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Amortentia, as described by Hector Dagworth-Granger, was a potent mood-affecting compulsion that manifested itself in the following symptoms: lowered inhibitions, impaired judgement, increased libido, and an obsessive fixation on a single target; long-term exposure and withdrawal was purported to result in chronic mood instability. Amortentia was as dangerous a potion as it was difficult to prepare, but that didn't diminish its reputation among wizarding consciousness. For all the troubling implications around its use, Amortentia maintained an air of mystery and romance—the latter of which Hermione found remarkably literal.
Air of romance, indeed, thought Hermione, in her first N.E.W.T. level Potions practical lesson, where Professor Slughorn revisited the fundamentals and moved on to advanced techniques with ingredients from his "special cupboard", which were too valuable to be stocked amongst the other ingredients of the student communal cupboard.
Slughorn demonstrated the process of pulverising moonstone into a fine dust, tilting the mortar for all the students to peer inside and observe the texture and consistency of the powder. After the moonstone, he showed how to clean a mortar to avoid cross-contamination with the next ingredient, freshwater pearls.
"...And this was how I learned to do it back in my old apprenticeship days, when my primary job was cleaning the master's cauldrons and grinding his knives. As a professional, one must keep his tools in tip-top shape, naturally; the first lesson any brewer learns is that good tools and good ingredients are what makes a good potion. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, including any overzealous apothecary assistants trying to convince you that an ounce of bicorn horn is equal substitute for two ounces of unicorn, hoho! Feels like just yesterday, let me tell you, when I learned that lesson first hand..." said Professor Slughorn, rambling on nostalgically. He kept his lessons informal, encouraging student participation; it gave his lectures a conversational feeling, albeit a conversation that was rather one-sided and contained so many extraneous anecdotes that Hermione had years ago stopped taking notes on them.
Hermione glanced to the side, where Tom wasn't taking any notes at all. He had his chin propped in the heel of one hand, his eyes half-lidded, looking oddly meditative. Looking around, she observed that most of the class had glazed expressions on their faces, more than usual for a lecture where Slughorn had strayed off-topic; where he'd started on his talk about preparing the day's potion, he'd ended up in a diatribe on the rising price of Ashwinder eggs, and the nerve of any suppliers who'd dare to mislabel inferior specimens as premium ingredients.
It's the potion fumes, Hermione realised.
She'd identified the contents of Professor Slughorn's sample cauldron at the start of the day's lecture, earning points for Ravenclaw. By now, the fumes had dispersed across the classroom, although she and Slughorn—and possibly Tom, who looked distant and bored in most classes where he already knew the subject matter back to front—seemed to be the only people who weren't swooning over their desks.
For her, the fumes were a combination of a library and a stationery shop: new parchment, leather-bound covers, bottled ink, and the fragrant lemon oil wood-polish that she associated with bookshelves and study nooks in the Hogwarts library. More subdued notes she could also discern: she smelled the tea she liked to drink during late night studying, a nice treat any other time of the day, and then the fresh scent of some sort of soap. It wasn't her own, which was more floral than herbal, and she couldn't recall if it matched the brand of laundry powder her Mum bought back home, or any of the cakes of soap her dorm mates used in their shared bathroom.
She found her lack of response to the Amortentia—the dazedness, the loss of mental clarity—to be somewhat unusual. Of course she'd noticed the allure that the textbook described as the potion's Air of Romance, but it wasn't that compelling to her; it was something that could be analysed in a specific state of mind, while the rest of her mind remained perfectly lucid. When she did it, directing all her attention to a single element of the scent, in the same way it was possible to concentrate on one particular flavour from an open spice rack, it was easier to overlook the Amortentia's unnatural appeal.
This was a meditative technique that Mr. Pacek had told her about years ago, and one she'd seen mentioned in the book she'd borrowed from Nott. A minor technique, as the book described, that was a prelude to training oneself to completely emptying the mind of conscious thought—the mark of a trained Occlumens. She would have considered it an impossible task if not for the book confirming that it could be done, though not without much effort and practice.
The ideal: to narrow the the focus of the mind, withdraw conscious thought from bodily perception, create separations—compartments—between each mental function so that a trained Occlumens in desperate need could choke down raw whalemeat without wincing at the taste, or tourniquet and cauterise her own limbs in a life-or-death emergency.
Hermione found those examples extreme, but she could see their utility: this was about learning to ignore impulses, whether it was a natural, internal reaction to pain, or an external compulsion produced by magic.
Legilimency, as she'd read, was only one of many ways to sway the direction of human thought. Other things could affect the mind: Compulsion charms, the Confundus, the Imperius, the innate abilities of certain magical species such as Veelas, Sirens, Dementors, and Phoenixes. Potions, this potion in particular, and its fumes could do it, although there was very little the mental art of Occlumency could help with if Amortentia was ingested into the body rather than simply inhaled. It made sense that a Potions Master like Professor Slughorn had learned to immunise himself against the side effects, though it was interesting, very interesting, that Tom appeared to be just as composed as she was.
Tom's chest rose and fell as he breathed deeply of the fumes, as everyone else was doing, but his eyes hadn't glazed over. It seemed as if Tom was enjoying the smell without falling under its allure. Hermione enjoyed it too, but it wasn't her fault; Amortentia was brewed for the purpose of beguiling the unwary.
When class ended, Hermione asked Tom about his thoughts on the lesson.
"I haven't seen anyone worried about Amortentia, and how dangerous it is," Hermione remarked, on their way to the Great Hall for lunch. "I saw that half the class were drooling over their desks! The textbook has a list of warnings in the footnotes, but no one reads them, and instead of going over it, Slughorn spent more time explaining how to substitute cultured pearls for a budget brew. As if any of us were ever going to brew Amortentia ourselves."
"Some people might do," said Tom, "if they buy into the belief that the smell of Amortentia is an indication of who they'll marry in the future... But since they're the same people who trust horoscopes so much that they'd stay up three nights without sleeping to chart the rise of Venus, their judgement is probably not to be trusted. I'm not certain how that works, anyway; the textbook says that food smells are quite common. Surely even the oldest of old maids out there would hesitate about marrying a kidney pie."
"Did you get a food smell?" asked Hermione. She'd gotten a drink, but that was close enough to count.
"Among other things," Tom said nonchalantly.
"Oh?"
"What did you get?"
"Books and parchment. The good kind, you know, the heavyweight ivory parchment that Scrivenshaft's sells by the inch," Hermione said, picking the scent that she had identified first, the one she knew without a doubt what it was, unlike the last one she was still puzzling over.
She was referring to the expensive rolls of premium parchment at the back of Hogsmeade's one stationery shop, which required the assistance of a clerk to cut sections off upon request. Students restocked their supply with the cheaper parchment from racks at the front, but it was that expensive parchment which Hermione lingered over at every visit. It was so thick and weighty that the ends didn't curl up as soon as she turned around; the standard quality stuff needed inkwells and paperweights to keep it from scrolling up in the corners. This was the paper that Hermione couldn't justify buying for everyday use, only for her final term projects for her favourite classes, Arithmancy and Runes. And it was the paper used in the most valuable books in the Restricted Section, the antique grimoires written by hand and quill, instead of being mass-produced like their school textbooks.
"I got that too," said Tom, sounding very pleased with himself.
"There was something else..." Hermione spoke uncertainly, pausing for a moment to allow a group of Hufflepuff First Years to overtake them. They were holding hands to keep from getting lost in the maze of corridors that led out of the dungeons, a sight that made Tom scoff quietly under his breath.
"...I couldn't tell what it was, but it smelled familiar," continued Hermione. "Like some sort of soap, or cologne. I still don't know what it is. I think I'll have to go up to my dormitory before dinner to see what the other girls are using."
Tom's eyes narrowed. "You've actually thought the potion smelled like one of those Ravenclaw girls? What a preposterous idea—who on Earth would it be? Gutteridge? Shelton? It had better not be Ellerby; she's a twit."
"Don't tell me you believe in Amortentia Divinations," said Hermione, with a trace of reproof. "I fail to see how everyone thinks it's romantic; Professor Slughorn skimmed over the dangers, but he was very clear that nothing about it had anything to do with real love."
She didn't believe in the mystical powers of Divination, especially if the predictions came from any of her classmates who claimed to have the Sight, just because they had a nightmare about doing poorly on an assignment and it came true.
Hermione was also aware that, in spite of whatever her personal thoughts on the subject might be, the Muggle world would never have permitted the marriage of two inverts, as it was called in the journals of psychology she'd found in her father's study at home. A 'mental condition', she'd read—and it was only in writing that she'd learned about it, because it was not a subject trotted out in casual conversation, not in primary school or the family dinner table. She wasn't even sure that Magical Britain allowed it by law, but from what her dorm mates had told her about Jasper Hastings and his 'deviant inclinations', certain things were tolerated so long as the people involved (for a given value of 'people', as she was almost convinced the Sorting Hat was sentient) didn't make a public spectacle of themselves.
(And if they performed their duties first, if that was required of them by their families. That was something that went unspoken, but was nonetheless understood.)
Either way—and if Divination by Amortentia was a real thing, which she highly doubted—she couldn't imagine herself living with one of her dorm mates for the rest of her life. Though they might clean up after themselves in the communal facilities, and had the courtesy to Silence their curtains if they snored, they weren't more than token friends, and distantly at that. She couldn't remember the last personal conversation she'd had with any of them; she was the only Muggleborn out of the group, and wasn't particularly invested in Wizarding culture to the extent that she followed the news to the day, or recognised specific names dropped in gossip.
'Friends' and study partners she and the other Ravenclaws might be, but that was a far cry from being a true friend or a partner for life.
"I don't believe in them," said Tom quickly. He glanced around to ensure that the hallway was clear, before his voice lowered to a whisper. "I think you could do better than that. You're meant for greater things—greater than some trite, romantic nonsense that came out of a cauldron, at least."
Hermione sniffed. "Just because I don't like the idea of artificial romance doesn't mean that there's something wrong with romance in general."
While she could admit to enjoying the melodramatic idea of romance, the fictional portrayal of it that involved balcony serenades and the obligatory Act Three double suicide, it wasn't anything she actively sought to incorporate into her own life. That sentimentalised version was all fine to read about or see performed on a stage, as a form of entertainment where she was safely installed behind the Fourth Wall. Romance as a concept, however, which encompassed everything from courtship, reciprocated affection, closeness and constancy into the far distant future... well, that was something her parents had, and that realistic version of romance—which didn't come without its faults and setbacks—she wouldn't mind knowing on her own terms.
Logical reasoning was an intrinsic part of Hermione's nature. There was no excuse for why romance, of all things, couldn't be approached with realistic, reasonable expectations. Doing it this way would avoid all those sticky endings that star-crossed romantics found themselves stuck in. Death by heartbreak was a fate she intended to avoid; it was something that wouldn't do her future aspirations any favours.
"Is that something you want? Romance?" Tom's mouth twisted into a scowl. "Love?"
"Doesn't everyone?" she answered.
Tom said nothing to that.
Hermione sighed and stepped closer, taking his hands and lacing their fingers together. "Just because you might think of yourself as different to everyone else, doesn't mean you can't want what I want—what everyone else wants. It's not beneath you, or beneath anyone to value that. You can consider romance trite and common if you want, but it's not the same thing as love, and one day I hope you'll see that."
"You know," said Tom, "you sound an awful lot like Dumbledore when you say things like that."
"Well, I think he's right about some things," said Hermione. "Love is the most powerful magic of all."
"Wrong, actually." Tom shook his head solemnly. "Magic is the most powerful magic of all."
Hermione laughed at the graveness of his expression, and after a few seconds of trying to maintain his serious manner, Tom gave up and smiled with her.
On the walk to lunch, Hermione debated Tom on what other natural and conceptual phenomena could pass as magic, if wizards counted Love as magical. Gravity? Luck? Entropy or Time?
Dumbledore had mentioned before that Music was a great magic, but Hermione was dubious about it, having never seen it quoted in a textbook. But for once in his life, Tom agreed with Professor Dumbledore on that count, as music was a conscious amalgamation of imagination and intent, just as spoken or written language were, as used in magical incantations or runic enchantment. And intent was a basic principle of magic.
However, Tom did acknowledge certain exceptions to the rule: he held that there was nothing remotely magical or even likeable about Muggle dance hall rags or the singing minstrel variety hour broadcasted on the wireless. And in that, Hermione agreed with him.
She was so engrossed in the debate that she didn't notice they'd reached the Great Hall until Tom straightened his tie and fixed his expression to one of thoughtful severity, as befitted his status as Prefect and overall top student.
He glanced down at their connected hands and loosened his grip; she felt the edge of his nails drag briefly down the flesh of her wrist before he removed his hand from hers. He strode purposefully into the Hall and over to the Slytherin House table, but before he sat down, he turned to look over his shoulder at an empty seat at the Ravenclaw table, which was situated so that they'd be able to look at one another during lunch.
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Hermione's long-awaited seventeenth birthday came and went, and instead of celebrating it with Firewhisky, cake, and a pack of Gambol's Colour-Changing Sparklers, she spent it in the library.
There was plenty to research on the subject of her rights and obligations as an adult citizen of Magical Britain, and it would be remiss of her to waste valuable research hours, particularly at this time of year, when she didn't have to fight for a seat that wasn't squeezed between a Fifth Year preparing for their O.W.L.s and a Seventh Year their N.E.W.T.s. This early on in the term, all the books in the card catalogue were available to be read, without her having to sign her name on a waiting list at the librarian's desk.
The by-laws of the Ministry of Magic were a bureaucratic labyrinth to navigate, but it was a task Hermione had been bracing herself for, having in the summer acquired forms from Gringotts so she could owl them in after her birthday. This would allow her access to wizarding currency without having to visit a teller in person, and with that, she could transfer the administrative charges associated with having her family's house in London properly registered as a wizarding residence.
It was all very tedious to go through, as the Grangers owned a Muggle house in a Muggle neighbourhood, and there was a long checklist consisting of multiple sections and sub-sections that the Ministry required for the application process.
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17.5.c: Magical organisms (non-wizard). Include species and number of all live pets, pests, flora, beings, beasts, and all non-living ghosts, poltergeists, or non-beings on property. Proceed to form 17.6.d if any organisms exceed MoM Department of Magical Creatures rating of XXX or higher. (Please refer to Appendix G12 for rating schema.)
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It was tempting to ignore the reams of paperwork and continue on as she had been doing; for years, she'd been eschewing the Ministry altogether, hiring a third-party to ward and inspect her house, without the authorities ever knowing about or looking into it.
She was browsing the wizarding law section of the library for more information when she heard a voice on the opposite side of the bookshelf.
"Psst!"
Hefting Volumes One and Two of The Wizarding Patents Registry of Experimental Hybridisation from the shelf, then setting them on the floor to create a gap, Hermione bent her head down and peeked through to the aisle on the other side.
A pair of blue-grey eyes stared back at her.
"Nott," she said, "what are you doing?"
Nott's eyes darted left and right, checking for anyone approaching his section, before his attention returned to her. He hissed through the gap, "You've been avoiding me, Granger!"
"No, I haven't!"
"Yes, you have!" he snapped. "You never wrote back during the summer, and whenever I try to talk to you in class, you pretend you're busy."
"That's because I am busy!"
"Busy hiding something, I'd say," Nott insisted. "What did you find? And I know you have something; you've got that same face you make when someone else has his hand up in the air before you do."
Hermione wasn't aware she made any sort of face when the teacher awarded points to another student in class. Tom had never made mention of it before.
(Tom was the only other student whom she counted as academic competition in any of her subjects, but he usually waited for other students to have a go first before he modestly volunteered his own answer to win points for Slytherin. He enjoyed beating her when the question was a complicated one, as answering it first would further cement his reputation as a model student in the eyes of the professors and the rest of the class.)
"First, I don't make a face!" said Hermione waspishly. "And second, I don't even know why you're looking at me in the first place."
"One can learn a lot through looking," said Nott in a cold voice; through the gap in the shelf, Hermione saw his nostrils flare with poorly contained impatience. "For instance, I've noticed that you've been hovering about in the section between Wizarding Patent Law and Prosecution Transcripts of the Eighteen-Nineties. The only books there are on property law. And I've seen you with parchments stamped with the Ministry's seal. What are you doing there, Granger? Buying a magical property?"
"That's none of your concern," Hermione retorted.
"It could be," said Nott. "I don't know if you know this, but those hundred page applications don't matter at all. When you owl them in, the clerks at the Ministry never even read them—they only flip to the last page, and then they either stamp their approval right away, or it gets lost in the system and you never hear back until you show up in person... That's when they claim you never sent anything in. What really matters is the last page on the form, the statutory declaration."
"I was going to get my Head of House to sign as witness," Hermione bit out.
The Statutory Declaration form, which confirmed her identity as an of-age adult and legitimate registrant, wasn't just for property purchases—what Nott thought she was applying to the Ministry for. It was a sheet of parchment imbued with Anti-Forgery charms, a variant of the spell that the professors used on Hogsmeade permission slips when any Third Year brought one in with the signature looking like it was done in a child's handwriting.
"Beery?" Nott snickered. "He's a joke. That's the fastest way to get your form floating around someone's In-Tray for the next six months."
Hermione frowned. "How does anyone put up with this level of inefficiency?"
"Ah, that's the thing," said Nott, his tone annoyingly insouciant. "Not everyone puts up with it. My family certainly doesn't."
Her frown deepened. "Don't tell me it's due to your connections."
"Five points to Ravenclaw," Nott said with a smirk. "I wouldn't mind sharing my connections, if you'd like, Granger. All I ask is for you to share something in return..."
He trailed off meaningfully.
Hermione chewed her lip, tempted as much as she was conflicted.
At this point in the term, she might be an adult, but she was still a student, and she couldn't go haring off to the Ministry in London, be bounced between administrative departments, all to finally get to the one office that had the approval stamp for her specific application.
It was best to get her family's home registered as a wizarding residence as quickly as possible, which would ensure her parents could have the Floo installed by Christmas, and the whole house protected with a full set of anti-munitions wards instead of just the cellar. With that, her parents' safety would be assured in every room of the house, in case the house were to be bombed during the day when Mum and Dad weren't sleeping underground. With wards over the entire house, she'd be able to use magic in the kitchen, sleep in her childhood bedroom again, and even practice Apparition indoors. Doing it inside a registered house was permitted by the Ministry, as an alternative to finding a deserted alley to Apparate.
(Alleys were nonexistent in the suburbs outside of central London, and the textbook she'd read to prepare herself for the official lessons next term said that beginners were often very noisy with their Apparitions. Hermione wasn't eager to practice Apparition outdoors if the gunshot sound, created by the air displacement, would have her neighbours ringing the police every time.)
She also knew that Nott had no spirit of generosity; he was not a kind-hearted soul who yearned to help the disadvantaged and less fortunate. He always wanted something in return, and though he had never cheated her out of any exchange so far—which was limited to all of one time—he was not above exploiting her, her ignorance and inexperience, if it suited him.
On one side of the scale, there was information on Tom's family, which she'd learned from Major Tindall and Roger, and if it had been a secret, it wasn't now. Mrs. Riddle and her husband had had to acknowledge Tom's parentage in public, because an affluent selection of London society had got wind of it and taken an interest in a young man who'd been poorly neglected by his blood family. In the aftermath, a scandal two decades old had been revived, one which the Riddles thought had run its course and gotten buried in the passage of years.
On the other side, there was Hermione's family, whose lives had been much improved by Hermione's gift of magic. They were doing much better than other families still living in London, enough that they could afford to send the surplus of their larder and table to those of lesser means, because they had access to the wizarding markets. Hermione wanted to increase that access—secure it permanently—by bringing magic in and making their home magical, so even if Hermione moved elsewhere in Britain, or if she was away visiting Yorkshire, she could guarantee that her parents would always be close by and within easy reach. Safe.
There was a choice she was being offered, and when she looked at and weighed up the worst possible outcomes, she would choose Tom ignoring her for a handful of weeks, or a few months if he was going to be obstinate about it, as he'd done that last time he'd assumed she told Dumbledore about him. (If he tried to go without speaking to her, he would have a jolly time of it now, as their N.E.W.T. subjects had consolidated classes without regard for separation by House.)
Having Tom ignore her was better than Mum or Dad being injured or—it was difficult to contemplate such a ghastly prospect—killed in a completely preventable situation.
What use was being a witch if she couldn't protect her own family?
Unlike some other people she could name, she had a family whose presence she appreciated, valued, rather than suffered.
Tom didn't care about his family.
So why should she care? As long as she limited any information she shared from being detrimental to Tom himself, then it wouldn't matter, would it?
"How can I trust you?" asked Hermione. "You talk of connections, but I know you wouldn't be allowed to visit London to chat up whatever cousin's cousin you've got working at the Ministry."
"I'll write out a letter to my father's solicitor in front of you. You can read it over my shoulder," said Nott. "Make a copy of the forms, owl it with my letter—you can choose a school owl and watch me send it off—and he'll sign your declaration slip and hand-deliver to the right Ministry office."
"The forms have my personal information on them!" Hermione protested.
"Solicitors are contracted to client privacy," Nott countered. "And our community is only so large that a prominent family denouncing a person's reputation would ruin him for years, if not for life."
Hermione considered the offer for a minute or so. "Write the letter out first."
"And then you'll tell me what you know?"
"I'll tell you what I found out this summer," said Hermione, choosing her words carefully. There were plenty of things she knew about Tom that she'd learned years ago, and while she didn't know if Nott could tell whether or not she told him the truth, she did know that there existed magical means to ensure honesty. It was better not to risk it; it was better to tell selective truths than outright lies.
"You have a deal, Granger," Nott said. He glanced over his shoulder, then his face disappeared from the gap between the shelves. He reappeared once more an instant later, holding a stack of books, which he shoved back onto the shelf, closing off the connection.
Hermione returned the patent registry books on her side of the shelf. She leaned against the wooden frame and drew in a shaking breath.
Unimportant information only, preferably if it was also accessible to the public.
It would further reaffirm her honesty; in the event it ever came into question, she could point him to look it up, if he ever deigned to go rummaging into the dusty depths of Muggle bureaucracy, where his family connections would be of no help. Public information meant that it was as far from confidential information as the Wizarding Law section was from Astrodivination.
She'd decided that she wasn't going to tell Nott anything that Tom had told her personally; that would be betraying his confidence as a friend. Even when she'd asked Dumbledore about Tom's Legilimency, she'd never used his letters as proof against him—she'd only told the professor about her personal experience with his mind magic. So there it was: anything she'd gleaned through her own investigations or experience, or had been apprised of by other parties: she found that morally acceptable to share.
Nott came around the corner of the shelves, dumping his bookbag on the nearest table. His wand flicked, and a roll of parchment flew out, followed by a bottle of ink sealed with a wired cork stopper, the label on the front identifying it as Scribbulus' Best Indelible Formula #16.
The parchment was unrolled, corners pinned into place with a textbook, and then Nott picked up a quill and began to write.
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To A. McLaird of Slant and Associates, 84/C Diagon Alley, London:
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As pertaining to the extant retainment contract, authorised and renewed in 1933 by C. H. Nott of the House of Nott, your legal and administrative services are hereby requested. Immediate assistance is required in lodging the following applications on behalf of one H. J. Granger...
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Hermione read the letter over Nott's shoulder, noting that his writing was not as beautiful as Tom's—Tom always finished his Y's and J's with elegant looping tails—but it was extraordinarily clean. Nott handled the quill with the ease of someone who'd been trained from childhood to use one, his right hand working over the parchment, his left hand keeping the page from rumpling, smoothly reaching out to dab the blotter at the end of each line at the same time he began a new one. When he went to refresh his ink, he didn't violently jab the quill nib into the inkwell as she'd seen younger students do; with care, he wiped off the excess before he continued writing, so that there were no splatters or blobby ink drops on the first stroke he made, and each line, each word, was consistent and uniform to every other.
Despite her own feelings on Nott's personality, Hermione appreciated the efficiency. She herself had never mastered this level of proficiency, having several years ago saved up her birthday money and bought an enchanted No-Blotting nib that she could swap around on her collection of quill feathers.
Another thing she had to appreciate was how he could draft a legal letter in situ—a skill that wasn't taught in any class at Hogwarts—with the correct modes of address, the concise yet formal passive voice, and references to specific clauses to the Notts' contract ensuring that any details Mr. T. E. Nott shared with the family solicitor would not somehow wind up on the desk of Mr. C. H. Nott when the quarterly billing form arrived.
She felt a pang when she realised that she could have learned this skill herself, had she gone to Donwell Prep and taken the secretarial course that had been offered there. Magical Theoretica was an interesting subject to pursue, but it was a sobering thought to realise that delving into the purely academic side of her magical studies came at the cost of picking up useful life skills.
It was another sobering thought to acknowledge that she might have surpassed all the pureblooded students in her year with her O.W.L. scores, but there were other areas in which they were her superiors in knowledge and expertise.
Nott blotted the final sentence, drying the ink, and slid the parchment over to Hermione. When she indicated that it met her approval, he drew out a stick of green wax from his quill case, then slid the ring off the third finger of his right hand to create the seal. He melted the end of the wax stick with his wand and dribbled the melted wax by his signature. When he removed his ring from the cooling wax, Hermione observed that his family's coat of arms was of a shield held between two crossed oak boughs in leaf.
"How many wizarding families have arms?" Hermione asked curiously, inspecting the seal. The wax was green, but the surface had a pearly silver sheen.
Nott shrugged. "Sixty or thereabouts. Some houses are gone in the male line, some are gone altogether, and some don't use them anymore because they want to be—" he scoffed, "—modern."
"That's funny," Hermione said, "aren't there only twenty-eight families on your father's official list?"
"Twenty-eight worthy families," corrected Nott. "That distinction is important."
"Whatever you say," replied Hermione, who thought sorting groups by worthiness to be a ridiculous, arbitrary task, with the end result bearing no objective weight. Anyone might decide that raspberries were the most worthy fruit, and relegate strawberries and gooseberries to be the "Devil's Berries", as if such a classification meant anything.
"It's your turn now, Granger," Nott prompted, cocking his head and suddenly looking quite eager, his hands gripping the edge of the library table with white knuckles. "What do you know?"
Hermione pursed her lips, taking a few seconds to review the facts and select the ones she deemed safest to share.
"'Riddle' is a Muggle name," she admitted. "You were right about that."
"I knew it!" cried Nott, eyes glittering in triumph. His mouth twisted into a cruel smile, baring a flash of white teeth. "I knew Riddle was Muggle riff-raff from the start. You know, his first day in the dormitory, he smashed the mirror in the bathroom because it talked to him. What kind of savage doesn't know that enchanted mirrors give grooming advice?"
"He's not riff-raff," Hermione said defensively, glaring at Nott. "His family are actually wealthy land-owners in Yorkshire. Not too far from where you live, actually."
"That doesn't change the fact that they're still Muggles," said Nott.
"It changes nothing about Tom," Hermione said. "To gloat over this because you have nothing else to gloat over... that's just pathetic."
"Oh, whatever you say," Nott said in a mocking voice, echoing what she'd said a few minutes ago. "I assume his mother is a filthy Muggle as well? Shall we make it two for two?"
"I don't know for certain," Hermione confessed. "There isn't much known about her."
She wasn't going to mention the few things she knew about Tom's late mother, which weren't flattering in the least. There was no way to make the descriptions of 'village tramp' or 'fortune-hunting tart' sound anything better than belittling, and she felt uncomfortable repeating such disparaging language aloud. Seeing as these descriptions had been used by the likes of Mrs. Riddle, she had her doubts that they were an objective fact; Hermione was more inclined to believe that after twenty years, Mrs. Riddle was still offended that her highborn son had been stolen away by a woman of the working class.
"Well?"
"Um," said Hermione. "All I know is that her name was 'Merope Gaunt Riddle'. I assume that 'Merope Gaunt' was her maiden name—'Gaunt' doesn't sound like a middle name to me."
Nott's gleeful smile froze; a muscle twitched under his eye. "Did you say 'Gaunt'? Spelt 'G-A-U-N-T'?"
"I believe so," said Hermione, who'd never seen the name in writing. "Are there any other ways to spell it?"
"Fuck," muttered Nott. Then louder, he repeated himself, "Fuck!"
"Shhh!" Hermione hissed at him, glancing around for any sign of the librarian. "You can't swear here! This is a library!"
"'Gaunt' is a wizarding name," Nott spat between clenched teeth. "A proper family name, on the list of worthy families."
"It could be a coincidence," Hermione suggested. "'Black' is a pureblood name, but there are plenty of people with it who are Muggles."
"It's not a coincidence." Nott shook his head. "You told me that 'Marvolo' was his middle name, and now that I know which surname it's connected to, it all makes sense! There was a 'Marvolo Gaunt' listed in Father's Pureblood Directory—died in Twenty-Seven, but they've got to be related. There are too many connections for it to be coincidence. Riddle is a Legilimens. The Gaunt family are rumoured to bear that particular trait... and another, more famous one. If he has one, then why not the other?" He leaned in, voice lowered. "Tell me, Granger, have you ever seen Riddle talk to snakes?"
Hermione blinked. "What? Why—why would he do that? Snakes can't talk!"
"They can, and they do—but not to just anyone," said Nott very mysteriously, eyes narrowed in calculation. "I have a theory... The Sorting Hat decided Riddle was worthy of Slytherin. It knew something, didn't it? It had to know—he spent minutes under there back in First Year; he was almost a Hatstall. I always thought it was debating dumping him in Hufflepuff, or another one of the lesser Houses—offense intended, Granger—but now I think that it had to have known something... and Riddle must have been hiding it the whole time, the sneak..."
"The whole time he was a half-blood," said Hermione, who was trying to pluck the facts out of Nott's half-mumbled rambling. "Is that what you mean? He's not a Muggleborn, if his mother had a wizarding name. She... she must have been a witch!"
This was a theory she had discussed with Tom years ago when they'd learned they were magical, and that magic had a tendency to run in families. Back then, Tom hadn't known his mother or his father, believing himself to be an orphan, and Hermione had assumed that there was a chance that either or both parents could have been wizards. Tom had dismissed the idea of his mother being a witch; what he knew of her was limited to the information he'd been given by the orphanage authorities: that his mother had stumbled into Wool's in mid-winter and had him right there in the foyer, then died a few minutes after naming him.
What pregnant witch would choose a Muggle orphanage as the perfect place to drop a baby? Why wouldn't she go to St. Mungo's? It was dangerous for a witch to Apparate in labour, but there was the Floo Network, and plenty of places in London had public Floo connections. Furthermore, the hospital was run off the donations of wealthy families who liked to see their names engraved on plaques hanging by the front doors. Medical care was free for those in need, and an imminent birth counted as an emergency.
For years, Tom had been under the assumption that it was his father who had been the wizard, the man who was the source of his unique ability, and it was only this summer that he'd met the Riddles of North Riding in person. Hermione suspected that, at this point in time, Tom no longer cared about his parentage—that he'd dismissed both sides of his family tree as useless outside of the material advantages they offered. (Which for now was limited to Mrs. Riddle's indulgent promenade of expensive trinkets and clothing.)
Being a Muggleborn herself, she whole-heartedly supported this reversal of opinion, even though she didn't care much for the callous way Tom spoke of the Riddles, as if he was just waiting for them to expire of old age so he could collect his inheritance and spend it all on rare spellbooks. (If Hermione had come into a large amount of money at once, that was what she'd have spent it on; she and Tom differed in a number of ways, but not in this.) It was somewhat disturbing to know that Tom had looked up average British life expectancies, and had been pleased to discover that the census of 1940 reported that British men were expected to live to an average age of sixty-five. Mr. Thomas Riddle, current owner of the Riddle estate, had turned sixty-three this year.
Mr. Riddle liked wine with lunch and dinner, brandy and cigars for afters, and plenty of meat and butter with every meal. Hermione was the daughter of a doctor, and despite having no medical qualifications—or any training in the magical art of Divination—she found it safe to predict that he wouldn't live past his eighth decade, and even seven would be a stretch. But she still felt a touch of nervousness knowing that Tom wasn't one for patience, that he had always been greedier than was good for him... Surely he wouldn't try to rush things, would he?
(When Tom joked about his inheritance, was he really joking?)
Nott made a face. "She was a pureblooded witch. Distinguished lineage, perfect unmixed blood, and a sacred surname—that is, until she went and threw herself away on a Muggle."
"Unmixed blood," said Hermione in a flat voice. "Does that mean she was inbred?"
Nott brushed the insult off with an indifferent wave of his hand. "All purebloods intermarry if they want to stay pure; don't get your lowly Muggle sensibilities wound up about it." He grimaced. "Urgh, I'm sure that makes Riddle my sixth cousin or something. I swear there was a Corvinus Gaunt who married an Injeborg Rowle in the Seventeen-Eighties, and a Rowle of that generation who married Celandine Nott."
"Well, if the connection is by marriage, that puts at least one remove between you and him," Hermione pointed out.
"Haha, Granger," Nott grumbled. "Very droll. I'll have to investigate this—this is the best lead I've got; assuming it isn't a hoax, then this information is much too promising to pass up."
He pushed himself up from the table, shovelling his quills and ink into his quill case, clearing up his space of books and parchments and chucking them all into his bookbag. It must have been enchanted with an Expansion Charm, because Hermione heard them rattling around inside until Nott closed the flap and buckled it shut.
Nott ran a trembling hand through his hair, mumbling to himself.
"Hey!" said Hermione, hurriedly picking up her own books and parchment, "What about the letter? We still have to go to the Owlery to send it off!"
"Fine," Nott grunted. He jerked his head in the direction of the library doors. "Let's go, then. Hurry up; I've got things to do."
On the walk up to the Owlery, Hermione peppered Nott with questions on the Gaunt family, which turned out to be a minor and relatively obscure house on the official list. She'd never read The Pureblood Directory, having been aware of the Muggle equivalents which were nothing more than regularly updated lists of British Peers. She'd not been impressed by the conspicuous self-aggrandisement that underpinned these books' entire existence, and if her lack of enthusiasm toward the concept of the Directory had been evident in her tone, she didn't bother to correct herself, not even to spare Nott or his father's feelings.
She learned that the Gaunts were secretive and extremely conservative, even more than the average pureblood, to the extent that they'd secluded themselves from wizarding society. They chose homeschool over allowing their children to go to Hogwarts via the awful Muggle contraption that was the Hogwarts Express; last century, when Minister Ottaline Gambol had stolen the Express from the Muggle builders, she'd put out an ultimatum that all school enrollees had to ride the train to Scotland or forgo their Hogwarts education, and apparently the Gaunts had been one of the few families who had put their foot down in a refusal to expose their children to such Muggle degeneracy.
The Gaunts' heraldic animal was the serpent, and they alleged descent from many notable historical figures—but as it was through the female line only, even professional genealogists like Cantankerous Nott had found no solid, undeniable proof in support of their claim. However, the purity of their blood was unquestioned.
"They're not pure anymore, unfortunately," Nott remarked, when they'd reached the high tower that was the Hogwarts owlery. There were several hundred steps to reach the top, and Nott sounded winded by the time they'd reached their destination, which had bird droppings smeared all over the floor and walls, and niches carved out for owls to roost when they weren't hunting or out delivering letters. "Not if a Muggle man got a son on Merope Gaunt. What a shame: another good family struck off the list. This'll have to go in the next edition, of course."
"Tom still has magical blood, whatever surname he bears," said Hermione. "He's a Legilimens; you'd be a fool if you discount his ability due to the 'purity' of his blood."
Nott's jaw tensed. "Trust me, that's the last thing I'll forget. Now hurry up and pick an owl."
Gilles fluttered over to Hermione's shoulder, when Hermione cast about looking for an owl to take the letter. He butted his head up against her hair, sharp talons pricking through the wool of her school robes. Hermione patted his head soothingly, explaining that they needed an anonymous owl to make a delivery, while Nott tapped his foot in irritation, toes crunching on straw stalks and desiccated owl pellets.
They tied Nott's letter to the leg of a barn owl, with Hermione's application tied to the other. The owl, one that belonged to the school, hooted at them while it tested the unbalanced distribution of weight between its two legs. But soon it flung itself out of one of the tower's large windows and winged away into the late afternoon sunset.
"Are you going to tell Tom?" Hermione asked when it was done.
Nott gave her a disgusted look. "I'm not stupid, Granger. I know better than to go and do that."
"Well, now you know better than to call Tom names for his blood status," said Hermione starchily. "Since you're probably cousins."
"Half my House are distant cousins; it doesn't mean anything." Nott rolled his eyes. "There are plenty of other names, unrelated to Riddle's blood, that I could think of to call him."
"But you won't," said Hermione, tilting her head. "You're afraid to even think too loud around him."
"You're a fool for not being afraid of him."
"I've nothing to be afraid of."
Ever since the evening of the Gala, Tom had been more affectionate around her than he'd ever been before. He didn't hesitate to return the small physical demonstrations of their friendship, and now he initiated such contact on his own. It was nice—Tom was nice—and however unexpected it was, she valued the changes that she'd seen in him. Was it perhaps the harsher edges of his personality mellowing out as he transitioned into adulthood? Was it due to finding his family, and now that he knew he wasn't an orphan, he no longer had to act like one, no longer had to cling onto the anger and distrust that had formed in the years of orphanage deprivation?
Whatever the reason for the change, she liked this version of Tom. She didn't think he'd ever become altruistic and all-loving; that was too far a stretch. At present, Tom was more thoughtful around her, more attentive to her feelings, instead of the other way around where Hermione had had to take special measures when in his presence. In the past, mentioning a specific topic could have him going silent and brooding for hours at a time. After the first summer that Tom had lived in her house, discussing the state of the war or the German air raids was enough to send him into a day-long sulk.
"You're too trusting, Granger," said Nott, shaking his head in disappointment. "Riddle is a Slytherin, and that means trust lasts only as long as it's convenient. And convenience won't last forever."
Hermione couldn't bring herself to contradict him; in a debate on trust and trustworthiness, she didn't think she was prepared to vindicate her own position. So she held her tongue as they made their way back down the circular staircase of the Owlery tower.
"One of these days, Riddle is going to stop pretending to be everyone's favourite Prefect," Nott went on, taking Hermione's silence as tacit agreement. "The two of us know better than everyone else what he's like—what he's capable of. When he decides to make it known, he won't be needing any infantile attachments." Nott's gaze flicked over to her, before continued with, "He's clever enough to know how useless they are in the grand scheme of things, compared to how useful it is to court the establishment, as it were. If it's known that Riddle has the proper blood, if not the proper name, doors will open for him once he learns the right way to turn the handle..."
Hermione let him blather on, having decided that Nott was a prat whose opinions were nothing more than self-important hot air. Nott might be able to score Outstandings in his class subjects without relying on the right group partners or the best student tutors, but that was as much a measure of his individual academic aptitude as his astounding lack of charisma. He had dozens of distant cousins, but she couldn't name anyone in their year who could pass as a genuine friend of his. He had some sort of grudge—grudging obsession, more like—against Tom Riddle, and made derogatory remarks about Tom with every other breath... but he still loitered around the edge of Tom's group, because there weren't any other people with the patience to put up with him.
Nott was a rather pitiable person, the more she thought about it. She wasn't the most charismatic person either, but at least she could hold a conversation with the other girls in her dormitory, and even if she didn't share the same priorities or personal beliefs as they did, she didn't go out of her way to insinuate they were morally or intellectually deficient for it. It was discomfiting to contemplate that in Nott's imaginary Anti-Riddle Society, he would have counted her as a founding member, because there was no one else he was on 'friendly' terms with, or, really, on any terms at all...
Upon turning the last curve of the spiral-shaped stairwell, she and Nott bumped into Edmond Lestrange going the other way, a sealed envelope clutched in his fist.
"Nott," said Lestrange in greeting, giving the other boy a polite nod of the head. Then he noticed Hermione, who was standing too close to Nott for the two of them to pass it off as a random encounter during a routine mail run. "What are you doing with Granger?"
Hermione sent Nott an apprehensive look, before she said, "Sending a letter. Why? What did you think we were doing?"
Lestrange gazed at Nott, who seemed as pale and twitchy as he usually was, then he turned to Hermione. He studied her face intently.
Hermione felt her cheeks heating up under his intense scrutiny.
"You shouldn't be chumming it up with her, Nott," said Lestrange. "You'll be giving people the wrong idea."
"Excuse me!" Hermione interjected. "I can 'chum it up' with anyone I like."
"And what's it to you?" Nott scowled. "Mind your own business."
"It's nothing to me," said Lestrange, shrugging his meaty shoulders. "But maybe Riddle would have something to say about it."
"And you're going to tell him, are you?" asked Nott contemptuously.
"He'll be interested to know," Lestrange said, a dark glint of malicious glee flashing in his eyes. "Maybe he'll remind you of that day you sicked up in the bathroom. What did you even do to him to earn it? Y'know, we never found out what happened—but if you've been pawing over Granger, maybe there'll be a public encore and Riddle will give us all front row seats."
He let out a nasty laugh.
"Shut the fuck up," Nott snarled, drawing his wand. "You have no idea what you're on about."
Lestrange drew his own, and for several seconds the two boys eyed each other from where they stood on the staircase of the Owlery tower.
Hermione reached into her robe pocket—
"Furnunculus!"
"Melofors!"
Two flashes of light erupted from the ends of their wands, yellow from Nott's, and orange from Lestrange's.
Hermione cast a silent Protego, bouncing Lestrange's spell right back at him, and the combination of that and Nott's own spell flung him down a half-dozen steps and against the wall of the tower, where he crumpled into a dazed heap on the floor.
"Duelling in the hallways is grounds for detention," said Hermione, casting a reproachful look at Nott for a brief second, before she rushed over to Lestrange, dropping to her knees on the floor at the base of the staircase. She checked the pulse at his wrist and throat, examined his breathing, then began on the counter-curse for the first of the two jinxes, which had raised a series of swollen pustules across his skin. "But since assigning you detention means you'll have to serve it with Tom... Just try not to do that again."
"You aren't going to change your mind on that?" Nott asked, making his way down the stairs.
Hermione shook her head, busy thinking back to her Defence textbooks' counterspell diagrams. Nott's jinx had been cast with a demicircle in between two vertical strokes, hadn't it? What was Lestrange's? There'd been two jabs; how did the textbook explain the reversal for those...
"Good," said Nott. "Obliviate!"
"What was that for!" Hermione cried, her head twisting over her shoulder; behind her, Nott had his wand trained at Lestrange's face.
"If he tells Riddle," Nott said, "then that's the end of our arrangement. And I can't let that happen."
His brows knitted in concentration as he purged the last few minutes of Lestrange's recent memories—which made Hermione wonder how and where he'd learned Obliviation, as it wasn't taught on the Hogwarts curriculum. Hermione had understood the reason for it: the book on Legilimency had said that most magics related to the mind required thorough training in mental discipline to cast. That Nott knew how to do it was an implicit statement of how much benefit there was in having been born into an influential wizarding family.
Hermione wasn't jealous about it. She tried not to be, at least. The theory of Obliviation and memory modification had been discussed in the Legilimency textbook she'd borrowed, and she expected she could cast the spell based on the written instructions. She hadn't made an attempt; finding a test subject was a risky prospect, not that she wanted one, of course. Nott, however, appeared ambivalent about the risk of causing permanent damage.
Nott gave a quick turn of his wrist, murmured "Colovaria", and inspected his handiwork as Lestrange's hair became a vibrant, eye-watering crimson, with his eyebrows and eyelashes turning a shade of cornsilk yellow so pale they all but disappeared into his skin.
Hermione sucked in a slow, measured breath, her fingers tightening over her wand. She could see Nott was trying to frame this as an "accident", and while she wasn't entirely pleased about it, she couldn't think of anything better. Bringing Lestrange to the Hospital Wing, perhaps—but the Mediwitch on duty would ask her too many questions. Hermione had already countered the effects of the jinxes, so Lestrange wasn't in dire need of medical attention.
When she'd finally composed herself enough to speak, she said, "I don't understand why anyone would want to be Sorted into Slytherin."
"People don't want to be in Slytherin," said Nott matter-of-factly, slipping his wand up his sleeve. "They either are Slytherins, or they're not."
.
.
.
Author's Notes:
— Note that Tom never answered what his Amortentia smelled like.
— The history of the Hogwarts Express is on Pottermore, if you want to read more about it. The references to it made in earlier are "canon" if you consider JKR's supplementary information as legit.
— This chapter is the first time an f-bomb has been dropped in the story. It feels like a milestone, but maybe that's just me.
— Repeating the disclaimer from Chapter 1, character opinions are accurate to the culture and time period, and do not necessarily represent my own beliefs.