Chapter 1
Hermione pushed Agamemnon up higher on her head. “I want to see,” the daemon objected, but he also nestled down into Hermione’s curls. She turned the page of the old newspaper – not technically from the restricted section, but not something a student like her could look at without raising eyebrows – and scanned the page looking for stories of Muggles. Of rescues. Of Obliviation and the Imperius and adoption.
She needed to find out who to blame.
As usual, there was nothing. When she sighed, Agamemnon jumped down on the parchment, then crawled up into her arms. “It’s somewhere,” the little daemon said reassuringly, and Hermione scratched behind his ears.
“Is a thing that small really even a cat?” The scornful voice came from behind her and Hermione bit the inside of her cheek to keep from defending Agamemnon. The tense shoulders she couldn’t hide earned her a snigger.
Hermione turned slowly and ran her eyes along Draco Malfoy, from his blond head to his shined shoes, then sniffed. It wasn’t as if there was anything wrong with his uniform robes or the little green snake pin he liked to wear. She just enjoyed taking him down a peg. The snotty bastard was far too full of himself, and watching his eyes flicker at her dismissal gave her a lot more pleasure than she’d gotten from another failed search through the archives. As usual, his ferret daemon bounded up to her and scampered just out of reach. Agamemnon jumped down and the two daemons sniffed one another, then began a game of chase that went over and around and under the chairs and table.
The daemons might be happy, but Draco wasn’t going to let her dismissive sniff go by without another jab of his own. “How’d they even know you were magical with that thing?”
“You know how,” Hermione said tightly. Everyone knew how. One innocent change – to a niffler in Agamemnon’s case – and the Aurors swept down. At least things were better than they had been. At least her parents were still alive, thanks to Grindelwald’s reforms. After all, they might have another magical child. They should be left alone to breed. Not to raise the child they already had, of course. Oh, Merlin no. Muggle parents raise a magical baby? When every drop of magical blood mattered? That would never have been allowed. Still, a hundred years ago, they would have been killed where they stood. She supposed it was better.
She still wanted to know which aurors had done it.
Draco was smart enough to know when he’d crossed a line, and he changed the subject. “Theo sent me to ask if he could borrow your notes from History of Magic.”
Hermione reached down into her bag and tossed the requested notebook at Draco. It wasn’t as if she needed them, and if she refused she was ungrateful. Theo’s family had taken her in, Muggle-born that she was, and a week at Nott Manor rarely went by that his father didn’t remind her how lucky she was. Some Muggle-borns ended up in less prestigious families. Like that Potter boy, he’d said over Easter break as she chewed and chewed and chewed the ham and kept a smile on her face. Living with those Weasleys. Not a pot to piss in, the lot of them. I’ve given you the best, girl. I expect you to remember that.
Theo looked miserable whenever his father went off.
“He sick?” she asked. It was unlike her sort-of brother to miss class.
Draco shrugged. “Some stomach thing.”
“He needs to remember to not eat the shepherd’s pie.” It made him queasy every time.
“I’ll tell him that.” Draco took the notes and left, his daemon racing after him. Hermione slid her research away. If she didn’t track down the history of her own adoption today, she’d do it tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, then the week after that. Or the year. She had a long life ahead of her, and somewhere she’d find the right records. And once she knew who to target, she’d get her revenge.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Hermione shoved her fork down into dinner – not shepherd’s pie but some institutional mess with too many potatoes and not enough seasoning – and made a point of not looking up at the Head Table. Bastards, all of them.
Harry’s daemon was curled around his neck, a bright green snake necklace. Even when he’d been eleven, all messy hair and scar, Angitia had never been anything else. Back then she’d changed from big to small, from banded with bright reds and golds to shocking white to this much plainer green, but she’d always been a snake. It gave people the shivers. Harry reached an idle hand up to stroke her head before asking, “What are you going to do after exams?”
Move away from Nott Manor and never go back. Find her parents. Restore their memories. Track down the aurors who’d done the job. She couldn’t say any of that, though, so she just shrugged. “Get a job, like everyone else. What about you?”
“I’m going in for the Auror program,” Harry said.
She almost dropped her fork. He had to know that was wrong. He couldn’t possibly think that was a good thing to do with his life. “Harry,” she said as urgently as she could without attracting attention.
“What?” he asked, already defensive.
“I’m doing it too,” Ron said, which made her roll her eyes. Of course, he was. Anything Harry did, Ron followed after. She didn’t expect him to understand. He’d always been in a magical home.
“It’s just… they kidnapped you,” she said. How could he want to be one of them?
He snorted. “More like rescued.”
“Which you wouldn’t have needed if….” She trailed off and glanced up at the Head Table. Dumbledore looked ponderous and weighty and reliable and not at all like a man who’d left a baby on the doorstep of abusive relatives. “They’re still horrible.” Agamemnon hissed in agreement, and she ran a hand over the little cat’s head.
“Well, I disagree,” Harry said. “Drop it, Hermione.”
Hermione sighed and took another bite of the potato mess. Harry didn’t seem to notice the institutional nature of the food. He ate as if he’d never seen dinner before and might never again. Ron gulped his pumpkin juice the same way, and Hermione stole another look up at Dumbledore. It boggled her mind how Harry idolized the man. A person could miss the rise of a power-mad insurrectionist, try to cover up his Voldemort-shaped mistakes like a cat burying his stool, but all he had to do was smile at Harry and Harry would adore him. Harry trusted almost no one, but Dumbledore made the list. Her and Ron too, but that made sense. They were friends.
“Well, I’ll come visit you at work,” she said. Visit him, look around, see what that department looked like from the inside.
Ron dropped a bit of his dinner down for his daemon, and the dog scarfed it up eagerly. “What are you planning?” he asked. “Since you’re too good to be an Auror?”
“Depends on my N.E.W.T. scores,” Hermione said, watching Ron’s daemon. She took such joy from everything she did, whether it was eating or running or climbing up on furniture. Hermione envied her.
“Fair,” Ron said, then looked up and across the room. “Did one of you spit in Pug-Faced’s pumpkin juice or something? She’s glaring at us.”
Hermione turned to look at the Slytherin table. Pansy Parkinson was staring directly at her, loathing more than clear, and one hand possessively on Draco Malfoy’s shoulder. Theo looked uncomfortable, as always. “Damned if I know,” she said.
“And double damned if you care?” Ron asked with a grin.
“Exactly.”
. . . . . . . . . .
After dinner, Theo was waiting for her outside the Astronomy Tower. “Hermione,” he said, and the words were such a clear warning she swallowed the demand to know why he was here, why he was bothering her.
“What?”
“Once we’re done here,” he said, “When this year’s over, we’re getting a flat. Together.”
Hermione wasn’t sure what to say to that. Of all the things Theo might have cornered her to talk about, this one hadn’t occurred to her. Returning the notes he’d borrowed, sure, or asking her to be nicer to Malfoy. This, though, was new and Hermione liked to think carefully about new things. Theo’s daemon hopped around his feet, and to buy time, she said, “Hullo, Hríma. How are you?”
The jack rabbit twitched her nose and gave her one of those baleful, terrifying stares.
“Hermione,” Theo said again, and she knew he wasn’t going to let this go or be distracted by casual chat about their daemons or how much he disliked her friends. “You won’t have any money after we graduate, and God knows my father isn’t going to help you get set up, so we’ll get a flat together.”
“And he’ll let you do that?” Hermione had trouble picturing that. Thoros would ‘do the right thing’ by raising a Muggle-born, especially since it made him look good after his whole misstep with Voldemort, but she couldn’t see him spending a single extra knut on her once she was out in the world.
“I have a vault from my mother,” Theo said. “And please don’t tell me you were planning on living with Potter and Weasley.”
Ah, there was his general dislike of her friends, and from the look on her face he must have deduced that was exactly what she’d planned. “Harry has his own townhouse,” she said defensively. At least, he thought he had it. It had been in probate for years, and wizarding inheritance was the sort of nightmare only the very diligent could sort out. Harry was anything but diligent. “It was his godfather’s,” she added.
“Who isn’t dead,” Theo pointed out. “Azkaban isn’t the same as dead.”
Rather annoyingly, that was the same argument Hermione had raised and Harry brushed aside. He’d just move in. No one was living there, so no one would stop him. As far as Harry’s plans went, it was a little above average but, like most of them, would probably end in a disaster that could have been avoided if only he’d done his homework. Hermione could feel herself grinding her jaw in Harry-driven frustration, and she forced herself to release the muscles. You could break your teeth that way. Her parents had been dentists, and she remembered them saying that. Or maybe she remembered remembering. Or maybe she remembered reading about that in one of the many books on dentistry she’d bought on stealth trips to Muggle London and assigned it to a memory of her mother. Whichever way, tooth grinding was bad, and she shouldn’t do it.
“So, you want to live with me?” she asked once she’d made her face relax. “The Muggle-born Gryffindor?”
“I think we’d suit,” he said. He shoved hands down into his pockets and shuffled his feet, and she waited for the catch. It didn’t take long. “I thought I’d invite Malfoy to join us.”
“Malfoy?” The name came out in a half-cough, half-gasp of disbelief. Well, that explained Pansy Parkinson’s glare. “Since when are you one of his little followers.”
“I’m not.” That was sharp and defensive and Hermione pulled up a slightly apologetic grimace. “I know you two don’t exactly get along, but he needs to get away from some of those Voldemort fans.”
“Thus me.” Voldemort had been of the opinion Muggle-borns were stealing magic from far more deserving squibs and more than one family with a gap in the family tree they didn’t talk about had latched onto that idea and poured money into his coffers and ideologues into his hands. Draco’s father – like Theo’s – had been part of the inner circle. Hermione wouldn’t be surprised if Lucius Malfoy was still wanking off to Voldemort’s disgusting idea of purity.
“Thus you,” Theo said. It was quite an admission, but she felt more comfortable knowing Malfoy wanted to use her. It kept their relationship in the same familiar place of tired hostility. “If he lives with you, none of that set will come around.”
“I don’t know why they glom onto him so much,” Hermione muttered. In her more charitable moments she could almost feel sorry for Theo’s childhood friend. It wasn’t as if she liked Draco Malfoy, and it wasn’t easy to muster sympathy for a wealthy child of the elite – especially one who’d been sure to let her know she was lesser than and lucky since she’d been dumped on the Nott doorstep with her daemon and exactly one trunk – but she wouldn’t want the likes of Crabbe or Goyle following her around all day.
“You really don’t know?” Theo asked.
She shook her head.
“His father branded him with Voldemort’s Mark.”