Chapter 12
Hermione started as she swung round to face Altaire, her heart nearly jumping out of her throat in surprise.
The other girl looked completely collected, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed.
“I didn’t mean to-“
“You heard the whole conversation. I’m sure you would have left earlier if you really ‘didn’t mean to’” she smirked, cocking a lazy brow.
“How did you know?” Hermione asked, realising that there was no point in lying.
“Your thoughts were quite loud. Difficult to ignore.” was her response.
“My thoughts?” Hermione asked, furrowing her brows in confusion.
Altaire merely stared blandly at her, her dark eyes betraying no signs of emotion.
Finding the silence more uncomfortable than being found to have been eavesdropping, Hermione changed the subject.
“You and Blaise –“
“We’re not lovers.” Altaire responded coolly.
“He cares about you a lot.”
Altaire’s expression remained the ever-disinterested mask that she wore with poise.
“And I him.” She said with a tone of finality, signaling that she would not entertain any further questions on the matter.
“So… is everything you said in that classroom true? Or were you just trying to convince me to trust you?” Hermione asked, pivoting again.
“My lack of desire to lie and pretend is what seems to have gotten me in this mess in the first place.” Altaire replied with a halfhearted smirk. “Self-preservation never came as easily to me as the rest of my family. Perhaps my parents brought it on themselves… They named me after the Eagle constellation after all… although I suppose Serpens doesn’t really have the same pureblood princess ring to it.”
Hermione gave her a weak grimace. “My parents named me after a character from a muggle play.”
“Shakespeare, a Winter’s Tale. I know it.” She responded simply.
Hermione stared at her curiously. “You read a lot of muggle literature?”
“I’m a Ravenclaw.” Altaire shrugged in response. “It’s in my nature to be curious.”
“And your parents… it doesn’t offend them?” she asked tentatively, wanting to slowly lead the conversation back to the questions she really wanted answered.
“Should it?” the girl asked, examining her perfectly painted nails with an air of boredom.
“You’re a Malfoy. Your father was at the graveyard when Voldemort killed Cedric, you said so yourself.”
Altaire raised her brow with an air of indifference, “I fail to see why my father’s extra-curricular activities participating in some ritualistic grave robbing and murder might have anything to do with his views on my own academic interests.”
“He supports Voldemort, and Voldemort wants the likes of me dead.” Hermione retorted hotly.
“Do you mean the academically over-achieving?” Altaire sneered, a condescending smirk forming on the edges of her lips. “Because I hate to break it to you, Hermione, but you might be the smartest witch in Gryffindor, but in a house that actually prides itself on their academic vigour, you might find that you’re not so special after all.”
“You know what I mean!” Hermione snarked back, ignoring the insult, “Mu..mudbloods!”
“I don’t use that word.”
“Your brother does.”
“I told you before that he regrets it. Regardless, I’m not my brother.”
“And you’re not your father either.”
“Correct.”
“Why should I trust that you’re any different from them?”
“I don’t remember asking you to trust me.”
Hermione sighed. This was an impossible conversation.
After a moment of tense silence, Altaire straightened herself, returning Hermione’s affronted stare with a bemused look. “Surely you’re not so naïve as to think that everyone is exactly as they perform in public.”
“Are you saying that your father is just ‘pretending’?” Hermione scoffed in disbelief.
“I’m not interested in having the same conversation with you all over again Hermione. Like I said before, everyone does what they have to, to survive. Potter fights because to give up would be to die. You fight for much of the same reasons, I would presume. Both of you, hell, even Weasley… your name and your blood-status defined who you’d become in the Wizarding world from the moment you were born. My name and my blood-status… to be a pureblood aristocrat doesn’t give me a free pass to live my life however I want. It has its own… restrictions.” Noting Hermione’s skeptical expression, Altaire’s eyes narrowed, filling with fire as her voice lowered dangerously. “Cedric Diggory’s death was an unfortunate circumstance of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Do you think Igor Karkaroff was at the wrong place at the wrong time, or Sloan Travers? Eli Walden? Arcturus and Desdemona Avery?”
Hermione frowned. Apart from Karkaroff, she recognised the name Avery as a Death Eater that Harry had said was present at the graveyard last summer, but the others sounded utterly unfamiliar.
Altaire laughed coldly, her pretty face twisting in malice as her tone became angrier. “You haven’t even heard of them, have you? And why should you have? It’s not like the Ministry would waste their precious resources investigating the deaths of witches and wizards connected to former Death Eaters. Who cares that they were innocent? Who cares that they shunned their families and turned their back on what they thought was wrong, long before the rest of the world even cared about what was happening to their poor little muggles?”
Hermione swallowed, biting the inside of her mouth as she stared at Altaire in confusion. Travers… Walden… Avery… were they children of death eaters? Spouses?
“You know why Karkaroff was murdered.” Altaire continued bitterly, turning away to stare at a sleeping portrait. “Sloan Travers… she was found dead in her house just a few days after, her body completely mutilated, torn from limb to limb... Her uncle was Marcus Travers. He escaped Azkaban a few months prior, during the mass outbreak. She was the one who turned him in, after she found out he was one of the Death Eaters who massacred an Order Member’s entire family. They killed everyone, even the children.”
Hermione paled. She hadn’t heard of Marcus Travers before, or Sloan for that matter. When the Daily Prophet had broken the news of the Azkaban outbreak, it had mostly focused on Sirius’ supposed involvement in the matter, and the escape of Bellatrix Lestrange… Hermione herself hadn’t even wondered who else were in the list of escaped convicts, focused on her outrage at the Ministry’s incompetence and their focus on chasing after the wrong lead.
“I… I hadn’t heard of her.” Hermione said, her tone subdued as she mulled over the names in her head.
“Neither had the Auror office,” Altaire scoffed. “You would have thought she’d be one of the people they’d have sought out to protect as soon as they realised Marcus had escaped… but no. And Eli Walden. Him and his brother were both Death Eaters during the First Wizarding War. He was only 17 when he joined. He was just following his older brother… he’d idolised him. When he realised the ugly truth, he didn’t want to be complicit in wiping out half the wizarding world, so he sought out the Order. He offered to spy for them in return for their protection, during and after the war. When the war ended, the Ministry nevertheless put him on trial and publicly outed him for his betrayal. They spared him Azkaban, but they broke his wand and took away his magic. No-one from the Order even tried to speak for him.” Altaire’s voice was hollow, the witch’s fingers tracing the edges of the frame of portrait she was staring at. “He was left completely defenseless, when his brother finally came for him.”
“How do you know all thi-“
Altaire turned her head with a withering glare, cutting her off, “Arcturus and Desdemona Avery. I’m sure you’ve heard of Jeremiah Avery. Did Potter tell you how he begged for the Dark Lord’s forgiveness? How he pleaded with him to spare his family?”
Hermione nodded faintly. Harry had mentioned Voldemort’s anger at his followers after his ascension. His raging fury at their failure to seek him out during the last decade.
“The Dark Lord was forgiving. He spared his first-born son. His younger son and his wife however…” Altaire’s jaw clenched as she gave Hermione a knowing look. “Everyone at the graveyard that night was punished in some way or another for their… lack of enthusiasm to publicly support the Dark Lord during his disappearance.”
Hermione began to open her mouth, thinking about Lucius Malfoy, but was cut of yet again. “My father was spared the worst punishment.” Altaire’s lips curled up in disdain. “My father always knew the Dark Lord would make his return. He knew that anyone who outrightly turned his back on him…they’d be the first to pay the price eventually. As you might remember… your second year, was it? He made sure the Dark Lord knew he hadn’t abandoned him, even if it was done… covertly. He made himself indispensable, so that he could protect me, all of us, when the time came.”
As she let Altaire’s words sink in, Hermione thought about the dead witches and wizards she’d just listed, and she couldn’t help herself feel a spark of sympathy for the witch. But thinking back to second year, and how Ginny had almost died due to Tom Riddle’s diary, her heart flared with anger.
“So what? Your father nearly killed an 11-year-old girl to protect himself,” she hissed, glaring back. “Ginny was innocent. Your father put himself in that position by siding with Voldemort to begin with.”
Altaire pursed her lips, looking back at her unabashedly. “There’s a lot more to the story than that.” She said simply, ignoring Hermione’s disbelieving scoff. “My father is doing what he thinks is best for the family. I’m not asking you to forgive him. He doesn’t need your forgiveness, nor do I. I’m only telling you this so that you understand. The world isn’t black and white, and people aren’t just Light or Dark. Some people don’t have the luxury of publicly acting on their moral compass. Some of us have to navigate in the grey, trying our best to stay afloat, and not let the dark drown our only hopes.”
Hermione frowned skeptically; her feelings wrought with conflicting emotions. “Fine,” she said shortly. “So, what do you want?”
The witch grinned, her smile calculating. “I already told you. I want to become Potter’s ally. Discreetly of course. There’s a lot of scrutiny on me right now, with my long absence from Britain and pureblood society… I’m being watched. But I have a lot of information that will prove useful to all of you. I can help.” Altaire stared at her intently, her tone sincere. “I want to help. I’ve thought it through, and I believe that Potter can take the Dark Lord down, once and for all. More than that, I want him to succeed. I can help,” she repeated, taking a step forward so that the two witches were eye-level. “Let me help you, Hermione. You won’t regret it.”
Hermione took a deep breath, mulling over Altaire’s proposition in her head. Everything the girl had said up to now, everything she’d just overheard… it all felt sincere. The witch sounded genuinely concerned for her family, and her offer felt… real. But she was still a Malfoy. They were slippery, self-serving, and not to be trusted…
“And what about your brother?” she finally asked, frowning.
“Oh, he’ll help.” Altaire smirked at Hermione’s incredulous expression. “My brother isn’t just some one-dimensional bigot you’ve got yourself believing that he is. You needed an enemy, and he gave you a good reason to find him as one. I’m not saying he can’t be a right git.” She laughed, “He gets on my nerves, even on the best days. But he’s alright once you get to know him. Regardless, he’s my brother and he loves me. Once he finds out I’m officially in with Potter, he’ll have no choice.”
“How so?” Hermione asked drily, trying, and failing to imagine Malfoy as anything other than the outrageously irritating and arrogant ferret that she knew.
Altaire’s expression sobered, the amusement disappearing from her eyes. “We’re all just trying to protect what we love, Hermione. And believe it or not, Draco loves more fiercely and loyally than anyone else that I know.” She stared down at Hermione intensely. “Once he decides that you’re his to protect, he’ll douse himself in Fiendfyre and let the flames burn out his soul before he lets you come in harm’s way.”