North Star
Part 2: North Star
*********
Think of me
As I think of you
Ceaselessly, in thought & dream
My sharpest torment
My sacred sanctuary
*********
Hermione Granger did not know what to do.
This was a less rare occurrence in her life than she would like to admit, but she'd been reassured that the circumstances of her life so far were mitigating.
Worse, Hermione Granger did not know what she wanted. This was a far more rare occurrence, indeed. She simply had no idea what a realistic, best-case outcome from her current situation looked like.
Over her breast, a line of a love poem was written in a scar. Over her collarbone, the dried blood of one of her best friends’ betrayal dripped from the mouth of a snake, sprung from and made of the same scar. The scar from a wound that nearly killed her; the scar from Antonin Dolohov, Death Eater and Charms genius; the scar from a man locked away for the rest of his life in Azkaban.
She had exchanged perhaps two dozen words with the man, most of them spell incantations, and the rest threats and demands.
It made no sense. Why?
If she couldn't answer why, she would focus on how. There were still books in the Black family library that might contain information on scars as a medium for magic, and she did not have to work today.
*********
The tapping at her door was soft, but relentless. It had probably been going on for some time before she'd even noticed it - she'd been deep into one of the older tomes she'd brought to her room. It was only when the text turned to the uses of excised scar tissue in spells, and her interest had waned, that she realized someone was knocking the rhythm of the Imperial March from Star Wars.
It would be much harder to tune out going forward, so she opened her door a crack. "Did you need something, Harry?"
He leaned forward, resting his head against her door. "I'm performing a wellness check, ma'am. I haven't seen you all day."
Ron wasn't with him, so she opened the door more widely, causing Harry to lurch forward. He surveyed the room, noting the pile of books and notes on the bed, and the half-full tea mug, the plate covered in toast crumbs, and a half-eaten chocolate bar on the bedside table.
"You're laid in for a siege," he observed.
"No," she said. "A topic came up that I wanted to research. If you irritate me enough, I'll insist on telling you. All. About. It. In excruciating detail."
Harry laughed. "Anything but that! Seriously, though, you usually do your research in the kitchen or the library. Not locked in your room."
Hermione's hands clenched. "I don't want another fight with him today."
"Ron feels bad about last night. He wants to apologize." Harry raised his hands, forestalling her sharp rejoinder. "I know, he needs to speak for himself. Speaking for myself, I don't want you to feel you have to hide in your own home."
"I…" She rubbed her hand over her face. "I appreciate that, Harry. I'm just afraid that even if Ron intends to apologize, it will go wrong and we'll end up shouting again."
"That's why I'm not letting you skip Sunday dinner at the Weasleys' this afternoon. Ron will mind his manners better in front of his mother, and if he does start to go off, everyone will lay into him." Harry leaned against her wall and folded his arms.
"What? No, that's a terrible idea. You know Ron doesn't like his family to know when we're quarrelling."
"All the more reason for him to apologize properly and quietly. Besides, you always attend Sunday dinner. If you don't come, you know everyone will be badgering you all week for a reason why. If Ginny has to take time off from quarterfinals practice with the Harpies to find out what's wrong, you know she'll be brutal. They'll find out you're quarrelling anyway, you'll waste a lot of time and effort in arguments with all the Weasleys - better to just give in and come to dinner with me."
Harry was at his most annoying when he was correct. She made him take her dirty dishes downstairs as penance while she changed out of her pajamas. The books were staying in her room.
*********
As Hermione unfolded herself from the floor into The Burrow, she was overwhelmed by the scent of food and by a tidal wave of noise. Victoire, Bill and Fleur's little toddler, was running around the house pursued by Teddy Lupin, both emitting high-pitched shrieks. Ron, George, and Bill were engaged in a heated discussion, most likely involving quidditch. Fleur was correcting Percy's table-setting technique, and receiving considerable pushback on the topic of butter-knife orientation.
Arthur and Andromeda were also talking, and Hermione was blissfully oblivious to the topic, because both of them understood the concept of indoor voices. Bless them.
Hermione walked into the kitchen, which was uncomfortably steamy, and gave Mrs. Weasley the box of macarons she'd picked up earlier that week.
"Hermione, love! Oh, you didn't have to." Molly wrapped her in a full-body hug, and Hermione did her best to hug back.
"You don't have to share these, Molly - between you and me, I think they'd be wasted on the boys. Save them for evenings when it's just you and Arthur!"
Molly laughed. "I might just do that, as I've a bread pudding with caramel sauce for tonight already."
"Can I help you with anything?"
"No, no, dear, you'd just be in my way. Though you might see if Percy needs a hand."
Hermione was rather disinclined to do so; there was something satisfying about watching the most finicky member of the family be out-nitpicked. But Percy and Fleur had apparently reached flatware détente, and he approached Hermione on his own.
"Good afternoon, Hermione. I hope your day has been pleasant."
"Thank you, Percy, yours as well." Percy was focusing on her in a way he rarely did; they rarely spoke beyond pleasantries at the weekly dinners. She wondered what he wanted.
"Tell me, how are you finding your work at the Ministry?"
"I've enjoyed the projects I've been assigned in Numbers, and recently, I've been loaned out to other Departments as a consultant. The consulting projects have been challenging, but very satisfying - needing to work out what aspects of the problem space are amenable to quantification, and which can be conveyed in Runes, and which parts simply aren't susceptible to Arithmantic solutions."
It was a bit more of an in-depth answer than she usually gave, but Percy might just actually be interested in her answer. He'd managed an Outstanding on his Arithmancy NEWT, and worked for the Ministry himself, in the Department of International Trade.
"Yes, I've heard people speak well of your contributions. You're introducing methods from some sort of Muggle Arithmancy?"
"Statistical modeling. It allows Arithmancy to be applied to a wider range of problems than previously thought, because -"
"And really, what everyone is most impressed by, is your 'what-if' pictures. Such a vivid way to convey information, and apparently you can change the picture to demonstrate different scenarios? Those could really transform my job, Hermione."
She wanted to scream. Hundreds of hours of exacting work, integrating complex modeling methods into Arithmancy. Groundbreaking advances in applications, if she did say so herself. And all anybody was interested in was her ability to make pretty graphs.
"Really." Her tone was dry. "How -"
Ron walked up to them, interrupting. "I need to talk to 'Mione, Percy. Alone."
“We’ll catch up later, Percy. Maybe have lunch.” If he wanted to talk to her about her graphs, at the very least he could spring for lunch.
Ron didn't sound angry, but he was intense. He reached for her hand; Hermione didn't let him take it, but did walk towards the stairs, thinking it might be a quieter spot. Ron sat on the second step, and she leaned against the bannister, feeling more comfortable with her head above his and the posts between them.
"Look, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have grabbed you, I know." He addressed his words to the floor, rather than looking up at her.
"It hurt, Ron. And it hurt when you shook me in the pub."
"I'm sorry."
She didn't know what to say. She wasn't ready to forgive him for the bruises yet, mostly because she wasn't sure the same thing wouldn't happen the next time they argued. She didn't understand why he was escalating to physical tactics, and no matter what Harry thought, family dinner at his parents' house was neither the time nor place for this discussion.
She also wanted an apology for the subject of the argument. Not for his professional disagreement with her, though she wished he was handling it more civilly. But he'd no right to get angry at her for not wanting to teach, for having ambitions to shape the policies of Wizarding Britain. And eventually, she thought they would have to dig down into why he both craved and resented her each year as autumn slipped into winter. Face what had never been said about the locket Horcrux, and his angry abandonment of her and Harry. But again, not the place or time.
But was this enough of an apology for her to, as Harry would phrase it, 'stop hiding in her own home'?
Not quite. "I know you're sorry. But it's happened twice, and I need to know it won't happen again."
"Well, you did a job on my hand. That'll make a bloke think twice," he offered, semi-humorously. He waved his hand in the air - it was red and swollen, and looked thoroughly painful.
"Have you had that looked at?"
"Do I need to?" He sounded confused. "What did you hit it with?"
"It wasn't exactly under my control," she said, edging around the truth. "I was scared and in pain. I don't know if it needs a counter curse."
He stood. "You didn't have to be scared. I wouldn't really hurt you, even if I was angry."
He wouldn't really hurt her? Where was the line between really hurting her and just hurting her a little? Was a little hurt okay with him? If he was so sure he could keep himself from really hurting her, did that mean he could have restrained himself from what he'd done, and had chosen not to?
Molly's food suddenly didn't smell so delicious.
"I really am sorry. I didn't sleep well last night, I was so mad at myself. Harry bit my head off, too. I know I've been a berk the last few days, it's just…" Ron reached out to wrap his arm around her waist.
She stepped away. "I am really feeling anti-hug right now. Your Mum used up all the hug I had in me, sorry." The thought of his hands on her again, so soon, made her nauseous.
She remembered the new length of scar that snaked around her lower back, from hipbone to hipbone, looked at Ron's swollen and inflamed hand, and wondered if keeping him from touching her again might be in his best interest, as well.
They were summoned to the table for dinner, Ron back in a minor sulk because she wouldn’t let him embrace her. Hermione sat down between George and Ginny; between Ginny's enthusiastic discussion of the upcoming quidditch semifinals and specifically, how she and the rest of the Holyhead Harpies would do against each of the other teams’ players and George's overwhelming extroversion, she could fade into the background.
She had a plate of roasted chicken with potatoes, carrots, and parsnips, slices of homemade bread, and a bowl of pumpkin soup in front of her. She wasn't sure she could eat any of it. She stirred the soup, drowning the toasted pumpkin-seed garnish. She lifted a spoonful to cool it.
Then she felt it. A slow, firm stroke circling her back. She twitched, spilling her spoonful back into her bowl, splashing soup over the edge.
"Eat your food, Hermione, don't play with it," admonished Molly. "If you don't like it, put it aside."
"I'll take yours, if you don't want it," said Ginny. Hermione fended off her greedy hands with the spoon. "Ugh! You got soup on me."
"Serves you right. I wasn't finished. It smells very good, Mrs. Weasley, it just seemed a little hot to eat," said Hermione, as something continued to rub her back soothingly.
Usually, Hermione would blame George for any inexplicable event that occurred in Weasley territory. But a mysterious calming backrub didn't seem his style, and the cool touch was very familiar. She ate a spoonful of soup, and tried to let the wide, slow curving strokes ground her as she listened. Apparently Neville had visited the shop with Astoria Greengrass, of all people. George was quite impressed with Astoria’s sense of humor, and thought she might be quite good at pulling Neville out of his comfort zone.
She looked down at her nearly-empty soup bowl. The inexplicable backrub had been quite effective at easing her nerves; she thought she could eat more. Since she wasn't about to lift her shirt and take a peek at her scar at the Weasley dinner table, to see if it was really acting independently, there seemed nothing better to do than to finish her dinner.
*********
Sitting on her bed, Hermione regarded the objects on her bedside table. Wand. One pile of books, read. One pile of books, unread. Muggle notebook and pen. Water bottle, just refilled.
And a vial of Dreamless Sleep potion.
Taking Dreamless last night hadn't prevented her scar from growing, but there had been, as promised, no dreams. No dreams full of sensual touches and a crooning baritone voice.
She craved another dream, maybe too much. She reached for the vial.
She felt a faint tickling sensation run across her shoulders and down her arm. Her scar slithered out from underneath the sleeve of her t-shirt, undulating down her skin to the back of her wrist. She jerked her arm back, holding it suspended in front of her eyes. The scar looked more like a snake than ever; the rounded bulge at the end was now shaped precisely into the tapered oval of a serpent’s skull. Two dark eyes seemed to look back at her from the head, and all along the scar, there was the faintest texture of tiny scales.
She lifted her left hand, and stroked down the back of her scar snake, trying to elicit any reaction at all. It was still cool to the touch, and the scales were smooth beneath her fingertip. The sensation of her finger sliding along the scar sent goosebumps rippling out over her arm; it was still sensitive. She stroked it again, and a tiny scar-tongue flickered out of the snake’s mouth down her wrist.
Then the scar snake lifted off of her skin.
Hermione thought it should have hurt, should have left behind bleeding and gouged flesh. But no, the scar snake reared up, leaving unmarred skin beneath it. It remained a scar from her elbow on up, but the part that had been a flat scar on her forearm was now fully three-dimensional; a serpent’s tubular body and slightly flattened head. The scales were in the color palette of her scar - magenta and mauve, with a belly the same pallid color as Hermione’s own belly skin. Hermione was no herpetologist, but it looked like a common garden snake to her. Except that it was in shades of purple and pink and was attached to her body.
Hermione wasn’t sure if she was in shock. A snake had extruded itself out of her scar - she ought to be in hysterics. Admittedly, she’d had some suspicions about the scar’s mobility - it did explain the bite on Ron’s hand, and her mysterious dinner backrub. But this was… she stared at her elbow, where the three-dimensional snake flowed back into the only slightly raised scar, fascinated and revolted at the same time.
Was it so thick and round beneath her skin, only showing the top of itself, like a scar iceberg? She palpated the edges of the flat portion of the scar snake on her upper arm, not feeling a more rigid mass beneath her skin. It must just generate more scar tissue as needed to round itself out, just - just much faster than her body usually did. She started to feel lightheaded, and cold sweat beaded along her back. Adrenaline had her heartbeat pounding, and it sounded as though she had seashells pressed up to both of her ears, carrying the faint sound of the ocean.
It was irrational, but she pushed the scar snake down against her forearm, hoping she could force it back down into a flat scar on her skin, not hovering above it. Smooth scales pressed against her arm for a moment, then it pushed back, forcing her hand to loosen enough for the scar snake to squirm out from under her grip. It was strong, ridiculously strong for the slender width of its body.
"At least you didn't bite," she murmured.
It twisted to face her, and began rubbing its chin against the back of her hand, shiny black eyes meeting her own. The gesture felt affectionate.
Wonderful, the rogue part of her body didn't want her to be upset. She was definitely going to need the Dreamless Sleep tonight.
It continued to rub against her hands, patient and undemanding, as they trembled. At first it was just a gentle touch, endless circles around the backs of her hands, and as the ocean sounds receded from her ears, it wrapped around her hands and flipped them over, to lay palm-up on her thighs. It drew Elder Futhark runes across her palms, repeating the shape over and over until she named it aloud.
Gebo, she identified. Gift. Across the other palm, Kenaz. Torch. The muzzle drew spirals from the center of her palm to the edge for a moment, and then, Wunjo. Joy. Back to the other palm for Naudiz. Need.
The scholastic exercise settled her as nothing else could have, and she found herself smiling, enjoying the game. "Your 'x' shape was awfully tall for that to be Mannaz rather than Dagaz," she teased, when her first guess proved wrong.
The scar snake flicked its tongue against the center of her palm, and drew a spiral from her palm up to her wrist, moving slowly up the thin skin of her inner arm. She shivered at the sensation; this was closer to a lover's touch than she'd expected.
The scar snake lifted a long length above her arm, stretching up to be on a level with her face. It held its head level with her eyes, and flicked its tongue out quickly, tasting the air. Hermione thought they were examining one another. After a moment, it twisted, lunged toward the bedside table, and pushed the vial of Dreamless Sleep out of easy reach with its snout.
The scar snake had opinions, it seemed.
“Oh, and how else am I supposed to get to sleep without it, after you’ve given me a shock like this?” she muttered, wondering just how mad it was to talk to her scar snake.
The scar snake lifted back up so they were face to face, this time tilting its head. It flicked out its tongue again, brushing the tip of her nose, as though it were kissing her. Reassuring her again. Hermione let out a sigh. Thus far, the scar snake had done a good job of relaxing her. Its touch had been pleasant. Beyond pleasant, if she counted the dreams, it had been the most sensual attention she'd ever received.
It could make her feel good. Relaxed. There was nothing wrong in indulging in that, was there? She slid down the bed, until she was laying down, rather than sitting cross-legged.
Fleeting, barely-there touches followed a path from her nose to her cheek. She let her eyes fall closed, and gentle flicks of snake kisses traced the line of her cheekbone, and to her earlobe.
She felt a coil of the scar snake body settle over her shoulder, and then the soft flicks against her ear stopped. Instead, she felt a familiar long cool stroke along her collarbone, where the neckline of her shirt gaped. Looking down, she saw the snake's head rubbing against her.
Back and forth, the familiar touch brushed against her shoulder, the side of her throat, and the sensitive spot behind her ear. It relaxed her, yes, but left her yearning for a different kind of touch.
The scar snake pulled back to regard her again. "Yes, I'm more relaxed now," she told it. If she was a little too turned on to sleep, that was her problem. Her body would calm down eventually.
The scar snake slid forward off of her shoulder, down her chest, to rest its body on her opposite arm. It wrapped a loop of itself around her forearm, near her wrist. The loop around her arm was tight, but not enough to hurt or cut off her circulation. The scar snake lifted its head to her eye level again, and seemed to regard her, waiting for something.
Morgana’s girdle, she really was having a psychotic break, wasn’t she? “This is how I’m supposed to get to sleep?”
The scar snake undulated, and pulled her arms closer together with more strength than Hermione expected - though the loop still didn’t tighten, and there was no pain or tugging where the snake joined her scar at the elbow. She let the snake pull her arms together, and wind loops of itself around both forearms, binding them together, folded one over the other beneath her breasts.
The snake had not been that long before; it had the capacity to grow considerably, it seemed.
The smooth scales sliding over Hermione’s skin were, by now, a familiar sensory pleasure that awakened the nerves and left her tingling. What she had not expected was the feeling the constriction unleashed in her; the continuous gentle pressure was like being held securely, somehow. She pulled against it, testing the hold, testing the security, and felt the scar snake slide against her side, tunnel under her back, and come up the other side, wrapping around her back and pinning her arms to her torso. She struggled harder, and was unable to free her arms, was unable to reach out and control anything. Nothing tightened, nothing hurt - there was just the continuous pressure and her arms and hands held helpless. She relaxed into the restraint.
It was like a switch flipped in her head. The voices that constantly told her what she ought to be doing were silent. She was no longer asking herself if she was upset enough about the appearance of the scar snake, if she was responding the way a sane person, or a real witch, or a normal human would respond. She was no longer making lists of what she needed to research, who would need to be notified if she needed to be locked up in the Curse Damage Ward at the hospital, or what she needed to do before she taught class on Tuesday. It was silent in her head. There was just the sensation of the scar snake pinning her arms.
It was bliss. Her arousal still tugged at her, begging to be indulged, but she could do nothing but yearn for a touch, reinforcing her helplessness.
Then she felt a faint tingling beneath her shirt, on her left breast, and remembered the twisting tendril that had appeared there the second day her scar had manifested poetry. A cool, smooth touch caressed the top of her breast, and when she looked down, a small lump undulated beneath the fabric of her shirt. When it circled her nipple, the tiny scales rasping against her sensitive bud exquisitely, she threw back her head. It continued circling until she was tossing her head back and forth, her nipple hard and sensitive as could be. The tiny scar snake tightened itself around her nipple, pinching it, and undulated from side to side, rolling the trapped nipple back and forth. A whimper escaped from Hermione’s mouth, and the tiny snake repeated the action over and over.
Hermione’s clit began to throb, and she felt slick between her thighs.
Her binding snake extended a little further, and she felt it slither over her arms, and up the slope of her right breast. Then she felt it clamp onto her nipple. Not with fangs, there was no sharp point of pain, just an intense pinch that hurt, but made the muscles in her pussy seize in a spasm of pleasure. On her other breast, the tiny scar snake also bit down, without fang, and both of them pulled up, just a little. Hermione wasn’t sure if the sensation was pleasure or pain, but it made her vision white out momentarily and the space between thighs ache for a touch. She thrust her hips up, circled them, frantically searching for anything to rub against.
Hermione remembered the thicker length of scar that now ran across her lower back, and felt her hips lifted by a powerful form that was slithering out from under her. Once free, it reared up, and looked down at her as her binding scar snake had; they shared coloring and shape, but where her binding snake was perhaps a half-inch in diameter, this snake was over two inches in diameter. No, she thought to herself, I can’t possibly, while at the same time, her clit throbbed intensely and she felt her lubrication overflow from her pussy, running down to dampen the sheets beneath her.
She had never, ever made the sound that was coming out of her mouth with any partner she’d had previously. She had no idea what that thick scar snake was going to do, and with her arms bound tightly, there was little she could do but lie back and take it.
She was terrified and aroused, and she wasn’t sure those two feelings were actually separate feelings. But she didn’t have to interrogate her feelings - she couldn’t, there wasn’t the space in her head amidst all the sensation. She was drowning in the need to have something touch her, and as her hips writhed uncontrollably, she knew she wouldn’t protest if the thick scar snake came close enough for her to rub her desperate wetness against.
She didn’t think she had it in her to protest if the snake scar did more.
It coiled itself down onto her belly, and the smaller scar snakes tugged on her pinched nipples, whiting out her vision again and pulling something like a shriek out of her mouth. Thank Merlin and all the little blind newts, she routinely silenced her room before going to bed. The larger scar snake flicked its tongue at the undersides of her breasts, and dragged its head down her flanks, rubbing against the inside curve of her hipbone. The slide against sensitized skin made her writhe, and as the snake rubbed against the short curls on her mound, and flicked its tongue against the inside of her thighs, she began to beg.
“Please, please, touch me. Rub my clit, slither your way in between my pussy lips, let me feel your scales against my entrance, anything, please!”
She was too far gone to be shocked when she felt another voice, rumbling and vibrating through her chest. The sounds were blurred, again, but the encouraging, soothing murmur wrapped around her as surely as her scar snake. “My North Star… a little longer… Soon, very soon…”
The thick scar snake wrapped a loop of itself around her thigh, and contracted, pulling her thigh up towards her hip. It rewrapped itself, and contracted again, repeating the process until her thigh was pulled all the way up, leaving her splayed obscenely wide. Hermione felt her face heat, even though there was no one to see her on soaking, swollen display but her slithering scars - but at the same time, shameful words were pouring out her mouth: “Yes, hold me open, spread me wide - Need it so much - can’t hide from you -”
The gravelly voice became utterly unintelligible, going deeper and guttural. It made her bones shake.
The tip of the scar snake’s snout wedged between her outer labia, sliding easily between them, parting them widely. A length of snake slid against her delicate inner lips, the fine texture of the scales causing pleasure nerves to fire like a chain of dominoes. She tilted her hips, trying to push the scales against her clit, but it was useless - the scar snake moved with her.
Her nipples were tugged at again, and at the burst of delightful agony, something deep inside her ached for pressure, for something to thrust against it. The ache was nearly as bad as her clit's constant throb for the slightest touch. She squeezed her internal muscles as tight as she could, and almost, almost - it felt like something fluttered against that internal spot.
She let out a groan from deep in her chest, raw and needy. She was past the point of kittenish mewls, or even coherent words. The thick body of the snake pressed against her entrance, undulating just the tiniest bit from side to side. She groaned again as it dragged down, away from the little nub that so desperately needed attention. The slicked scales slid back and forth against her perineum now, as well as her entrance, and she'd never realized how sensitive she was there.
The scar snake continued to slide down, pressing more of its length firmly between her legs. When the serpentine dance reached her rear entrance, she gasped. The feel of the scales, drenched by her own arousal, sliding over her rosebud was amazing. There was no pressure, no attempt at penetration, just the silky texture rubbing over nerves she never realized she had.
It was as though the scar snake had extended her swollen, pulsing erogenous zone several inches backward. She was a cradle of sensitized need, from her mound to her arse. Her hips were thrusting uncontrollably, without rhythm or purpose.
"Please, please let me come - do anything, just let me come -"
Suddenly, there was a flurry of ghost-light touches on her clit, as her thick scar snake's tongue flickered against it, over and over. Each individual touch was teasing, too too soft to push her over, but as they accumulated, it was like a golden fire in her clit that spread deep inside her pussy, and back to her arse, turning her into a conflagration of ecstasy. Her nipples were freed, and the stab of sensation from them only pushed her higher. Her internal muscles were pulsing madly, each pulse a new peak of pleasure, and it was going on and on and on. She wailed her satisfaction without self-consciousness, and might have thrashed herself off the bed had her scar snakes not wrapped her tight.
When she returned to self-awareness, she was no longer bound, and her limbs were laid out loosely on the bed. Aftershocks still throbbed pleasantly within her pussy. Her water bottle sat within reach. She grabbed it with shaking hands, not bothering to sit up, and drained it nearly dry. Her throat was just a little sore. There was no snake emerging from her arm; there was no scar running down her arm. She lacked the energy to check that her scars were all settled back where they’d been that morning.
Instead, she rolled over and fell asleep almost immediately. When familiar troubling dreams nearly woke her in the middle of the night, she thought she felt someone drawing runes on her back, runes she couldn't recognize, no matter how hard she tried.
*********
What in Circe's seven silver cauldrons had she done last night?
It was her first thought upon waking. Her memory of the night before - the most satisfying orgasm of her life, brought about by prehensile scar snakes? - was so bizarre that at first she thought it was a dream.
Then she sat up and reached for her water bottle, and her shoulders and arms informed her that they'd seen some unusual use last night, and if she wanted to move without pain, she'd best plan on spending some time stretching. And some quality time under a hot shower wouldn't be amiss, either. As her shirt slid over her chest, her nipples informed her that they, too, had seen heavy action and were swollen and tender today.
When she attempted to stand, the leg that had been bound joined the chorus of complaints.
As she walked into her bathroom, she listened for the sounds of the boys getting ready. The house was strangely silent, and there was no water running elsewhere in the pipes - perhaps they'd had an early shift today.
She stripped off her shirt and looked down. It was a long line today, the script smaller than usual:
My North Star, above every darkling plain1
She recognized the reference, but was a bit surprised that Dolohov would know it. Where would a Death Eater, probably Pureblood, mad genius have come across Muggle poetry?
Maybe she knew nothing about Antonin Dolohov at all, truly. Hermione wondered what conclusions one could come to about her, based only on Ministry files and articles from the Daily Prophet. She pondered that thought for a moment, and shuddered.
Still, that casual "my" irritated her. She wasn't Dolohov's anything, and it was beyond presumptuous to write it on her skin.
Even if his scar had given her the most erotic experience of her life.
*********
Given that the boys had apparently cleared out before she'd even awoken, Hermione was surprised to come home to an empty house. Assuming her housemates would return exhausted and hungry, and with no idea of when that return would be, Hermione made a beef stew, which could simmer on low heat all night, if need be.
She also ran out and picked up several pumpkin pasties, which had been a comfort food for Harry since he'd first encountered them at Hogwarts. The store-bought ones weren't as good as the elf-made pasties, but they would do.
Ron didn't have a comfort food, as such. As long as there was a large quantity of food, he was comforted, so Hermione felt she'd covered her bases there.
It had been a good day. She'd finished her work with the highly redacted autopsy report from the Aurors, which let her spend most of the day alone, in a high-security room. She'd been able to confirm that the killer was tall, perhaps six foot three or four inches, with large hands - more than eight inches from the base of the palm to the tip of the longest finger. The killer had not used his weight to inflict any of the damage, which suggested a spell or potion had kept the victim motionless throughout what had to be a long procedure.
She felt it was solid information. Hopefully the Aurors would agree.
She decided to bring down a book from her bedroom and read in the kitchen until Harry and Ron returned.
It was nearing 10 pm when they arrived, wrapped in hats and scarves which seemed a bit much for the end of October.
"I'm never going to be warm again," said Ron. He removed the knitted hat and two scarves, dropping them on the floor, but left his coat on. He took a seat at the kitchen table and slumped forward, half laying on it.
Hermione frowned, but picked up the dropped items and brought them down to the coat rack. Harry was still down there, trying to disentangle his scarf from his coat zipper.
"Hello, Harry. Bad day?"
"Very." He grunted and yanked, and with a tearing sound, the zipper opened.
Hermione examined the scarf he'd just freed. "I hope you weren't too fond of this; you've ripped the yarn and it's already unraveling."
"I don't care, it was from the lost and found box. I didn't bring my winter gear in. Didn't realize…" He trailed off. "Oh. That thing you asked about. He's where he should be. Someone laid eyes on him."
So Dolohov was still in Azkaban. She still didn't understand what was happening with her scar, but she had a new puzzle. Someone, probably an Auror, had been to Azkaban lately. Had personally seen Dolohov. Why?
"I'm still freezing," said Harry as he started climbing up the stairs, much more slowly than usual.
"I made stew. It's not Molly's cooking, but it is warm - and I picked up pumpkin pasties."
"If you'll make tea, too, I swear I'll give you my firstborn."
"Harry James Potter, why would you think I'd want your firstborn? I'm not even sure I'll want my firstborn."
She sat him down, and dished up stew for both boys, setting out the pasties on a plate. Only a bit more effort yielded a pot of herbal infusion, which Ron complained about, but it was far too late in the day for the caffeine in proper tea.
She let them eat in silence until they were both midway into their second bowls.
"You were both out early this morning. It was nice to have all the hot water to myself."
"Hot shower before bed, yeah," said Ron.
"We got called in early," said Harry.
"An emergency?"
"Not really, but it was time sensitive." Harry looked unhappy. "How was your day?"
"I…" Hermione hesitated to bring her accomplishments of the day up in front of Ron, but decided that he'd have to deal with it. "I finished incorporating the data from the new victim into my matrix. I have some conclusions about your killer that I submitted to Robards."
"Well, you're going to have more work to do," muttered Ron, rubbing his hands together, as if they still chilled him.
"Ron! Need to know." Harry seemed too physically tired to yell, but his spirit was willing.
"What? She'll find out anyway. They'll give her all the gory pictures." Ron slammed the last of his infusion. "D'you have any dark chocolate? The Auror's office only had milk, didn't do the job."
Hermione got up to fetch a bar from her personal stash. The pieces were falling into place: Harry's update on Dolohov; how cold the boys were; the request for dark chocolate, which was a remedy for Dementor exposure. There was only one place in Britain where one would encounter Dementors, and after his stint there, Sirius had been incredibly sensitive to cold temperatures.
"You've been to Azkaban." She snapped her bar of gourmet Belgian dark chocolate in half, and gave a piece to each boy.
Harry buried his face in his hands. "Damn it, Ron."
"She figured it out on her own, mate." Ron took a large bite of chocolate, chewing with his mouth open.
"With help."
"Harry, eat some chocolate, please. Remus said it helped after Dementor exposure." After Harry began to slowly nibble, Hermione reassured him. "I am sworn to secrecy, and I won't let on to Robards or anyone that I know you were at Azkaban today…" And suddenly, she knew. "At Azkaban today retrieving the new body."
"Bloody hell," muttered Harry, biting off a bigger piece of chocolate.
"That's why the file I received on the second body was so heavily redacted. That body was retrieved from Azkaban, too. I would have recognized the victim if I'd seen more, known more."
"Yes." Harry sighed. "He was a Snatcher, one of the group who brought us to the Manor."
"Scabior?"
"You remember his name?" Ron was incredulous that she remembered; Hermione could hardly believe that the names of the men who had dragged them to Bellatrix's mercy weren't forever burned into his brain.
"Scabior and Greyback were the only two of that group that survived to stand trial. They both received life sentences."
Harry flinched.
"Would I be correct in assuming that Fenrir Greyback was the third body?"
Ron nodded. "I mean, no one really cares if somebody with a life sentence gets offed. But who's doing it? Not too many suspects there. A few human guards, a mediwizard, the prisoners. House elfs and Dementors."
"Was the first body retrieved from Azkaban, as well?"
Harry sighed, and gave in. "He was one of the human guards. Based on the interviews today, it seems he was brutal, even for… the environment."
"Day of interviewing bloody Death Eaters, in the freezing cold, with Dementors lurking… dark wizards should have all been given the Kiss." Ron was grumbling more to himself than to Harry or Hermione, and she was largely tuning him out. They were never going to agree on the topic of retributive justice versus restorative justice. "Smug bastard making fun of my hand."
Since Harry was sharing information, Hermione was curious about something. "Did your Pureblood consultant have anything useful to offer?"
"No," said Ron.
"Eh," said Harry, tipping his hand back and forth. "He thought this might be a ritual out of a family grimoire, the sort of thing that is almost never shared outside of the family. Whatever it's for, it isn't used very often."
"I suggested an obscure ritual," said Hermione, a little offended that it was considered useful information now that a Pureblood said it.
"I remember," soothed Harry. "What he could do for us was tell us some families who almost certainly wouldn't have such a spell. Something about elements of the ritual and incompatible family magics."
"Of course, his family was one of the incompatible ones," added Ron.
"Only the paternal line," corrected Harry. "So, it could be someone from the family that owned the grimoire - or given how many Pureblood family lines Voldemort ended or punished, it could be someone who got their hands on someone else’s grimoire."
“See? Bastard was useless.” Ron hit the table with both hands to emphasize his point, only to cradle the injured one to his chest, hissing, “Fuck.”
“You really should have that looked at,” said Hermione, feeling a bit bad that it was still so painful. She wasn’t going to volunteer to tend to it herself, as that would probably send a mixed message and start Ron touching her again. But she did feel bad, and so she prodded, “I told you that I don’t know what it was hit with, and a stinging hex or cutting hex wouldn’t be so swollen days later. It could be serious - I mean it, you could possibly lose fingers, or even the whole hand.”
“Don’t nag me! Merlin’s balls, you sound just like that sodding wanker.” Ron’s face screwed up into a scarlet mask of rage; he’d never handled being in pain well. “All ‘take care not to lose any fingers, you might still have to count.’ Murdering bastard’s gone completely mental. Filthy git went on about needing to be careful when handling other people’s valuables. Looked at me like I was scum in his toilet. Wearing a prison jumpsuit full of holes, and acting like he was Supreme Mugwump. Should’ve been put down like a rabid dog. Fucking Dolohov.”
*********
When she returned to her room, Hermione silenced it and warded the door. If Harry needed comfort after his day visiting Azkaban, he’d have to floo Ginny. If Ron needed comfort, he’d - well, she couldn’t give him any. He’d have to learn to make do.
Unbuttoning the jeans she’d slipped into after work was difficult, because her damn hands were shaking. There was no reason for her hands to shake. Too much tea, maybe. She peeled the jeans off and threw them towards the armoire. Her knickers, King’s College jumper, and bra were thrown in the vicinity of her laundry bag. She sat on the bed, nude, the oversized t-shirt she usually slept in crumpled next to her.
Her hands were still shaking as she drank from her water bottle.
On her shoulder, where the middle-sized scar snake’s head rested, she felt a tingle. She slapped her hand down over it. She didn’t need or want her back patted by magically extruded scar tissue right now.
She stared down at her scar-decorated torso.
My North Star
‘Other people’s valuables.’
Think of me
Why should she have to think of him? Because there were people being murdered in Azkaban, and she knew in her bones that he had something to do with it? Because two of those murder victims had scared her, hurt her a little, and dragged her to the worst experience of her life? She couldn’t even feel bad, as she ought to feel, at the deaths of Scabior and Greyback, even knowing that each premature death diminished the world. Even knowing that her mother would be disappointed by her apathy, had she known she had a daughter to be disappointed by.
Her eyes were burning with tears. She felt like a tsunami of expectations was smashing into her, eradicating all identifiable features of her self-scape and leaving behind only flat sand and wreckage. Professional, personal - everything she wanted or needed was being crushed or swept away under expectations of the Golden Girl, of muggleborns, of witches. Most of her Department in the Ministry loathed her. The Exclusive Set of Arithmancers found her methods too radical to be presented at their annual conference, even though not a one of them could find a flaw in her exactingly laid-out proofs.
She leaned forward, grabbing fistfuls of her hair, pulling at it. She loathed teaching, but teaching would fix so many of McGonagall’s problems, and Minerva had gone to bat for her Mastery. Kingsley had gone to bat for her Mastery as well, and it looked like her pursuing a career in the Ministry would require him to step into battle after battle as her champion against entrenched, bigoted beauracracy. Was she really worth it?
She hated Grimmauld Place, the gloom, the mounted house-elf heads, the palpable lingering misery ground into every dark and dirty corner. The only room she could bear to spend her waking time in was the kitchen. But Harry treasured the place as his link to Sirius, and had begged her to live with him, at least until he wed Ginny. Not that he’d yet proposed to the red-head of his dreams.
Not to mention that living in the same house as Ron became more and more difficult as his unhappiness with her escalated each year. Fuck, Ron - he had been one of her best friends. Now, the thought of spending time with him filled her with dread.
She used her t-shirt to scrub tears off of her face.
Think of me
My North Star
She wasn’t his. She wasn’t some ideal on a pedestal, and how dare he put that expectation on her. How dare he demand her thoughts, her attention, using her own body as his personal stationery! How dare he cover even more of her skin with his scars, and use them to assert his ownership of her body - “other people’s valuables,” her moon-pale arse!
Her breath came in gasps, and she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs, but her eureka moment hit her like a bludger to the chest. There was a perfect way to demonstrate to Dolohov exactly how she felt right now, and it didn’t involve requesting a permit to visit Azkaban. If he liked scars so much…
She grabbed her wand from the bedside table, and rearranged herself on the bed so that she sat back against the headboard. It was a Black family antique from the attic, and so was an ugly nightmare of wrought iron spindles and shapes that were vaguely floral-looking. She’d found it less distasteful than the other available options.
She tied her hair up in a bun with an elastic and leaned back against the headboard. She then pressed the tip of her wand against the skin of her chest, in the center, between her breasts. The first vertical slice had to be repeated; it was a scratch, barely bleeding at all. She repeated it, pushing more magic through the wand, and a thin stream of blood ran down. That was good, that would scar. She made the diagonal next, deciding to use print, all capitals. Let Dolohov have his beautiful, looped script. She would use brutal block letters to make her point.
She completed the final vertical of the “N.” Perhaps she should have grabbed a towel to soak up the blood; it wasn’t an unreasonable amount, but it was a steady stream and was staining her bedding.
No matter. She could burn it and replace it tomorrow.
She placed her wand for the second letter and in her peripheral vision, saw something magenta-colored moving. She whipped her wand in a small circle, sacrificing control for speed. The “O” was not symmetrical and she cut a little deeper than she’d intended. Not too deep, not deep enough that she ought to worry. But her mattress would need a very thorough cleaning after this.
A purple-red blur flew around her wrist, and her arm was yanked forward, away from her body. She yanked back, more out of instinct than a reasoned decision to fight, and found it impossible to pull her hand in closer to her body. A coil of her shoulder scar snake, the medium-thickness one, was wrapped around her wrist. Its mouth was closed around her wand, roughly halfway up the length. She tried to tip the wand, pointing towards herself, thinking madly about what spell might disable an enchanted snake made out of scar without harming it. The bite-hold the scar snake had on her wand was equally unyielding. As she was shifting her weight off of her other hand, to bring it up and use it to pry the snake off, the tiny snake on her breast lunged forward, striking a spot at the base of her thumb with its nose forcefully.
It must have hit a pressure point. At the strike, Hermione’s thumb went numb and her grip on her wand slipped just the slightest - enough that the scar snake ripped it out of her hand, and flung it across the room. She heard her wand bounce off the wall before hitting the floor and rolling.
“You’d best not have broken that,” she said, tone low and angry, breathing still ragged. The scar snake lowered its muzzle as it stared at her, and though the serpent face was incapable of expression, Hermione still felt she was being regarded with incredulous scorn. “You’d no right. Am I not allowed to say ‘no’?”
The scar snake straightened itself rigidly, still regarding her face. She felt, and heard, the rumble of the Russian-accented voice in her chest, louder than ever before, tone sharp and angry. The words were a long string of what might be cursing in Russian. The shoulder scar snake dipped down and plunged its muzzle into the stream of blood still dripping down between her breasts. Crimson-faced, it raised itself back to meet her eyes, then whipped its head from side to side in a violent negation that sent drops of blood flying. The voice - Dolohov’s voice, by some impossible means, she finally admitted - returned to English, though it was still muffled “...not tolerate… no one harms… not a placid man!”
She tried to fit a finger between the loop of scar snake and her wrist, to pry the damn thing off her wrist. She wasn’t a placid woman, either.
The snake twisted with uncanny speed, and she found herself with loops around both wrists.
“What? No, we’re not doing that again.” But the snake pulled her wrists towards her shoulders, and then wound loops of itself around a spindle of the headboard, behind Hermione’s head. Her arms were pulled over her head, and bound to the headboard. The loops of scar snake protected her skin from direct contact with the unforgiving iron.
“I’m serious!” It would have been more intimidating if she hadn’t had an involuntary gasping sob midway through. At the sound, Dolohov’s muffled voice returned to rapid, unhappy Russian. Ignoring it, Hermione unfolded her legs and twisted her body to slide them off the side of the bed. Feet on the floor ought to give her some leverage.
At her hip, the scar snake stirred. “Fuck,” she muttered. It coiled down her leg in a loose spiral, and surged forward, looping around the wrought-iron post at the bottom corner of the bed. It contracted, pulling her leg out straight, and rewrapped itself into a new spiral. Then it repeated the process more forcefully, sliding her arse down the bed until she was laying flat on her back, arms stretched above her head, bound to the headboard, and one leg bound to the bottom corner of the bed.
The thickest scar snake undulated its head up her bound leg to her belly, and raised itself up to look at her face. It was fantastically, freakishly longer than the scar running behind her back had been - there was no physical way the scar could grow so long, so quickly.
Of course not, Hermione told herself. It’s fucking magic.
The scar snake binding her arms was moving its head, and a pillow brushed against her face, and was dragged down her body. The thick scar snake picked it up, twisted, and tucked it beneath her bound knee, easing the strain on her back.
There was no explaining it, but the moment the pillow went under her knee, Hermione began to cry. Her breathing was reduced to a series of irregular gasps, and tears pooled in her eyes to spill out the corners and down her temples.
Then she felt soft touches on each side of her face. Tiny flicks of scar snake tongue, which were apparently licking up her tears as they fell, before they ran down into her ears or her hair. It had to be the tiny scar snake from her breast, stretched up, and the scar snake binding her arms to the headboard, stretched down, because the thickest scar snake was slowly undulating up her torso. She lifted her head to see as the head slid between her breasts. It stopped there, and began licking at the “O” of the “NO” she had carved into her chest.
The touches stung, but not badly, and she let her head drop back. It felt as though the scar snake was systematically working its way around the “O” counterclockwise. The voice continued to rumble through her chest in Russian, but it no longer sounded angry. Instead it sounded… soothing? Maybe just a little regretful? Without a doubt, it was comforting, again, and all the more comforting for not being in English. There was no pressure to parse words out of the indistinct sounds.
The weight of the scar snake on top of her torso was calming, somehow. Hermione felt like the hiccupping gasps were compressed by the weight into smaller and smaller spasms, pressed down into shaking but regular rhythms, and finally down to deep, slightly wobbly breaths. The flow of tears was coming to a stop, and a lassitude was creeping across Hermione's mind.
She was not surprised when, tear-cleaning duty complete, her shoulder scar snake brushed against her cheek gently and descended to her chest, only to begin licking at the "N."
She lifted her head again, and looked down. The bleeding had stopped where the scar snakes had tended her cuts, and the flesh was pulling closed and healing visibly. She dropped her head back, and sighed. Her scar snakes were healing her. Of course they were. It was magic. She relaxed, and let them work. Her tiny scar snake wriggled up her chest, up her throat, and stroked itself back and forth across her forehead.
After a time - Hermione had been drifting, and had no idea if it had been twenty minutes or an hour and twenty minutes - the soft flicks of snake tongues against her cuts ceased. Nothing hurt. She felt her hip scar snake slither down her torso, down onto her belly; weight rested on her mound, and her labia were gently nudged by a blunt head. Then the weight on her mound disappeared, and the thickest scar snake loomed above her, head tilted to the side in a quizzical fashion.
She was being offered the opportunity to say ‘No.’
A dozen thoughts flew through her mind, mostly of things she ought to be doing rather than indulging. She should clean her room; with all the blood, it no doubt resembled a crime scene. She should clean herself - dried blood was hard to scrub out of her hair. She should think about telling Harry that she suspected Dolohov had something to do with the murders in Azkaban. She should think hard about why she didn’t want to tell Harry of her suspicions. She should determine if there was a deeper meaning to Dolohov’s scar poetry. She should try to figure out what Dolohov was trying to accomplish. She should finish reading what the Black library had to offer on scars and magic, and think about better search keywords for use in the Ministry library. She should say no, just to prove that she could. She should say no, because letting snakes made of scars get her off was just plain perverted. She should get extra sleep.
“Yes,” she said. It had been a stressful evening, and she wanted to feel good.
Her tiny scar snake wriggled down, flicking a gentle kiss against the tip of her nose, before it moved on to attend to the sensitive spots behind her ear and down her throat. Her thickest scar snake lowered itself back down and slid a length of itself between her legs, rubbing scales against the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. One leg was still bound to the corner of the bed, but the other was gently pushed out, and her knee pushed up, opening her wide.
She heard a slick noise as her outer lips separated, and felt her face flush. A serpentine length pressed against her, from above her clit to her perineum, and with a gentle, easy pressure, began to circle. It seemed that instead of last night's teasing, sharp peaks of pleasure, tonight would be a slow build.
She appreciated that. She felt too wrung out for the raw exposure of an encounter like last night's. "Mmmmmm," vibrated out of her throat, the sound nearly a purr.
The sudden rub of scales against her nipple made her body jolt from an excess of sensation, not entirely pleasant. Her shoulder serpent reared up.
"Sorry, they're a little too sore from last night," she offered.
It gave her a flick of the tongue on the nose, then slithered down to encircle her breast and proceeded to squeeze and knead with painstaking care.
The slow build of pleasure between her legs had her rocking her hips fractionally up and down, the only motion her stretched-out, bound position afforded her. "Mmm!" It was a more urgent noise now, rather than the continuous expression of satisfaction she'd been uttering previously.
The scar snake ground hard against her clit, which caused her pussy to clench. Then it pulled away, and she groaned in disappointment. Her frustration didn't last long, as the muzzle of her scar snake ran up and down her inner pussy lips, spreading her lubrication evenly and thoroughly. It nudged from side to side, slipping between the petals slowly as it caressed the nerve-rich surfaces.
There was a pinch of her inner labia on one side, pressure with just a hint of pain, and then it was gently tugged. The motion pulled everything else, too, in a blissful dance. The hood of her clit was tugged down, rubbing it over her neediest nub, lighting flares of sensation that soared, hot and bright, through her body. As the slick skin of her labia and her entrance was pulled out, up, and down, it jostled the swollen tissues deep inside her, rubbing her walls against each other and against her g-spot. She tightened her inner muscles, and the sensation became more intense, dragging a moan from her throat.
And though before last night, she might not have registered the sensation, the ring of her rear entrance shifted, sides of the sensitive rim rubbing against one another in a forbidden but exciting frisson.
Then the scar snake tugged again. And again. Never any harder; each of the a cornucopia of sensations was gentle, understated, even - but together, every inch between her thighs tingled or throbbed or ached. Hermione rocked her hips as far as she could and moaned again. "Please," she sighed.
The pinching grip on her labia - the scar snake had probably bitten it gently, without fangs - released. The snake's muzzle slid up, and began to draw circles around the hood of her clit, pulling the hood to the side, above, below - an indirect stimulation that had her pussy throbbing for something to clench down on.
Then she felt something slide into her entrance, just an inch or two.
"What?" She wasn't focusing well, but she thought all her snakes were accounted for. She lifted her head, and from between her legs, saw the familiar head of her hip scar snake lift… followed by a tail.
Of course her scar snake could grow a tail. It was magic. There was only one reasonable response.
"More," she said.
The circling around her clit resumed, and she whined, high-pitched and needy. The tail rubbed itself against her slickness, and pressed inside her again. It had been months since her last lover, and she'd forgotten the pleasure of being worked open. The scar snake lacked the rigidity of a cock, so she didn't quite have the quivering sensation of being impaled by an unyielding force, but it felt good to be full. She squeezed, and felt it undulate in response.
One of the undulations slid and pressed right against the place inside that had been aching for contact. Her hips tried desperately to drive up; she wrapped her hands around the spindles of her headboard and held tight, needing an anchor against the surge of sensation.
"Again," she rasped.
It obliged, and undulated continuously. At her urging, it pressed harder against her inner walls, and it was as though lightning wrapped in velvet forked from deep inside her out to the nape of her neck, to her fingers, to her toes, to each of her ribs in a chain of ecstasy so overwhelming that one more iota of sensation would make it agony.
She couldn't say she had an orgasm; it was a plateau of pleasure, and she was held there past the point where her vision whited out, past the point where her clenching hands and arms began to shake uncontrollably - just to the point where the thin, sharp pain of overtaxed nerves joined the sensations within her channel.
"Stop, stop," she panted, but her request was clear enough, and all stimulation ceased. Her bindings unwound. Once her breathing slowed, the joints that had been held extended were carefully bent, and extended, and bent again, until the stiffness was eased. Her water bottle was brought to her hands.
She drank deeply, almost as deeply as she slept that night.
*********
The next morning, Hermione was sorely tempted to call in sick for teaching her statistics students at King's College. Or perhaps she was tempted by soreness? In either case, it was only the guilty awareness that she was not, in fact, contagious, that dragged her out of bed. That, and the fact that her sheets were unpleasantly crusted with her own dried blood.
It wasn't until she had spent some time in a hot shower that she was able to make two important observations. The first was that her self-inflicted wounds from last night were not going to scar, apparently. They were nearly imperceptible already.
The second was the new line of script over her breast:
Incandesce, & I will follow
It was clearly intended to pair with yesterday's line:
My North Star above every darkling plain
Incandesce, & I will follow
Sadly, she lacked both the mental clarity and time to ponder them.
She also lacked the time to properly clean her room. She magically locked the door behind her; she'd rather not have to explain the mess should someone decide it was easier to borrow an item from her and ask forgiveness for the intrusion later.
It wasn't until she'd arrived in the classroom and saw students dressed as sexy pirates, ninjas, sexy nurses, and zombies, that she remembered that today was Halloween - or rather, Samhain. One of her students gifted her with a small plastic pumpkin full of candy corn. It wasn't to her taste, but Ron would eat it.
She made it to the Ministry without mishap, and had just settled in at her desk with a hot cup of Darjeeling when Harry and Ron arrived. It seemed prudent to take the discussion away from her office.
“Gentlemen, is this something we should discuss in one of the high-security rooms?” She was already standing, gathering her folders on the ritual killing cases.
“That’s probably a good idea,” said Harry. She noticed he had an armful of well-worn manilla folders and three-ring binders. Ron was similarly laden with binders and what looked like a box of muggle projection slides.
“Why’d we drag all this stuff down here if we were just going back up to the Auror section?” Ron seemed a bit put out.
“To show off how fit you are, no doubt,” said Hermione dryly. “I’ve a muggle treat for you when we get there.” She snagged her mug of tea and led the way to the lifts.
When they’d settled around the table in the secure room, and Ron had been convinced that unlike wizarding candies, muggle candy corn would not attempt to flee or bite back, Harry started pushing the binders in her direction. She flipped through one; it seemed to be filled with sepia photographs of archaeological digs and handwritten notes on aged paper.
“Archives found some runes that resemble the ones carved into the bodies. They were very obscure because they hadn’t been categorized as wizarding sites, or magical runes. There really isn’t much information about them - they’re from very old sites, on the Isle of Mann and Skye, and there’s not much context for interpreting the runes. We can't find an expert on the sites, wizard or muggle, and this is what the muggle side of the British Museum had in storage. Pictures of stuff with runes on it, and what was found around them.” Harry’s explanation was less than completely coherent.
“Alright,” said Hermione, wary. “I’m not sure what you expect me to do. I’m an arithmancer, not an archaeologist, Harry. I did well enough on the Ancient Runes NEWT, but that was understanding of Futhark, Sanskrit, and other well-understood runic languages. Honestly, you need a real expert here...”
“Yeah, but you’re the best person to take a stab at this who already knows the case and is sworn to secrecy,” said Ron. “We’ve got three victims so far. Robards doesn’t want to wait until we can find somebody, probably a muggle somebody, who will spend weeks studying the pictures and probably get it all wrong because they don’t know anything about magic.”
“Look, this isn’t asking me to help you with your homework or trying to figure out something on the fly when we’re wanted criminals! This is law enforcement work, and it needs to be done properly, not with some amateur guesswork.” Still, she found her eyes lingering on a photograph of runes carved into a wall, next to what might be stylized images of dogs or wolves. The wall was damaged, but above and to the side, she could just barely make out the images of intertwined tree branches, or briars. Maybe antlers? One of the runes looked a bit like an inversion of the rune carved into the victim’s chest.
“We know this won’t be Wizengamot testimony worthy research, ‘Mione,” said Harry. “And I know this isn’t really your field. But you’re bloody brilliant, and if you can even give us a hint of what these runes might be about, if this is actually a ritual, it would be fantastic.”
“More useful than the Pureblood consultant git,” muttered Ron through a mouthful of candy corn.
As much as Hermione hated to admit it, it was probably Ron’s comment that got her to agree to spend her afternoon flipping through binders, using Lumos to project slides onto the wall, and trying to decipher crabbed and faded notes. She really couldn’t pass up an opportunity to show up their Pureblood consultant.
*********
It was past 9 pm by the time she was ready to call it quits for the night. Harry and Ron had left the office already, headed to the Halloween party that the Patil sisters were hosting. Hermione hadn’t planned on attending, hadn’t even bothered to acquire a costume for the party, but she did insist they bring her some falafel for dinner before abandoning her.
Her report was minimal; there really was a paucity of information with which to work. She was reasonably certain the forehead rune had a connotation of opening or entrance; access, perhaps. At first she had thought the chest rune had something to do with dogs or wolves, but in other places it was paired with images of the moon, or bare tree branches. Sometimes it was incorporated into images of slaughtered warriors. A previous scholar had associated the rune found on the victim’s right hands with gifts, offerings, and bountiful harvests. Hermione didn’t quite understand how he had reached the conclusion, but it wasn’t her field and she noted down the finding, anyway. The other runes did not appear in any of the slides or photographs. It wasn’t much information; probably no more than the Pureblood consultant had offered, honestly.
She returned home, and was not surprised to find herself the only one there.The Patil sisters’ parties were infamous for near-Dionysian excess. Wandering into the courtyard, she lit some candles and set out a plate of Jaffa cakes, remembering the bonfire and food offerings of the Samhain ritual at the Lovegood’s that she usually attended. This year Luna and her father were engaging in crypto-magizoology in Iceland. She tried to sit among the flames and open herself to the spirits of the dead, but found herself too restless to focus.
She went to her room and cleaned it, so it no longer resembled an abattoir. She remade the bed, and settled herself in the sheets. After the last several nights, she expected her scar snakes to rise from her skin and touch her, but they remained quiescent.
It was just as well. She was exhausted.
*********
It wasn’t a light or noise that woke her in the dead of night, or even a draft of cool air flowing over her skin. It was the sensation of magic gathering and concentrating near her. It felt like a hush falling over a forest clearing, except there was no noise to be silenced; it felt like fine hairs rising on the back of her neck before a static shock, except all her hairs remained flat. It was pure expectation that awoke her, and she was sitting up, wand in hand, when the shadows in the corner of her room began to gather, sliding along the floor, the walls, the ceiling. The shadows blended into one another in one mass, taller than a man, wide as an ox. Light fled the rest of the room and clustered around her bed, and the darkness became impenetrable and almost tangible.
Wait, pulsed the beat of Hermione’s heart, in mad contradiction to all sense and caution. Wait. Wait.
Within her skin, her scar snakes shifted - she felt the tingling sensation as each of them twisted to rest their heads over her heart.
With each pulse of her heart - Wait, Wait - she felt her magic intensify, as though it were a bonfire, and she was steadily feeding it until it lit up the entire night, a beacon for spirits to return to the mortal realm.
Then the darkness opened, and Antonin Dolohov appeared in her bedroom.
He was backlit by a rippling curtain of teal and emerald light, and for a moment, Hermione saw him crowned with antlers, with lean hunting hounds prowling at his feet.
Then he stepped forward, and the aurora behind him was obscured. She regarded him illuminated by the faint glow that had gathered around her bed. His head was crowned only by hair the color of ground cloves, disheveled and falling a little past his chin. Thick scruff, not quite long enough to be a proper beard, covered his chin.
His eyes, though - they were a rich mahogany, and he stared at her as though she were the Philosopher's Stone and the Elder Wand, wrapped in Merlin's Lab Notes. As though she had accomplished an arduous task against impossible odds, just to make him smile.
"My North Star," he said, and his voice was clear, and wrapped around her like a warm blanket. "So much heat. So brilliant."
Though his attention was like the sun after a year of nothing but rain, there was something she had to say. "I'm not yours. Not your North Star. Not your valuable thing."
Dolohov raised an eyebrow. "You are the beacon that I followed to safe haven. For me, you are the North Star. And you are, indeed, not a thing - but you have great value to me. I will not pretend otherwise."
He reached out his hand. "Will you come with me? You can say no, of course." He smiled, and she started to ache between her thighs. His voice dropped to a lower pitch, and rumbled even more. "Should you accompany me, you can say no to any other proposal, though I very much hope you will not always choose to do so."
She remembered the aurora behind him; the dead men; the scar snakes; her momentary vision of him. His destination was not some safe house in Denmark, or a family manor in Saint Petersburg. "Where… where are you going?"
"I'm not certain - nor do I know what we will shape it into. Will you come despite that?"
She took a deep breath, and extended her hand.
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1.Darkling plain is a reference to the poem Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold. You can read it here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43588/dover-beach
Sorry that it isn't a link, tiny smooth brain tonight cannot figure out what I am doing wrong with HTML.