Mirror Image

In the frenzied chaos of Harry’s vision, Hermione was only able to point out once that this was a trap. It was her duty to do so, and even with their recent disagreements, Hermione was no fair-weather friend. And truly, no matter if it was a trap by her own Toma or by the Death Eaters, she didn’t want to see Harry killed. Admittedly, in the midst of chaos and of unplanned adventures, Hermione’s higher thinking processes were reduced to logical steps and one-thing-at-a-time’s.

But no amount of reason would work - Harry was determined to see his own plan through. He would break into Umbridge’s office, tip off the Order, and fling himself into the middle of whatever danger lay waiting in the Department of Mysteries. She knew, on some level, that she wasn’t entirely wrong to be worried. Toma had told her - this entire situation in the Ministry was a way to force the Order and the Death Eaters into an encounter, and Hermione didn’t want to be in the middle of such a battle. There were things about this situation that didn't make sense, too.

Toma's plans had progressed, developed. He was forcing a confrontation tonight, and Harry was supposed to be there for it. This was no longer an abstract strategy to manufacture tension, this was a very real, very tangible fight. Something had changed, and Hermione didn't have time to find out what.

Standing in Umbridge’s office, watching as Harry cast Floo powder into the fire, Hermione felt a familiar prickle in her mind. Gone were the days of headaches and sharp pains when Toma pushed his way into Hermione’s mind. Now, she only felt familiar tugs at her memories, gentle pressure on her temples. She let him in, she didn’t fight it, and he watched what she watched for a moment. He saw Harry tell Ron to stay back and alert the Order.

Go.

Hermione dropped to her knees by Harry’s side. “When are you going to get it through your head we are in this together?” The words fell from her lips so easily, as if she’d thought them up without Toma’s insistence she follow Harry into this particular fire. In her mind, she wondered why are we going at all?

There was no response, and no presence in her mind. Toma was already gone.

“That you are.” Hermione jumped, startling at Harry's side.

Umbridge was at the door, the Imperial Squad behind her, and they were rounded up quietly and soundly. From the moment Draco stepped into the office, he’d been fighting to keep his eyes off Hermione - she could feel it every time he so much as shifted his weight. Snape came and went, and spoiled Umbridge’s plan to use Veritaserum, and then it was only Harry, Umbridge, and baited breath.

Hermione didn’t even know Veritaserum had been one of Umbridge’s planned methods of getting information from students. If she’d been using it for a while, Draco hadn’t told her. She wondered if Toma had known - perhaps that was the other reason Toma had for keeping Draco close to such a vile woman who held an all-access pass to their secrets. Hermione wanted, desperately, to be able to slide into Toma's mind the way he slid into hers. She had questions, and she was scared, and she wanted to hold Draco's hand.

Harry was stupidly silent as they all stood there, watching as Umbridge crept closer and closer with her wand trained on his forehead.

Hermione and Draco had shared a fervent, split-second look with one another behind Neville’s back, but Draco didn’t know about the dreams. He didn’t know that Toma wanted Harry there tonight, at the Ministry, and he didn’t know that Hermione was under her own orders to go with them.

Perhaps it was panic that drove Hermione to come up with her own, underdeveloped plan. Maybe it was simply that Hermione could not stomach watching someone receive the Cruciatus now that she had been on the other end of that particular curse. Undoubtedly, it was her own fear and adrenaline that forced the image of Grawp to her mind.

She and Harry left with Umbridge, Draco watching them leave with some kind of apprehension poorly hidden in his face.

Hermione wished, walking through the Forbidden Forest, she could have Toma by her side instead of her current company of imbeciles. Sure, Harry had passed along a coded message to Snape, but there was no way of actually knowing whether or not Snape would do anything about it. He was, afterall, the only professor in the castle that Hermione did not fully trust. Even if Snape did pass along their message, it didn’t matter. Hermione had been told - she needed to go with Harry, to get him to whatever it was in the Ministry. Whatever was happening tonight, it was important and there was no time to check in on details or plans or anything.

Walking through the woods, alone with only Harry and Umbridge, Hermione wondered how the hell she’d gotten to this place in her life.

Watching the centaurs carry Umbridge away, standing alone with Harry, Hermione realized this would be her last chance to breathe easily before the night was over.

The others met them coming back over the bridge, and Hermione felt a tug in her chest when Ginny said they’d gotten the best of Draco and the others. Everything in Hermione wanted to go back, to check on her beloved, but there was no time and no opportunity when Luna was pulling them into the forest again to find the thestrals.

The only reprieve she got was when they were flying over the open expanse of Scotland, heading to London, and it was only then she realized what had been bothering her from the very moment Harry fell to the ground in the courtyard. Up to that day, Harry’s visions happened at night, when he was asleep and his mind was relaxed and easily infiltrated. But today, Harry had not only had a vision in his waking mind, he’d had one of the most elaborate ones yet. Hermione didn’t know what that meant, but she knew it had to do with Toma’s power, and the fact that it was growing.

~~~

The Department of Mysteries was full of bizarre magic Hermione hadn’t even read about. The time-turners and love potions were familiar enough, but nowhere in the Malfoy, Nott, or Riddle libraries had Hermione found books on the room of brains preserved in potion and deadly to touch. Not once had she read about the universe contained in a single, pitch-black room. And she had never seen reference to the room of death, where an archway of stone was standing all alone.

Hermione could have spent hours examining each room, pushing and pulling on the Natural magic that flowed all around her, but Harry dragged her forward, through the rooms until he burst through the last door and into the Hall of Prophecies.

The Hall of Prophecies was just that - a long, never-ending hall of shelves that stretched stories into the air. Along the shelves were rows and rows of small orbs, all full of hazy, foggy gas. They seemed to whisper when Hermione passed them, and they seemed to glow blue-green-purple as the light hit them from different angles. Hermione was fascinated, her feet planted in the ground to look at them.

Harry didn’t stop to look at them at all. Sirius was, according to his vision, down a bit from where the door had let them into the room, and Harry’s mind was stuck on only getting to his Godfather.

He raced down the aisle between shelves, Ron, Ginny, Neville, and Luna chasing after him. They seemed to be swallowed up in the darkness of the Hall, the shadows bleeding together and shrouding them from view. Their footsteps seemed to be gobbled up, too, as they got further and further away from the door. But Hermione stayed.

Just to her right, where the shelves were at eye-level and the orbs shiny and new, was a prophecy with Hermione’s name on it, H.J.G. engraved into the brass under the orb. She reached for it, the fog inside swirling around as if it was trying to break out of the glass and wrap around Hermione’s fingers.

The glass was cool in her palm, and the fog seemed to settle in her hand, and there was a voice whispering all around her.

A servant becomes partner, chained by mutual dreams… Blood and power bound… They will make this new world their playground… They, separated by eras, will become one in the same…

She heard Neville cry out, and she hastily put the orb back in its place before rushing to get to the others. Neville was showing Harry something, another orb but this time, with Harry’s name on it. Hermione watched as Harry went still, holding the orb and tilting his head as he undoubtedly heard those same whispers Hermione had a moment ago.

She turned, and-

“Harry!”

The man was almost completely hidden in shadow, his dark cloak bleeding into the hall around him. The only part of him not obscured was the mask on his face. It was silver, intricate and carved skull-like.

“Where’s Sirius?”

“You should learn to tell the difference between dreams,” the man said, waving his arm as his mask dissolved around his face. It was a face Hermione recognized - Antonin Dolohov. “And reality. You saw what the Dark Lord wanted you to see. Now hand me the prophecy.”

There was a shrill laugh from behind Dolohov’s shoulder, and Bellatrix Lestrange stepped into view. Harry was holding the prophecy at his side, loose and so close to the ground.

All around them, there were Death Eaters surrounding them. Silver masks and black robes at every turn, boxing them in. Hermione raised her wand loosely. There was a tense, muscled tension in the air around her in Ginny and Luna and Ron’s stiff arms and tightly held wands. But Hermione would lean on her blood for this fight, and she could tell Neville would, too. Because his wand, although held tight in his hands, wasn’t responsible for the waves of oranges like a tide around her.

Her resolve broke - there were 6 of them and twelve Death Eaters - and there was a sharp, hard burst of salt, rain, and cinnamon from deep within her core. Neville nearly stumbled from it, and Ron looked at her sharply.

There was no time for them to ask about it, though, because Harry shouted for them to act and then they were running. Hermione had never seen the means of smoke travel from the outside perspective, but she saw it now. All around them, wisps of dark smoke seemed to chase them through the hall and twist in the air. It looked impossible, it looked like something of a fairy tale.

Harry was shouting stupify’s all around them, but Luna and Neville had both gotten clever with their spells. Luna was tripping them into the shelves, bringing cascading walls of prophecies down on them. Neville was jettisoning them with blasts of boiling water, jets of flame and conjured sand. 

Hermione, leaning into her nonverbal casting, let loose some of her darker curses - at least three of the Death Eaters fell to the floor because of her, bleeding and burned.

They raced back to the door, searching for any way to get out of the hall now that Ginny’s own spell had sent the shelves all around them crashing to the ground.

Hermione’s prophecy wouldn’t survive that kind of a catastrophic event, but she had heard it. It would be enough for her - and for Toma. It was some kind of sad feeling of loss, but at the same time, Hermione wondered if this was why Toma wanted Hermione here tonight, even with the threat of Death Eaters.

The black smoke followed them through the door, crashing into them as they all took to the ground. They were back in the death room. Hermione felt someone, something, pulling her in their smoke and she found herself being dragged to the edge of the room. She felt her feet buckle against the floor, and she opened her eyes to see she was standing with one of the Death Eaters she didn’t recognize from the paper. All around her, her friends were being held by Death Eaters. And between them, there were jittery, eager Death Eaters waiting with their wands for a fight. Harry was stood alone, in the middle of the room. Dolohov was the only Death Eater not holding a body nor shifting foot to foot, and he held out his hand. It was commanding, sure and even. There was something in his stature that reminded Hermione of Lucius. There was something in his face that reminded her of Toma. “I will give you the opportunity now. Hand over the prophecy, or your friends die.”

Harry looked around the room, eyes trained on each of the people he had brought with him. His eyes snagged on Neville, who was struggling against Bellatrix’s hold, and then he finally turned back to Dolohov.

For one, breathless moment, Hermione was sure Harry would hand the prophecy over to the man in front of him. She wasn’t even sure why the thought scared her so badly - Toma had said the prophecy was old news. It wasn’t the prophecy regarding her own role in this new era, and it wasn’t going to change the fact that Toma was firmly on Hermione’s side in this war. But the idea of the Death Eaters having an advantage no matter how small it was struck fear into her very core.

And then light. Blinding, dancing light like the exact opposite of the smoke that had chased them through this terrible place came bounding into the room. With it, came the Order. Remus and Sirius and Tonks. Shacklebolt and Moody. They were there in an instant, Hermione felt the Death Eater holding her suddenly take a step back as blinding light raced towards her.

She threw the spell before she could think better of it. She didn’t even really throw it - she had thought it. She’d thought of the way he had scared her, and she imagined making him just as afraid. Her anger, secondary to fear and obligation and survival instincts, burned in her veins as the magic rushed to her call. All around her, cinnamon was strong and heady, drowning out the salt and the rain.

The Death Eater she’d been held by crumpled at her feet, screaming. His blood was boiling, steam was billowing from his eyes and ears and mouth and nose. He clawed at his mask, shaking and red fingers pulling it away from the sensitive skin there.

Blood, hot and burning and bubbling, began to seep from the man’s skin. It left blistered trails of skin behind it as it ran down his cheeks and arms and legs.

He screamed and died, all the while the battle raged on around Hermione. No one had noticed the man dying here, ravaged by one of Hermione’s Darkest curses yet. Only it wasn’t Dark. She hadn’t destroyed anything, she’d just changed it. This was pure, Grey magic, some kind of mutation of the boiling charm.

It felt like hours - it was seconds of unbelievable torture. Hermione saw his eyes dull, his hands go limp on the ground. The blood continued to spit and boil, leaking sluggishly from a body that gave way so easily now that it wasn’t fighting.

She had seen a dead body before. She had never been responsible for one.

Hermione spun around, and there was Remus to pull her away. He pushed her behind a great rock, and she went willingly. There was Ginny and Ron, and behind them, Neville and Luna.

Above them, there was the sound of the prophecy shattering, of Dolohov’s cry of surprise, and then-

“Avada kedavra!”

Hermione pushed herself up and over the edge of the rock. Sirius fell backwards, through the veil behind him, and Harry let out something of a shriek, only it was deeper. It came from his core, deep and raw and painful in a way Hermione had never heard before. It was the sound of a soul shattering.

And then Harry was gone, racing after Bellatrix as she took off through the room, back out of the Department of Mysteries.

Hermione and Ron were the first to move - they pushed away from the rock, launching to their feet, and they chased Harry and fought the Order to get to him. They could hear, just around the corner, a Floo fire burning. There was Harry’s voice, but it was distorted. Wrong. And Dumbledore was talking, too. Hermione was pushing, all of her weight against Remus’s arms, but the raw power of her curse from before had sapped more out of her than she was willing to admit.

She couldn’t make out what Harry and Dumbledore were saying, only the timbre of her friend’s voice and the rumble of their familiar teacher’s words.

Hermione needed to know. Was it Toma? Was he here?

Was this the moment he killed Harry Potter? Or was he going to wait, to play with his food before he ended the hunt? Was he going to throw Hermione away in one fell swoop? Would he spare her a second glance, an errant thought before he did it?

Moody had Neville held in his arms, wrapped up around the boy’s neck, and Tonks was holding Ginny like a snake around prey. Kingsley was holding Luna’s arms, but she wasn’t fighting nearly as hard as the others.

And Remus, tears still wet and running down his cheeks, eyes red and broken even as he held both Hermione and Ron back. His arms were tight around them, spasming and pressing them together like he was sobbing, even as he was silent above them.

Hermione fought to get out of Remus’s hold and to keep her magic tight within her. She didn’t want to lose control of herself in Remus’s arms, she couldn’t bear the idea of- of the heat- of the blood- of burning-

Finally, the Order allowed one opening. Ginny had bucked into Tony’s chin, and Remus had spared them a look. Hermione ran, ducking under arms and dodging hands. She nearly skidded into the wall coming around the corner, and she stopped short with a burst of fear. Harry was laying in the middle of the room, speaking to Dumbledore. Not Dumbledore.

He was speaking to himself. His eyes were glazed and empty even as he spoke.

“-and I feel sorry for you.”

Harry’s voice changed in an instant, hissing and low and deeper. “You are a fool.”

Hermione’s eyes blew open wide. That was Toma - she recognized the way he wrapped his tongue around the words and the way he formed his phonetics. Whatever this was, Toma was here in Harry’s head. Safe from afar, but still here to antagonize Dumbledore.

Hermione took a stumbling, stilted step forward.

It was all over in a moment - Harry’s whole body seized and convulsed, and then he laid flat and still under Dumbledore’s hands. All around the main hall, Floo fires sprang to life and Fudge and his most loyal employees spilled out. Lucius, too, stepped through the farthest fire. He wasn’t a Ministry employee, but he was a member of advisory boards and policy development teams.

He was tall and firm, looking to all the world like he was unfazed by the chaos of a late night call.

Hermione could tell, looking at him, that he was scared. He was scared for her, and his eyes set on her with a kind of panicked relief. She wanted to go to him, to fall into his familiar arms and breathe in the bergamot shampoo Lucius and Narcissa both used, she wanted to cry for herself and that man back there and that she was here at all.

She wanted to feel Draco’s fingers in her hair, she wanted Theo’s palm on her back, she wanted to tell Toma about the prophecy she’d found.

But she didn’t do any of those things, not right then. Instead, she let herself get pulled away by the Order, she fell back and let Ron of all people guide her away. Hermione let Dumbledore usher them all back to school. She let herself be laid in a bed, McGonagall pushing her into the mattress with a firm but gentle pressure.

And Hermione slept.

~~~

Dumbledore and Fudge sat across from one another, quiet but it was less advisory this time. Instead, they were filling the silence with sipping tea and slow, mental coming to terms with the events of the evening.

Admittedly, Dumbledore had heard there was a second prophecy in the Ministry’s Department of Mysteries regarding Voldemort. He’d known for a while, which is why the Order was supposed to be guarding it.

The contents of such a prophecy, however, weren’t exactly easy to get. It wasn’t about Mr. Potter this time, and it’d be issued by a new prophet, one Dumbledore had yet to meet. In fact, it seemed as though no one knew what was in the prophecy. There were no witnesses to the original announcement of it, and it had simply appeared in the Hall overnight on its own. Fudge couldn’t seem to tell them any more than that.

The Death Eaters had been tipped off, a predictable outcome of a new prophecy appearing in the Hall regarding their master. It was, undoubtedly, why they had been there, too.

Why Voldemort himself had not made an entrance - why he had lured Harry to the Hall in the first place - was still a mystery. He turned it over in his mind this way and that. Perhaps it hadn’t been about the prophecy at all? But the students had all said that Dolohov asked Harry to pass along the prophecy. He’d asked for that one specifically, the one that Harry could hold and hear.

Had it been a trap? Was the prophecy a trap from the beginning, just a way to get the Boy Who Lived and his friends in a place where any kind of accident, big or small, could result in death? But, again, then why had they genuinely asked for the prophecy?

“Nothing was recovered?” Dumbledore asked quietly.

“There is nothing left of the Hall of Prophecies,” Fudge said, setting his cup down. “Whatever was in that prophecy, it is gone and lost now.”