.
.o.
.o0o.
The first time Hermione saw herself in a mirror after… reawakening, the mirror did not survive. She wasn't sure if that was an accident or not. Questions about conscious versus subconscious intent as it applied to magic slipped through her mental grasp like smoke.
Madam Pomfrey gave her a permanently foggy hand-mirror, and instructed her to look into it for a full minute every hour— which still made her skin feel like an undersized wetsuit and her heart feel like some burrowing parasite, but slightly less so each day. She also got a salve for the self-inflicted scratches. They were resistant to magical healing for some reason.
Harry was sweet for worrying about her schoolwork, but it was a bit hard to care about re-writing things she'd learned months ago when she was still adjusting to having limbs again. Her dreams were swirling, technicolor chaos. She woke with her arms extended, as if she'd been reaching for something in her sleep. Her peripheral vision seemed to ripple like a mirage.
When she started writing again she found she couldn't look away, lest her hand start doodling abstract lines instead. It made note-taking very frustrating. Madam Pomfrey checking in every day to ask her questions for which she had no coherent answers didn't help.
Upon her release from the hospital wing barely a week before the end of term, she could not decide between the Great Hall, the Library, and the Tower, and thus meandered through the corridors, noticing tapestries and portraits she hadn't before. They all felt familiar.
The dead end she arrived at felt… wrong. The blank wall in front of her, specifically.
Her stomach grumbled before she could begin to properly theorize.
The Express had just left Hogsmeade Station when a shiver ran down her spine. The air of the compartment seemed slightly colder, all of a sudden. Thinner. The colors of the compartment and the people in it seemed ever-so-slightly duller, and there was something else, a sourceless yet vaguely familiar sense of lack.
The door sliding open interrupted her thoughts.
In stepped the Patil Twins. Hermione's jealous annoyance at their sleek, lustrous plaits and flawless makeup was a distant memory. Parvati looked like she was about to take an exam, jaw set and gaze determined. She even did her signature braid-flip.
Padma just looked nervous.
The door slid shut behind them.
"…Hello?" Said Harry.
Parvati turned to her twin, crossing her arms with an aloof, expectant air. Padma took a deep breath, and stood a bit straighter. Then she looked at Harry, opened her mouth, and hissed.
Hermione flinched. Padma shot her an apologetic glance.
Harry hissed back, wide-eyed and tense.
"You're a parselmouth?" Ron practically shouted.
"No," Padma said primly. "I am a Nagajihva. 'Parselmouth' is a nonsensical Anglicism, and the superstition around it is—"
Parvati elbowed her in the ribs.
"—unfortunate."
"Prejudice against Nagajihvān is a very western European thing," Parvati chimed in. "In India, they have a reputation as skilled healers and guardians."
"Why?" said Ron.
Padma gave him an impatient look. "Would you want to burgle a house guarded by venomous snakes?"
"And why hire a fancy wardmaster when you could just pay your neighbor's cousin to tell his friends to bite trespassers?" said Parvati. "Also, venom is the key ingredient in most antivenoms."
"You make it sound like… Naga-jihvān are more common over there," said Hermione.
"Nagajihvāh," said Padma. "-jihvān is the accusative."
"They are," said Parvati. "Much more common, that is."
"They?" asked Hermione.
"I have different gifts."
"But you're twins."
"And?" Parvati arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow. "Magic is weird."
Point.
Padma hissed apologetically. Harry looked torn for a moment, then sighed and hissed understandingly back.
"May I?"
Hermione looked back to find Parvati lingering by the empty seat to her left.
"Oh— of course."
Parvati sat. Hermione smelled jasmine and sweet almond oil, and averted her eyes from her sleek, glossy hair.
"Why didn't she say anything earlier?" She asked quietly. "When Harry needed it most?"
"She said she's a bit of a…" Harry trailed off. "I've got no idea what that'd be in English, actually."
"'Recluse' is close enough," said Padma. "I was excited to hear him Speak, but when I saw how everyone reacted…"
A shrug.
"I'm not a Gryffindor."
"I told her it's alright," said Harry. "I wouldn't have said anything either."
"Do you think Salazar Sliderin had Indian heritage?" Hermione blurted.
"Sliderin?" asked Padma.
"Don't get her started," Ron muttered.
"No idea," said Parvati. "His ancestors could have come from almost anywhere in South Asia or Africa, though some regions are more likely than others."
"I wonder if they were Roman, or brought to the isles by the Romans…"
"I've wondered that too."
Hermione found herself smiling. "Are your parents…"
"Nagajihvāh?" Padma took the seat Harry offered. "Our mother is. You pronounced it right the first time— impressive, for a Brit."
"Well, I'm trilingual. Bit of an advantage."
"Oh?" Said Parvati, in the same tone she reserved for Juicy Goss. "Do tell."
This was how Hermione found herself commiserating with Parvati about the woes of being surrounded by monocultural peers— and, subsequently, saying more about her Jewishness than she had to any goy before. Ron chimed in with some surprisingly insightful questions, though most likely to distract himself from Harry and Padma's quiet hissing. Hermione was glad for the distraction herself. Neville, curiously, didn't seem to mind it much.
Feeling a bit wrong-footed, Hermione turned the conversation back to South Asian snake-speakers, and was fascinated by Parvati's answers.
(So fascinated, in fact, that she did not notice the resigned, rote quality of those answers. Not until later.)
Addresses were exchanged. So were tentative smiles. Revealing a widely-abhorred skill seemed a little far to go for the sake of a prank, after all.
.:.
Tonks' bubblegum-pink hair was a beacon in the crowd. Hermione couldn't see it once she descended into the crowd, of course, but Tonks found her soon enough anyway— with an urgent, assessing sort of look that quickly melted into relief.
Hermione strongly suspected she morphed her arms stronger for hugging purposes.
"You alright?" Tonks asked, giving her another once-over. "Mum said Harry said the 'Draught did what it was 'sposed to, but…"
Hermione hesitated. Weighed her words. "It did."
It was disconcerting to see Andromeda's imperious eyebrow-raise rendered in pink.
"I…" Hermione averted her eyes, and tried not to fidget. "It's a bit… complicated."
Eyebrow #2 rose to the level of #1.
"Not the context in which I expected t'hear that" Tonks muttered. "Right! Your folks are just past the barrier, and all they know is that you had a run-in with a magical creature, were laid up for a bit, and released with a clean bill of health."
Hermione barely absorbed most of that, as she was rather busy being frozen in dread.
"They— don't know? The school didn't…?"
Tonks grimaced. "The school has to notify them about any hospital wing stays, but isn't obligated to provide details. Because muggles couldn't possibly have done enough research to understand any magical ailment."
Hermione took a number of very deep breaths.
"Firebug?"
They weren't much help.
"Hermione?"
"Myrtle Warren."
"Wot?"
"Myrtle Warren, Ravenclaw, 1928 to 1943, dead by Basilisk. What did the school tell her parents?"
Tonks hesitated for the first time since they'd met. "I… dunno. We can look into that. Right now we need to get you home, but I want the full story when you visit, alright?"
Hermione nodded numbly, and let herself be led through the crowd.
She had known, intellectually, that the wizarding world thought of muggles as lesser. It was in the very word, the derogatory ring to it, the way so many pronounced it like a synonym for simpletons.
But to not have given her parents details about something that could have killed her—
Hermione didn't talk very much for a few days. Words drifted and blurred on every page she tried to read. Every smile felt like a contortion. She dreamed of a slitted yellow stare shattering her parents like glass.
When her Maman made Pain perdu for breakfast, she knew the jig was up. Exactly how up it was remained to be seen. (Revealing the full story would get her packed off to France. Without her, Harry wouldn't have known the identity of the beast or where to find it. Without her Ginny would be dead, Voldemort would be reincarnated, and no one would be safe— not Harry or Ron or Neville, not Colin or Penelope or Patrick or Dean, not Tonks or Ted or Andromeda, and certainly not her parents.
She could not tell them the full story. Neither could she lie to them.)
Thankfully they waited for her to finish eating, giving her time to plan.
Her plan lasted less than a minute.
"Hermione, what kind of beast was it?"
She swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, heart suddenly pounding.
"A basilisk."
Thus began the first truly serious Granger Family Argument. Voices were raised. Research was cited. Tears were shed. Letters were drafted, accidentally burned, re-written, revised, and sent. There was a great deal of hugging.
That summer's first Granger-Tonks dinner was really more of a strategy meeting with food.
"Every progressive Headmaster has had to fend off interference from the Board, Wizengamot, and Ministry," said Andromeda. "Dumbledore has his flaws, but he is a bulwark against an entire murder of agendas. The Old Families already have a slight majority on the Board, and the DMLE is heavily influenced by both the Wizengamot and Minister…"
"Who's chummy with Malfoy," said Amadi.
"Yes."
The elder Grangers shared a Look.
"Can you give us any reasons not to send Hermione to Lys-des-Cendres in September?" asked Joëlle.
Ted regarded her evenly for a long moment before answering.
"Other than the friendships she's cultivating both with the heirs of wealthy families and some of the most accomplished educators in Britain? Malfoy's removal from the board and Fudge's unlawful detention of the gameskeeper has given Dumbledore more leverage and leeway to protect the students."
"Dumbledore who failed to do anything about the deadly predator in his school ," Joëlle shot back. "Can you give us any compelling reasons?"
Ted shared a Look with Andromeda.
"Hermione," Tonks said gently. "Do you want to transfer out?"
"No."
Wanting to get away from Parkinson and Bulstrode and Malfoy and Snape was not the same as wanting to leave.
"Why not?"
Hermione hesitated.
They need me would… probably not be the most effective argument, here.
"All my friends are at Hogwarts. Professor Babbling is at Hogwarts. The Library is unparalleled, and the Hogsmeade shul is— incredible, you're all here in England—"
Tonks, quite uncharacteristically, held up a hand to quiet her. "You would make new friends in France."
"You don't know that for sure."
"You'd find new mentors— or they'd find you. And it has a big old library of its own."
"What about Shul?"
"They have one on-campus," said her Baba.
Hermione set her jaw. "It wouldn't be the same. I'd still be an outsider, just for different reasons! A-and I'd be even farther away from you!"
"I would send you to Australia if it meant you would be safe!"
Hermione flinched back, startled.
He had never shouted at her before.
He softened immediately— but before he could speak again, Tonks did:
"Would you spend a few pounds? Because I can teach her Auror safety, but I'll need some uppers to stay awake for it."
Within the week, Ted and Andromeda were Hermione's magical guardians, transfer documentation was ready to be sent across the Channel just in case, and she was spending all her free time huffing and puffing through Tonks' idea of boot camp. Which included running a mile before they even started on spellwork. And weightlifting.
When informed of these cruelties, Hermione's parents simply patted her on the back and started making protein smoothies.
One day in mid-July, she followed Tonks into the rec-room and was immediately hit by a stinging hex.
"Ow!" She clutched her side. "Dora! What on—"
"CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"
The utter menace then stopped their first mock-duel only moments in to ask why she was missing so much.
Hermione crossed her arms self-consciously. "I didn't exactly spend my recesses developing hand-eye coordination."
A blink. "Firebug, what are we doing?"
"Sparring."
"With what?"
"…wands?"
Tonks raised an eyebrow.
"Magi— oh."
Intent, imagination, and focus.
Hermione flicked her wand. Three marbles struck Tonks' shield dead-center.
Tonks grinned.
"Remember, Grasshopper: anything your eyes can see, your magic can hit."
It was during one such lesson that Hermione noticed vague auras around Tonk's wand-arm an instant before the spells left her wand.
She told herself she was imagining things, no different than the dreams or the… weirdness in her peripheral vision.
Then she left late one night, and found she could just barely see a ghostly geodesic dome around the house.
She told Tonks. Tonks deferred to Andromeda. Andromeda conducted a series of confusing sensory tests. Hermione neither heard nor felt anything special; her vision, however…
"Hm," said Andromeda.
Then she disappeared into the library for a but, and returned with a dragonhide-bound tome entitled MAGESIGHT: the Wonder and Horror.
"Oh fun," said Tonks.
Dear Penelope,
I hope you are well, both physically, magically, and otherwise. I wanted to thank you again for accompanying me to the library that day. Duty as a prefect or not, if you were even half as afraid as I was, it was a terribly brave thing to do. I'm not quite sure how to go about making it up to you, but have been advised that dinner is a good place to start. You are thus cordially invited to chez Granger (directions enclosed) for a multicultural culinary experience, time and date TBD.
Incidentally, if you have been experiencing any residual oddness, you are not alone. I suspect (and hope) that we might learn something by comparing our experiences.
Gratefully,
Hermione Ijeoma Granger
.:.
Dear Colin,
How are you?
I would mention the odd experience which was the summer after my first year, but it would hardly be comparable, would it? Nonetheless, I am here if you want to talk about the strangeness of readjusting to mundane life, about summer assignments, or about our shared experience and any residual effects you may be feeling. I would like to know if they're anything like mine.
Sincerely,
Hermione Ijeoma Granger
.:.
Dear Justin,
Though you and I do not particularly get along, and you may have no particular interest in corresponding with me, I feel you should know that I am attempting to organize a meeting of our muggleborn peers— specifically but not limited to those of us who spent time in the hospital wing this past year. I find that the oddness of the experience is lingering, and suspect I may not be alone in this.
Please reply at your earliest convenience.
In solidarity,
Hermione Ijeoma Granger
.:.
Dear Padma,
I hope your summer has thus far been both relaxing and productive, and want to apologize for any unwarranted harshness I may have shown you on the Express. The suspicion and hostility Harry received both for his gift and via the true Heir's attempts to frame him had left me quite protective, you see.
I was also a bit out of it, having recently been un-petrified (de-petrified? 'Reanimated' makes me think of necromancy).
I would like to express my appreciation of the courage it must have taken to approach him; I do not know that I would have been able to do the same in your position.
I was wondering if you might recommend further reading on the subject of Nagajihvāh and Nagita (have I spelled that right?); I was quite fascinated by what little you and your sister shared with us on the train.
Sincerely,
Hermione Ijeoma Granger
.:.
Dear Heiress Granger,
This is Parv. Found your letter in a pile of books and weird diagrams because Pads nests like a swotty magpie if left unsupervised. Looked like she started drafting a reply but got distracted, probably by something you two would have an incomprehensible conversation about while the rest of us sat around twiddling our wands.
Who in Circe's name taught you to correspond like a pureblood princess? Do you write to everyone like this? I feel I should warn you it'll only inflame the rumors of you being some long-lost Seacole (or a Shafiq by-blow— don't curse the messenger).
The only good books on Nagajihvāh & their arts are either Slytherin's (so 'missing') or published overseas, & everything in our family library is spelled against duplication. I'm afraid there's simply no recourse but for you to come visit. Also inviting Harry, to distract the Swotbird.
Ta,
Parvati Prajnan Patil
"Tripping jinx?"
"Of course."
"Torchlight charm?"
"Fax!"
"Bloody hell, remind me to get some sunglasses. Knockback jinx?"
"Evertat!"
"Good! Striker?"
"What?"
"S'only a slapping hex if you're feeling slappy."
"Oh! Slæsik!"
"Oof! Got some aggression to work out, Firebug?"
"Fodio!"
"Too slow! How about a slip-grip?"
"Relashio!"
"Scouring charm?"
"What? Why?"
"Ever tried casting a spell when all your spit's been vanished? Even if you don't need to incant, it's still pretty distracting."
"Scourgify!"
"Oop! Wow, mum wasn't kidding. Alright… cutting hex?"
Hermione hesitated.
"Really?" Said Tonks. "You're willing to risk putting eyes out with those marbles, but not a little papercut?"
"There were extenuating circumstances."
"I'll extenuate you if y'don't — "
"Diffindo!"
"…right then. Honestly thought that'd take more convincing. Again!"
"Diffindo!"
"Hmm… try Skera ."
"I'm not familiar with that spell."
"Shearing hex. Think cutting wheat instead of snipping cloth."
Hermione thought about that, gnawing her lip.
"Firebug?"
"I understand that offense can be a good defense, but I still feel that I should prioritize the shield charm."
"Ambitious. Fifth-year spell, that."
"Why?" She wiped her forehead, and crossed her arms. "Does it require qualities that typically take five years to develop? Because that seems the only valid reason for it to be taught so late."
Tonks tilted her head, and then shrugged. "Y'know the incantation?"
"Yes. I've— sort of cast it before, but under duress. And it was a bit… fiery."
"Fiery? You? I'm shocked. Bewildered. Absolutely flabber—"
"Sheli!"
"Woah!" Tonks let it hit her, and wandlessly summoned her wand back into her hand before it could fly far. Then she blinked at it, and turned to Hermione wide-eyed. "…did you create a modified disarming charm?"
"Not disarming." Hermione failed to hold back a smug smile. "Wand-stealing."
Tonks just stared at her for a moment. Then she grinned, and silently cast.
"Protego!"
Hermione had slightly more success with the shield charm than she would have without anything to deflect— but not enough to keep her un-hexed.
"If you can't deflect, move!"
Easier said than done, post-workout.
"Alright," said Tonks, after a precious few moments of letting Hermione adjust to her new welts and bruises. "Try Skjald instead."
"Is that… nordic?"
"Yup! Imagine yourself as some burly viking bloke, with a big sturdy shield, and visualize the casting as raising that shield. Really put some oomph into the incantation."
She did. The initial flash was brighter than with protego, but not by much. She frowned, and closed her eyes. Pictured Goyle and Bulstrode and Nott stalking towards her, faces twisted in hate as they raised their wands—
"Skjald!"
A disk of silvery light pulsed out of her wand-tip just in time to deflect a minor hex. It withstood three more before it dimmed and vanished.
Hermione's cheeks heated at the pleased look on Tonks' face.
"I've never heard of any Norse spells before," she mumbled.
Tonks grimaced. "Yeah, well, consider who brought'em here. Most of the ones that got written down are real war-magic. Brutal stuff. My mum thinks the Ministry is afraid that if people learn the benign spells, they'll get curious about Norse magic in general and end up finding out about the real bloody —and blood-based— stuff."
"Then how did you learn it?"
"Andromeda Tonks néé Black, Firebug. Viking battle curses are the shallow end."
Right.
Hermione was momentarily distracted by picturing what sort of rooms Bellatrix Lestrange and Narcissa Malfoy must have practiced in as adolescents, which led to picturing what the Black family library must have looked like. The Tonkses library was already a dream come true, and they hadn't nearly the resources of—
"Think fast!"
Hermione spent the next half hour practicing her shield charm, with limited success. Tonks morphing into a large, unkempt man strengthened it, but only after startling her so badly it failed— and no matter how hard Hermione tried, it couldn't withstand anything more than schoolyard hexes.
It wasn't long before she was blinking back tears of frustration.
Tonks lowered her wand with a sigh.
"What?" Hermione hurriedly wiped away her tears. "Why'd you stop?"
"Kiddo. Firebug. My sweet baby lion-cub."
"Dora—"
"I'm pretty much full-grown, I've got seven years head start on spellwork, and I'm training my arse off to be an Auror. The fact that a shield you just learned held up against even a few of my spells is bloody phenomenal."
"…oh."
Tonks huffed, and hit her with a cheering charm.
On August 5th, Harry met the Grangers outside the Leaky Cauldron, black locks peeking messily out from under a baseball cap, scar hidden. There was no sign of his aunt, uncle, or cousin.
From the Leaky they flooed to a village called New Dyrnwold, clearly magical in a way Diagon was not— every building was made of stone, and even the stones laden with ivy looked fresh, as if it had been laid a few days prior rather than a few centuries. Rows of owls perched along on the rooftops of the courtyard outside the inn, and the fountain at its center poured something warm and golden instead of water.
That was where the Patils greeted them. The four looked like teledrama royalty trying to blend in with the commoners, standing regally poised beside a nearby fountain in clothes that were unembellished but clearly tailored from the finest materials, their hair and skin almost shockingly perfect.
Hermione felt acutely plain.
The Twins' father greeted them in fluent French, introducing himself as Prajnan and his wife as Varsha— who cast some sort of privacy charm before hissing to Harry. Prajnan smiled fondly at her. Hermione couldn't not smile at the shy awe on Harry's face.
Chez Patil (Prajnan called it Patil Mahal a first; Varsha pinched his elbow, while Padma and Parvati rolled her eyes in eerie unison) sat upon a hill at the edge of town, looking very much like it had been painstakingly cut from bedrock, all decorative arches and carven serpents coiling up pillars. The sheer artistry made it seem like a grand palace, rather than the smallish mansion it was.
The gate gleamed as it swung open, and Hermione noticed veins of silver twining around the wrought iron— but was distracted from the implications by the electric warmth that rushed over her the instant she stepped through them.
It was immediately followed by a feeling that reminded her quite viscerally of the time she'd made eye contact with a silverback gorilla at the zoo.
"Alright?"
She blinked.
Parvati was watching her worriedly. The rest were a few paces ahead, and didn't seem to have noticed her… lapse.
"Yes." She shook her head and kept walking. "Yes, of course."
(Silver in the gates— protection against werewolves? Ward boundary? But the sense of comfort she felt upon entering chez Tonks was nothing like that.
Maybe because she'd been visiting the Tonkses routinely for over two years? She really needed to research warding, which Professor Babbling required preliminary knowledge of area-of-effect spells and extensive knowledge of runes…)
Hermione half expected a butler to greet them in the entry hall, but Varsha led them unceremoniously through it into a sitting room that was fairly ordinary, except for the artifacts mounted on its walls. There was an apparently authentic celtic torc, a battered viking shield engraved with a runic stave, a helmet ornately adorned with dozens of tiny golden plates, a cloak made entirely from contiguous snakeskin, a pair of unsheathed talwar swords crossed behind the bird-sized likeness of a butterfly crafted from what looked very much like ivory and blue gold, and in the corner…
A chill shot down Hermione's spine.
"Ah," said Mr. Patil. "I see you recognize my favorite trophy."
She nodded numbly.
In the corner stood a plinth. On that plinth was a scarlet cloth. On that cloth was an ornate silver mask, its eye-holes gaping like empty sockets, its mouth 'stitched' shut with bands of gold.
"I've told him it would look better with a dent or scar," said Mrs. Patil. "But no, authenticity before comfort."
"My wife is quite humble," said Mr. Patil. "'Twas her scaly companions that felled the scoundrel, you see— not my spellwork."
"You—" Hermione swallowed, mouth dry. "You took that from a…"
"Jumped-up inbred that thought it would be good fun to disrupt my daughters' birthday party? Yes. He lived to see a trial, if that sort of thing matters to you."
She wasn't quite sure how much it really did.
When the tour had been given and the chai had been savored, Padma gave Harry a book about Nagita and Hermione a brief history of magical India, which appeared to have been written by a native dedicated to gleefully eviscerating colonial perspectives on the subject. It took significant willpower not to start reading it immediately— though slightly less when she saw the pleased smile on Padma's lips.
It was then that Prajnan produced an album featuring moving photos of him, his older brother, and their parents side-by-side with James Potter and his parents, all in traditional clothing.
"Oh," said Harry, very softly, and spent the next few minutes staring.
The Patils engaged Hermione's parents in small talk, but she was distracted by her friend's unusual stillness, and the slow, shaky breaths he was taking.
"I guess I do look like him," he said at length. "People always tell me that."
"Witch Weekly once featured Lucius Malfoy as its Most Beautiful Bachelor," said Varsha. "There is far more to a person than their looks. You are your own man, Harry."
He seemed unsure what to make of that, if the dewy-eyed staring was any indication.
Padma hissed something which brought a slight smile to his face, and they fell back into unintelligible conversation.
Hermione did her best to ignore the pang of envy she felt at how easily the other girl drew Harry out of his shell. It was ugly of her, really. He needed all the friends he could get.
"So," said Parvati, plopping down next to her on the couch, "you have to tell me what you use on those curls."
Thus was Hermione drawn into a surprisingly fascinating conversation on the intricacies of traditional Marathi hair and skin-care (traditional apparently meaning 'comprised of both magical and mundane elements,' as said traditions predated the imposition of the Statute). Apparently a number of key ingredients could also be poisons if processed differently, and there was a storied history of anticolonial agents exploiting such nuances to dispose of their oppressors.
She left Chez Patil with a bottle of allegedly miraculous anti-frizz conditioner, several more books from the family library, and the mild euphoria of having found a friend who understood her in ways her paler peers could not.
It didn't last long.
Harry was dear to her, but connection to his ancestral culture was among the things Voldemort had stolen from him. Hermione had always felt sad on his behalf— but now she was angry.
"Hmm…" Tonks eyed the scratch Hermione's cutting charm had left on the archery-style target she'd stuck to the garage wall. "What'd your teacher's tell you about the legality of using that on people?"
They…" Hermione paused to reflect. "…implied illegality."
Tonks nodded, neon pink locks tumbling down across her forehead. "Right. It's actually in a grey area, really— commonly used to cut cloth and other objects, but it can be used to do harm. It is legal to use against people in clear-cut cases of self defense, of course."
"…what if it's not so clear?"
"Depends on how much damage you do. If you seriously injure someone—"
"Then you must have really wanted to."
"Exactly. So it should really be a last resort… as should this." Tonks flicked her wand like an angry painter. "Skera!"
The ensuing flash left a deep gash across the entire target—
"Ceorfa!"
—and the next cleanly bisected it. A half-circle of wood clattered to the floor.
Hermione swallowed, both uneasy and itching to try. "More Old Norse?"
Tonks squeezed her shoulder with one warm, strong hand, and reconstituted the target with the other.
"This time," she said, "picture yourself as a big old Saxon bloke, out to chop some wood to build up your fort or something. Command the axe as you swing it."
Hermione attempted to do so and found it less effective than her cutting curse, which bore consideration.
She had never built a fort… but she had built a fire.
She pictured the hearth back home, full of crackling flames in the dead of winter. She pictured Bulstrode recoiling in fear, hand scorched, raised her wand—
"Ceorfa!"
Orange light flashed into the target, and left a long, darkened cut along its surface. A faint wisp of smoke rose from it, diffusing into the air.
Tonks stepped closer, touched the mark… "Huh."
…and held up a fingertip smeared with soot.
Hermione stared for a moment. "Tonks?"
"Hm?"
"...You're an Auror. Why are you trying to teach me potentially lethal spells?"
"Noticed that, did you?"
Hermione crossed her arms and tilted her chin ever-so-slightly up in a (secretly well-practiced) imitation of Andromeda. Tonks smiled, and sighed.
"What spells should I be teaching you?"
"Well, the stunning charm, I suppose."
"Why?"
"...because it incapacitates the target without serious injury?"
"What if they fall wrong and bash their head open on something? What if their mate rennervates 'em the moment you turn your back? What if you just don't quite have the oomph yet to overpower your target's magic-enforced desire to stay conscious? 'Coz if they're bigger and older than you, that's no easy task."
"...What about a body-bind?"
"Similar problem."
"Incarcerous?"
"Won't even require much help to counter, unless you can conjure steel cables or chains at the drop of a hat."
"...I see. How much more difficult is is to conjure metal than—"
Tonks' gaze twitched away from her, and her grip on her wand briefly tightened. Her eyes narrowed. "Hold that thought, love."
"Why? What is it?"
"Wards. C'mon."
Hermione followed her into the house (forcefully biting back a slew of questions), where they were intercepted by a subtly miffed-looking Andromeda.
"Dora, some of your colleagues decided to pop by. See to them, will you?"
The two exchanged a look Hermione had no way of interpreting. Tonks shot her a quick smile and headed off towards the front door; Andromeda laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and steered her in the opposite direction. "It occurred to me that you haven't seen the new runes we added to the basement."
Hermione narrowed her eyes. "Why are we hiding from Aurors? We haven't done anything illegal."
"Still best to avoid unnecessary scrutiny, dear."
Thankfully the basement (though it was really more of a magically-augmented bomb shelter Ted and Andromeda had built themselves) was well-stocked with literature both magical and mundane. Hermione spent the next half hour reading up on some of the methods they had used to do so, forcing the slow simmer of anxiety to the back of her mind.
She wondered briefly if this was how French Resistance fighters felt hiding from Nazi patrols, then silently scolded herself for it. Magical Britain clearly had some issues with corruption, but it was nowhere near as bad as that; the mere comparison was shameful.
She was copying down the unfamiliar runes from Andromeda's notes on structural reinforcement when the witch herself swept in, her smile tight and her eyes tired.
"Mrs. Tonks?" Hermione stood up, feeling as if she should be fetching something. "Is everything alright? Where's Dora?"
"Everything is… we're in no immediate danger. Nymphadora has been called into work." Andromeda lowered herself onto the couch with uncharacteristically imperfect poise, ratcheting up Hermione's worry another few notches. Then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and asked: "What do you know about Sirius Black?"