harry spoke up.
"I think we are almost there."
Due to the lack of any light and high noise distortion, Hermione did not realize how close he was until her face landed flat right on the Harry's behind. She angrily pushed him, or to be exact, his butt, forward to signal not only to continue their crawl but also her growing annoyance. This proved not to be the best idea, when a sharp shriek escaped Harry's lips and his body started to collapse in a sequence of maniacal movements. Hermione, who, in the impenetrable darkness, could only see her best friend's outline, grabbed the closest part of Harry's body, his ankle and before she knew it they were both speed-sliding down the steep slope of the sewer.
They hit the hard stone ground with a loud thump, The Boy Who Lived first and Hermione right on top of him.
"What the hell?" breathed out frightened Hermione, first quickly checking herself for any broken bones or cuts and then moving her full attention to the surroundings. They were, indeed, at the right place. Despite its most fearsome monster being gone, it was still the same dark miserable place; the Chamber of Secrets. Mostly it was just as she remembered, the stone walls covered in the lightest layer of green fungus giving it an emerald tint, the snake-decorated slopes framing the way to the back of the room, where the crown piece stood. The statue of Salazar Slytherin has seen better days, Hermione noted. Almost entire top left half was missing, probably being knocked off by the caved-in ceiling and there was a deep crack reaching from Salazar's mouth, across his cheek, all the way up to his bottom eyelid. Only real change in the chamber, outside of the aging damage, was the lack of water on the floor. It wasn't surprising, considering that Hogwarts has been shut for merely four years now, and so there was no water running through the sewers, therefore there was no chance of it leaking into the underground chamber, and the leftover of moisture was not enough to flood the floor like it used to be.
"Mbphmm.." sounded from underneath Hermione. She carefully pulled herself off of Harry's flattened form, feeling little guilty for not realizing she's been slowly suffocating him with her weight sitting almost exclusively on his torso.
"What?" she asked as soon as he caught his breath.
"I said," Harry sucked some air in: "why did you push me down that sewer?" He repeated his question calmly.
"I couldn't see. You stopped without warning." defended her choice Hermione.
Harry's right brow disappeared in his hair in a mocking manner: "So you pushed me? Just like that?" He asked like he was seriously questioning her sanity and/or intelligence. Hermione herself understood the banality of this argument and decided to cut it short.
"Whatever..." she rolled her eyes, but then continued in all seriousness: "Maybe we should stay here for the night." Harry's smile vanished as well and he nodded.
"Yeah, we can start searching tomorrow. Let's just check for any dark charms there might be here...I mean, you can never be sure..." Harry wondered off slowly and pulled out his wand. Hermione simply mirrored his action and they both headed to the opposite corners of the chamber, mumbling different spells trying to detect any possible magic traps. Curly haired witch walked slowly with her wand clutched firmly in her outstretched hand. The dim white light of her Videros charm was illuminating the wall to her left and her eyes were watching attentively to any change in the coloring of the light; a.k.a. the easiest way to tell change in magical field around her. She was almost past the Salazar's statue, when the wand flickered gold. Hermione paused abruptly, trying to make as little movement as possible, and stretched her wanded arm closer to the statue pointing it directly at Salazar's nose. But nothing happened. The gold glow was gone. She reached out and traced the marble surface of the statue. Still there were no signs of magic. She was about to give up when her wand lit up again. It was near the ground at the edge of ancient wizard's beard, the small corner she just passed, considering it an unlikely trap place since no one would probably ever go there. Hermione carefully took two steps towards the place. Her wand glow again. She held her breath in anticipation. It was obvious the statue was not the source of the foreign magic, but what else then? It seemed to be coming from behind the statue. Hermione frowned. She had no clue what could it be. There was almost no space before the back side of the marble head connected to the wall behind it. She took another step to get closer look at the dark space, her wand illuminating the place. Yes, there definitely was something in the corner behind the statue. On the floor. She leaned forward and...
"Aaaaghh!"
Skeleton! It was a skeleton! No, it was more of a corpse! Hermione stared at it wide eyed and completely unable to move. This person, or what was left of it, was curled up in the sitting position in the darkness of Salazar's head. Its arms were curled tightly around itself and the skull, with some loose locks of grayish hair still attached to it, was turned upwards in an unnatural way. It looked almost in pain.
"Herm-" started Harry, who just reached Hermione, but he stopped dead in his tracks as soon as the corpse came to his view. He wrapped his arm around Hermione to calm her down, although his eyes haven't left the dead body a single time.
"Who do you think it is?" she asked quietly, coming back to her senses. For the first time in what seemed like hours Harry moved his sight onto his companion. Neither of them had any answers to that. Hermione's eyes slipped back to the unknown and then onto the floor in front of it, where her wand lied. She did not even know she dropped it. No matter how many people she saw die, she will never get used to it...
She reached down for her wand and thoughtfully casted Videros again. To her surprise, the light emitted by her wand was pale white; no trace of other magic found. She frowned. She was almost positive she has found something. With an indecisive look she turned to Harry and stated in a heavy tone: "Well, it's nothing I guess..."
Harry gave her a curt nod of approval and walked back to the middle of the room, where they have left their bags. Hermione glanced at the skeleton. It would also be the last time, if the small silver thing did not catch her eye. It was some sort of a silver chain hanging off of the person's collar bone. It was torn down the middle, the pendant missing. Hermione looked around if she can spot it, but it was nowhere to be found. Another thing she noticed was that her left femus was practically crushed in one place and her pelvis heavily damaged...yes, Hermione was pretty sure the corpse use to be a female...The young witch couldn't ignore the signs of fight on the body. But what was she fighting? Basilisk, perhaps. But what's with the necklace? Hermione highly doubted that the vicious snake monster would be interested in jewelry. How long has she been here? Did she die fighting or hiding?
Her thought stream was interrupted by Harry calling her name. 'I'm getting oversensitive' thought Hermione, stood up and joined him by their packs. It was time to finish searching for dark spells and set up the camp.
"It's all in Dippet's journal." explained Harry his assumptions as they were lying in their sleeping bags on the floor of the chamber.
"I have a page of it." he added and to support his cause, pulled a piece of folded parchment out of his pockets. Hermione listened silently, taking all the information in.
"Dippet wrote all about Voldemort, when he was still in school." he said, but Hermione only rewarded him with a very skeptical look. She wasn't sure, where is her friend going with it, but Dippet was never a good trustworthy source. Hogwart's ex-headmaster wasn't necessarily a bad person; just a very easily manipulated person, who spent his last years of work defeating Tom Riddle's crimes. Harry understood immediately and explained further: "Ok, I know how it sounds, but listen to this." He adjusted his round glasses and read out loud: "I am so pleased, as well as rest of the faculty, to see Tom have a real friend. He works too hard on his studies and a friend might be just what he needs to fully enjoy what life has to offer outside of school limits. She seems to smitten people where ever she goes; even Albus took a liking in this girl. Just the other day, I heard some of my younger pupils calling her 'the Alfa'. It is, supposedly, the outcome of a duel… makes me wonder about my own youth and how much times changed. We did not have to wear uniforms in my days- and then he goes on and on about local fashion" Harry finished, expecting older witch's response. Hermione frowned and took the parchment in her own hands: "Best friend? I seriously doubt that. I mean, Voldemort has no morals, nor any feelings, so even if this so called best friend is real, Voldemort probably doesn't care or has already killed them. Plus it would be hard to find one 70 years old woman, when we don't even know her name. She could be anywhere…"
"But what if it is true? This could be our advantage! We could still win!" Harry whispered the last part, not from fear but rather from regret. Hermione watched his face fall and felt angst setting in her own heart. Could they still win?
It was almost two years since the Battle of Hogwarts; almost two years since they lost. Voldemort and his army of Death Eaters, werewolves and giants have beaten them and it wasn't pretty. People were killed, the Hogwarts castle was destroyed and they barely made it out alive. She, Ron and Harry ran away after the last Order member was killed. Harry didn't want to go. He wanted to fight, but was dragged by Ron from a pointless death and Voldemort's ultimate victory, with nobody to stop him. So they ran. The tree of them spent a month or two hiding in Highlands of Scotland until one day, Harry decided to follow Voldemort and find anything to help him in his quest to get rid of the dark wizard. Ron disagreed, because he wanted to find rest of his family and survivors, if there were any, first. And so they split. Hermione and Ron stayed behind and Harry went after Voldemort.
Hermione wanted to go with Harry, but Ron...didn't let her.
Thoughts of past made Hermione feel uneasy. The time she spent with their deceased ginger friend didn't belong with her better memories, even though she assured herself, she did love him at the time. She reached out for the ring on her left hand and clutched her little fingers around it, still lost in thought.
Harry noticed almost immediately the change in mood. She could tell that he knew something was wrong. Her eyes followed his sight to her ring. It was massive ring made out of 24carat gold with a large emerald gem in the middle. Very detailed carvings of Latin writing and different images of animals and nature were covering the whole base up to point where the small silver leaves held the shining green rock in place.
"Hermione," there was a heavy pause: "How did Ron die?"
She didn't want him to bring this up, but Harry was very perceptive and it was almost expected.
Young witch decided there was no point in lying and answered: "I don't know..." It was the truth. She had no idea; she wasn't there when he was killed. She read it in a newspaper somebody left sitting on a bench in Hogsmeade. She looked at the black haired boy by her side, trying to read his features. He was dying to know.
„After you left, Ron and I searched all the safe places we could think off, but did not find anybody. He was getting more frustrated, and I more tired of the pointless search..." She trailed off and Harry nodded in understanding.
"Nothing." stated Hermione tiredly after searching the entire top floor of the old shack they were currently occupying. It did not take much time, since the building itself had only two floors and wasn't too large, but it was the third place they searched this week and Hermione was getting annoyed. Every hour she spent searching those empty houses, or the woods, she could be chasing Harry and helping to deal with the real problem. She wanted to find them, Ginny, Neville and Mrs. Weasley, but the hope of doing so was getting thinner every day. Actually, she gave up long time ago. She would never admit it to her red haired friend, but she found this pathetic.
"I'm sorry, Ron." she lightly touched ginger's shoulder.
Ron run his hand through his hair and nodded: "We need to search Deadly Hallows again. They might just got there..."
"Ron," started Hermione carefully: "We have already searched there. We need to find Harry."
The taller wizard merely shook his head: "No we can't. We need to find any survivors. They might still be hiding somewhere."
"We have searched for months. Now we need to help Harry!" argued Hermione, even though she still made sure to keep her voice soft and calm. It would be no use to anger Ron. They had enough arguments already and every one of them ended the same; Ron got offended, yelled at her and later she had to go and apologize.
The redhead turn abruptly towards her with a frown: "Don't you want to find them?"
And here was the question again. Ron had strange ways of guilting her into things; especially recently it seemed to be his favorite thing to do.
She rolled her eyes instead of responding: "If Harry doesn't kill him, WE won't survive!" This time she spoke a little louder and with more force.
"Oh, so you just want to leave to Merlin-knows-where and let the others to die?"
His fists were clinched now.
"What others?" defied Hermione. "We looked everywhere and nothing! We need to consider our priorities!"
His eyes narrowed in anger, when he growled: "Perhaps, YOU need to reconsider YOUR priorities!"
"What? Ron, this is insane!"
He stopped dead in his back-and-forward striding around the room. Then he walked right in front of her and said in a dangerously low voice:" I'm insane? Fine! Well, maybe you SHOULD go then! If you want to find Harry so desperately, you are welcome to! But stop wasting my time!"
Wasting his time? Hermione was furious. Enough was enough! She turned on her heals and grabbed her brown leather bag from the floor.
"Fine." she answered quietly before walking out the doors.
...and I haven't seen him since." she finished her story. It was unbelievable that this happened over two years ago. She felt very bad, when she heard of Weasley's demise. It somehow seemed like her fault, even though her brain told her otherwise. The golden ring on her hand was heavier than ever. She let out a small sigh.
"That is not all, is it?" asked Harry after a couple seconds of silence. Hermione tried to see his face in the darkness that surrounded the chamber. "What happened then?"
"No, it's not" she admitted with smile.
"After we split, I went back to Hogwarts. I was hoping to find anything about Voldemort whereabouts..." Pause. She still had a chance to back off and keep her secrets. She threw her best friend another look before deciding to continue:" There I ran into Draco Malfoy"
Harry raised his eyebrows in surprise: "Did he attack you? Was V-Voldemort there?"
"Not exactly..."
The young witch sneaked out through the door of old potion classroom and whispered "lumos" to illuminate the corridor.
For a year after his victory Voldemort has used the Hogwarts castle as his base, that is before he moved his attention towards the rest of the England and Scotland just wasn't as useful. Yet the castle itself still looked like he was never here. There were no items or clues left after him or his servants. Nothing. How was Hermione supposed to find out where he was?
She was almost half way at an intersection of the corridor she was in with another one leading towards the Great Hall and the main staircase, when she heard quickly nearing steps somewhere ahead of her. Quickly she dispelled the illumination charm and listened again. The steps were definitely close, but the intersection made it difficult to recognize where exactly their origin was. The bushy haired witch did the only sane thing her brain was able to put together at that moment and jumped behind the gigantic old tapestry, which hung motionlessly from a large stone arch. Couple seconds later there was a crash, which sounded like, and she assumed it was, a stray curse missing its target and clashing with one of the windows in the corridor. Hermione held her breath and got her wand ready. The steps were inevitably nearing. It wasn't just one person, as she thought at first, but it wasn't big group either. So she silently stood there in shadows, waiting for the intruders to pass.
Suddenly, the edge of the tapestry flew open and a tall figure clothed in dark brown raincoat jumped fanatically behind it, just a foot away from Hermione. She froze. Death Eater! She tightened the grip on her wand. Luckily for her, whoever this was, they seemed way too preoccupied with the happenings on the other side of the tapestry to notice her standing right behind them. She tilted her head to the left to get a better view of the stranger's face, but the hood of his coat was pulled so forward that it was practically impossible for her to tell without the person actually turning. Her brain quickly ran through all the options she had; It was probably a Death Eater and this was her best chance to take him down, while she still had the advantage of surprise, but then again, hiding behind the curtains in Hogwarts wasn't exactly a typical Death Eater behavior…at least not since the entire castle was "ruled" by 'His Dark Lordship'.
She drew her wand higher and was about to knock him, or her, unconscious, when the figure swiftly turned to around and Hermione found herself staring into the cold silver eyes of no other than Draco Malfoy. She pushed her wand to his throat just as young heir did the same to her. They stared at each other for good ten seconds, neither willing to make a move.
And then there were more steps and hushed voices in the corridor. Both ex-classmates held their breaths.
"You heard the Lord. The Malfoy prat must be eliminated." One voice whispered not far from them. It must have been couple of men by the corner of that corridor, searching for Draco. The answer was silence, broken only by decaying sounds of their steps.
When it fell completely quiet again, Hermione decided to speak: "I think, they're gone."
Draco nodded. Their eyes met and it took almost a full minute before they came up to the silent agreement and slowly moved their wands away from the other's throat.
The next year and half was the strangest thing for young muggleborn. She and Malfoy, without ever discussing it, decided to stick together after the incident. It took a week of awkward silence before he actually spoke to her. She kept searching for any information on Harry or Voldemort and he kept following her. It felt really uncomfortable, at first, to have somebody sitting across the room, while she searched through the school documents or any writings that could have been left by Voldemort's followers, doing nothing, but one day, after couple of weeks, he started to help her organize and fill in the blanks about Voldemort's recent whereabouts. They still did not talk much, but they were becoming a great team.
Harry stopped Hermione with a deep sigh: "Mione, you know, you shouldn't have done that." Hermione knew exactly what he meant.
"Malfoy was a Death Eater; his father and mother were Death Eater. What if it was just a disguise? It seems suspicious, how you found him. He might have been sending all information to Voldemort and-"
"We got married" interrupted Hermione Harry's rant in a whisper. As time went on the Gryffindor found herself getting closer and closer to the attractive blond boy, especially after he dropped the all-pure act. To be honest, there was always strange tension between them, they just never got close enough to explore it. They talked a lot, and he was able to make even the darkest moment funny with his cynical remarks or snobbish behavior. It was almost like a perfect love story; they met, were forced to cooperate, fell in love and one day out of passion got married…
The black haired boy's mouth opened and closed few times without a word escaping. The pregnant pause followed, neither of them brave enough to face the other one. Hermione was sure Harry would hate her forever because of Ron and all, until he spoke softly with his eyes still pinned to floor: "I'm sorry"
"Why?"
Harry chuckled to himself and then finally raised his head to look at her: "My best friend got married and I missed it."
Another short pause.
Hermione bounced onto her best friend's already open arm. This might have been the happiest she's been in a long time. It was an indescribable feeling to have Harry back. It could have been yesterday they studied for their finals, they will never be able to take, or played chess late into the night on top of the Astronomy tower. The two of them used to sneak out of their dorm and go to the kitchens, while everyone else slept. There they ate the most obnoxious muggle and wizarding sweets, listened to music, and occasionally even danced and drank. Hermione now was sure she would take a bullet for this spooky, messy haired, introverted man in front of her.
Hermione woke up early next morning feeling completely rejuvenated, which was surprising since she and Harry spent the entire night talking about everything and anything in the world. She stretched her arms and turned her head slightly to the right just to find the younger wizard to be still deep in his private dreamland. She smiled to herself, got up from her sleeping bag and tiptoed to their bags. After checking her watch, she decided that it was still way too early for Harry and that he won't be up for at least another hour, so she might as well grab a book from her bag and enjoy some quality reading time. Maybe she could even check Hogwart's History for some information on archiving important documents. She kneeled next to the pile of the bags they brought yesterday and dipped her hand into her red infinity handbag. She was very proud of herself for creating that one. It took a quite a spell work to get the dimension to weight parameters right, so the bag isn't too heavy when stuffed or doesn't collide on itself when empty. Only problem she still needed to fix was the inability to use accio while searching through the indefinite space of the bag.
Hermione spent a good while blindly searching around with her fingers until she found the book she needed. When she pulled it out and closed her bag back up, she was about to head back to her sleeping spot, but a small object in Harry's half closed back caught her eye. It was her time-turner, but why was it in Harry's bag? She was sure she's always kept it in a safe pocket of her bag. After a second thought, the bushy witch decided not to get ahead of herself; it was probably a different time-turner and Harry would ask if he wanted to use hers. So she returned to sitting on her sleeping bag, opened the Hogwart's History and started to flip through the pages.
When ten minutes passed and she couldn't concentrate on anything outside of the small golden hourglass in her best friend's backpack, she closed the book and walked back to the place of interest. She unzipped the bag and as she was to reach after the time-turner, she stopped. What was she doing? This was Harry Potter. The good guy, the savior. She should trust him and not go around violating his privacy. She tried to pull her hand away, but the curiosity got the better of her and she grabbed the small pedant.
Just one single look at assured her it was in deed hers. It even had the name of their old transfiguration professor engraved on its bottom side. She checked on still sleeping form of The Boy Who Live and turned back to her hand. What would Harry want with it that he couldn't just ask her? She pondered purposely ignoring the hurtful fact that her best friend stole from her. Her free hand reached into the bag for the small leather notebook lying where the time-turner was just a seconds ago. She remembered Harry writing names of all dead people in the war, suspected and proved. It was more used now, actually almost the whole book was full and it wasn't just a list anymore. As Hermione went through all the pages of different schemes, notes, names, some crossed out and some circled, an old yellowing page fell out onto her lap. She scanned it and immediately knew what Harry planned with her time-turner.
At the top there were couple book titles such as Time-Traveled by Sarvirus Polligan and How far to the Past by Miranda Lowen. Right underneath that was a list of some spell Hermione couldn't read because they were all crossed out except for one, Lamis Tempus. From there simple arrow directed her to couple notes on the bottom reading: Aug 15, 1943- TMR- 5th
Jan 20, Chamber of Secrets opens
Jan 28, Myrtle
Sum 44, DarkMark, DE
After this there was one more word, friend, circled and underlined many times.
Harry Potter was after that girl, the so called Voldemort's best friend! But he wasn't planning on finding her now, but in the past! He wanted to travel 50 years into the past and..
Hermione did not have time to finish her thoughts, because a voice disrupted the silence: "Hermione, what are you doing?"
She dived so deep in his notebook she didn't noticed he got up and was now standing just a couple yards away. She jumped to her feet like a child caught sneaking into the forbidden cookie jar.
"What am I doing? How about yourself?" she replied little panicked. Harry has already noticed the things in her hand.
"What is this?" she demanded and held both book and the time-turned in front of her.
"Hermione, calm down." said Harry and took a careful step towards his friend, but Hermione was way too enraged and took a swift step backwards.
"No! Are you crazy?! What the hell?" yelled Hermione, still keeping a distance between them.
"Hermione, please, first calm down and then we can talk about it." Tried Harry
Hermione only huffed back: "Talk about what? About your stupid plan to go back in fucking time to what? To chase somebody some moron mentioned in his diary? " said Hermione desperately thinking that this must be just her luck. She finnaly got her best friend back two weeks ago and now he wanted to literally commit a suicide.
Harry was getting frustrated with his constantly backing-up friend: "This is our big chance Hermione! I have to go and bring her here!"
But Hermione wasn't about to give up: "What?! That's a fucking suicide! He will find you and kill you! And you don't even know how to get back!" blamed angrily Hermione, her high-pitched voice echoing through the chamber.
Harry stopped for a second but then said in a calm voice: "I have to try" He looked at Hermione for a support, but she only clutched things harder in her hands and shook her head.
"I won't let you."
A seconds passed, when Harry suddenly charged towards Hermione full speed, his hand aiming for the time-turner. They were only about two yards apart, so with his Quiddich skills as a Seeker is was no problem to get a hold of the golden chain on the first try. They struggled, the chain snapped and it was only a very unfortunate result that the falling spinning golden hourglass landed right underneath Harry's foot. The fragile glass shattered. They both followed the noise with their eyes. Harry bent down to pick up the broken pieces, when Hermione spoke: "H-Harry?"
Her voice sounded scared, so he looked up. The young witch's eyes were widened with fear as she watched her disappearing hands.
"Hermione?" Harry reached out to grab her arm, but his hand went through her body like she was nothing more than a ghost.
"Help me" was the last thing Hermione whispered, before vanishing with Harry's notebook and the broken chain into the thin air.
So, what did you think?