Unspeakable Things
POV: Hermione Granger
The room did not hum so much as it listened .
Hermione Granger stood in the center of Archive Chamber Three, surrounded by humming glass tanks that glowed faintly in the dim, rune-streaked light. Each contained a sample of what the Department politely referred to as Residual Magical Trauma. To the outside world, that meant sealed evidence of dangerous hexes or battlefield echoes. But in her wing of the Department, it meant something else.
The room was cold. Not by charm—by design. Magic decayed faster in warmth.
She leaned closer to the tank on her left, studying the smear of blue-green aura suspended mid-vial. The residual imprint clung to the inner glass, refusing to settle. It always did that when the source was a child. Their signatures never quite knew where to rest.
The file in her hand—Case 1785-M—was a closed one. A seven-year-old Squib whose parents had requested magical suppression, hoping early intervention might change the outcome. It hadn’t. What remained was this: a flickering echo of magic denied, not by nature, but by policy.
Hermione reached for the sigil wand hovering beside her. She tapped twice against the etched crystal on the rim of the tank. The imprint twitched. She recorded the pulse. Again. No shift.
Still resisting measurement, she thought. That made four in a row.
The magic didn’t vanish when you cut someone from their lineage. It hung in the air like a question no one wanted answered. Most people thought a Squib had no magic at all. That wasn’t true. They had enough to be erased by it.
Hermione made a note in the margin of the report: Residual imprint persists beyond suppression. Emotional resonance possible.
She underlined possible twice.
A door opened at the far end of the chamber—silent, but not unnoticed. Even here, among Unspeakables, silence had texture. Hermione didn’t look up until the footsteps reached her table.
“Granger,” said a voice, crisp and dry.
Head Unspeakable Saanvi Varma appeared in her periphery, draped in formal black, hands folded behind her back like a woman who had never once fidgeted. Her eyes, always sharp, scanned the room before returning to Hermione.
Hermione straightened. “Head Unspeakable.”
Varma held out a slim file—no sigils, no glow, nothing to mark it as urgent except the color of the seal: ashen grey.
Hermione took it. Opened it.
One phrase was highlighted in violet ink: Perception breach. No magical residue.
She blinked. Read it again. Then flipped to the attached summary: Five murders. No known connection. No magical trace. Victims found in magically warded homes, undisturbed. Auror Office requesting review.
Varma’s voice was level. “The Department believes someone is mimicking magical signatures without access to a channel.”
Hermione frowned. “A Squib?”
“Not quite. Possibly something in between.” Varma tapped the file with two fingers. “The Aurors have no theory. Just a growing list of bodies and no spellwork to pin them to.”
Hermione’s mind clicked into gear. “So they want us to provide a framework.”
“No.” Varma smiled, thin and without softness. “They want us to send someone.”
Hermione stilled.
Varma added, “You’ll consult. Observe. Do not interfere.”
“Understood.”
Her tone was neutral. Practiced. She didn’t ask the obvious question until she closed the file and saw the name printed neatly at the bottom of the assignment sheet.
Her hand paused. “Who’s the Auror on record?”
Varma didn’t blink. “Malfoy.”
There was a long moment where Hermione said nothing.
Then: “Of course.”
The lift made no sound as it descended—just a slow hum of enchanted gears behind velvet-lined walls, like the Ministry couldn’t bear to be noisy, even in motion.
Hermione stood in the center, arms crossed over the file Varma had handed her. Her wand hand flexed once, absently, the only betrayal of tension. She didn’t read the name again. She didn’t need to.
Malfoy.
The seal had already vanished. The rest was memory.
The lift shuddered once, then slowed.
She didn’t move.
Instead, her eyes fixed on the mirrored panel across from her—the one that reflected her face a little too clearly, too honestly, the way Department glass always did.
She adjusted her collar. Smoothed the fold of her sleeve. A twitch of control, nothing more.
It’s professional, she told herself. It’s a case file. It’s logistics and field coordination.
But her reflection didn’t blink, and for a moment—just one—something surfaced. A flicker.
It had been raining during the skirmish, though she only remembered that in flashes—mud streaked up her robes, her hair matted to her neck, the way her spells hissed when they hit the ground. It was a cursed grove near Dorset, one of the last wandfire holds before the battle that didn’t get a name.
He had been there.
Not beside her. But not against her.
A curse had arced toward her left, split through the fog like a bone-snap of violet light. She hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t needed to. He was already moving.
She never heard him cast. But the air shifted—something bright and fast and meant to shield. The curse broke inches from her shoulder.
They didn’t speak. Not then. Not after.
A week later, she passed him in the corridor at Shell Cottage. She had paused, half expecting some nod, some shared acknowledgment of breath in borrowed time.
He didn’t stop. Didn’t glance. Just moved past her with the same fluid quiet he’d used in the grove.
Like nothing had happened.
The lift chimed. The doors slid open.
Hermione stepped into the corridor without looking back at the glass. The air outside the Department felt heavier somehow, thicker with the noise of the upper floors. Footsteps. Paperwork. Too many people speaking at once.
She moved briskly through the main level, past rows of enchanted file cases and Ministry-issued pens that recorded signatures whether one wanted them to or not.
She walked as though the weight in her chest wasn’t new. As though it hadn’t stirred at the memory of a single look that never came.
It’s ancient history, she told herself again.
But it wasn’t, not quite.
History didn’t vanish just because you didn’t write it down.
The Auror Office was too loud.
Hermione stepped through the brass-framed doors and was met with the sharp scent of ink and wand smoke, the whirring of enchanted filing scrolls, the clipped rhythm of a dozen voices talking over each other—none of it disciplined, none of it quiet.
She stood for a moment on the threshold, absorbing it all.
There had been a time when this was familiar. When she would have moved through this place with practiced confidence and a dossier full of legislation to fix what didn’t work. But that had been before the Department swallowed her. Before she learned what was written in the archives beneath the ground and what was never meant to rise again.
Now, even the light here felt too quick. Too exposed.
A junior Auror approached—fresh-faced, underfed, and clearly regretting whatever mistake had led to being the one to greet her. He held out a temporary identification badge with both hands, as if it might bite him.
“Unspeakable Granger,” he said, voice cracking slightly. “Welcome back to field operations.”
Hermione took the badge with a nod. “Thank you.”
He flushed. “Director Selwyn said you’re expected in—”
But she was already walking.
The bullpen sprawled before her, all sharp corners and louder confidence. Warded boards floated above desks, cases flickering across them in bursts of image and fact. Paperwork moved of its own accord. Someone was arguing in the far corridor. Someone else was swearing at a file that had vanished mid-sentence.
Hermione moved through it like a ghost, unhurried, untouched. A few people turned to look—half out of recognition, half curiosity—but no one stopped her.
She saw him before he saw her.
Draco Malfoy stood near the center of the room, shoulder to shoulder with Director Selwyn, both of them bent slightly toward a shared board lit with golden script. He was speaking low, gesturing with a pen. His posture was loose, but not careless. The kind of confidence that had been earned, or at least, practiced until it passed for real.
Then he turned.
Their eyes met across the chaos.
His expression didn’t shift—but something in the line of his jaw tightened. Just enough.
Hermione kept walking.
Selwyn looked up.
“Granger,” he said. “Welcome back to the field. Brief with Malfoy. You’ll want to see the Rosier scene.”
Draco didn’t turn. “I filed a complete report,” he said flatly. “She can read.”
Hermione stopped beside them. Her smile was thin, precise.
“And yet here I am.”
Selwyn handed her a copy of the field log. “Full access granted by Mysteries. No jurisdictional walls. Malfoy will get you up to speed.”
He left without waiting for confirmation, coat flaring behind him like punctuation.
Hermione turned to Draco.
He still hadn’t looked at her directly.
There was silence between them. Not charged. Not awkward.
Just old.
The room Selwyn had assigned them was a former storage office hastily converted for collaboration. It still smelled faintly of dust and cooling charm residue, and the windowless walls carried the faint pulse of Ministry monitoring glyphs—active, but low-tier. Standard surveillance. Not that it mattered.
Draco entered first and sat without a word, unrolling the incident scroll with the same efficiency she remembered from war councils. She followed a beat behind, settling into the chair opposite. The table between them was narrow, meant for proximity. She didn’t let it register.
The parchment unspooled between them.
He began reading aloud, voice clipped and dry.
“Rosier, Elspeth. Age fifty-six. Found seated, no sign of hex or trauma. Ward breach—none recorded. Magical residue—none.”
Hermione had already skimmed two-thirds of the report.
She interrupted him.
“This detection pass doesn’t account for chemical residue.”
His eyes flicked to hers, sharp. “There was nothing to detect.”
She leaned forward slightly, tone measured. “Or you didn’t know what to look for.”
A pause, flat and humming. Not silence, not quite. Just the moment between contact and combustion.
His gaze didn’t waver, but he stopped reading.
Hermione tapped the fourth line of the ward signature log. The ink was dry, the glyphs neatly printed, but there—a half-second discrepancy in the reactivation pattern. Small. Imperceptible unless you were trained to watch the way time folded around magical permissions.
She reached into her coat and withdrew a red ink quill. Circled the anomaly.
“Reset lag,” she said quietly. “Milliseconds, but enough to imply something was disarmed manually.”
He didn’t answer.
She sat back. Waited.
His jaw shifted.
“You’re suggesting she let them in.”
“I’m saying the wards didn’t fail.”
He studied her then—not the report, not the glyphs—but her. As if trying to decide whether this was a theory or an accusation. She didn’t blink.
Eventually, he rolled the parchment back into place and rose from his chair.
“I’ll take you to the scene.”
Hermione nodded once, gathered the file, and stood.
They didn’t speak as they left the room, but the distance between them had changed.
Not closer.
Just sharper.
They’d barely cleared the corridor when she asked for the full ward log.
Draco didn’t offer it. Just raised a brow, then summoned it from the archive fileroom with a muttered passcode and a flick of his wand. The document arrived folded and slightly out of order—typical for Auror field work, she thought. Or perhaps deliberate. It was difficult to tell with Malfoy.
They found another quiet room. Smaller. No surveillance glyphs this time, just plain plaster and a single floating lantern that flickered as though it disapproved of the company.
He stood as she sat, arms crossed, expression unreadable as she spread the original log across the table. The Ministry record ink was faint at the edges, but the internal signatures were still legible—ward anchors, activation echoes, magical ID stamps.
Hermione scanned the glyph array quickly, then slower, parsing for sequence.
Three of the four perimeter anchors matched Elspeth Rosier’s standard magical signature. A fourth bore the trace of a Ministry safety override. Expected.
It was the fifth that made her pause.
Not a name. Not a code.
Just a signature string that resolved to nothing.
No registration match. No traceable origin. Not even a failed classification.
She frowned.
“Problem?” Draco asked, his tone level.
She tapped the glyph. “Someone was inside who doesn’t technically exist.”
He leaned closer, glanced at the anchor notation. “You think it’s a ghost?”
Hermione didn’t look up. “No. I think it’s someone who never officially counted.”
Her fingers curled once against the edge of the parchment. Then she added, softer:
“Which is worse.”
The lantern above them buzzed faintly, its glow turning sharp against the white of the page.
She looked up then—really looked at him. No distance. No analyst’s shield.
“Take me to the house.”
He didn’t answer. Not at first.
But he moved toward the door, and she followed.