Chapter Three:
With each and every test Hermione's hopes dropped and Bakwell's ire increased.
They were all positive.
And yet he still mixed more and more vials from the trunk. Some required a hair, some just a simple spell. Many required blood. Her hands were tingling from the number of times magic had been used to slice and repair her skin. She took solace in the fact that at least Zabini's hands must feel the same.
Most of the spells required a second source of blood to determine a match. Blaise had taken the job without a word. She wondered what kind of mother let her child bleed this much without ever turning away from the window.
As The Mosquito, as he'd become so fondly named, sliced her hand open once more, she mused about Draco Malfoy. How would he cope, she wondered, if he'd been here and forced to see that there was no difference in blood between muggleborn and pureblood.
Then again, it was looking less likely by the minute that she was muggleborn at all.
'Madam.' The Mosquito looked far too pale for all the blood he'd sucked. 'She's passed them. There's only…'
His eye's flicked to the final vial filled with a sin-dark liquid. Rodder furrowed his brow and made to reach for the vial only for his hand to be smacked away.
'Don't touch it.' Bakwell hissed.
'Miss Granger has passed every single ministry approved test, George.' Rodder was beyond frustrated now. 'I will not allow some unregistered and unknown potion to be administered!'
'It's not a potion.'
Lady Zabini rose from her seat. Elegant robes trimmed her figure neatly and swept along the floor. Her long hair fell in a plethora of tiny braids that looped and weaved in delicate designs. Hermione was stunned. Her own hair had never behaved like that.
But her face is what gave Hermione pause. She was beautiful for sure, stunning in every meaning of the word, but her eyes were blank. Empty. She plucked the vial from its place and held it up to the light. From there, the liquid shone through a deep crimson red.
'Now just a minute!'
Lady Zabini ignored Rodder's outrage and looked at Hermione.
'This is blood of an ancestor. She bled and prayed that she would aid her daughters against deception and betrayal.' She pulled the stopper from the bottle, a single bead hung from the tip.
'Dianthu's blood will burn and curse anyone who isn't her daughter.' The woman warned.
Hermione swallowed audibly; her gaze fixated on the liquid. 'Why wouldn't you just test with that then?'
Lady Zabini gave a smile that looked more like a warning. 'Why would I waste it on liars who can be caught otherwise?'
'Madam, I insist you stop this instant!'
The room turned its focus to Mr Rodder who was trembling with rage. With a flick of his wand, he started sending vials back into the Mosquito's trunk.
'If you are so ready to dismiss the Ministry's own procedures then I don't know why we have wasted our time here tonight.' He fumed. 'The Ministry has always allowed the Zabini House leniency in the demands they make due to the sensitive nature of this matter, but this has reached the point of blind ignorance.'
The Mosquito puffed up noticeably in offence. 'All of those tests have some loophole or another- '
Professor McGonagall interrupted Bakwell with something akin to scorn.
'Which is why you test all of them every time. It would be impossible to safeguard against all those potions without causing extreme side effects! Not to mention she is thirteen.'
'Younger have tried!'
'Enough.' Dumbledore raised his voice and the whole room fell silent. It was rather impressive really, the deference he commanded.
Curious blue eyes glanced over Hermione's face before settling on the vial of literal blood Lady Zabini held.
The Wizarding community couldn't be more dramatic if it tried.
'You believe, without a doubt, that the blood will prove if she is yours?' Questioned Dumbledore.
'My own mother showed me as a child.' Her finger traced slowly around the vial. 'I will know.'
His attention switched back to Hermione. His gaze clinical and- she felt odd. Like memories were running through her head that she hadn't thought of. He blinked and then folded his fingers together. His eyes were friendly once more.
'Miss Granger,' he began gently. 'The Zabini House cannot accept you may be theirs without this test. However, it is not mandated by the Ministry of Magic. You are not required to perform it. But I warn you, they will not take kindly to you claiming their name. You will never receive acceptance, nor anything tangible without proving to them that you are.'
'Which is why if you're after gold or power, you're better off just admitting now that you faked this whole thing.' It was the first thing Blaise had said the entire time they'd been there. His face was as blank as his mother's, but the slight tapping of his finger gave him away.
He was nervous. Just as nervous as her, to know for sure whether this was her family. Whether this was her blood.
Professor McGonagall rested her hand on Hermione's shoulder. 'You don't have to do this.' Her voice was low but soft. 'We can leave this behind us and let it be forgotten.'
Part of Hermione wanted to do that. It warned her not to create cracks where the ground was already weak. To refuse logic and pretend this entire thing had never happened.
But that wasn't who Hermione was. So, she summoned her Gryffindor courage and stepped forward, McGonagall's hand slipping away.
'I need to know.' Her hands were fisted so tight it hurt and she forced herself to breathe.
'What do I need to do?'
Lady Zabini calmly remove the top of the vial. 'Bakwell, her finger.' Hermione swore the damn man took joy out of this.
As The Mosquito made her bleed once more, Lady Zabini looked her over carefully.
'Your parents are muggles.' She stated. 'Does that upset you?'
Hermione shook her head.
'Then why do this?'
Hermione bristled. They still thought she was faking. As if she would put herself through this for a laugh.
'I love my parents.' She said fiercely. 'No matter what some blood says, I will always belong to them. But I can't stick my head in the sand, I need to know the truth.'
Lady Zabini held her gaze coolly, but something flickered through her eyes for the first time. If Hermione was an optimist, she might have called it hope.
A sharp burn made her hiss, and she realised that the sly Witch had dropped the blood without a word. Her heart clenched in fear at the woman's words.
Dianthu's blood will burn and curse anyone who isn't her daughter.
Burn and curse-
Hermione desperately tried to yank her arm out of the woman's grip, but she held firm. Her eyes never left Hermione's as the blood began to surge through her veins.
The fire reached a crescendo and to her horror her hair sizzled and sparked before an electrical current ran over her skin with a zap. With a shriek she gave another tug and slipped from Lady Zabini's grasp. Stumbling backwards and colliding with a chair she pat herself down, reassuring herself she hadn't lost a limb.
Frozen between fear she'd been cursed and relief the burning had stopped, it took her a moment to look up again.
And look straight into the eyes of a white-faced Lady Zabini.
'It's her.' She choked. 'It's really- '
'Madam!' The Mosquito rushed to her side, stumbling when she shoved passed him without a glance.
Warm brown hands fluttered anxiously around Hermione's face, not quite daring to come into contact. Something Hermione was grateful for as she shrunk back in confusion.
'I don't understand. What did it do?'
'Dianthu's blood must have removed a spell…' Lady Zabini murmured in shock. 'It protects from deception, I- '
'This has been a long evening for us all.' Professor Dumbledore interrupted smoothly. 'I believe we should retire for the evening, and we will continue this tomorrow.' His curious eyes, normally twinkling, abruptly seemed closed off and cold.
This remark finally snapped Lady Zabini out of her stupor, and she twisted sharply to face the Headmaster.
'No! I've only just found her; she will not leave my si- '
'With all due respect, Madam,' Rodder began carefully, 'her parents have left her in the care of the school.'
'I am her mother.'
'By blood.'
Six pairs of eyes snapped to where Hermione sat. She wasn't entirely sure she wasn't in shock right now. It would explain the oddly numb sensation she was experiencing.
'I told you already, I have a mother.' She continued idly. 'I just wanted to know and now…' her voice petered off as she stared at her pricked finger.
'Miss Granger has been through a lot today.' Professor McGonagall said firmly. 'You will see her tomorrow, but she must rest first.'
Lady Zabini drew herself up to full height. A truly formidable battle would surely have taken place if it wasn't for Blaise's hand laying on his mother's arm.
A moment passed between the two of them before she sighed and nodded tersely at Hermione's Professor.
'Tomorrow then.' The elder Witch reached out to tuck an errant curl behind Hermione's ear. Her fingers curled tightly into a fist as Hermione stepped out of reach.
'Tomorrow.' Hermione's quiet voice agreed.
The trip down the twisting stairs was silent as Professor McGonagall escorted her back to the Gryffindor dormitories. A tiny voice screamed at her to wake up and think about what all this meant but for once she was happy leaving her mind blank. It was an interesting feeling, she thought. To be blank. She wondered if this was what it was like in Crabbe and Goyle's minds.
'Miss Granger,' She looked up as her professor lay a gentle hand on her shoulder. 'What you decide to do with this information is up to you. However, people will want answers, and soon.'
Hermione couldn't help the flinch that rattled through her body. How was she meant to answer questions she didn't know the answers to?
'Get some rest.' Professor McGonagall said firmly. She gave a brisk nod goodbye and watched until the portrait closed behind Hermione.
McGonagall had never felt her age so acutely. As she held her head in her hands, she worried what tomorrow would bring for the young girl on the other side.
It was very late she realised, the testing had to have taken hours, because the normally bustling common room held only three pairs of eyes. Ron and Harry jumped to their feet the moment they saw her and ushered her gently to a seat where awkward back pats and hair ruffles ensued as the two boys tried their best to comfort her. She gave a giggle, then a sob, and the back pats increased exponentially.
'Merlin's soggy pants.' Ginny rolled her eyes as she made her way over.
She shoved Ron out of the way and wrapped her arms around Hermione, rocking slightly as she soothed. Another sob escaped Hermione's lips as the full weight of the evening hit her. She clung to Ginny and wished it was her mum as she felt herself begin to drown in her emotions.
She'd wanted to find the truth. She'd never felt so lost.
To have your whole world flipped on its head was an interesting thing. She felt like Alice falling down a rabbit hole of her own thoughts, curiouser and darker than anything the old man could have dreamt up. Lewis Caroll may have been high as a kite when he wrote Alice in Wonderland, but Hermione's own author was just plain batty.
The numbness that had carried her all the way back to the Common Room had long since broken. The tears had come as a relief despite the mortification of it all and she'd clung to Ginny like a lifeline, pushing everything out of her head and taking comfort in her friends.
Now as she lay alone in her bed, the thoughts came crashing back in. Oscillating between baffled denial and painful understanding, a heavy and hollow pain was forming in her chest.
The world was upside down and Hermione was hanging.
It wasn't so much the revelation of who her birth parents were. She'd never worried too much about finding them. She loved her parents, and they made her feel loved. A curiosity, yes, but rarely anything more than that. What gnawed at her most was the notion of her blood. Now supposedly "pure".
It made her sick.
After last year she'd found pride in being Muggleborn. A fire stoked in proving the Wizarding World wrong, in rising above them all.
Would they look at her now and chalk all her accomplishments up to a lineage that she'd never known? All her efforts and nod and say "Of course, she's a Pureblood."
Had she inadvertently reinforced their blasted rhetoric?
The pain swelled up into her throat, burned behind her eyes and fused her teeth tight as she clenched her jaw and pushed back a sob.
Maybe it was silly and childish to be so focused on this over the twisted blood family she had discovered but Hermione had learnt to take pride in being different. Pride in shaping intelligence out of her experiences and becoming something unexpected and brilliant.
She thought of her parents, loving and warm and so far away. Of the morals and passions they'd instilled in her. Of book after book pressed gently into her hands, a million worlds to explore, to teach, to satiate an insatiable curiosity. Dad's quick and clever hands. Mum's sharp wit. A periwinkle door offset by the ivy they'd let run rampant at their daughter's insistence.
The comfort of a home, a family, and an identity, snatched away by a woman who didn't know her and that unstoppable golden thread of fate.
She was normally an early riser, cherishing the silence of a calm morning where she could savour tea and a book without risk of knocking one over the other.
Gryffindors were too energetic for their own good.
This morning however, the young girl was procrastinating. Lavender and Parvati were primping and preening in preparation for the day. To show her face would be a death wish. Besides, the later she got to breakfast, the less time she risked being asked about yesterday.
She could hear their not-so-subtle whispering about the events of yesterday. She was fairly certain their eyes were trying to burn a whole through her curtains, but she stayed perfectly still and waited them out.
It was difficult, especially when Lavender's tale of Carlotta Zabini was different from Ron's.
This tale had cast Caterina Zabini as hideously jealous woman who, after doing away with both her husband and paramore, grew so jealous of her daughter's beauty that she killed her.
Supposedly rubbing yourself down with children's blood resulted in eternal youth.
Really, if Lavender put half as much effort into her schoolwork as she did these stories, she might pass third year.
The girls finally left the room and Hermione grumpily started getting ready for the day, pausing when she caught herself in the mirror. There was something… different. As if she'd never really seen her face before. The slant of her eyes, the slope of her jaw, it all eerily looked like-
Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and breathed slowly before opening them again.
Damn it.
That burning from last night, the sizzling over her skin, it had been the erosion of some kind of magic. Di-whoever's blood had removed something. Something that had stopped her from being… recognisable? She guessed.
It wasn't that her face had actually changed, she mused. It was that she could now recognise those features from the Zabini's. She wasn't perfectly stunning like her- that woman, but pieces were there.
Hermione hated it.
She decided to focus instead on what kind of magic could essentially hide someone in plain sight. To not actually change her features but steer away possible suspicion at the same time was remarkable. Like a notice-me-not spell or a repelling charm. A complex spell like that would take time, energy, potentially ritual components. Who on earth could do that, and why?
These are the thoughts that carried her through her morning routine. She knew that curse breakers could somehow create a visualisation of the curse and key points built into it. That was how they knew where to unravel it after all. Was it connected to body or magic? How had it stayed powered all these years? What materials could power it for so long.
Tiny neurons were so busy firing that by the time she reached the Gryffindor table she'd almost forgotten that it wasn't just some thought experiment.
The looks and whispers and just plain staring while saying "OH MY GOD DID YOU HEAR?" might have reminded her.
'People have no manners.' Hermione grumbled as she slipped in next to Harry.
'Huh?' Ron asked through a mouthful of toast.
She could feel a vein twitch in her forehead.
'I know it's hard, but eventually it'll die down.' Harry assured her.
'Well, if anyone knows anything about being stared at, it'd be you.'
He scowled at her playfully and she laughed as he attempted to swat her.
'I thought Seekers were meant to be fast?' She teased.
'Looks like the broom's doing all the work.' Ron chimed in.
Harry looked between their two grinning faces and shook his head.
'What did I do to deserve you two.'
'Something heinous probably.'
Ron nodded sagely. 'Absolutely savage.'
Harry groaned.