Chapter 3
The journal wasn’t easy to work with. Part of the problem was the damage to the book itself. The water and the hole punched right through had melded some of the pages together, and the leather had worked its way into the jagged edges of the paper. Hermione could barely open it without ripping the cover or the pages out, and even then, she only got it open a few centimeters.
Her trip into town had been mostly successful. She’d gone in the height of the afternoon rush to blend in with the crowds, and she’d kept her head down under one of her more inconspicuous cloaks. Knockturn Alley wasn’t a place for young witches in general, but Hermione was particularly keen on getting her errands done without being seen.
The books she’d needed were dark. They were dusty from disuse, their pages were worn and yellowed, and they were expensive.
Since she hadn’t yet gotten any magic books that summer, her parents were happy enough to lend her the pounds she needed for them, and a quick stop at the wizarding bank had sorted the cost.
Pouring over them at home only frustrated Hermione. Nowhere in her books was there an antidote or potion, no charms to cure the effects. Basilisk venom was nasty to work out of even impermeable materials, but out of leather and paper which soaked up whatever was spilled on them was nearly impossible. Nearly.
Hermione had found a small passage in one of the books. It wasn’t about venoms, nor about repairing damaged, dark artifacts. It was about blood magic.
Blood magic had always fascinated Hermione in a secret, guilty pleasure kind of way. It was supposedly powerful, incredibly so, but everyone she ever broached the subject she was told in no uncertain terms how evil it was. It was infuriating - magic couldn’t be evil in Hermione’s mind. It could only be used for evil, and that was an important distinction. The charms they learned in school were deemed safe and good, but they could be utilized to cause chaos and crime just as any other form of dark magic. Alohomora could get someone inside a home just to cause trouble, just to inflict pain on those who lived there, or to steal what was inside. Herbivicus was used all the time in class, but it could be utilized to create something monstrous if it were used on certain plants, in certain situations. Even Protego was the root spell behind Protego Diabolica and others, which did significant harm to others. And in the same vein, those spells considered too evil to teach could be used for good. Legilimens was a spell Hermione had found mentioned a few times as an invasion of privacy, as a disregard of human minds and human memories. But it could be used to solve crimes, or to bring comfort to those suffering from trauma. And even worse, there were Unforgivables, which existed as three of the most feared spells in the wizarding world. Hermione couldn’t see much good from the Crucio curse, but the killing curse could be used in chronic cases of illness and pain. Imperio could be used to help those victims of paralyzing accidents walk again.
It was all theory, of course. Hermione had never found much on dark curses being used to benefit others, and even if she could see a way for it to work, it seemed as though she was the only one who did.
Still, her interest in blood magic had never waivered, not since she saw it barely mentioned in her first ever transfiguration book. She’d never been able to find anything else on the topic, so she didn’t even know how it worked. Until now. The three-sentence passage at the bottom of the 26th page in her book on Magicks Ole and Forgot was all she needed to understand how it worked.
Magick acts within a body as a humor alongside blood, bile, and phlegm. To call it for your own purposes is to call blood to the skin or to will a coughing fit. There is no direction, only feeling and intuit, and it will seek out other sources of magic.
Hermione wondered if this was part of the Pureblood belief around Muggles Malfoy had told her about. If Purebloods, having moved past the idea of being a separate species all together, had turned to the idea of magic being a humor, being something you could balance. Perhaps this was another way in which they had justified their difference from Muggles. Perhaps this was another way in which they had made sense of their otherness, their strange existence.
Hermione didn’t dwell on what it meant to the beliefs of Purebloods, she focused on the concept of blood magic as a way of controlling one’s body. She could, sometimes, feel a heat in her cheeks like she was blushing. Like blood was rushing to her skin without her permission. She’d never tried to make it happen, though, and she didn’t know if it was possible. Still, Hermione sat back in her chair and tried to will her blood to rush to her cheeks. She tried to make it happen on command, and when that didn’t work, she tried to imagine every embarrassing thing that had happened to her in the last year. Every sidelong glance at Ron caught in the act, every time Snape had called her out in class. Nothing seemed to work. There was no familiar heat in her face, no blush when she looked in the mirror on the desk to her right.
Every day for a week and a half, Hermione tried to find a way to make her blood rush to her skin, to control that part of her body. It seemed impossible, like she was pushing against a wall of stone she’d never have any chance of moving. But she kept trying, kept reaching for those places inside her she couldn’t quite reach.
It was the memory of Malfoy staring into her face that day in the library that finally did it.
Hermione grasped at the feeling of her blood rushing to her cheeks, tried to remember it and replicate it. She was clutching to her own blood, trying to will the blush back and forth, bright at her cheeks and then dull and receded into her skin.
It felt like tensing old, forgotten muscles.
It took ages, but she was able to control it. She felt the blood in her body reaching up to meet her call, easier after a while. After two days, it was second nature to beckon or to dismiss the blood. After five, she could call up a blush, a bruise, or genuine droplets of blood across her body, every inch of skin under her control. She felt it move within her, pulsing with the beat of her heart.
Controlling her magic was a different issue altogether. It was an unfamiliar feeling - blushing was a constant, something Hermione had felt since she was a child. Magic - willing, intentional magic - was only a few years old.
But she tried the same tactics as before, using her wand to call up easy magic and trying to get a grip on the feeling. Her magic wasn’t as solid as her blood, though. It wasn’t something she could feel in the same way. There is no direction, only feeling and intuit.
Hermione tried something else. She tried to feel both her blood and her magic together. Maybe the blood was a conduit of sorts, something to contain the magic as it moved within her. She pushed her blood into her hand, asking for water. She didn’t use the incantation she knew from school, nor did she think about the practical magic theory from her books. She only felt her blood, hot and welling up at her fingertips so fast they turned purple, and her magic. It was cooler than she expected, almost icy in her hands as she pushed it forward, forward, forward.
A drop of blood oozed from under her pointer finger’s nail, dark and almost sparking, and it transformed as it fell. Clear, clean water splashed on her desk, and a scent of saltwater wafted through her room.
~~~
Hermione harnessed blood magic as easily as she harnessed any other kind of magic. She practiced. Her study of the topic took time and effort, and more often than not, Hermione found that she fell asleep at her desk, too tired to make it into her bed after her work.
She found that magic sought magic. Future attempts at creating water resulted in drops that rolled on their own to find the first, drops that had a mind of their own. Hermione tried it with the journal after a few days of practice. She let her blood fall from her fingers over the journal, her blood no longer transforming as it fell but rather sparking and humming before it made contact with old, mangled leather. It soaked into the journal, but only at the edges. Only where the Basilisk venom still remained. She could feel it thrumming there in the leather and parchment, no longer connected to her physically, but still hers in that it was her blood and her magic.
So Hermione took three days to prepare. She ate good, leafy greens, and she took her mother’s iron supplements. She drank water and slept more. She wrote a letter to Malfoy but didn’t send it, just in case her parents found her passed out or something drastic and she couldn’t write for a few days. So he wouldn’t worry about her. So he'd know what she’d done.
She didn’t write one for Harry and Ron. They wouldn’t understand her fascination with Blood magic, and they certainly wouldn’t be kind to her if they discovered why she’d been practicing with it.
Hermione waited until the dead of the night, when her parents were in deep sleep and wouldn’t interrupt her. The candles on her desk cast unfamiliar and eerie shadows on the walls around her, and yet, Hermione wasn’t afraid. She sat at her desk, one hand extended over the journal in front of her, her other gripping a sharp dagger over the opposite palm. She needed an uninterrupted string of magic for this.
The cut was hard and fast, stinging like a jump rope from childhood snapping against her ankle.
She felt a rush of power as her blood poured steady and slow, controlled by her will, onto the book. Her magic found the venom easily and held on, pulling tight against Hermione’s will.
She felt the book jerk, physically pulled between her blood and the venom. And then, with a sickening noise like meat ripping wet and rough, her blood began to pull the venom from the book. It sucked it out, gathering in her blood with her magic, and Hermione had to hold it away from herself and the book. She didn’t want to reinfect the book, and she didn’t want to bring the venom into her body. The blood, dirty and poisoned, hung in the air above Hermione’s desk, still pulling more and more from her body. It was a gathering cloud, and Hermione barely got her other hand under it to yank the journal away before she released her blood and let it splash onto the desk. Her hand started bleeding faster, no longer controlled, and Hermione winced at the mess. There was an overwhelming scent of iron in the air, but under it was the barely there scent of the wind at the beach. Wet and salty and Hermione thought it was hers. Her magic, smelling like the sea air.
In her other hand, still held away from the mess of her desk, the journal was stitching itself back together and glowing faintly. It thrummed in Hermione’s hands, like it was alive, and there was the smell of burning plastic in the air. After a moment, the journal’s light dimmed. The movement within stilled. Hermione took a breath and let her hand fall, the journal pressed to her chest.
First things first, she put the journal on her bed, away from the mess. Crookshanks on her bed stared at it and then at her, before tucking his head back into his body and going back to sleep. Hermione tried to find her grip on her blood again, and she held it at the surface of her palm, just on the other side of the cut until it seemed to have coagulated enough to release it. She tied a strip of gauze around it, just to be sure, and then set to cleaning her desk and the carpet below.
~~~
Prometheus,
I’ve repaired the journal to its original state. You were right, there’s writing here but it’s well concealed. I’ve tried the usual suspects for revealing it, but nothing has worked so far. Do you have any ideas?
Athena
~~~
Hermione wasn’t sure this was a good idea. Malfoy had asked her to bring the journal to him. Bring. He’d opened the Manor floo for her to use and sent along a little pouch of floo powder for her to use. Even though the plans were set, and she had the journal in her bag, and she was standing in the post office once again to use their fireplace for the trip, she felt like it was asking for trouble. She was a muggleborn, about to step foot in Malfoy Manor. It was a terrible idea.
And yet, she took a deep breath and threw the powder at her feet before calling out "Malfoy Manor," and disappearing into a green fire.
The room she was spat out into was big and spacious, and there were books all around. She stepped out of the fireplace and got a better look, her eyes roaming the vaulted ceilings and the double-high bookshelves that went floor to ceiling. A ladder on one of those tracks ran the room around, so you could reach the books at the very top. It was the kind of library you'd see in a fancy hotel, a castle, a movie. Dark wood, accented by thick, deep fabrics for the curtains and the chairs and the couches. Less green than Hermione would have expected. Everything that wasn't wood was gold, bright and shining.
Hermione turned, and came face-to-face with a freckled boy about her age. He had green eyes, bright and expressive, and brown hair like hers. It flopped into his face, over the top of his eyebrows, the slightest curl to it so each strand sort of flicked upwards at the ends. He wasn’t unlike Draco in the curve of his jaw, the sharpness of his cheekbones, but his nose was just a little rounder. Hermione’s eyes snagged on the freckles. “Hello.”
“Goodness,” Hermione said, stepping back.
The boy stepped back into her space, chasing closeness. “Draco mentioned you were coming. I didn’t believe him at first, but here you are. You know, he shared your books with me. I was particularly moved by Madam Curie. Did you know a similar thing happened to the woman who invented Skele-gro, she didn’t account for the continued exposure to the fumes. She ended up growing this boney, second skin. She died.”
“How dreadful,” Hermione remarked, a little taken aback at how quickly the conversation was getting away from her. “I’m Hermione.”
“I know,” the boy said with a cockeyed smile. “Do you not recognize me?”
Hermione shook her head, and he put a hand to his chest, mock offended with an exaggerated gasp.
“You wound me,” he said. Then stuck his hand out. “Theodore Nott at your service.”
Hermione shook his hand lightly, and shuddered when he grasped her fingers even tighter and pulled her in. “Draco doesn’t normally make new friends.”
He let her go as if nothing happened, and Hermione realized that despite his appearances, he was not a man to underestimate. She remembered him now - they shared some classes together and he was usually the only other person to raise their hand alongside Hermione to answer questions. He was smart, but loud. A little jarring to most people. Hermione felt something akin to whiplash, trying to follow his quickfire transition between topics and tones. Her body betrayed her, a curious tug of her blood in her cheeks like a half-hearted blush trying to bubble up. It was then there was a cough at the door, and they both turned to see Draco standing there, looking rather relaxed in a pair of corduroy pants and a sweater. “Hello.”
“Hello,” Hermione said. She willed herself not to blush, the feeling of her blood tugging tight and harder than before in her face. What in the world was happening to her? “I brought the book.”
As if to prove her point, she stuck her hand into the bag at her side and held out the book to Draco, waving it a bit. He crossed the room quickly and stared at the book in awe, his mouth hanging open for a moment before he remembered himself and shut it with a crack of his teeth.
“Incredible,” Theodore remarked at her side. “We thought you were exaggerating, but it’s like nothing happened to it at all.”
“How did you manage it?” Draco asked, looking up at Hermione.
She wet her lips. She didn’t think Draco would judge her, but blood magic was something of a taboo topic. Hermione knew it was considered by the general public to be a vile, evil thing. A primitive form of magic from the barbaric ages of times gone past, but Hermione didn’t think it was so bad. It was a pure form of magic, no wand. No spells. Just feelings and instincts. Would Draco agree with her? Would Theodore tell someone? If he knew about the journal, maybe he was just as involved with this secret as Hermione was, but still. She didn’t know him. She didn’t trust him.
Draco seemed to sense her concern because he flashed a quick glance over her shoulder at Theodore and then focused back on Hermione. “Theo is a friend, I trust him with my life. And you know I don’t judge like your other friends do.”
Hermione smiled and reached inside to pull at her blood. Then she held up a finger and willed a bead of blood to pool there, at the precipice of her nail. “Blood magic.”