Disclaimer: Harry Potter to e5. JK Rowling to f7.
Chapter 15
By Monday afternoon, however, Hermione's excitement was back. It was actually a little difficult to get through the day, she was so eager to show Harry and Ron her new discovery. The two boys seemed less enthused, possibly because she was so hung up on surprising them that she refused to tell them where they were going.
"Hermione, will you just tell us what's up there?" Ron demanded as she dragged them into the empty Great Hall after classes ended.
"You'll see, you'll see in a minute!" She ran behind the high table, pulled the empty jar from her robes, and used it to listen to the panels, tapping on them one by one. "Now which one was it again?"
Harry and Ron looked sceptical. "Look, if you—" Ron started.
"Aha!" She found the right panel. She stood up primly and, keeping an eye on the boys, knocked four times on the wood. To her delight, the panel popped open, revealing the elf-sized staircase. "Come on," she implored them.
"In there?" Harry asked.
"Yes. It's alright. It's not that hard. Just follow me." She crawled into the stairwell.
"Hermione, what's all this about?" Harry asked as he crawled in after her.
"I found this place yesterday, and—oh, come on, I want to show you."
"Alright, alright, keep your shirt on. We're coming," Ron said.
The three children crawled uncomfortably up the small, winding stone steps. Harry and Ron quickly realised, as Hermione had done, that it was quite a long way up.
"Hermione, doesn't this thing actually go anywhere?" asked Ron. "This isn't some kind of prank, is it?"
"No, I finally found out what's up here, and you just need to see it."
"This is a really weird staircase," Harry commented. "It doesn't look like it's made for regular people." Even so, the dark-haired boy seemed unusually competent at moving around in the confined space.
Hermione didn't respond to that as she hoped Harry wouldn't speculate too close to the truth. A few minutes later, they emerged onto the top landing, and Hermione motioned them forward, still crawling—Ron especially was too tall for the place—until she took that left turn and came face to face with a house elf with cobalt blue eyes and blond hair cropped short.
"Sonya!" Hermione said with a smile. "Hi. How did you know I'd be here?"
"Hello, Miss Hermione Granger," the little elf squeaked eagerly. "Tenny heard that someone was climbing the stairs, miss, and came to tell Sonya, and Sonya is coming to meet Miss Hermione Granger."
Harry and Ron squeezed up against Hermione, peeking around the corner as best they could to see what strange creature their friend was talking to.
"What the heck?" Ron exclaimed.
Harry sat wide-eyed. "Um, who are you?" he said.
"I is Sonya, sir. Sonya the house elf."
"I met Sonya here yesterday," Hermione explained. "Sonya, these are my friends, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley."
"Eep!" Sonya rushed forward to shake Harry's hand, even though she could barely reach it around the corner. "Harry Potter, sir! Such an honour it is!"
"Erm, thank you," Harry said absently. He turned to Hermione. "Uh, sorry, but what are house elves?"
Sonya let out a surprised squeak. "Is Harry Potter not knowing about house elves, sir?"
"Sonya, Harry was raised by muggles, like me," Hermione said. "House elves are like magical servants," she explained, making an effort to be respectful about it. "They do all the cooking and cleaning in the castle."
"Yeah, lots of old, rich families have 'em, too," Ron added. "Mum's always says she'd like an elf to do the ironing and stuff, but we could never get one at the Burrow."
"Huh…" Harry said. He had obviously not thought about all that before either.
"Sonya, do you think we could get to the Common Room, where there's more space?" asked Hermione.
"Oh, of course, miss, of course. Please be coming in." She led them forward down the long hallway.
"So this is where the elves live," Ron mused. "Weird. It's all, like, elf-sized. Fred and George've talked about meeting the elves in the kitchens, but they never mentioned this."
"That's because they didn't know," Hermione said with a grin. "At least until I ran into them in the kitchens last night."
Ron laughed loudly. "Wow, Hermione, I never thought you of all people would be better at exploring the castle than my brothers."
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
Ron opened his mouth and did a surprisingly good imitation of Hermione's voice: "We could all have been killed—or worse, expelled." Harry chuckled behind his hand.
"Please, Ron, I was hysterical about running into a giant Cerberus. And besides, as near as I can tell, this place isn't actually off-limits."
They came to the end of the hallway, and the three children stepped out and stood up, surveying the perfectly scaled-down Common Room. It looked just as surreal as it did last night. Dozens of elves were sitting around it, chatting. Evidently, the dinner shift hadn't started yet.
"Everyone," Sonya called to the room as they entered. "It is Harry Potter!"
The room erupted as all the elves jumped to their feet and crowded in to get a look at the Boy-Who-Lived, jumping up and down and bowing and curtsying to him. Harry looked distinctly uncomfortable wading through the mass of the little creatures.
"Blimey, mate, even the house elves are all over you," Ron said, laughing at Harry's predicament.
"Uh, hi, uh, nice to meet you," he said.
Hermione managed to manoeuvre the three of them to a ring of sofas in the corner of the room, which was one of the few places three humans could sit together. Tilly soon came running over, ostensibly to keep "Sonnitt" in line, but Hermione could tell from her wide grey eyes that even she was eager to meet Harry.
"No thank you, really," Harry said as multiple elves offered to get him snacks from the kitchens. Even so, they continued to bound up to him to greet him. "I'm really not…I'm really nothing special," he protested.
"Harry Potter is very modest, sir," Sonya said admiringly. "He does not speak of his triumph over He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."
"Voldemort?" he said.
"Ahh!" The elves screamed, and many of them jumped back or even ran to the far end of the room, clapping their hands over their bat ears. Harry turned very red at having frightened the strange creatures. Tilly was the only one calm enough to reply sensibly: "Please do not speak the name, Harry Potter, sir. It is a most terrible name, sir, especially to we house elves."
"Sorry," he said. "But really, what's the big deal about it?"
With a nervous squeak, Sonya turned back to him and piped up: "Sonya hears stories of when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was at the height of his powers, Harry Potter, sir, when Sonya was very young. Professor Dumbledore protected us in the castle, but other house elves was treated like vermin, sir, but life is much better for we elves since Harry Potter defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, sir."
Harry looked even more embarrassed at this. "But I don't even remember that," he protested. "And I don't think I was the one who did it. I was only a baby."
"But Harry Potter survived, sir, and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did not," Tilly said. "Tilly remembers it well. His power was broken, and things was at once much better for we elves—and goblins and others, too, sir. Harry Potter is a beacon of hope to so many of the lowly creatures of the magical world."
Harry was pretty much lost by that point. He knew Voldemort was a bad wizard, but he barely knew anything about the other races in the magical world, much less how Voldemort had affected them. He tried asking Hermione to explain, but he got more than he bargained for when she had Tilly, the elf teacher, start in on a long explanation about house elves' service. It seemed a little eerie to Harry that wizards had a whole race of bound servants to do all their chores that he hadn't heard about—eerie and disturbingly familiar—but it was actually pretty interesting, and things did get clearer as she explained. Even Ron, who was always complete rubbish around Professor Binns, was into it by the end.
"Wow, maybe you should teach history instead of Binns," Harry said as she concluded.
Tilly blushed crimson at the praise and started tripping over her words, "Oh, b-begging Harry Potter's pardon, Harry Potter, sir, but T-Tilly is knowing much more of elves' history than wizards'…"
"Yeah, but anybody'd be better than Binns," Ron quipped. "Plus, can you imagine the look on Malfoy's face if he had to have and elf for a teacher?" All three children laughed aloud at that and several elves giggled conspiratorially, especially Sonya.
Hermione had warned Harry and Ron that they should leave when the dinner shift started, but they still had a little bit of time after that, so Sonya roped the three of them into a game of Exploding Snap with a timid-looking Vanny and a taller elf with a French accent whom Hermione had not met yesterday. Hermione had noticed by now that a significant minority of the elves had foreign accents, mostly French, but she heard some German and Spanish in there, too, which made her curious.
"What's your name?" she asked the newcomer.
"I is being Remie, Mademoiselle," he replied.
"Are you French, Remie?"
"Yes, Mademoiselle. Many elves is traded to different countries, Mademoiselle. Zee 'Ouse Elf Relocation Office is doing it, Mademoiselle, to make sure too many elves isn't breeding with cousins."
"Really…?" To prevent inbreeding? she thought. That seemed odd. But then, Hermione thought about all the places in Britain that might employ elves: Hogwarts, the Ministry, St. Mungo's, and then if one in ten wizarding families had a house elf (and she suspected that was being generous), there couldn't be more than five hundred working-age elves in all of Britain, probably more like three hundred, which she wouldn't trust to maintain a viable breeding population. (Actually, with that body shape, she wasn't sure how elves could reproduce at all, but it was probably best not to think about that.) So the job of the House Elf Relocation Office didn't have so much to do assigning elves within Britain, but with moving them from country to country to keep the elf bloodlines healthy.
Suddenly, Hermione burst out laughing.
Harry and Ron gave her a confused look, and Remie turned pale and started apologising, but Hermione cut him off: "I'm sorry, I wasn't laughing at you. I was just thinking how all the pureblood wizards are so proud of keeping their bloodlines 'pure' when even they recognise the importance of interbreeding with their house elves. The hypocrites!"
At that, the other elves started sniggering conspiratorially again, as if she were speaking about something improper. Ron chuckled and said, "Well, my Dad says the whole pureblood thing is hogwash anyway. There's so few purebloods left that practically everybody's half-blood these days. Mind you, my family's still pretty pure, but there's only a couple others we'd actually associate with."
Hermione made a mental note to look up some of the wizarding genealogies for reference when she had the time—which wasn't often with their little third floor project—but that could wait until later. For now, she could just enjoy the game.
It was only when they crawled back down the spiral staircase and started toward Gryffindor Tower that Hermione pulled one of her friends aside for a chat, telling Ron they would catch up with him in a minute.
"Harry, I was wondering what you thought about the house elves," said said.
"What do you mean?" Harry said, confused.
"I mean, they are technically slaves, even if they say they like it. I was just wondering, since you were raised by muggles…"
"Well, they seem like they've got a pretty nice place to live. It's sure a lot nicer than what I grew up with."
That wasn't an answer Hermione was expecting at all. Had Harry misunderstood the question? "Huh? What do you mean by that?"
"I had to do all the chores, too, and my cu—room wasn't very nice. I definitely didn't like it, though, so it's kinda like they're better off."
Hermione had already been a little concerned for Harry, but this clinched it. If the boy was saying he was worse off than slaves—well-treated and bizarrely-happy slaves, but slaves nonetheless—something was seriously wrong with his life. "Harry…" she asked tentatively, "if it's so awful for you at home, don't you have anywhere else to go?"
"No," he said defensively. "They're my only family. Where would I go?"
"I'm sorry, I just thought…if it's just for the summer…Honestly, I might be able to convince my parents to take you in if I asked them nicely—or maybe Professor Dumbledore could arrange something."
"You don't have to do that, Hermione," he said quickly. "I can manage fine with the Dursleys. Besides, it's only two months, and that's worth it to come to Hogwarts."
Well, it was hard to argue with that logic. Even she still couldn't believe how amazing magic was sometimes. Even so, she filed that away in case she got a chance to find her friend better accommodations for the summer.
November turned to December, and Hogwarts was buried under several feet of snow. Hermione didn't think snow that heavy fell regularly anywhere in Britain, but maybe it was the magic of the place. People stayed inside when they could on account of the cold, except for the occasional snowball fight, and the Weasley Twins' charmed snowballs were a constant threat to anyone who ventured outside.
With the colder weather, the Gryffindor Common Room grew more crowded with people keeping warm around the fire. Hermione took to sitting nearer the edge, away from the crush—at least when she was curled up with a good book and not chatting with her roommates. It was on one of these evenings that something at a nearby table caught her eye, something she had glanced at, but not paid much attention before. She saw Ron and Seamus Finnigan were playing chess—wizard chess.
Wizard chess turned out to be the same as regular chess except that the figures were alive, and you had to call out your moves to them. She wandered over to the boys' table for a closer look just as Seamus made a move.
"Knight to e5."
It was an obvious sacrifice move designed to draw Ron's queen out. Hermione felt like the little knight piece had a resigned look on its face as it moved from a rook's line of fire to the queen's.
Ron accepted the offered knight: "Queen to e5."
The Black Queen glided forward and lifted up her chair. Yelling a distinct "Hi-ya!", she swung it around so hard that the knight was knocked clean off the board.
"That's totally barbaric!" Hermione said.
"That's wizard chess," Ron smirked.
Hermione calmed herself. Surely, the little chess pieces weren't really alive, were they? They were probably just constructs transfigured to act like it, just like Professor McGonagall always said. Even so, it was weird to see Seamus's pieces question a couple of his moves. Wasn't that like cheating? Or was wizard chess more different than it looked?
She watched them a while longer, thinking about what moves she might make in the game. Seamus was decent at chess, but Ron was good. After a few moves, she broke down and said, "Okay, I play winner." She pulled a chair close and sat to watch them finish.
Ron cocked an eyebrow. "You play?"
"Of course."
"Alright, we'll see if you're better than Seamus," the redhead said smugly.
"Oi!"
But Ron beat Seamus after just a few moves, and the sandy-haired boy got up and yielded his seat. By now, Harry had noticed them and come closer to watch quietly. Fred and George were also keeping watch and came over to see what was up.
"Ah, so you've discovered that ickle Ronnie is a chess prodigy," George said.
"Well, I don't know about 'prodigy'," Fred suggested. "More like idiot savant."
"Hey, lay off guys, I'm finally gonna beat Hermione at something," Ron said.
Hermione rolled her eyes, "We'll see about that."
"Ooh, this should be a good one," George said.
"Just a moment," Fred added before calling out to the Common Room, "Hey everybody, Ron's facing Hermione Granger at chess. Place your bets!"
"Fred!" Ron and Hermione said in unison. Hermione nearly lectured them that gambling was against the rules, but she reminded herself that it wouldn't help. Anyway, it turned out that a lot of the older boys had fallen to Ron's chess skills and wanted to see the action. Lavender, Parvati, and the Quidditch Chasers, on the other hand were sure that Hermione's raw intelligence would win out. For their part, Fred took Ron's side, while George took Hermione's.
And so, it was a very red-faced Hermione who found herself facing the undeclared chess champion of Gryffindor with a sizable audience. Ron took the two queens in hand behind his back, mixed them up, and then presented his closed fists to Hermione. She tapped one of them with a finger, and he opened it, revealing the White Queen. Hermione was encouraged to see that that custom was the same in the wizarding world.
The pieces set themselves up, which was very convenient, and then it was all up to Hermione to make the first move. She sized Ron up. He was a good player. He probably had a solid opening book. This wasn't a timed game, so her speed wouldn't be of much help. She considered a Queen's Gambit, but instead, she decided that she would try to throw Ron off with a non-standard opening.
"Pawn to c3," Hermione ordered.
She supposed she shouldn't have been so surprised when all of her pieces yelled, "What!", which was echoed by several of the chess players in the Common Room. Fred started laughing at George. Ron just stared at her in disbelief.
"I though you said you played," he said.
"I did. Pawn to c3."
Her pieces shouted another protest, and the c-pawn itself said, "Are you nuts? That's a ridiculous opening move."
"No, I mean it. Pawn to c3," she repeated. When the pawn still didn't move, she physically picked it up and moved it by hand as it shouted a muffled protest under her fingers.
"Grrr. Well, so much for this game," the pawn said when she put it down.
Ron smirked at her again and said, "Pawn to e5."
Aha! Pawn to d5 would have been better, Hermione thought. He's just ignoring me and doing his own thing. Good.
"Mm-hmm. This should be easy," Ron's e-pawn said as it glided forward.
Hermione didn't hesitate. "Pawn to d4."
"Oh, now you do something sensible, after he's already got a pawn there," the d-pawn said, but it glided forward on its own, used to being knocked out early in the game.
Ron raised an eyebrow at Hermione's "strategy" and ordered, "Pawn to d4," capturing Hermione's piece.
But that's what Hermione was counting on. "Queen to d4," she said.
"Are you sure?" her queen asked. "It's risky sending me out this early."
"Trust me. I know what I'm doing." The queen grumbled, but moved forward, capturing Ron's pawn.
"Well, I'm surprised," George said. "It seems our Hermione likes to live dangerously."
"Maybe, brother, but doesn't she have the skill to back it up?" Fred replied.
Ron didn't seem to think so because he shook his head and said, "You are a nutter. Knight to c6."
Hermione just grinned and said, "Queen to a4."
Ron's smile started to fade, now, as the queen threatened his knight, and he started to see the inklings of Hermione's strategy. "Pawn to d5," he said.
Hermione responded with, "Pawn to e4."
This put another of her pawns diagonal from one of Ron's. Her e-pawn, being used to this kind of treatment, said, "Oh, boy, here we go," before it moved.
Ron still looked sceptical. "A reverse Scandinavian Defence?" he asked.
Hermione just smiled innocently.
"Fine. Pawn to e4," Ron took another of her pawns.
Hermione followed up with, "Knight to d2."
Her knight slid into position and looked around, surveying the board. "Wait, what just happened?" it said. "This actually looks kind of good."
Ron was surprised, but he had to agree. It was a much better position than he expected to see her in after that weird opening, even if it was still pretty off. He gave Hermione another sceptical look.
"What?" Hermione said offhandedly. "It's a variant on the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit—I've already got my queen deployed, I'm blocking half of your queen's moves, and my pawn structure's almost as good."
"Bloody hell!" The reply came from both Ron and all twenty-nine pieces that were still on the board. It was his chess set, after all.
"You were saying?" George asked Fred, who glared back at him.
"Wow, you are good," Alicia said from over Hermione's shoulder. Much of the audience murmured in agreement.
"Alright," Ron said with a determined look on his face, "now you asked for it."
The game was hard-fought after that. Ron certainly wasn't ignoring her anymore. He wasn't just good, though, he was really good. Hermione struggled to hold her own. The tension in the room seemed to rise as people started recalculating the odds on the outcome of the game. The people who were most familiar with chess cheered when either of them made a decisive move.
It was after a couple of particularly difficult moves, as Hermione surveyed the board, trying to figure out her best course of action, that she noticed Ron looking particularly smug in the corner of her eye. She nervously looked over the pieces again, and the realisation hit her.
"You win in two moves, don't you?"
There were gasps from the people who were supporting her.
"Ah, so you noticed it," Ron said, folding his arms.
"You won…" Hermione said. She was about to knock over her king on the spot when she saw him take off his crown and throw it at the Black King's feet. "You beat me…" she stammered. "I can't believe you won."
Ron started laughing. "Yeah, well it'll probably do you some good to lose once in a while," he said.
Hermione glared at him. "It's not that. I've never been beaten by someone my own age before."
Ron's eyebrows rose a bit. "Really? Well, I think you are the toughest opponent I've had who's my own age. That was a good game." He offered her his hand.
"Yeah, good game…" she said as she shook his hand. "I want a rematch," she said sharply. She should have tried that Queen's Gambit from the start.
But Ron let out an exasperated sigh and rose from his seat, saying, "Tomorrow. It's getting late."
"Fine." Actually, it was getting close to her self-imposed bedtime. She'd have to turn in soon, as well.
"That was still brilliant, Hermione," George said quietly after Fred forced him to pay up. He put a hand on her shoulder. "You'll have to beat him sometime—cut him down to size."
"I'll certainly try," she said. Ron was going to be tough to beat, though. Most of her friends were surprised by her own chess skills, but Ron was definitely a level above her. She was starting to think there was more to Ronald Weasley than she'd first thought.
It was the day before Christmas holidays, and the teachers were busy setting up the decorations for the Great Hall. Dinner that evening would be the Christmas Feast for the majority of students who were going home. Most of Hermione's friends would be on the Express with her tomorrow, but Ron and his brothers were staying because his parents were visiting another brother, Charlie, in Romania, and Harry, predictably, had no desire to see his relatives.
The Great Hall really did look amazing, even unfinished. Hagrid was hauling in the twelfth and final huge Christmas tree—even taller than he was—when they ran into him that morning. Professor Flitwick was decorating the trees with huge golden bubbles from his wand. Professor Vector was nearby, measuring everything with a quadrant—probably something to do with ley lines, Hermione thought. She had mentioned that even on small scales, the proper alignment would improve the staying power of Professor Flitwick's charms.
But for all this, Hermione was still on a mission. "Harry, Ron," she said, "we've got an hour before lunch. We should be in the library."
"Yeah, the library, right," Ron groaned. He was quickly losing patience with the whole think.
"The library?" Hagrid said. "Bit keen, aren't yeh, the day before the holidays?"
"Oh, we're not working," Harry said brightly. "We've just been researching magical artifacts in our spare time."
"Magical artifacts?" Hagrid rumbled suspiciously. "You're not still on about the third floor, are yeh? I told yeh to drop that."
"We just wanna know what's up there," Ron said.
"Unless you'd like to tell us and save us the trouble," Harry added.
"I'm sayin' nothing'," Hagrid insisted.
"Trouble Hagrid?" Hermione twitched when she saw Professor Vector coming over, having obviously overheard their conversation.
Hagrid seemed to consider whether to say anything, but apparently decided to do the responsible thing, much to Hermione's nervousness and Harry's dismay. "Well, Professor," he said diplomatically, "it's just that these three here seem to have got it into their heads to figure out what's at the bottom of the third floor corridor."
"Miss Granger," Professor Vector said in surprise. "I'm sure you remember what Professor Dumbledore said at the start of term. This isn't something you should be getting involved in."
"I'm sorry, Professor," Hermione said, glancing down at her feet. "But we're not looking to cause any trouble. We're only looking in the library. We just thought it would be interesting to know. And the research is quite fascinating. We're learning lots about ancient artifacts."
Vector's lips pressed together sternly, but she softened when she saw Hermione's face. "Pardon me, Miss Granger. I know you're quite responsible. If you're only doing research in the library that any other student could do, I certainly can't stop you. But please speak to a teacher before you get any ideas about anything else. This is a dangerous business that children should not get mixed up in."
"Yes, Professor," Hermione said.
"Thank you, Miss Granger. And Happy Christmas."
"Happy Christmas," Hermione called before the trio walked off to the library.
But they didn't find out anything interesting that day, and Harry nearly got kicked out of the library when he wandered into the Restricted Section. The next morning, Hermione packed up and got down to breakfast early so she could make it to the carriages to go to the train station. Harry and Ron walked out to the carriages with her.
"Well, have a nice Christmas here," she said as she loaded her trunk into a carriage. "I'll see if I can send you something by owl post."
"You don't have to," Harry said. "I can't get you anything."
"I want to. You've both been really good friends. Remember to owl me if you find anything interesting in the library."
"Yeah, will do," Ron said unenthusiastically.
"Happy Christmas!" she said, hugging both of them before she climbed into the carriage. Harry gave an odd shudder when she did, but she didn't think much of it at the moment.
"Happy Christmas," the two boys called after her, and she was off.