Author's Note:
Soooo...catching up on old friends is not always beneficial if you're in the middle of trying to switch career tracks (even if it's not far). An old teammate of mine from uni turns out to be a director (well, directrix, to be accurate) of a tech start-up. Shite. (No, remembering that she's an overachieving type A personality still doesn't help).
Sorry for the delayed update.
To some of the reviews without FFNet, accounts, I'll have to settle with replying them here.
To the guest reviewer(s) who wrote in detail about what they like as well as speculate in-depth about the plot: Thanks for the effort. I don't think I can remember all of the points addressed when I can't personally reply to the reviews, but I can try to address some of them (like I did in the writer's notes of the previous chapters. I might not answer all, particularly when I think the answer would be spoilery and/or would be addressed in the next chapter or two, but I do try.
To Ash: Thanks for the impassioned comment! I, for one, am glad that you accidentally clicked submit before you're done, because it meant I get a second bonus review. Heh. Well, my reviews and fav numbers are what they are and I don't know what else to do at this point except just letting time take care of things. (My sister might run her tumblr blog for SA, but her life is currently hectic that she'd been dormant this week and the last).
To Clem:
Merci beaucoup pour votre avis! J'apprécie vraiment les compliments. Vous êtes le premier lecteur francophone á enregistrer. Je pense que c'est cool. Je suis est vaguement joyeuse. Also, that's as much French as I dare to use before I stumble and end up making a rather glaring mistake.
As I write, I aim to immerse the reader in my particular version of Hogwarts, so I'm certainly happy that the supporting characters are fascinating enough to make the world, the story's milieu feel real.
Thanks also for your kind words. I think any talent I have is not too different compared to the talent any one of us have as humans. To be a writer is to be afflicted with the drive to write, to create. You either get over it, or the drive is too strong and you just have to keep writing. You'll be constantly disenchanted with how the scene came out in your hands compared to how it played out in your head. Over time and effort, you improve (seriously, you have to see how I wrote six, ten years ago).
'-
43 Slow Sunday
Breakfast time. Flashback to the first time Hermione intentionally used two dark curses. Hermione is making a grand sketch of the current wizarding world with some help from Emma. Maggie Edelstein gets shanghaied by Madam Álava.
'-
The weirdest thing about the morning was about how completely normal it was.
She wasn't surprised or regretful; Hermione had scarcely done anything she hadn't expected and partially planned for.
How this came to be for her was because the older she became and the more she knew, her mind become honed at calculating the odds of events. The more information she had, the more accurate her intuition would be for future possibilities opening and closing (of course, she wouldn't rely on them for actual forecasts without doing some real calculations with pen and paper to back it up). Ever since she finished her Mastery in Arithmancy, her mind automatically calculated probabilities for simple events at the back of her mind. It was a comforting background hum, almost an afterthought.
It was also why she'd grudgingly accepted that she can't afford to lie to herself or indulge in denial.
In an arithmancer's forecast, a blindness that big would easily lead to a lethal mistake. Hermione won't gamble with her friends' lives just because she couldn't face her own weaknesses and human flaws. As such, she always made a reckoning of her own interests no matter ow unexpected. She was attracted to Tom and he could actually be a decent friend (if you didn't threaten his life and you don't let him walk all over you and treat you like another easily disposable pawn). Ergo, the probability that she would sleep with him was noticeably higher than a random coin toss would come up with heads.
Tom's lack of concern, on the other hand, really needed no explanation (he was shameless, why would he have any regrets?)
He found her nudity aversion and embarrassment amusing, towards which she simply ignored his reactions. She summoned all her clothes one by one, and before she wore them, she kept the blanket around her. Not being used to being ignored, he ended up distracting her before she'd summoned all her clothes.
"Tom!"
"I'm not stopping you from doing anything," he murmured to her breasts. How on earth was she supposed to think when his hands were already drifting lower?
Alright, she wasn't trying as hard as she could to stop him and they ended up getting carried away, but she told herself that it was only once. After that, she was more interested in food—she hadn't even had breakfast. Her schedule was usually very full on weekdays, and it was why she was determined to use Sunday to the fullest. She certainly couldn't start thinking properly without first getting a proper meal.
"Clothes." Hermione's tone brooked no argument.
"Are they really necessary?"
She ignored his amusement with aplomb.
"Well, we're not chimpanzees, so I refuse to eat like one."
"All the people au naturel in classical artworks would disagree with you." Tom replied, puncturing her argument easily. She gave him an unamused look.
"We're definitely not in anything like Eden or Arcadia." Hermione summoned her shirt.
He moved with far less enthusiasm than she did. At least until he saw that she was only wearing her shirt other than her underwear. That raised his brow.
"You're dressed for breakfast?"
She shrugged. "I didn't say public breakfast. It would do for a private breakfast."
His expression wasn't easily readable, but the part where his gaze drifted to her legs wasn't hard to understand. There was a table somewhere between the bed and the balcony at the end of the room (goodness, was it really necessary to have this much space for one bedroom?) it seemed convenient enough. This was when she figured out that the Room of Requirement had the same amenities that any of the staff lodgings in Hogwarts has—full room service. Tom had successfully summoned a house elf and requested breakfast to be brought to them. What they did get an arrangement of many dishes laid on the table.
A shirtless Tom openly rolled his eyes when she began asking the House Elf (Melsy) about where the kitchen got the recipe for each of the dishes. Midway, Hermione carelessly summoned for parchments and quills—and she was almost buried under the amount that was flying her way.
Tom reacted faster and stopped all of them with a flick of his wand. He passed a random one to her along with a quill. His look told her she really should know better.
She gave him a sheepish grin. "Um, thanks."
"You're welcome. Now, can we actually get on with breakfast?"
"After I wrote all this down."
Tom made a put-upon sigh but didn't actually stop her. He merely summoned the scroll that she'd seen him work on last night in the library, quill included, and did his own scribbling as she turned to Melsy and continued the impromptu interview. Hermione found his lack of protest weirdly unnerving.
(Why? Because at this point, Ron would have told her to 'put the quill down, for Merlin's sakes, and let's just eat'.)
"You're not asking me why I'm doing this?" She finally asked.
"Obviously, you insist on compiling that house elf cookbook you think is important to do, to record their 'contribution' that the wizarding world tends to gloss over or even consider as their own creation. Personally, I doubt it would make much of a difference—people see what they wish to see. But you won't let that stop you at all, would you?" He didn't even look up from whatever it was he was working on when he gave her the answer effortlessly.
Hermione was stunned.
"You remembered that?"
It was her tone that caught his attention. "You said it yourself when we took our dinner in the kitchen."
"We've talked about so many things," she said.
"And I've yet to become senile. It's merely a case of listening and remembering—not exactly chasing down the blackmailer to the king of Bohemia, is it?" He replied as easily. That was when he began to watch her expressions carefully. She barely paid any attention to the milk she was drinking, too surprised.
"It's so elementary, Hermione."
She sputtered, almost choking on her drink. If he wasn't so casually involved in spreading marmalade over his toast (which she was almost certain was a façade), she was sure he'd look bloody smug. That was why she bit back the reflex to shout 'don't tell me you read Arthur Conan Doyle!'
"Did you happen to have close friends before?" He asked, out of the blue.
"Close friends?"
"Male, female," he offered without much care about the details. "Someone you can perhaps imagine yourself in a romantic relationship with."
The brunette witch could've said no, but the way her cheeks coloured probably already told him that her answer was yes.
"Not that it's any of your business, but yes, there's at least one."
"At least?"
"Remember the holes in my memories? They're here to stay. There may be a few more people, but I was sure they're not really close friends either." She said. He nodded in understanding.
"Well, your surprise implies that even your closest friends have never quite paid attention to your interests. An observer is lead to conclude that they've never really regarded it as important. Perhaps they thought your technical interests were merely academic assignments, as opposed to your actual passion."
Tom's gaze met hers. "Am I getting close? Ah, so I am close."
Hermione had no idea why he needed to even ask the rhetorical question. She knew her face was practically transparent to him.
Yet it was precisely because he'd politely refrained from judging the people she'd known that the difference stood out in stark contrast to her. A wave of his hand floated a cup of tea in her direction. She picked it up out of mid-air. He made it milkier than most people liked and a tad sweet—exactly the way she liked it.
(Ron still overshoots on the sugar all the way to the end, and he's just as careless with the milk.)
How sad was her life if her friends-with-benefits actually knew who she was better than her first serious boyfriend? (That is, if Ron wasn't her only serious boyfriend).
"Hermione?"
"Nothing. Just old memories." She brushed off his questioning glance with a shake of her head. "Anyway, I'd rather stay in the present. Don't you?"
He raised his cup to her easily. "To the present, then."
'-
"You know something? I told Eugenie that you came back very late and had left very early this morning." Lakshmi made a casual comment as Hermione slid next to her just in time to pick out some desserts. The table was half empty, but that was expected on a Sunday because people attend breakfast following a more spread-out schedule (there was no early class everyone needed to rush to in the morning).
As this was Hogwarts and known for good eating, there was no meal of the day that came without dessert. In fact, one can even get some sort of dessert if they were to drop in at the kitchen in the middle of the night.
"You did? Why, how ever will I thank you?" Hermione said with mock surprise.
The other Ravenclaw turned fully to face her. "I think Riddle's rubbing off you more than you realise."
"Please. I was sarcastic before I knew him. I simply used to hold myself back more."
"Still, he's rubbing off you."
"Oh, I don't know," the brunette mused. "If we're going by actual examples, most people would think that it's the other way around, isn't it? Have you seen him being sarcastic before he met me? I can just see the gossip rags' headline now, 'muggleborn doxy corrupts rising talent'."
"Damn! I've been trying to work something like that into a conversation and you just drop it so easily!" Lakshmi cursed. Hermione grinned.
"I'm sure you'd find something more scandalous to speculate about."
"It's not that easy," the dark-haired witch complained. "You're Hogwarts Nightingale and Riddle's too good at keeping his appearance of a perfect student."
Hermione shrugged. "Not my fault. And hey, you do notice that he actually put on less of an act when I'm around, right?"
"And most people who'd accidentally seen that would rather pretend they didn't. He has more cutting edges in him than a butcher's convention." Lakshmi answered dryly.
"I'm sure that's just because they met him when he's rather tense."
Hermione didn't hide her grin when Lakshmi stared at her in disbelief. "Really? Is that your best excuse?"
"Well, no. My best excuse is, you haven't given me enough time to ease that tension down." She replied flippantly as she hid her smile behind a slice of summer pudding.
"Rriiiiiight," Lakshmi muttered. "Because just half an hour in a broom closet wouldn't do."
"Broom closet, really? How unhygienic!"
The dark-haired witch snorted at Hermione's faux outrage, before she glared at the transfer student for causing her to make a sound that was definitely not elegant.
"You—! That's it. You owe me some stories, Hermione."
"What is it about, now?" Eugenie asked with a tired sigh from Lakshmi's other side to turn at the brunette. "Did you happen to use a different shortcut that went through a broom closet somewhere?"
"Nope, no shortcuts. I absolutely took the long way back to the dorms," Hermione said, this morning, she absolutely didn't add. There was a reason she wasn't currently wearing last night's clothes.
"And that long detour involved seeing Tom Riddle," Lakshmi murmured under her breath. It was Eugenie's turn to be surprised.
"I did say I was going to fight him last night."
"What happened?" Eugenie asked.
"Well, we both ended up with rather extensive burns. Some of them might not even be first-degree." Hermione replied.
"You were at the infirmary last night, right? That would explain everything." Eugenie said in a horrified tone.
"What? No! I wouldn't even consider going directly to see Maggie Edelstein like that. We might as well just finish burning ourselves—because she'd absolutely roast us for being that reckless in our fights. I healed most of our wounds and Tom got the rest, of course. I'm not crazy."
"That is entirely debatable," Eugenie muttered.
Lakshmi gave her an impressed look while Hermione's gaze was a betrayed one; 'Et tu, Eugenie?' The blonde herself was blushing. Apparently, she hadn't intended to say her thoughts out loud.
It was Lucretia's unexpected chuckle from across the table that broke the silence—she'd been talking to a slender witch that nonetheless had a forceful aura.
"A large burned area, you say?" The unknown witch asked.
Her sharp eyes were a yellowish shade of amber and reminded Hermione of a hawk. Even with her Ravenclaw tie, there was a slight something in her tone that made Hermione guess she was one of the Germans.
"Oh, please, a good application of Episkey would do. Of course, you'd need something more specialised if you smell burning fat and not just skin, but it's nothing beyond what the Hogwarts' Infirmary can handle." Hermione replied.
"You make me regret not taking Advanced Defence, Fräulein." The witch said.
"See, Verena? I told you it was a good idea. Hermione and Tom are really pushing everyone's duelling standards up." Julia butted in. Hermione hadn't even noticed that she was nearby.
"Riddle? Beatrix and Wilhelmina were in his class last year and he is not extraordinary. Too complacent in dealing with his year-mates." Verena said.
"Oh, that's not true since his all-out fight with Hermione. He flattened Moorcock and Colliers in less than a minute. You should have seen his duel with Raj too. It was fantastic." Frankly, Julia's enthusiasm was bordering on bloodthirsty.
"Perhaps I will." The German witch did not take her eyes off Hermione. "Lucretia, if you don't mind…?"
"Not at all. Hermione, this is Verena von Valagust, sixth-year and Ravenclaw seeker. Verena, this is Hermione Curie, fifth-year and also my dormmate."
"Hogwarts own Nightingale. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."
The witch's smile was very slight, if there was even one at all to begin with. Hermione's smile was a little awkward, though she doubted the other witch noticed.
"It's a pleasure to meet you too."
That nickname is going to follow me everywhere, isn't it?
'-
Hermione decided that she'd use the convenient free time she had right now to try to chart the current flow of history. Of course, before she would even feel confident to start predicting the direction of the future, she'd have to actually know the present pretty well. That was why she greeted Emma Eccleston without any hesitation right at the Slytherin table—it helped that her general area was empty of other students.
It was clear that the seventh-year prefect had already finished eating and was more occupied in reading. Whether she chose to stay there simply because she wasn't in the mood to move yet or if she was waiting for someone else, Hermione had no idea.
"Emma! G'morning."
"Hermione? Good morning. What brings you here?"
The dark-haired witch was only surprised for a second or two before she was back to her level self. She was reading a thick tome on arithmancy, but easily set it aside with Hermione's presence. Hermione herself was almost distracted by the book. Bridget Wenlock? I thought I've read all of her books, but I'm pretty sure I haven't read this one. What's the title—
"Hermione?"
She was snapped out of her meandering thoughts by Emma's voice. She thought the seventh-year's mouth curved slightly up on one corner. Or, she might just be imagining things—this was the ever-professional Emma that they were talking about.
"I hear that your family is in the Ministry?" Hermione asked.
"My parents are in different departments, but yes, they are. Two of my older brothers are there too." She answered, moving aside easily. Hermione accepted the implied invitation and took a seat beside her. Hermione shook the left sleeve of her robe loose as she unstuck the sticking charm she cast to a spare scroll there. It fell out with the movement of her arm. She knew she had a verbatim-quill to record this conversation somewhere on her…
"Well, I was trying to map our way forward when I realise that I don't actually know the conditions in wizarding Britain enough to do that accurately."
"You wish to know more about the Ministry, then?"
"Yes. I hope it's not too much of a bother for you?"
"Considering that most people aren't usually interested, it's not a bother at all. How much time do you have?"
Hermione thought over her (rough) schedule carefully. "Well, I think I have around an hour for now."
The seventh-year nodded as her gaze drifted up distractedly, following some invisible organisation chart. "Ah, enough to cover the basics, then."
"The basics?"
Behind the glasses, the excited gleam in Emma's usually placid grey eyes was making Hermione a mite worried.
"You already know the minister and his controversial plans for reform, right? There is no limit on the number of undersecretaries that the Minister for Magic can have, though choosing too many would earn the ire of the Wizengamot. Historically, the most anyone ever has without causing an uproar is seven. One has to think about the budget for their appointments too, after all."
"Alright, seven undersecretaries at most." Hermione summarised.
"The traditional posts are three, first for the Home Undersecretary, the second for the Undersecretary of Health and Magical Maladies and the third is the Undersecretary of Justice, which is usually responsible for the DMLE as well as the legal system. Not every minister fills all three and sometimes they appoint new undersecretaries for particular purposes…"
'-
Hermione lay on her stomach on her bed, in her dorm, unrolled scrolls and parchments spread around her for her charting project. Lakshmi hadn't even woken up yet while Eugenie was certainly out and about, perhaps even with other Ravenclaw fifth-years. She had the weird realisation then that she probably knew more Slytherin fifth-years than Ravenclaw ones, thanks to Tom's minions (friends, Hermione, you should call them friends).
She shook the thought aside and focused back on her chart.
The way Hermione had observed over several years, there were several important pillars within wizarding society in Britain. She needed to understand what they were like and where they were right now to have any chance of forecasting the future.
The first is the most obvious, the Ministry of Magic, the bureaucrats that made up the government.
She had a pretty good idea of what the place was like during the 1940s thanks to Emma. The Ministry governs the use of magic through the British Isles and monitors it. There are magics that are undoubtedly dark as well as those that are unquestionably light, but there are far, far more that lay in between. This is where the Ministry comes in with their decrees. A few years out of Hogwarts gave Hermione more than enough field experience to realise that what the Ministry decrees as illegal is not always instantly damaging or dark. Harry's experienced Auror unit, for one, had many spells in their regular arsenal that was supposed to be illegal due to some rule or another. She was determined that once she became Minister for Magic, those were the first things she'd change.
Hermione's guideline has always been simple (and Harry agreed with her rule of thumb). Are you inflicting unnecessary pain on another being? Could you reverse the damage you did in a timely manner (say, after the suspects were secured)? If the answer to the first and the second was no and yes, in that order, then the spell could be used.
(Of course, every time a newbie or someone from the more 'vanilla' side of Aurors get assigned to their unit, the established members grumble because it meant shelving a good chunk of their spells until the newbie becomes one of them or gets rotated out again).
It did take her a while to pull herself out of her youthful blind trust in the Ministry's rules. To be exact, she'd resisted until the first time when Harry could've easily died.
(It was only three years after the War with Voldemort finished too. It was the first of the serious dark lords that they had to face).
It had been one of their missions that went, as Draco would've put it, tits over arse (she found it amusing that he overcompensated for his posh background by picking up all the curses he can find every time he was seconded to the DMLE). Someone had cast some sort of blood poisoning curse on Harry. Hermione had cast a strong and rather complex stasis spell on him to stop its progress, knocking him out instantly. Theoretically, all they needed to do was drop him off at St. Mungo's and let the specialist healers do the work, as he was as stable as he could be under the spell.
Well, 'theoretically' clearly never spoke to their attackers, which had them pinned down and outnumbered three to one, in a small cottage in a village abandoned since World War II. Hermione thought it was appalling that they'd missed an ambush when they knew they were trying to flush out the base of a rising dark lord.
Ron ran through the details of the entire operation over in his head, step-by-step, just like he'd easily run through the steps of any of his chess matches (it wasn't as if they could do much but plan or try to snipe any fool who extended his head out far enough). The redhead ended up cursing the scouts which he'd pinpointed as the source of the bad intel in their strategy. Some newer Aurors were going to get their hide chewed out, Hermione had thought.
That is, if any of them were left alive to do so afterwards.
After all, they needed Harry's firepower to even out the odds. Waking Harry up meant allowing the poison to spread rot in his bloodstream once more.
He might be able to get them out…only to drop dead at the end.
It was oh-so-very fortunate that she'd been helping Draco record the books in his family library, and they'd slowed down every time there was a fascinating book. One of those had a blood draining curse. Next to that was a blood sucking curse, which takes the blood of the victim into the blood stream of the second target. She and Draco had pored over the book and studied it on Saturday out of sheer morbid curiosity. It was hilarious to see the Harry and Draco's reaction of mutual disbelief and a general expression of 'oh-god-tell-me-it-isn't-true' when St. Mungo's test declared that their blood was compatible for transfers to each other, but it was certainly useful in an emergency like then.
"I'm going to drain Harry's blood from the point of the rot and however far it has spread." Hermione had said to the room. "I'm going to throw out more than is strictly necessary, just to be safe. To compensate for that, I might take a quarter litre of your blood, Malfoy."
He went paler, if it was at all possible, but when he spoke, there was no doubt in his voice.
"Do it, Granger."
Hermione used both curses she'd learned over the weekend. It was indeed as effective as the grimoire said—Harry woke up ready to deal a lot of damage. The team easily fell into their positions, supporting each other's movements even through improvisations. They were so in sync that observers seeing the memory later on might be fooled into thinking that it was choreographed.
They had all piled in at one of the DMLE's large pensieves and watched Ron's memories. The excuse was to use it as a case study (before Ron reamed the scouts that had slipped up). Hermione knew that most of the boys wanted to bask in the admiration of their peers and juniors.
"We're like the fucking Bolshoi," Draco had crowed.
"Which would be cool if I had any idea of what in bloody hell that is." Ron replied.
"Philistine." Draco snorted.
"Nob."
"Twat."
"Gangrene."
"Gonorrhoea."
"If the both of you don't shut up now, you'll know exactly what gonorrhoea feels like for at least five minutes," Harry interrupted acerbically as he put on his glasses with his right hand, green unamused eyes staring at them. There was what looked like a black spider web tattoo over his left arm, trailing down to almost his wrist—it was the scar from the curse that hasn't completely healed yet, the curse's point of impact being the centre of the web. Even then, his arm was slightly weak. The Healers told him it wouldn't be back to full strength for at least a week.
"You can't do that!" Ron protested. "You don't even know the spell."
"Guess how long the check up at St. Mungo's took? Guess how long it took Hermione to teach me?"
Hermione pretended she didn't see the looks of betrayal that both Ron and Draco sent in her direction while desperately holding in her laughter. Susan Bones had no compunction laughing out loud, and neither did Tonks.
St. Mungo had declared Harry clear of any curse when they finally made it there. Hermione would find out there and then that she'd managed to pull enough tainted blood with the so-called dark curse.
From that point on, Hermione never looked back.
If she found a new and useful spell in an obscure tome somewhere, if they'd already tested it forwards and backwards for any possible side-effects and they found nothing unexpected, she'd pass it on to Harry and Ron. Draco did the same when he found something from their family library, except he passed it to her so she and Luna could test it in the Unspeakable labs and then passed it to the veteran Aurors. Even Neville got in on it as well—sometimes he came across mysterious old scrolls when he was hunting for exotic plants in far-flung corners of the globe. Ginny did too, though Hermione had no idea where Ginny got the tomes from, considering that she was a reporter covering lifestyle of all things.
(Daphne was…oh, this was before they became closer with Daphne. That was, what, some two more wannabe dark lords down the line? Neither of which was as strong as the first, or as the fourth one that came afterward. Ah, so she still remembered that detail. Not bad.)
So, the Ministry of Magic, Hermione thought to herself as she reread the transcript of her talk with Emma, highlighting parts of it with different coloured inks. The Minister is an idealist. The thing is, the man seems to forget at times that four of his five undersecretaries are from old families. The fifth might have a muggle last name, but he's still a halfblood, connected to at least one pureblood family. The background profile of his undersecretaries is more-or-less a mirror of the Ministry in general.
Hermione sighed.
It's still disproportionally dominated by people from old families as well as the well-connected halfbloods, though the muggleborn is a noticeable minority that's still increasing.
Well, that explained the noise over any suggestions of implementing an entrance exam for Ministry employees. She suspected that Minister Spencer-Moon's goodwill wasn't getting him anywhere.
Hermione stared at the chart that Emma had helped her draw, along with footnotes upon footnotes of who was in the same year with who, whose families had historically been together often. She did miss being able to just hand over these stuffs to Draco (even if she can't remember when exactly she got involved in politics, of all things). But needs must and all that. Add in another talk with Oswin, and she'd probably have enough information on the whole Ministry (or the top and a chunk of the middle tiers). Enough to start calculating their opinion and bearing.
So, where does that leave her now? Ah, the other institutions of wizarding society after the Ministry.
The second pillar would be the Wizengamot. At a glance, it is the wizarding version of the House of Lords, what with the hereditary seats as well as other specially-assigned seats. It also had the capability of the House of Lords old ability to be the final 'jury of their peers' for any gentleman disputing the decision of a lower court. Yet the analogy didn't fit well considering that they also passed laws, which should've been the purview of the House of Commons if they're following the UK's template.
Basically, the Wizengamot had all the law-making power while they're also the highest court of the land, the pain-in-the-rear, overbalanced, bastards.
Hermione could feel another headache coming on. It probably meant finding the newest Burke's Peerage in the Hogwarts library. She needed to see exactly which houses had seats on the Wizengamot. An unaccountable memory of hers remembered well enough that it wasn't just the Sacred 28 houses that had seats there. In fact, not even all the houses of the Sacred 28 were included, because she remembered that some of the newer ones didn't make the cut of being old enough a couple of centuries ago.
Then, she needed to figure out who currently held those seats for those families. Usually it was the current head of the house. Sometimes if the head was old and/or bored, it might be passed down to the heir already even before their death.
Alright, what comes after the Wizengamot?
The professional class—they're the third pillar of wizarding society, and some of them may overlap with the clerical staff of the Ministry. People like Madam Álava and Healer Orpington. They were the people who made the world go 'round. They may be low profile and pragmatic, and generally dissuaded from messing with politics because they were busier handling real life, but they do have their opinions. They are also perfectly able to passive-aggressively stall, block or even quietly sabotage any ministry decree that they consider as foolish, unnecessary or outright evil.
Technically, they were the hardest to check for her. She probably could start with Nurse Edelstein and her circle of friends, and maybe even Healer Orpington and Madam Álava. She also had no doubt that many Hufflepuffs have contacts that are actually quite capable at working for a living instead of just coasting on the income from their estates.
It might be a good idea to ask Agatha or Andrew about it.
The fourth pillar would be the media, which in the small and unquestionably insular wizarding world, was mainly the Daily Prophet. On paper, it would seem impossible for an orphan student to investigate a privately-held newspaper company of that size. But she was pretty sure that the article about her in the Daily Prophet was made at Tom's behest, so finding that out was not as difficult as it seems. Especially since she also remembered Lucretia making a similar assertion easily.
The fifth pillar of wizarding society would be Hogwarts.
It may be small and look like just another school, but its importance was reflected in how practically all the heirs of Britain's pureblood families were educated there. It was also clear that the current generation was unusually filled with almost all the offspring from the major families and even several from neighbouring countries due to the war in the continent. The political shifts and eddies in Hogwarts were, more than ever, a microcosm that precisely mirrored the power balances of the greater wizarding world.
Unlike in her generation, the old families' power was still more obviously felt. The old wizarding culture was still proud and dominant as they had not been broken by the fall of Voldemort and the blood-soaked guilt for supporting him. It can be easily seen by how prejudice can still be uttered carelessly among the students with barely any censure given to them. She was sure that neither Hattie Perks' nor Adrian Smith's experiences with bullying because of their background was unique.
Hogwarts was also a place where many talented wizards and witches came to teach—Dumbledore's presence was a good example of that. Considering how Dexter's past had surprised her, she suspected that other teachers have backgrounds that were just as odd and impressive. She only needed the names of the entire student body as well as all the staff retained. Investigating them personally would certainly be easier than the Ministry or Wizengamot.
She'd also need to formulate the rules currently in effect within wizarding society right now and add that in, which basically meant the norms and culture.
Hermione groaned.
Oh, for the love of…
Pureblood etiquette and code of conduct. She had to know them enough to know how to add them in. These were definitely not her favourite.
These include the explicit, such as how a wizard may express interest in a witch, and the implicit, which was probably a ton other rules that Hermione had completely missed. She'd probably need to ask Lucretia to be sure, and one of the Slytherin wizards to double check (Pendleton or Starkey came to mind)—just in case there were rules that wizards were more familiar with than witches and vice versa.
Hermione sighed as she wrote her outline down. After that, she rolled up her scrolls and made her way to the library for that Burke's Peerage she'd planned.
'-
It had been a peaceful morning in the infirmary for Maggie, and she was plotting on where to have a lunch date with her beau. It might not be a good idea to go to Paris until the war is over, but she was pretty sure she could visit London. At least that was her plan until the flash of green lit her fireplace.
Madam Álava stepped out of the fireplace in no time, her all-black outfit giving her the impression of being the Dowager Queen of Crows, though her grey hair was a contrast to that. She'd never liked floo-calling and would rather visit directly altogether.
"Granny?"
"Maggie. Are you free today?"
"Well, there hasn't been anyone wounded—"
"Good. You're coming with me to St. Mungo's."
"Granny Álava!"
"Oh, just send a message to Hermione and ask her to man the infirmary in your place for an hour or so."
Nurse Edelstein couldn't help but open her mouth.
"But she's—"
"Competent enough to take care of any idiocy that a student would see fit to inflict upon themselves and their peers." Esmeralda Álava. "Though on the downside, they probably wouldn't learn that way."
"She's a student and…"
Madam Álava stared at Maggie without shifting, one of her eyebrows raised. "And who would check, Maggie?"
Maggie threw her hands in the air. "Dippet wouldn't even know I left until several days. That's only if one of the teachers say anything."
"Precisely."
Madam Álava took a pinch of powder from above the fireplace and called out for St. Mungo's. The nurse resigned herself to following suit after she'd managed to call on the house elf attending the infirmary and asked her to pass a message to Hermione. They arrived one after the other at one of St. Mungo's staff lobbies—both Maggie and Madam Álava was wearing the caduceus pin of the healing profession. St. Mungo's floo terminal was certainly sophisticated enough to sort people to different fireplaces based on whether they were wearing the identifiers of the healing profession or not.
"Now, I want you to see the handiwork of your apprentice." Madam Álava said. Maggie was feeling like she was suddenly thrown into the middle of a scene in a play, without a script. She quickly ran to catch up with Madam Álava before slowing her strides down again.
"My apprentice?"
"Well, I can't exactly be Hermione's Master yet, can't I?"
"Um, why not?"
"Because she's still a Hogwarts student, Maggie, and your practice is in Hogwarts. Do try to keep up. She'll have to be your apprentice for the time being if she's to improve as a nurse or healer."
"But-but we don't even know if she wants to become one!"
They'd turned around at a small office. Maggie knew well enough that it was not Madam Álava's office—if anyone gave her any, it would have been something far more impressive, and certainly on the third floor and higher.
"The patient files are declassified by my request because the considerations for an apprenticeship are important enough to provide details of a patient's treatments. The names are of course removed, but if you're still in Hogwarts, I'm sure it would not be difficult for you to find any one of them."
Indeed, there was a set of medical records on Madam Álava's hands. Maggie simply had no idea what that has to do with Hermione suddenly being her apprentice. With a sigh of defeat, she acknowledged that she was moving blind here.
"I…I don't understand."
Madam Álava stared at her critically. "Part of your hair is curled and let down instead of completely held up and you're wearing a brighter lipstick. Your brain is taking a holiday right now, isn't it? Because you can't take your mind off your date for even a few minutes?"
Maggie blushed, the colour of her cheeks clashing awkwardly with her copper hair.
"It's Sunday! It's officially my day off, or well, half-day!"
"These," Madam Álava practically dropped the files in Maggie's hands, "are the victims of the Hogsmeade attack that Hermione stabilised, no, treated before she sent them to St. Mungo's. Read them, then read the report that she sent in later."
Nurse Edelstein paused, surprised. Madam Álava was still evaluating her shrewdly, but it was less pointed than before.
"Report?"
"Yes, by verbatim-quill. Now, does that sound like a novice nurse to you?"
"Not really."
"Read, then tell me your impressions."
Maggie did exactly as she was told, leaning against the desk while reading one report after another while Madam Álava either stood or walked back and forth. She shook her head when she was done, the reports placed on the desk once more.
"I know she's good for her age and certainly has had training already. But this is—"
"Not theoretical knowledge at all and at an entirely different level. She kept her head together—I'm sure you saw the prudence in using the Smokescreen Spell mentioned—and managed to save all those people. I've even managed to ask Orpheus about what happened and he told me that there was one patient that did not make it to the notes."
"Because the wound was light?"
"Because he insisted on going back to the field immediately. Orpheus said that he did drop in at the A&E later on to get the bullet taken out."
"I still can't believe that you're stalking Hermione up to her Head of House."
"Professional interest, Maggie," Madam Álava scoffed. "She doesn't have a pureblood family to back her up and support her. Even with all her talent, how far do you think she'll manage without anyone else's help? Would you rather that we not help her at all?"
Maggie didn't say anything, and the older nurse took it as realisation or agreement.
"Now, aren't you curious about the last patient?"
"Oh, what the hell, tell me, then."
"Tom Riddle."
The Hogwarts nurse raised her voice then, pushing herself against the desk to stand upright.
"What? That can't be true!"
"In fact, he was shot before Hermione triaged the rest of the victims." Madam Álava had a satisfactory gleam in her eyes, the same one that a crow has after managing to gouge the eyeballs out of a displayed head at the Tower of London in the old days.
"I knew Riddle was stone cold—both in the good and bad ways, I suppose. But Hermione… I just… I can't imagine she'd be able to go on and professionally give those people help when someone close to her had just been bleeding recently. I know I'd worry. The skill she went through them too, not much hesitation or doubts there…" Maggie trailed away. She could only shake her head at this point.
"She's had field experience, that's the only explanation. Add the research proposal that you suggested she sent me, and it proved that her capabilities are far above the first-year trainee healers. She's certainly already beyond second year too. One starts to wonder about what the British wizarding enclave in Kopervik was like."
Since Nurse Edelstein didn't quite understand what Madam Álava was talking about (or what a town in Norway had anything to do with it), she asked the subject that had been on her mind.
"What was the apprenticeship about, then?" Maggie asked.
The question that Madam Álava asked next wasn't something that the nurse had expected.
"She's an orphan without any family member claiming her, isn't that right?"
"…yes."
"A healing apprenticeship would scarcely pose a difficulty for her. As soon as she became a nurse or a healer, she'd be able to stand on her own two feet in the wizarding world, regardless of what other professions she might choose to pursue afterward. Oh, don't look so surprised, Maggie. You and I know that she'd never end up in just one—that is, if the wizarding world doesn't drag her down to its level first." Her tone was as acerbic as usual.
Yet Madam Álava's gaze was keen, sharpened by the stones of ages.
"She has too many dreams."
Maggie closed her mouth. Initially, she'd wanted to complain that Madam Álava had been too heavy-handed. She wanted to say that her old mentor was pushing Hermione in a direction that they didn't even have any idea whether the fifth-year wanted or not. Only now did it cross her mind that it wasn't what the senior nurse had been thinking at all. Her forthrightness made it easy to forget that there were at least four generations of difference between them—Esmeralda Álava was literally the product of another century.
If there was anything that Madam Álava knew as a woman who'd travelled often between the muggle and magical worlds in older times, it was how valuable the ability to be independent was. Back then, not many women could easily change the course of their own life when they wish to do so.
It was simply that Esmeralda Álava never wanted to see Hermione be one of the unlucky ones.
'-
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End Notes:
Random note on the future: In the future that Hermione left behind, Tonks is alive and is a single parent to Teddy because Remus is dead. Why? Well, why does both of them had to be taken out at once? I don't really feel particular attachment to either of their characters, just that it felt a bit random. So, this is a bit of my roll-of-fate's-dice with regards to the difference in Hermione's future compared to canon. It really doesn't affect the plot in any way if you want to consider her to just be dead, for example (after all, that future is already gone).
One of the Weasley twins being dead, on the other hand, I can understand. The degree of pathos felt by the reader is significant since we're actually rather familiar with both of them.
'-
Additional Notes:
…both Maggie and Madam Álava was wearing the caduceus pin of the healing profession: this is inspired by the chrysanthemum pin that a practicing lawyer has the right to wear as a badge of his or her profession in Japan. I thought the easy visual recognition is nice, not to mention that if you have magic, you can key the pin to various wards. It's like the magical version of an access card.
'-