"So: We've got Malcolm Smith, Cho Chang, Cassius Warrington, Lee Jordan, Éadaoin Lobosca, and you," Tracey said. She drummed her fingertips over her lips. "You can probably beat Malcolm and Cho hands-down, but Warrington and Jordan might put up a bit of a fight. I don't know enough about Éadaoin to say one way or another."
"Éadaoin might be running, but she's Hufflepuff, and it's more likely that the Hufflepuffs will vote for who Cedric told them to," Pansy said, smirking. She glanced at Hermione, raising an eyebrow in a challenge. "That is, so long as Cedric is still endorsing you, Hermione…?"
She shot her a catty look, and Hermione's face flushed as she folded her arms. She was glad Tracey hadn't invited the boys to this meeting, the day after the nominations. She suspected all she'd end up doing would be arguing over Cedric Diggory with Draco Malfoy.
"Seeing as he took her to dinner after their speeches, I think that's fairly safe to say," Daphne said, idly looking at her nails, cultivating an air of utter disregard for Pansy's cattiness. "We'll need to focus on the groups Cassius and Lee poll well with, and figure out where to go from there."
"Lee Jordan hangs out with the Weasley Twins all the time," Millie observed. "He'll get the mischievous boy vote, from the boys who don't really care much about the government at all."
"Cassius will get all the votes from the Slytherins who don't like Granger," Pansy said. She glanced at Hermione. "A lot of them still don't think you belong in Slytherin, I'd wager."
"You'd think that would have changed after she couldn't call herself a Muggleborn in the Wizengamot's Truth Circle," Millie grumbled.
Hermione shrugged helplessly. "Things change slowly in the magical world, I guess. Even opinions in the face of facts."
Daphne regarded the list carefully.
"Draco and I would be best suited to convincing the other Slytherins to vote for you, possibly Theo as well," she said. She looked at Hermione apologetically. "We'd be more likely to persuade them to vote for you than you would be able to directly, I'm afraid."
Hermione waved off her concerns. She didn't want to have to deal with outright blood-prejudice if she didn't have to.
"I can try to take on the mischief-minded boy crowd?" Tracey volunteered. She tossed her head. "I enjoy a bit of mischief here and there, and if nothing else, I can flirt with them to try and win them over to our side."
Millie snorted. "You can't just snog all of them to get their votes, Tracey."
"I never said I would!" Tracey shot Millie a dark look. "But flirting and flashing a bit of cleavage is fine. That's like, Basic Boy Manipulationn for first years."
"If you say so," Millie said innocently, smirking at Tracey with droll amusement.
"One of us will need to figure out what's up with Éadaoin," Daphne said. "Though she might not gather many votes, her speech was particularly impassioned. We need to figure out what's making her tick."
"I can do that," Pansy volunteered. Her eyes gleamed. "I love ferreting out secrets."
"What's that leave for me?" Hermione asked.
"The hedgewitches," Tracey said immediately. She snickered. "You seemed to hit it off well enough with them, Hermione. And no one else wants to deal with them."
Hermione rolled her eyes, but Daphne was nodding, looking serious.
"There are a lot more hedgewitches than we like to think about, really," she said. "If you can win them over, that's a lot of votes most people don't think of. And I don't think any of your competition would go after their vote except maybe Éadaoin – Hufflepuffs tend not to share the aversion for the hedgewitches quite as much."
"Why is that?" Hermione asked, and Daphne shrugged.
"Hufflepuffs aren't as worried of them stealing their magic," she said. "I think because they like to trust and see the best in everybody? But the rest of us like to leave them alone."
"Wait, what?" Hermione asked, incredulous. "Steal your magic?"
Daphne looked at her funny.
"Of course," she said. "They envy us the magic our blood gave us, and they would take our power as their own if they could. There are old stories of magic being stolen by hedgewitches, a healthy person turned into a Squib overnight."
Hermione bit her lip. She wanted to contradict Daphne, to say that such a thing was ridiculous, but she hesitated. She'd seen Dark rituals in books that indicated such a thing might be possible, though her claim was still likely to be untrue.
"So you sent me over there, even thinking they might steal my magic?" she asked dryly. "How kind of you."
"You were the only reasonable choice," Daphne pointed out. "Your magic comes to you from Magic itself, and Magic protects you directly. Even if they tried to steal your magic, you would be likely gifted with more."
That was a twisted sort of logic, but it made a weird sort of sense, Hermione supposed. If you believed she got her magic gifted to her by a higher power or source, it made sense that she'd have more protection than another might. Though she wanted to object and argue, she just sighed. Sometimes, working within the restraints of the legacy the prophecy had given her (and her own self-imposed restraints, though she hadn't meant them to restrain her at the time) was exhausting.
"I'll woo the hedgewitches," Hermione conceded. She glanced up. "Are there specific places to find them?"
"Theo will know," Daphne said. "He has a map. I don't remember why."
"I think his father used it," Pansy volunteered unexpectedly. "You know. Before."
They all fell silent at the ominous reminder that Theo's father had been a Death Eater, and Hermione shivered.
"I'll talk to Theo and see what I can get from him," she said. She made a face. "I already owe him a favor as it is, so we'll see how well this goes."
Theo agreed to meet with Hermione at The Leaky Cauldron, and he listened to what Hermione needed with mild curiosity.
"I do have such a map, that I could provide if I wanted to," he said. He smirked. "You're just racking up the favors you owe me, aren't you?"
"I'm well aware." Hermione rolled her eyes. "I'd honestly rather you start cashing them in sooner rather than later. I don't want them to accumulate too much."
"I'm still figuring out how best to get what I want from you," Theo admitted, looking at her skeptically. "I haven't figured out a way to do it that wouldn't require you to be memory charmed afterward."
Hermione jerked in shock.
"Memory charmed?" she hissed, eyes narrowing. "What exactly would you have me do?"
"It's not like that," Theo protested. "I just need a way to ensure you don't spill my secrets to anyone."
Hermione shuddered to think just what secrets Theo was so desperate to keep.
"When you figure out a way to go about whatever you need, you let me know," she said dryly.
Theo smirked.
"I can let you copy the map," he said. "You'll have to come with me, though." He looked at her sideways. "It's in my father's study."
Hermione swallowed hard. "Alright."
Theo's voice was calm and self-assured as he called out "Nott Manor" into the Floo, and Hermione went first, stepping into the fire and tucking her elbows tightly in. She kept her eyes tightly closed as she spun and whooshed through the Floo Network, only opening them to stumble out of a fireplace and catch her balance in what looked to be a very dimly lit foyer. She was Vanishing the soot from her robes when Theo stepped out a moment later, his eyebrows rising high.
"We're not allowed to do magic over the summer, you know," he said conversationally.
Hermione shot him a dark look. "Going to tattle on me to the Ministry?"
Theo laughed and shook his head. "Never mind. Come on."
The entire house had high ceilings but seemed dusty and dimly lit. Rays of light that filtered in through dirty windows captured floating dust motes in the air, drifting aimlessly through large, empty halls. There was a slight echo to the Manor, as if there wasn't enough carpeting or furniture to absorb any sounds made.
"Big house," Hermione commented.
"It's supposed to house the entire Nott family," Theo said. His voice was strained. "That used to include siblings, branch families, parents, the whole brigade. Now, it's just me and my father left."
Hermione wondered what had happened to the rest of the Nott family. She knew Thoros Nott was one of the original Death Eaters. Had the rest of his family fought for Voldemort in the war and not been as lucky as him to survive?
She followed Theo up a long, curving staircase to the second floor of the manor. This floor seemed much more lived in, with framed pictures and portraits up in the hall and carpeting on the floor.
"This is the wing I use," Theo said, gesturing to doors as they passed. "That's my bedroom, that's my potions room, that's my personal library, and that's my reading room."
Hermione wondered why he didn't just read in his personal library. It seemed silly to need to need to go to a room away from all the books to read.
At the end of the corridor, there was another staircase, and this one curved up to a much darker floor. There were few windows, if any, and though the wooden floorboards gleamed, they were dark and stained.
"My father doesn't need to come up here much anymore," Theo admitted. "All the same, try to leave everything how you found it."
"Where is your father right now?" Hermione asked.
"Out," Theo said dully. "Who knows what he's up to?"
At the end of the hall behind a large, imposing wooden door was a study, and when Theo lit the torches around the room, Hermione gasped.
The study was a study taken from classical times, with huge, high-reaching bookshelves around the room and giant maps pinned around the room. There was an old drafter's desk set up against one wall, as well as a large table in the center of the room with large drawers underneath it, long enough to hold other rolled-up maps. There was another smaller, more conservative desk made of a rich gleaming wood as well, and the globe on the corner of it looked like it was made of semi-precious gemstones.
"Hedgewitches, right?" Theo asked over his shoulder. He was already rummaging through rolled up papers in the drawers of the large table.
"Yes," Hermione said, drifting closer. "Anything you can find to do with that."
Theo hummed as he went through maps quickly, checking titles written on the back before shifting them aside. Hermione was surprised to see many of the maps were titled with names of countries from the continent. She didn't expect Thoros Nott to have maps of magical France or Spain.
"This might work?" Theo said, pausing to look at one. "Well, maybe."
He untied and unrolled the map over the huge table, and Hermione lit her wand and looked closer, curious.
The map was a huge drawing of the British Isles and Ireland. Key landmarks were labeled, such as Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley, Gringotts, St. Mungo's, and the Ministry of Magic, but there were other landmarks drawn on and labeled too, with the map divided up into rough sections. There, in Wiltshire, there was a structure labeled Malfoy Manor, and there, in Devon, near a small familiar village was a building simply labeled Lovegoods.
"How come Malfoy gets 'Malfoy Manor', but Luna only gets 'Lovegoods'?" Hermione asked Theo, scrunching her nose. "I've been to her house. It might not be a manor, but it's certainly something."
"Luna doesn't live in her ancestral home," Theo said, pointing over to Ireland at a larger structure labeled Lovegood Teach. "Will this work?"
"Where are the hedgewitches located?" Hermione asked, and Theo winced.
"They're kind of around each of the manors and estates?" he said. "This one doesn't show their villages."
"I am not going to traipse all over the Malfoy lands just looking for hedgewitches around," Hermione said, her hands on her hips, and Theo sighed and began rifling through more of the maps.
When he was distracted with the others, Hermione quietly cast Gemino and made a copy of the current map, though, just in case, which she hurriedly rolled up, shrunk, and stuffed into her robes.
"Aha!" Theo pulled out another map, unrolling it. "I think this one is it."
This map was also a large map of the British Isles and Ireland, but this time, it had clear sections marked on it and little areas and villages marked down.
"These are the hedgewitch community hubs," Theo said with satisfaction. "It's hard to mark them, because they all tend to live far apart and move around, but these are the places where it was observed they congregated the most."
"Perfect," Hermione breathed, looking over the map with fascinated eyes. It seemed that each area had at least one community hub, possibly two, and there were a few larger places that seemed to be on the borders of several areas, possibly for larger hubs of multiple communities there. She beamed up at Theo. "Thank you, Theo! This is exactly what I need."
Theo looked thrown for a moment. "Ah… sure thing, Hermione."
Hermione happily cast Gemino and rolled up her own copy of the map, shrinking it and tucking it into her pocket. She turned to regard Theo when she was done, who had finished reorganizing the maps and carefully putting them away.
"Do you know what favor you'd like yet?" she asked, keeping her tone light.
Theo winced.
"I mean, I know what the favor I want is," he said. "I just don't know how to ask you for it yet."
"You could try with words?" Hermione suggested, and Theo laughed.
"I'll get around to it, don't worry," he told her, his eyes glinting. "You go worry about wooing the hedgewitches to vote for you." He paused. "Though I don't think they can hurt you, since you're New Blood and all, you should still be careful. There are some that might try to take your magic anyway."
Hermione bit her lip hard and merely thanked him for his advice.