Emerald Orbs

Hermione walked into the café with purpose. Her friend was waiting for her over in the corner, having already ordered. Harry flicked his wand surreptitiously as she sat down, muttering a privacy spell. 

“So, what was so important I had to drop everything at the ministry and rush over here?” Hermione asked, sipping her café latte macchiato.

“Do you trust me?” Harry asked. His face darkened and his emerald orbs glinted. She hadn’t seen him this tense since the tent. What could possibly be behind all this secrecy?

“Of course! Why? What’s wrong? Have you heard any rumours of what the Dark faction is up to?” Hermione was fretting. The months since Harry vanquished Voldemort had been almost too easy. She hoped this wasn’t the other proverbial shoe, about to drop. They had been through so much together, like saving Buckwheat or whatever.

“I have heard rumours of a Pure Blood house threatening the two of us. I don’t want to say anything more until I can get you to a safe location. If I asked you to, would you agree to come with me and go completely excommunicado?” Harry looked deadly serious. She hadn’t seen his face fixed in this particular grimace since his third detention with Umbridge during their fifth year, where he nobly refused any and all help like an idiot.

“Why would I be excommunicated by the Catholic Church? Do you mean complete radio silence?” Hermione couldn’t believe the path this conversation had taken. Harry looked far too serious to be joking, but at the same time he was sort of jittery and mixing up words. What was going on? There must be some sort of crisis brewing. Hermione couldn’t imagine anything short of an eighth horcrux and imminent resurrection plot by Voldemort making Harry mix up incommunicado and excommunicated. 

“Well, whatever, would you come with me to an undisclosed location and follow my orders? I need to know you trust me. There’s something big going on, I promise.” Harry’s face was flushing somewhat, and Hermione couldn’t help but wonder how he made such a basic mistake.

‘I guess I’ll have to see where this leads’, she thought, Harry would never betray her, and if she knew Harry there was a credible threat to their safety. She decided right then and there to take the proverbial plunge. “I’m in”

Harry breathed out in relief, and handed her a piece of black cloth while smiling. 

“Thanks ‘Mione. I know I’m not being totally transparent at the moment, but it means the world to me that you trust me like this!”

“Of course. Anything for you Harry, you know this.” Hermione gave him a small smile back, while grabbing the piece of black cloth Harry was holding, expecting it to be some sort of portkey.

“Portus,” Harry intoned, and they were whisked away from the café.

—

Hermione had braced herself for the rigours of portkey travel, and wasn’t surprised when she felt the hook-like feeling behind her navel. She was surprised however, by the opulence of their surroundings. Everywhere she looked, there were old magical paintings, their gilded frames standing out against the somewhat simple clothing of the people within them. 

“Oi bruv, that’s the bird then ey?” a dishevelled looking man shouted from the opposite wall. Hermione had no time for whatever nonsense he was speaking, as a groan from the floor alerted her to Harry and his problems with magical travel.

“Honestly Harry. Get up!” She grabbed the back of his robes and hauled him to his feet. As he scrambled upright, Hermione looked around in confusion. “Where are we?”

“The Kiln, Potter Manor,” Harry answered, a small smile playing across his lips. Hermione always thought it was horrible how Harry was left an orphan with only gold to remember his parents by. An entire manor, with generations of Potters on the walls, had to be as big of a surprise to him as it was to her. Hopefully she would be able to interrogate them for their secret Family Magicks before too long.

“Well, we’re here. What’s so secret that you can’t tell me in the café on the high street?” Hermione rounded on Harry, wanting answers for his sudden secrecy. She hadn’t heard a single thing about the Kiln from either him, Ron or Ginny, and she’d spent the last couple of weeks at the Burrow, Harry only left a week ago!

“I need you to drink this potion first”. Harry held out a clear potion in an unmarked vial. Hermione's eyebrows rose. While they were best friends forever, and had been since the Troll in their first year at Hogwarts, she was even the only one to stand by him when his name came out of the goblet for Merlin’s sake, she wasn’t about to chug some random potion just because he asked her too!

“What is it?”

“A Purgative. I have reason to believe you have been compromised by Love and Loyalty potions”

“By whom? I haven’t noticed any changes in my feelings or behaviours?”

“Well if I told you who I suspect, the potion would make you disbelieve it anyway. And it’s been going on for so many years that you wouldn’t notice any changes either. Please ‘Mione. You know Purgatives have no drawbacks whatsoever, just take it”

Hermione considered it. If the potions regiment had been going on long enough, whatever changes they made to her mental state would be indistinguishable from the inside. And, while purgatives meant that you couldn’t move from the vicinity of a toilet for over 24 hours, they had now lasting effects on her mental or physical state. Maybe, just maybe, Harry had the right idea here.

“I guess I’ll take it? Will you tell me who’s behind this nefarious plot threatening the both of us afterwards?” Hermione said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. While at school her breasts hadn’t merited much mention, seeing as she was a child, they were now perfectly suited to her frame. She noticed Harry’s eyes flicking downwards subtly, and a strange sort of validation surged through her body. 

“I promise, on my Life and Magic, that after your first purge caused by this Purgative potion I will hold your hair back and tell you everything I know, as sweareth by Lord Potter. So mote it be!” Harry responded. A glow suffused him, a wind blew up and suddenly, a flash permeated the room they were standing in.

“What?” Hermione blinked.

“Oh, it’s some sort of Pure Blood tradition I think? The portraits have been telling me all about it, I’m allegedly the Duke of Bedford or something, but as far as I can tell The Kiln is some place in Wales. Don’t think much of it” Harry’s hair was still swaying by the wind kicked up by his proclamation. That’s what it felt like, a Proclamation. Hermione could almost taste the Magicks in the air. 

“Oh, hand it over,” Hermione said, rolling her eyes and reaching for the vial. She peered closely at it, seeing nothing untoward. A Purgative potion was clear, indistinguishable from water, but it only took a mouthful to, well, purge every magical food, drink and potion a person had imbibed in the last week. It would make whosoever drank the potion expel waste from any available orifice, and it was considered second to the Crucio by the magicals of Britain, but if there weren’t any magical draughts in your body it wouldn’t really do anything. Because of these facts, Hermione didn’t hesitate, and popped the seal before knocking the vial of Purgative back.

Harry released a relieved sigh. “Thank you ‘Mione. Let’s head to the vomitorium and I’ll hold your hair, stroke your back, and tell you everything I know of the current situation,” Harry promised. 

“Actually, I’m somewhat certain that the word 'vomitorium’ meant a passage in which a large crowd could exit efficiently.. Hurk” Hermione started to explain, but the effect of the Purgative took hold too early. How was she supposed to explain the intricacies of amphitheatre architectural design in these conditions? Harry would probably go the rest of his life believing vomitorium was a synonym for loo, while in reality the situation was much more complex!

Harry rubbed soothing circles on Hermione's back, and somehow muttered soothingly too, while guiding her to the loo. “Relax ‘Mione. I’ve got you. Just like the time we saved Buckwheat or whatever.” Hermione was quickly bundled into the loo attached to the reception hall of The Kiln. It was a bit strange how the rich Pure Blood families kept their fireplace and floo in a designated room just for receiving visitors, but Hermione had to keep a hand to her mouth to keep her Burrow approved lunch, in addition to her words, inside. 

Harry continued rubbing her back, and when Hermione was finally situated in front of the porcelain throne, he explained the threat facing them. While Hermione was too busy chucking up to argue, Harry described the conspiracy arranged against them. How the youngest Weasleys, helped by their mother, brewed potions to ensure both Harry and Hermione's love and loyalty, how since their second year Molly Weasley had access to Harry’s Gringotts vaults, how Albus Dumbledore was too faded to notice. Dumbledore had raised Harry for the slaughter, and didn’t care about Harry’s obligations in a future he didn’t believe would ever come. Hermione would inject some much needed powerful magical blood into the Weasley clan, and a premarital pregnancy for Ginny Weasley would leave her the sole inheritor of the vast Potter fortune. Listening to this, while chucking up the last couple of months of force fed Love Potions keyed to the loser Ron Weasley, a man with no redeeming qualities at all, a spark was born in Hermione. A spark of revenge. A spark of lust.