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Chapter Text

Hermione Granger wasn't born with a bad heart.

She was born with a heart of gold.

Fierce. Loyal and righteous. She was Gryffindor made flesh—sharp as a blade, brave to the point of recklessness, and stubborn enough to break the world in two if it meant protecting those she loved. The swotty best friend of the Chosen One. The bookish Muggleborn girl who knew every answer but never acted like she was above anyone else. The Golden Girl. The brightest witch of her age.

She fought for the light. She was the light.

Righteousness radiated from her, even on her worst days. She was the sun—brilliant, generous and impossible to ignore. She burned with purpose. She was loved, and she loved back just as fiercely. Her friends. Her family. But above all else, him.

Harry.

He was her center. Her constant. Her brother in everything but blood. He was her sun, too and together, they kept each other shining.

Harry wasn't just her best friend.

He was the boy who had offered her his hand in friendship when others mocked her. The boy who stood beside her from the moment a twelve-foot troll nearly killed her in a bathroom—who chose her, again and again, even when it would've been easier not to.

When the school turned on him during fourth year, when whispers followed him through the corridors and even Ron faltered in his faith, Hermione never left his side. She believed in him when no one else did. She stood by him through the whispers of madness, through the Triwizard Tournament and its horror, when the goblet spat out his name and the world turned against him.

She'd watched the light dim in his eyes, watched the toll of it all weigh heavier on his shoulders with every year. And still, she stayed.

She was there when Umbridge carved words into his skin with that infernal quill—when he clenched his jaw and bore the pain in silence, as if he deserved it. They'd sat side by side in the shadows of the common room, dabbing dittany onto each other's hands, trying to make the pain disappear, even when they both knew the scars would never fade.

They didn't need words. They just understood.

Together, they fought their way through the Department of Mysteries. Faced Death Eaters, prophecy, loss. She held him when Sirius died. Held his grief as fiercely as she held him.

They bled together, wept together, fought beside one another as children forced to become warriors. When everything felt like it was falling apart, they looked to each other—steadfast, unshakable.

Then came the Horcrux hunt.

God, the Horcrux hunt.

Three teenagers living like fugitives. Three cold, hungry and exhausted teenagers. Terrified of every sound outside the tent. And yet—even then, even as the fear crept in and the road stretched on endlessly—Hermione never left Harry. Not once did she even consider it. Not even when Ron did.

She'd watched Harry crumble under the weight of fate. She'd seen the haunted look in his eyes when he stared into firelight, wondering if they would survive. She'd wrapped him in arms full of understanding, reminded him who he was when he started to forget.

In turn, he held her when she sobbed over her parents, over everything they'd lost. He'd brought her water when her hands shook too badly to cast spells. He called her brilliant, called her brave and told her, with reverent honesty, that he couldn't have done any of it without her.

They weren't just friends. They were home to each other.

He was her compass. Her anchor. The one person who saw all her jagged edges and called them necessary. Who didn't flinch from the fire in her, but matched it with his own.

He was the boy who danced with her in a cold tent to chase away the ache in her heart if only for a moment.

The boy who would've died for her without a second thought—and now, he had.

Hermione would never forgive the world for that.

Never forgive fate.

Because Harry wasn't just a symbol. He wasn't just "The Chosen One." He was Harry.

And he was hers.

She clawed her way through that godforsaken war, heart in tatters and soul fraying at the edges, doing what had to be done, believing—desperately needing to believe—that the light would win. That he would win and good would triumph.

Until it didn't.

Until Harry dueled Voldemort in the ruins of the castle courtyard, magic crashing like storms, their spells lighting up the sky like meteors falling to earth.

Until the world shook with the force of it and still, it wasn't enough.

In the end, Voldemort won.

The final spell struck true, and Harry—her Harry—fell.

There was no triumphant speech, no last words and no more miracles.

He wasn't walking away from the killing curse a third time.

Just a boy lying limp and broken on the stone, eyes wide and empty, glasses cracked, his battle won wand slipping from fingers that would never hold it again.

He was exposed and alone. Cold.

The sun had been extinguished.

Hermione's scream tore through the air, high and sharp, slicing through the stillness like a blade. It cracked the silence, fracturing the moment, and echoed off the crumbling castle walls. It was a sound that would haunt the battleground for years—a sound of pure devastation, the kind that settles into your bones and never quite leaves.

It wasn't just a scream. It was the sound of something sacred being ripped apart.

Of the light inside her dying.

And when it died, something else rose to take its place. Something feral and hungry. 

She didn't fight it.

She let the darkness in—opened herself wide and let the grief claw its way into her chest. Let it devour her warmth, her mercy and her hope.

Her heart didn't break. It didn't shatter in the way they described in movies, it simply stopped. It wasn't profound or dramatic or groundbreaking. 

Hermione's heart stopped beating when Harry Potter stopped breathing. It was just a fact, it just was. 

Hermione Granger would not live in a world without Harry Potter. 

She told herself it wasn't a choice. That there was no choice. What else do you do when your entire world is taken from you? When the best part of yourself is murdered in front of your eyes?

He wasn't just her best friend. He was her protector. Her safe place. The boy who held her hand when she was too scared to speak. The one who brought her food when she forgot to eat. The one who made her laugh, even when they were bleeding and running and nearly broken.

He was everything.

And now he was gone.

Murdered.

Harry James Potter was dead.

And with him, the last light in her world. She was operating on borrowed time. 

She couldn't breathe. Didn't want to breathe. Her magic flared violently around her, uncontrolled and lashing out like a storm with no center. She let it rage. Let it consume her.

Everything they had done. Every battle, every sacrifice was for nothing.

So she turned on them.

The Death Eaters in their polished masks and black robes. The cowards who had stood there, unmoving, as a child died at their feet. Not one of them had lifted a wand. Not one had flinched. They just watched him fall and did nothing.

Hermione wasn't sure why she would ever except anything different. These were the people that had been out for his blood since the moment the prophecy came into play. 

They stood there in the name of "blood purity" as if that made them noble. As if their stagnant ancestry made them gods. As if centuries of inbreeding and arrogance gave them the right to decide who lived and who died.

It was all a load of shite.

Harry had never hurt them. Had never hated them. Even when he should have.

He was kind and so terribly loyal. He gave everything, even when he had nothing left to give.

And they let him die.

Hermione's jaw locked. Her magic pulsed. And then she saw her.

Narcissa Malfoy.

Standing apart from the others. Unmasked and horribly pale. She was completely frozen.

Her eyes weren't on Voldemort, nor on Hermione. They were fixed on Harry's body. Her stare was haunted and hollow.

Hermione suddenly remembered the words Harry had hurriedly whispered to her before he left to chase Voldemort through the castle, to lure him away from the children.

Narcissa—She had lied to the Dark Lord to protect her son. The woman who, in the end, had gambled on Harry living not out of love for him, but out of desperate maternal instinct.

And yet it hadn't been enough.

She hadn't tried to save him, but she tried to give him a chance and she had failed.

Hermione saw the anguish on her face, not the grief of a soldier, but the raw despair of a mother watching another mother's child die.

In another life, she might have pitied her. Might have even forgiven her.

But now?

Now, Hermione felt only raw, unbridled anger. Because it didn't matter why or how Narcissa had tried. Harry was still dead.

And they all let him die.

So Hermione rose. Her spine straightened, she raised her wand towards those who had wronged her so thoroughly.

And she struck.

Magic poured from her like blood from a cut, thick and easily flowing. She didn't think. She didn't stop. She let the wrath take over and tore through them like fire through a dry forest. There was no mercy offered. No second chances granted. She showed no hesitation.

This wasn't about war anymore. This was about Harry.

He was gone.And Hermione Granger—the girl with the golden heart, the sun-soaked soul—was gone with him. All that remained was the storm.

Bloodied and bruised, wand arm shaking, she finally reached him. Harry lay still. Eyes open and vacant. Those green eyes—once so full of fire—muted to something hollow.

He was dead. Unfathomably dead.

Hermione collapsed beside him and clutched his hand. Then she disapparated. They landed on a quiet patch of grass in the Forbidden Forest, hidden from the world. Just for a moment.

She stroked his hair, his cheeks, stared into those lifeless eyes and prayed to every god she knew to give him back. Just a moment. Just one chance to say she loved him, to tell him he never asked for too much when he longed for peace. That he was justified in his exhaustion.

She begged. Screamed. Offered everything.

Her life. Their lives. Anything.

But the gods were silent. Harry was not coming back. So, she said goodbye. She closed his eyes with trembling fingers, brushed back his hair, and kissed his forehead."I love you, Harry. To the moon and back and across all the stars in the sky. I love you," she whispered.

But he didn't answer.

Tears fell. She wiped them from his face and unclenched his hand from the Elder Wand. She took the Invisibility Cloak from his back. The weight of it shattered her. Harry would always have given her the cloak from his shoulders. Taking it now felt cruel. Too familiar. Too final.

Harry may not of won his duel against Voldemort but he'd won the Elder wand and with it, a way for Hermione to get him back. 

She'd stop at nothing to get her brother back. 

With the wand in hand and cloak on her shoulders, she stood over him one last time. "This may be the last time I see you," she said, voice breaking. "I'm so sorry, Harry. I swear on my magic I will fix this."

She raised the wand. "Incendio." Bluebell flames rose, devouring the body of the only person she had ever loved with her whole heart. Hermione watched him burn for a minute, then turned away.

The next step awaited.

The Resurrection Stone. She needed to find the place where he dropped it—where he died the first time.

And so, Hermione Granger stalked through the Forbidden Forest like a lioness on the hunt, heading toward death with nothing left to lose only something to bring back.

The Forbidden Forest was quieter than it should have been.

Every crunch of earth beneath Hermione's boots sounded like a scream in the hush between the trees. Wind whispered like ghosts overhead, and somewhere distant, the soft sobs of a world still burning drifted through the underbrush.

But Hermione had no tears left.

Her fists clenched the cloak around her shoulders tighter. The Elder Wand, heavy in her grasp, hummed like it knew what she was about to do. And the hollow inside her pulsed with something ancient. Something final.

She moved like a shadow. Step by step, drawn by the whispered words of Harry's sacrifice—the place he'd willingly gone to die. And when she found it—half-buried in moss, so small, so unremarkable—her breath hitched.

It was nothing. A pebble. A relic. A death sentence.

Hermione knelt, brushing dirt from its surface. She didn't speak, didn't beg. There was no point in doing either, they wouldn't bring Harry back.  She closed her fingers around the stone, and her world turned silent.

Not quiet—silent. As if the world itself held its breath.

Her heart stuttered, and suddenly the forest shifted around her. Pale shapes flickered at the edge of vision—shadows not cast by light. And for a fleeting moment, she thought she saw Harry. Not resurrected or real. But watching.

She didn't call him back. She knew the story of The Three Brothers like the back of her own hand and so, she knew it wasn't more than an echo of her Harry. 

Hermione had no intention to settle for an echo. 

The wind picked up and with it the ground seemed to tremble. A power older than wandlore and blood magic surged up her spine like liquid fire.

The Hallows were hers. All three of them.

The Wand.

The Cloak.

The Stone.

Hermione Granger was the Master of Death.

And she was walking straight into its arms.

Smoke still curled in the sky like the fingers of the dead clawing their way back to the world of the living. The air was thick with ash, blood, and the metallic sting of spent magic. Bodies littered the battlefield like discarded toys—some twitching but most were disturbingly still. The once-grand courtyard of Hogwarts was in ruins.

And yet, from the shattered treeline of the Forbidden Forest, Hermione Jean Granger stepped onto the broken stone, draped in the Invisibility Cloak, Elder Wand clutched in one hand, the Resurrection Stone burning cold in the other. Her heart was hollow, her soul already scorched from loss. She was death walking on two feet.

The moment her eyes landed on him—on Voldemort—something inside Hermione shattered.

There he stood, the monster who had taken everything. The man who had stolen the sun from her sky and left only darkness in its place. His presence reeked of victory, of smug satisfaction, and it made her stomach churn. Her blood boiled, and her vision blurred with a rage so pure it nearly consumed her.

Her heart broke all over again.

Every breath he took was a desecration. Every flicker of movement, every smug shift of his wand hand, was an insult to Harry's memory.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to claw at him until there was nothing left but dust. Her grief was a roaring storm in her chest, but it was the rage—the unrelenting rage—that rooted her to the spot and kept her from collapsing to her knees.

She didn't see a powerful dark wizard. She saw a thief. A butcher. A coward who struck down the brightest soul she had ever known.

And for that, she would make him pay.

Voldemort stood at the center, surrounded by what remained of his loyalists. His pale face twisted into something feral when he looked around at the carnage he inflicted. She dropped the cloak from her shoulders and stocked it into the beaded bag she'd transfigured into a bracelet. She let his snake like eyes fall on her battle worn form. 

Let him see her coming.

She strolled forward with a casualness that made the Death Eaters shift uneasily, a smirk curling at the corner of her mouth. Her hair was wild with blood and debris, eyes burning with the fire of a thousand suns.

"Nice day for a chat, huh, Tom?" Hermione said, her voice steady, sharp as a blade. She smiled not at all kindly.

The name she used landed like a curse.

Voldemort's lip curled, his reptilian eyes red as fresh blood. "You dare speak that name, filth. Mudblood filth!"

Hermione arched a brow. "Well, it takes one to know one, doesn't it?" 

"You insolent—"

"Oh wait." She cut in unflinching. "You're technically a step above me, right? Half-blood and all. Isn't that right, Tom Marvolo Riddle?"

The way she spat the name made even some of the Death Eaters flinch.Voldemorts eyes narrowed, his wand twitching menacingly in his hand, not quite raised at her yet but not held idly either. "Foolish girl. What do you hope to gain from this? Surely you haven't come to surrender."

Hermione chuckled, it was a low, bitter sound. Her response was spat dryly. "Surrender? I'd sooner lay with a basilisk—yours is dead by the way—than kiss the top of your decaying feet." She tutted. "Muddy as my magical blood may be to you, my muggle blood runs pretty fucking blue and my grandmere taught me to, and I quote, ‘never bow to those below my station’."

Voldemort's lip curled in disgust. His rage was evident in the way his shoulders were pulled taught, the white iron grip he held on the stolen wand in his hand. "Preposterous."

Hermione took a single step closer to him, calm as the sea before a storm. "Touchy, aren't we? Poor little orphan Tom. Not a sickle to his name, scrabbling for power like a rat in a storm drain. Must've been exhausting pretending you were worth something in either world."

His hands clenched around his wand. The Death Eaters watched silently, as if hypnotized.

"Keep talking, mudblood, and the only thing you'll earn is your death." He hissed, his forked tongue flicking out from his cracked lips, something that reminded Hermione distinctly of Barty Crouch Jnr. She shivered in response to the foul memory. 

Hermione stopped a few paces away from him, utterly unfazed. It was all going to plan after all. He was for once, giving her absolutely everything she wanted. "Oh no not death! Anything but that."

She tilted her head and laughed. "That's a bold threat, coming from a man with...hmm what is it now? An eighth of a soul left?" she said, "and less dignity than a flobberworm. Spare me the theatrics, Tom."  She shrugged. Like nothing regarding their confrontation really mattered, in the end it didn't really. 

She stepped into the circle of scorched earth where Harry had fallen not long ago, her boots crunching on charred stone. Her voice lowered. "Let's be real, Tom not everyone is as terrified of death as you are and I've likely got more magic in my pinky toe than you've got left in that decaying scarecrow of a body."

"Lies! I would have felt it. Seen it!"

"Felt it? You?" She stepped even closer, daring him to strike. "You didn't even notice when your precious snake got its head lopped off. You didn't feel the locket scream or the cup shatter. You're too empty to feel anything." She drawled, rolling her eyes. "You're a ghost with a God complex. A walking corpse if you will and I know it. I've seen what's left of you— nothing but fear and hate."

His face contorted, eyes blazing with disbelief. "LIES!" he roared, stepping forward, his wand raised. "YOU KNOW NOTHING!"

"All your Horcruxes are gone, Tom. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. You're a shell of what you once were, and I have it on good authority that deaths waiting to collect his dues."

"LYING FILTH! YOU KNOW NOTHING!" He bellowed. His rage was rolling off him in waves, the raw magic filling the air was making it difficult to breathe. It didn't matter. None of it did. 

Not when she knew the death blow was coming. 

Hermione met his eyes, cold and unyielding as his wand was aimed at her. She could feel the curse on the tip of his tongue, it was coming and she would not be afraid. 

She was Hermione Jean Granger and she would not be afraid. She would not back down or yield a single step to him, she stood stock still and smiled, all teeth and no kindness. 

The smile of an unhinged woman welcoming the final breath. 

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

The green light rushed toward her like a rolling storm, and Hermione did not run. Did not yield or flinch. 

She closed her eyes.

There was no fear. No panic. No resistance.

Only acceptance.

She welcomed death like an old friend, like slipping into warm water after a year in the cold. It kissed her skin and wrapped itself around her bones, and for the first time since Harry fell, she could breathe. Really breathe.

She had planned for this. Had hoped for this. Death would mean reunion. An end to pain.

And so, when the Killing Curse hit her square in the chest, Hermione Jean Granger did not scream.

She smiled.

Everything vanished.

No sound. No feeling. Just absence.

Then nothing.

White.

A ghostly, endless white.

There was no floor beneath her feet, no ceiling above her. No horizon to break the monotony. The world was bleached into stillness, stripped of sensation, stripped of time. Hermione stood—or maybe floated—for what felt like hours. Days. A lifetime.

There was no Harry.

No voices.

No flame, no shadow.

Just the void.

And slowly, so slowly, the hope she had carried like a flickering candle began to burn out. Her lips parted to call his name, but her voice echoed back with no answer. Was this all there was? Had she miscalculated? Had she failed—again?

But then—

Hands. 

Two of them. Shadowy and jagged, like darkness made solid. They burst from the white beneath her feet and grabbed her ankles with an ice-cold grip. Hermione gasped, but there was no air to draw. She tried to move, to shake them off, but they were relentless. They yanked.

And down she went.

The white peeled away like skin from bone, replaced by black—inky suffocating black—rushing up to swallow her whole.

There was a tearing sensation in her chest, like her soul being reeled back on a hook and her magic itself was screaming in protest.

And just before she blacked out completely, just before the dark overtook her, she felt it. A hum. A pulse. The Resurrection Stone, warm now, burning into her palm like it was alive.

And then she breathed again. Gasped like a newborn, lungs greedy for air.

Her body convulsed on the cracked ground of the courtyard, right where she'd collapsed. Her hand still clenched the Stone, knuckles white.

Her eyes snapped open.

And she knew.

Death was with her.

Chapter Text

The last thing she remembered was green. Not grass. Not leaves. Not even his eyes.

It was the sickly, blinding flash of the Killing Curse. She welcomed it like a lover's touch—arms wide and heart shattered. It was cold and then it was nothing.

And now this.

The silence stretched on, heavy and unnatural. Hermione stood in the muted version of the courtyard, the emptiness pressing in from all sides and yet she didn't feel cold but she didn't feel very warm either. It was like existing in a memory of a feeling—a world suspended between life and death. 

Hermione looked around slowly. There was no pain, no sound or sensation. Just an empty courtyard. The world—or whatever this was—stretched infinitely in every direction, it looked almost the same as it did before she died. 

But there was no battle here, no death or destruction. She wasn't scared. She didn't have the energy for fear anymore. All she felt was the hollow ache of loss.

And then she saw him. 

Her breath caught. Her chest twisted.

It was Harry.

But it wasn't.

It hit her like a curse to the chest. For a moment, Hermione truly believed it was Harry. That this was some final mercy or some divine kindness, letting her see him again before whatever came next. She even took a step forward, lips parting, his name on the tip of her tongue.

But she stopped.

It wasn't him because Harry was dead and so was she. 

He stood across from her in the courtyard, tall and familiar in all the wrong ways. He had Harry's build, his mouth, his posture, even that slight lean forward when he listened too intently. His hair was just as black, but not a single strand was out of place. It was combed back smoothly, unnaturally perfect. 

And his eyes.

Oh, God his eyes. Not emerald. Not bright or curious or warm.

Milky white. Opalescent and ancient.

Dead.

Hermione's legs nearly gave out beneath her. She didn't know whether to scream or sob or run into his arms and demand that he come back to life.

But this wasn't him.

This wasn't Harry.

"You're not real," she whispered, her voice cracking, raw from pain she hadn't yet learned to live with. "You're not him."

The figure gave a slight, almost amused tilt of the head."No," he said simply, his voice was like wind moving through the tress—soft, cold, and full of finality. "But I wear his face for your sake. Familiarity breeds calm or so I'm told."

"You look like him," she breathed, fury and grief sparking in her chest. "But you're wrong. You're wrong."

He didn't flinch. "Good. I'd be insulted if I passed for the real thing."

Her fingers curled into fists. "Is this supposed to be funny? Is this some kind of punishment?"

"Punishment?" he echoed, with a ghost of a smile. "You punished yourself, Hermione Granger. I merely picked up the pieces."

She staggered back a step, mouth dry. "Who... who are you?"

He bowed, elegant and terrible. "I am Death."

The word dropped like a stone into the blank world around them. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest. "You're... you're him. The creator of the Hallows," she said, voice shaking. "Every body fears you, you know?."

"No." He shook his head once. "They fear the idea of me. They fear endings, not me. I am not cruelty. I am not revenge. I am just...inevitability." he gestured to himself with a wave of his hands. 

She stared at him, disbelieving. "And I'm your what? Am I...Master now?"

"You are," Death said, stepping closer. "You gathered the Hallows and united them once more. You faced me with no hesitation and walked into my loving embrace. As such, you belong to me now, and I to you."

Hermione's throat tightened. "I didn't do it to become your Master. I did it for him. I just... I just wanted to see him again."

"I know." His gaze softened—no, not softened, it became less sharp, like a violent current easing for a moment. "Which is why I'm furious."

Hermione blinked. "You're... furious?"

"Yes." Death stepped forward again, voice rising. "Do you have any idea what you've done? You wielded power no mortal has held in centuries, and your first act as my Master was to throw yourself in front of the first killing curse you could find like some common fool! What the hell were you thinking?"

Her lips trembled. "That nothing mattered without him."

A heartbeat's worth of silence stretched on like an eternity.

Finally, Death nodded once. "A cruel truth. And a dangerous one."

Hermione turned her face away. "He was everything to me. From the troll in the bathroom first year to the Department of Mysteries. I stood by him when no one else would. Through Umbridge, through the Horcruxes, through hell. He never left me behind, and I refused to let him go without me, even into death."

"I get it," Death said quietly. "But now I ask you to walk through something worse."

Her eyes flicked back to him, cautious. "What?"

"You are the Master of Death," he said. "And as such, you are granted two things. The first: power."

"Power?" she repeated warily.

"The powers of death or as I like to say—The Raven," Death said, circling her slowly. "You will gain a certain foresight, you won't be a seer it's more a sixth sense. A gut feeling of what's wrong and right. You will have the ability to mimic any voice you hear. To walk through shadows, I like to think of it as them hugging you but I've gotten quite sentimental in my old age. You'll also be able bend the veil between the living and the dead."

She turned to follow him, frowning. "That's an awful lot. And what aren't you telling me?"

"A wise question," Death said, pausing in front of her. "But one I won't answer. Some truths are best learned when it's too late to unlearn them."

"That's not an answer."

"And yet, it is the only one you'll get."

She clenched her fists. "You're infuriating."

"I prefer 'acquired taste' but that's besides the point."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Charming. The second thing?"

"A choice," he said. "You may return to the start of the Battle of Hogwarts to change its course. Have an opportunity to save Harry and all the other souls lost in that pointless battle."

Her breath caught. "Or...?"

"Or," Death murmured, "you may go further back."

He let the silence hang, letting the weight of those words settle in her chest like a stone dropped in water. Hermione stared at him, heart thudding wildly in the stillness. It was an impossible choice and she was sure he knew that. How was she ever meant to choose? To choose between saving everyone she loved or going back to point where she could possibly stop the war from ever happening. "Further back?" she echoed, voice brittle. "How much further?"

Death's milky eyes shimmered faintly, like fog on glass. "May nineteen seventy-nine."

That was before the Potters went into hiding and before Harry was born. Before the first war devoured everything in its path.

"You would return to a world on the edge," Death said, each word heavy with consequence. "A single spark from the fire. The Death Eaters were rising and the Order was trying to hold them back. Tom Riddle had nearly completed his transformation into the creature you knew. The public was watching the storm roll in and doing nothing."

Hermione's knees felt weak. "You want me to go back to the middle of that?"

"I offer only what is already yours," Death said calmly. "A Master of Death is not bound by time. But the further you reach, the more uncertain the return. You could alter everything. You could stop Tom before he becomes Voldemort. You could save Lily and James, spare Harry the prophecy and everyone the war."

 "And if I go back to the battle? To that time?"

"You save your people," Death said. "You bring Harry back. The world spins as it did—with its wounds, with its grief—but with your loved ones still breathing. Still broken but still themselves."

Hermione's hands shook. Her chest felt heavy and every breath was like swallowing sludge. "But if I go back to 1979... I won't know them the same way. Harry might never even exist."

"He might not," Death said, voice low and even. "Or he might exist differently. Without the scar, without the weight of the war on his too young shoulders."

A silence settled between them.

"I can't guarantee you'll find the same faces waiting," Death added. "But you might find them unbroken."

Hermione stared into the ghost of Harry's face—his too-perfect hair, those dead, pale eyes—and felt her chest ache with longing and fear. How was she ever meant to choose? "I hate your face," she whispered, her voice trembling.

Death gave her a soft, knowing smile. "That means you remember his."

"I always will," she said. "He was my best friend. My brother."

Death inclined his head. "Then choose, Hermione Jean Granger. May 2nd, 1998—where the blood still spills—or May 1979, where you might stop it before it begins. But know this: there is no undoing the choice. No third path. You only get to choose once so do it wisely."

She closed her eyes.

Hermione kept her eyes closed, as if doing so might still the tremor in her chest. But her thoughts surged forward like a rising tide—memories unspooling one after another.

Harry, twelve years old, gripping her hand as they faced fluffy. 

Harry, fifteen, hiding the hateful words Umbridge carved into his skin.

Harry, seventeen, silently slipping her his rations as they camped in the woods.

Harry, dying—because the world had demanded he be a symbol, a weapon, a sacrifice.

Tears slipped down her cheeks, quiet and endless."I don't want to fail him again," she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper.

Death, still wearing Harry's shape, tilted his head in that same inhuman way. "Then choose carefully."

Hermione slowly stood, swaying slightly, still trembling from the weight of everything. The magic inside her hummed with potential now—like lightning waiting to surge. She could feel it in her bones, this new power, sharp and restless and utterly alien. It was intoxicating... and terrifying.

The Raven's gifts. Shadow-walking. Sound-mimicking. Foresight.

Tools. Weapons. Or perhaps curses.

She forced herself to look at him—at it—and stared into those pale, hollow eyes."I want to save him," she said. "But not just him. Not just the ones we lost in this war. We've been putting out fires for too long. It's the forest that's burning, not just the trees."

Death smiled, and for a fleeting moment, he looked more like himself—like the ancient entity he truly was. "You understand."

Hermione sucked in a deep breath. "If I go back to 1979... who will I be? Will I be myself?"

"You will arrive in your body as it is now," Death said. "But time will shape you. You will remember everything of this life but your magic will adapt. You will be... more."

She frowned. "More?"

"You'll be everything a true Master of Death should be." A pause. "but not even I know exactly what you'll become."

That chilled her. But not enough to turn her away. "And what about the Hallows?" she asked. "They made me the Master of Death. Will they still be with me?"

Death's grin widened. "Of course. They are yours now. They will follow you across time and tide. But remember—they are not your salvation, they are your burden."

Hermione gave a short, humorless laugh. "A burden's nothing new."

She looked down at her hands—steady and determined. The same hands that held Harry's after every fight. The same hands that dug graves, that healed wounds and cast Unforgivables when there was no other choice.

She had killed. She had wept. She had broken. And now, she would rise.

Her voice rang clear through the void. "Send me back. May 1979."

For a moment, nothing happened. Then Death stepped forward, slowly raising a hand. The facade around them began to crack, like glass shattering beneath invisible pressure. Fissures spiderwebbed through the space, glowing gold from within.

Hermione's skin prickled, her magic roaring to life like a tempest called home.

"One last thing," Death said, and for the first time, his voice sounded almost...warm. "You cannot save everyone. There will be pain and you will bleed for every inch of the future."

Hermione met his gaze, unwavering. "I know. I'm not afraid."

"You will be."

And then the world fell away.

The courtyard fractured, folding in on itself. Hermione's body lurched, a jolt of magic rushing through her like lightning through a copper wire. She screamed, not in pain, but in sheer force— it felt like being unmade and reborn at once.

And then there was nothing but darkness.

Heat.

A scent of summer grass and woodsmoke.

Chapter Text

The world slammed into her all at once.

Hermione gasped as her feet touched earth, her knees buckling beneath her. The damp moss of the ground beneath her sliced into her hands as she hit the ground. The air was thick and fresh and alive, far too vivid to be real. A breeze stirred the canopy above, and for a moment, all she could hear was the sound of wind whispering through the leaves.

Then came the memories—violent and unrelenting.

She was back. The same forest where she'd once hidden, scavenged and bled. Where she had camped with her best friends. Where she had last seen Harry smile—danced with him for the first and final time. Where all her happy memories ended. 

And now... she was back.

Her stomach twisted and her heart pounded as the weight of the world itself settled over her. This wasn't just another place. It was the place. Where bonds forged in death defying circumstances were broken and Hermione was left to pick up the pieces. 

Her heart burned something fierce. 

Then it happened.

The power struck her like a heavy hit to the gut. She gasped again, but not from fear. From sensation or too much of it. Her body arched, limbs trembling as the forest exploded into new clarity. Every sound, every flicker of life surged through her. She could hear the pulse of insects beneath the bark of trees. The scratch of beetle feet across moss. She could feel magic in the air—old, thick magic humming through the roots of the forest like a forgotten song.

Her eyes snapped open, and the world was different.

The shadows moved differently now. They were deeper, more alive. Her vision adjusted not just to light, but to magic. The forest around her pulsed with ancient magic. She blinked, and saw trails of it weaving through the trees like strands of silk.

She had become something else. Something not entirely human anymore.

The Master of Death.

She stood slowly, unsteady but not afraid. Her shadow stretched long behind her, even though the sun was hidden behind the clouds. Hermione knew what she needed to do. 

She whispered, "Come." The shadows listened. They parted, curling like smoke, and from the void stepped Death.

He emerged soundlessly, wearing Harry's face like a borrowed suit. And it hurt—she knew it would and she flinched at the sight of him. Even though she knew, even though she'd told herself a thousand times when she first saw him that it wasn't actually Harry, her heart still ached when she looked at him. 

Because it could have been. From the length between his eyes to the curve of his mouth, and the slope of his nose; it could have been Harry.

But it wasn't.

His eyes were the first betrayal. Pale and Milk-white. Completely blank. They weren't Harry's eyes,

there was no emerald green, no glimmer of humor or warmth. Just an endless, bone-deep lack. The hair was wrong, it was too neat, combed back with an unnatural precision. His clothes were sharp and black and clean, as though no dirt would ever dare cling to him. The light didn't touch him and he cast no shadow.

Hermione swallowed, her throat tight. "You still look like him."

"I know." His voice was quiet—gentle, almost—but it echoed too far and too wide. Like it came from under the earth and over the stars at the same time. "Would you prefer another face?"

"Yes," she whispered. "It's a good reminder of what needs to be done but I don't think I can bear it much more."

Death inclined his head. "As you wish." Suddenly his whole frame began to ripple, like the surface of water when its prodded and magic seemed to roll off him in waves. 

It went on like that for a long moment before Hermione was staring into a face she'd never seen before. 

She missed Harry's face but she was glad she didn't have to look into eyes that didn't belong to him any longer, didn't think she could handle it if she had too. 

His face was all sharp contrasts. He had high cheekbones that cut shadows across his skin and lips too soft for the severity of the rest of him. His eyes were still that empty white but they now held a certain degree of depth but carried no warmth; they seemed to watch rather than see. A faint beard shadowed his jaw, giving the impression of someone halfway between man and boy. Black curls framed him in disarray, the kind of hair that made the darkness cling closer. He was beautiful, yes—but in the way of something not entirely alive. 

He held the sort of beauty that came with destruction. The beauty of storms and fires. 

They stood in silence for a beat as Hermione observed his new face, as she took in all the small changes. Then she straightened her spine and spoke again. Ever the determined one. "Thank you but I need to know how this works. I have time, yes, but how do I fit? I can't just walk into the Wizarding world in 1979. I need a name, I need—"

"—a story," Death finished for her. "Yes. And you have one."

He stepped closer, and though his feet made no sound on the forest floor, she felt the earth shift beneath him. Like the world was making space for him. "You are not quite what you were, Hermione Granger. You have always believed yourself Muggleborn, and you are... not wrong. But you are not entirely right, either."

Her brows furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"You are descended from both magic and myth. Six generations of wizards and witches stand behind your parents who were both squibs but knew nothing of magic. Pureblood, by the measure of the world you're about to enter. Your father's line...not viable, but very powerful. A branch of France's oldest magic. A descendant of Vinda Rosier. Your mother's line is more complicated. She was the only child of Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel, though she never claimed the name."

Hermione stared at him, her heart stumbling. None of that could be true. It wasn't possible! 

"That's not possible," she said hoarsely. "My parents were... normal. They were both dentists. They—"

"They did what had to be done," Death interrupted softly. "Your father was obliviated at eleven when he received no Beauxbatons letter and was sent to an orphanage. Your mother ran from a world that was eating itself alive. But blood remembers. Magic remembers. You were always meant to be more than what the Ministry decided you were."

Hermione sank to the forest floor, her breaths came in shaky inhales. Her thoughts spun around in her mind like leaves in a storm.

Technically Pureblood. Rosier. Flamel. It sounded like fiction. Like she'd stepped into one of the books she used to lose herself in as a child.

Death crouched beside her, unnervingly still. "You will use this history to your advantage. Claim your lineage. You will find that despite your name, the most dangerous families will become your closest allies. The Blacks. The Lestranges. Even the Malfoys, perhaps."

"Why would they trust me?"

"Because you are my chosen. Because magic sings in your veins. And because no one lies quite so well as the desperate."

Hermione looked up, her voice barely more than a breath. "And if I fail?”

"You won't."

"You don't know that."

"I do. You've already done the impossible twice." Death's eyes gleamed. "Besides... I'll be with you every step of the way. You need only call for me."

The shadows shivered and the wind hushed.

And for the first time since she'd been yanked from the void, Hermione felt steady.

Because the world had taken Harry, but it hadn't destroyed her. She would tear it apart before it ever got the chance.

Still something wasn't sitting right with her. "The Blacks and the Lestranges," she repeated, her tone colder than the forest floor beneath her. "You expect me to align myself with them? To work with people who will become monsters?"

Death watched her quietly. The light still refused to touch him and the shadows bent around him like they were eager to touch her instead. "I expect you to be clever," he said, evenly. "You didn't come back to play by your old rules, Hermione. You came back to win."

She surged to her feet, hands balled into fists at her sides. "You don't understand. You don't know what they did to me—what she did."

"I know everything," Death said. "I was always there."

That stopped her cold. Her fury faltered but only for a moment. "I will not play tea-party with the people who stood by as children were butchered!" she hissed. "I will not dine beside the woman who held a blade to my throat while I begged for my life. I will not save Bellatrix Lestrange."

Death was completely still and silent while she raged, whilst he let her rage. 

"If you ask me to do that," Hermione continued, her voice trembling with fury and grief, "I swear to you, I will end myself faster than you can blink. I will burn this entire plan to the ground. I will not pretend she's worth saving."

There was silence again, it was heavy and sacred.

Then Death bowed his head."Then she will not be saved," he said, with a flicker of something strange, approval perhaps. "Whatever my Lady wishes."

Hermione stared at him, breathing hard, every muscle in her body pulled taught and tight like a rope ready to snap.

"Do not mistake me," he continued, more seriously now. "I ask you to move through these circles, to earn their trust not to love them. Many of the people you will meet are not yet beyond saving. The world hasn't carved their paths in the stars. You could change the course of them."

"I'm not here to redeem the wizarding aristocracy," she said bitterly.

"No," Death agreed. "But you are here to make choices. And if you choose wisely, you might stop others from falling into the fire."

Hermione turned away, her heart was aching with the weight of too much hope and too much rage.

The idea of walking into a house with Bellatrix Lestrange in it made her stomach twist. But Regulus Black wasn't Bellatrix. And Andromeda had broken away. Narcissa hadn't yet sullied herself so low as to allow Voldemort and death eaters to reside in her home. There were pieces still loose. There was still time.

She didn't want to change them—not for their sake.

But if it meant changing the war... if it meant saving Harry before he was even born...She would do what she had to.

Even if it meant drinking poison with a smile. "Fine," she said at last. "But I won't forget who they are. And I won't hesitate to stop them if they begin down the same path."

"I would expect nothing less," Death murmured, stepping back into the shadows.

Hermione stood alone again beneath the trees, the weight of her purpose settling into her bones.

The war hadn't truly started yet.

But this time, it would end on her terms.

Chapter Text

The sun over southern France was warmer than the one she remembered. Not just in temperature but in weight. Everything felt just a little bit lighter under the sun.

Hermione stood on a rise overlooking a quiet valley, her boots sinking slightly into soft soil. The air was thick with the scent of lavender, the hum of bees drifting lazily over the wildflowers. Golden light spilled over olive trees and stone paths. It was beautiful—too beautiful. Her eyes burned from the contrast.

The Forest of Dean had been dense and watchful. Here, the world breathed gently as if it didn't yet know what it had to fear.

Down below, nestled between the arms of two low hills, stood a modest stone cottage, framed by climbing roses and ivy-covered shutters. The roof sagged slightly under age, and smoke drifted from a crooked chimney. It was, undeniably, the home of someone who had long since stopped fearing time.

It was almost enough to make her turn around.

She didn't belong here—not like this. Not with everything she carried. The ghosts. The scars. The power.

But she walked forward anyway.

Each step toward the Flamel home felt heavier than the last. Her heart thudded in her chest like war drums. She wasn't sure what she feared more: rejection, or acceptance. Being believed... or not.

When she reached the front path, she paused.

Then she raised her hand and knocked once.

There was no sound. The door absorbed the contact like ripples in water. A moment passed.

Then the door opened.

It swung inward without so much as a creak, revealing a hallway bathed in soft candlelight and standing there, framed by the glow of a thousand tiny enchantments, were two figures she had only ever seen in dusty books and spoken of in hushed tones.

Nicholas Flamel looked old in the way that stone looked old—like he had been carved by time and simply endured it. His face was deeply lined, but not fragile; his eyes were sharp, gold-flecked, and curious. He wore a robe stained with ink and something faintly metallic, and he regarded her like a father would he wish wayward child. 

Perenelle was luminous.

She was tall and angular, her cheekbones carved like sculpture, her silver hair braided into a crown that shimmered faintly in the candlelight. Her eyes, unlike her husband's, held no curiosity only recognition. She stepped forward like a woman who had been expecting this moment for centuries.

"Ma petite," Perenelle said gently, her accent soft but certain. "You look like hell."

Hermione swallowed hard. "I feel like it too."

Nicholas narrowed his eyes. "We felt your magic before you crossed the wards. It feels ancient and wrong. Terribly wrong. And yet..."

He stepped forward and peered at her, not into her eyes but through them. Hermione felt his magic brush against her own. It recoiled for a moment then bowed.

He blinked. "Ah. Lady Death."

She flinched at the name. "Please don't call me that."

"But it's what you are," Perenelle said gently. 

Hermione didn't answer. She wasn't sure she had the words or even knew where she would begin trying to explain.

Perenelle's gaze dipped to her cloak, her boots, the trembling in her fingers. She stepped aside and gestured inward. "Come, blood of my blood. You carry something old with you. Let us listen to it."

~~~~~~

The sitting room was unlike anything Hermione had ever imagined.

There were no grand artifacts, no piles of gold, no glittering elixirs glowing with immortality. Instead, there were books on endless shelves, scrolls wrapped in faded twine, manuscripts bursting from drawers and tucked behind vases. The scent of sandalwood mixed with parchment and something more obscure—mercury and honey.

An ancient grandfather clock ticked in a rhythm that made her head ache. Time moved differently here, or maybe not at all. 

Not for those who lived here anyways. 

Hermione didn't sit. Her spine was too stiff and her nerves too frayed.

"I know this will sound mad," she began, her voice hoarse, "but I see no use in lying to you. I've come from the future, from a time where there is a terrible war. A war we lost long before it ended."

Perenelle said nothing. Neither did Nicholas.

Hermione's hand twitched. Then, with shaking fingers, she raised her wand to her temple.

"I don't know if I'll be able to explain with words, not yet anyways so If you have a pensieve I'll show you."

Perenelle raised her hand and one came floating in to the room. 

Hermione was awestruck. 

She drew her memories out slowly—long, silvery strands that shimmered like threads of sorrow. They floated through the air before sinking into the basin Perenelle summoned with nothing more than a flick of her wrist.

The moment they touched the glassy surface Hermione slumped back into a worn armchair. 

She showed them everything. 

Harry's body, broken in the dirt.

Ron weeping over Fred.

The courtyard burning.

The final duel.

The boy who lived—dead.

Hermione's scream as she fell to her knees beside him.

Then earlier.

The Department of Mysteries.

Sirius falling.

Dumbledores body on the ground.

The locket. 

Her screams echoing through Malfoy Manor.

The knife held to her throat. 

Hermione couldn't speak. She sat frozen as the memories were watched, centuries of pain in a basin. Her hands shook as her magic writhed beneath her skin.

When they came out of the pensieve, the silence was thick.

Perenelle looked pale, her hands trembling in her lap. Nicholas was utterly still, but there was something cracked in his expression, as though a piece of the world had just come undone.

"You... lived this?" Nicholas asked softly.

Hermione nodded.

"And Voldemort?" Perenelle whispered. "You said he tore his soul?"

Hermione took a breath. "He created Horcruxes. Seven of them. He used murder to split his soul and anchored   those pieces of his soul into objects so he couldn't truly die."

Nicholas turned away, looking sick. " That's unnatural, foul magic. Even death has rules."

"He broke all of them," Hermione said bitterly.

"And the Philosopher's Stone," Perenelle added, her voice barely a whisper. "You said we... gave it to Albus. That he used it to bait Voldemort?"

Hermione met her gaze. "Yes. In 1991 he used it to lure Voldemort out knowing Harry would try to stop Voldemort. It was a... test of sorts. Harry was only eleven."

Perenelle closed her eyes. Her face filled with grief for a life she had not lived. 

"We are old friends," Nicholas murmured, voice hollow. "He has worked with me on many alchemical projects. How could he betray me in such a way?"

"He claimed his actions were for 'The Greater Good'" Hermione responded sadly. It was hard to think of her old Headmaster, it always brought up feelings she wasn't quite ready to face. 

For a moment no one spoke.

Suddenly Perenelle rose from her seat and stepped forward, her eyes dark and gleaming. She reached out toward Hermione who flinched slightly but let her continue on, and gently unwrapped her cloak, revealing the scars beneath. There was an old and silver one on her arm, some faded, others deep and angry. A map of battles fought and lost across her skin.

"My God," she whispered. "You were just a child."

"I didn't feel like one," Hermione said and her voice cracked on the words she had to speak. "Not after the first time I had to kill."

Nicholas closed his eyes and covered his face with one hand.

"I didn't come here for pity," Hermione said, suddenly angry. "I came because I need you. Because I want to stop this before it starts. I want to change the world and I can't do it alone. Plus you're...family, the only family I have in this time."

Perenelle exhaled slowly, then placed a hand on her shoulder.

"You don't have to," she said. "We will help you."

Nicholas nodded. "But... on one condition."

Hermione blinked. "What?"

"You stay," Perenelle said. "For two months. No running and no planning. You live, you heal and you let us teach you."

Hermione opened her mouth to argue but the words caught in her throat.

She was so used to moving. So used to surviving but she couldn't deny that she was exhausted.

More than that, she wanted to be someone's child again. Even if only for a little while.

She nodded.

"Alright," she said. "Two months. Then I go to Britain and the work begins."

Perenelle smiled and pulled her into a gentle, trembling embrace.

And for the first time in what felt like lifetimes, Hermione let herself be held.

~~~~~

The days in the Flamel house passed slowly, like syrup dripped from a spoon. For the first time in what felt like years—lifetimes really—Hermione wasn't running. There were no Horcruxes to chase here. No Ministry to infiltrate. There was no war waiting just beyond the curtain of the night.

And that terrified her.

She rose each morning with the sun, the unfamiliar quiet of the valley pressing at her from all sides. She helped Perenelle tend the herb garden and sat with Nicholas in his workshop as he taught her about ancient alchemical sigils. She slept in a room lined with dusty bookshelves and silver-inked constellations drawn by hand on the ceiling.

She spoke with them both about her mother, the life she lived before she chose to have her memories of magic wiped and of the life she lived with Hermione. They spoke through tears and clogged throats of how much they all loved her and how desperately they missed her. 

It had only been 5 years since she left the Flamels and even less for Hermione but it felt like lifetimes for all of them. 

Still, no matter how many times Perenelle handed her tea with a smile, or Nicholas paused his notes to ask her opinion, Hermione felt like a blade shoved into a scabbard too small.

She didn't fit into the calmness.

The war was still in her and the clock in her chest was always ticking.

One evening, about a week into her stay, she found herself in the greenhouse at the back of the property which was Perenelle's private sanctuary. Vines crawled up the glass walls, and the air shimmered faintly with preservation charms. Fireflies hovered over blooming nightshade. A soft breeze stirred the petals of a violet thistle Hermione didn't have a name for.

She stood at the edge of the table, her fingers digging into the worn wooden frame. Her magic pulsed just beneath her skin, restless, angry and too loud in her ears.

She didn't hear Perenelle enter until the older woman placed a cup of tea on the table beside her.

"Chamomile," Perenelle said, settling onto the bench. "With valerian. You haven't been sleeping."

Hermione didn't deny it. She sat across from her, cradling the warm porcelain between her palms.

"It's all too much," she said after a moment, her voice low and frayed. "Everything is so heavy. The war, the timeline, the changes I have to make. I thought... I thought if I came back, if I did something, it would feel like a solution."

"And now?" Perenelle asked gently.

"Now it just feels like I've made it worse," Hermione whispered. "I'm not just carrying my mistakes. I'm carrying everyone's." She didn't mean to say it aloud but once the words were out, she couldn't take them back.

"I chose to come here. I chose this power and now I can feel it all the time. Death. Time. It sits in my chest like iron. It hurts to even breathe sometimes."

She looked up then, eyes stinging. "How do I fix the world, Perenelle? How do I fix everything when I'm already breaking?"

For a moment, the older woman said nothing just watched her over the rim of her cup, like she was studying a constellation no one had charted yet.

Then she said softly: "You start by remembering you don't have to fix it alone."

Hermione opened her mouth to protest, but Perenelle silenced her with a raised eyebrow.

"No," she said. "Don't argue. Not with me."

Hermione looked away.

"I know what you are, my raven," Perenelle said, reaching across the table to touch her hand. "Lady of Death. Power older than the world itself but you are still a girl—still human and you are not alone."

Hermione's throat tightened. "You don't understand what this feels like."

"I do," Perenelle said quietly. "I carried the weight of eternity long before I was ready. I watched empires rise and fall while the world changed around me. And Nicholas, he carries more weight than you know. You are not the only one with great powers, my raven."

Hermione didn't know when the tears had started.

"I know your shoulders carry the burden of more than one lifetime," Perenelle continued, her voice was fierce now, eyes alight with fierce fire behind her calm expression, "but let me and your father help you. We are not so incompetent, you know!"

Hermione choked on a laugh through the tears, blinking fast. "You keep calling him my father."

"Because he is," Perenelle said firmly. "We may not of raised you but our daughter did. You are the blood of my blood. I've found you now and I have laid my claim to you. Family should always claim you when it finds you."

Hermione looked down at their joined hands—hers smaller, scarred and trembling. Perenelle's were lined with age, but steady warm. Steady in a way that made something inside her crack and bleed.

"I don't know how to let anyone help me anymore," Hermione admitted quietly.

"Then you'll learn," Perenelle said gently. "Start small. Let us hold some of the weight."

The wind stirred the herbs, the candles flickered in their jars.

Hermione nodded, eyes still damp, but her voice was steadier than before."Alright," she whispered. "But I still have to go back to Britain."

"Even then, You'll still be family. There is nothing in this world that will ever change that. Now you will start referring to us as Maman and Papa." Perenelle said, and smiled.

~~~~~~

The following weeks passed not in urgency, but in a slow and steady rhythm.

Hermione continued to rise early each morning and joined Nicholas in the workshop, a sun-drenched room at the back of the house that smelled permanently of parchment, metal, and a faint tinge of burnt rosemary. There, he insisted on drilling her in the language of alchemy, often while simultaneously crafting multi-layered spells on copper discs or rearranging runes in patterns that made her head ache.

"Magic is a language," he told her one morning, gently pushing a dusty tome across the table. "One that most witches and wizards have forgotten how to speak."

"You mean most people aren't taught to," Hermione muttered, tracing the ink-stained diagrams. "There are classes on runes and arithmancy but there's nothing like this."

Nicholas gave a dry chuckle. "That's fair. But you, ma fille, are very bright and will understand the olde ways in absolutely no time. All you have to do is listen to the magic when it speaks to you."

She smiled despite herself.

In the afternoons, Perenelle taught her how to move with silence—true silence. They practiced shadow-wielding in the olive groves behind the house, learning how to slip between patches of light, how to vanish from the eye without a Disillusionment Charm.

At first, Hermione had no control over it, she had stepped half into a shadow and fell face-first into the lavender bushes more than once.

"This is deeply undignified," she grumbled one evening, as she spat a petal out of her mouth.

Perenelle, lounging nearby in the crook of a tree, sipped from a dainty tea cup and said serenely, "Death never promised you dignity, only power my dear."

"You're enjoying this," Hermione accused her.

"Immensely."

They had dinner together every night. Long, lazy affairs full of old stories, sharp banter, and enough red wine to make Hermione's cheeks glow. Perenelle told her about ancient courts and magical duels fought with words sharper than any wand. Nicholas recounted his brief and ill-fated attempt to teach a herd of centaurs penmanship.

And slowly—so slowly—Hermione began to laugh again.

It came first in bursts. Then in waves.

She laughed until her ribs ached and her eyes watered, until her heart remembered what it felt like not to carry the weight of the world.

She still dreamed of Harry and all her friends and family, of course. Still woke up gasping some nights, reaching for the locket she no longer wore. But in the daylight, the ache dulled. The Flamels gave her a space to breathe and for the first time since she had become the Master of Death, she allowed herself to rest.

But the calendar never stopped turning.

And July 1st came quickly.

~~~~~~~~~

The morning of her departure was quiet.

Hermione stood in her room—a small space tucked into the back of the house, with golden light pooling on the floor from the open window and books on the shelves and stacked two feet high on every free surface. She'd packed her bag carefully. Robes that Perenelle had tailored for her in midnight colours, two spare wands in leather holsters, the invisibility cloak folded with painful reverence.

The Elder Wand tucked in a velvet holster at her side. It felt heavier now. Not just with magic but with purpose.

Downstairs, Perenelle waited by the hearth. She was dressed in royal blue, a wand tucked neatly into her sleeve, her silver braid woven tightly down her back.

"Are you ready?" she asked softly.

Hermione nodded. "As I'll ever be."

Nicholas stood at her side, silent for a moment. Then he stepped forward and handed Hermione a small silver coin etched with ancient runes.

"For luck, we gave your mother a similar one before she left as well." he said.

She smiled at him, it was warm and tender and filled with all the love she held for them both. "She never showed it to me but thank you all the same."

"And to track you," he added casually. "Should you start any fires. You're ours to protect now, even from afar."

Perenelle gave a long, martyred sigh. "Try not to set anything ablaze for at least a week please, I only just stopped worrying so much."

Hermione grinned faintly. "I shan't make you promises. I would hate to break them."

Perenelle stepped forward and took both of Hermione's hands in hers.

"You're about to walk into a den of lions, wolves, and worse," she said. "But remember this, you are not a lamb. You are a raven and you are so very clever. Lady Death."

Hermione's throat tightened. "I'll come back," she whispered.

"Don't you dare die again," Perenelle murmured, her voice fierce. "I love you far too much to loose you so soon."

Hermione gave a tearful laugh. "I'll try... and I love you both too."

And with one last look at the people who had become her family, Hermione turned on the spot and vanished into smoke and wind.

Chapter Text

1st July 1979

Gringotts towered above Diagon Alley, its stone walls casting imposing shadows on the rest of the alley. It was far too familiar for comfort in Hermione's opinion.

Hermione stood at the bottom of its steps, wrapped in dark robes that flowed softly behind her in the morning breeze. Her original wand was tucked into her sleeve; the Elder Wand was nestled to her thigh in case of emergency. She could feel them both pulsing, steady and ready.

She'd been here before, of course.

But never like this.

Today, she wasn't a Muggleborn girl clinging to her heritage and sticking her nose up at arrogant old men and goblins alike.

Today, she was a girl with too much knowledge and well no where to live and that just wouldn't do.

Hermione Flamel.

The name still felt wrong on her tongue but it fit better than she'd expected. Like a blade rediscovering its hilt.

She stepped into the bank.

The great marble hall looked unchanged: towering columns, dark wood counters, golden candelabras suspended in mid-air. But this time, the Goblins turned to look at her before she even approached the desk.

She didn't flinch under their weighted gaze.

"I request a blood inheritance test," she said evenly to the goblin at the entry desk.

The Goblin behind the desk didn't blink. "Name?"

"Hermione Elysande Flamel." It was the name Death had bestowed upon her so no matter how wrong it felt to say, she'd force it out anyways. 

That got his attention. His eyes flicked up and he studied her for one long, unreadable moment then slid from his stool and gestured for her to follow him.

She did.

They led her down a side hall—not into the tunnels yet, but to a private consultation chamber behind a thick iron door. Inside, the walls were lined with filing cabinets that were very likely older than most bloodlines. The desk in the center was obsidian, its surface gleaming like still water. The room was windowless and completely soundless.

A second Goblin was already seated at the desk when she entered, quill in hand. This one was older, sharp-nosed, with thin gold spectacles perched low on his brow.

He looked up at her and spoke with perfect enunciation. "Well met, Miss Pendragon I am Irontooth. Blood inheritance tests require a formal processing fee of six Galleons."

Hermione inclined her head. "Well met, Irontooth. Once I've been granted access to my vaults, the fee will be paid immediately. You have my word."

The Goblin...Irontooth nodded once. "Acceptable. Please be seated."

She lowered herself into the carved wooden chair across from him. A long scroll of parchment was unfurled between them. Irontooth produced a ceremonial dagger with a thin, sharp blade and a handle inlaid with jet.

"Three drops of blood," he said, "placed here."

He slid the parchment toward her, tapping the designated spot with one clawed finger.

Hermione took the dagger without hesitation. The edge bit cleanly into her finger—she barely felt it. She squeezed until three dark crimson drops fell onto the parchment.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the parchment ignited not with fire, but with light.

Gold light glittered along the parchment like starlight, illuminating the room with its soft glow. 

Intricate sigils shimmered into view across the page. Lines of ancestry bloomed outward in fractal patterns—names, houses, titles she couldn't even begin to process. And two at the top, writ large and glowing:

Flamel. Rosier.

Hermione decided she needed to take a much closer look at the parchment. 

Hermione Elysande Rosier-Flamel  

DATE OF BIRTH: 19th September 1979

DATE OF DEATH: 3rd May 1998

DATE OF REBIRTH: May 1st 1957

TITLES: 

Lady Death

Heir Flamel

Heir Presumptive to House Rosier

ABILITIES: 

Hand of Death

Shadow wielding 

Mimic

Foresight

REDACTED 

REDACTED

REDACTED

Occlumency

The list of properties went on and on, not to mention vaults and all the rest. Hermione stared blankly

at the paper...because what! Death did not mention...all of that. 

What in Merlin's name was with all the redactions?

So many people questions. Death will certainly be getting an earful later. 

When she finally slid the paper over to Irontooth he took a moment to look at her before letting his gaze fall down to the parchment. 

Irontooth stared for a while. 

He rose slowly from his seat and walked around the desk, eyes wide.

"This... this is not a trick?"

"No," Hermione said quietly.

He studied the parchment again, lips moving silently as he traced the lines.

"Flamel, Lady Death" he breathed. "You carry very old magic. Blood not seen in this bank for nearly four hundred years. Not since Lord Flamel left these shores." His voice shook. "And Rosier... that is going to be a very difficult situation to manage."

Hermione remained still as he rambled.

"And you," he whispered, "are both. By birthright. That's not even touching on that riveting title you have"

Hermione sat silently for a few minutes, trying desperately to figure out what to say, what she wanted to do, what she needed to do. 

"I don't want to stir up any unwanted attention from the Rosier line just yet as it will hinder some of my plans. Is there a way I can um...hide? Yes, hide that bit of information from public knowledge?" She hedged nervously. 

Irontooth hummed, his sharp nailed finger tapping a steady beat on the desk. "It can be done. For a price of course." 

"I'll pay it. Plus an extra 20 percent of the total cost for your discretion."

Irontooth straightened. His voice changed—deeper and more formal. "Then it is our honour, Heir Flamel, to welcome you to Gringotts. We will escort you to your family vaults immediately."

⸻

They descended into the depths of the bank on a private cart. Not the rickety metal mine carts she remembered—but a smooth, silent vessel carved of black stone and warded with golden runes. The wind whipped through her hair, and the tunnels flashed past in a blur of crystal and shadows.

Irontooth sitting beside her said nothing but he kept glancing at her with something close to awe.

She said nothing either but her hands were clenched in her lap. Because this wasn't just a vault. It was a threshold she was preparing to cross.  

They stopped before a towering set of obsidian doors. No numbers. No keyholes. Just a singular crest: the twin phoenixes of the Flamel line.

"Place your hand on the seal," Irontooth said. "Speak your name."

Hermione stepped forward a her heart pounded in her chest.

She pressed her hand to the cool stone. "Hermione Elysande Flamel."

The doors shuddered before they opened.

Inside, the air was colder but not lifeless. The vault was cavernous, carved into crystal-veined rock, with high shelves stacked with artifacts and weapons. Ancient armor lined the walls. Tomes older than Hogwarts sat in sealed glass cabinets. And in the center, like the eye of a storm, a chest embossed with the Flamel sigil shimmered with protective runes.

There was stacks upon stacks of galleons, the coins tossed carelessly across shelves, on the ground. Everywhere. 

More galleons than she had ever seen in her entire life. 

It was overwhelming.

Hermione stepped inside and felt her magic expand.

It reached toward the artifacts. Toward the stone. The vault welcomed her like a lost daughter returned.

For a moment, she couldn't breathe.

She stood there in the stillness, surrounded by the weight of her inheritance, and realized:

There was no going back.

Hermione Granger, Muggleborn war heroine, had been laid to rest.

Here stood Hermione Elysande Flamel.

And the wizarding world would not survive her.

~~~~~~

The vault door sealed behind her with a low, final thud.

Hermione didn't speak as Irontooth led her back to the surface—her head was still spinning from what she'd seen. The vault had swallowed her whole. The sheer size of it was nothing short of astonishing. She carried the key now—not just a literal one, but a symbolic one too. She was no longer tethered to the legacy of Hermione Granger. The vault had seen to that.

Now came the reckoning.

Before she departed the cart Irontooth advised her she would need to return within the month to go over account statements and the like and that he would be her account manager going forward if she wished. Hermione failed to see a reason why she shouldn't agree, Irontooth had been rather polite for a goblin so she agreed before parting ways. 

She stepped into the atrium, the sound of Gringotts washing over her like a crashing tide: boots on marble, the low growl of Goblin murmurs, the jingle of coin. Her fingers brushed the edge of the velvet pouch at her waist. She hadn't taken much, just a few enchanted documents, a ring with the Flamel crest, and enough Galleons to carry her through her first month navigating wizarding society.

Her head ached and her magic prickled beneath her skin, as if uncertain how to settle in this new world.

She barely noticed the man leaning against one of the far pillars until he pushed off and stepped into her path.

"About time," he drawled, lips curling with something between amusement and expectation.

Hermione stopped.

The man had dark hair, a little longer than fashionable, and silver-threaded at the temples. His robes were expensive and draped like tailored shadows, and there was a languid grace to his posture. He was self-assured, and perhaps slightly dangerous. He held a cigarette loosely between two fingers, the smoke curling lazily upward.

But it wasn't that which made her stomach lurch.

It was his face.

The resemblance was impossible to miss. His sharp cheekbones, that aristocratic jawline, the tilt of his grin—it was Sirius Black in older form. Refined, sure, but unmistakably of the same blood.

Hermione's hand twitched instinctively toward her wand.

Even the same eyes—grey like wet ash, watching her like he already knew what she would say before she said it.

"I—" she started.

He gave her a knowing look. "Yes, I've been told I bear a striking resemblance to my favourite nephew."

Her brows rose. "So you're—?"

"Alphard Black," he said, dipping his head with a practiced half-bow. "The one that disappeared. The embarrassment. The free thinker, if we're feeling generous."

Hermione blinked. "You were disowned."

"Yes," he said with a smile far too pleased with itself. "But I won't bother to ask how you know that. I think we both know things we probably shouldn't. Quite curious, isn't it?"

She didn't laugh, but her lips twitched. She studied him more carefully now, his posture, the way his eyes tracked everything. He looked alert and sharp. But there was something else beneath the charm. A tension in his expression, like he had been waiting for her.

And then it hit her like a sack of bricks. 

He wasn't surprised to see her.

He had been expecting her.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "How did you know I'd be here?"

His smile deepened. "Let's just say I've been keeping an eye on... important arrivals."

"That's vague," she said flatly in response.

"It's also true."

There was something in the way he said it, his tone was light and casual, but he was too measured. Too aware.

He knew something.

She didn't press the issue just yet but the thought lingered like an itch in the back of her mind.

He knew far more than he was letting on and it made her feel off kilter, like she was starting on the back end. 

He didn't make sense. 

A memory stirred in her mind—Trelawney's trembling voice, Firenze's gaze in the forest. Hermione had always dismissed Divination as nonsense. Which was highly likely as divination is nonsense, one can't open an inner eye they do not have. 

But. 

But he knew who she was. He knew she was going to be at Gringotts today. 

He knew too much. 

He looked like someone who understood patterns. Who knew exactly where to look for them.

"Regardless," Alphard said, interrupting her thoughts, "Lady Death has arrived, and Diagon Alley will be buzzing with the news of Heir Flamel before nightfall."

Lady Death. 

He definitely knew a lot more than he was letting on. 

Unlucky for him Hermione was like a dog with a bone when it came to figuring out puzzles. She would get to the bottom of Alphard Black. 

"I didn't do anything," she muttered.

"You didn't need too," he replied. "The Ladies are like sharks, they'll circle new blood the first chance they get."

Hermione sighed. "Brilliant."

He tilted his head, expression softening just a little. "Come. You look like someone who could use something sweet."

She blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Ice cream," he said, gesturing out toward the Alley. "Florean Fortescue's is just across the street. I'll even buy. Though it may damage your new and shiny reputation."

There was very clearly an ulterior motive. Not an obvious one, not one that the untrained eye would pick up one. But there was something in his eyes. Interest, yes, but not the leering sort she's dealt with occasionally in the past. He was no Cormac McLaggen. It was more curiosity, perhaps a sort of recognition. 

And perhaps... company wouldn't be so bad.

"Alright," she said finally. "But if this is a trap, I'll hex your kneecaps backwards."

He looked delighted. "Merlin's bones, you're even better than I expected."

Hermione didn't answer but for the first time all day, she smiled.

Chapter Text

1st of July

Fortescue's hadn't changed.

The awning still fluttered in the warm summer, striped in pale blue and gold. The tables were still cluttered with slowly melting sundaes, chattering parents, and bright-eyed kids trying to drink in every ounce of freedom before the next school year. Everything glittered under the bright July sun like it was enchanted to glow to match the warm sunshine. 

Hermione hated how much it unsettled her.

Everything was too normal.

She felt like a ghost pressing through a photograph visible only to herself, too heavy for the warm light in the world around her.

She hadn't sat at this table in nearly 3 years if time still meant anything. She remembered being here with Harry, the way he grinned at her with ice cream on his nose, laughing even when there was a war on the horizon. She remembered safety. A brief moment of it, anyway.

Now, she sat under the striped shade, wrapped in high-collared robes, high lace gloves and sharpened wariness. Her posture was perfect, her face impassive but her eyes flicked constantly across the crowd. She scanned for faces she recognized, voices she remembered or someone who hadn't aged yet. Someone who'd died too soon.

She didn't know what would be worse, seeing someone she theoretically knew or seeing no one at all. It all made her feel so conflicted and confused. 

Most of all though, she just felt uncomfortable. 

Alphard Black, for his part, looked completely at ease.

He lounged opposite her, legs crossed, cigarette dangling between two fingers like a prop in a play. He didn't fidget or glance around. He looked like he belonged here, like this table had been set specifically for him and him alone.

Hermione watched him stir his ice cream absently with his spoon, the bowl melting around the edges. He hadn't even taken a bite yet, he was just playing with it. 

"You know," he said without looking up, "you've got the kind of stare that would make a Dementor shiver."

She arched a singular brow at him. "I'm just deciding whether you brought me here to talk, or to trap me in public where I can't hex you."

Alphard grinned unabashedly. "I like you." he said without hesitation. 

She didn't answer. Not because she didn't have a retort, but because something about him made her... cautious. She couldn't quite pin it. It wasn't just his Black family charm, not even the hints of Sirius in the curve of his mouth or the amused glint in his eyes.

No. It was something else. She settled on chalking it up to how calm he was. Too calm. 

Too familiar with her for someone who'd never met her. Who she'd never met in either timeline. 

"Start talking," she said instead, her voice low.

Alphard finally looked at her directly. There was something sharp in his gaze now, tucked just beneath the smirk. "Very well, Lady Death. Let's say, hypothetically, that I've seen a few things in my life. The sort of things people call inconvenient. Bloody messes, mostly. Mistakes just waiting to happen."

Hermione kept her face still, but her pulse quickened.

Seen a few things.

She didn't miss the phrasing.

"Are you claiming you've been watching me?" she asked carefully. "Or... watching for me?"

He shrugged, ever infuriating. "Not exactly. I just knew you'd come sooner or later."

Knew.

Not guessed. Not hoped. Not deduced.

Knew.

The air around them suddenly felt thinner. Hermione looked down at her untouched cup of tea, her fingers tightening around the handle. A Seer? But there had been no mention in anything she remembered—no family tales, no records.

The closest she'd come to a true seer was Luna Lovegood and even that wasn't a proven thing. It was more of a deduced explanation as to how Luna knew all the things she did.

Still... Alphard had shown no surprise when he saw her. He had been waiting outside the bank. He still hadn't truly asked her anything, it was like he already knew the answers to questions one would ask on the first time meeting someone. 

He also kept referring to her as Lady Death. "You're being vague," she said after she finally dragged herself from her spiralling thoughts. 

He smiled. It was all teeth, sharp incisors ready to draw blood. He was Black through and through. "Vagueness is how one survives in our circles," Alphard replied. "Besides, you're not exactly laying your cards on the table either." he snorted. 

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

He laughed softly, eyes dancing. "Tempting."

Hermione leaned back slightly, allowing herself a moment to breathe.

She didn't trust him—not at all. Her trust was decidedly hard earned in this life. But there was something... solid in the way he spoke. His words weren't reckless, they were measured even when playful. To her he seemed like someone who saw the storm coming and made peace with it long before the skies broke.

"I want to speak with the Blacks," she said after a long pause. He wanted her cards on the table, well here was her showdown. 

Hermione fully intended to be the winner of this round, probably all of them if she was being honest . She'd always been competitive to a fault. 

Alphard blinked dumbly at her. "All of them?"

"Well," she said, voice sharpening, "almost all of them. Bellatrix cannot be present under any circumstances."

She didn't say more. Didn't dare to say anything else along those lines out in public, 

Alphard didn't press, but his smile faded just enough to tell her he understood this was serious. That the demand wasn't personal it was strategic.

He gave a slow nod. "Alright. I'll speak with Arcturus. He'll be curious enough to call them together."

Hermione's heart thudded once.

One step forward.

"I'll need it done within five days."

"That soon?" he asked, lifting a brow.

"I don't have the luxury of time," she said simply. She didn't explain that any further either. If he got her what she was asking for he'd find out all he wanted to know then. 

He wasn't the only player on her board. And she wasn't the only one on his. 

He was quiet for a moment. She could feel him studying her, and she hated how exposed she suddenly felt, sitting in the open like this. She'd lived so long in shadows that she wasn't used to sunlight anymore.

"What's the urgency?" he asked, his tone softer now.

Hermione looked out across the Alley, where two young boys were chasing each other with melting cones, laughing. For a moment, she saw Harry and Ron. Eleven and completely carefree. 

Then Fred and George. But it wasn't them. Not really. 

Just people that looked like them. Echoes of the past. 

She swallowed the lump in her throat. "I need the Blacks onside before the next deaths hit. They're...you're vulnerable now. You just don't know it yet."

"And the Lestranges?"

To say Hermione was shocked he knew of her plan to involve them was putting it mildly. Once again she felt like the was walking into a conversation mid way through and didn't have all the information. 

He knew too much. More than she would have been willing to share really. 

Whatever his...gifts were, they were proving to be quite frustrating to Hermione, a person that was not used to sharing information easily. 

But he knew anyways so it was a fruitless endeavour to try and hide her need for the Lestranges from him. 

"I'm rather put out that you know I need them too. I was... planning on finding a way to speak to Renaud next. If I can reach him before Rodolphus and Rabastan take the Mark, it would be ideal."

Alphard sat forward slightly, his smile returning but it was sharper now. Hermione wondered if his teeth had ever tasted blood. 

Was he covered in blood the way she was? Was it wrong of her to hope that he was? 

"If you want the Lestranges to listen," he hedged, "it'll go over better with Arcturus Black behind you. They'll care less about your lack of history in the British aristocracy and more about your backing."

Hermione's jaw tensed because he wasn't wrong. But she still hated it.

"Fine," she said finally. "Then I'll wait. But the meeting needs to happen soon."

"You'll have it within five days," Alphard promised.

She nodded, rising from her chair. Her ice cream had melted long ago.

He looked up at her, eyes catching the light. "You're very good at this, Lady Death. Almost as if you've done it before."

She met his gaze. "Maybe I have."

He watched her a moment longer. "You carry all that blood on your hands quite well. I don't think I make it look quite as pretty."

Hermione paused.

Then: "I'd wash it off if I could. Would you?"

And with that, she turned, disappearing into the Alley without a backward glance.

Alphard watched her go, something unreadable in his expression.

And when she was gone, he smiled to himself—just a little—and whispered, "Right on time."

~~~~~~

The ancestral Black estate didn't welcome visitors very often.

It loomed set back behind skeletal trees, its brickwork weathered by centuries of weather. The house stood tall and wide on the land, its chimneys clawing at the sky. A narrow river ran before it, reflecting the estate's spiked turrets and shuttered windows in perfect symmetry.

Alphard stood at the edge of the water, cigarette burning low between two fingers, and regarded the manor with an expression somewhere between boredom and faint nostalgia.

He hated this place.

The Black family called it Astoria Hall, though no one outside their circles knew it existed. Grimmauld Place was the public face—the shadowy London fortress with all its cobwebs and dusty portraits—but this was the true heart of the family. It was far older and the wards around it were far more vicious.

A place where blood came before everything else.

He tossed the cigarette into the water, watching the ripples fade, and made his way across the stone bridge.

Astoria Hall smelled the same—like old stone, wax polish, and magic. The family magic that remembered you whether you wanted it to or not.

Alphard stepped into the drawing room with the casual elegance of someone who had once belonged and now found the idea slightly offensive. The house had always felt too still, like it was holding its breath. Even now, it bristled beneath his boots, ancestral wards brushing against his skin like a dog sniffing a returning stranger.

Arcturus was where he always had been: seated in the high-backed chair beside the hearth, a book open on his lap, a glass of something old and expensive at his side.

"Back from your self-inflicted exile, are you?" Arcturus said mildly, not looking up. "Should I alert the Prophet or have the elves air out the spare room so you can hide from the inevitable scandal you’ll create?"

Alphard rolled his eyes and let his travel cloak slide from his shoulders. "I see you're still charming, Uncle."

"And I see you're still alive. A mixed blessing I’m sure."

"You missed me."

"I missed the silence your absence provided."

Alphard snorted and helped himself to a drink from the sideboard without asking. He never had to. They were both creatures of habit, and one of Arcturus's was knowing when to pretend he didn't care.

The scotch burned, but he welcomed it. Britain always tasted colder.

"I come bearing news," he said.

"That already sounds tedious. Do I truly need to know?"

Alphard dropped into the chair across from him, lounging like it was his right—because it was, even if no one said so. "It's about the family."

"That narrows it down to a few dozen walking disappointments," Arcturus muttered in response, his gaze glued to book in his lap. 

He grinned. "This one's new."

That earned him a look. Dry and calculating. A warning and an invitation all at once.

Alphard leaned forward, setting his glass down with a soft clink and resting his forearms on his knees. His expression shifted—still calm, but sharper now. More deliberate.

"There's a woman in Britain," he said. "Claimed the Flamel vaults two days ago. Walked into Gringotts like the bank owed her something and the goblins gave it to her."

Arcturus blinked, slow and deliberate. "Flamel?"

"And another but that’s not my business to share just yet."

"That's either a very elaborate fraud," Arcturus said, "or a very dangerous truth."

Alphard nodded once. "She's not a fraud."

"Is she mad?"

"Unclear." He took another sip. "She might not be the sanest person I've ever met, but I highly doubt we're in any place to judge such a thing."

No one in this family is truly sane, went unsaid. Black madness runs in them like blood in veins.

He glanced toward the fire, watching the flames dance low in the grate. His expression didn't change, but something in his chest twisted. He hadn't meant to come back. Not now. Not ever. He'd carved out a new life, one where the Black name didn't reach, didn't poison, or hold him down. But visions had a way of dragging your heels through graves, and the ones he'd seen...

The war wouldn't just break the world.

It would erase it.

He couldn't ignore that. Not when he saw her in it.

Arcturus set his book aside. "You wouldn't be here if it was just a matter of some girls inheritance."

"No," Alphard said. "I wouldn't."

He met Arcturus's eyes and, for a moment, let the humor fall away.

"She wants to speak with us. The whole family."

"The entire family?"

"Well," Alphard said lightly, "with one exception. Bellatrix must not be present."

That earned another pause. He could feel the weight of Arcturus's scrutiny, the way his uncle was cataloging every syllable.

"She gave no reason?"

"She eluded to the fact that I'd understand once I heard her out."

"And you believe her?"

Alphard's gaze flicked to the fire. "I believe... we should hear to what she has to say."

That was as much as he was willing to give. He wouldn't speak of what he'd seen—the blood, the shadows swallowing cities, the girl standing in the center of it all with Death at her back. It was just another bit of information that wasn’t entirely his to share. 

They were his visions, yes, but it was her life. 

Arcturus continued to scrutinise him for a long, silent moment, and Alphard let him. Let him draw his own conclusions, mistrust what he needed to, test the waters.

"You always did have a talent for bringing trouble to my door," Arcturus murmured at last.

"And you always did enjoy it, when it was interesting enough."

A dry smile tugged at Arcturus's mouth.

"Very well," he said, leaning back in his chair. "You'll have your meeting. Five days from now. But if this turns out to be another cousin with delusions of grandeur, I'll personally hex your eyebrows off."

"I'd expect nothing less."

They clinked glasses once, quietly, and for a moment—just a moment—Alphard almost felt like he belonged here again.

Almost.

~~~~~~

The house appeared through the mist like a dream or a memory she'd never had.

Hermione stood at the edge of the iron gate, her fingers curled around the cold bars, and stared up at the manor that now, impossibly, belonged to her.

It didn't look like it should exist in the modern world. Turreted, towering, carved from dark stone and ivy. The hedge maze that curled around its front lawn was impossibly neat, each line precise and symmetrical but there was something watchful about it, like the maze had teeth hidden beneath the greenery.

Mist wound through the garden paths and clung to the windows, painting everything in shades of grey and green.

She pushed the gate open with a groan of rusted hinges and stepped forward. Her boots crunched on gravel. Each footfall echoed just slightly too loud.

Hermione reached the front steps and paused.

There was no plaque, no warded crest, no welcome mat like her parents had on their doorstep. Just an ancient wooden door, carved with sigils probably older than Hogwarts, that pulsed faintly under her gaze.

She hadn't even seen this house in the vault records—just a single line beneath her title: Makaria Hall and the coordinates. 

And yet she'd known where to find it. The moment she left Diagon Alley, her magic had tugged her northeast, to the edge of the forest beyond Aylesbury, through hidden barriers and twisting roads until she'd stood at the gate with wind in her hair and something tight in her chest.

The house had called to her.

She removed the glove from her right hand and pressed her uncovered palm to the door.

There was a sound—a low hum, not quite music, not quite language. The runes lit softly under her hand, then faded when the door creaked open.

And Hermione stepped inside.

The entrance hall was vast, silent, and filled with shadowed light. A grand staircase rose before her, its banister carved with dragon scales and vines. The floor was dark stone, worn smooth by centuries. Tall windows stretched up two stories, letting in filtered light through leaded glass, casting fractured colors across the floor.

It smelled like old books, dried herbs, and magic.

Not Ministry magic. Not the clean, crisp spells of Hogwarts. This was ancient and wild. It wrapped around her like a cloak the moment she crossed the threshold.

She walked forward slowly, boots whispering over the stone.

The sitting room was lined with shelves

filled full with books she didn't recognize, tomes with titles written in runes and pictograms and languages that she reckoned hadn't been spoken aloud in hundreds of years. The fireplace was framed in carved obsidian, and the furniture, though draped in dust sheets, looked untouched by time. 

Above the mantle hung a portrait—ancestors, cloaked in starlight and bearing silver blades.

A soft sound startled her, a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye.

And then, with a pop, a house-elf appeared.

She nearly reached for her wand.

The elf was old, dressed in forest-green livery with the symbol of the Hallows stitched neatly over her chest.

"Mistress," she said, bowing low until his long nose brushed the rug. "You have finally arrived."

Hermione's mouth opened. Then closed again. "I—yes," she managed. "I suppose I have."

The elf straightened, "I am Thana" eyes bright. "The Makaria has been waiting."

Hermione stepped further into the room, fingers brushing the edge of an old table. Her throat felt tight.

"I didn't know I had a house," she whispered.

"You have many, Mistress" the elf Thana said solemnly. "But this one knows you."

Hermione looked around, heart thudding. "It feels alive."

"It remembers you," Thana said. "Your blood. It has been sealed for many generations, waiting for the return."

"The return?" she echoed.

Thana gave a solemn nod. "Of the Raven."

Hermione went still.

It wasn't a name she had claimed—but it fit in a way that made her magic tingle. It wasn't her title as Lady Death, not exactly. But it was close. The shape of it settled around her like a prophecy spoken too quietly.

"I don't know how to be her," she admitted.

Thana looked at her kindly. "That is what the house is for. It will give you what you need."

She stood in silence for a long time after she left her alone.

She wandered the halls slowly—fingers trailing over ancient doors, quiet portraits, velvet drapes long faded with time. Her room overlooked the mist-laced garden, with a balcony that opened onto the maze. The bed was too large. The space too quiet.

But it was hers.

Hermione sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped in the grey hush of dusk, and let herself feel it.

The grief. The weight. The surreal vastness of what she now carried.

She had a house.

She had a name.

She had an inheritance older than the war.

And the girl she used to be—scrappy, furious, beloved—was buried beneath all of it.

Hermione Flamel inhaled deeply, feeling the pulse of old magic settle against her skin like a second heart.

"I'll make it count," she whispered into the quiet.

The house creaked softly in answer.

Chapter Text

3rd July

The air in Astoria Hall tasted of iron, old magic, and dust. A storm had rolled in overnight, draping the world in shadow and silver light. Lightning forked behind the manor's stained glass windows, turning the great hall into a cathedral of flickering ghosts.

Alphard stood before the cold hearth, watching the runes etched in to the stones flicker to life. The summoning circle was nearly ready. Twelve concentric lines of ash and salt spiraled across the marble floor, each sigil etched precisely in a tongue only Black blood knew how to speak.

Behind him, Arcturus muttered a final incantation and touched his wand to the inner ring. The entire formation pulsed once like a heartbeat.

Alphard exhaled slowly. "Ready?"

"I was born ready," Arcturus said dryly, stepping back. "It's tolerating you I still find difficult."

"Touching," Alphard murmured.

They stood side by side in silence. The years between them made it strained, and stretched but it did not snap. Alphard had never hated his uncle, not truly. But he hadn't really missed him, either.

"Are you sure about this woman?" Arcturus asked, eyes fixed on the runes.

"No," Alphard admitted. "But I'm curious enough to find out."

Arcturus gave a quiet grunt. "Curiosity killed the cat."

"But satisfaction brought it back," Alphard said with a grin.

Arcturus raised his wand. "Shall we?"

Together, they spoke the command:

"Grimms of House Black, come forth."

The room dropped into silence.

Then the hearth exploded in blue flame and from it stepped twelve spectral dogs, shaped from mist and starlight. They were massive and completely silent. Each bore silver eyes and coats that shimmered with the sheen of moonlight on water.

The Grimms.

Once, they had been real enchanted hounds that guarded the first Black estate in the Scottish highlands. When the last of the blood-bonded beasts died out, the family preserved their spirits, tethering them to ancestral magic. Now they served as messengers in only the most dire of situations. 

Alphard stepped forward with his wand raised. "For Pollux Black," he said to the first.

The Grimms looked into his eyes. Then one bowed its massive head, vanished into smoke, and disappeared.

"For Irma. For Walburga. For Orion. For Cassiopeia. For Druella. For Cygnus."

One by one, the Grimms vanished each bound to a name, carrying a summons that would bypass any ward or glamour. Eventually the final two stood silently at attention.

Alphard hesitated.

"For... Sirius," he said quietly to the eleventh. "Deliver but do not drag him here if he fights the magic. He's not to be forced here."

The Grimm lowered its head and disappeared.

The last hound remained.

Or wasn't Alphard that spoke, it was Arcturus instead. "Not Bellatrix," he said.

"No," Alphard responded blandly. "She's not to hear what will be discussed. It's... complicated."

"Everything in this damn family is."

Alphard didn't argue. The final Grimm simply bowed and faded away, unsummoned.

With all the Grimm sent on their merry way, the hearth dimmed and the runes cooled.

"You'll need to reinforce the wards," Alphard said. "If someone informs Bella of the meeting she can't be allowed entrance, Uncle." The words felt bitter on his tongue and sent his stomach rolling. He wasn't yet sure why Hermione was so against Bellatrix but he knew without a doubt she would not enter a room Bella was in. 

"I won't pretend to understand her conviction for keeping Bellatrix out of the loop but...I'll concede this once." Arcturus hesitated for a moment before continuing. "What have you seen for Bella Alphard?" 

Alphard sighed. He didn't want to answer that question, and it wasn't because he didn't like the answer but because he didn't have an answer. 

Not one his uncle would like anyways. 

He hadn't seen anything about Bella in months. He had seen meetings in dark alleyways and heard hissed words but nothing was ever clear. It was all cloaked in darkness and obscurity and nothing had come for quite some time. 

"I haven't been anything for Bella in quite some time Uncle and I won't lie to you and say it doesn't concern me. I fear she has finally done something we can't bring her back from." He replied morosely. Bella was still his niece, even if she had done something irredeemable she was still blood. 

He remembered the girl that used to run around and mock duel with Sirius, the pair too similar for their own good. Wild, untameable and utterly terrifying at times but still just a girl. 

So yes, Alphard had his fears and the knowledge of Hermione being so against Bella did nothing to quell them. 

He moved toward the window, watching the storm sweep over the distant hills, lightening occasionally illuminating the dim room. 

"I believe Heir Flamel to know more about that situation than I do." He added on. 

Arcturus raised a single brow at him in question and it was an easy question to decipher. 

Why would this girl know more than you? 

Because she's not from here Uncle, she's seen more than I ever have. Bears the scares of wars not yet passed. 

But those were words he could not speak. Would not speak. 

"I cannot say much but she's more than even I expected," he said quietly. "She's not just powerful. She's strategic and extremely intelligent. But underneath it all is a level of rage I've never seen before."

"A woman of multitudes and conundrums," Arcturus muttered, summoning a bottle of scotch with a flick of his wand. "Our kind are drawn to darkness like moths to a flame."

"She doesn't want power, she has more than enough already." Alphard said. "I think she wants to rewrite the way the world works."

Arcturus paused, pouring two glasses. Wordlessly floating one over to Alphard. "And you believe she can? You believe she will create the sort of world our family will appreciate?"

"Not at first but I think she will drag us there kicking and screaming if we refuse."

He took the drink, but didn't sip it. He wasn't sure if the fire in his chest was anticipation or dread.

Across the manor, the ancestral wards shimmered into place. they were old, patient and humming with power. Invitations had been sent. The board was being laid.

And soon... the players would arrive.

~~~~~~

Makaria Hall had gone still for the night.

Hermione stood barefoot in the main study, robes discarded, hands still covered and her wand resting on the desk beside her as she stared down at a weathered journal. It was open to a page covered in her own writing. Names, dates and timelines. A patchwork of history she was trying to reweave.

At the bottom of the page, two names stared back at her like ghosts.

Fabian Prewett.

Gideon Prewett.

They weren't just names. They were laughter that never came again, bravery that never got thanked, blood spilled on stone while the Order fumbled over half-truths and hope.

Hermione hadn't known them but she'd known what they left behind.

Molly had once cried into her hands at Grimmauld Place saying, they were boys, just boys! And we kept sending them out like they were invincible!

Now, they were alive and they were walking straight into the trap she couldn't forget.

Her hands flexed at her sides. Her magic sparked against her skin like restless energy.

She closed the journal, holstered both wands and pulled the invisibility cloak over her shoulders. The house whispered something as she passed through its doors.

Something like go.

Hermione knew that not everyone could be saved, there would be souls even she couldn't stop death from collecting but that did mean she wouldn't try. She came all this way, gave up everything to be here—to make a difference, so she would try. 

Dumbledore may see fit to sit back and let others die on his watch but Hermione would not be the same as him. There would be no sitting idly by, no grandfatherly speeches and wishes of luck where she was concerned. 

The Order did not hold her loyalty. 

No one but Death did and he placed no parameters on who she could salvage. 

Her fingers itched for a fight, magic pulsing under her skin begging to be released, to lash out at those it deemed enemies and Hermione knew just the place to let it loose. 

Lives could and would be saved tonight. 

⸻

She landed on the cliffs outside the Mulciber estate in a low crouch, her boots skimming over the mist-drenched ground. The wind off the sea bit at her face. Wards hummed through the air like power lines, barely visible to the standard wizards eyes but to Hermione, they shimmered like threads of silver and blue, waiting to snap.

She closed her eyes and willed her magic to obey her, to give her what she needed and when she opened them again the world flared into painful clarity.

Curse traps coiled around the earth like serpents. The air was strung with illusions designed to mislead and deeper—beneath it all—resonated a pulse of dark magic that didn't just protect, but predated.

Hermione walked between the traps like smoke, shadows curling around her cloaked form like a loves embrace, slipping into the estate's outer ring. Her breath didn't fog the air and her steps made no sound.

She moved faster now because she could feel them approaching too quickly.

Two magical signatures appeared just past the boundary line, breaking the perimeter with a careful silence. Fabian had a detection orb and Gideon scanned the tree line. They looked confident, like they were ready for whatever may be thrown their way. 

But they were not. 

They were completely unaware that they were walking gallantly towards death.

Hermione moved to intercept.

But not fast enough.

A ward flared under Fabian's foot. A low hum—the sound of a trap setting its jaws.

"Protego Maxima!"

Her barrier flared gold between them, just in time to catch the blast as it erupted. The ground quaked as dirt exploded around them. Smoke and magic choked the air making it difficult to breathe. 

Fabian staggered back as gideon cursed, wand snapping up toward her.

"Who the—?"

"Don't move!" Hermione hissed, stepping out of the smoke.

She ripped the invisibility cloak from her shoulders and shoved it into her seemingly bottomless back pocket. Her wand was raised. Her eyes glowed faintly with borrowed power.

"You're surrounded by a spiderweb of wards prepped and primed to kill you!" she whisper shouted. "One more misstep and you'll be dead. I'd rather you didn't do that."

Fabian blinked. "Okay, that's new."

Hermione didn't waste time. She crouched low, carved a sigil into the dirt with her wand tip, and hissed something in a language lost to almost everyone.

The trap hissed and blinked out.

She turned and stalked toward the next rune, snapping her wrist in a practiced curve. It fizzled and died unceremoniously.

"You're welcome," she said tightly. "Again."

"Who the hell are you?" Gideon demanded.

"I'm here to save your lives," Hermione said without looking up.

Gideon scowled. "You expect us to believe you just knew to show up in the middle of this raid?"

"I didn't guess," she said, rising. "I remembered."

They stared.

Hermione brushed dirt from her dragon hide gloves. "You have questions I am not going to answer. Feel free to come to your own conclusions but just know you absolutely would've died had I not intervened." 

"You're mad," Fabian muttered.

"Maybe," Hermione said. "But I'm not wrong."

Gideon raised his wand again. "You could be lying. That was definitely dark magic—"

"If I were lying, you'd be screaming on the ground right now with a ruptured lung," she said. "And it wasn't dark, it's just magic you haven't seen before."

That shut them up. As it should. 

For a moment, there was only the sound of the wind.

Then a second flare of magic spiked behind them, likely another trap and behind that was the faint sound of footfall. 

People.

Hermione's head snapped toward the east corridor. One robed figure, face covered by a silver mask embossed with gold filigree, emerging from shadow with a wand already raised toward them.

A Death Eater.

Hermione flicked her hand—not her wand, her hand—and the shadows peeled from the wall like living smoke. They wrapped around the figure's legs and arms, dragging him down.

"Silencio."

He didn't scream.

The twins stared.

"Did you just strangle someone with a corridor?" Fabian asked.

"Technically I immobilized and silenced him," Hermione said, voice cool. "If I'd strangled him, he wouldn't still be breathing."

Gideon blinked dumbly. "You're terrifying."

"I'm efficient."

⸻

Once the threat was neutralized, she turned to them fully.

"I'm not here to convince you of anything," she said. "I'm not here to recruit you to some noble cause. I'm here because this was the night you died, and I think the world still needs you."

"You don't even know us," Gideon muttered.

Hermione's eyes flicked to him, soft but steady. He was right in a way. She didn't truly know them but it felt as though she did, from the stories Molly would regale them with of her brave twin brothers that fought against the dark and gave their lives for the light. 

She did not know them but she knew they deserved more than the hand they had been dealt. 

"No. But I knew who you became."

Silence. Always silence. Truly were her words that shocking? 

Probably. 

"Why now?" Fabian asked. "Why us?" He looked skeptical, as if the words coming out of Hermiones mouth could be nothing but lies and she didn't blame him and she certainly wasn't going to hold it against him. 

The twins had not become aurors by blindly trusting people they just met, especially in times of war. They were not foolish or naive. 

No longer green probies expecting easy arrests. 

So no, Hermione would not hold their distrust of her against them. 

"Because I can't be everywhere," she said. "And because some things... need to be rewritten. At the roots."

She hesitated. Then added, more softly: "I don't know you but I know you could help turn the tides of this war. Help stop something worse from unfolding." 

"Worse than Voldemort?" Fabian asked, still so disbelieving. Always on the same page as his twin. 

They reminded her so heavily of Fred and George that it ached. The uncanny resemblance sent phantom shivers down her spine and threatened to cause scissures in her carefully crafted occlumency. 

Her heart cracked just a little bit more. 

"You'll see," Hermione said. "If you live."

Another tremor rolled through the ground.

She turned. "More are coming... fuck! A lot more are coming. You both need to apparate out of here now!"

"Wait," Gideon said. "How do we find you again?"

Hermione hesitated. She wanted them to live another day, to keep fighting for the justice this world so desperately needed but... did she want to have them onside? 

Would it be worthwhile or were they already in too deep with the Order? 

"Send a Patronus," she said determined. "Think of me and send it to Lady Death."

There. 

They could contact her if need arises but they did not know who she was. It couldn't be tracked back to her if any unwanted ears caught wind of her assistance. 

And then she vanished in a blur of smoke and wind.

⸻

Later, after the rest of the death eaters had cleared out, Hermione returned in shadow form.

No one was left.

She stood in the ruin of the corridor where Fabian would have bled out. The stones were clean. The blood had never been spilled but in her mind, she could still see it.

Death materialised from the shadows that licked at the walls and he surveyed the room around them, as if he was watching what unfolded after it had already happened. 

After a while his white eyes turned to her. "You saved them."

She didn't flinch at Death's voice, the low timbre of it sent shivers down her spine and made all the hairs on her arms prickle. If she was a dog she'd say her hackles were raised. 

"I bought them time."

"For some, that is the same thing."

She stared at the crumbling wall. Every minute she spent in his presence made her feel uneasy and like she was standing next to something that should be feared. 

She couldn't bring herself to meet his eyes when she responded to him. "You saw their eyes," she whispered. "They didn't believe me. They think I'm some sort of insane dark witch."

"They don't need to believe you," Death murmured. "Yet."

Hermione exhaled slowly, letting the cold creep into her bones.

"Everything is moving," she said. "Too fast. Or not fast enough. I haven't decided yet."

"It is moving as it must. You've turned the wheel and now it spins."

Hermione turned away from the wall and faced Death head on. It was no use trying to avoid him. He'd already told her he was going to be there with her every step of the way so she would need to get used to his unnerving presence. 

Even if he still scared her something silly. 

Death wasn't there to hurt her. 

And she walked back into the night.

⸻

Somewhere in Devon

"I'm telling you, she wasn't lying."

"She might've been lying. Or cursed. Or insane."

"She threw a man across a room with shadows, Gid."

"That's not proof of moral character!"

"Fine. Don't trust her. But if we end up in another near death scenario I'm sending that Patronus."

"...Me too."

Chapter Text

5th of July 

The manor was quiet when Hermione rose.

She sat on the edge of her bed, already dressed in deep green robes stitched with silver thread, white lace gloves covering her shaking hands, her wand holstered tight against her forearm. She'd been awake for hours, but really sleep had never truly come. Her thoughts had been too loud. The weight of the coming day too sharp.

The House of Black.

She closed her eyes and took a breath. She'd faced down Death Eaters, broken into Gringotts, and rewritten time itself. But this felt... heavier. More volatile and far less predictable. The Blacks weren't monsters or allies. They were a legacy—old blood, old grudges, old pride wrapped in the finest silks and sharpened tongues.

They would not be easily swayed. Unlucky for them that Hermione was quite prepared to drag them into compliance by their ears. 

She stood and crossed to the mirror, fastening the silver clasp of her cloak. She looked like she belonged to something ancient and untouchable. She looked every part the well-bred pureblood woman that she supposed she now was. 

She didn't feel that way and it rankled her.

Her heart was steady, but her chest ached with anticipation. Not fear, just the knowledge that everything she said today could shift the path of history. Or damn it all to hell. 

Speak with purpose. Do not overexplain. Let Alphard anchor the room. Observe first. Intervene only when necessary. And above all else—do not flinch.

Hermione was new to the ways of the Pureblood elite but she was not so uninformed to the aristocracy, she knew that like the back of her old hands. 

Her parents may have been dentists that chose to work for an honest living but she was forced to sit through etiquette classes just the same as Purebloods. She knew when to speak and when to hold her tongue—even if it got away from her occasionally, how to wield words like daggers and strike true. 

Her father's mother... well adoptive mother she supposes, was related to the French royal family and had groomed Hermione into the proper young lady she was supposed to be. 

Every summer and well any holiday really was spent with her grandmere at her manor house in Cotignac learning the ways of the aristocracy and how to behave in a way befitting of her station. 

She could hold her own against a group of outdated traditionalists. 

The magic that danced along her fingertips, hidden behind lace was all the backing she needed. 

The Blacks were old blood—steeped in tradition, power, and carefully cultivated fear—but Hermione was something older still. She was pure magic made flesh, she was forged in fire, war, and sacrifice. Death did not stalk her— he stood at her side, loyal and bound, wrapped around her fingers. Where the Blacks clung to legacy, Hermione was the wielder of a being older than any bloodline.

She would handle this. 

With a final check of the Elder Wand hidden beneath her cloak, she stepped into the morning and vanished with a crack of magic.

⸻

Alphard had owled her the morning prior, his handwriting as sharp and slanted as his wit. Arcturus Black had agreed to the meeting, it was to be a formal meeting and entirely unavoidable—not that she wished to avoid it. Set for ten o'clock sharp on the 5th of July, at the Black Ancestral Manor.

Every immediate family member would be in attendance.

Well everyone but Bellatrix.

The exclusion was intentional— it was carefully negotiated, barely tolerated, and entirely necessary.

Hermione refused to bare her soul to that vicious harpy. She'd sooner snog a manticore in heat. 

They had agreed to meet just before the meeting was to commence, at 9:50 a.m. in Diagon Alley outside Florean Fortescue's. Alphard would side-along her directly to the estate. Punctuality was a weapon in pureblood society, and lateness wasn't just inconvenient it was a personal slight.

And Hermione could not afford any slights today, no matter how inconsequential.

This meeting had to unfold with the precision of a ritual. She didn't want any chaos. Every move would be calculated and well thought out in the way she was prone to. Every word she spoke would be sharpened to cut.

There was simply no room for misstep. No luxury of second chances.

Hermione had walked through fire and come out blemish free—but today she had to become something more.

And there was no reality in which she would be late.

So she arrived in Diagon Alley at 9:40am on the dot and decided she would wait the extra ten minutes for Alphard to arrive. She could busy herself with looking in a few shop windows if she got bored enough. 

Diagon Alley was bustling. Families wandered between shopfronts. Owls swooped above the cobbled streets. It looked almost exactly as she remembered it and that made it worse.

It was a lie.

This world was already cracked beneath the surface, and no one could see it. If they could they did nothing at all to bridge the chasm. 

She scanned the crowd, doing her usual people watching until she spotted him. 

Alphard stood leaning against a lamppost outside Florean Fortescue's, lazily tossing something silver between his fingers—a sickle, maybe, or a button. She couldn't tell from where she was standing, could just see the light reflecting of it. 

He smiled when he saw her. "Fashionably early," he said. As if she would be anything else! 

"I didn't want to be the last one in the room," she replied, her voice tighter than she intended it to be.

Alphard's relentless cheer was starting to wear on her—grating against the tightly coiled nerves she was doing her best to mask beneath practiced calm. He spoke as if they weren't mere minutes from a conversation that could unravel everything. A meeting that could either cement her allies or doom her plans before they had a chance to bloom.

This wasn't brunch with family. This was war, dressed in silk and civility.

And yet Alphard carried himself like it was a casual Sunday breakfast. As if the House of Black wasn't teetering on the edge of irrelevance and blood-soaked ruin. As if he hadn't spent years in self-imposed exile to avoid the very rot they were about to confront.

Her jaw tightened.

"Wise," he said after a pause, finally sensing the tension but choosing not to comment on it. Instead, he offered his arm with a rakish grin. "Come along, Lady Death. Time to rattle the bones of House Black."

⸻

Hermione walked beside Alphard in silence, every step a slow tightening in her chest.

The halls around her were heavy with magic that felt almost as ancient as she did most days. It wasn't welcoming but it wasn't cruel either. It simply... observed, the way old magic always did, as though weighing her intentions with every step she took.

Her boots made no sound on the floors, but she felt the echoes all the same—not of her steps, but of footsteps long gone. The ghosts of decisions made in rooms just like the one she was about to enter. Deals struck. Names buried. Fates sealed.

She had walked into duels with more ease than she felt now.

There was something uniquely suffocating about politics, about knowing that a single misstep, a single word misjudged or truth mishandled, could unravel everything she'd built so far. This wasn't about wandwork. This was about legacy and power.

And they were going to test her, she felt it humming in the air already.

Hermione straightened her spine.

Let them test her.

She didn't come to ask for their permission. She came to make them choose.

And she was damn well ready.

"They're already arguing," Alphard murmured, just as a voice echoed down the corridor.

"I suppose I am late to the party then." She sighed in disbelief. How was she twenty minutes early and still late! Gods damned aristocratic bull shite. 

"She has no right to be here!"

"She's blood, you arrogant old goat—!"

Hermione exhaled through her nose and followed Alphard into the eye of the storm.

The room was vast, windowless, and full of silk clothed witches and wizards, venom flying with every word spoken.

Cygnus and Druella stood by the hearth, postured like war generals flanked by a pale and impassive Narcissa. Cassiopeia Black lounged on a velvet settee with theatrical boredom, while Pollux barked across the room at Arcturus. Regulus stood stiffly near his parents at the doorway, arms crossed, trying to look older than his years. Melania Black sat near the far wall, her spine straight, her eyes shrewd and calculating.

And in the corner, apart from them all, stood Andromeda.

Unapologetic and completely unbothered.

"Where is Sirius?" Cassiopeia snapped.

Hermione stood still beside Alphard, saying nothing. The moment stretched.

She wasn't here to explain the guest list herself. Let them circle each other like rabid dogs.

"Enough," came a voice like a thunderclap.

Arcturus rose slowly from his seat in the corner of the room, it was a grand wing back chair befitting a king. His cane tapped once against the marble floor and his presence alone silenced the room.

"I alone determine who is cast out of this family," he said coldly. "Not Cygnus or his vapid wife. Not Pollux. Not even you Walburga. I have not disowned Andromeda. And I have not disowned Sirius."

His terse words landed like blows on each and every person in the room.

Druella's mouth opened as if to retort to Arcturus' outright insult then snapped shut. Pollux looked livid and Walburga—rigid beside her husband Orion—looked as if she might faint from the indignation of the whole affair.

"You lot can blast who you want off your imitation family trees, do so until you fulfill your hearts desire for all I care but make no mistake it does not change the line of succession or the family magicks." Arcturus spat at them all. 

Hermione simply adored him for putting all the whining to a swift and brutal end. She'd always appreciated the way words could be wielded like weapons and watching Arcturus cut through all the bitching made her feel almost giddy. 

Still, no one aside from Alphard had even noticed her yet so she waited and watched Arcturus strike down arguments seamlessly.

As the argument spiraled, she continued to observe. Hermione didn't fidget and she certainly didn't bother to interrupt. That wasn't her place after all.

She'd speak when spoken too. Because eventually, they'd stop screaming long enough to realize they had a newcomer in their midst.

And that was when she'd start tearing the ground out from under them.

At long last Walburga turned her head and noticed the newcomer. The only person in the room that was not a Black. 

Hermione rolled her eyes internally. Took them long enough. 

Her eyes narrowed. "Anything to say for yourself, interloper?"

Hermione arched a brow. She would not back down from sharp words, would not show a lick of fear to a single soul in this room. They did not deserve her fear. 

They barely deserved the warning she was there to give but needs must. 

"Much more than you are likely ready to hear, I fear."

A beat of stunned silence.

Alphard snorted.

That did it.

Cygnus took a step forward, sneering. "Who even are you? What in Merlin's name gives you the right to speak in this room?"

Hermione met his eyes unflinchingly. "I have reasons and rights, along with many names but well you may address me by one of my official titles, Heir Flamel."

Shock rippled through the group.

Pollux looked skeptical. "A convenient lie."

"I'm not here to argue about lineage with animals," Hermione said, her voice cool. "I'm here because you are all on the verge of losing everything."

"And we're supposed to take your word for that?" Cassiopeia asked, feigning a yawn.

"No," Hermione said. "You don't have to take my word. You only have to watch what comes next if you choose to ignore me. Spoiler, it will be the collapse of your Ancient and Noble house."

She turned, finally stepping toward the center of the room. She could feel the Elder Wand warming beneath her sleeve, almost pulsing in sync with her heart.

"There is a war brewing," she said. "It is not a noble one in any sense of the word. It is a war that will consume everything in its path—children, traditions, entire families. No house is spared and no name untouched by it."

Eyes shifted. Postures stiffened.

Hermione kept her tone even. "You believe yourselves above the chaos but you will be at its center. Your sons will be offered glory and die in vain. Your daughters will be married off to men who destroy them. They likely already have been but that's quite beyond my assistance now." She shrugged before continuing "The bloodline you've built the foundations of your pride on will crumble under the weight of your own arrogance."

A long, brittle pause ensued because no one enjoyed being chastised so thoroughly, let alone a room filled with pig-headed bigots so Hermione gave them a brief respite. 

Regulus stared at her, lips parted.

"Then why are you here?" asked Melania after a minute had passed in utter silence. "Why bother to warn us if you think us to be 'arrogant animals'?"

"Because it isn't too late yet," Hermione said. "Because if I can turn even one of you from the path that leads to that fire, it might be enough."

"And what do you want in return?" Orion asked, quiet but sharp.

Hermione met his gaze.

"I want you to listen to what I have to say and then decide for yourselves. That's all."

Alphard spoke next. "I personally believe she's telling the truth. Even if she is full of complete shite she's not asking for anything more than your ear. She's offering the chance to save our house from collapsing in on itself."

Arcturus nodded once.

Hermione wanted to scream at them.

She wanted to hex the entire room into submission, or better yet, bang their thick skulls together like a child smashing rocks in the garden just to see if it would finally knock some sense into them. She now understood, with painful clarity, why Snape had always favoured the word dunderhead. It wasn't about superiority. It was about survival in the face of terminal stupidity.

These people were clinging bloodlines and family pride like it hadn't already led to bloodshed and ruin. Like the world wasn't burning just outside the fragile walls of their arrogance. As if she wasn't in the

midst of explaining how exactly that attitude will lead to their downfall. 

But instead of lashing out, she inhaled—deep and controlled—and let the breath out slowly through her nose.

Her fingers curled into the fabric of her robes beneath the table.

No yelling. No panicking. No yielding.

Let them argue. Let them hurl their pride like weapons and build their walls against her invasion of truth.

She would break every one of them down with words sharper than any wand.

She'd come too far to let her temper get the better of her. She didn't need their respect, only their obedience.

And she would earn it.

Or force it.

"Your house will not be the only one to fall, but it will fall nonetheless. I can stand her rattling off names and facts like an over eager schoolgirl or I can provide you with the means to stop you from the fall. Make your choice, I will not offer it again." She looked each person in the eye, letting them take notice of her conviction, the utter lack of fear. 

She was not the one in peril. She did not need the warning. 

They needed her more than she needed them and she planned to make them disgustingly aware of it. 

"Those who are unwilling to listen," he said, voice firm, "will take a vow of silence so they cannot speak of what has been disclosed and shall not hear any further." 

Cygnus looked ready to explode. Pollux glared at Alphard like he might duel him on the spot. Cassiopeia scoffed and passed her left hand to Arcturus to accept the vow before she swept from the room in a whirl of velvet. Melania rose slowly and gave Hermione one last assessing look before taking the vow and leaving.

Melania knew her husband would handle the situation better than she could and would inform her of anything she needed to know when she needed to know it. War tables were not something she had ever experienced and she had no desire to pull out a seat at one now. 

Andromeda stayed seated, arms folded.

Hermione turned to her with a warm smile on her face. Andromeda had always been the best of a concerning bunch. 

"You're not being dismissed," she said gently. "But the path ahead will be more dangerous than even you know. I will need you soon, and when I do, you'll need to act without hesitation. It's better, for now, that you don't know everything."

Andromeda tilted her head, studying her.

"So I'm not being excluded because I'm unworthy."

"No, I don't think you're unworthy in any way imaginable" Hermione said. "I think you're a mother to a young girl in a precarious situation. I know you have many light connections and I never want to put you or your growing family into a situation where you will be met with distrust. You are instead being trusted with something more important and when the time comes, you'll know."

Andromeda gave a small, sharp nod. "Thank you." She sad softly, her tamed brown curls bouncing slightly as she nodded. "I'll keep an eye out for your owl, good luck." She winked. 

The doors closed softly behind her.

And then there were five.

Arcturus. Orion. Walburga. Narcissa and Alphard.

Hermione exhaled quietly.

Now, she thought. Now we begin.

Chapter Text

July 5th

There was a stillness to the room that felt unnatural, even for a place steeped in old magic. Hermione stood stock still beneath the carved arches of Arcturus Blacks personal study, a place very few were granted entrance and felt it wrap around her like a shroud.

Only the five of them and her.

Hermione could feel her nerves beginning to betray her, the urge pick at the skin around her fingers was ignored solely because she was wearing gloves. Her confidence was waning and a feeling of dread was settling in its place. 

She looked around the room anxiously and took stock of who was sitting where and how she'd make a break for it if she needed too. 

Arcturus sat like a king in the chair behind his desk, his cane resting beside him, his face twisted in a sharp expression. Alphard lounged in the corner near the drinks cabinet, but his stillness betrayed the tension under the surface. He was watching her just as closely as she was watching everyone else. 

Hermione had noticed more than once how his eyes seemed to track her every movement. 

She didn't know who was prey or predator. 

Orion sat with his arms crossed, spine rigid and his face an impassive mask. Walburga stood like a dagger waiting to be thrown with her mouth contorted in a thin, disapproving line. And Narcissa—soft, too soft—sat poised at the edge of it all, trying to cover the dread curling behind her eyes with a gentle smile.

Hermione's pulse thrummed beneath her skin. The air was thick with tension and probably the urge to spew insults. 

This was it. 

Time to shower them with some very uncomfortable truths. 

She inhaled slowly, letting the breath settle deep into her belly and cool her nerves. "You're all going to die," she said nervously. "Well with the exception of you Narcissa" she spoke gently to the nervous witch sitting as still as a marble statue. "Unless something changes."

There was no gasps of shock or indignation. No fury was expressed by any party. They all just stared at her, as if willing her to continue with their eyes alone. 

"You, Alphard," she continued, her voice steady but hushed, "will be found dead in November. The official investigation stated it was from curse complications but you'll be murdered for refusing to fall in line with Tom. Regulus will die not a week after whilst trying to do something brave but very reckless. Orion your heart fails under pressure you were never meant to endure and you will not see the end of Winter."

She forced herself not to look at them too closely. To see their faces would break through the minuscule amount of strength she had left and she desperately needed to get through the rest of this conversation. 

Just finish the conversation then you can go home and cry in the bath. You can do this. You've faced worse. 

Hermione straightened her spine and clasped her shaking hands behind her back to hide them from view. She didn't need to have her weaknesses on display. 

"Sirius," she said, her voice cracking on his name. She didn't want to talk about her brothers godfather. About the man that called her kitten and snuck her books she definitely should not have been reading. God it hurt to think about him but she forced the words out even though they made her tongue feel itchy and raw, "will be wrongfully imprisoned without a trial in 1981 for a crime he didn't commit. He'll escape thirteen years later, only to die in the Department of Mysteries in 1996. His name is never cleared and he never got to be free."

The guilt slammed into her like a wave, she'd failed him and everyone else. She should have done more, should have demanded to give a testimony to his innocence. Should have found a way to save him. 

I couldn't save that version of him but I'll make sure this version never sees the inside of an Azkaban cell.

She finally looked around the room and saw how pale both Walburga and Narcissa were. Saw how Orion had stiffened as if he'd been struck.

Still she pressed on. There was more she needed to say, to tell them. 

"That's just some of your family."

Her magic was rising with her grief now, curdling in her stomach like spoilt milk, the combination made her feel sick and off kilter but she couldn't afford to stop. 

"The Bones. The Potters. The Prewetts. The Mckinnons. The Meadowes. The Rosiers and The Longbottoms. Entire families murdered or only one member left standing, children were orphaned and it all leads back to one man."

She didn't say his name straight away, instead she let them squirm. Let the silence stretch taut.

"Voldemort," she said at last, and the name dropped like a stone in water.

A flicker of something passed over Arcturus's face, a look of recognition, maybe. Or dread.

"He has created certain failsafes—dark objects pertaining to certain aspects of himself, making him something dangerously close to immortal. A truly horrifying yet incredible feat of magic. He dies, or well actually doesn't die but disappears I suppose for 10 years before he returns. You all long dead by then, and yet he continues to burn your houses to the ground."

She could feel Walburga's fury rising, it lashed through the air like a whip. Hermione welcomed it.

She practically launched herself across the room so she could stand directly in front of Hermione, her words were spoken through clenched teeth. "You expect us to believe this apocalyptic fantasy? You sound like a madwoman."

Good, Hermione thought. Be afraid. Be angry. At least you're listening to me. Please keep listening to me. 

"I would be offended," Hermione responded blandly, "if I hadn't lived it."

The air between the pair grew thick and heavy and Alphard shifted slightly towards Hermione, placing himself behind her but a foot or so back. 

"Explain yourself, girl." Arcturus barked at her from his perch behind the desk. 

And so she did. It worked with the Flamels and she desperately needed it work now. 

Hermione Elysande Flamel would not falter in the face of skepticism. It was a mantra she had begun repeating to herself internally from the moment she stepped foot in the manor. 

"I've come quite a long way," she said. "And someone here apparently saw me coming." she shot a pointed glare over her shoulder to the man in question. 

Alphard's smirked but it was faint and fleeting. It wasn't the same lazy, overconfident smirk he had given her yesterday and it only worsened the churning in her gut. 

Apparently Hermione isn't the only one with skeletons in the closet. 

"I'm not from here—yes, yes I know that's painfully obvious—what I mean is I am not from this time" Hermione said, her voice low. "I am technically due to be born this year actually." She hummed. "I have travelled a long way to have this conversation, nearly 20 years in fact." She looked around at them all pointedly, silently daring them to question her, to rage against the atomic bomb of information she had dropped on them. 

The silence broke something inside her—like a scream waiting just behind her ribs.

She had said her piece, given them the warning she'd promised death she would and now it was up to them. 

She was standing in a room full of people already buried in her time.

And yet they still didn't believe her.

Arcturus said what she knew he would. "Prove it."

Hermione smiled and gave him a slow, solemn nod. "As you wish."

Her hand slipped into the inner pocket of her cloak, fingers curling around the cold surface of the Resurrection Stone. It pulsed against her skin like a second heartbeat. "Come," she whispered.

The fire dimmed, torches flickered and the shadows in the corner of the room shifted—not as if someone moved through them, but as if something woke within them and then Death stepped into the light.

Hermione's heart clenched.

Walburga reached for her wand, but Hermione's voice cut through the air sharply: "Don't. He isn't here to harm you, he's just here to confirm what I've told you."

She stood rooted in place as she stared at death, the grip she had on her own hands so tight she was worried her circulation could be cut off. 

He was just so... eerie. 

"My Lady speaks the truth," Death said blandly. Hermione didn't think he was all that interested in joining her tea party. 

Shame he's the one who threw her back here. If she had to suffer in the company of bigots then so does he. 

"She has seen your ends. She has seen the cobwebs on your tapestry, very circular by the way. It almost looks like a yule wreath with your colour choices. Anyways! I have personally carried you over but well that's neither here nor there." 

Hermione swallowed hard. The words still hurt. Even if he tried to joke about it, to make light of a tragedy it still fucking hurt. 

"My Lady has returned not to prevent death," Death continued, "but to delay it and redirect it to more deserving souls. She's such a doll for that." He smiled at them, as if he hadn't just insulted the entire room. Prat. 

Hermione in turn sent her fiercest scowl in his direction. She did not appreciate being called a sodding doll! 

"And if we don't believe her?" Arcturus asked skeptically.

Death turned to face him and gave him a grin. It was all teeth and gums. Hermione wondered if they could see the bloodstain on them. 

"Then your house will fall. As it did before and I shall come to collect all the same."

The silence that followed wasn't still. It was a living thing that clawed under the skin and settled between their ribs.

With a final bow to Hermione—and her alone— he was gone. The shadows reclaimed him like he had never been there at all.

Her knees nearly buckled, but she forced herself to stay upright through sheer force of will alone. 

Arcturus's voice was dry, but quieter than before when he spoke to the room, he looked ashen. The indignant attitude was gone and wariness took its place. "Well that was rather unpleasant."

Alphard gave a short, brittle laugh in response to his uncle but the smile he wore didn't reach his eyes.

Everyone in the room looked quite shaken and uncomfortable which was... well it was to be expected really. 

"Yes well Death takes some ah... getting used to? Truly you warm up to him eventually." Hermione shivered. "I hope."

Orion spoke next. He sounded like he had swallowed sandpaper. "Assuming we believe all this—and I'm not saying I do—what exactly do you want from us?"

Hermione met his eyes. "I want your help. Specifically, Arcturus and yours first and foremost. I would like a meeting with Renaud Lestrange and his sons before the end of the month. And whilst my last name is intriguing I doubt it's enough to get me in front of them so I'll need help. Mainly I would just like your support."

Walburga scoffed at her. "You expect us to bend knee to a girl barely out of school?"

Sweet Circe she despised that woman. Memories of her screeching portrait were swirling in the forefront of her mind as she responded. "I would hope that you choose to do what's necessary to survive."

She turned away from the banshee and faced Arcturus instead. "Less than 20 years from now your good name is tarnished beyond repair, your house is scattered and your line dies with Sirius."

She stepped forward towards the desk he was still seated behind and placed both hands on it, leaning down so they were at eye level. "Well?" she asked coolly. "Will you help me save your house, or shall I leave you to its funeral?" 

~~~~~~

Astoria Hall exhaled behind her.

Hermione stepped through the old doors and into the back gardens, letting the quiet wrap around her like a shawl. The air outside was cooler—brushed with the scent of crushed lavender. The hedges were wild in places, curling like dark veins around marble columns and thorned vines. It wasn't beautiful, it was slightly haunting in a way.

But for once, she didn't mind the feeling.

Footsteps echoed behind her, softer than they had any right to be. Alphard joined her without a word, hands tucked into the pockets of his dark coat, eyes scanning the path ahead like someone might pop out of the hedges and attack them.

Hermione wouldn't put it past any member of his insane family after what she'd told them.

They walked in silence for a time, past a fountain long gone dry and a statue of a winged hound with broken teeth.

Finally, Alphard spoke. "That went exactly as well as I feared."

Hermione huffed out a breath that might've been a laugh. She appreciated his attempt to diffuse the tension, even if it was rather shoddy. "I'd say it went better than expected."

"Oh yes, only one wand drawn and no one called for blood. A roaring success by Black standards."

She gave him a side glance. "Is that standard for your dinner parties?"

"No," he said, "sometimes they hex before asking any questions. It's actually our second motto—'Hex first, questions... never'"

She almost smiled.

They reached the edge of a stone balustrade overlooking the gardens below. The trees swayed in the evening light, and the sky above had dimmed to violet and grey.

Hermione leaned forward, bracing her hands on the cold marble. Her voice, when it came, was barely more than a whisper. "I hate this part."

Alphard raised his brows in silent question. When Hermione didn't respond he asked with his words instead. 

"This part?"

"The waiting part," she said. "The moments after something monumental has happened, when your heart hasn't caught up to your head and all you can do is stand there and feel like hippogriff shite."

"I usually skip that part," Alphard said. "Terribly inefficient and bad for my complexion."

Hermione laughed quietly, then turned toward him and smiled. "Thank you for standing by me in there."

He looked at her for a long moment. "I knew you were coming and I saw bits and pieces of what is to come. I'll support you in front of all the stuffy, inbred purebloods you put in front of me. I quite enjoy making them uncomfortable." 

She didn't ask if he saw her death. Or Harry's. Partly because she wasn't sure if he would have told her but mostly because she didn't want to know. 

"I'm sorry that you came back here," she said softly. "Even though you had no plans to do so."

His smile was faint but it was there, a delicate thing Hermione wanted to tuck away in her beaded bag and protect. "The war's coming either way. But if I stayed gone, I wouldn't get to be smug when I'm right about everything."

"Such noble motivations."

"The noblest," he said, with a wink.

They stood in silence a while longer. The stars began to emerge above, pale and flickering. Hermione closed her eyes for a moment and let the wind pass through her and cool the tiny bit of bare skin she had showing.

"I feel as though I've done something utterly mad," she murmured.

"You have."

"Very reassuring, thank you."

"You don't have to do it all alone," Alphard said. "That's the entire point of this insane charade. You brought us in. So do yourself a favour and let us help you."

Hermione said nothing at first, she just let herself ruminate on his words. She'd never been good at accepting help, it had always made her feel like she was lacking in some way. But maybe she needed to accept that she'd fallen face first in to a giant load of dung and grab on to the hand that was offering to pull her up. 

Still, Rome wasn't built in a day. "I’m not quite so how to if I’m being honest."

Alphard didn't mock her or make her feel stupid for admitting she didn't know how to accept his help, he simply shrugged his shoulders and gave her a lopsided grin. "Well I'll be here when you figure it out," he said.

Another gust of wind left a trail of goosebumps across Hermiones skin. She'd need to go home soon. 

"I'll work on it," she said. "Even I can admit there is a few things I can't do on my own."

"That's alright," he said. "We'll handle them together."

She looked up at him, the way the wind tussled his hair and the cool weather left hues of pink on his cheeks made him look like he had walked straight out of a magazine. 

Gorgeous. He's gorgeous. 

"Death refers to you as someone that Sees. Can I believe him?"

Alphard's grin sharpened. "If it pleases you to do so."

~~~~

Malfoy Manor, July 5th

The corridors of Malfoy Manor never felt entirely still. Even at night, even with the lamps dimmed and the occupants settled in, the house still seemed to shift.

Narcissa stood by the window of the east parlour, her hands clasped loosely before her, watching the fog curl over the gardens below. She could see the hedge maze from here. Lucius had it trimmed three times a week—he was obsessed with appearances like that. He’d always had a thing about control. 

Funny how that was now sure to lead to their downfall. She thought back to back to the muggle books she’d read as a girl about greek gods, something about achilles heel and flying too close to the sun.

Lucius would condemn them with his unquenchable thirst for control and notoriety. 

She hadn't said much of anything to her husband when she returned home. Lucius had of course inquired as to why the family was called to counsel but she placated him with benign excuses. 

Concerns over the line of succession, concerns about inheritance. Alphards return. 

It was easier to lie when you include inconsequential truths. 

He was too distracted by the Ministry's new regulations, and how "the right people" were making themselves known. He used phrases like tradition and order and destiny as though they were absolutes.

He didn't see the cracks forming beneath the world they occupied.

She did. And so did Hermione Flamel.

Narcissa didn't know what to make of her. Not truly. She had spoken like someone who had nothing left to lose and that, more than anything, terrified Narcissa. People with nothing to loose and everything to gain tend to be the ones you need to look out for most for there is no mean that would not justify the end. 

Narcissa did not intend to be a casualty that could be brushed aside, collateral damage in the war that would surely rage around them. 

She did not wish for her husband to be one either but how tightly he’d wound himself in the coils of war made her nervous, she was not sure how she could save him. Whether it be from death or an Azkaban sentence.

Alas, she would find a way. She always found ways to get what she wants. 

At first she thought the Flamel girl might be a seer. But no, it was far more complicated than that, unsurprisingly. A Time Traveler. 

How utterly fascinating. 

Hermione had been precise in the way she informed them. She’d been poised and collected in a way that even Narcissa could admit—not aloud mind—was impressive. 

A woman who sat where men claimed the right to speak. Who stood in the heart of the Black family and told them they were doomed, then dared them to prove her wrong.

Narcissa had been raised to recognize power. To seek it out and cultivate it in a way which would benefit her the most. 

Hermione was more than just power. She was something deeper. Something buried and feral, polished not by privilege but by fire and fury and bloodshed. The kind of power that survived no matter what it faced. 

And she hadn't begged them. She hadn't even tried to win them over. She had just... spoken. She had told them what was to come and said they were free to make their own choices. 

To listen or to not listen. To heed the warning provided or ignore it. 

Narcissa's gaze drifted to the far end of the garden. The garden she had spent many a day coaxing into the beauty it now reflects. 

Lucius would follow the Dark Lord, she knew that. He already had, she just needed to find a way to safely remove him from his service. 

She thought back the way Hermione had spoken his name—Voldemort—without fear, without reverence. As though she had destroyed the darkest wizard of their age herself.

Narcissa touched her fingers lightly to the glass. The manor was quiet, but she swore she could still hear Hermione's voice echoing somewhere in her skull.

She had a lot to think about, a lot of moves to calculate and social calls to make. She wasn’t entirely convinced of the Flamel heirs words… but. 

But one didn't need to whole heartedly believe in something in order to take part in it.

And that, perhaps, was the most dangerous thing of all.

Chapter Text

From a very young age Walburga knew she was meant for greatness. 

She was brought into this world for more than just a marriage between two houses, for more than creating children that were Black in blood but not name. She didn’t care for a great love like the other girls in her dorm twittered on about, never cared for anyone who wasn’t a Black in blood or name. 

But, she was a daughter of a third son so her only duty was to marry and birth heirs. She refused to birth anything but a Black, anything else was beneath her so would not entertain it. 

And that was how she knew what her destiny would be. 

When she was sixteen she begged her father to organise a match between herself and her younger cousin Orion. He was quiet where she was outspoken, blasé where she was serious but he too understood his duty to his family and more importantly so did his father, Lord Black. 

Lord Black initially wanted a love match for his son, wanted to give him what he himself had with his wife Melania but Walburga was nothing if not determined and stubborn. Orion would one day be Lord Black and Walburga was steadfast in her belief that she would be there right beside him, that she would bring the next Black heir into the world as was her duty. 

The match was approved when Walburga was nineteen and Orion fifteen but she decided to be kind to her future husband and give him time to enjoy his youth. 

She waited patiently as he dallied around with girls his own age, whilst she grew into the steel her family name demanded of her. She did not raise a fuss or berate her future husband for his behaviour, never once shamed him or made her impatience known. She kept her purity intact whilst Orion sowed his wild oats and did nothing bar gritting her teeth. 

She understood after all. 

Their marriage would not be one born of true love or all encompassing desire like many wished for, it would be one of respect and permanence. It was a strategic match to further the family line and bring forth greatness. So, she would endure his indulgences as long as he came to her in the end. 

They married when Walburga was twenty-nine and Orion twenty-five, and from that day forward she set herself to her true duty. Children. The continuity of the Black name and ideals. 

It took five long years, but on the third of November 1959, Sirius Orion Black III came roaring into the world. He tore her to bloody ribbons as he came—she was sure his tiny fingers clawed at her womb as though trying to drag it out with him— but when she looked down at furious and red-skinned infant covered in her blood, Black blood, all she felt was proud. 

A Black twice over. The perfect Heir. 

On the seventeenth of April 1961, Regulus Arcturus Black II arrived in the complete opposite fashion. He did not claw or scream, no she had to get him clawed out of her. He was pulled into the world silent and blue and so fragile looking. For a moment she thought he would not survive, but he did. 

And with that her duty was done. 

Orion, however, longed for more. He wished for a daughter, a little girl to dote on and soften the hard edges of Grimmauld Place with delicate laughter. He wanted a daughter to dress up and twirl around rooms to gentle melodies. 

Walburga would not deny him that. He had surrendered his chance at true love for her ambitions, so she would not begrudge him a daughter if that was what he wished for, she was not so selfish to take that desire from him too. 

They may not have been a love match but they were partners, they respected one another and were committed to each other till death so they had long since decided to make the best of the situation. 

But the world refused to give them that gift. 

Their third son, Leo Pollux, was born silent. He never took a breath or opened his eyes, his heart didn’t beat. He was buried in the family plot in a coffin no bigger than a cradle, and for three months their entire house dressed in mourning black. 

Walburga wore hers like armour, but inside she seethed. She yearned to rip the world apart at the seams with her bare hands and demand it give her baby back. She had bled for him, had screamed and cursed and bled. 

And the world stole him from her anyways. 

When it stole two more from her before they left infancy she was done. Two more tiny coffins, two more pieces of her body ripped from her arms too soon and laid in the ground beside their brother and with them a part of her died as well. 

Done. Done. Done. Enough. Enough. Enough. 

After that, she refused to push out another part of herself that was going to be stolen from her cradling arms. She would not—could not—rip herself apart only to bury another fragment of her soul alongside her baby. 

She did not love Orion enough to risk mourning again. She had given enough for his desires. 

She was done. 

In the aftermath, she focused on raising her two living sons and moulding them into the perfect Blacks. Boys who understood their family history and legacy, who acted in a way befitting of their station. 

Sirius was not one to be moulded though, he bucked against her rule and questioned everything he was taught. He snuck into his brothers room to comfort him, took his brother’s punishments and had meltdowns to a level she had never seen. He was perfect. 

Her first born son, Heir Black was perfect. So when he lashed out and her family tried to punish him or demand she do something about his unruly behaviour she staunchly refused. 

Blacks do not bow and Sirius embodied that sentiment perfectly. 

So she tolerated it when he was sorted into Gryffindor, she grit her teeth and attempted to double down on her teachings of their family legacy. That he should not saddle himself to those below his station, not muddy himself with those of dirty blood. 

She tolerated his behaviour for longer than others believed she should have. She clung to him despite his Gryffindor colours and despicable choice in friends. She had lost too many already—children stolen before they could breathe or walk—and she refused to surrender Sirius so easily, not until he made himself impossible to keep. 

When her perfect Heir turned his back on her it was not a simple rebellion, it was an annihilation. She had fought, bargained and bled for him. He was not just Heir Black, he was a part of her, it was her blood in his veins so when he spat on the family name he spat on her very being. 

She blasted her first born off the family tapestry, scorched his face and washed her hands of him. Told herself good riddance and comforted herself with the false knowledge that Regulus Arcturus was better off being Heir than Sirius Orion ever was. 

So when she found out what her second son had been up to, Walburga was once more consumed by the kind of rage that made her want to destroy everything she set her eyes on, the type that had her yearning for destruction and decimation. 

And that was how she found herself in the drawing room of Grimmauld Place with Orion, the silence between them heavy with failure.

Walburga Black sat in the drawing room with her spine perfectly straight, her patience was waning and she felt as if she might shatter under the weight of her own…miscalculations if she dared relax. The morning light cut harsh lines across the rug, but she hadn’t moved to draw the curtains. Let the day burn through the room just as her anger was.

She had carried Regulus into this world. She had bled and wept and torn herself open to deliver him. And now, because of her blindness, her son was walking toward ruin. That failure pressed against her ribs like a stone.

Across the room, Orion stood before the fireplace, cradling a tumbler of firewhiskey he hadn’t sipped. His robes were unbuttoned at the collar which was unusual for him and his hair was poking out at all sorts of angles. Small things out of place that one who wasn’t familiar with them wouldn’t notice. Tiny cracks in the façade they had both spent years cultivating.

The kind of cracks that came before the shatter. She hated cracks. She had already buried three children and scorched another off the tapestry; her life was a ledger of fractures. She could not bear another.

Walburga’s voice was uncharacteristically soft when it finally broke the silence. “So. Our son is going to die.”

The words hung heavy between them. There was no venom in her tone, just resignation. Saying it aloud was like swallowing glass, but she would not flinch.

Orion didn’t look at her when he responded, he likely couldn’t bear to see the look in her eyes. “Unless we do something.”

She nodded slowly in agreement. “I’ll write to Dumbledore. We will have Regulus finish his NEWTs from home.”

That earned her a glance from her husband.

“He’ll grumble,” Orion said. “He likes the illusion of independence that Hogwarts provides him with.”

“He can grumble all he wants, Orion! He will live and frankly that’s all I care about.” Walburga’s eyes narrowed. “I won’t have him branded like livestock by a jumped up half-blood who believes himself to be the next Grindelwald.”

The word branded turned her stomach. Her sons were not cattle, not soldiers for another man’s cause. They were Blacks — her Blacks — and she would see them ash before she saw them treated like slaves.

Orion grunted as he swirled the amber liquid in his glass. “How did we miss this, Wal?”

Walburga’s lip curled in distaste at first but eventually she let out a long-suffering sigh. “We were so occupied with Sirius and the…less than savoury company he decided to keep, we didn’t see Regulus starting down an apparently deadly path.”

Her heart clenched even speaking his name. Sirius. Her perfect heir. The boy who had clawed his way into the world and clawed his way out of her grasp. She had tolerated him longer than she should have because she had already lost too much — but in the end he had annihilated her all the same. And in her grief, in her fixation on the son who defied her, she had failed the one who remained.

“He’s always been so compliant, especially after Sirius left.”

“He’s spent most of his life in his brother’s shadow and has seen a lot from that position,” she responded tersely. “He watched as we scorned Sirius, set his portrait on the tapestry aflame and he thought we would expect him to shoulder the responsibility of being heir—something we asked of him, mind you..”

And wasn’t that the truth of it? Regulus had been born a spare, not an heir. She had known it. Orion had known it. But fear and silence had twisted the boy’s mind until he carried a weight never truly meant for him.

The fire crackled as silence settled between the pair.

“I never expected him to try and fill his brother’s shoes,” Orion eventually murmured, almost to himself. “I had assumed he knew that even though Sirius was banished from this house that he was never disowned. That we still expect him to step into his role as heir when it is required of him.”

“He didn’t hear those conversations, Orion!” Walburga said bitterly. “He was terrified. Our Regulus was not born to lead.”

She stood, pacing by the window. Beyond the glass, the street was strangely empty. A Muggle boy once rode his bicycle past every day at noon. She used to scorn him and his lack of magic. Today, she almost missed the sound. The silence was too close to a coffin’s hush.

“We let him assume it would all fall on him,” she whispered. “Every Black expectation. Every burden that comes with being Heir. All because Sirius refused to fall in line.”

And there it was again — Sirius, her wound, her shame, her grief. His rebellion had not only broken her, it had warped Regulus too. One son’s betrayal had condemned the other.

Orion sighed. “And we did nothing to assuage his fears. No wonder he ran to the first devil who spoke his language. I fear we have failed in our duties towards our sons, Wal.”

The words scraped against her pride because they were true. They had failed. She had failed. Walburga turned towards her husband, crossing her arms. Her voice was flint. “That devil is going to die. Sooner than he thinks and I will not bury my son because of him. I refuse to lose another child.”

For the first time that morning, Orion looked at her fully. He saw his own fear and anguish reflected so clearly on her face, how taut her shoulders were. He saw how openly worried his normally closed-off wife was and it startled him something fierce. “I don’t want to either. In saying that, you believe her.”

Walburga paused her pacing and narrowed her eyes at Orion. “I don’t trust her as far as I can throw her,” she said. “But I believe she knows what’s coming.”

“Why?”

“Because she didn’t even blink when she told us our house would fall and come to ruin. Because she looked Death in the eye and it looked back. It smiled at her, Orion. I’m not foolish enough to discredit such a thing. Plus we all know of Alphard’s visions even if we choose ignore them.”

She hated even admitting that — hated that some stranger, some girl not of her blood, had told her a truth she could not ignore, but it was there and wholly undeniable. And Walburga had always known when to bend her ear, if not her back.

Orion said nothing in response, instead he returned his gaze to the glass in his hand and let his wife’s words wash through him. He let himself sit with all the revelations the last twenty-four hours had brought and truly thought before he spoke his next words.

“She’s dangerous,” he said at last.

Walburga nodded. “So she is.”

“And you want to keep her close.”

Walburga turned back toward the window, the light catching in the silver of her irises. “In a sense,” she said softly. “I would like to understand her.”

Orion raised a single brow at his wife. A silent request for more information.

“She’s not like most others,” Walburga continued. “Not like the Ministry sycophants or the noble twits we keep pretending are allies. She doesn’t ask for permission, doesn’t beat around the bush or play the game. She simply acts and I find that refreshing and very intriguing.” She shrugged.

“You admire her,” he said, not accusing, just surprised.

“I admire her nerve,” Walburga corrected. “And I wonder what the world would have looked like if I’d had it when I was her age.”

And that was the raw truth. For all her discipline, all her sacrifice, Walburga had been a creature of patience, of waiting for what was hers. This girl had not waited. She had taken. And Walburga could not help but ache, just a little, for the strength she might have had if she’d done the same.

The silence stretched taut between them.

“She’ll expect to be watched,” Orion said finally.

Walburga smirked. “I don’t doubt it. I imagine she’d be disappointed if we didn’t.”

Then she turned toward the door.

“We tell Regulus today,” she said.

“He won’t take it well.”

“Let him rage. Let him scream. He’ll still be alive.”

Orion watched her go, then drained the untouched drink in one long swallow.

———————

From the moment Regulus could remember, Sirius had filled every corner of his world.

Sirius laughed the loudest, shouted the fastest, drew every eye whether in triumph or in trouble. Regulus had been born into that shadow, the “spare” trailing behind the brilliant, impossible heir. He told himself it was fine. He was quiet, Sirius was loud; he was obedient, Sirius was reckless. They balanced each other. That was what brothers did.

They healed each other’s scrapes and bruises. Stood by each other in punishments and snuck into each other’s rooms in the dark of night when they had nightmares, cradling and whispering stories and reassurances. 

Except brothers weren’t supposed to leave. Brothers weren’t supposed to get themselves burnt from the tapestry and spit on the blood that bound them.

When Sirius left, Regulus didn’t just lose his brother—he inherited his absence. All the weight that should have been Sirius’s fell squarely onto him. He had not been raised for it. His mother had made that clear enough, in all the ways she pressed him into silence rather than command. He was to support, not to lead. Spare, not heir.

And yet, in the aftermath of Sirius’s rebellion, he saw no choice but to try. To carry the banner his brother had flung to the floor and spat on. To prove he could be strong, useful, worthy.

He had thought it would make them proud.

He had thought that stepping forward, aligning himself with the man who preached their family’s creed, would prove he understood what it meant to be a Black. Sirius had shamed them. Regulus would restore them.

Except now he sat hollow with the knowledge that he had been wrong. 

Again.

All his life, Regulus had lived in fear of failing them—his mother’s sharp eyes, his father’s cool judgment, the weight of the Black name itself and he had failed anyway.

The knowledge burned inside him as he walked into the drawing room, as his mother’s gaze carved into him as his father’s silence pressed heavy on the air.

“Close the door, Regulus,” Walburga said.

He obeyed, though his heart thudded like it might split his ribs. He had imagined this moment a hundred different ways. None of them had ended well.

“Sit down,” Orion said.

Regulus sat. His hands trembled against his knees. He tried to still them, tried to hold himself like Sirius might have—careless, bold, untouchable—but he had never been Sirius. He would never be Sirius.

Walburga’s voice cut into the silence. “What exactly have you been doing behind our backs?”

His throat closed.

“Because from where I stand,” she continued, each word a deliberate tightening of the hand on his throat, “you were ready to kneel to a half-blood hypocrite who preaches blood purity with filth in his veins and hides his mothers shame behind a name he invented.”

The shame in her voice seared him more than her anger would have.

“I thought…” Regulus forced the words out, brittle as glass. “I thought it was what you would have wanted.”

That stopped her.

“You thought,” Walburga repeated slowly, “that I wanted you to serve him? Bend knee to someone below you?”

“Not serve,” he whispered. He could feel the hollowness in his chest, the years of trying and failing rising up to choke him. “Protect. Uphold the family name. Sirius left. He threw it away. I thought—I thought it was mine to take up.”

“I was trying to make you proud!” The confession burst from him, unplanned and desperate. Maybe he was just as brash as his brother after all. “You always said the Black name must endure. I thought if I took the Mark, if I showed strength like cousin Bellatrix—”

“Do not bring that girl into this!” Walburga snapped at him and her eyes were a righteous inferno. He’d never seen his mother so furious, not since Sirius ran away. And wasn’t that something. “You are our son. Not a banner. Not a pawn for some madman!”

The words struck him harder than a slap would have. All his life he had measured himself against Sirius, against Bellatrix, against every cousin who seemed louder, braver, more certain. He had thought aligning himself with Voldemort would finally prove his worth but instead his parents looked at him with something worse than anger: disappointment. 

“I thought you’d approve,” he whispered. “I thought you’d see me as doing something befitting of House Black.”

Walburga’s voice trembled with fury edged in grief. “You are seen, Regulus. You always have been. But I refuse to bury another child because you acted without us. You should know better.”

The words made him flinch. He had never been enough—and yet, somehow, he had always been too much. Too quiet, too cautious, too weak to be the heir, too spineless to be the spare. Always failing in some direction.

“You will not return to Hogwarts,” Orion said firmly. “You will finish your NEWTs from home.”

“What?”

“You heard your father, Regulus. We will not allow you to be marked like common cattle,” Walburga added. “Not by him. Not by anyone.”

Regulus lurched to his feet, panic clawing up his throat. “You can’t—”

“We can,” Orion interrupted, cool and final. “And we are.”

“You’re treating me like I’m helpless,” Regulus snapped. The words stung, because a part of him knew they were true. “Like I’m a boy!”

“You are a boy, Regulus Arcturus!” Walburga thundered. “And more than that—you are ours. Our flesh. Our blood. We love you, even if we do not say it enough. We will not see you die for a man who bleeds children dry and calls it war. Not you, jeune étoile.”

The old name cut through him. Little star. He had not heard it in years. It made him want to weep and rage in equal measure. To hide between the folds of his mother’s skirts, clinging to her hand and to burn those hands at the same time. 

“You saw something,” he said hoarsely in response, no other words would come out. No apologies would be made, no further words of love would be given. Only choked words and demands. 

They didn’t answer. That was answer enough.

“You spoke with her. With Hermione. What did she show you?”

Walburga stepped closer, fingers brushing his cheek with a tenderness he barely recognized. “The end,” she said. “We saw the end. And it was full of names, ours among them.”

Regulus stood frozen in front of his mother, her warm hand cradling his cheek with a level of affection he’d long since felt. A feeling he was sure he would never experience again. Something he thought he grew out of but missed all the same. 

“We are not asking,” she finished. “We are telling.”

He closed his eyes and basked in the warmth her hand was providing. Let himself get lost in the soft gesture and pretend he was still a boy with his brother by his side and his mother in his corner. 

“Alright,” he said softly. “I’ll stay. I won’t take the Mark.”

The words were obedience, but the hollowness in him only deepened. He had done what they asked. Again. And still, it did not feel like enough.

“I want to help,” he added. “If you believe her—if what she says is true—I want to do something about it.”

Orion studied him, then gave a single nod. “We will consider it.”

Regulus gave a small smile. It did not reach his eyes. “Of course.”

Chapter Text

Grimmauld Place was a theatre, and Hermione refused to watch it play out from side stage. She fully intended to be centre stage when she ripped the floor out from under her hosts.

She’d politely asked for the drapes in the sitting room to be opened, not because she liked this house (she hated it) but because she wanted to see all the minute changes in facial expressions when she spoke. 

Let the light burn away all hope of keeping things hidden in shadows.

Walburga sat as if she’d been born on a dais, she wore silver-trimmed robes, and her hair was pinned up in a way that resembled a crown. Hermione recognised it all for it truly was, armour. 

She donned her finely crafted robes and extravagant hair styles so she could hide behind them. 

Narcissa had arrived late but was unbothered by it, which thoroughly shocked Hermione. Still, she was a cool blade in blue silk. She was hiding just the same as Walburga, albeit in a different way. 

She didn’t touch the tea served to her by a much less outspoken Kreacher. And what a shock to her system that was! To be referred to as ‘Young Miss Flamel’ and not ‘Filthy mudblood girl’ was like having a bucket of ice water dumped on her head and then shoved in a sauna in the same minute. 

She felt raw and rankled, disgusted yet determined. She wondered, with a bitter sort of amusement if she would ever stop feeling things in such contradictions and juxtapositions.

She could feel the ache of Harry like a hand pushing down on her lungs with every second she spent in his house. It was a slow tightening in her chest that never went away, the grief lived in her the way breath did. But grief had lost the argument weeks ago; it could ride along or be dragged. She was done letting it steer.

This isn’t about comfort, she thought as she watched them, and they watched her in return. This is about leverage.

“You know,” she said aloud, swirling the cup she would not drink, “for a society so thoroughly run by men, it’s remarkable how much of it would collapse without the women keeping it upright.”

Walburga’s brow lifted: go on. Narcissa’s faint smile over the rim of her cup: we’re listening.

Hermione laid it out cleanly—didn’t plead for understanding, offered no righteous flutter, just truth laid bare. Men strutted with titles and signatures; women managed the homes, the reputations, the heirs. Influence from behind curtains was the story these women had been handed and told to be grateful for. She had been told to be grateful for a lot of things. 

She was done with gratitude that tasted like dirt in her mouth.

“Behind the curtains is safer, according to men of course.” Walburga said, cool as cut glass.

Safe. What an ideal it was. To be safe, to feel safe. Security and safety and protection. 

Such rot this world was shoving down their throats and forcing them to be thankful for it. Safe hadn’t saved anyone who needed saving. “No,” Hermione said. “Safety is an illusion and it certainly doesn’t win wars. You’ll bleed just the same as your husbands if nothing changes.”

Narcissa tilted her head. “You’d rather we fought openly?”

“I’d rather we weren’t told we couldn’t fight at all actually, but that might just be me.” 

A clean truth set between them. Hermione felt the shift in the room as something was passed between them, shared recognition and shared irritation. Three women who had done everything as they were told and watched the world stay ugly.

They already knew of the future she’d laid out for them, what the war would cost and which names would be carved into stone if nothing changed. 

Fear hadn’t sent them scurrying which was good, Hermione didn’t have time for cowards or for anyone who decided inaction was feasible.

She leaned in, not with volume but with certainty. “You birth and raise the heirs. You decide who sits where at functions, who is welcome, who is not. You keep gossip moving or you kill it. You make reputations and you break them just the same.”

“Not law,” Walburga countered.

“Law follows culture,” Hermione said and waved her hand dismissively, as if she was batting Walburgas argument aside. “And culture follows power.”

Narcissa sat stock still sipping daintily at her tea every now and then, she hadn’t bothered interjecting yet, but Hermione knew she would eventually, could tell by the minor ticks in her expression. The way her eyebrow would raise or her mouth turn down before she could wipe her expression clean again. 

“Our actions may not be included in the history books,” Walburga said, “but we raise the historians.”

“It is us that raise the Heirs, guard the family secrets and protect the names they carry,” Narcissa finally chimed in.

“Then maybe it’s time we stop settling for being footnotes,” Hermione said with a soft smile in response to her.

Narcissa watched Hermione with wary eyes. “And if the men cause a fuss?” She asked stiffly.

“Let them.” Walburga’s disdain was faintly amused. “We’ll remind them who controls their children’s reputations, their wives’ tongues, and their legacy.”

“Sounds suspiciously like a coup,” Narcissa said as she took another careful sip of her tea. 

“Sounds like Tuesday,” Walburga replied easily.

They laughed quietly, a conspiratorial sort of laugh between three women who were all desperate to change the status quo. 

Hermione let it land and then pushed forward. The old Hermione—the one who knit lumpy socks and wrote infuriatingly polite letters about werewolf rights—lived under her skin with the same stubborn heartbeat as always. The world had taught her pain; it had not taught her to stop.

“There’s something I’ve been thinking about,” she said, and the words steadied her. A plan was grief’s only effective leash. “I would like to open a clinic. A place for healing, gathering information, and helping people the system would rather forget. I’d of course like it to be as discreet as possible.”

A memory bit the inside of her chest—Shell Cottage at night, Fleur’s quiet hands at her throat, the way kindness could feel like air after drowning. Time had stolen Harry, the future and her softness. It hadn’t stolen the part that insisted kindness was a weapon when wielded properly.

I won’t let 1979 file me down into a palatable shape, she thought. If it won’t bend, I’ll break it.

She would treat whoever walked in: Death Eater or Order member, werewolf or hag, squib or creature. Politics didn’t stop blood from letting. Pain didn’t care about sides in a war and frankly, neither did she. 

Walburga’s brow arched. “That’s frightfully ambitious for a witch.”

Narcissa’s mouth tilted. “Terribly dangerous as well, Aunty.”

Hermione nodded in agreement; they weren’t wrong even if it grated on her nerves. “True enough. Which is why it has to be off the radar and likely somewhere overlooked.”

“Knockturn Alley,” Walburga said immediately.

Hermione blinked dumbly at her for a moment before responding. “Really?”

“You want discretion, access to those unwilling or unable to go to St Mungos, and a steady stream of blood and gossip,” Walburga tapped her finger thoughtfully against her own teacup. “Knockturn is your best option.”

Narcissa smiled widely at her aunt. “Many will stop to question a new shop opening, but, if it caters to those willing to turn a blind eye you may prosper.”

“With discretion and inclusivity being priority,” Walburga added. “You won’t lack patients.”

Hermione’s mind reeled. How in the world hadn’t she thought of that? It annoyed her in a way that she wasn’t the one that came up with the idea but well…everyone has their uses she supposed. 

She wasn’t sitting in Grimmauld Place because she had a taste for self flagellation after all. She came to Walburga and Narcissa because they understood the world of high society in a way she couldn’t—not in the wizarding world anyways. 

“I know of someone that might like to help,” Narcissa said. “She’s a trained healer and she’s brilliant but has had some issues.” A beat. “Truly, she’s an incredible healer.”

“I don’t care about issues,” Hermione snorted inelegantly. “I care about skill and discretion.”

That got her a considering look from Walburga. “Orion can assist with the legal side of things. Licensing and the tedious paperwork.” She shrugged. 

"You believe he'll do that?" Hermione asked skeptically. 

Walburga raised a single, arched eyebrow at her. "I know he'll do it if I ask him and I am willing to do so as he's home far too often. I could use the peace and he needs the socialisation."

Hermione hadn’t expected to want either Walburga nor Orion anywhere near her clinic. 

Walburga had a certain fire to her that reminded Hermione so vividly of Sirius, just a lot less reckless. She seemed determined to assist in altering the wizarding world—to her benefit of course—and that was something Hermione could respect. 

Orion, on the other hand, was cool, calm and collected. He observed and only spoke if he believed his words were necessary or useful, he reminded her a lot of Remus actually. 

Minus the furry problem of course. 

Still, even with all of this she was wary. She didn't truly know them or fully understand how they operated as a team but she was willing to give them a chance.

Wary did not equal unwilling

"You know you'll be welcome too? Your skill in manoeuvring through the social scene would be extremely valuable." She murmured in response. 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Walburga said, thoughtfully.

“First, locations,” Narcissa concluded, efficient as a snapped fan. “Then we hire.”

“Wear gloves,” Walburga murmured. “And bring gold. Lots of it. There is no problem galleons can’t solve.”

Hermione raised her already-gloved hands and allowed a small, sharp smile. “I’m always prepared.”

The grief in her chest didn’t recede, but it had somewhere to go now. Forward.

“Head high,” Narcissa murmured quietly next to her ear the moment they crossed into Knockturn Alley. “Hunched shoulders read as prey.” 

Hermione snorted in response but stuck her nose in the air and adopted the same pinched expression she vividly remembered Narcissa herself wearing when she first met her back in gods…1992? ‘93? Merlin, it had been such a long time. 

Still, she understood Knockturn had teeth, but she refused to flinch at the bite or rear back at the sight of blood. She wouldn’t give this foul-smelling place the pleasure of being nervous. 

“This place is as charming as ever.” She muttered while looking around curiously. It really wouldn’t change much in the next 20 years. 

There would still be venders haggling about discounted love potions and…fucking Merlin! Shrunken heads was a new sight and certainly not a pleasant one. Hags hidden in the corners between buildings hissing nonsense. 

Narcissa caught her gaze and subtly shook her head. “Don’t make eye contact with them.” She admonished. “The rumours about them and flesh started somewhere.” She raised an eyebrow at Hermione but well Hermione wasn’t going to contradict her on that, and she didn’t particularly feel like having a quick chat with the Hag either. 

“Right. As I said, absolutely charming.” She drawled. This place gave her the heebie jeebies honestly. 

She supposed she’d have to get over it pretty damn quick if she was going to work here though. 

The pair turned down a narrow passage and made their way towards their first stop of the day. It was a dank place to put it lightly; the windows were covered in what looked and smelt like centuries of grime and the inside was no better off. 

The Landlord, Mr Granton wanted two hundred galleons a month and staunchly refused anything beyond superficial renovations. Hermione thought it had a small amount of potential, but Narcissa was not of the same mind. 

That is to say she laughed in the Landlords face and told him they’d be taking their considerable amount of galleons elsewhere. 

The next two places were worse. 

One was leaking and according to the Landlord a former brothel. Hermione refused that place on morals alone. 

The other one had half decent wards and the rent wasn’t horrible, but it shared a wall with a banshee run antique shop, which cleared up any confusion they had about the rent. 

Narcissa made a snide comment about it being discounted due to expedited hearing loss and Hermione had to agree. 

Still, Hermione’s determination didn’t waver. If she had to build her clinic from the ground up in a pit she’d start shovelling. She’d done harder things than bloody shop hunting. 

Her perseverance paid off when they arrived at their final potential shopfront for the day. 

It was a narrow two-storey building. The dark brick of the upper level was weathered and uneven, with soot clinging to the mortar. Two windows sat above the shop front, their glass dulled by grime and framed with thin, worn-down curtains. The doorway was set deep into the wall, shadowed beneath a deep red painted facade that had long since begun to peel.

The sign on the front of the shop read: C. Vellum & Sons — Rarities but it was almost completely faded, and letters were beginning to peel away. 

Hermione turned to Narcissa and gave her a smug smile. “This place has promise. Tell me you see it!” 

“I see a place in desperate need of remodelling.” She sighed in response. 

Hermione was not so easily deterred. 

Inside the store smelled strongly of dust and parchment and the specific scent of very old books. Shelves lined the two side walls, tall enough to almost reach the ceiling and there was a large wooden till counter towards the back of the shop and behind it an intricately carved oak door. 

Hermione strolled through the shop, running her hands along one of the shelves until she made her way to the old counter. A short and quite round man with a full head of grey hair and kind brown eyes was sitting behind it idly reading the days paper. 

“Good afternoon sir, we heard this place was being rented out and are quite interested.” 

The man startled and subsequently dropped his paper to the floor before rushing to stand up and scurry around the counter to greet them. “Good afternoon Las! Yes, yes. It was my father’s place, so I’d like to retain ownership but well, the place is just rotting away!” 

Narcissa simply hummed in response as she looked around with critical eyes before she turned to face the man once more. “Pleasure to meet you Mr…?” 

“Oh! I’m Patrifor Vellum. Lovely to meet you, sorry what did you say your names were?” He responded jovially. 

Hermione smiled at him, he truly did seem very kind, if not a bit jubilant. “This Lady Malfoy and I’m Hermione Flamel, well met Mr Vellum.” 

Patrifors eyes seemed close to bulging right from his eye sockets, so Hermione took pity on the man and decided to move the conversation along before he made an ass of himself. “What is your asking price Mr Vellum? I’m a healer and hoping to start up a small clinic you see. And this place seems perfect!” 

“Oh ho! A healer you say? How wonderful, no such thing as too many healers in my opinion! Rent is to be 350 galleons a month.” 

Hermione looked over to Narcissa to see if she had any opinion on the matter, she was admittedly quite out of her depth seeing as though she’d never rented a place before, let alone anything in the wizarding world. She’d only been to Gringotts four times—officially—for goodness sake! 

Narcissa clasped her hands behind her back and smiled at Petrifor for a moment before speaking. “Hmm, quite the asking price Mr Vellum. Is there a reason your asking price is higher than any other place in Knockturn?” She queried not so kindly. 

He looked slightly affronted at her question but took it all in stride. “This place is in good nick and it has a fully functional studio apartment upstairs as well as three decently sized rooms in the back that are all included in the rent, Lady Malfoy.” 

“And are renovations allowed? As my dear friend said, we are looking to open a clinic so some modifications will of course need to be made.” 

“Of course! As long as it’s nothing too outrageous or beyond future alterations I have no problem with such things.” 

“I think I’d quite like to rent your shop, Mr Vellum.” Hermione said with a warm smile, when Petrifor smiled in response Hermione stuck out her hand for him to shake, and the deal was done. 

He agreed to have all the paperwork forwarded to Orion within the next few days and bid them farewell and safe travels. 

Hermione took one last look around the store before they left and let the feeling of accomplishment wash over her. 

She could do so much good with a place like this and help so many people. It would be a small ripple in the ocean of corruption but a ripple nonetheless. 

And who’s to say she can’t turn a ripple into a tidal wave? 

“You look quite happy.” Narcissa murmured as they made their way out of the shop. 

“I am. Do you think Orion will mind terribly that the paperwork is being sent to him? I’d hate to be an imposition is all.” 

“Don’t fret about that, Aunty Walburga will handle him. Now we have a healer to hire.”

The apothecary Narcissa led them to reeked of rotten plants and something burnt. It didn’t have the distinctly clean and chemical smell of the apothecaries she was used to and it made Hermione feel off kilter. 

She paused just inside the doorway with the dull jingle of the bell above her head still ringing in her ears. Much like the shop front they had just left, every surface was littered with dust. There were half burnt candles on most shelves alongside jars filled with…Hermione wasn’t actually sure what they were filled with. 

Behind the counter, slouched on a narrow stool sat a woman with hair almost as pale as the Malfoys and the skin to match. When she looked up to greet them Hermione felt her stomach hit the floor. 

The resemblance was unmistakable. 

They weren’t identical, but so close to it that Hermione thought she might be sick right there on the floor. 

Fleurs features had been softer and harsher at the same time, polished by love and war. This woman had deep shadows beneath her eyes and an air of tiredness that radiated off her like waves. But her hair was the same shade of pale blonde and her eyes the same impossible glacier blue. 

A cousin? Aunt maybe? She couldn’t tell. 

Hermione could see the faint shimmer of her aura, something once radiant now dimmed and muted. It made her feel sick and sad and like her knees were going to give out. She quite despised Narcissa for bringing her here and exposing yet another bleeding wound Hermione wasn’t even aware of. 

Gods she was a mess. 

She hadn’t thought of Fleur in a while before today, not properly at least. Not of the nights at Shell Cottage, the gentle way Fleur had whispered healing charms across her ruined neck and braided her hair when her arms wouldn’t cooperate. Seeing her face again—familiar but so different—felt like she’d been stabbed through scar tissue. 

The woman merely blinked and narrowed her eyes at them, completely oblivious to Hermione’s downward spiral. “Lady Malfoy, how can I help you today?” 

Narcissa stepped past Hermione with all the unbothered grace of someone who never walked into a room they weren’t immediately welcome in. “Miss Delacour, pleasure to make your acquaintance.” She demurred with a barely there dip of her chin. 

“I’m sure. What brings you here today?” She replied flatly, not bothering to remove herself from her perch on the stool behind the counter. 

Narcissa smiled tightly in response. “A business venture of sorts. Is there somewhere we could talk privately?” 

Delacours gaze flicked to Hermione and the lack of recognition in a face that resembled someone she loved so dearly cut deeper than she was ready to admit. 

Hermione took a shuddered breath and stepped forward so she was standing beside Narcissa. “We won’t take much of your time and it will be worth your while, I assure you.” 

Delacour regarded them both skeptically for a moment before she stood and jutted her head toward a door behind them. “Very well, follow me.” She sighed. 

The back room was barely larger than a broom cupboard. It housed a tiny desk, three chairs and a couple of floating shelves on the wall’s littered with parchment. Delacour closed the door behind them with a flick of her wand and took her seat behind the desk. 

Narcissa and Hermione both sat down in the chairs in front of her, settling their skirts and crossing their ankles eerily in time with each other. 

Delacour crossed her arms across her chest and raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “Well? Speak.”

Hermione let out a shaky exhale of air and steeled her spine. “Firstly, my name is Hermione Flamel and it’s lovely to meet you Miss Delacour.” She attempted to smile kindly but was sure it came across as more of a grimace. 

“Isolde Delacour” She responded bluntly. “Get on with it please.” 

Hermione had to bite her cheek hard enough to draw blood to stop herself from snapping at Isolde. It was hard to meet with such harshness from a face that once bathed her in comfort. 

“I’m opening a healing clinic here in Knockturn Alley. I’m looking to hire a healer and Narcissa informed me that you were a brilliant one, so, I was hoping you might be interested.” 

Isolde looked to Narcissa and blinked slowly. “Is that so?” She asked warily. 

“Don’t fish for compliments, it’s unbecoming.” Narcissa responded, her tone was light but Hermione could tell by the tightness in her shoulders that she was feeling quite the opposite so she cut in before things could escalate. 

“You will of course be paid well. I plan to emphasise on discretion and inclusivity, that is to say anyone with any sort of magic will be welcome. Due to this and the location the shop will be heavily warded and have private floo access.” Hermione informed her. She was desperately hoping this information would reel Isolde in and was sorely tempted to childishly cross her fingers. 

“Hmph. You’re right about me being brilliant and I do find myself tragically underemployed.” She mused, a thoughtful yet far off look on her face.

“We thought you might be interested in something,” Narcissa hummed quietly before continuing. “More worthwhile than manning the desk at Greengrass’s knockoff apothecary.” She finished delicately. 

Isolde snorted abruptly. “You thought right. But why me? There are plenty of more reputable healers you could’ve approached and yet…” She cut off and gestured between herself and them with a raised eyebrow. 

Hermione shrugged. “You were recommended and I trust Narcissas judgement. Plus, from what I’ve seen and heard so far, I think you miss healing.” 

Isolde’s shoulders dropped a fraction and her voice when she spoke again, was no longer wary or sharp. “I apprenticed at Beauxbatons under the High Healer. After I finished my apprenticeship I ran my own clinic in Marseille.” She whispered. 

Hermione frowned. “What happened?” She inquired softly. 

“France happened,” she responded simply. “The laws changed and Veela blood became inconvenient. Then dangerous.” 

Hermione’s jaw tightened but before she could unleash her righteous indignation at what she had just heard, Narcissa spoke calmly. “And now you sit behind a counter selling potions to simpletons.” 

Isolde’s smile in response was crooked and self deprecating. “Pretty, isn’t it?” 

Hermione, whose indignation was simmering just below the surface and begging to be let free, leant forward in her chair and looked her directly in the eyes. “You don’t belong here. What I’m offering is a place to do what you were always meant to. To heal and help those that face the same discrimination you once did.” She said pleadingly. 

“And you said it’s here in Knockturn?”

“Yes. But as I said, it will be heavily warded and you’ll have access to anything you need or want, funds will not be an issue.” 

There was a lull in conversation for a few moments as Isolde considered all that had been said. Then, quietly she asked, “Who is the other healer?” 

“Hermione herself,” Narcissa smiled smugly before adding, “Orion Black will be assisting with the legal side of things and I’m sure Alphard will be making a nuisance of himself often but do ignore him.” 

Isolde flicked her gaze over to Hermione and gave her a considering look. “You seem to have a fair few of the Blacks onside.” She hummed thoughtfully. 

Hermione only smiled forlornly in response. 

“Fine. I accept but I will reserve the right to my own judgment and expertise. Now give me more information.” 

Hermione smiled widely and eagerly provided Isolde with all the ideas and information she had. It wasn’t a lot, still bare bones and idealistic concepts but she handed it all over happily nonetheless. 

And that was how she spent the rest of her afternoon, sitting in a cramped back room with Narcissa Malfoy and Isolde Delacour going over all the plans she had for her clinic and latching onto all the new ones her compatriots provided. 

Hermione couldn’t remember the last time she felt so excited.

Chapter Text

10th July

Alphard stood by oversized window with his hands clasped tightly behind his back, looking out at the mist glazed lawn at the Black Ancestral home. The air in the drawing room was thick with tension and felt its usual amount of oppressive.

He didn't particularly want to be here but he knew he had little choice in the matter, for there was thinly veiled threats to exchange between family.

A most enticing way to spend his time.

"Funny thing about our family," he said, taking care to ensure his tone was pleasant but his words directed at his family like knives at a target. "We'd sooner preserve our pure blood than the people bleeding it."

Orion, who was leaning against the hearth nursing a glass of something dark—fire whiskey the most likely liquid—was shocked by the snort he made and tried to cover it with a very unconvincing and pathetic cough before he spoke. "That ideal was practica—no literally beat into us, Alphard. Why do you continue to expect anything else?"

Alphard wanted to grab him by the hair and slam his head down on to the very hearth he was leaning against. To scream at him that he expects more because any less is going to get them all fucking killed. Instead, he grit his teeth and dug his nails so deep into his palms he was sure blood was drawn.

He was really, really struggling to be pleasant today. He was sure it had something to do with how pigheaded and uninspired his cousin could be. "Well Orion, I was under the impression that we were grown adults and able to form our own opinions. My sincerest apologies for being wrong, cousin." He smiled tightly where he wanted to bare his teeth.

He hated being back in this house. Hated having to listen to Orion preaching all his blood purity drivel. Hated that he could no longer lash out at his cousin like when they were mere boys slinging jinxes and hexes in the very grounds he was just staring at.

Mostly, he hated that Orion regurgitated that utter shit in the first place. Alphard knew from a young age what his cousin would turn into, but being faced with it didn't hurt any less.

Being faced with the possible repercussions was a certain type of familial heartbreak he would never wish upon anyone.

The hatred and pain of it all made him itch for blood and violence and something to sink his teeth into. Made him burn with the urge to scream and rage at his family.

It was no surprise to him, but it hurt something fierce nonetheless.

"You can apologise with gold or by disappearing again. I'm partial to either option." Orion sneered and it made Alphard wish he had less control over his actions. The anger and hurt that rung through his body felt like he'd shoved a hand in his chest and rung an eternal bell.

He knew his cousin didn't truly deserve it but he sorely wanted to sling a slicing hex at his stupid face. Hell, he was tempted to fall to his knees beg his uncle for permission.

"Careful, I'll take this family's saving grace with me if I leave. I do so hope you all have your wills in order, not that there'll be anyone to leave the fortune to."

Arcturus, who was sat in his usual high back chair like a spider at the heart of its web watching the barbs flow without inserting himself had clearly had enough. "Enough. We will not be turning on each other any longer, Black blood will be preserved and it we will persevere. Am I understood?" He barked at them.

"Understood." Alphard said at the same time Orion hissed out a reluctant "Yes, father."

At least someone in his godforsaken family had their head screwed on almost right.

Arcturus levelled them both with a fierce glare before he continued speaking. "Now, we have important matters to discuss. Such as how we are going to force Renaud to speak with Miss Flamel."

Personally, Alphard didn't care to speak with Renaud. He was a self serving, sanctimonious, bigoted old plonker that had offered the world nothing but prejudice and dimwitted sons.

But, Hermione said the Lestranges were essential to the 'Tom Riddle Assassination Plot' or T.R.A.P as he'd coined it. So, he'd be gritting his teeth through more unstimulating and infuriating conversations in the near future.

Lucky me. He thought morosely. 

"We cannot seem to be offering him charity. Pride is leash, pull it wrong and he'll bite." Arcturus grumbled, his cane tapping rhythmically on the stone floor in front of him. The steady beat lulled them into silence for a while before Orion spoke up.

"What about preservation? He is a self serving bastard and may be enticed by that or the chance of new and fruitful alliances, father." Orion chimed in. It wasn't his worst idea, it might even work if it executed correctly. Heavy emphasis on the might in that statement.

Alphard still really, really really wanted to hurt him though. A twisted part of him, the part he forcefully shoved down into the nether of his soul wanted to rear his closed fist back and sock him with as much force as he could muster just so he could observe his reaction when he was felled by muggle means.

That same twisted part, who had dreams of a war torn girl, coated in blood and war and heady magic knew that Hermione would enjoy watching it as well. Righteous, viscous little hell cat she is.

She would smile at him with blood soaked teeth and rejoice at the sight of a member of the Sacred Twenty-Eight getting sucker punched.

He was snapped out of his daydreams by his uncle asking him a question he was not at all prepared for. Something he was not ready to speak on.

"Alphard. She was adamant that Bellatrix was not to be included. Why?"

Alphard wanted to sink into the floor beneath him, for it to gobble him up and never let him see the light of day again. He hated this. So, so much.

Despite her many flaws and shortcomings Bellatrix was his niece and knowing what fate awaited her made his heart ache uncomfortably. He wanted more than anything to be able to help her, to guide her along to a better future. But, he knew such a thing was impossible.

She was beyond saving.

"I do not believe Bella can be saved, even if offered the chance at survival. She's already lost to madness and I fear there is nothing we can do to bring her back." He said solemnly. The words tasted foul in his mouth despite the truth of them. "And Hermione—Miss Flamel—made herself quite clear. If we force this on her she will no longer aid us, and that is not something we can afford."

Arcturus narrowed his eyes at him suspiciously. "And what exactly is Miss Flamel to you, Alphard?" He queried.

"The woman I saw coming in dreams I'd prefer not to relive." He responded darkly.

Arcturus raised his brow, his shock displayed subtly on his face. "You have not spoken of your visions since you were a boy, Alphard."

He was not wrong.

His sight had always been a sore spot for him. They had started when he was only eight and never ceased. Dreams so vivid he would wake shaking like a leaf and choking on the air that he was meant to inhale easily. Faces he didn't recognise screaming in agony, the world around them burning and death looming over them all.

As the terrified child he was he cried out for his father night after night, begging him to make them stop, to chase the monsters in his mind away. To protect him from the viscousness of his dreams and be the shield his younger self so desperately needed. He'd learnt quickly—and painfully—not to wake his father with his wails of terror.

The message was crystal fucking clear. You will not burden this family with such madness. Do not speak of this again.

So, he learnt not to. He begged his house-elf Magsie to silence the curtains around his four poster bed and discreetly wash the blood from his bedsheets when his nose bled from the strain of it.

He hated them, those dreams. Not just for what they showed, but for what they took. The peace, innocence and naivety a child should experience. And the fear and anguish they always left behind.

So, no he didn't really wish to speak of said visions with his family. He didn't want to speak of them at all.

"I was taught not to with a heavy hand." He replied. "She walks alongside death. We've all seen it, it's wrapped around her shoulders like a bloody scarf. Even if I hadn't seen, I'd still not be game to move against her for that reason alone." He tutted. His mood was foul enough without discussing this.

Orion cocked his head to the side. "And you want us to trust her?" He asked incredulously.

"Is that what I said, Orion? No. You're free to make your own decisions." He smiled sharply, all teeth and a distinct lack of softness. "What I said was that we should listen. The world will change and if we do not bend, we will break."

For a long while, silence reigned. It was the heavy and uncomfortable sort of silence that weighed down on your bones, forceful enough to make you want to bend to its every will and whim.

Then Alphard watched as Arcturus rose slowly and deliberately from his seat, his can tapping against the stone floor with every step like the tick of a counting down clock.

"Then we shall prepare." He said. "We will give Renaud a taste of the future and see how desperately he wishes to survive."

"And if he resists?" Orion asked warily.

Alphards expression darkened, he barely resisted the urge to snarl at his cousin like a rabid dog. "Then we let the future swallow them." He bit out from between clenched teeth.

Good fucking riddance.

13th July

Diagon Alley was too bright for the murky state of his mind.

The noise got under his skin—Hawkers calling out for potential customers, owls screeching in protest, the heavy beat of boots on stone. People brushed too close to him as they made their way through the Alley and it grated on his admittedly taught nerves. He’d never been overly fond of crowds people in general, but after the last few days—the meeting with his uncle and cousin—he almost preferred this kind of uncomfortable. At least the noise here wasn’t made of arguments and threats.

Hermione walked a few steps ahead of him, her shoulders squared but twitching ever so slightly when someone stepped too close. There was a tension to her posture that the untrained eye wouldn’t notice, the sort of tension that came from forced habit rather than nerves. As observant as she was, she still didn’t seem to take notice of the stares she drew.

He did. He always did. She had the sort of presence that demanded a second glance. The power bleeding from her making even the most unobservant double back.

Narcissa, however, moved beside her as graceful as ever. Her regal nose wrinkling in displeasure at the undignified crowds. “This place gets worse each year. I cannot fathom why we are not in France.” She sighed wistfully.

Alphard snorted. “That’s just your prejudice talking ‘Cissa.” He ribbed.

Hermione glanced at him over her shoulder and almost smiled. For a moment, it felt like something. A small, tentative thing, but something all the same.

As they made their way into Madam Malkins Alphard was hit with the stench of fabric dye and the tangy residue of magic. There was rolls of cloth levitating around customers on circular podiums, racks of ready to wear robes lining the walls and pin cushions zipping around in a frenzy.

Madam Malkin herself hurried over to greet them as soon as she noticed them. “Lady Malfoy, Mr Black and this must be Miss—?”

“This is Miss Flamel,” Narcissa cut in curtly. “She is the reason you’ll be able to buy finer fabric this season.” She finished, nodding to Hermione.

Hermione flushed lightly. Alphard caught it, even though she tried to hide it by ducking her head and busying herself with adjusting the gloves covering her hands. She could face down war and megalomaniacs with squared shoulders and bared teeth but a simple compliment turned her inside out.

Eventually she lifted her head and smiled prettily at Madam Malkin. “I am in need of new robes as I am opening a clinic. I would prefer them to be as practical as possible, please.”

“The finest materials you have, embedded with the usual charms on healers robes.” Narcissa corrected. “Practical but still befitting an heir of a Noble and Ancient house.”

Alphard raised an eyebrow but turned his gaze toward Madam Malkin. “Could you also stitch in the crest of House Flamel?” He asked.

Madam Malkin looked nothing short of delighted, if she was any less proper Alphard would say she’d be squealing and clapping her hands in glee. “Of course! I’d be thrilled to assist, my dears!” She said before ambling off to gather multiple different fabrics in a number of shades ranging from Black to apple green.

Hermione gave him a look that wasn’t quite annoyed, more like she wanted to be but couldnt quite muster the ire. He smirked in response. He liked testing her temper just to see the spark of it.

He watched while the seamstress worked. Charms melting in softly as fabric shifted across Hermione’s form: Black, green, grey. Each colour seemed to change the way she held herself. The brighter colours making her shoulders slump slightly, and the darker ones having her stand close to confidently.

“I feel rather like a dramatic, posturing old crone.” She grumbled.

“They’d be so lucky.” Alphard muttered under his breath, not expecting anyone to hear him. Hermione’s eyes met his in the reflection of the mirror infant of her and smiled toothily, his traitorous heart skipped a beat in response.

Beautiful. He thought to himself.

“The green and Black are quite fetching.” Narcissa informed her warmly.

The seamstress added a litany of extras: Stain resistant charms, a multitude of pockets and built in wand holsters. Alphard suggested silver filigree on the green and red on the black robes. Madam Malkin added it and seemed particularly pleased with herself.

He actually laughed at the indignant look on Hermione’s face. It was a quiet laugh, but a real one. The sound surprised him. It had been a while since anything had felt worth truly laughing at.

When the fitting was finished Hermione thanked the seamstress, holding both her hands in her own gloved ones and promising to return to pick the robes up once they were ready and for any future robes she’d need. Aplard noticed the way her shoulders were less tense on the way out, still squared but pulled a little less taught.

He understood that feeling intimately. Two days ago he’d been locked in a room with his uncle and cousin, arguing over the ruins of their family, wishing for violence and blood. Now he was walking under the warm rays of the July sun, watching Hermione change the world with predatory grace.

He wished all days would taste this sweet.

The moment they stepped inside Slug & Jiggers Apothecary, the smell hit him like a slap across the face. It was sharp, earthy and unpleasantly chemical. Whilst it was unpleasant, it wasn’t so foul that he’d voice his complaints, he’d been raised better than that. Still, his nose twitched in displeasure. Hermione didn’t even seem to notice the stink at all; she was already moving through the narrow aisles, eyes scanning labels and her lips pursed thin in one-minded focus.

Narcissa lingered by the doorway, clearly as unimpressed as he was. “How anyone can stand this stench is beyond me.” She whispered to him.

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye snd nodded his head in agreement. “Gods willing the clinic will have air freshening charms.” He commiserated.

They stood together watching as Hermione picked through shelves with dogged-minded focus, bred from experience. She clearly knew what she was doing and didn’t falter in her ministrations—Not even with the ingredients the most experienced healers treated like explosives. She filled a small basket she’d grabbed with vials and tins of fine powder, weighing them in her steady hands as if deciding they were worth the galleons.

He found himself quietly impressed with her. She wasn’t soft-hearted—that wasn’t the brand of healer shed ever be—she was practical and clinical to a tee. The sort who’d splash you with healing charms and send you on your way before you even had time to thank her.

Narcissa leaned toward him and spoke softly, a sheen of sadness in her pale blue eyes. “One has to wonder if she’s planning for war and not the opening of a clinic.”

“I don’t believe she sees much difference.” He responded.

When Hermione came back to the counter, he stepped forward to speak with the proprietor. “We will need fortnightly deliveries to Knockturn Alley. I’ll draft up an owl-order request form and have it to you within the coming days. They can be billed to the Black vault.” The man looked wary but nodded in agreement. Alphard stamped his signet ring to the parchment to authorise the days purchase and ushered the women out of the store.

He caught Narcissa’s wand flick out of the corner of his eye when they stepped back into the street. He felt the freshening charm wash over himself and his robes.

“The stench is deplorable.” She huffed when he raised a brow at her.

He sniggered. “Merlin forbid not smelling like fresh peonies.”

“I shan’t apologise.” She said airily and strode forward towards their next destination.

Hermione accepted his offered arm when he fell into step next to her, her hand wrapping daintily around his forearm and there was an inferno blazing under his skin. Distantly, he wondered if she was even aware that he felt like his skin was on fire every time she touched him. That every delicate sweep of her fingers across any—and every—single part of him left him burning and searing and praying that cooling charms didn’t exist because he relishes in the flames she leaves behind. He never wants those flames to extinguish. No, he wants them to crackle and pop for as long as possible.

There was a faint line between her brows, the same one he noticed she got when she was trying not to think too hard about something. Alphard didn’t ask what was ailing her. He wouldn’t answer if she asked him, after all.

The sunlight outside felt hot on his neck after the damp, dim interior of the apothecary, but Hermione seemed to bask in the glow of it. “Better?” He asked simply.

She turned her head to smile up at him and suddenly his pulse was racing and his hands felt clammy. “Better.” She nodded at him, tightening the grip she had on his arm.

Alphard thinks the way he covets those smiles is sick. The way his chest clenches and his heart thumps in his veins is sick and awful and embarrassing, but so, so beautiful at the same time. He can’t bring himself to hate how much he covets those small smiles. Can’t blame himself for hording every inch of herself she gifts him.

Blacks are notoriously greedy after all.

He smiles down at her in return and places his free hand over hers. It’s a possessive gesture but, he doesn’t bother to restrain himself. 

Chapter Text

15^th July

Hermione was stressed. So bleeding stressed.

She had begun pacing around her room at the crack of dawn, her mind running in circles about everything that could possibly go wrong, and didn’t stop until Thana popped into her room with a snarl and all but dragged her into the bathroom. Her opinionated elf telling her she was due to take a long, strongly scented bath. Once she was as pruned as weathered fruit she was dragged out and shoved into her robes for the day.

Thana was an incredible elf, but, she was certainly spirited. If Hermione ever questioned her decisions—read demands—she was promptly informed that “Thana knows what is beings best for her Mistress, yes she does!” and that was the end of the conversation.

Unless she wanted to be growled at and threatened with a bite to the hand like she was some sort of unruly child. Really, it was preposterous.

Hermione did not have the wherewithal to argue today, so she complied with her elfs demands and let Thana wash and braid her hair, let her choose her robes and jewellery for the day. It was certainly easier than standing in her obscenely large closet—which was the size of the entire top floor of her parents house—and fretting over what outfit was least likely to have her committing some sort of social faux pas.

As she made her way down to the formal dining room her mind began running laps around her again, thoughts slamming into her skull and leaving her with the beginning of a horrific migraine.

There was potential for incredible gain today, but, she couldn’t ignore the potential there was for catastrophic loss either.

It felt like her mind was playing some sort of perverted version of tug-of-war with itself.

Hermione ghosted her bare hands—the inky black of them standing out like a lumos in the dark—against the sheets covering the chairs, picturing what the grand room would look like in only a few hours time. The thought of it all made her feel wrong-footed and underprepared.

She wasn’t some high society wife who hosted tea with the other ladies or galas on holidays. Sure, she’d attended a few with her Grandmere but she’d never been the bloody host! She didn’t know how to do any of this stuff for Circes sake. Inside, she was still just Hermione Jean Granger, muggle-born witch and all of this grandeur made her skin itch.

Hosting a formal dinner for two of the most prominent—notorius in her time—pureblood families in the Wizarding world was not in her skillset. It was not something she had ever planned, or even thought of doing before she died. Hell, it wasn’t even something she thought of doing after she died.

But, needs must.

So, she called Thana down to help her set it all up and they spent the first few hours of the midmorning getting the house set to sorts.

Rooms were cleaned, brass and silver were polished, candles were changed and cushions were fluffed to near extremes.

The formal dining room was the star of the show and where Hermione would be putting everything on the line so she put in the most elbow grease there, preferring to do things the muggle way so that her hands and mind were busy, at least for a little while. She dusted the entire room, wiped down the table and chairs, cleaned the windows that overlooked the gardens and, admittedly, got Thana’s help fixing up the fire place.

When she was done she circled the table and organised the seating arrangement in her head. She’d be sitting at the head of the table—of course—and on her right would be Alphard. She’d need his sharp tongue and unflappable nature to keep herself in order. To her left would be Arcturus Black and Orion in that order, showcasing the line of succession for the Black family. Across from them would be Renaud, Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange.

It was a calculated arrangement. One that adhered to all the pureblood posturing and grand standing that the situation called for.

Hermione stood behind her chair, her hands gripping the upholtesry in a fierce chokehold and exhaled slowly.

She wasn’t scared, no, that girl died a lifetime ago on a burning battlefield.

But, there was a pressure in her blood. A slow coiling tension that left her magic surging. The sort of surge that usually came just before a lightening strike. She pulled out her wand and walked toward the front of the house, she planned on checking the wards again so she could let out her excess magic.

She needed to be focussed tonight, on her game and in control of the wild magic that was pumping through her veins. If letting out surges of magic ensured that, then well that’s what she’d do.

There was no room for error. She could not afford to fail.

A few hours later, Hermione was once again in her study reviewing the physical timeline and lineage charts she had drawn up, as a way to pass the time until her dinner guests arrived. The charts ebbed and flowed, names bleeding into others and families merging. Black, Rosier, Malfoy, Lestrange, Burke. All were woven and tangled and fraying threads destined for ruin. She circled the blip on the timeline that signalled the Lestrange brothers joining Voldemort with her pointer finger and sighed.

It was something that didn’t have to happen this time.

But Fate was a fickle God, especially with people like them. With people like her. Sometimes there was no altering Fate. No chance to extinguish a fire already set to burn itself out.

What Fate didn’t take in to account, was that Hermione was a determined woman. She was an angry and headstrong one at that. And as the saying goes, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Hermione felt like her previous life was one scorn after the other. Her mother never informing her of the wizarding world, the trials she went through during her school years. Fighting against grown adults as a mere slip of a girl, loosing friends as a young girl. Ron, Fred, Harry. Gods, loosing Harry was the worst of them all.

So, she was fucking determined to unweave, to untangle those mangled threads and ensure the wizarding world prospers this time around. Determined to watch the her world flourish without the boot of a megalomaniac dark lord stomping on its throat.

Hermione picked up the masses of parchment on her desk, shuffled them around and tapped them on the desk to organise them neatly and put them in her draw. Once the draw was closed she warded it, pricked her finger and swiped the blood over the lock. She was taking no chances when there would be strangers in her house.

Unfortunetly for the wizarding world, Hermione Elisande Flamel—Heir to The Noble and Most Ancient House of Flamel—was not here to play games. She was here to prevent a bloodbath.

The weight of it was a noose around her neck.

Hermione stood and moved toward the window in her study. Mist clung to the sculpted hedges in her back garden, the forest at the estates edge was blanketed in the growing darkness of night, and she could’ve sworn she saw something move in there.

Whether it was animal or something else was yet another mystery she’d eventually have to solve. But, for now she let it be.

She turned from the window and moved through the room with a single-minded focus. Her dainty heels clicked against the stone flooring of the manor as she made her way to the front door, her guests were due to arrive any moment.

She stood by the door, her hands clasped tightly behind her back and chewed the inside of her cheek to bloody shreds.

Thana popped into existence right beside her and tugged on her skirts urgently. “They’s be arriving, Mistress.”

Hermione looked down at her elf, who was usually so self-assured and just slightly pigheaded about her demands, and nodded her head resolutely. “Thank you, Thana. I’ll greet the guests and show them to the front sitting room. I will call for you if I need anything, alright?” She smiled warmly.

Thana nodded eagerly. “Yes, mistress be’s calling for Thana. Yes she does!” and popped away.

Hermione steeled her shoulders and contorted her mouth into the warmest smile she could before throwing open the grand oak doors, she moved to stand just outside them so she could watch as her guests walked up the path from the apparition point outside the front gate.

Both Arcturus and Renaud were utilising canes but their dispositions could not be more different. Arcturus--who Hermione guessed was used to being the most important person in any room he entered—was walking at a leisurely place with his Orion on his left and Alphard on his right, Hermione watched as he canted his head to whisper something to his son who nodded in response. Renaud had both his sons walking directly behind him, he didn’t so much as look over his shoulder to put eyes on them, just seemed to trust that they would stay in step with each other. His face was set in a grim scowl, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

All six of them walked up the path with polished restraint and an air of aristocracy. If one was unaware of who they were, they would not be unaware of their station. The sort of elegance they wielded was the type that would have even the lowest born bastard understanding they were from the highest echelons of society.

It rankled Hermione. Still, she greeted them kindly when they graced her doorstep.

She reached her hand out to Lord Black who turned it over and placed a chaste to the air just above her knuckles, Hermione dipped into a brief curtsey. “Lord Black, welcome and thank you for coming.”

She greeted Orion and then Alphard in the same manner, the only difference was Alphard who placed a lingering kiss directly on her knuckles and winked at her when she blushed beet red. The absolute cad!

“Pleasure to meet you, Lord Lestrange. I am grateful you accepted my invitation.” She murmured as she dipped into her fourth bloody curtsey. Only two more she placated herself.

“Well met, Heir Flamel. Why the lack of French greeting for a fellow countryman?” He chuckled in response, and Hermione could’ve slapped herself for the faux pas. There she was worrying about robes and dinner placings and cutlery, when she was destined to commit one as soon as they arrived.

Fuck, she really wasn’t cut out for this shit anymore. Her Grandmere would scold her to Paris and back for her lack of proper manners.

She quickly leaned forward and offered him one cheek after the other and kissed the air next to his own in kind. Hermione welcomed both Lestrange brothers in much the same way and gestured for the unlikely group to follow her through to the sitting room.

“Please take a seat, can I get anyone a drink whilst we await dinner?” She asked sweetly. A chorus of agreements filled the room as they all sat down. Arcturus and Renaud seated themselves in the wingback chairs on opposite sides of the rooms, Rodolophus and Rabastan occupying the lounge nearest their father and Orion doing the same with his own. Alphard decided to stir the pot and settle himself down on the love seat directly beside Hermione.

She had to hold in her laughter at the scandalised look on all three of the Lestranges faces when he crossed his ankle over his knee, leaned back and draped one arm across the back of the seat behind Hermione, a sly grin on his face. She glared at him out of the corner of her eye but said nothing to reprimand him.

“How are finding British soil so far, Miss Flamel?” Renaud asked, taking a sip of the aged whiskey that had appeared on the coaster floating next to his seat.

Hermione tilted her head and hummed non-committedly. Renauds question hung in the air, heavy with faux sincerity. His tone held the same polite precision as his posture. The sort that Hermione was sure came from a lifetime in the political scene.

She turned her glass by the stem, letting the candlelight catch on the rim before she answered. “Hermione please. And it is not so bad, the weather is decent out here this time of year and I have had fine company.” She turned her head to smile tightly at Arcturus and Orion. “I am quite sure my ambitions will be fruitful here as well.”

Renauds mouth twitched in the beginning of a sneer or snarl, and his eyes narrowed slightly. “A working woman then? Are you not looking to settle down and start a family?”

The condescension was so smooth, so practiced, he almost sounded kind. Almost. Hermiones returning smile was all arsenic and war sharpened incisors. She swallowed every insult she wanted to spit at him, every spiteful word that came to mind was forcefully eaten.

At this rate, she’d be full before dinner was served.

“I have yet to relinquish my girlish dream of motherhood, do not worry so. There is just a few little things I would like to do before I start down that road, is all.” She answered, her tone laced with honey and vinegar. Patronising prick.

Alphards low snort broke the bubbling tension in the room. “Little, she so says.”

Hermione turned to glare at him, but as soon as she laid her eyes on the warm smile on his face all her anger at him abated. Heat bled from his arm where it rested behind her shoulders, fingers slightly brushing her shoulder blades. Gods, she was grateful he was here.

“And what of your ambitions?” Rodolphus asked, breaking her out of her reverie. He was trying--and failing miserably—to sound casual.

Hermione took a sip of her wine and smiled at him. You catch more flies with honey or whatever. “I am in the process of opening up a healing clinic. It may be the free spirit my Maman cultivated in me but, your hospital is quite…ah…exclusive, non?”

She watched as all three of the Lestranges narrowed their eyes at her. Purebloods all hated the word exclusive when used like that—when it meant corrupt, elitist and exclusionary.

“Are you a certified healer then?” He queried.

Hermione had to swallow her answering laugh. “Ha! Non, I learnt under my Maman and Papa. I have the skill but not the qualifications, it is why I chose the location I did. I do not intend to work there forever, just long enough to get it going.” She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug.

Alphard snorted again. Gods he really needed to get a hold of his nose! “She hired a certified healer and has successfully roped dear Orion here into doing some dodgy paperwork for her. A Slytherin If I ever did see one!.” He laughed.

Hermiones hand flew before she could stop herself, smacking Alphard on the chest. “You must stop sharing all my secrets before dinner is even served!” She admonished him with a girlish giggle.

“Now where is the fun in that, dearest?” His grin was insufferable, and the warmth radiating from it stirred something deep in her chest. Something she thought was long dead and buried. She shoved the feeling down and rolled her eyes at him, refusing to smile back. Though she could feel the corners of her lips twitching anyways.

Renauds gaze darted between the two of them, assessing them. “Vous êtes tous les deux assez proches, n'est-ce pas ? 

“Aussi proche que l’on peut être d’une epine dans le côté,” Hermione replied, her tone mild but sharp enough to let him know she’d be answering no further questions on the matter.

Alphards quiet laugh slid warmly down her spine.

A thorn indeed.

For a time the room buzzed with the polite rhythm of conversation and the soft clink of crystal glasses. The men in the room spoke of Wizengamot meetings and business deals, the kind of self-boasting chatter that filled silence and left her teeth clenched and jaw aching. Hermione smiled where appropriate and nodded when necessary, never offering more than a hum of agreement in the way of noise.

She silently imagined throttling the next person who used the word ‘pure’ like it was some sort of generational achievement. From the sour and pinched expression on Alphards face she could tell he felt a similar way.

Thankfully Thana appeared next to her lounge. “Dinner be’s ready, Mistress.” She informed them.

“Thank you, Thana.” Hermione rose from her seat and smiled at her favourite elf who popped away with a quiet crack. “Shall we?”

The transition into the dining room was seamless—the kind of thing her Grandmère would have approved of with a stiff nod. Hermione led the procession through the halls toward the formal dining room with forced ease. The faint scent of myrrh and roasted herbs growing stronger with each step.

The air inside was warm and drenched in golden candlelight. Polished silverware set out carefully and napkins folded in intricate designs.

The grandeur of it all was akin to a lit match under the fire of Hermiones unease. And despite how hungry she was, her stomach revolted at the idea of eating with the motley crew in her home.

Hermione gestured gracefully to each seat as they entered, ensuring her guests found their predetermined places. Alphard, as always took his own liberties. A slow, deliberate brush of his hand against her back as he passed, enough to send a pulse of heat up her spine.

She ignored it. Or tried to.

The first course of their meal was flawless. Fillet mignon served with charred asparagus and herb roasted potatoes. Hermione hadn’t eaten anything that decadent since France, and she was too tense to truly enjoy it. She cut each bite mechanically, her mind lost to her own memories and violent urges.

Polite conversation filled the air again. Brief empty things about the recent weather in their lands and the state of the Ministry. Hermione let them have at it. Choking down her want to fling knives at her guests alongside her meat.

Renaud leaned back, placed his fork neatly across his plate, and gave her an assessing look she loathed. It was the sort of look that gave her the impression he was about to ruin the polite conversation.

“So. Why are we here, Hermione?”

There it was.

She set her own cutlery down with care, the gentle noise of the action sharp in the hush that had befallen the room. But before she could speak, Alphard was chortling like a madman.

“So direct, Lord Lestrange.” He mocked. Unrepentant in his distaste for all things formal. “One might think you’re loosing your way old man.”

Hermione glared warningly at him. Whilst she appreciated his lacsidicial attitude in most situations, this was not one of them. She wanted to spit as much vitriol at Renaud and his sons as she could manage, but.

But, she needed them onside. So, she pushed it down and smiled sweetly. “As I said, there is a few things I would like cleaned up before I settle down here. One of them being the war that is brewing on your soil.”

Renaud’s mouth pinched and his brows drew together in displeasure. “What do you know of such things?”

“I know a great many things. Are you sure you are ready to hear them, Lord Lestrange?”

“Crache-le, ma fille. Je suis fatigue de cette mascarade.” He snipped.

Hermione met his stare unblinking. “Comme tu le souhaites.” The words were spoken softly, but the inflection beneath them wasn’t.

“You have a Dark Lord running in your circles. One with his boot on your necks and hand in your vaults. I know that he will be the fire that burns your long standing family to ashes.” She hummed as she took a delicate sip of her wine. Rolling it around in her mouth whilst the men at the table stared at her.

“I beg your pardon?” Renaud choked out, his face red and grip tight on the table. “He means to restore us! To bring forth greatness!” He hissed.

Hermione expected the sentiment. It was no different to the simpering the purebloods did in her own time. They all pawed and begged for his attention until the flames of it licked too close to skin.

She smiled at him, the teeth she’d used to tear apart the thread of time on full display. “I am not interested in your begging, Lord Lestrange. Frankly, it is beneath me and I would bore of it quickly.” His sons and Orion all sputtered at her insult. Arcturus merely raised his brow and kept eating his meal. “Now, I have seen what will become of your Noble House and it is not a pretty sight.”

“She came to us with the same warning, old friend.” Arcturus added in her defence. The endearment hung between the two of them—old friend—with heavy history.

“What fate awaits us, Miss Flamel?” Rabastan asked, his voice calmer, steadier than his fathers.

“Your father will fall first, and he’s not remembered fondly. Your brother will follow a mere two years later, heirless and felled by a school aged boy. You will meet your maker at the end of an Aurors wand. What lays in wait between now and then is no sweet sight either.” Hermione told him honestly.

Renauds chair scraped carelessly against the stone floor as he pushed back from the table in protest to her words. He didn’t rise from his chair but he looked close to doing so. “You lie! My line will not end with my boys!” He ground out from between his clenched teeth.

Hermione cocked her head to the side. Curious as to why he didn’t rise. Such an odd action to push away but not fully.

“Still little boys under your father’s thumb then? How touching.” Alphard cooed mockingly at the brothers. She was sorely tempted to join him in his mockery. To laugh and poke fun at the men who still followed their father’s rule, bent to his passing fancies. She settled on coughing daintily into her napkin and not bothering to admonish him.

It was the most she could manage. She placed her napkin back down on her lap before she spoke. “I do not intend to let that happen, worry not for a future that will not come to pass. I have not shared this information to anger or frighten you, I would like your assistance in ensuring your line prospers.” It was a blatant lie, one she hoped they wouldn’t pick up one.

She didn’t care whether their line died out with them. Couldn’t fucking care less, truly. All she needed was access to their vault so she could nick a Horcrux and be one step closer to ridding the world of Voldemort.

But one caught more flies with honey as the saying goes.

Renauds fury faulted, replaced by confusion and the brief respite gave Hermione room to push on.

“I invited you here to ask you not to join him, ask you not to bend knee to a halfblood megalomaniac. In addition to that I will ask for an artefact from your vault. One that is paramount in removing your Dark Lord.”

“She asks for such simple things, really.” Orion drawled. It was the first time he had spoken up in a while.

Hermione turned to glare at him. “What I know saved your son’s life. One might be grateful for such a thing.” She shot back at him. She didn’t really want to spar with him currently, but she had never been one to back down when cornered.

“Bite that silver tongue of yours, Orion. She saved your life too. Don’t fucking forget that.” Alphard seethed. His tone iron strong, leaving no room for argument. Whilst it was wholly unnecessary, she appreciated it nonetheless.

There was a lull in the conversation as Hermione let them roll the information she had dropped on them like an atomic bomb over in their heads. She tapped her plate with her fork and their next course arrived, a pheasant consommé so clear it gleamed like amber in the bowls under the candlelight. The bread that came with it was warm, butter whipped with honey and salt appearing next to it.

They ate in uncomfortable silence. The only break in the tension being a soft touch to her knee from Alphard. It made her jerk slightly in her seat but she couldn’t muster any ire for the gesture, she slid her hand under the table and gave his a firm squeeze before letting go.

“My-my wife has already joined him. What am I to do for her?” Rodolphus’ voice cracked in tone and the silence. It was raw and human and drowning in the sorrow one has for a lost one.

“Do not speak of family affairs with outsiders, Rodolphus!” Renaud growled at his son.

“She’s my wife, father. I must ask such a thing!” he snapped back roughly.

Hermiones eyes flashed, internally enjoying the argument and wishing it would continue so she could observe it like some twisted version of a tennis match. Pride before reason. Such a foolish mentality, one that was sure to get them all killed.

Arcturus huffed indignantly. “Must I remind you that Bellatrix was a Black before she was a Lestrange, Ren? She may be yours on paper but her blood is still my own.” He tskd.

Renauds nostrils flared but he didn’t argue the issue any further. Alphard kicked her ankle under the table in silent warning but she ignored it.

“I would recommend a severance of your marital bond, if such a thing is possible. However, I do understand she is your wife so I will leave that decision in your hands. Arcturus has yet to share his own course of action with me, you may like to discuss it with him.” She said pleasantly. She needed to soften the blow before her next words. “I will not be involved with that feral, viscous, kinslaying harpy.” Hermione vowed, the words dripping with latent magic and promise.

All three Lestranges bristled, but it was Renaud who spoke first. “Mind your tongue, girl. Bellatrix is a wife of House Lestrange. Speak of her with the respect she deserves.”

“I do not doll out my respect freely. I do not give it to kinslayers at all actually. Do you?” She queried with a raised brow, daring him to parlay with her. To give her a reason to unleash her ire.

He took her bait. “Now you see here—”

But Hermione didn’t let him finish. She was prone to interrupting and forcing her words down throats, why attempt to curve such a habit now? “Do not forget your location, Lord Lestrange. I will speak how I wish within my own walls. If you take offence to the truth then feel free to take your delicate sensibilities out of my home.” She stated hotly. Burning with the need to stamp down on his overconfidence, to squash it beneath her foot like a bug.

The silence that came after was oppressive and itchy to Hermione. She wanted to scream and spit and sling curses. She wanted to fight and draw blood and expose bone and sinew to the world.

She didn’t want to sit in silence and eat her anger. It left a bitter taste in her mouth.

“Enough posturing for Salazars sake. Miss Flamel came to us with the same dire warnings and we intend to heed them. Despite my earlier words, she is not asking for a great deal, and is offering much more in return.” Orion sighed, his thumb and pointer finger rubbing at the bridge of his nose.

Arcturus nodded in agreement. “Indeed, my son. I offer you my own warning, Ren, from one old man to another. Do not let your house burn down when Augamenti is on the tip of your tongue.” He said wisely.

The old Lestranges gaze flickered between them all. Suspicion, pride and fear clouding his eyes.

She hated that they didn’t accept her own warnings but understood it to some degree. She’d never been the best at heeding warnings where Harry was concerned so she wasn’t in the best position to throw stones.

Glass houses were delicate places.

“We have seen her proof.” Orion picked up where his father left off. “We have seen our own fate and accepted that we will need to walk down a new path. You can walk with us into prosperity or you can stay the route that leads to your own ruination.” He shrugged.

Hermiones voice was less heated when she spoke again. “I offer only a fork in the predestined path, after all.”

Renauds shoulders sagged, a man weighed down by years and a bleak future. “We thank you for your honesty.” He bit out.

His younger son looked at him expectedly, but when his father didn’t offer anything further he spoke up. “We will think on what has been shared and advise you of our decision when one has been reached.” He said diplomatically.

Hermione nodded in agreement. “I shall await your owl then, please take care not to dawdle. I do hope you enjoyed your meal.”

They all rose, decorum restored. Farewells were offered, cheeks kissed and bows performed. Perfunctory and demanded by societal norms. Hermione smiled and performed her part, every gesture perfect. Inside, she was shaking the cages of her confine, begging to let go of customaries and opt for blood.

When the front door closed behind all bar one guest, the silence was deafening. Candles burned and the scents of dinner long eaten lingered in the damp air.

She sighed and methodically removed the thick lace gloves from her hands, exposing the ink-black skin to the air. Her heart was still thumping in its cage behind her ribs and her magic roiling uncomfortably.

Alphards voice came from behind her, quiet and fond. “I told you it would go fine.” He teased.

Hermione didn’t turn to him. She spoke to air in front of her. “Fine is a generous word.”

“No blood was drawn, was it?”

She huffed out something that was stuck between a sigh and a laugh. “It was a close call.”