With only a few days left before the winter solstice, Hermione focused on finishing her plan. The term had finished (the exams rather easier than she'd expected, truth be told), and while everyone else was all a-flutter gossiping about the upcoming ball, Hermione was handling the finishing touches on her Dark ritual. The night before, she reported to Viktor that it was done, and everything was ready and set in place. Viktor nodded slowly, knowing what this meant.
"You need way to capture boy," Viktor told Hermione seriously. "You have plan?"
"I don't," Hermione confessed. "I was kind of hoping I'd just stun him and that would work."
"Even if you stun him, you cannot to Apparate," Viktor pointed out. "How you take him there?"
"Yule is one of a few special days a year," Hermione told him, biting her lip. "Where—where anyone can travel the way I do, if they know what they're doing. My plan was to—to kind of drag him along with me, as I went."
Viktor's eyebrows rose very high.
"Is safe?" he asked, and Hermione snorted.
"Viktor," she said. "If it's not safe, and he gets lost, it's honestly probably a kinder outcome for him overall."
Viktor smirked.
"True," he conceded, dark eyes glinting. He looked at Hermione. "I offer myself as backup plan, then."
"The backup plan?" Hermione asked, looking up at him.
Viktor nodded. "I tell boy I heard of him, his family. I invite him to see our ship in the dark, and we go the long way. If you cannot to take him to site, I Apparate him from there, at edge of wards."
Hermione considered this, nodding slowly.
"I'd rather not implicate anyone besides myself in this," she said. "Because he has to remember me doing it – he has to know why – and you'd be in danger."
Viktor scoffed. "I eat danger for snack."
"Nevertheless," Hermione said, trying to hide her amusement, "we'll keep you as the backup plan for now, okay? Let me try alone earlier in the day, and if it doesn't work, then we'll move to Plan B."
"As you say, Hermione," Viktor said, bowing slightly to her. He frowned. "I not like you performing ritual alone, but I know is not safe for me to be nearby."
"Not safe at all," Hermione agreed faintly. She paused. "…Though. I wonder if it'd be safe for someone else."
"Yes," Viktor said pointedly, "but only if they are girl."
That night, before bed, Hermione casually locked the door and silenced it while Pansy was whining about Draco refusing to match his dress robes to her gown for the ball. Only Millie caught the action, her eyes going wide, but Hermione moved to the middle of the room a moment later, getting everyone's attention.
"Listen up," Hermione said. "I need to tell you all something. I need you all to decide whether you'd be up for participating or not. If you decide you're not," she said, eyeing Tracey, "I need you to agree to be Memory Charmed."
"Memory Charmed?" Pansy said, immediately alarmed. Her eyes narrowed. "Why, Granger?"
"Because this concerns the vengeance for Daphne upon Cassius Warrington," Hermione said patiently. "And my plan is unequivocally Dark and criminal. If you're not going to be equally implicated, you're safer off not knowing anything about it."
It was as if she'd said the magic words; immediately, all of their expressions darkened, and the girls all exchanged hard, determined glances. Daphne had paled dramatically, but she kept her composure, sitting up straight.
"I'm in," Tracey said.
"I'm in," Millie agreed.
"I'm in," Pansy said. She paused. "This all feels rather similar, doesn't it? Please tell me we're not just doing The Fallen Foe for this pig."
Hermione laughed. It was a cold, dark sound. "He should be so lucky."
"I'm in," Daphne said, her voice quavering. She looked frightened, but Hermione suspected it wasn't from the magic, and determination was slowly overcoming the fear in her eyes. "He can't—he can't be allowed to get away with this. I can't have him—he can't be—I can't—"
"He won't," Hermione promised Daphne. She looked around at the group. "I need promises that you'll consent to be Obliviated if one of you wants to back out after you hear the plan."
The girls all chorused their agreement, and, as Hermione explained the plan and what they would be doing, their eyes grew wider and wider and wider. When she finished, there was a moment of astonishment as they just absorbed her words.
"Wow, Granger," Pansy whistled. "You don't fuck around, do you?"
"Language," Hermione snapped, and Pansy laughed, almost manic.
"Language?" she said. "You've designed this Dark, Dark Dark Dark revenge ritual, but oh, you'll admonish me for language—"
"How are we going to get Daphne to the site?" Tracey said, frowning. "She's not—"
"Hermione's landlord token," Millie said immediately. She paused. "Actually, if Daphne's in, she and Cassius can use that – that's probably much safer."
"But then Hermione doesn't get to kidnap someone," Pansy said, faux-mournfully, and Hermione shot her a dark look.
"I'm in," Daphne said. Her green eyes had turned hard. "I can lure him towards you all. And then we'll go."
"Do we need to learn any chants or anything?" Tracey asked, glancing at Hermione.
"I'll get them to you all," Hermione promised. She looked around at them all. "Just so we're clear, even though this is for revenge, this is probably Dark magic—"
"Oh, unquestionably," Tracey said immediately.
"Was there ever any doubt?" Millie looked amused.
"We're Slytherins, Granger," Pansy said, folding her arms and raising an eyebrow. "A little Dark magic doesn't put us off."
"Besides," Daphne chimed in, a viciousness in her eyes, "he'll be getting exactly what he deserves."
When the winter solstice arrived, Hermione found she was far too anxious, far too wound up to appear in public. Everyone would know in a moment that something was up, that she was plotting something, and Hermione couldn't let herself give the game away for something as trivial as food.
Instead, she stayed in her dorm room most of the day, transfigured a few chairs into wooden dress forms, and worked on making robes from the Acromantula silk she'd bought.
Viktor had been right – there were channels within the fabric that magic could travel more easily. It didn't seem like how it would be with dragon hide, though – with dragon hide, it had sounded like Viktor had been referring to the path the dragon's magic had taken itself, whereas with this fabric, magic seemed to travel more easily along the warp than the weft.
Which made sense, if she thought about it – Acromantula silk was entirely magical, composed of entirely of the same substance, but woven into cloth.
It certainly made Hermione's job easier – she'd started with a cape for Viktor, figuring the loose, flowing quality of the fabric would make something without seams much easier. She'd laid out one of her own capes onto the bolt of fabric, added some height and girth, and cut the fabric out, carefully sustaining a severing charm as she dragged her wand along the cloth. Once she draped it on the form, though, she immediately recognized her problem – a plain cape was boring, Acromantula silk or not, and if Hermione wanted to bedazzle the cloak in any way, she'd need a lining so Viktor would be comfortable wearing it.
Hermione sighed, going to her chest to dig out her old book of tailoring charms. If she was going to do this, she thought grimly, she might as well do it right.
By the time Pansy came by around three o'clock, bringing her a sandwich and apple, Hermione had managed to fully make a plain cape and set of trousers for Viktor. She was playing with the silk on the dress form, scowling at it, and Pansy raised an eyebrow.
"Has that poor doll done something to offend you?" she asked, and Hermione laughed.
"I can't decide what I want," she said. "Do I make him a shirt and vest? Or just a vest? Or some combination of a vest and shirt?"
Pansy raised an eyebrow.
"What kind of man wears a vest without a shirt?" she asked, disdainful.
"The kind who's incredibly fit," Hermione said, "and whose date kind of wants to show it off."
Pansy snorted in amusement. "Fair enough."
She watched as Hermione floated bits of silk up to the form, moving things around a bit.
"If you add a decorative detail to the cuff of a shirt to match whatever you've got planned with the bodice, it would help it all look cohesive," Pansy advised. "Keep this V if you want, but make it so you're looking at an old-style fancy tunic, rather than a modern shirt and vest."
Hermione blinked, flicking her wand to summon other pieces, hovering them roughly in place.
"That's perfect," Hermione breathed. "Pansy, you're a genius."
"I know." Pansy smirked. "See you at sundown, Granger."
Hermione made quicker work of Viktor's outfit after that. Now that she knew what she wanted, it was a simple matter to drape the pieces how she wanted them, cut them, use a sticking charm to pin the pieces in place, and then carefully free transfigure the fabric. Hermione didn't have a sewing machine, and she certainly wasn't about to stitch by hand, but she found she was able to coax the threads of Acromantula silk into matching up with the threads on the other piece, morphing and healing the fabric into one continuous piece.
It would be weird, wearing a piece of fabric with no real seams, maybe, but it was all Hermione could do. People tended to only react if they saw seams when they shouldn't, right? She hoped no one would notice if there were no seams where there should be.
The designing and robe-making successfully distracted Hermione and burned off her extra energy. By the time her dormmates returned to get their boots and cloaks, Hermione was no longer an anxious ball of stress. Instead, she greeted them already prepared herself – her boots and cloak on, her hair tied back, and her eyes sharp and bright.
"Cassius is going to meet me in the Entrance Hall," Daphne said, dressing herself quickly. "I thought it'd be easier to coax him outside for a walk that way. He'll be hoping for a snog and a grope in the dark."
"You look ready," Pansy observed, looking Hermione up and down with a keen eye.
Hermione looked at Pansy, and Pansy flinched, almost visibly cowering from the look in her eyes.
"Oh, I am," Hermione murmured. Her voice was dark, dangerous, and part of her felt a dark thrill at hearing herself, like she'd somehow become the female embodiment of Tom Riddle, a dark lightning strike of magic designed to wreak vengeance upon the world. "Let's go."
