letters
Hogsmeade Owlery, 12th October 1996, 4:33 pm
The fact that she was posting a letter to Narcissa Malfoy was so ludicrous it was almost funny. After all, Hermione had spent the majority of her time actively avoiding anything that had to do with the Malfoys like they were the plague. She supposed the feeling was likely decidedly mutual.
She gave the nondescript grey owl a treat and let him go before she could second guess herself. She could only hope that Narcissa Malfoy was intelligent enough to figure out the hidden message in the letter, and that she had written it, not Pansy Parkinson. If her suspicions were true, then the Order would have a crucial spy on the inside. In Malfoy Manor. In the nest of Lord Voldemort himself. This could turn the tide of the upcoming war.
“Hey Hermione.”
A soft, lilting voice that belonged to Katie Bell. She had been so lost in her own thoughts that she hadn’t even heard anyone come into the Owlery.
“Hi Katie, how are you?”
Something about the way Katie was standing put her on edge. She was dressed in her usual robes and had a long cloak wrapped around her. But she looked tense, and the smile on her face seemed too cold. Forced. Her usually vibrant blue eyes looked glassy and dead.
“I’ve never been better. Were you posting something?”
Hermione nodded briskly. “I just posted a letter. You?”
“I’m expecting a parcel. Oh, here we go,” she said as she reached over to a tawny barn owl that had just flown in holding a small parcel wrapped in brown paper.
Why didn’t she get it delivered to Hogwarts?
“Did they not deliver to Hogwarts?” As soon as she asked the question, she regretted it. Katie could ask the same of her.
Katie began petting the owl and giving it treats, before picking up the parcel.
“It’s a present. I didn’t want anyone to see me get it, you see.”
Maybe she was just being paranoid. Maybe she was the one who was acting strangely here. But something about Katie, and something about the parcel made her feel a sinking sensation in her stomach.
“Oh, I see. Who’s it for?”
“Professor Dumbledore, of course.” Katie’s smile was frozen on her pretty face.
Too many teeth showing. She looks like a Stepford wife. Something's very very wrong.
“Katie, why are you getting a present for Professor Dumbledore?”
“My mother wants to thank him for coming back to Hogwarts. I’d better head off, Hermione, I have to meet Leanne before heading back to school.”
“Oh yes, of course. See you around.”
No. Katie Bell’s mother died right after she was born. This can’t be her. I need to stop her before she leaves. Oh God.
“Katie. Stand very still.”
Hermione raised her wand as Katie slowly turned around, panic etched on her face. She looked like a skittish mare about to bolt.
“ Petrificus Totalus. ”
Katie fell to the damp floor of the Owlery with a thud, stiff as a board. Hermione ran over, and picked up the parcel, and began to tear it open.
An ugly, heavy blue necklace, dripping with dull opals. It looked like something her great-aunt Mildred would wear. And something about it was painfully familiar. She had definitely seen the necklace before.
Borgin and Burkes. Malfoy was looking at it.
Then Katie started convulsing violently, kicking, coughing, choking. And her skin began to bubble and bloat, melting off of her like wax.
“Katie?”
…
…
…
…
Hermione walked out of the Owlery and frowned when she checked the time. She’d spent almost an hour posting one blasted letter. It was like time had just slipped away from her.
I’d better hurry up. Harry and Ron must be worried about me.
Hogwarts Great Hall, 29th October 1996, 8:17 am
Malfoy looked particularly gaunt that day, his ordinarily pale complexion taking on an almost sickly blue tint, grey eyes stormy and framed in purple. His lips were pursed, hunched over a plate of food, as he picked at it listlessly. He looked like a faint shadow of his past self.
Hermione knew that he was then going to drink from a silver flask he kept in the right pocket of his robes, and grimace as he swallowed. He always did that on days that when the bags under his eyes were darker, and lower.
He met her eye as he reached into his robes for his flask, and she jolted, but refused to avert her gaze and admit that she was caught staring. And something about the undiluted hatred in his dark grey eyes immobilised her. He slowly unscrewed the lid of the flask and swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing, scowl deepening at whatever was in that flask, but refusing to break eye-contact.
She glared back, hackles rising at the challenge in his eye. She never reacted well when faced with a challenge.
In that moment, he felt like the only other person who existed. The intensity of his irritation muted everyone else in the hall, despite the chatter and noise of the other students. She had tuned everything else out. Only they existed in this fucked up staring contest.
He continued to glare at her as if she was a piece of shit on his expensive dragon-hide shoes, before finally breaking eye-contact and turning at something Pansy Parkinson said.
She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, and absent-mindedly fingered the glamoured black band tattooed on the ring finger of her left hand. It had appeared two weeks ago, seemingly out of nowhere, and just seemed to get darker over time.
Without the weight of his eyes boring into her, Hermione began to think that Harry’s paranoia was infecting her too. She’d been tracking all of Malfoy’s movements almost obsessively, noting the shadows under his eyes, and the hollowness of his cheeks. The scowls and darkly muttered words she couldn’t hope to hear to a cackling Pansy Parkinson and Theodore Nott at the Slytherin table at breakfast.
He’d even been turning up in her dreams occasionally; always a blurry figure leaning over her, brandishing his wand in long, slender hands and muttering frantically. She could never hear what he said in these dreams, only a pounding noise, like a distorted version of a heartbeat. And the dream was always so fuzzy when she woke up that she could hardly even tell where they were, and who he was.
But somehow she always knew it was Malfoy. A murky painting in grey, black, brown and blue.
If she were a more superstitious person, she’d think it was trying to tell her something, perhaps a Vision like the ones Parvati and Lavender said they had and dissected in detail in the Gryffindor girls’ dormitory. But as far as it went for Hermione, it was just a nuisance, a recurring bad dream that served no purpose other than to tell her that her, and by proxy, Harry’s, obsession with Malfoy was reaching a point of stupidity.
She’d need to talk to him about that. They were both getting unhealthily obsessed over what was likely nothing.
“‘Mione, aren’t you gonna have the rest of your sausages?”
Ron’s question jolted her out of her reverie, and she turned to look at her best friend who was looking happier to be eating breakfast than she had seen him be for the past three weeks, what with the stress of the looming Quidditch game.
Some people were always just so consistent, it was almost cute. She chuckled lightly, and pushed them onto his plate, taking care to make sure the glamour on her left hand was holding.
“Yes Ronald, you can have them.”
He grinned happily before attacking the sausages. She turned towards Harry, who was also scowling at Malfoy across the hall.
“What do you think is in that flask of his? He always grimaces when he drinks it. D’you think it could be polyjuice?” Harry muttered to her.
He was frowning, dark brows furrowed together and lips pursed, utterly convinced that Malfoy was a Death Eater. She knew nothing she said would convince him otherwise. She sighed.
“Can’t be. He’d have to take it every hour and he doesn’t drink it in lessons. It would be far more likely for it to be a Moody/Crouch situation than Malfoy actually being a Death Eater though.”
“Then what the hell is it? He looks like he’s drinking hippogriff piss every time he drinks it.”
Harry began tapping his wand against his leg, shaking the table, as he glared over at Pansy Parkinson who smirked at him and mimed a nosebleed.
Hermione shrugged as she took a sip of pumpkin juice. She still had no clue why he would drink something that made him pull a vicious face every time, and turned back to look at Malfoy as he stood up from the Slytherin table, top button undone, shirt a map of creases, tie loose and askew. He hadn't eaten a single bite of food. He met her eye again, grey to brown, sneering heavily before mouthing ‘mudblood’ at her as he stormed out.
Harry caught the last of their exchange, and voiced his indignation, spluttering over his pumpkin juice. But she was too used to the term to even have the energy to be upset.
No, she was more interested in why Draco Malfoy had a glamour on his hand, and why she caught a glimpse of a black tattoo on the ring finger of his left hand as he left.
And why that swirling band looked almost identical to the one on her own left hand.