Hi! Hello! I apologize for being AWOL! A couple people managed to find this story even though nothing new has been posted in months (THANK YOU), so i figured it may be time for me to update. This is a SUPER short chapter, but hopefully I will have a few more up before summer is out. Don't hold your breath though ladies and gents; obviously I have a horrible track record. As usual if you see anything nonsensical or wrong, shoot me a message. All the best!
A day and a half of eerie calm passed in the Granger estate. The Widow let Robert moon over and make cow eyes at her. Her daughters tittered over dresses and hairstyles as a tailor fitted them for dresses in the current fashion. Hermione hid out in the servants' quarters, making her trips to the bathroom and kitchen quick and quiet. She hated it; hiding wasn't courageous or brave. She wanted to look the Widow in the eye and sneer at the girls' taste in fashion. Most of all, she wanted to show them that her magic was coming back, for it was indeed coming back, seemingly stronger than before. She couldn't do anything more strenuous than an avis, but even then she created more birds, her lumos was brighter, her wingardium leviosa was more forceful.
As much as she wanted to strut around the house like a lion in its prime, Hermione couldn't help but feel as if she should keep her head down, find cover, because something was coming. So she kept her head down, and silently fumed. She made her trips to the bathroom and the kitchen short and quick. At some point, it occurred to her to wonder if the Greengrass women knew how to feed themselves. Do they know what uncooked pasta looks like? She giggled and the thought brightened her evening.
In the late afternoon the day of the ball, Sirius sent a note suggesting that now was the time to begin preparing as well as a pair of strappy heather gray heels for the dress. Hermione pulled the dress from its packaging for the first time since it'd been delivered and laid it out on her bed smoothing over invisible wrinkles in the much simpler, periwinkle fabric. She huffed in amusement as she remembered the Marquis' and Madame Malkins' face when she rejected their shimmering creation. Really too beautiful for me.
She grabbed a book of beauty spells that she meant to put to use, assuming her magic was willing and made her way to the master bathroom of her parents' old room. For some reason or another, the Widow vacated this room as soon as her father died, instead, fixing up a room near her daughters with her overbearing taste in opulence and remained there. In her parents' room, Hermione took her sweet time with her beautification process. She tried a few spells and charms in the book, focused on forcing her hair into something presentable to public, but some were directed at her make-up and one to dispel the dryness her skin that had developed over the months.
Finally Hermione was ready. She looked at her reflection in the floor length mirror on the door of the bathroom. She was stunned again by her reflection in the mirror. She looked quite a bit thinner than the last time she'd seen herself. She turned this way and that viewing herself from every angle. Her hair was caught up in a elaborate high bun, void of jewelry as she hadn't thought to buy any. It's not as if I'm trying to convince him to marry me, she thought. I don't need to look like a bombshell. Even then, Hermione found herself thinking that she didn't look quite nice enough to stand on the arm of Prince Malfoy.
Shaking the thought away, Hermione walked to the parlor. Sirius would come for her soon. She cast the time charm, maybe a half hour. For a moment , Hermione wondered if she was sticking her neck out by sitting in plain view, but quickly dismissed it. It has to take more than 30 minutes for a storm to brew.
The storm Hermione was looking for blew in faster than she assumed. Settled in, Hermione corrected herself. That's what it felt like; a heavy blanket settled over her head and shoulders as she walked in to the parlor. A heavy blanket that made her feel lazy and languorous and…compliant. She felt as if she should sit. Sit and look at the woman in the room that she hadn't noticed before, but now readily recognized as the Widow, her stepmother. Why do I call her that? Hermione wondered. I suppose she truly is a widow, many times over in fact, but to call another person a spider seems a bit mean, no?
The spider smiled. She would click her pincers together if she had any. She turned her head a bit without taking her eyes from Hermione and said something loudly. It took a few moments for the words to get to her, as if they had to travel through molasses. Her step sisters flounced in from the same door Hermione entered. They looked between their mother and Hermione nervously, though their eyes glittered with something other than nervousness.
"Doesn't your sister look - hmm, well nicer than usual?" More slow words drifted to her as the spider paced around prey. "So modest as always." She picked at Hermione's sleeve, testing the fabric. "And cheaply made. She can't leave the house looking like that."
A thought echoed from deep inside her mind, run. But it bounced off every crevice of her brain until the word was distorted white noise.
"Help your sister girls." Hermione turned to look at her step sisters to see their wands raised. Confusion bubbled inside her and muted panic. What are they doing? Belatedly, she wondered, what am I doing?
Spells she didn't have time to understand or block fired off at her. Cool air kissed her skin in strange places. A halt in the assault on her person was filled with angry yelling and a bit of laughing, then more cool air. The youngest woman stomped forward - Astoria -and shoved Hermione hard from her seat.
Hermione's slow uncoordinated movements couldn't halt her fall, but caught a vase instead. It shattered beside her sprawled form surrounded by the spider and her two hatchlings. More tittering followed, but it got quieter as the girls left the room. She looked up at the spider from her position on the floor.
"What are you staring at girl? Don't you have something to clean?" She flicked her wand at Hermione imperiously and she felt the urge to clean indeed, starting with the vase beside her, all the tiny pieces, one by one until every single bit of it was gone. She began her task, not noticing the departure of her stepmother, or the small jagged cuts, the bits of vase embedded in her fingertips, the tears that ran down her face.
Hermione didn't know how much time she spent in this mindless, trancelike state, but she could mark the point at which she began to re-occupy her own mind. There was a dull thudding, behind her eyes, as she realized that her fingers hurt. Badly. Why am I hurting myself? she thought lethargically. She tried to pull her hands away from what was stabbing her, but her body wouldn't obey. She tried again, but found focusing on anything difficult, meanwhile the stabbing pain sharpened into several sharp pin pricks setting her hand on fire and the dull thudding became distant and distinct. The muted panic she felt before grew sharper as she realized she had little control over her body and not much more over her mind.
While her hands moved of their own accord, Hermione put all her effort into focusing her mind. The pounding was distracting, but at last, Hermione found her mind clearer, her thoughts more centered, but not enough to control her body. The effort was tiring, but the pain in her hands was worse. Harder, the thought came, no longer bouncing off cavernous walls. She tried harder, and then she felt it.
Relief as one by one, her hands let go of what she held. The pounding became hard frantic raps of someone beating at a door. For the first time in an unmarked length of time, Hermione's eyes saw what was in front of her and her ears heard her panicked breaths. Her hands were covered in blood and burning. Bloody vase pieces were piled off to one side, though most of it was still scattered on the floor. It was ugly anyways.
She realized that someone was yelling her name. Sirius. With great labor, she pulled herself to stand and made her way to the parlor door which the Widow must have sealed behind her; she could hear Sirius muttering unlocking spells behind it.
"Uncle!" Hermione called out surprised that her voice sounded much better than she felt.
"Hermione!" He sounded relieved. "Step back! I'm blasting the door down!" Hermione scrambled backwards to get clear of the door coming off its hinges. The Marquis engulfed her in a hug in the clearing smoke before holding her at arms length. His sudden movements made her head hurt.
"Good evening, uncle Sirius," she said. "I think you'll be on your own at the ball tonight."
"What happened to you?! I've been pounding at the door for more than 20 minutes!" He looked her up and down and gasped. Hermione felt equally surprised at the state of her dress. She was nearly naked, gashes and torn fabric creating far too many holes. She wondered at the fact that only her hands came away harmed.
"I don't understand," Sirius said slowly. "Did Greengrass do this to you? Couldn't you defend yourself?"
"I don't quite understand either," Hermione told him pulling away and sitting in a chair-not the one she'd been shoved from. Something very familiar was rising in her again. The anger was back weighing down her heart like a cement block. "She put some kind of obedience charm on me. Astoria shoved me face down to the floor and I didn't try to stand. They threw slicing hexes, by the looks of it, but I don't understand why only the dress took the hit."
Sirius fumed, staring into her eyes, glancing at her dress and then away. He unbuttoned the fine black over coat he wore to wrap around her shoulders, then set about healing her hands, siphoning away the blood. "Did you hear her speak a spell or incantation, anything?"
"They all said things, but unless it was an order, none of it made sense." Hermione huffed. "It's strange. My first guess would be the Imperius, but I didn't know I was trapped in my own body until she was gone."
Together, they fell silent for a moment, adding up the Widow's transgressions and puzzling out the curse set on Hermione, until Sirius clapped his hand. "Well, she won't be derailing us anymore tonight!" he said and then shouted for Kreacher, the miserable little house elf he owned. "Bring the parcel sitting on my desk, Kreacher."
Kreacher sneered disgustedly, muttering nasty words around "Yes, master."
"What's in 'the parcel', if I may ask?" Hermione questioned as he charmed locks of hair back into the correct places.
"My masterpiece of course," he sniffed.
"You had it made anyways?!"
"Of course! Especially seeing as I wasn't paying for it." Sirius sighed and looked off into the distance. "It was too beautiful to just forget about. Maybe one day I would have been able to force you into it, but that witch and her daughters did my work for me. I'm actually a little thankful. That drab little blue thing you had on before might as well have been a 'potato sack' as you put it."
Kreacher popped in long enough to drop the parcel containing the dress on the floor. After muttering a few choice curses, Sirius hustled Hermione off to a corner of the room to pull the dress on. "We're late as it is. Beyond fashionably late at this point. That hag probably thinks you're sufficiently out of the way, but I do love wreaking havoc. Turn around and let me see!"
Hermione was fiddling with things that didn't need fiddling, feeling quite uncomfortable in such a grand dress. Sirius slapped her hands out of the way and shoved another pair of heels at her. Hermione held the shoes out, wide eyed. As if the dress wasn't enough, the heels, Merlin the heels. They were crystal, or they looked like it. She was sure that if one looked at her in the right light, with the right bit of wind to make the dress flow, she would look like she was gliding on air. Well walking-she didn't have enough grace to make gliding applicable. It made her nervous to be in something so sumptuous, but at the same time, she felt quite pretty and couldn't help but smile.
A self-satisfied smirk grew on the Marquis' face as he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and escorted her out of the house and to black carriage with the Black coat of arms on the door in silver. Hermione nearly jumped out of her skin when one of the skeletal horse-like animals drawing the carriage snorted and shook out its mane. She'd never seen anything like it before; suddenly she remembered what they were. One could only see thestrals if they'd seen death. Hermione had become recently acquainted with death. She lagged behind Sirius, staring at the team hitched to the carriage. Impatiently, Sirius ushered her into the carriage and rapped the roof twice, signaling to the beasts in front that it was time to take off.
Inside, across from the Marquis, Hermione was fiddling again-with her dress, her hair, her fingernails. The anger she felt before had settled somewhere deep and the shock of the dress, heels and thestrals layered over it; now at the forefront, Hermione felt nervousness. The prince. Something strange inside her flickered and fluttered at the thought of him. The memory of his smile-miniscule tilt of his lips, really-made her fight to repress her own, and his eyes held her even in her mind. Friendship he'd suggested, his manner nothing but polite and courteous. Her stomach didn't flutter when she thought of friendship, but when she thought of Prince Draco Malfoy, her stomach was close to riotous.
Gahh! What the hell is wrong with me? Hermione threw her hands into her lap and blew harshly through her lips, making the Marquis look up at her in question. "What's wrong with you?" he asked. Hermione floundered for an answer, mouth open, head shaking. "Well get yourself together. We touch down in about two minutes."