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Word count: 3739
Chapter 6: Hogwarts (part two)
There are no suits of armor lining the walls. Hermione tries very hard not to be disappointed by that.
In the fact, the whole interior of the castle is surprisingly modern. Sure, the stone walls are obviously old, as are the stained-glass windows that litter spots of colored sunlight on the ground, but the corridors are too well-lit for there not to be artificial lighting, and as such, electricity.
It is breathtaking all the same, and Hermione's eyes are open wide as she tries to take in everything.
"Where are we going?" Hermione asks, reluctantly dragging her eyes away from a half-faded painting she believes depicts the story of Merlin and Morgana—two famous soulmates whose story had ended badly, a sign, according to all the literature on soulmates' Hermione ever found available, that soulmates couldn't be trusted.
"Your room," Remus replies, snapping Hermione out of her thoughts.
There's something different about this painting. It's not like the usual representations she's seen, and it's not until she spots Remus tugging at his sleeve absent-mindedly that she realizes why: while there is script on Merlin's exposed wrist (too faded to decipher, unfortunately), both of Morgana's wrists, visible since the sleeves of her green dress pool down to her shoulders as she raises her arms to the stormy sky, are entirely bare.
"Ah," Remus states with a kind of rueful laugh when he catches Hermione's eyes being drawn back to the painting. "I see. A fascinating picture, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Hermione sighs. She thinks about not saying anything, but really, what is she risking by asking? "I thought Merlin and Morgana were supposed to be soulmates?"
"You've read the mandated soulmates pamphlets, then," Remus states, arching an eyebrow at her. Somehow, it makes her cheeks flush in shame; because until now she'd never questioned anything the government had written about soulmates, even when she knows their treatment of them is unfair.
"And the storybooks," Hermione snorts, stepping closer until she's standing right in front of the painting, her raised fingers hovering inches above the crackled paint. She doesn't dare touch it for fear of ruining it, but she yearns to. It would feel more real, she thinks, if she could touch it.
"The thing you have to realize, Hermione," Remus says, in a soft lilting voice that reminds her of her History teacher, "is that those books all had to be, at one point, approved by someone from the SRD. Of course, they're not going to show soulmates in any kind of positive light. This," he explains, pointing at the painting, "dates from, oh, the mid-fifteenth century?"
He shrugs before continuing, voice full of passion. "There was some kind of purge, in the last century or so, where every piece of evidence relating to a version of history that contradicted with the message the SRD wants to send was destroyed. Or at least, everything they could find," Remus finishes smugly, fingers caressing the gilded frame wistfully.
"So, what's the real story, then?" Hermione asks, heart beating impatiently in her chest when Remus appears lost in his thoughts.
"Well, I don't know about real," Remus snorts, drawing back his hand like he's been burned—like Hermione's voice snapped him out of a pleasant fantasy. "But the version shown in this painting tells us that, unlike what we can read in storybooks today, Merlin and Morgana weren't soulmates. Now, maybe they were still lovers at one point, or maybe they weren't, but in this version of the story, Morgana had no mark on her wrist."
"Then who was Merlin's soulmate?" Hermione asks, the question burning at the tip of her tongue.
"Can't you guess?" Remus chuckles, his eyes on the tall, painted form of a wizard.
At first, Hermione is at a loss, and she's ready to say so when it hits her. It's so obvious it takes her breath away, and she wonders how she didn't see it before—didn't see how Merlin only stands tall because he's protecting Camelot behind him, where the king's banners are raised high in the sky. "Arthur," she breathes. "It's Arthur, isn't it?"
It shouldn't feel like her whole world has changed. In the grand scheme of things, the story of a legendary wizard and his soulmate shouldn't matter to Hermione this much; and yet it does.
But it reminds of all she knows about soulmates (or well, what little she's heard about), how it all comes from books and stories, and how the only voice among all these who ever disagreed with them was Harry, and it isn't that she didn't believe her brother, because she did, and she still does, but somehow, hearing it from someone else too gives it a greater scope.
Remus' amused smile turns bitter. "Yeah, it's Arthur," he snorts. "Not really something they'd want to be spread around, you see, especially when they're trying to tell the world that soulmates are dangerous and unstable."
Still feeling a little faint at this revelation, Hermione nods. "No, it's not," she agrees.
It really isn't: even if most historians agree that Arthur can't have existed—or that, if he did in fact exist, Camelot probably wasn't as big of a thing as the stories made it look—and that Merlin wasn't an actual magician (since those don't exist), the fact remains that Arthurian legends are important.
They're some of the first stories children hear, after fairy tales and the like—or at least, it was that way for Hermione—and that matters, to a child.
They start walking again, in silence this time, and Hermione keeps her eyes from wandering to the other paintings she sees. She's not sure she's ready to handle another revelation like the one she's just had so soon after the first; especially as her mind is still stuck on that one.
Still stuck on the fact that, here, there's proof that centuries ago, people thought soulmates could build things together instead of being doomed to destroy each other and the world—and yes, in the stories Camelot died with Arthur, but before that, it had been glorious.
It feels oddly unsettling, to think that there was a time where, maybe, people like her wouldn't have been hunted.
"So, this is what you do, then?" she finally asks, as Remus leads her up a pale marble staircase. "Recover stories, investigate history," she elaborates when Remus only sends her a curious look.
"Sometimes," Remus nods, smirking mysteriously.
He stops in front of an old but solid wooden door near the top of the staircase. Looking around, Hermione sees similar doors a bit further in the corridor the stairs have led them to. For some reason, that sight makes her smile.
Remus digs around in his pockets with muttered curses, before finally handing Hermione a silver key with a triumphant huff. "There," he says, placing the cool metal in the palm of her hand, "this is the key to your room—I brought your stuff up earlier, and we try to keep these rooms somewhat furnished, so you should have everything you need; but if you don't, make a list and we'll see what we can do about it."
Hermione smiles thankfully as she curls her fingers around the key.
"I thought that you might appreciate the opportunity to freshen up a bit before we continued this little 'tour'," Remus adds, nose wrinkling a little. "Maybe shower and change, too, if you want. Make yourself at home."
"Thanks," Hermione replies, unspeakably grateful. A shower sounds divine right now, but even just splashing some water on her face would be a luxury. Remus' words have made her painfully aware of how long she's been in these clothes, and it makes her skin itch. Her headache is back, too, or perhaps it had never really left at all, and Hermione resists the urge to rub at her temples valiantly. "A shower sounds delightful right now."
"Yeah, the girls thought you might like that," he laughs. He shifts a little on his feet, fingers playing with the hem of his shirt when Hermione doesn't move. "I, err, I'll be back in like, half an hour? Will that be enough time for you? I'll escort you downstairs."
"Half an hour sounds perfect," Hermione smiles. "Thanks."
He looks a bit like her father like this, awkwardly trying to consider a woman's feelings, and it makes something in Hermione's chest ache. She hasn't lived with her parents for a few years now, but this is still the longest she's been out of contact with them. Working at the tavern where she had found Remus had finally let her check on the internet for news about her parents, so she at least knows that they're fine, but it's a very different thing from being able to see that for herself.
She can't help but wonder if they know what happened to her, if they were told anything, or if maybe they simply think that she decided to run away and not talk to them anymore. She can't remember the last thing she said to them, can't remember if it was anything meaningful, or simply the dull niceties that came in a phone conversation when you didn't know what to say. She hopes it was the former rather than the latter.
She listens to the sound of Remus' retreating footsteps for a few moments before she shakes her head and tries to drag herself out of this funk. The key slides into the lock smoothly, and the door slides open more easily than Hermione would have thought possible, considering how heavy the wood looks.
It's like stepping into another century, a bubble of medieval times trapped in an abandoned castle, there only for Hermione's eyes.
She steps inside slowly, carefully, and the door clicks shut behind her as she lets out a bewildered laugh at the sight in front of her.
The room isn't big, but it has everything she thinks she could ever need: a large bed with red and gold covers and so many cushions that she has to wonder if she'll manage to fit in there or if those pillows will just bury her, a lacquered wooden desk whose dark shine makes Hermione's fingers twitch with the need to touch, and a tall wardrobe that looks like something she could have found at a flea market.
The stone floor is covered with cream and red carpets, and Hermione is very thankful for that fact—she's rather sure stepping barefooted on that floor would be chilling otherwise.
Her bag is there, just like Remus had told her it would be, propped up against the bed. It looks kind of pitiful, to be honest, dwarfed by the dimensions of the room, but somehow, Hermione doesn't feel out of place here.
Or rather, she feels like she could learn to belong here; like she could get used to this place. It's a dangerous thought to have, but she's too tired of running to care.
She grabs a clean set of clothes with greedy hands and ducks into the adjacent room, which she guesses correctly leads to the bathroom.
For a medieval-ish castle, the shower has better water pressure than almost anywhere Hermione's ever been to. The warm water that cascades on her skin does wonder to make her feel human again; and Hermione leaves the shower behind regretfully, a cloud of steam following her and tickling at her wet skin.
She wraps herself in the fluffiest towel she's ever felt and wipes the mirror clean. She's relieved to see that this time, the girl in the reflection is herself, and not some stranger she'd never seen before.
She's also slightly disappointed, though, and it's a sour feeling that lingers at the back of her throat like that one time she'd tried a cigarette and had ended up choking on smoke. It brings her eyes to her wrist in an echo of what that blond girl had done, and Hermione almost drops her towel in shock.
Her mark, blurry for so long, stands out against her skin in stark, black letters. Fleur Delacour, it reads, and Hermione finds herself tracing the letters absently. She's not sure what she expected, really—a revelation, maybe, or perhaps for the letters to sizzle hot on her skin. She'd have thought that getting a mark hurt, but so far, the most it's done is itch a little, and even that, she's sure, is mostly her mind bringing her attention to it rather than some characteristic of the mark itself.
She dresses in a daze, sitting on the corner of the bed and looking at her wrist as she tries to tug her shoes on with only one hand.
God only knows how she snaps herself out of it, and she reaches for her bag with a sigh. She finds her phone right where she had left it, at the bottom of it, and she has to wonder if they even bothered to search her. She had assumed they had—which is why she's shifting through her meager possessions now—but the more she thinks about it, the more it seems to appear that they didn't bother.
Her phone—an old flip phone type that she only got because it was the cheapest thing she could get—doesn't have any of the apps she used to enjoy on her old smartphone, but considering that she only needed it to get phone calls from her boss, that hadn't mattered, and it still doesn't.
Hermione watches it turn on with feverish taps of her right foot, resisting the urge to bite her nails. This is a bad idea. She knows it's a bad idea, but she can't help it—they told her that she was in Scotland, and it's a start, but Hermione refuses to stay in a place she doesn't know the exact location of. She can't be somewhere she doesn't know how to get out of, where she could end up running in circles trying to leave.
Sure, her phone doesn't have a GPS/map app like the more modern options, but it is able to tell her where she's at, and Hermione scribbles down the coordinates on a piece of paper that she tucks back in her bag, also saving it quickly into a note on her phone, just in case.
She's just in time, too, because Remus knocks on her door just as Hermione is turning her phone back off, and slipping it into her jeans' pocket.
.x.
What Remus calls the Great Hall looks like a university cafeteria, if universities were built inside castles and if cafeterias actually looked inviting. It's also ridiculously big, considering that Hermione can only see half a dozen people, herself and Remus included—and Remus excuses himself almost immediately, leaving her "in good company".
The food, she's glad to find out, also looks much better than anything she's ever found in cafeterias—even if it is just breakfast food.
"Seriously, where do you get this stuff? How does the food look so good here?" she asks, putting down her tray next to Luna, who pauses with her fork halfway to her mouth to smile at her sunnily, while Daphne, who sits across from her, scowls and tugs her arm down.
"Luna, don't do that or you're going to get eggs everywhere again, and then the boys will take that as an excuse to start a food fight, again."
Daphne's right neighbor, a dirty-blond haired boy, looks offended by the very implication. "I would never start a food fight, Daphne, come one," he protests.
Daphne doesn't even look at him as she rolls her eyes, saying, "I know you wouldn't, Neville, but unfortunately you're not the only one here." She keeps staring pointedly at the man sitting on her left, who looks like he's trying very hard not to chuckle.
"Hey, guilty as charged," he replies, raising his hands before him defensively. "I never claimed I wouldn't do it."
"Food fights improve morale, too," Luna adds, sipping at a tall glass of orange juice.
Daphne shoots her a betrayed look, throwing her hands up in the air with a snarl.
"I don't know what else you expected," the nameless boy smirks. "It's Luna—of course, she'd approve of food fights." He turns toward Hermione so suddenly she almost jumps in her seat, extending a hand toward her. "I'm Seamus, by the way. And that's Neville," he adds, pointing at the other boy, who waves at her with a shy grin. "It's nice to meet you—we don't get a lot of new faces around here."
"It's nice to meet you, too," Hermione replies, shaking his hand instinctively. "I'm Hermione."
"Yes, we've heard," Seamus replies, dark brown eyes twinkling with mirth as he tilts his head toward Daphne and Luna. "Daphne said you came in with them and Remus."
"Did she also say that they drugged my water so that I slept all the way here?" Hermione asks, arching an eyebrow at him.
To his credit, Seamus' enthusiasm does falter before he laughs it off. "They did it to me, too," he says, commiserating. "Sucks, doesn't it?"
Hermione is surprised to find herself huffing out a laugh at that. "I'll drink to that," she says, raising her glass of orange juice in a mock cheer.
The moment the liquid hits her tongue, she spits it out, sputtering. "That," she says, wiping her mouth, looking at the bright liquid like she doesn't recognize it (which she doesn't), "isn't orange juice."
Even Daphne laughs at that, though she, at least, hides her amusement better than the others.
"No, sorry. We call it pumpkin juice, for the color," Seamus explains, lips twitching up in a grin. "Neville here is the one to make it—he's also the one responsible for the food supply, here, since you wanted to know—and he refuses to give us the recipe. Alas, he's also gotten us all addicted to the stuff, so you'll probably have a hard time finding any other kind of juice to drink in the morning," he adds, shooting Neville a heatless glare, which only causes the other man to smirk into his own drink as he rolls his eyes.
"Or you can take coffee," Daphne interjects, gesturing at the fuming cup on her own tray.
"Yeah, you can drink coffee," Seamus replies, pronouncing the word coffee like one would snake or spider or anything equally distasteful and dangerous. "If you're not feeling adventurous."
Ignoring Daphne's haughty scoff, he turns back toward Hermione, eyes sparking challengingly. "So, Hermione, are you feeling adventurous today?"
Hermione licks her lips, looking down at her still mostly full glass pensively. The taste that lingers in her mouth isn't bad, per se—a little tart, maybe, and definitely not as biting as orange juice, but she doesn't think she disliked it entirely. At the very least, it warrants another test, to see if her spitting it out was only surprise, or if there was something else at play.
Seamus cheers as Hermione takes another sip, and then another, until she's finished the drink without even realizing it. She blinks, and licks her lips again, chasing after the taste. Yes, she can definitely see how the others have supposedly gotten 'addicted' to it.
They all calm down a bit after Seamus high-fives Luna and then Neville—Daphne remains imperturbable when he raises his hand toward her, arching her eyebrow in a silent 'I don't think so' that Hermione thinks is very impressive—and Hermione finds that the rest of the food tastes just as good as it looks.
The company is great, too, and Hermione finds that knowing she wasn't the only one to end up here by being drugged without her consent eases the sting of it quite a bit. It still doesn't make it right, or okay, but it makes it easier to move past it.
They're all just finishing up when Remus strolls back in, and he's not alone.
He's in full discussion with a tall man who looks like he could be Hermione's grandfather—if Hermione's grandfather looked like some version of Gandalf from a world where Gandalf didn't wear robes but rather an ugly velvet suit—and a blonde girl about Hermione's height stands to his left, half a step behind the duo.
At first, Hermione thinks her shy, but she dismisses that thought almost as soon as it crosses her mind. No shy person stands with a back that straight, or walks with as much desperate determination. She looks oddly familiar, too, and it makes it impossible for Hermione's eyes not to drift the girl's way.
As the trio nears their table, Hermione finds herself rising despite herself as the others do.
"Professor Dumbledore," they greet respectfully, and the old man, blue eyes twinkling merrily behind half-moon glasses, greets them back.
"And really, I haven't been a Professor in years—how many times do I have to tell you to just call me Albus?"
"At least one more time, Professor," Seamus quips cheekily.
Professor Dumbledore—Albus?—huffs out a fond laugh, before turning to Hermione.
Unconsciously, she straightens up.
"You must be Hermione, then," he says with a grandfatherly smile. "Remus told me that you were Harry's sister?"
But before Hermione can nod, or say anything, the blonde girl steps forward, eyes blazing with the desperate light that had made Hermione notice her earlier.
"I'm Gabrielle," she says, eyes flicking up and down Hermione's body quickly as she shoves her way past both Albus and Remus. "And we need to talk."
I-What?" Hermione blurts out, looking at the others for an indication of what's going on. Whatever it is, though, it can't be good. Not when Remus is openly wincing, and Albus, who so far has only been cheerful, looks so grim.
"I'm Gabrielle Delacour," the girl repeats, and the pit in her stomach grows as Hermione can guess at where this is going. "And you're Hermione Granger." Her eyes are very blue, and Hermione's heart skips a beat as she realizes why she thought this girl looked familiar before.
She wants to say something—anything—to make Gabrielle stop, or at least pause, so that Hermione can make sense of all this, but the blonde girl goes on mercilessly.
"My sister is named Fleur, and you're her soulmate."