Caelum Ignis Ch27: "Phoenix and Antonia"
A Dramione fan fiction
He brought her back to their shared room.
Hermione found herself babbling, unable to remain silent. She began talking as soon as he’d opened the door to their shared dormitory and ushered her inside.
“I can’t, I can’t just stay here,” Hermione protested. “Draco––”
He flinched openly when she spoke his given name.
She looked up at him and saw a flicker of that green-gold fire reach his eyes as he stared into hers. Briefly, he looked like he might say something.
Then he stopped, right before she saw him wince.
Frustration touched his eyes, along with what looked like guilt. Most of his face remained remarkably still, however.
After that flash of barely suppressed emotion, he became a lot harder to read. It was strange to see him so utterly blank after how he’d looked at her most of the night before, and that morning before they left for the Great Hall, and even in class.
She was still talking, her mouth barely attached to her brain.
She was panicking.
This had to be panic, right?
“I can’t just disappear,” she was saying now. “Draco, we can’t hide from this. Snape will probably check with Madam Pomfrey, and––”
“I couldn’t take you straight to Dumbledore,” Draco cut in.
He tore his eyes off hers.
She watched his mouth harden, seemingly in concentration.
He flicked his wand in the direction of the door. She hadn’t realized until then that he still held his wand in his hand, that he’d gripped it since they left Snape’s classroom. Her eyes followed the graceful motion, then her jaw fell slightly when a wave of blue-white light left the end of it. Draco’s lips moved rapidly as though he were speaking to someone in a hurry, but she couldn’t hear anything of what he said.
As he finished, a creature formed out of the light coming from the end of his wand.
Draco twirled his wand and directed the creature made of light.
The detailed form flew towards their warded door with a flick of its tail and disappeared through it. Light pooled on the wood where it had vanished through.
When he glanced back at her, her eyes widened in her face.
“Was that––”
“Yes,” he said.
She wondered how he’d known what she was going to ask.
She could think of a few things she might have asked him right then.
Truthfully, she had so many questions, she had no idea where to begin.
“I can’t send an owl,” he told her, maybe reading the confusion in her eyes. “I thought about taking you directly to his tower, like I said, but it would get back to someone on my end, and Dumbledore agreed with me that it wouldn’t go unnoticed if I met with him in person for any reason.” Draco’s jaw hardened. “Turns out my father didn’t lie about everything. But I always suspected that. It’s why I didn’t test most of his threats.”
His jaw clicked briefly, then he loosened it.
He shook his shoulders as if pulling himself together.
“Anyway, I wasn’t confident you could get in to the headmaster’s office anyway,” he added. “Meaning, if I brought you halfway and you went there on your own. I imagine they’ve changed the password by now, with what happened the other night. And it might’ve just raise more questions, if they saw you leave with me and you ended up in Dumbledore’s office. This way, you could say you convinced me to let you go lie down, and not drag you up to the infirmary. I’ll say the same, obviously. That you didn’t want to go to hospital, so I made sure you got back here.”
She fought to think through that, too.
His words made sense. Logically, they were sound.
She could feel it, though.
Draco’s ability to hide from all of this was rapidly disintegrating.
His ability to keep information from reaching Malfoy Manor was disintegrating, too.
She’d just ripped that facade apart a bit more.
“I’m aware of that,” he muttered. “Let’s hope that old fuck isn’t unaware, either.” His jaw tightened again as he stared towards the door. “I shouldn’t have brought Goyle in. Not personally. I should have had Dumbledore get one of the teachers to do it––”
“Why did you?” she asked, her mind back to chewing on that. “Why Goyle? You said Dumbledore agreed with you when you told him the reason why. What was the reason? You never told me why Goyle was suddenly so dangerous.”
He glanced at her, hesitated, then shut his mouth.
“You’re really not going to tell me?” she asked, disbelieving.
“No,” he said.
She fought through the next round of questions.
“Why did that happen to me?” she asked. “In Snape’s classroom. Is our magic somehow––”
He shook his head, once. “No idea.”
“No idea?”
“I’m asking him,” he said, jerking his jaw towards the door.
She frowned deeper at that. “But won’t someone notice? This is twice you’ve done that. Someone’s going to ask questions, aren’t they?”
Draco shrugged. “It’s better than an owl,” he repeated.
She wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him.
Instead she focused on breathing, on calming down. He was holding her arm, and it occurred to her he’d never let go of it, not since he first took hold of her in the classroom. He still gripped his wand in his other hand.
Hermione felt hot inside her own skin, and strange, almost fevered. Not as bad as she had before Draco approached her in the classroom, but enough that she was fighting panic within a few seconds of their mutual silence. She wondered if that was why he hadn’t let her go.
Maybe he knew. Surely he felt it.
He had to know.
She breathed in and out, slowly, steadily. She fought to think about only that, focus on only her breath. Eventually, it seemed to help. It helped only a little at first, but she could feel a calmness crawling back over her magic, bringing her back to near-normalcy.
He stood beside her, and she could feel both of them waiting.
He was probably waiting for her to calm down so he could let go of her.
“Dumbledore suggested it,” he commented. “Using patronuses. We’ve done it a number of times now. More than those two. I think it’s pretty safe, actually.”
She nodded as she fought to concentrate on his words.
“Your patronus…” she said hesitantly. “Was that a dragon?”
He glanced away from the door, and arched an eyebrow. “This surprises you? My name literally means dragon.”
She nodded to that, too.
“Do you think your father named you that deliberately?” she asked. “Because of the other caelum ignis? The one who nearly conquered Europe?”
Draco scowled as he thought about her question. She got the impression it hadn’t occurred to him before now. “I wouldn’t put it past him,” he muttered. “He’d probably think it clever as hell, to do it right under everyone’s noses. Especially since it still followed the Black family tradition of naming their children after constellations.”
Hermione nodded a third time.
Her blood felt slightly cooler now.
She felt a little woozy, though.
The instant she thought it, he steered her over to the couch. He positioned her there, then pushed her gently but firmly down to sit. For the first time since he’d appeared beside her in Defence Against the Dark Arts, he released her arm.
He didn’t sit down next to her.
When she looked up at him, he was still staring at the door, as if willing someone to walk through it.
“Are you actually angry at me for this?” she asked finally.
He turned and stared at her. He blinked, then stared harder. His skin paled more.
“No. Fuck no. Why would you think that?”
She felt something in her heart calm. Her breathing calmed. “Okay.” She inhaled a deep breath, exhaled it. She rested her face briefly in her hands. “Okay. Good.”
When she glanced up at him next, he looked hesitant.
She saw another flicker of emotion there, but it was gone too fast for her to identify it.
“I’m sorry,” he said, blunt.
She frowned. For the first time, she saw a kind of devastation in his eyes, and she wondered if she wasn’t the only one panicking. Maybe he was panicking in his own way. Or maybe he’d shut himself down with occlumency to keep from panicking. Or maybe he’d shut himself down until he knew what caused whatever happened.
In any case, she might not be seeing much of what was really going on with him right then. He’d told her, just last night, he didn’t feel particularly stable.
Around you, a sharper, annoyingly peevish voice reminded her. He didn’t feel particularly stable around you. You’re the one doing this to him.
“We shouldn’t assume this was you, should we?” she asked him next, her voice a little stronger. “Not without knowing. Not until we know something for certain, I mean.”
He stared at her in silence, blinked.
Then he laughed outright.
There wasn’t a lot of humor in the sound.
“Salazar’s Cock, Granger.” His voice came out bitter. “I know you’re ridiculously forgiving with me, but that’s just fucking nonsense. There’s no possible way you believe that. Neither one of us believes that, nor would anyone else, not if they knew what––”
He might have said more, but both of their eyes jerked towards the door when a shockingly bright, blue and white bird, bigger than an eagle, flew through the heavy oak panel, bleeding trails of light into their room.
Hermione stiffened when she recognized Dumbledore’s phoenix.
It struck her that it didn’t reform into its corporeal shape until it was fully inside.
“Merlin, that was fast,” Draco muttered. “Clearly he’s got some opinions.”
Hermione didn’t answer.
She wondered if Snape had already been to see him, or had communicated with Dumbledore about what happened in his class some other way. She knew the teachers occasionally sent notes to one another through other means, like what she’d seen in the Ministry of Magic in London, with the paper airplanes the wizards and witches sent zooming back and forth between offices and through the elevators and atrium.
The massive bird made of blue and white light alighted on the back of the couch.
When it opened its beak, Dumbledore’s voice came out.
He sounded stern but hurried, his voice strangely loud inside the stone common room. Like Draco implied with his muttered comment, Dumbledore sounded like he’d shot off a rushed reply as quickly as possible, and his voice reflected him thinking aloud as he spoke. It gave the disconcerting impression that he was in the room with them.
“This development is not entirely unexpected,” the bird said in Dumbledore’s deep voice. “The fact that neither of you was prepared for it tells me you didn’t complete the reading list I’d originally given you. I had told you and Ms. Granger to continue researching the subject for a reason. Apparently, I should have been more blunt about my instructions.”
There was a pause where the real Dumbledore might have been thinking, or possibly doing something else.
The bird cocked its head, as if waiting.
A few seconds later, it opened its beak, and more sound came out.
“I will have all of the relevant books from the Restricted Section delivered to your rooms as soon as possible. I believe the current circumstances demand a bit of rule-bending in terms of our usual requirements for books of that nature, but please do not take them out of your rooms, or share them with any other student. I suggest you take this task seriously, both of you, and do not dally in learning as much as you can, and as quickly as possible. If I am correct in my suppositions of Tom’s timetable, we are fast running out of time…”
Hermione blanched.
Tom. He meant Voldemort.
She wondered if Draco knew that.
The bird fluffed out its feathers, and again opened its beak.
“I will ask Dobby to ensure that lunch is brought to Miss Granger today, and dinner tonight. It is probably better if it is more widely believed she is sick, as you suggested in class. She can return to the Great Hall tomorrow. In the meantime, I strongly suggest the two of you return to occlumency lessons, as well. Perhaps you could give her some assignments between classes today, Mr. Malfoy.”
The phoenix lifted up off the couch with a flap of its broad wings.
It hovered there, wings beating.
“I will inform Mr. Potter that it is best that he and your other friends leave you to rest today, Ms. Granger,” the voice said through the phoenix’s open beak. “I would also like you to come see me tomorrow morning in my office after breakfast and before your first class. There are a few tests I would like to run, if you are amenable.”
Draco let out a harsh-sounding cough.
Hermione glanced at him.
He didn’t look happy, presumably because of Dumbledore’s last words. She could see him hesitating as he looked at her, as if he wanted to say something. Before he’d made up his mind, the patronus began to speak again and both of them looked back at the bird.
“I will be honest, Ms. Granger… I am not confident the ploy of ‘illness’ will work on Mr. Potter. As he witnessed what occurred in the classroom, and he certainly has definite ideas about Mr. Malfoy and yourself, we might need something more plausible to tell him. I will do some thinking on this today, and send you another message when I have come up with something. If you have any ideas on this yourself, Mr. Malfoy, please do not hesitate to share…”
Draco’s frown deepened, but he didn’t speak.
Dumbledore’s voice continued in the same hurried-sounding tone.
“…Whatever excuse we come up with for what occurred today, I believe it is safer for you to speak of this in the warded room, versus the Gryffindor common room, so I am thinking it might be better if I send Harry to you tonight, Ms. Granger. You will need to allow him into your wards. It perhaps goes without saying that you are not to tell him anything about what really occurred. You are not to show him the books. You are not to make any mention of Mr. Malfoy’s condition, or connect him to what happened in any way…”
Hermione fought the impulse to roll her eyes.
The phoenix’s voice rose again before she’d entirely suppressed it.
“Whether or not Mr. Malfoy is there when Mr. Potter arrives is up to the two of you, but it might be better if Mr. Potter begins to see him as less of a threat, as right now he is growing quite paranoid about him, and about his treatment of Ms. Granger, in particular. Professor Snape mentioned something similar to me, and he concurs. So if you can find a way to keep Draco there, and to convince Harry to converse with him about this, that would be ideal. Of course, this will likely depend somewhat on what story we concoct to explain why Ms. Granger’s magic would have destabilized to such a degree.”
Draco frowned.
Hermione figured it was about the Harry thing, about him being tasked to win over Harry’s trust, but when Draco spoke, it wasn’t about that.
“He’s talking to Snape about this?” he muttered.
He exchanged another look with Hermione, who felt even more light-headed. She placed a palm on her forehead and gave Draco a bare glance before both of them looked back to Dumbledore’s patronus.
“I will try to discern if your father knows anything, Draco,” the bird said next. “Trust when I tell you, I will be extremely delicate in this endeavor. I don’t have much hope of learning anything for that reason, but I will attempt with what small resources I have.”
Draco opened his mouth.
He’d paled outright at Dumbledore’s last comment, and looked about to speak, perhaps to argue, or simply to tell Dumbledore not to do it.
Unfortunately, before he could get out a single word, the phoenix exploded in the air, fragmenting into countless particles of blue-white light.
Draco was gone.
There’d been barely any time to speak about any of it.
The patronus had scarcely vanished in front of them when the bell for the change of classes grew audible inside their part of the castle. They heard those bells even more clearly here, given how close they were to most of the classrooms.
Both of them assumed it would be better that Draco not be late for his next class. As far as occlumency went, he only told her to try and carve out time to meditate, and to work on some of the compartmentalization exercises he’d given her before they stopped working on it.
Barely a minute passed after Draco left for class, when Dobby and five other house elves apparated right inside their dormitory.
Each of them held at least one, and sometimes three, heavy, leather-bound books.
Hermione recognized the titles and their bindings from her time in the library’s Restricted Section. They’d brought the same twelve books Dumbledore listed out on the original parchment he’d given her. The elves stacked them up on the larger of the two tables, the one under the window overlooking the grounds.
Dobby gave her a cheerful wave and a bow and inquired after her health, so she spent a few moments chatting with him, if only to reassure him she was all right. She also spent a few minutes admiring his new pants, tan jodhpurs that a muggle might wear for a fox hunt, or in a riding competition. He wore them with one bright pink and one orange sock, a tank-top with a cartoon bird on it, and another tea cosy, this one bright red.
She couldn’t help wondering where he’d gotten all of it.
After the rest of the elves left, and Dobby soon after, Hermione decided to stack the books they’d brought inside one of the built-in wall cupboards with doors, figuring it was better if the spines didn’t show where anyone could see them. That included Harry, if he came by that night. If she kept the one she was currently reading lying flat in front of her, all he would see was that Hermione Granger was reading a book, which was hardly noteworthy.
No one else should be able to get in through their wards, but having all of those books in their room still made her nervous. If anyone found them, there was some chance they could figure out what she and Draco were researching.
She set aside the four volumes she’d already read through, which mostly provided basic information on caelum ignis and the history of those believed to have had it. She hadn’t read them deeply, or taken what she’d consider sufficient notes, but she’d at least read all of the relevant sections in each of the four books.
For the same reason, she felt confident nothing in them explained what happened to her in Defence Against the Dark Arts.
She consulted the list Dumbledore originally gave her, and picked up the next volume listed after those four, which was another book on magical ailments.
She’d been reading for maybe two hours before she got interrupted again.
Dobby brought her lunch on a silver tray he’d loaded with positively ridiculous amounts of food. Someone had told the elf by then that Hermione was ill, so he wailed that she hadn’t told him, scolded her to eat, and wailed some more. He didn’t seem to know how to scold her properly though, so he waggled his finger at her, pulled his ears in worry, waggled his finger more, and huffed at her before he disapparated.
She had trouble not laughing, but she was touched, too.
Dobby had definitely been a lot more friendly and familiar with her since that morning she’d given in and asked him to bring her breakfast.
Grudgingly, she had to admit Ron, Fred, George, Lupin, and Sirius might have all been at least somewhat right about her indelicate behavior about the elves’ condition. George and Fred had been particularly incensed about her treatment of the Hogwarts elves by knitting them clothes and refusing to let them help her with anything, or bring her food.
She’d told herself at the time that it was okay to ask Dobby to bring her food, since he was a paid employee, unlike most of the house elves at Hogwarts, and it was therefore his job, so she wasn’t taking advantage. But she couldn’t deny his entire attitude towards her had changed since then. She wouldn’t pretend to understand it, but maybe she needed to at least try to be a little less inflexible on how she viewed the elves, at least in terms of their own culture.
Clearly, Fred and George had been right about her offending them.
That still didn’t mean she condoned any element of their magical slavery or their complete lack of rights in the wizarding world, or the fact that almost none were paid and most were forced to wear those horrible rags everywhere they went, and punish themselves cruelly for any perceived slight towards their masters.
The plight of most house elves was positively horrifying, and she’d never change her mind about that, not until their legal status changed significantly.
She was almost afraid to ask Draco what he thought.
She didn’t really catalogue the enormous tray of food Dobby had brought her until after the elf left. Two cheese and pickle sandwiches, a bowl of soup, a green salad, bread and butter, a raspberry tart, a pot of tea, a glass of juice, a bowl of fruit, crackers and cheese.
Hermione wondered if the elf was still worried she wasn’t eating enough, or if he thought any human sickness required vast amounts of food; in any case it was enough for three people, or maybe one Ron Weasley, but way too much for her.
She did the best she could with it, though.
For the rest of the afternoon, Hermione barely looked up from reading.
She got to the end of the relevant parts of the magical ailments book sometime in mid-afternoon, and moved on to the sixth volume on the list, which was another book on magical history. The new volume contained at least four chapters that dealt in some way with Konstantin “The Dragon” Petrov, and his Iron Front.
Draco never showed up between classes, so she had to assume he was busying himself elsewhere. Knowing him, he was trying to assess how much damage her outburst in class had caused, and trying to mitigate any gossip that might be going around the school. She had to hope he’d fill her in on what he’d been saying. She knew he might be collaborating with Dumbledore in some way about a story to tell Harry later.
The thought made her feel vaguely sick.
She hated the thought of lying to Harry.
She understood the necessity of it.
She understood that the more people knew, the greater the risk to all of them. She wouldn’t be doing Harry any favors by telling him. The last thing Harry needed was Lucius Malfoy targeting him alongside Voldemort.
She didn’t hear from Dumbledore until almost four o’clock.
He sent the patronus again.
“Ms. Granger,” the bird said politely, in a much less hurried and stern voice than the one she and Draco heard that morning. “I believe we have come up with a better ‘cover story,’ as the expression goes, for your mishap in Defence Against the Dark Arts. I plan to speak to Mr. Potter about this myself tonight, but if he comes to see you, which I shall strongly encourage him to do, please tell him I have been working with you privately on defensive and offensive magic meant to keep you safe against the increased threat against muggleborns. I plan to tell Mr. Potter there have been threats against the school, and that you are likely a specific target of those threats because you are known to be Mr. Potter’s close friend, a muggleborn, and at the top of your class… all of which has the benefit of being true. I do believe you to be at significant risk, which is part of what I wish to speak to you about when we meet tomorrow morning…”
Hermione felt her throat tighten.
Harry would lose his mind if Dumbledore told him that. Knowing Harry, he would blame himself, and it would make him even more reactionary about Draco.
Still, she could see the merits of the story, too. Harry would definitely believe this version over the one about her being “ill.” It also gave them a reasonable cover story for when she had her own private meetings with Dumbledore.
She heard the headmaster clear his throat.
It was almost like he knew he’d be interrupting her train of thought.
“I intend to tell Mr. Potter that these lessons are making your magic stronger, but that you are still learning control… and loss of control is what happened to you in class, given I had been working with you on blanket fire spells meant to take on large numbers of inferi. There has been discussion in the Daily Prophet recently about Tom using inferi again, so this should be plausible. I also plan to tell him I would rather if it did not get around the school that I was assisting you in this way, so I would prefer if he stuck to the story that you are ill.”
The bird again lifted off its perch on the back of the couch.
Hermione watched it hover there, as Dumbledore let out his last words.
“I look forward to our meeting tomorrow morning, Ms. Granger. In the meantime, please try not to worry.”
The phoenix again exploded into countless fragments of light.
She hadn’t yet made time to meditate.
She’d decided the reading portion of Dumbledore’s instructions took precedence, at least until she found something that might explain what happened to her in class.
She definitely got the impression from the first patronus Dumbledore sent that he was nudging them towards one piece of information in particular. She wanted to have that information in hand before she met with him tomorrow.
She just hoped she’d know it when she found it.
As it turned out, that wasn’t an issue.
She was halfway through the first chapter in the history book, eating a few bites of the raspberry tart Dobby brought her for lunch and drinking more of the strong tea he’d also sent, when her eyes stumbled over a group of words.
She put down the tart and her teacup.
She re-read the relevant segment from the beginning.
She re-read it a third time.
The blood drained from her face as she read through it a fourth.
…There were some at the time who dismissed Petrov’s powers, saying that if he truly were a caelum ignis, the condition would drive him into insanity soon, as was the lot of all those with that condition. The thinking was, if they could only wait him out, Petrov would be easy to control and dispense with once he descended into full irrationality. He would make mistakes, do foolish things, even end up dead from his own hand.
But those waiting for that outcome would wait in vain. Unlike most suffering from his condition, the Dragon did not fall into insanity or loss of control as he aged, although this is, admittedly, the usual fate of the caelum ignis. There is some speculation that the reason for this was his wife, Antonia Petrov, a formidable witch in her own right, who displayed similar abilities as her husband, although she herself was not believed to have been born with his condition. It is now thought by many experts in magical ailments that a caelum ignis only survives the transition to adulthood and the maturity of their powers through the taking of a mate able to share that power with them.
While this is theory only, those studying the condition agree that it could go far to explain why Petrov remained high-functioning throughout his life, despite the powers he displayed. It might also explain the strange case of Junger Richelieu, who lived a relatively normal life until the death of his own wife, who may have served a similar function.
Unlike Petrov, who had larger ambitions, Richelieu managed to stay out of the eye of Magical Law Enforcement by means of hiding his condition through an utterly ordinary existence. He owned a small apothecary which he managed with his wife, had many friends and two children who appeared perfectly normal. He may not have been identified as a caelum ignis at all, but for his wife’s death occurring from illness before his, which immediately caused him to degenerate into the worst excesses and instabilities of the condition.
While his children and close friends were apparently unharmed, he destroyed his own shop and several other buildings of note in the village where he’d lived his entire life, starting with the medical facility that had treated his wife, and the healers who had been unable to save her. Richelieu was caught and killed by aurors on his way to the nearby town of Rotterdam, where it was believed he intended to go after the medical facility there.
More known cases of caelum ignis would be needed to solidify this theory into something beyond mere speculation, but it does potentially explain why Petrov maintained lucidity throughout his life, despite his questionable ideologies and the uses to which he put his own abilities. Sadly, no one got the opportunity to ask either of the Petrovs this question. His wife, Antonia, took her own life the day after Petrov was finally brought down…
There was more about Antonia in the book.
Hermione read through all the descriptions of military campaigns and the various battles, and there were many mentions of Petrov’s wife, Antonia, fighting alongside Konstantin and appearing to wield similar powers as her husband.
She found it interesting that none of the previous books mentioned this.
She checked the publication date and realized the book she read now had been transcribed and translated from handwritten scrolls, so the publication date for the bound version was somewhat misleading. A publisher’s note at the beginning stated the text was believed to be almost two hundred years older than any of the others she’d read.
Hermione couldn’t help wondering if, at some point in the time since, scholars, or possibly even one of the magical authorities themselves, decided information about how a caelum ignis stabilized their powers wasn’t good information to be sharing. For one thing, it might throw into question whether every child born with the affliction should be murdered as a baby. Richelieu made the case that one could live a normal, even happy life as a caelum ignis, if perhaps one under a certain degree of supervision and intervention.
Hermione definitely suspected Antonia’s non-inclusion in later histories had been deliberate. She could guess a few reasons why it might have been intentionally suppressed, and not only to justify the current––and to her mind, barbaric––laws still on the books in all of the major magical governments of the world.
Regardless of the precise reasons, it was disturbing.
Hermione read through every chapter about the war.
She tore off a piece of spare parchment and stuck it in every part of the volume that explained about Antonia, Petrov’s wife, and her relationship with Konstantin. When she finished, she set that book on a different shelf than the other stack of books she’d already read.
She moved on to the next book, but by then it was suppertime, and Dobby appeared with yet another silver tray weighed down by food.
She wondered when Harry would come by to check on her, and if he would bring Ron. Only then did it occur to her that she had no idea when Dumbledore was meeting with Harry that night. She also had no idea how Harry would find their rooms, given the magical notice-me-nots and the wards and whatever else on their door.
Presumably, Dumbledore would know a way around that problem.
She wondered if Draco planned to come back for that conversation, as Dumbledore suggested. She hadn’t seen or heard a thing from him since he left, either.
It unnerved her suddenly, how isolated she’d gotten in such a short time. She’d felt isolated by secrets before, but she’d always had Harry and Ron those other times. She’d certainly never felt it to this degree, and not with so much going on.
Besides, most of those other secrets had been more Harry’s than hers.
The secrets she was keeping now felt a lot more personal, and much more about her. She had no idea what Harry and Ron were thinking about what happened in Snape’s classroom today. She had no way to ask them what they thought, or what story had been going around the school. She couldn’t help worrying about Harry’s reaction especially, given Snape had been concerned enough to mention it to Dumbledore.
Draco would likely tell her some of it when he got back.
He was hiding things from her, too, though, at least about Goyle.
Really, he could be hiding all manner of things from her, things she didn’t even know to ask about. He basically admitted today he’d been talking to Dumbledore much more than he’d initially confided in her. That whole thing with the arrow and Goyle––would he have told her about it at all, if he hadn’t been forced to?
Hermione had her doubts.
Having no control over any of this herself, or even knowing when and how she might have to lie about it, was adding to her anxiety, to say the least.
Then there was the rest of it, the feeling of being cut out of her friends’ lives more generally.
Harry and Ron would be starting apparition classes soon.
She’d gotten permission to take apparition the previous year, since she was among the very first students in her year to turn seventeen, so she wouldn’t have been going with Ron and Harry, anyway. But it still felt strange not to be involved at all. If she’d still been living in Gryffindor, she would be talking to them about it, at least, and maybe helping them once they’d started lessons. Draco wouldn’t be going to classes, either, but Hermione strongly suspected he knew how to apparate already.
There was a quidditch match on Sunday, but she was so out of the loop on that, she couldn’t even remember who Gryffindor would be matched against.
And what was Nott doing?
She hadn’t really spoken to Theo since the whole mess with Draco and Ginny. She knew Draco had been doing his best to keep an eye on him, but that didn’t really answer the question. Where would he go, after he completed Voldemort’s task? Would the Order take him in, like Lupin promised with her parents?
All of it was giving her an anxiety headache, but she knew she was distracting herself, even now.
The Antonia stuff created a knot in her heart she could scarcely breathe through.
Draco hadn’t known.
She was sure he hadn’t known.
Godric, he wouldn’t lie to her about something like that. She had to believe he wouldn’t. Anyway, she’d seen the guilt and fear and worry in his face well enough to know he’d only known enough to know it was his fault.
She forced herself to read the segments on caelum ignis in the seventh book.
It was another transcribed scroll, and had a lot more information on Antonia Petrov, including where they’d met, her own accomplishments as a witch prior to meeting Konstantin, and a number of other biographical details of both of them.
By all accounts, she’d been a strong witch before she’d married Petrov.
She’d completed apprenticeships and masteries in both potions and transfiguration before they met, and was also said to be a master at both occlumency and legilimency. Later, Antonia personally ran the team of spies they sent against their enemies during the wars, and was rumored to be the mastermind behind many of his battle strategies.
Like with Voldemort, it was a pity they’d chosen to channel all that magical talent into the Dark Arts, not to mention that they’d decided to wield it against muggles.
Granted, Petrov didn’t seem to mind muggle-born witches and wizards.
His own wife was at least a half-blood and possibly a full muggle-born, according to different accounts. No, it was the completely non-magical variety of muggle Petrov seemed to take issue with. He wanted them subjugated and legally controlled, with magical children “rescued” from their non-magical parents before they could be “contaminated” by muggle culture, muggle morality, and muggle views on the world.
Hermione didn’t really get why someone like Petrov saw muggles as the source of his troubles at all, though. It was his own kind who’d outlawed his very existence. It was wizards and witches like himself who hunted him down, and eventually killed him.
She read for maybe an hour longer after Dobby came.
She picked at the food Dobby brought her while she read. Again it was enough for three Hermione-sized people, if not four. He’d brought her a generous portion of roast beef, roasted potatoes, gravy, mashed potatoes, peas, dinner rolls, butter, and a large piece of chocolate cake.
She decided she was finished reading about the same time she decided she was too full for another bite.
She marked sections about the two Petrovs in the current book with more pieces of spare parchment, then decided to try meditating for a while, since she hadn’t even attempted any work on occlumency. For all she knew, Harry would be meeting with Dumbledore at eight, and wouldn’t be by to see her until nine or ten o’clock, anyway.
She sat cross-legged on the floor, not far from the fireplace, and closed her eyes.
Since it was foremost in her mind, and on the verge of giving her a panic attack anyway, she tried to deal with the segments of the books she’d read first.
Draco had shown her how to create barriers and other protections around different types of memories and knowledge and thoughts. He’d shown her a few different methods for doing this, and told her to pick the one that worked the best for her. After working with him for a few weeks, she’d decided on using animals for each of the categories she wanted.
Draco laughed when she told him.
He’d been so sure she’d use books.
Hermione told him she’d considered books, of course, but thought that would be too obvious for her, and wouldn’t an accomplished legilimens know how to find a memory storage method that way, if they knew even the smallest thing about her?
Draco had grown silent at that.
She definitely got the impression he’d agreed with her reasoning, and that maybe she’d even impressed him a little bit.
He did warn her that using animals would be one of the more difficult systems in which to store memories, and that she might want to consider changing her mind, if she couldn’t get it to work. He’d also added that it would potentially be the most effective for the same reason, so might be worth the effort, so long as she could make it functional.
She’d been practicing with that system ever since. She had no idea if it was adequately “functional” or not, but Draco hadn’t yet told her to change it.
Each of her friends got assigned a different animal.
Only the unsafe memories got stored in the animals, of course. Plenty of her memories were perfectly safe and intentionally left open and accessible to anyone who came looking.
Still, there were a lot of unsafe memories now.
She felt so overwhelmed by the sheer number of them, it was probably a good idea for her to do this tonight, even apart from Dumbledore and Draco.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, she envisioned Harry as a stag. After third year, and seeing that shockingly brilliant patronus he’d produced out by the Black Lake to save Sirius, it would forever be the animal Hermione associated with her best friend.
Ron became a dog, and in Hermione’s mind, a golden retriever. The image she conjured looked a lot like his patronus, so that was an easy one, too.
Nott became a cat with long black fur. She wasn’t entirely sure why she chose that for him, apart from him getting along well with Crookshanks, but it struck, and she’d never changed it. Now she could see him in the cat’s grinning face whenever she pictured it in her mind.
Draco became a dragon, which now struck her as obvious, as well. She’d told herself at the time it was because of his name, but as it turned out, it would have made sense for a number of other, even better reasons, his patronus among them. At the time she decided on a dragon for him, she hadn’t been thinking about Konstantin “The Dragon” Petrov.
Dumbledore was Fawkes, his phoenix.
Her parents were a male and female pair of beavers, but she saw them each wearing funny little hats for some reason.
Lupin, who joined her collection after that night at that stone house overlooking the sea, obviously appeared as a werewolf.
The books and research she’d done, especially the parts she’d researched alone, she envisioned as an owl.
She made her memories the memories of the animals she envisioned.
She gave them the memories as if they were the animals’ own.
Draco mentioned at one point that to do this effectively required creating a whole little “being” with its own personality and even its own facial expressions and way of hiding. Fawkes burned up in flames whenever those memories wanted to disappear. The beavers retreated into their den by the log and stick dam they’d made and barricaded the entrance. The dragon retreated into its cave and bellowed fire if anyone drew near.
The dog disappeared into its doghouse.
The stag dashed off into the woods.
It was complicated, she supposed, but some part of her liked that added layer of complication. She liked the image of all these animals living somewhere in her mind, running off to their safe places whenever a predator ventured too close.
Moreover, if she did it right, the image would mean nothing to someone in her mind, even if they did stumble across one of the creatures living there.
She made Ginny a horse, also like her patronus in the D.A. Ginny’s horse so far only stored memories of their conversations about Draco, which might have been more about keeping those from Draco than from anyone else.
She hadn’t really tracked time while she sat in front of the fire, adding memories to her dragon, the phoenix, the owl, and the werewolf in her little menagerie. She added the most to the dragon, which blew smoke rings at her in her mind’s eye, and occasionally smirked and winked at her as she transferred her memories of the past few weeks over to him.
The dragon looked sad when she shared her experience on the Astronomy Tower, and it occurred to Hermione again that she hadn’t yet talked to Draco about that.
When she finally decided to quit and glanced at her watch, it was almost eleven at night, and she realized she’d been at it for over three hours.
Harry had never shown up.
Dumbledore must have kept him too late.
She exhaled and rose to her feet.
Draco was probably in the Slytherin dorms again, drunk and regaling them with bullshit as he tried to smooth over the weirdness of that morning. That, or he might be having a more serious conversation with Nott and/or Blaise, assuming he got the opportunity.
She tried not to think about the other alternatives.
Whatever he was up to, she wondered if this was going to be the norm for them living here, with him barely around, and her reading these books and practicing occlumency just to keep from having anxiety attacks.
At least she now knew something about what had happened to her that morning.
She couldn’t decide if knowing made it harder or easier.
She supposed she could try ducking out of class when she felt that overheated, out-of-control feeling coming over her. She could ask Draco what signs he noticed when it was about to happen to him. He always seemed to know when he was on the verge of––
A patronus burst into being in front of her as she straightened.
It was the phoenix again.
Dumbledore’s voice rose at once, but sounded nothing like it had earlier that day. Rather than harried or polite, his words sounded thunderous, even as he kept them succinct.
“Ms. Granger, I am sorry to tell you this, but Mr. Malfoy has been badly injured. Expect us in two minutes. Please have the door open and waiting…”
As her heart leapt in her chest, as she fought to suck in a breath, the phoenix burst into a million blue-white stars and vanished.