Unwoven
Lord Voldemort had not anticipated winning would be this. . . anticlimactic.
He’d toiled for years, yet, the Order’s little birds continued to scramble, aimless. Yes, they had brandished their claws in most recent years. But their resistance hardly counted as one. He controlled the ministry. He controlled the populace. Their tactics were earning them less and less support. People preferred comfort, after all. And comfort was worth looking the other way. Yes, they’d say, things are not perfect, but the Order is making it worse. If they just surrendered. . . Did you hear about those children? The ones who went missing?
The Order had even lost the ability to say those accusations were false. It was disappointingly easy.
He hadn’t questioned his influx of power when it began. He’d always been powerful, after all. It was only later that he could pinpoint the beginning stirrings to March 1998.
It was even later when he realized his influxes arrived around the time of major battles, when members of the Order emerged from what should be death, returned from the dead, or otherwise survived when they should have been crushed.
He only started to worry when the influxes were no longer under his control.
It was an otherwise innocuous report that made him realize these. . . episodes were tied to the mudblood. She’d escaped yet another imprisonment the very day he’d inadvertently killed someone he’d meant to only lightly torture.
For the first time in too long, he did not have an answer as to why. He spent months pouring through grimoires and any tomes his followers could acquire for him, invigorated by the wonder that there was something he did not know. It had been too long since he didn’t know something.
He should have been horrified when all his research pointed in one direction. Instead he laughed, a deep, hearty laugh that put more than one of his Death Eaters on edge.
It seemed he and the mudblood had more in common than he’d thought.
****
Of course, Granger insisted on freeing the prisoners who had been trapped with her. Of course she somehow managed mass apparition into a forest too dreary to name.
“So, what’s the plan, Malfoy?”
“Well, Granger, have you ever been to France?”
Draco was only minimally surprised at her ability to do another mass apparition.
******
Hermione stared at the tapestry in front of her, crumbling to her knees.
The released prisoners were downstairs, being fed and healed. Sirius and a boy named Nott she recognized as an old classmate had led her to the study, worry across their faces as they told her there was something she had to see urgently.
She’d followed, and stopped still when they pointed at a family tree woven into a wall, her portrait face grinning definitely at her.
She realized why she’d been imprisoned by the Order. Maybe they were right. Maybe Fred was right to not let her escape. She wasn’t trustworthy, she was. . .
A mix of shame and betrayal swirled through her. She crumpled to her knees.
*******
“Drink this, Granger.”
“What is it?”
“It’ll protect you from having others drain your power.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your uncle will explain when he wakes, there’s a lot even I don’t understand. But he gave me this recipe and told me it’ll prevent the Order’s from sharing your power to keep them alive.”
Hermione still did not understand. Her brain felt clearer than it had in ages, but it’d been a long day. She fought sleep but a thought struck her. “Doesn’t this mean more Order deaths?”
“It also means there’s a chance at defeating the Dark Lord, Granger.”