Mirror Image

Hermione woke up the day of her birthday with gifts from Draco and Theo. However they’d done it, she didn’t want to know, but there was a plate of chocolate biscuits on her bedside table, a hot mug of tea, a vial of pain potion, and a vase of flowers. At the foot of her bed, where Crookshanks was curled up and asleep, there were three wrapped presents waiting for her. Narcissa and Lucius had sent along a beautiful necklace and earrings of innocuous pearl that no one would question, Draco and Theo had gotten Hermione an enchanted photo of the three of them from their dinner the first night of their relationship in a crystal frame, and surprisingly, Toma had gifted her a first edition of a theoretical charms book.

Since Theo had told her what happened to his mother, there was a sort of invisible pull between them all. Not that their bond wasn’t an invisible pull of its own, but Hermione found herself spending more and more time in the Room of Requirements, seeking out Theo and Draco’s company. After Theo had cried himself out in their arms, Draco confided in them the one and only time he had ever met his aunt Bellatrix, and the utter fear he felt when he met her. Hermione confided in the boys how sometimes, she scared herself with self-loathing inspired by years of being misunderstood by her parents, fear of her abilities inspired by misunderstanding Dark magic, and genuine confusion as to why the boys could stand her after what she had done to them both.

They shared all the dirty, terrible parts of themselves with one another, the floodgates open after Theo’s story. It strengthened their bond, it made them closer than anything else had in the past. That night - or rather, the wee hours of the morning with it’s terrible press of early light, they had fallen asleep together. There was nothing untoward about it. They all awoke with their uniforms still in place, but they were together. There was an intimacy to their evening that Hermione had never felt before, and she didn't want to ever share it with someone else.

And it leveled the playing field - Theo and Draco were able to better assure Hermione of their love when they noticed her insecurities rearing their head, Hermione and Theo were able to ease Draco’s natural anxieties and fears beneath his mask, and Draco and Hermione were able to show Theo just how thankful they were for his existence, even if he was ashamed of it himself.

So when Hermione awoke the morning of her birthday to gifts and flowers and pain potion, she was reminded again of how much her wizards cared for her despite her being, as she would put it, a terrible monster. Those bad feelings - the insecurity, the pain, the fear and hatred were quiet today. She got dressed with a beaming smile on her face, and trotted to breakfast with a little skip in her step.

A smile that fell when she saw Harry’s hand, wrapped in a bandage.

“What’s happened?” she asked as she sat down. Harry only pulled his hand under the table and out of view.

“Quidditch incident,” he said unconvincingly. The Gryffindor Team had only just started practices that week, so it seemed impossible they’d be already incurring injuries. But it was clear, Harry didn’t want to talk about it, so Hermione left it alone.

No one at the Gryffindor table wished her a happy birthday, and for the first time since she’d started spending her birthdays at Hogwarts, Hermione couldn’t bring herself to care.

~~~

Hermione couldn’t leave the bandage on Harry’s hand alone, not when she realized what it was. Umbridge, disgusting toad that she was, had given Harry detentions. Weeks’ worth of them because of what he’d said about Voldemort, and her detentions were barbaric. They were lines, but lines with an enchanted quill that carved the words on the page into the writer’s skin.

Even after Harry had served his detention, he landed back in the same seat when he couldn’t hold his tongue in class again. Again, he began to show up to meals and classes with his hand wrapped in a white, gauze bandage.

Umbridge’s classes weren’t just frustrating in the way they were entirely theoretical, without one practical demonstration, they were also pedestrian. They should have been working on combination spellwork, they should have been preparing for the OWLs. But Instead, they were stuck on fourth year curriculum. Or rather, the curriculum they should have learned in fourth year, but they’d learned it all in third year, with Remus.

Hogwarts students had longtime been ahead of the curve on Defense Against the Dark Arts, a side-effect of how paranoid Dumbledore was about Dark Magic. They were two years ahead of standard curriculums around the world, even in Britain, they were ahead of the legal curriculum set by the Ministry. Hermione had never noticed it before, not really, until she was thrust so far backwards.

All of that made Umbridge’s class unbearable. It was like they were being treated like little kids, working on magic they mastered years ago, and fighting with this horrible old toad who made it clear she had no compassion. An evil woman.

Hermione kept her head down in class. Ron did, too, but Harry would always speak without thinking. He challenged Umbridge on all kinds of things, speaking up in the middle of class to correct her on everything from her teaching theory incorrectly, to challenging that yes, the Death Eaters were active and yes, Voldemort was back.

Hermione would have found it amusing if it didn’t result in his getting hurt. Despite Hermione’s own frustration with Harry and the way she was growing increasingly annoyed with his own prejudices, she didn’t want to see him tortured in this barbaric way. Least of all when she knew just how right he was about it all.

Things came to a head when Ron came to her, seeking her out in the Library just before dinner. He was looking nervous as he slipped into the chair across from Hermione, and part of her wondered what the hell she was going to say to get out of this awkward, stilted confession. Just the last week, Hermione had agreed to write Ron’s essay introduction for him when she was trapped in a terrible conversation with the boy.

Ron just floundered for a minute, his mouth working open and shut for a minute, before Hermione sighed.

“What is it, Ronald?”

“I think Harry should be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

That was unexpected, to say the least. Hermione had been preparing herself for a confession, searching her brain for a reason why she couldn’t be with Ron that he would accept other than the fact she was already in a relationship. Relief flooded first, then a bit of confusion.

“What?”

“Hear me out,” Ron said. “Umbridge isn’t teaching anyone anything. You and I both know that Death Eaters are out there. And even if Voldemort’s been quiet for the last year, he’s out there, too. Even with all of us being more advanced or whatever, no one here is going to be able to actually fight the Dark Lord if we haven’t used magic in a year. We’re sitting ducks. Vulnerable.”

“And you think Harry can teach you and I some spells and we’ll magically be able to defend the whole school?” Hermione asked sarcastically.

“I mean that Harry should teach the others,” Ron said. “He’s good at Defensive spells. Come on, Hermione, even between us, he’s the best at Defense Against the Dark Arts. He could teach us, all of us.”

“Expelliarmus?” Hermione scoffed.

“Harry knows more than that,” Ron defended. “Patronuses, instinct stuff. I saw him use a bombarda in the maze last year stronger than anything I have ever seen before.”

“I assure you,” Hermione said, turning a page in her book and making a little note on her parchment. “Umbridge will not allow Harry to do some kind of after-hours classes.”

Ron rolled his eyes. “She wouldn’t know.”

He said it like he was explaining something incredibly easy to a small child. Like it was Hermione who was stupid here, and not the boy suggesting they have a 15-year-old teach them defensive spells that an actual, hired professor had all but banned from the castle. Like Ron wasn’t proposing a hair-brained idea to begin with.

“Umbridge is going to know,” Hermione said. “She’s got Filch running around the castle like her personal lapdog.”

Ron sighed. “Listen, she can’t be everywhere at once. And we can figure out somewhere to hold our lessons where she won’t find us, Harry can help us figure out a good place.”

Hermione let Ron take it and run. If there was one way to drive something to the ground before it even got into the air, it was letting Ron and Harry work on it alone. Ron approached Harry with the idea, and together they worked out some ideas for where they could meet.

It would have been more worrisome if Harry’s good classroom suggestions weren't the Chamber of Secrets in the bathroom and the Shrieking Shack. The idea was going to die - and Hermione was glad to see it die without too much of her intervention. Even though she’d offered to organize the meeting at the Hog’s Head, and she’d made the enchanted sign-in sheet so they would know if someone ratted them out, she was still hoping for the idea to fizzle out on its own. She didn’t want to blow her cover over something so stupid as tutoring sessions with Harry.

She couldn't afford to have her own magic well up unexpectedly or uncontrollably, nor could she even begin to conceive Toma's reaction to such a little club.

~~~

The idea refused to die out on its own. It was Neville who found it, stumbling on the Room of Requirement and racing back to the Tower to get Hermione, Ron, Harry, and the twins. Hermione had to act surprised and happy about it, but inside, she was panicking.

~~~

Toma had been quiet on the subject, happily allowing Harry and Ron to continue their unofficial resistance lessons and keeping his thoughts to himself. He didn’t seem to care much if Dumbledore’s Army - a stupid name if you asked Hermione - used the Room of Requirements as long as they didn’t walk in on the boys’ and Hermione’s date nights. And he didn’t seem to care that Harry was going to be teaching a bunch of students how to supposedly defend against the Dark Lord himself.

Hermione had tried so hard to tell him what they were doing, what they were going to do, to have him give her direction. But over the course of the month since their conversation in the Common Room, Toma hadn't asked much of Hermione at all. He would, occasionally, poke into her mind while they sat at meals or studying, and he'd called for her and the boys twice, but he did not seem to care about Hermione's concerns at all. His mind and worry was on his classes, on getting good grades and creating a positive name for himself.

Except for one other thing. He asked Draco to join Umbridge’s little organized, student-led police force, which was just in its infancy. He wanted someone to be close to Umbridge, to hear what she was parroting from the Minister. Draco had resisted - he wasn’t too keen on getting close to the foul woman - but Toma had made him see reason in the end. He really was gifted when it came to convincing others of whatever he wanted them to fear.

And Theo, being the more well-liked of the Slytherins, had another job to do with the students in other Houses.

Toma was content, outside of the little jobs he had set the boys to and the silent conversations with Hermione, to allow himself a normal, teenage life at Hogwarts. It infuriated Hermione to no end.

~~~

“Would you be open to trying something?” Hermione asked one day, keeping her voice carefully low so Harry and Ron didn’t hear. “I think I have an idea to make your casting a lot easier.”

Neville looked at Hermione in surprise, but he didn’t mind an extra lesson. They’d been partnering in their after class tutoring more and more, and they were growing closer in the process. Hermione had surprised him with her own knowledge of Pureblood customs, even if it was far more limited than Neville’s own, and Neville was someone who seemed to understand when Hermione voiced her thoughts on Muggles. He was far more accepting than Harry and Ron, Hermione found, and he was actually rather sweet when he wasn’t so scared of being made fun of. He had a distant cousin who'd been married to two wizards, something that Hermione asked him about far more than he might have expected, and he asked Hermione about Muggle customs. They both agreed they preferred wizarding society to that of Muggles.

Still, through their growing bond, Hermione hadn't asked him to meet her for extra, extra lessons.

Neville nevertheless showed up at the Room of Requirement the next night, while Harry and Ron were at Quidditch and Draco and Theo were busy in the Library, and Hermione gave him a warm smile. She was going to be taking a leap of faith tonight with Neville, but if her hunches were correct, then it could completely change how Neville practiced magic. It would make him a completely different wizard, and Hermione believed that truly, he would understand. He would see the complexity of the situation, the strength of the magic Hermione showed him.

“What should we start with?” he asked, drawing his wand. Hermione huffed a soft laugh and pulled the wand from his hand. She held it between her hands, fingertips poised on the ends.

“With your wand,” she said. “Do you remember when you got your wand? What did Ollivander say?”

“He didn’t-” Neville cleared his throat as it crept up to that nervous pitch. “I didn’t get my wand from Ollivander. It was my father’s wand, my Gran kept it for me to use.”

Hermione stilled and cocked her head a bit. That was- huh. It made sense, given how little control Neville had over his wand for so long, but it was unthinkable. Neville’s grandmother was a Pureblood witch, she should have known that wands had to be in-tune with their caster’s magic to be an effective way of actually channeling that magic.

Hermione shook her head a little bit and slipped Neville’s wand into her pocket. “We’re not going to use it.”

Neville laughed uncomfortably. “I’ll use your wand?”

Hermione shook her head harder. “No, no. I want to try something with you. I want you to think about something embarrassing.”

“What?”

“Neville,” Hermione said, placating and kind. Just a little bit like Toma when he was talking to the younger kids. “Trust me.”

Neville was still smiling, but it was uncertain and smaller than it had been when he first came to the Room of Requirement. “Of course I trust you, Hermione.”

“Okay. Then think of the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to you.”

Neville was looking at her, hurt and confusion in his eyes, and he almost looked like he was going to cry. For a minute, Hermione felt like she’d made a huge mistake and that her one question had hurt Neville more than she could ever fix. And then Neville closed his eyes tight and a blush came flying up his neck to his cheeks.

“Good!” Hermione said. “That feeling of the blood rushing to your face, I want you to remember it. Feel the heat in your skin, try to imagine it’s like a tide.”

Neville’s face was still screwed up in some confusion, but he was concentrating, too. His eyes were squeezed shut, lines etched into the skin around them. After a moment, Hermione put her hand on his arm.

“Feel your heartbeat. Try to focus on the feeling of the blood pumping.” She tapped her fingers on his arm, a staccato beat that roughly matched what a heartbeat would be. “It should feel like a thumping, or a sort of pull on the flesh in that area.”

Neville whined. “I don’t feel anything,” he said.

“Focus,” Hermione whispered, quiet and hushed. “Just- be quiet. Feel your body. Feel the way your robes sort of rustle without you moving. You can hear it.”

Neville breathed deeply, and there was silence in the room. “I feel that.”

“That’s your breathing and your heartbeat together, it makes little tremors.”

“I can feel my heartbeat,” Neville whispered. The blush in his face was gone, his embarrassment forgotten in favor of focusing on his body.

“Try again,” Hermione breathed. “Think about that embarrassing moment. Keep thinking about it, and feel the way the blood pumps to your cheeks.”

It took ages - it was well past curfew when Neville finally mastered the concept of feeling his blood in his body - but he didn’t seem too tired. He was just looking at her, open to suggestion and education and whatever else Hermione made him do next. So Hermione decided to take the last step, to show Neville what they were working on together.

“Okay,” she said. “Deep breathes. Remember to feel the blood in your body, try to pull on it the way it pulls on you." Neville was holding his hand out, his eyes screwed shut again and deep creases in his forehead. "Focus on your hand. Make the blood follow your will, make it go to your fingers. Feel it there, keep your fingers stretched out. There you go-” there was a deep, purple-ish color in Neville’s fingers, and Hermione smiled. She kept her voice even. “-now imagine the feeling of water there. Don’t think about casting an aguamenti, don’t think about moving your hand. Just focus on the feeling of blood in your hands, and imagine cool water over your fingers. Imagine what it would feel like in contrast to the blood.”

There was a terrifying moment when Hermione was sure Neville would open his eyes in fear, scared of her or of the blood suddenly pooling in his palm, but he kept his eyes screwed tight even as his hand shook with the feeling of slick, warm blood pooling there. Hermione held her breath, and then the blood there slowly diluted and the room was filled with the scent of oranges in the sun, and Hermione let out a relieved, impressed breath.

“Open your eyes,” Hermione said, reverent and quiet.

Neville’s eyes flew open, and he gasped at the pool of water in his hand. He dropped his arm to his side, suddenly feeling very drained, and the water splashed at his feet. In a moment of joy, utter and complete happiness, he spun around and pulled Hermione into a tight hug.

“That was incredible!” he said, stepping back and pushing his hands into his hair. “What was- no one has ever showed me-”

Neville’s eyes were wide and wet, his face suspended in a grin.

“What was that?” he asked, and Hermione didn’t know what to say. It was like a breeze had come and blown away the warm scent of oranges, and she was suddenly so scared to say out loud what she’d done. She thought he had understood while they were doing it, that he might have realized. She thought he would spare her the act of actually saying the words.

With Draco and Theo and Toma, her use of Blood magic was impressive, was clever and indicative of her strength as a witch. They'd not even blinked when she told them, just stood there in awe.

But with Neville, Hermione had no idea what he would think. With every passing moment she was silent, Neville’s smile grew dimmer and dimmer, until he was staring at Hermione slack-jawed and scared. The excitement, the accomplishment, it was forgotten in an instant.

“What was that?”

“Neville,” Hermione started, and she bit her lip. “Please don’t hate me.”

“What was that, Hermione?” Neville's voice was stronger now, hard in a way Hermione had never heard before.

“It was a kind of Natural magic,” Hermione said quickly. “Just like wandless casting. See, there was this book I read about how early witches and wizards, they thought magic was a humor like bile and blood. And how wand magic, it’s great for focusing intent and power, but it can also sometimes- think of it like- like a cork? In a potion bottle?”

Neville was staring at her like she’d gone mad, like she was talking about something evil. She shook her head, curls flying around her face.

“Like a-” Hermione ran out of breath, her words stuttering to a stop and then she sucked in a dry breath. “Like a stopper in a bottle. Your wand is like a stopper in a bottle, it only allows a bit of your magic through in a controlled way. But with your wand being your father’s, and it not being so well suited to your magic, it’s probably been stopping all of the magic, not just focusing it.”

“What did you just teach me?” Neville asked, searching Hermione’s eyes as if he hadn’t heard her explanation at all.

“It’s old magic,” Hermione said. “I told you, magical people used to think of magic as a humor, like blood or bile.”

“That’s old magic,” Neville said, repeating her and shaking his head. “That’s ancient magic. Dark magic.”

He was shaking his head, and Hermione didn’t know when she started crying, but tears were spilling over her cheeks.

“It’s not,” she cried. “It’s Natural magic, Neville. It’s just Natural magic. How you would cast magic if you never had a wand, and you have struggled with aguamenti since we were kids, and you did it tonight so easily and-”

“It was Blood magic!” Neville shouted, suddenly angry. Hermione had never seen him like this before, wild and explosive. She flinched backwards. “You made me do Blood magic!”

“I didn’t!” Hermione cried harder. “I didn’t Neville, I was just showing you, and you did it all yourself. When you practice more, you don’t even need the blood to focus your-”

“To what? To do dark spells, they just happen naturally?”

“No! I’m not a dark-”

“I’m not sure what you are anymore!” Neville snapped, and Hermione’s mouth snapped shut, her teeth clacking against one another. Neville took a breath, all the fight draining in an instant, and he held out his hand.

“My wand.”

Hermione shook her head. She couldn’t let him leave, not when he was convinced she was some Dark witch and he could go and tell Harry and Ron, and she couldn’t face that yet. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t imagine Toma’s reaction if he knew how badly she’d blown this. The pain of the cruciatus was never really gone, never forgotten, and it simmered under her skin now as she stared at Neville. He would tell, and Toma would punish Hermione, and-

“Please,” Neville added, softer. Hermione looked at him, eyes wild and scared and blown. “I just want to leave.”

“No,” she gasped.

“Please,” Neville repeated. “I won’t tell anyone. Please just give me my dad’s wand.”

Hermione looked at him, so sincere even as he was angry, and she slowly held out his wand. He took it, fingers wrapping around the handle, and then he left her there to scream at the walls. She didn't even notice that he hadn't called it his wand.

~~~

Hermione didn’t dare speak to Neville. For two weeks, while they sat through classes and attended DA meetings, she didn’t speak to him. September turned to October in a hurried state of waiting silently. It wasn’t a pointed, cruel thing. It was about leaving the ball in his court, keeping the peace he’d established, and hoping to God he didn’t say anything to anyone.

For two weeks, Hermione was on egg-shells, waiting for someone to start screaming at her.

For two weeks, Hermione jumped when McGonagall called her name, so sure she was being sent to Dumbledore’s office.

And then, one ordinary morning, Neville sat beside her at the Gryffindor table and leaned into her space, reaching for the teapot on the table. “Good morning.”

Hermione swallowed the stickiness in her mouth. “Hello. Good morning.”

Neville nodded. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes,” Hermione said. “I slept fine. You?”

What in the world was happening? Was this a plot, lure her into a false sense of security only to have Harry and Ron waiting to slam her for being a dark witch? No, that wasn’t something Neville would do to her. He wouldn’t. She was spending too much time with Toma, too much time thinking about enemies, too much-

“I slept fine,” Neville said. He reached for his morning tea and took a sip. “Water, Hermione?”

Hermione eyed him, searching his face. Even as he offered it, he hadn’t reached across the table to retrieve the water pitcher. He hadn't really done much of anything, not even indicated what he was thinking.

“Please,” she said finally.

Neville nodded once, hard and sure, and he pulled his wand from his trousers. Hermione watched as he paused, his hand pink around the wood, and then he waved his hand over her goblet. Crystal clear water appeared there, clean and cool, and Hermione reached for it.

It tasted cold and crisp, the hints of orange under the tasteless satisfaction of the water.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “It’s like-”

She stopped short, but Neville just gave her an encouraging smile. The first real smile- the first real expression- she'd seen since he sat beside her.

“It tastes like oranges. Like your magic.”

Neville smiled wider. His face was open and easy, laid bare for Hermione to read. “It’s the only spell I’ve been able to cast easily since, well, that lesson.”

Hermione nodded. “Natural magic makes wand casting easier, I think. The same thing happened to me when I figured out how to make water the first time, suddenly casting with a wand was much easier. Same thing later with warming charms or whatever”

Neville nodded, and he shrugged his shoulder. “Kind of makes you wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“If it’s really so bad,” he said as if that answered every question about Blood magic. “If it’s Natural, and it comes so easily. You wonder if it’s actually as bad as everyone makes it out to be. People told me all my life it was cursed magic, like it was going to hurt you and others just being around it. But I've been around it, and I've used it. I don't think it's bad.”

Hermione shrugged. “I don’t think it’s bad,” she agreed. “I think people just say that it is, because we use wands now. But the history of it is interesting. I have books on the subject, if you want.”

“History?”

“Of magic,” Hermione said. “How we got to this place where everyone gets a wand at eleven, even if it does tend to hinder their magic somewhat. How we started labeling Natural magic as Dark magic, when that’s not strictly true. How it all got twisted up with Muggle relations and social shifts.”

Neville was staring at her, head cocked to one side. Hermione’s love for books was nothing new, and she’d always had the most extensive library of anyone Neville knew, but books on the history of Natural magic, that weren’t tainted with prejudiced beliefs, weren’t in the Hogwarts library. Hermione had to have gotten them from somewhere, a Pureblood or maybe some of the less savory stores in Diagon Alley. All the strange, out of place moments from the last few weeks suddenly tallied up in his mind. Hermione was spending time with a Pureblood. Moreover, it had to be a wealthy Pureblood to have extensive books, and an old family to know so much about Natural magic. Neville had a good idea who it was, but it wasn't his place to say such things at breakfast, where anyone could overhear them.

They were being reckless enough as is, discussing Natural magic so close to the other Lions.

“Sure,” he said finally, and Hermione lit up. He would like to know what she was reading at the very least, even if he couldn't get through the material personally. “And perhaps you could show me some other spells?”

Hermione finally beamed, her smile reaching all the way up to her eyes. “I’d be honored.”