Mirror Image

Hermione didn’t like the Black ancestral home. It was cramped and dusty, and the first day of break, she’d found genuine mold growing down the side of the bathroom wall.

But she couldn’t deny the holiday spirit of the place. Sirius had done his best to decorate with greenery and they’d made up a little feast of turkey, rolls, corn, and gravy. They even had two bottles of cheap Goblin wine to toast with. It wasn’t quite the holiday feast Hermione remembered from home, nor from the Manor, but it was just fine for her. And it wasn't like Christmas was about the gifts and the glory of the decorations. It was about being with family and friends.

Hermione pointedly ignored the fact that she was with neither family, nor friends, as the Weasleys and Sirius gathered around to exchange gifts.

Molly had made a round of sweaters for everyone, save the twins who got scarves, and even Hermione had gotten one this year in a hideous, grey-lavender yarn that scratched at her wrists when she put it on. Harry and Ron had both gotten her, predictably, books. They hadn't thought about them much more than the fact they were pages bound together with a common theme of magic, but Hermione found some little kernels in each to take interest in and thanked both the boys nonetheless.

Ginny had gotten her a necklace - a crystal thing that looked vaguely like a star.

Surprisingly, it was Sirius who got her the most useful gift of the group - an enchanted set of vials for keeping potions.

Hermione found a few minutes to herself between gifts and dinner to slip into the tapestry room. It had dawned on her over the months at school, scenting the mixed magic of her, Draco, and Theo, that a magical tapestry might recognize her now she was almost engaged to the heir of the Black line. She’d assumed she’d appear with Theodore alongside Draco’s miniature portrait on the wall, tiny bouquets framing their small trio.

But where Draco was on the wall, there was nothing. Hermione leaned in closer and ran a finger down the thick fabric. It was almost like there was a haze or a fog over the image of Draco's pale, white hair and strong, aristocratic face. She turned her eyes upwards, to the top of the tree, and found that some of the first portraits were gone all together, and those below them were fading in much of the same way Draco's was.

Sirius had said the tree would migrate. There were no more Blacks to inherit the house - Sirius had no children and the only Black relative with any children was Narcissa. Sirius had been clear, the tree would migrate itself to the Malfoy tree when there was a serious reason, an heir to both families. Draco was that heir, more so than Harry since Harry would never be accepted as a blood relative of the family. Perhaps, when Hermione got home, she would find the missing Blacks on the Malfoy tree, and Hermione and Theo would show up beside Draco there when they were engaged in less than a year.

Hermione stepped away and slipped back into the hall, rejoining the Weasleys for Christmas dinner. The night passed slowly and uninterestingly. They ate together, shared a single nightcap together, and then Hermione and Ginny went to their shared room and went to bed.

It was the day after Christmas that anything of real interest happened, when Harry finally told Sirius that in his dream, he wasn’t just seeing things. He was seeing them from the snake’s point of view.

The house had been alight after that - Dumbledore was called for, Sirius and Molly had called for the other Order members to join them all, and Hermione slipped away in the chaos to write a note to Toma about that development, spending her final hours at Grimmauld Place hurried and stressed. By the time she had packed her bags and gotten ready for the train ride back to Hogwarts, the Order was scrambling around the house, discussing some kind of missing weapon or something.

~~~

The Spring came over the castle and grounds with something like a vengeance. The snowmelt seemed to nourish the very soil of the place, and even in the courtyards, Filtch was fighting stubborn flowers that were trying to grow through the cracks of the cobblestones. Hermione liked to watch them and imagine there were their own kind of rebellion against Umbridge’s reign.

Hagrid made a quiet return one morning, and Hermione, Ron, and Harry rushed to speak with him about the mission he’d been on. Ron and Harry because everything Hagrid did in the name of Dumbledore was interesting to them, Hermione because she needed to know what the Order was doing for Toma.

Giants. Of course, it was giants. Dumbledore wanted to recruit them before Voldemort could, and Hagrid had been put in the crossfire of their anger.

Harry and Ron seemed uninterested in the black eye apart from asking if Hagrid was alright when they first saw him. They let Hagrid brush it off, let him change the subject, but Hermione was stuck on the way the frozen steak had thwacked against Hagrid’s bruised and bloodied face. Dumbledore had no proof that Voldemort was even back. He only knew the Death Eaters were active, and yet, it was enough for him to send Hagrid into dangerous, enemy territory. Hagrid had returned injured and Hermione could only guess how he was fairing mentally. His mother had abandoned him for the same creatures that had just beat him black and blue.

No one seemed as worried as she was about the man. They were all too interested in the fact that Hagrid told them the giants were likely to side with the Death Eaters.

Toma told her not to worry about that part. The giants had followed Voldemort in the first war, but they needed a strong, centralized leader. They wouldn’t follow the Death Eaters, not unless the amorphous group of blood purists found a new leader in record time. If the war came to true battle, the giants would abstain. Still, it plagued Hermione's mind.

There were things Toma wasn't telling her, just as there were things the Order kept from her. Somewhere in the last year, Hermione had let Tome do as he pleased, and she had no idea what the Death Eaters were really accomplishing. She didn't know who was running them, nor how many of them there truly were. She didn't understand who was giving orders to the Death Eaters.

And she didn't know how Toma fit into the strange web between the Order, the Death Eaters, and the dreams Harry had.

She couldn't think about those strange, precarious, mysterious connections between Toma and those other groups, not when news of the Azkaban breakout finally spread through the school. Hermione had jumped in her seat when Neville threw down the paper, grabbing at it for herself. Ron and Harry and Ginny at her sides had already grabbed their own copies of the paper, noses stuck in the pages.

“How did this happen?” Hermione breathed. Azkaban was the most secure prison in the world, save for the Nurmengard fortress, and breaking out simply wasn’t an option.

Except the dementors had been in Little Whinging. They had been on the Death Eater’s side, even without Voldemort at the helm, because they loved the feelings of despair and loss and fear that came with the Death Eaters. They didn't need a strong, centralized leader like the Giants did, they just needed the chaos that came with a second war.

Was it such a jump to think perhaps, they might have allowed a break out?

Hermione’s eyes scanned the list of those prisoners who were now at large.

Antonin Dolohov

Augustus Rookwood

Rebastian Lestrange

Rodolphus Lestrange

Bellatrix Lestrange

Her head snapped up and she looked across the room to where Draco and Theo were huddled together. Draco was tense, his knuckles tight and pale over the fork in his hand. Theo was close to him, his hands jumping every few seconds as if he was fighting the urge to grab ahold of Draco’s hands or waist or shoulders. She turned and looked down the table to where Toma was sitting. He, too, had a paper open in front of his face, obscuring the little smile Hermione only spotted because she recognized the way his eyes folded at the corners. He peeked up at her and jerked his head down with one small, controlled movement, gesturing back to the paper.

Hermione looked back down and scanned for Fudge’s quote on the breakout.

“‘We find ourselves, most unfortunately, in the same position we were two and a half years ago when the murderer Sirius Black escaped,’ said Fudge last night.” Harry read, spitting along with Fudge’s words as Hermione read them. “‘We think it likely that these individuals, who include Black's cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange, have rallied around Black as their leader.’

He threw down his paper, and Hermione schooled her face into something more disbelieving and indignant as Harry looked to her instead.

“How can he be so stupid?” Harry said, voice raising dangerously. “I don't believe this. Fudge is blaming the breakout on Sirius?"

Hermione cleared her throat. “What else can he say, Harry? He can’t exactly come out and say he was wrong. He’s spent the last six months saying you and Dumbledore were lying about Voldemort’s return, and he can’t very easily go back on that now.”

Before Hermione or Harry could say anything else, though, there was the overwhelming scent of oranges in the air. Hermione looked to Neville, recognizing the scent of his magic anywhere, and was shocked to see smoke catching along the paper clutched in his hands. Hermione felt a sudden, sharp fear come over her, and she held out a hand. It was comforting, yes, but it was mostly the only thing she could do to get Neville’s attention off the paper and the only hope at getting him out of his trance-like state, because Natural magic was a distinct smell, and anyone in the room who had used it before would know it. Even if they didn’t know it was Neville who smelled of oranges, they would know someone was using enough Natural magic to take on a permanent scent of it. Hermione couldn’t let this secret out - no one knew what she’d been teaching Neville. Not Harry, not the Weasleys, not Draco and Theo, and certainly not Toma.

Toma, who was sat just a few feet down the table.

Toma, who had no qualms hurting people who messed with his plans.

“Neville,” Hermione whispered. “Calm down.”

But Neville’s eyes were fixed on the image of Bellatrix Lestrange on the page, on her screaming face. Hermione didn’t need to know his personal history with the witch to understand that look - it was the same one Draco wore when he talked about his aunt.

The woman who had tortured Neville’s parents to insanity was one in the same with the woman who had terrified Draco as a child, filling his head with nightmarish screams and taunts about how good of a soldier he’d be to break. Bellatrix was a living, breathing, nightmarish creature of the dark.

Hermione was desperately pulling at her magic, keeping the scent of it coiled tight within her, but she was holding onto Neville’s arm hard and trying to get him to take a breath, to calm himself, to reign in the magic pumping out of his pores. It was getting harder for her to keep herself calmed and controlled when the heat in Neville’s palms was only growing stronger.

Oranges in the air. It coiled and grew stronger, wafting around them and down the table.  It was a wave of intense scent, rotten and overly sweet, and Hermione had to force herself not to hold her breath. She spared a panicked look to Toma, who was looking murderous behind his newspaper, and the last shred of her calm broke. Her own magic sparked for one second, the scent of it negligible under the cloud of oranges, and then Neville gasped and the smell died instantly. Oranges died out with cinnamon, rain, and salt.

On his arm, under where Hermione had put her hands, was a thin, long cut, barely deep enough to draw blood but plenty startling enough to knock Neville from his trance-like state.

Neville shook his head, and he looked at Hermione, panic in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Hermione just shook her head. “It’s okay.” She would take the punishment for this, she would protect Neville. She wouldn’t blame him for this reaction. She wouldn’t give him another nightmare.

~~~

“Shut it down,” Toma spat, hands curled in Hermione’s sweater. His thin fingers were digging into her skin, into the cavities around Hermione’s collarbones. “Now. No more magic lessons, not if you’re going to use them to teach bloody fucking Blood magic to the poncey little Lions.”

Hermione didn’t argue - she couldn’t. Her body was shaking under the remnants of Toma’s assault, bruises blossomed over her neck and arms. Her head throbbed from where she’d been thrown backwards, and her left knee was split open from where she’d kicked out and caught the edge of the thick, heavy armchair in the middle of the Room of Requirement.

Hermione had known for a while now - Dumbledore’s Army would need to be dealt with sooner rather than later. And she had been playing with fire, teaching a Gryffindor Blood magic even if he was a Pureblood.

It required something of her she’d never done before. Something Unforgivable, and even as she cast the curse, she regretted it.

But someone needed to inform Umbridge, and it couldn’t be her.

The blow came while Harry was teaching Patronus magic. The Weasleys were all doing quite well with the assignment, and Hermione had finally conjured an otter, thinking of the first time Draco and Theo had kissed her.

Neville struggled with it, though. He was still thinking of his parents, of the coming threat, and he couldn’t think of anything happy enough in that moment to conjure more than a fine, weak mist.

Luna had just cast a rabbit when the lights flickered.

Hermione crept forward in the crowd, playing her part even as she knew what was coming. The mirror on the wall smashed, and they heard a distinctly Umbridge voice before-

The wall blew apart, dust and rubble flying up and over their rag-tag student group. Hermione immediately grabbed Neville by the shoulders and pulled him around, shielding her eyes and falling to the floor. Harry kept his footing, staring at the now destroyed wall with a heaving chest and something like betrayal.

Marietta Edgecombe, one of Cho Chang’s friends, was standing with Umbridge, Filtch, and the Imperial Squad. Her face was pox-marked with the word SNEAK across her forehead, and she looked like she’d been crying. Hermione felt a pang of guilt - her curse from the parchment meant she would forever be disfigured, and she wouldn’t have told anyone if not for Hermione’s magic that led her to Umbridge’s office - but she shoved it deep down.

She was doing this to protect Neville, herself, and the boys. She didn’t have space in her life to worry about someone she had never met, not when she had people she loved in danger.

Umbridge let most of them go, simpering about later punishments and how she wouldn’t forget their terrible treason here. Hermione thought for sure she would be hauled in with Harry and Ron, that she would have to face Dumbledore with an iron mind, but it was Harry, and Harry alone who was taken to face the Headmaster.

~~~

The news had been all over the school - Harry had been teaching practical lessons right under Umbridge’s nose, Dumbledore had been dismissed as the Headmaster by the Minister himself, and Umbridge had been named the temporary head of the school. But where students were convinced Dumbledore had just taken the fall for Harry’s idiotic plan, the Prophet cited Dumbledore’s attempted insurrection and planned coup for power as the reason for his dismissal. They claimed that Dumbledore was trying to mobilize students in his war against the made-up Dark Lord, and he’d brainwashed Harry Potter to support it.

In response to the Ministry’s take on the situation, the Order had a letter published by one of their own people, claiming that Fudge had made Hogwarts vulnerable to the Dark Side now, and with ten of the worst Death Eaters on the loose to boot.

“The Greengrasses and Wood families are both concerned,” Theo said, shifting in his slippers. It was nearing 2 in the morning now, but Toma had called them to the Room of Requirement nonetheless. “They believe something is going on, but they won’t say for sure if they side with the Ministry or Dumbledore. They just want to have a real education. Same thing with the Mcmillian family. They want to see the school put under new management, where a Board of Directors would be in charge of the Headmaster, not the Ministry. The arguments against that, of course, lie with the Weasleys and, surprisingly, both Smith and Bones have discussed a willingness to see the Ministry remain in power.”

“Umbrige knows,” Draco said. “She’s asked us to keep particular eye on the Weasleys and Bones, but Smith is a surprise to us. She’s going to try and remain the Head for as long as possible.”

Toma nodded. “Interesting. This is something we can use.”

“Harry’s furious,” Hermione added. “He’s sworn to do whatever he can to fight Umbridge, though he hasn’t said yet what he has planned.”

“We need that anger.” Toma let his hand rest on the edge of his jaw, a single finger tracing over his chin thoughtfully, absent-mindedly. “Hermione, do you have an essay on the detriment of educational decrees on the historical identity of the Witch and Wizard?”

“I can write one.”

“Good,” Toma said. “Make it opinionated. Send it to the Prophet when it is done for publication.”

~~~

Don’t Muddy My Education

Authored by Hermione J. Granger

When I was eleven years old, I saw a chocolate frog come to life. It is one of my first memories of coming to this magical world where girls and boys like myself belonged. A professor from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was escorting my parents and I to Diagon Alley so I could buy my school supplies, and as we stepped through the enchanted wall behind the Leaky Cauldron, I saw a boy open a brightly colored box, catch the chocolate frog about to jump out, and eat it. 

Growing up in the Muggle world, I had been ostracized by a world that didn’t understand my magic. The core of my being, as central to my life as my beating heart, was fundamentally different. It was something few Muggles could accept, even with evidence from the Ministry and the school when I reached the appropriate age. It not only made me a stranger to my own parents, it made my parents strangers to their own families. For years, my parents have had to lie to their siblings, parents, and friends just to keep my secrets, and in return, I had never been more alone surrounded by so many familiar faces.

The issue was remedied slightly when I entered this world. Two feet planted firmly on magical soil, I was no longer the strange, unnatural creature I had been. My otherness, the discrimination of being born a Witch, was washed away in this world where levitation and transfiguration are commonplace. The identity I found here was one deserving of pride and honor. This identity - witch - had been abused for so long in the Muggle world, distorted into caricatures of old, green-skinned crones and child-eaters. It had been used to murder countless people in the middle-ages, becoming the very tinder our ancestors burned upon. Through it all, we have persisted.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry under the leadership of Umbridge not only spits on what it means to be a witch, it betrays our rich, proud history as a society.

Headmistress Umbridge attempts to hide this history and shadow the identity of the witch. Under Headmistress Umbridge’s direction, the moving paintings in the castle, some dating back to the tenth centuries, have been removed. There are no portraits of our ancestors to speak to, no encouraging words from those who died to see us taught in this day and age. There are no historical debates, no proposal of ideas from our mentors long gone.

She has confiscated wands, and in their absence, refused to allow any form of non-verbal casting, leaving her students completely ill-prepared for our practical exams.

The natural way of our being, thrumming under our skin and in our blood with potential, is denied under her watch. There is not so much as a Focillo uttered at the dinner table. Magic - the thing that sets us apart from those men and women of the Muggle world - is denied at Hogwarts. Spells deemed inappropriate for being too unyielding, too combative, too advanced, too Dark, and too useful by an arbitrary score are stripped from the curriculum being taught to all students. Even spells routinely taught to first-years are being removed from the classroom for being ‘too ambitious’. Preparation for our Ordinary Wizarding Levels is reduced to the reading and recitation of textbooks.

There is value in reading a textbook. They are full of rich history, magical theory, and conceptual exercises. They are not a substitute for hearing first-hand what it was like to survive the witch-hunts, or to cast a spell with your own hands, or to experiment in the potions lab under the watchful eye of Professor Snape.

Our OWL exams will shape our lives, and the health of our world. OWL exams are used to determine educational placements, future career opportunities, and even our future ability to cast magic. Students passed with satisfactory scores on their OWLs today may go on to train to be Aurors, but without the vital abilities taught in fifth-year Hogwarts classrooms in past years. Alternatively, students who fail this year’s exams may be well-suited to practical magic, but their educational trajectories will be forever stunted by this year’s changed targets for passing the OWLs.

My identity is that of a witch. I am proud to be one, and I am comforted by the idea that my struggle to be accepted as a witch wasn’t one unique to me and my life, but rather a shared experience by those witches who came before me. It is a gift to be taught in these halls that taught my ancestors. It is a privilege to practice magic when so many before me were killed for it. 

The answer isn’t simple. It isn’t about changing Headmasters, or implementing further educational decrees. We need a systematic change to the way we educate our young witches and wizards. Muggle studies is important to giving young witches an understanding of the world that lies just beyond ours, but where are our magical cultural studies? Where are the historical accounts of old magic forgotten by all but the few Pureblood families who still practice them? Where is the standardized curriculum, held above the hands of ever-changing Headmasters? Where is the government oversight, or the protection that keeps government from dictating how we educate our children?

I may not have been born in this world, but it is my home. My family will never understand what it is to be a witch, nor will they see the full extent of sacrifice my ancestors gave to give me this gift of a world. This world is as much a part of me as I am of it - my magic is alive in my veins.

This world should be respected as such, and Hogwarts should be embracing my identity, my history, and my being fully.

~~~

“‘Mione!” Ron called, waving the paper above his head. “This is brilliant!”

“What?” Hermione said, looking up. She’d sent off the paper to last night, and Lucius had called in a favor to have it printed despite its tone. Truthfully, Lucius hadn't read the article before it's printing, and still he had helped her. Normally, such a dramatic and clear dismissal of the Ministry’s choice headmistress wouldn’t have been allowed within the printing office, let alone on the page, but it was astonishing what money and a quick print deadline could do to get opinion pieces put in the pages of the Daily Prophet.

“You stuck it to Umbridge and Fudge in one go!” the redhead whooped in excitement. He was grinning, his lips pulled up on either side of his cheeks, and when Hermione looked around, she saw that several of the other DA members at the table were grinning at her in a similar manner.

She tilted her head. It wasn’t like she expected them to fight her on the piece, but she had thought they would be more upset. Her words were clear enough, but there was subtext there, too. If any of them read between the lines, or read through what the words meant over what the words were, they would see it. She'd thought Ron might have noticed, having been raised by a Pureblood family even if they didn't adhere to the real traditions of Pureblood families.

Hermione looked away from Ron and the others, and instead turned her gaze to Neville. Neville was a Pureblood she could trust to see the whole story, the subtext in all its glory, and he wouldn't judge her for it too harshly. He was smiling, but it was shorter. Less ecstatic, more reserved.

“I like how you said we should be taught more magic,” Neville said quietly.

“More like any magic at all!” Ron interrupted. “Blimey, Hermione! It’s brilliant, you told them to teach us anything at all like it wasn’t a big deal! Like Umbridge isn’t backed by the Ministry! I don’t know how you got it in there, but this is bloody brilliant!”

Hermione nodded politely to Ron, but she kept looking at Neville. He knew what Hermione could do. He practiced Natural Magic with her and despite his initial reaction to it, he didn't judge her for it. He gave her a knowing, slight nod. So he had picked up every little thing she had left between the lines of her writing - Hogwarts should teach the magic deemed too inappropriate, with or without Umbridge there. They should be celebrating Natural magic, historical rituals, and forgotten theory. They should be giving students the whole experience of being a wizard, and they should have been doing it for the last hundred years.

But Ron and the others - Harry, the Weasleys, and the Order - they were oblivious to what she was really saying. They wouldn’t get it. Even the Purebloods in Gryffindor were raised outside of the tradition for the most part. The Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws that Hermione knew and spoke to wouldn’t understand the meaning of her piece, even if they were Pureblood. And those few who both understood what she was seeing and what it really meant wouldn't truly believe it. How could it be possible that Hermione, Gryffindor Mudblood, not only knew about Dark and Natural magic, but believed they should be taught more of each?

The Purebloods in Slytherin, or the Purebloods otherwise raised within the tradition of magic, they would understand it, though.

Blaise Zabini dropped his own copy of the paper onto Draco’s plate, uncaring for the buttered biscuit it fell onto.

“Excuse me,” Draco said. “I didn’t order this.”

“Read the damn article,” Blaise said, settling down on the other side of the table. Goyle and Crabbe had taken up the seats to the right and left of Draco, leaving Blaise to sit with Theo and Pansy on the opposite side. Draco scanned the paper with expressionless eyes. He and Theo had read the article the previous night, before Hermione submitted it. It was good. It flew right under the Order’s radar, and it spoke to those who understood the history and true nature of prohibited magics.

“What about it?” Draco asked when he was done, moving it off his plate and resuming his breakfast.

“If I didn’t know better,” Blaise said, leaning forward. “I would assume someone else had written this. Granger is advocating that Hogwarts reinstate lessons on Natural magic.”

“But you do know better,” Theo said, leaning forward and tapping his finger on the page. “Granger is the author of the essay.”

“It’s here in black and white,” Blaise snapped. He snatched the paper back and read it back to them. “‘Where are the historical accounts of old magic forgotten by all but the few Pureblood families who still practice them?’ ‘Spells deemed inappropriate for being too unyielding, too combative, too advanced, too Dark, and too useful by an arbitrary score are stripped from the curriculum being taught to fifth-year students.’” He scoffed and threw the paper back down on the table. “She did a good job hiding it in her plea for Umbridge to be removed and for real OWL preparation, but she’s not actually talking about that. She’s saying the curriculum is too Light-sided.”

Theo merely shrugged. “Maybe she’s curious.”

“You haven’t heard?” Pansy cut in. “Your cousin has been making a friend of her. I heard from Hannah Abbott they were studying in the Library together. I wonder what he was teaching her?”

Pansy laughed a shrill laugh, and Draco’s hands spasmed on the table. Because she was implying that Toma and Hermione were an item, that Hermione was being turned to their side of the world by Toma’s influence.

It was Draco who had befriended her, encouraged her, showed her the complexity of their world. It was Draco who had opened the door of Dark magic to her, given her the project that drove her to Blood magic. It was Draco who had fallen for her, Draco who had invited her to the Manor. Draco who had introduced her to Theo. It was Theo and Draco together who had helped her, had found the potion ritual to bring Toma back. It was Theo and Draco who held her that cold December morning after her parents had all but died in front of her, it was them she came home to on breaks. It was them she loved and kept and promised to marry someday.

Theo huffed out a laugh. It was convincing, but Draco knew him too well to not notice how forced it was. “Toma isn’t interested in Hermione Granger. He’s not interested in anyone, my cousin has never dated as long as I have known him.” It wasn’t a lie.

“There’s a first time for everything,” Pansy retorted. “And he’s a half-blood. What a disgrace. He wouldn’t think twice about shagging a Mudblood tart.”

Theo kicked Draco hard and sure, right in his knee. The scent of salted rain and cinnamon flared hot between Draco and Theo before Draco stabbed his fork into his eggs, and Theo smacked his lips.

“I suppose we’ll just see how it all turns out,” he said, and then he changed the subject to more pleasant things.

~~~

Fred and George Weasley left Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry on an otherwise dreary day, clouds providing the perfect backdrop for their fireworks. Hermione had suspected they were going to leave when they’d pressed matching, friendly kisses to her cheeks and whispered in her ear they would show Umbridge what real magic was.

The fireworks were a marvel of magic, pure and bright and so cleverly charmed.

Hermione shared in the joy of the school, watching as the twins rocketed into the sky and yelled in joy. She clapped and cheered with the others in the courtyard, looking across the crowd to where Toma was leaned up against one of the stone pillars.

There was commotion behind her.

She turned.

Harry was on the ground, his eyes dazed and confused, and she fell to her knees at his side. There was something akin to fear, to pain, and to anger in his eyes. She gripped his hand and tried to get him to focus, and then-

“Sirius.”