The Seer a Girl
Hermione thought it odd that the same minister of magic who had so vehemently denied Voldemort’s return just a few short months ago publicized the Azkaban breakout so quickly when it occurred. Harry, of course, was furious that the ministry and the press were implicating Sirius in the matter, and it put him in a foul mood that made him challenging to be around (though what didn’t those days?). Sirius found the notion hilarious and spent an insufferable amount of time strutting around Grimmauld Place with a distinctly pureblood self-aggrandizement. Though Remus’ restored loyalty and the portrait of Walburga’s intense scorn for him, convinced even the staunchest members of the Order that he was blackest sheep of the Black family, Hermione wasn’t sure the apple fell that far from the tree based on all she’d observed as she explored the Order’s headquarters over the summer. She got the feeling that he didn’t consider himself all that different from them either.
That was the kind of thing she kept to herself in order to avoid Harry’s ire and the Weasley’s patronizing. They had a nasty habit of writing off many things she said based on intuition unless she proved her point by drawing on her endless knowledge or magical ability – which even they could not deny was far greater than their own. She knew in the back of her mind that they would have taken her more seriously if she were not a muggleborn, but she did not yet hold it against them. Incidentally, it would be their war against Voldemort which would move her to do so. At this point, however, that war and its ideals were still young.
For the last four years, she’d worked hard in and out of class to earn a reputation for intelligence and skill that would have shocked her parents had they known. Perhaps it even shocked her, if she was honest about it. Everything had shocked her, though, from the beginning. After her first month at Hogwarts, she had become very tired of being surprised all the time – new culture, new history, new traditions, new politics, new clothes, new intelligences, things from fairy tales that were real and also so frustratingly ordinary. She quickly resolved to not be surprised anymore. She buried herself deeply in her studies, textbooks, library, and the news so that she was always a few steps ahead of everyone else – frequently even the purebloods from the oldest families. Thus, the young, confused Hermione faded away in everyone’s minds, and no one (except perhaps Professor McGonagall) could remember a time when she wasn’t the brightest witch of her age.
**
Late in the summer one day, Sirius was in a rare, sporty mood after a few glasses of firewhiskey and took Harry, Ron, and Hermione a tour of unexplored parts of Grimmauld Place. The three of them were not too proud to shrink behind him as several suits of armor brandished unnecessarily sharp swords before standing down to salute him as the group strode down the hallway. Generations of Black portraits forgotten by even more generations lined the walls. Every now and then, one would call out to Sirius to tell him how ugly he had grown up to be, to try to commiserate over experiences in Azkaban, or ask if he’d had a child yet.
“Try that sumptuous little girl behind you, Sirius,” one said, leering at Hermione.
The voice of another saying, “Aye, not so fast. She’s a mudblood according to Walburga,” set of a chorus of hateful and crass jeers.
Ron’s defense of her was cut off by a woman dressed in almost medieval garb. “Shut up, Weasley. Your opinion matters even less than hers, unless you’re finally ready to offload your entire family estate to a better family - although by the looks of it, no one even in your house would trust you with that decision.”
Sirius ushered them quickly to a quieter hallway, which was punctuated in the middle by a striking one of ambiguous gender. Their small, devious smile somehow overshadowed a large, open wound under their right ear pulsing bright red blood onto their robes and out onto the surface of the canvas where a ragged column of brown-red substance hardened on the portrait, frame, and the wall below it. A silvery red magic misted from the wound. The person emitted a soft hiss as the group passed on the opposite side of the hallway.
Their eyelids twitched when Sirius’ voice interrupted, “Ashlys. The first unequivocally insane member of the Black family. Well, probably not the first, but the first whose reputation outlived them. Not their fault, but also not based on merit. Come along. Don’t want your attention to go to their head.”
As the little group carried on, Hermione saw Ashlys lift their chin and narrow their eyes at Sirius, a motion that made her inhale and shiver, though she quickly forgot about it. She resisted the urge to wave the mist out of her face; it was not altogether unpleasant, just unsettling.
They reached their destination in a wide room with a table made from a long slice of what Hermione guessed would be a redwood tree based on pictures she saw in National Geographic when she was younger. The entire wall behind the head of the table was filled with the Black family tree. Because it perfectly filled the wall, she assumed the tapestry must be charmed to re-arrange itself as the family grew. Ornate calligraphy, strangely akin to that on her invitation to Hogwarts five years ago, identified each member of the family underneath a small picture of them. A handful of charred black holes were scattered about the tapestry. The oldest appeared to be somewhere at the turn of the 16th century; the most recent was a ragged gash in the right side of the tapestry and the wall behind it.
“Can’t keep your eyes off it, can you? No one ever can.” Sirius loomed over them. “That spot should be Andromeda, sister to Narcissa Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange. Married a muggleborn. Ted Tonks. No less dangerous than the other two though; maybe even more.”
“Tonks’ mother is a Black?” Harry wondered.
"Was. Dear cousin Bellatrix burned her off the family tree when she found out. Created quite the scene in one of my father’s meetings.”
“Were you there when it happened?” Harry asked.
“No, but I was right after. Had to help clean up and repair everything.” He turned away as his face fell. “I’m glad I wasn’t. It was the last time the sisters were together, and the family went downhill right after it.”
Lost in thought, Hermione placed her finger delicately through the hole in the tapestry into the crater in the wall where Andromeda Black should have been. A sharp jolt ran through her arm, like touching an electric fence, and she jerked it away. Narcissa Black, no, Malfoy stared up with icy blue eyes daring her to touch the family again while Bellatrix Lestrange smirked at her with a knowing look until she willed herself to look away. Lestrange looked nothing like she did in the new Death Eater wanted posters, and that bothered her for some reason.
“It reminds me of Hogwarts in a strange way,” said Hermione at the end of the tour.
Ron gawped at her, “Are you kidding? This is nothing like Hogwarts, unless you mean that it’s old, weird, and sorta epic.”
“If Hogwarts has a tenth of this house’ dark magic in its walls, it’s changed significantly since I’ve been there,” Sirius chuckled.
“No, no, it’s not that.” Hermione waved her hand dismissively. “It has a …fullness of some sort to it. It’s like it’s alive but hibernating; Hogwarts isn’t hibernating though. It’s just pulsing, overflowing its brim with centuries of magic.”
“What version of Hogwarts: A History have you been reading, ‘Mione?”, said Harry. “I was with you til the hibernation part.”
“You’ve been hanging out with Luna again, eh?” Ron poked at her.
Hermione rolled her eyes and sighed as the boys sauntered back into the kitchen. There weren’t many people who she could discuss the experience of magic with. She assumed it was raw magic and was just beginning to understand that most witches and wizards did not feel or see it the way she did. Unfortunately, Luna Lovegood was someone who did, though Hermione was loathe to admit it and had mixed feelings about entertaining Luna’s eccentricities so that she could talk about it. Still, the visible and tangible magic was what had made her long to go to Hogwarts in the first place, and it was what would entice her to many more things in the coming years.
Sirius turned before following the boys and looked straight into her eyes. “You’re right, though, Hermione. Grimmauld Place is like Hogwarts. All the old pureblood estates are. Or perhaps it’s more correct to say that Hogwarts is like them. Ancient magic is in these buildings – whether it is dark is not the question. They are alive because they can’t help it. Their families are overflowing with repressed magic and their houses soak it up. And every building answers to master, which is generally the head of the family - although sometimes it's the most powerful family member instead.”
Hermione remembered reading something about stone soldiers which would mobilize at the Hogwarts headmaster’s command. “Like Dumbledore controls Hogwarts?”
“Yes, although I’m certain if one of the heirs of the four founders returned, the building would abandon him in a heartbeat.”
“And you command Grimmauld Place?”
“For now.” That was the most lucid and earnest she would ever see him.
Of course, the pureblood houses were like Hogwarts. That many of them pre-dated it and therefore that Hogwarts was perhaps modelled upon them should have been obvious to her. Hogwarts: A History was practically a reader of pureblooded education ambitions, now that she thought about it. What wasn’t? Diagon Alley, Gringotts, the Wizengamot all began as pet projects of the Sacred 28. The other Ministry divisions and its slum wards were boons from them to halfbloods, squibs, and displaced Irishmen. World Quidditch and other international collaborations were invented to buy the loyalty of the developing middle wizarding class in Britain. So that evening as Arthur Weasley, Tonks, and Lupin passed a bottle of firewhiskey back and forth in front of the fire blabbering about the imminent fall of pureblood supremacy, Hermione sank deep into her chair, glowering into her butterbeer. Pureblood supremacy was systemic throughout the entire existence of the wizarding world, and she doubted any of them could see that. Maybe they wouldn’t even want to if they could. If the bloody Order didn’t see it, there was no way that winning the war against Voldemort would uproot it.
Halfway through a defeated sigh, Hermione dumped her drink on her lap as she scrambled to grope for her wand. A head of long, tumbling, dark hair appeared with a pop in the fireplace. Framed by roaring green floo flames under the Black family crest on the mantle, the angry eyes from Bellatrix Lestrange’s wanted poster stared down the three closest to her. Magic flexed, the walls bowing out and caving back toward the fireplace.
Her voice sliced coldly through the room, “Nymphadora!”
“Merlin, mum!” Tonks lazily crossed her ankles on the footrest in front of her. “No need to yell. I’m right here – and was enjoying my evening, I might add.”
Tonks’ mom. It was Andromeda Tonks, not Lestrange. Hermione relaxed a shaking hand that still hadn’t found her wand and let out a silent breath.
“You promised your father and me that you would be over for dinner at 6. It’s 9:30. Your worried father called on the Ministry to see if your team had returned safely from Romania but was told you were actually off early. And you’re here at the bloody Order of the fucking Phoenix headquarters in this shithole – “
“Andy, it’s not so bad now. Why don’t you let yourself in and have a look around?” Sirius butted in. Hermione could tell he was oblivious to the house gyrating with magic.
Deeply wild, umber eyes turned toward him. The house flexed again as purple and yellow sprung from the walls and rushed to be redirected up as a fountain in the middle of the room. “What kind of fool are you to invite someone like me into your shell of a home for your shell of a life? You are as much of a hypocrite and a coward as the rest of them.”
The house trembled with these words, but the head swiveled back toward Tonks and continued speaking in a highly threatening tone. “It’s your father’s birthday tomorrow. You’ll be over for tea if you expect to have a place to stay between missions when you command the special ops unit. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, mum.” A frozen Tonks nodded, hair flushing dark blue.
The head spun back into the flames, which returned to their normal glow, and the room was silent. The magic collapsed, and the crestfallen house let it slink away to slumber again in the hallways. Hermione stole a glance at Sirius, whose eyes were locked on the ornamental designs in the ceiling’s corner, now aware but unseeing of the magic dying back into the creases of the house.
“I better go now.” Tonks sat down her unfinished drink, stood quickly, summoned her robe, and strode out of Grimmauld Place before conversation continued. It was the same as always in that no one said a word about the raw magic.
Truthfully, the breakout at Azkaban turned out to be a bit of a letdown. No sign of the Death Eaters was seen for many months, and they receded into everyone’s subconsciousness. The Quidditch World Championships came and went without incident; Diagon Alley overflowed with back-to-school shoppers; London reported an economic upturn for rural muggle villages; and Harry remained un-attacked. By the time the Hogwarts Express reached the school, a glum uneasiness – much like the raw magic - was simply part of their existence but went mostly unmentioned.