Unspoken

The cool dampness of the hallway stuck her cheek to the subway tile as she knocked her head against the wall trying to steady herself. It was almost like breathing in a winter fog, the sticky cold freezing her lungs from the inside out. She squinted into the gloom, the only illumination from some distant prickets. The dim light just reached her and even so it burned through her eyes into the back of her throbbing skull. Every limb ached and she gasped against a sharp burning in the back of her throat that made the humid chill somehow worse. Her hand trembled, the piece of parchment clenched between her fingers shaking as she reread the words again.

To the new owner of this body,

My name is Hermione Jean Granger. That is your name now. Or at least, it is the name of the body in which you now reside. While I could regale you as to the reasoning behind my father’s choice of name, I suppose that likely doesn’t interest you just now. What you do need to know is that your occupancy in this body has left you in a dire situation.

I apologize for leaving you under the current circumstances, but as you are now in possession of what was once my body and I am not, I can help you no further than the means I have set in place for you. 

You must be aware that you are in danger. As you appear to have survived whatever it was that wiped my existence from the world, I assume you will prove to be capable enough to get through this situation. I hope that something of my acumen has remained behind for you in any case. I do not know where you are or what time you were ‘born’ into this world; I could only prepare so much for this moment. 

You have no reason to trust me other than assuming I don’t wish harm on my former body. There is a coin under the wax of the seal that you broke when opening this scroll. Once you are clear of the bodies, as soon as you are sure no one is watching, touch the coin. When you arrive, I promise to explain at length.

If you need more proof than this letter, there is a chip on your (our?) back left molar from breaking the tooth on a rock cake a year or so ago. And there is always the scar on the inside of the left forearm that was carved there by a mad woman hellbent on breaking me to gain secrets. That woman was a member of a group whose goal was genocide of those they deemed to be impure - mudbloods. Me, and now you. Does the word mean anything to you? Well, for all I know, they could have succeeded at last, for I am gone and now you remain.

Stay safe.

Sincerely, Me

It was clear to her that whomever this Hermione Granger was had left her in a hell of a position. 

Bodies indeed.

Whatever had happened here in this cold hallway was brutal - even in the pale light she could see the dark liquid seeping along the channels between the stones beneath the corpses. Several of the bodies were situated in impossible angles, pushed to the edges of the hallway as though thrown against the tilework. Every body was adorned with a bone-white mask on their face; some were cracked, another was broken along the bottom revealing a mouth oozing copious amounts of red. The tang of coppery blood was thick and she almost choked on it, bringing her arm up to cover her face despite the agony involved in moving her limbs. She dragged herself away from the carnage, one step then another, picking her way through the bodies, her shoes slipping and squeaking as they left behind glistening prints. Anxious, uncertain, and scared, she glanced behind her one more time before turning a corner where the candles burned more brightly.

Another hallway stretched in front of her, this one as black as before but blessedly free of any gruesome corpses. The bright light seared against her retinas, pulsing against her headache until she almost vomited from the tension. She scrunched her eyes until she could only just peer through her eyelashes. There were no windows or doors she could see. The silence disquieted her. One had to assume that whatever had happened to cause the scene she had just left would have resulted in a fair amount of noise and screams. And yet there was no one here.

Wherever here was.

What sort of danger was she in? What sort of a life had Granger led that had resulted in that mess? The letter was disturbingly and annoyingly vague. She rooted around in her mouth with her tongue, probing at the back left molar before she apprehensively pulled up the sleeve of her left arm and stared at the mutilated letters.

MUDBLOOD

The letters were large and a fleshy white, the scarring old. It did not hold any significant meaning for her and she wasn’t sure she wanted it to. The word had a taint of nastiness. It literally had the word “mud” in it. A connotation of dirt and muck. She hastily shoved the sleeve back down to her wrist. 

No, no. She did not want this body, this life that Hermione Granger had acceded to her.

She struggled forward slowly due to the agony coursing through her body, limping through the empty corridor and stopped. The eerie silence felt like a shadow nipping at her heels. A glance down at the blob of ruby wax still attached to the scroll in her hand showed a glint of metal just beneath as promised. She did not trust this Granger as the woman clearly had poor decision making skills. But it seemed there was a little choice left to her. If Granger didn’t know where this body had been left behind, well, she couldn’t expect to either. 

With a bitter pursing of her lips, she dug her fingernails into the hardened wax and grasped the gold coin. The cold metal warmed beneath her thumb followed by a hard tug just behind her navel. With a loud gasp, she was torn away in a blur of candlelight and darkness.

-------

She arrived in such a state of shock that despite keeping her feet and landing somewhat solidly on the carpet, she immediately backed into a tufted ottoman behind her and toppled clean over. Fucking hell. Fresh bruises now painfully formed on top of her older ones as she groaned and rolled onto her back.

The room around her was well lit, harsh on her eyes - someone had left lamps on overhead, but there was an odd light in the form of a small jar that appeared to hold a bright blue flame. It sat on a smart wooden desk tucked neatly into a corner. Everything about this room was smart, in point of fact. The ottoman and couch, which she slowly and resignedly pulled herself up on, were a matching set, neutral tones that complimented the rest of the wooden furniture that had been set up in what appeared to be a cozy (albeit boring) and corpse-free living room.

Neat freak, she thought with a sniff, noting how the couch lined up perfectly with the carpet with the wall.

Exhaustion soaked through her very bones so she dragged herself onto the pristine sofa and let herself dissolve like jelly. Rather than try to fix her posture, she buried her face into the cushions so that all she could see was the blissful blackness of her inner eyelids. She was too tired to cry from the stress and the fear and the tension of being abruptly born into a body that apparently had belonged to someone else. Whether to believe the mysterious letter writer was a big question, but she had landed wherever here was safe and sound. And try as she might, she could not remember anything before the consuming smell of blood and the chill in her chest.  

A thundering band of cries roused her from the couch with a great deal of alarm. The shouting was coming from outside the room. Each step from the couch to one of the exterior windows resulted in a wince, which resulted in a groan as even the act of scrunching her facial muscles hurt. Through the linen curtains, something blazed against the darkness of the night. Something large. A crowd was gathered several stories below, their voices blending into a frenzy of emotion. She could feel her own heartbeat thrum in rhythm with the shouting, the instinct to run and hide growing in her core. 

The fabric was coarse in her hands as she slowly held the curtains to the side. She kept her back pressed up against the wall as she surveyed the plaza below. A bonfire ranged in the middle of the crowd, the shadows of the congregation dancing alongside the flames. None of the gatherers were making any move towards her building or any of the others. They seemed to be simply enjoying themselves and the fire. A breeze shifted the direction of the smoke and carried the voices more clearly up to the window.

Remember, remember! The fifth of November, the gunpowder, treason, and plot…

A celebration of some kind; the words tickled her consciousness but inspired nothing. She dropped her shoulders, slumping down the wall and letting her head nest between her knees as she took several breaths to steady her nerves. That crowd wasn’t there for her.

She wasn’t sure where she was or who she was other than a name, but she knew what she needed more than anything else at this moment, more than even answers to what the hell had happened tonight, was sleep. Doing her best not to weep from weariness, she pulled herself to her feet and stumbled to a closed door that she hoped was a bedroom.

As the door swung open to reveal an orderly bed, nightstand, and a number of bookshelves, something fluffy and orange launched itself out of the corner directly at her.

She cried out, landing on her back again for the umpth time in who knew how many hours. Winded, eyes tearing up from the pain, she swatted back against the sharp claws that gouged repeatedly into the folds of her clothes. “Would you please just stop?!” she shouted at the furry monstrosity, who upon hearing her speak disengaged and moved instead a few feet back. The poor, tired, beaten down woman on the floor cursed heatedly into the carpet once again before lifting her head up to look at the animal.

A large ginger cat sat upright, squashed face and bright eyes studying the human before him. Both creatures maintained eye contact, the woman afraid to break away; it was as though she was being measured up and primarily found wanting. But the cat finally meowed resignedly, almost grumpily, and padded back away into the bedroom, glancing over his shoulder as if it wanted to indicate that she was supposed to follow.

She did, eventually, once she managed to push herself back upright. It was a bedroom, with a large, plush looking bed with a soft goldenrod yellow comforter. The cat leapt onto the bed and snuggled under the blanket, pushing it back far enough that it almost seemed to be inviting her to sleep. Desperate, confused as to how the cat knew why she was here, but tired as all hell, she chucked her shoes off into a corner and dropped herself into the bed. Next to her, the fluffy cat nestled against her person as though to act as her guardian, his purr soothing. Even with the distant shouts and the beam of light from the ajar door to the living room, she felt herself falling swiftly into slumber.

—----

“Unholy mother of…” groaned the woman in the bed. Her face was smashed into a pillow and she was wholeheartedly unwilling to face the light of the sun growing rapidly brighter though the bedroom window. Every centimeter of her body ached, from her toenails to the ends of her hair. She wanted to keep sleeping but something was insistently nudging her pillow. 

That something was a massive ginger cat. Trying not to growl at the creature who had spent the entirety of her sleeping hours at her side, she dragged her head out from its hidey hole and groaned, “What could you possibly want?”

He stared at her flatly and then pointedly moved his gaze first to the window, then to the living room door. 

“Oh my god. You want breakfast.”

A rumbly mrowr gave her the affirmative answer she didn’t want to hear. She let herself cry a few brief tears into the now-grimy pillow case. Her legs wobbled underneath her as she blearily came to. The sweat and dirt and blood from the previous night made her skin itch but the cat rushed ahead of her, oblivious to her need of a shower. She called to it, voice cracking, “You’re going to have to show me where your food is!” 

Once the giant cat was gulping down his meal of tinned chicken morsels, she stood back and surveyed the residence. She was dirty and in pain, and starving, but it was past time for some answers. She started to hunt around. The living room was quite an antithesis to its name. The whole place felt sterile, as though everything had been set up for a viewing rather than a place that someone lived. There were neat little coffee table books without so much as a crease on a single page. No shoes or jacket hung by the door. There was a soft knit blanket that, rather than being squished up against one side of a chair, was folded in even halves and smoothed over the back.

Suddenly, as she moved around a table, there was a sharp poke on the outside of one thigh, right in the center of a particularly painful bruise. She cursed, digging deeply into the pockets of what appeared to be some type of insanely impractical outerwear cloak and withdrew a stick of wood. She must have slept like the dead to not have rolled on top of it in the night. Her thumb rubbed over the ornate designs along what appeared to be a handle. 

It was a wand.

She wasn’t sure how she knew it was a wand. Wands implied magic. Sorcery. And yet even though the thought of magic should have roused an iota of incredulity, she felt sure that magic had had something - everything - to do with last night. 

She kept digging, but her inspection of the rest of the pockets revealed nothing further, not even a piece of a lint. Granger didn't have a wallet? Where did Granger keep her ID or her money? Maybe she'd accidentally left a bag or purse behind in that dark hallway. Shit. Eyeing the wand, she tapped it a couple of times against her palm, almost expecting something to happen but it remained… dormant? What was she expecting to happen? She threw the wand haphazardly onto the couch cushions and stared at it as though this was all the wand's fault before continuing on a further search of the flat.

The most obvious place for another letter was the desk, but surprisingly all it held were a few scrolls of blank parchment paper and ink quills - whoever owned or has set up this place was really into the old style of stationery - and the weird jar of blue fire that she purposefully ignored. The living room was small with little room for more than the chairs and the desk, mostly due to a large and lonely looking fireplace along the wall adjacent to the curtained windows. Something about the fireplace struck her as odd - nothing on the mantle, no wood or tools - but as there wasn't any sort of paper to be seen, she moved on. The little kitchenette had nothing on the counters other than a bowl of green apples, some containers marked flour, sugar, and so on. The fridge shelves were bare save a few eggs, a half empty carafe of milk, and a loaf of bread - a slice of which she shoved into her mouth as she kept looking. Whoever lived here must have sustained themselves on air. No dirty dishes in the sink, no take out boxes in the bin. Granger had promised her an explanation, damn it all! She was growing increasingly crabby until something soft brushed pointedly up against her calves.

The cat, who had evidently finished his breakfast and could not bear to watch her fruitless searching any longer, padded across the residence to the bedroom and jumped up to paw at a picture frame on the little wooden stand just off the side of the rumpled bed. The photo was three young people, teenagers, all smiling brightly and dressed in what appeared to be some sort of boarding school uniform. Two boys - one black haired kid with glasses and a sting bean of a redhead - with a bushy-haired but plain looking girl sandwiched in between. They were laughing, almost like the photo moved. Her new animal companion mewled impatiently and held out a paw, tapping the frame again. Turning it over, she saw that the back of the frame was bulging and in undoing the little latches that held the frame together, she found a thick folded piece of parchment. As she pulled it out, two words scrawled themselves into existence across the top in the same precise handwriting as before.

To You

As she unfolded it, she sat on the edge of the bed, causing the cat to move to the opposite end where he sat, waiting and watching again, a feline stoic. The handwriting inside definitely matched the first letter, the words slowly coming into existence as though she were watching them being written.

You appear to have safely arrived at the flat and gotten Crookshanks to allow you into the bedroom. To be honest, Crookshanks has been one of the things I’ve been most worried about while preparing for this eventuality. I had no idea if he truly understood when I explained to him what was going to happen, that I was no longer going to be around and that you would be... taking over. I flatter myself that he did as he has never been particularly clingy and as of late he dislikes being anywhere other than my lap when I am home. Do not let him fool you into thinking he is simply a pet. This old man is cleverer than many people I have met. I do hope you will win his approval, and that in turn he wins your heart as he did mine. He particularly enjoys chin scratches and a good salmon dinner if you are inclined to treat him.

The squashed visage was still staring at her. “Crookshanks, is it?” she asked, one eyebrow raised. He sneezed and turned his head away with a sniff.

I need to apologize for the vagueness of my first letter. Given the information I had, I knew it was imperative that I get you here in the flat first and foremost before any further explanation could take place. But you are safe within the strongest wards I could possibly cast on this place and so now I will do my best to explain.

As to how I knew that you would be sitting in my home, reading this letter: I am not psychic. I do not know the future, and to tell the truth, up until some years ago I was absolutely certain that divination was pure poppycock. Even knowing that prophecies did exist in my world - our world - the first warning I was given I passed off as more fear mongering by an old professor of mine whose favorite pastime was predicting the death of her students. But then I was given another prophecy, and another, different words from different people but always the same outcome. You would find yourself alone, in the dark, surrounded by bodies, new but broken. I would no longer exist. I knew, with certainty, that I could not outrun my ill-fated destiny. (I am in no small part bitter about it. After all, who wants to learn that their persona is going to be cleanly wiped away like chalk from a board with no opportunity of stopping it, but then the added rub of it coming from that batty old twig… well, if you ever meet her, you’ll understand.)

Are you wondering why I believed in what is seen by many as spurious fortune telling? I stand by my above claim that divination is real. My best friend in the entire universe was plagued with similar prophecies that caused him heartbreak and pain beyond the understanding of most. He came through the other side a stronger person, but not without great personal loss.

You may ask why I didn’t fight harder to save my future if I knew what was coming, to find a means of saving myself. It was clear in this situation that there was no way to circumvent the foretold outcome. I think with time it will become clear to you that I am - was - in a similar situation. I have no idea who is behind this, what I have done other than exist and try to be the best possible version of myself. I can guess, but I have no proof. I don’t actually know what will happen to me. All I know is this:

• I will be attacked in the future by people who see me as a threat and though my body will survive the assault, I will not.

• Everything that makes me “me” will be gone. My personality. The important parts of my life as I remember them. They cannot be recovered.

• You will be “broken,” though I have yet to distinguish in what way. I was so overcome with yet another prophecy that I am afraid I hyperventilated through most of the words and was unable to retrieve the memory. 

Honestly, I was unsure for a time whether you would ever actually read this letter. I wrote several copies of the first, placing them in different cloaks and jackets, hoping that one of the letters would be on you when the event finally occurred. I hid this letter because, in the event that something did happen to you and you did not make it safely back to my home, well, I didn’t want to upset Harry and Ron once they went through my things. I placed an additional safeguard so that no one would read it unless opened by our body.

I have so much to share with you. I did toy with the idea of setting up another life for you, provide you with the resources to leave this life behind and be your own person in a new country with a new name. I have the means and money to do so. But I have already overcome so many obstacles in my life - I have fought for my friends, my family, for my very life so many times over - and I will be damned if I let some faceless entity think for a moment that they have succeeded in ridding themselves of Hermione Granger. I am not giving you a choice. I have set up almost everything you could possibly need to resume my life in my place. It will not be easy. I have had to make several choices over the last year since the prophecies began to trickle in and it means you will essentially be battling this alone. 

I ask you, I beg of you, please ensure my friends and family are safe. Do not let my hard work disappear. I need you to be Hermione Granger because I no longer can. All I can hope is that with time you’ll appreciate why I have done this. My life as it is now is a good, comfortable life, aforementioned hardships aside. You have my flat, my money, and my name. 

I would apologize again, but I am proud of the life I have lived. I would not change a moment, not even knowing my choices have led me to bequeathing this life to you.

She stopped reading. There was a slight smudging of the ink here from what was, on closer inspection, pale water stains in the parchment.

Oh. Granger had cried while writing this letter.

But as heart wrenching as the plea was, she was resentful that Hermione Granger, who clearly understood how burdensome the lack of choice was, would turn around and do the same to her! How generous, leaving behind her things for her. After all, it wasn't as though they were ever going to meet, that Granger would be witness to the inconveniences she had foisted upon the future owner of her body. Comfortable life or not, Granger had had no right to ask anything of her. She was only here because Granger had failed. She must have scowled outwardly because there was a low rumble from the end of the bed and she looked up to see Crookshanks glaring at her, bushy tail swishing in warning from side to side.  

“I may be lacking in memories,” she snapped at the cat, “But that doesn’t mean I’m lacking in feelings of my own, you know! You have no idea. I have no memories. I know how to cook an egg but I don't remember ever eating one! Do I like dogs? Have I been to France? SHE is the reason I am like... this! And as wonderful as you may think your previous owner was, she was a right bitch to even pretend to ask for my help. I have no means of refusing.” The tail continued to wave back and forth. Mollified only a little by her outburst of emotion, she turned back to the rest of the letter.

And one other thing. You also have, I presume because the prophecies didn’t leave me to believe otherwise, my magic. Yes, I said magic. You are a witch. Congratulations! I was eleven years old when I first found out that the odd things I did, the reasons I was bullied constantly as a weirdo in school, were magic. My parents were even more shocked than I was, given they have no magical abilities whatsoever. You probably (hopefully) have found my wand by now. Wands are essential for witches and wizards to channel their magic as I learned at Hogwarts, a boarding school for magic that I attended until, well, other things happened. I won’t get into that part of my life yet. What’s important for you to figure out right now is how much control you have over your magic. I studied spells, potions, history, the works after I learned I was a witch and I’m praying that some of that knowledge stayed with you because you do not have seventeen years to relearn everything I know about magic. Because the next thing you will need to do to survive in my life involves venturing into your new world and it will absolutely require my - your - wand.

Ah. There it was. Magic, as she had thought, made the most sense somehow. Was she surprised? She read that last paragraph over three times. She knew deep down, under all the bruising, that Hermione Granger was not the type of person to lie. Not about this. Granger had been so meticulous about everything else so far that there was no point in pausing the game for a round of charades. This was all caused by magic from the start.

Without pause, she marched back into the living room and stared at the wand she had thrown onto the couch. Just behind her, Crookshanks pattered quietly into the room and hopped up on the ottoman to watch. The wand just lay there, innocuous as anything. With a deep breath, she leaned over, wrapped her fingers around the handle, and stood back up. The engravings she had neglected to look at earlier were beautiful, wrapping up around the handle through to the main shaft of the wand. It felt light in her hand, not too heavy, but not dainty. Still, though, nothing happened. She glanced at Crookshanks expectantly, who simply kept his eyes on the wand, waiting.

She tapped it against her palm again. Nothing.

She waved it through the air.

Nothing.

The back of her mind felt fuzzy, like something was fighting through the lingering headache to reach her. The woman rolled the wand a few times between her fingers and brought it back up in front of her. A word floated just at the surface like a dull echo. “Accio,” she whispered as she pointed at the little jar of blues flames. The jar shuddered but slowly it bumped its way along the desktop and floated the remaining distance to land heavily in her free hand. And she remembered.

Well, that is to say she didn't remember. But she knew.

She knew about Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She knew what a Boggart was, and how to brew a Pepperup Potion. She’d always known since waking up in this body that was hers but wasn’t hers - the shock of the evening had just buried it all momentarily.. 

She carried the wand and the jar carefully back to the bedroom, where she set the jar on the nightstand next to the frame and picked up the letter again.

If you did retain all my knowledge, I’m glad. I do not like to brag, but I was always better at magic than most. Once you have determined that you are comfortable enough to handle the wand - and there are plenty of books about magic on the bookshelves if you are so inclined to review them - this is what you need to do next…

With a small sense of peace she did not remember ever feeling before, Hermione Jean Granger tucked her wand behind her ear and curled up on the bed to finish the letter.