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Chapter Text

Hermione believed firmly in appointments. It was why she employed Hewitt, an owlish young man, who kept her diary organized (down to her bathroom breaks according to Ronald) and unwanted visitors out of her office. In the years since the war, her fame had largely faded due to her steadfast avoidance of the spotlight and inability to discuss anything besides her work. It made writing articles on her for the Daily Prophet dreadfully dull. But the occasional grateful wizard still popped onto her diary for a rigorous fifteen minutes of handshaking and effusive complimenting. Harry and Ron were able to handle such encounters with humility and enthusiasm respectively; Hermione’s often ended with her red-faced and gingerly patting her visitor on the back.

To the point, while often uncomfortable in the presence of strangers, Hermione was not a hard person to get a hold of and thus undeserving of a coffeehouse ambush. The Beanery, on muggle London’s high street, shared its narrow quarters with a plant rehabilitation shop. Greenery (sick and healthy) fought pastries and burlap sacks of coffee beans for every inch of real estate. The room hummed with the hiss of steamed milk and the shouted barbs flung between the shared proprietors. Both of whom generally felt their respective shop deserved to be the star of the show. Hermione, who had both left several sick plants to be rehabbed and bought many cups of coffee, was decidedly glad she could complete several tasks in one space. Efficiency was the name of her game.

“I need to speak with you,” said a head with a large chin jutting out defiantly between two snake plants. Hermione felt the woman’s warm breath in her ear before she saw her and jumped out of her skin. Coffee spilled down the front of her cream blouse and Hermione loosed a cry, ripping the material away from her. One look down her shirt revealed welted angry skin. When her gaze returned upwards, the woman was sitting at her bistro table, presumptuously unloading a stack of journals from her shoulder bag.

“Excuse me,” Hermione said curtly. “Did we have a meeting?” Hermione knew very well they did not. The woman gave her a droll little smile. She was pretty, a rosebud mouth, doll-like cheeks and shorn black hair that feathered across her ears. The cut only served to make her cheekbones sharper.

“No matter. You’ll want to hear me out,” the head that belonged to a pretty woman said. It was not no matter to Hermione. Appointments were not only necessary for keeping the order of one’s calendar but also largely considered polite.

“I’d love to. Floo my office and we’ll set up a time to meet.” Hermione tried for a sweet conciliatory tone. The woman’s answering look told her she failed.

“You’ll hear me out now, Ms. Granger or I will make life very hard for you.” So not a muggle, someone from her world. Hermione forced her lips into the semblance of a bland smile, she waved her hand in a gesture that urged the woman to continue. She would sit here, nod in all the right places and let this woman air whatever grievances she clearly had against Hermione and then she would go on with her day. That she had lost the few precious moments where she was just a woman in a cafe and not a war-hero with great expectations placed upon her and nothing but a failed relationship and failing research project to show for it was only a temporary wound.

“My magic was stolen from me when I was eleven years old.” The woman delivered the blow without her eyes leaving Hermione’s for even a second. Neither of them blinked, the words sitting between them. Hermione picked them apart one by one. Stolen magic was a myth perpetuated by purebloods to make them feel superior to muggleborns. It was a barb she had faced at the hands of ignorant children like Draco Malfoy parroted from the mouths of their bigoted fathers. So this was a poor joke.

“And let me guess,” Hermione smiled a saccharine smile, “You’re here to accuse me.” She cast a wandless muffliato. While much of the pureblood rhetoric had fallen out of fashion with the death of Voldemort and countless reforms, change in any world–magic or not–was slow.

The woman gave her a look of disbelief and muttered something that sounded an awfully lot like and you’re supposed to be the brightest witch of an age. “No, you’re the person I want to do something about it.” The woman’s words were sharp and she swallowed the last syllable like she wished she could erase the bite. So this wasn’t going the way she wanted it to go either. Hermione didn’t feel sorry for her. She was supposed to be enjoying her coffee in peace, not watching it dry slowly on one of her favorite blouses. Hermione was often the person who did something about things but she was tired.

The woman bit her lip, her teeth leaving deep indents in her cracked lips. Hermione recognized it as a move to prevent tears from spilling into her eyes. The woman looked younger then, barely out of her teens like she was shrugging on the skin of an adult and finding it didn’t quite fit. Hermione softened slightly, maybe she was less tired than she thought she was. “Let’s pretend I believe you. How was your magic stolen?”

They spoke until the coffee stain had set beyond saving by any stain remover, whether muggle or magical. The woman’s name was Matilda. She was twenty-one years old, muggleborn, and entered Hogwarts the year Hermione, Harry and Ron were on the run. Her parents were teachers and she had no siblings. Matilda had been a lonely child, prone to outbursts of accidental magic and the ridicule of other little girls in the school yard. When she learned about magic, every childish jibe and lunch alone made sense. The magical world would offer her a new life where she fit just right. And then that life had been ripped from her, her memories stolen in a botch job that left her feeling stuck between two worlds. She had been in and out of care facilities until she had found others like her who believed magic was real and users of it among them. In another life, she was Hermione Granger and her magic had been stolen.

“Have you gone to the DMLE?” Hermione finally asked when Matilda’s story had been concluded. Matilda gave her a pitying look. “If you attended Hogwarts–”

“–I attended”

Hermione gentled her tone. “There will be records of you. You can submit your memories to the aurors, your school admittance records and they will investigate. I know someone in the auror department, I can give him your information. He can help you.”

“Harry Potter?” Matilda raised an eyebrow.

“Well yes,” Hermione said. It seemed whatever memories of Matilda’s had returned had included the savior of the wizarding world.

“There is no record of me ever attending Hogwarts. No one I attended class with can remember my name and I have no clear memories to submit.” Matilda’s story had the bitter cadence of one she had told to similar tones of disbelief. She pushed a pink journal toward Hermione. A small heart shaped lock dangled from its spine. “This is the only proof I have. My diary from when I was eleven years old. When they erased my memories they didn’t account for a little muggle girl’s habit of writing everything down.” Matilda placed a scrapbook over her diary. “And my baby book. It’s full of strange accidents my parents struggled to explain. Take them.” Hermione knew these journals would amount for nothing in the hands of the DMLE if Matilda tried to go to them. It was foolish of her to even suggest it. They would only erase her memory, violate her a second time, and send her on her way. It was only with Hermione on her side that anyone would lend credence to her story.

Hermione studied the young woman’s eyes. The dark purple circles underneath and the harsh cut of red veins through white pupils. Her cuticles were picked bloody, but her countenance was clear. Hermione believed her.

“You have a theory about what happened to you, don’t you?” Hermione did not believe the woman before her would’ve approached her if she didn’t. She did not press her on how she knew so much about Hermione and the world she had been kicked out of; Hermione knew muggles had a long history of sneaking into the periphery of the wizarding world whether by design or accident. It happened far more frequently than most of Wizarding Britain would like to admit. Since the war the veil between the two worlds had become sheerer than before.

“In the last year, memories have started to trickle through. Strong memories, combined with what I wrote in the diary I started to remember that brief year of my life.” Obliviation was not infallible, and the more you had to erase the messier it became– Hermione was intimately aware.

“I know I was sorted into Slytherin.” Hermione winced. “It was as you can imagine, lonely, miserable, isolating. And then I made a friend. He was a second year. Elias Waterbench.” The name rang familiar in Hermione’s mind. “He was so handsome, worldly I thought, and he had been raised with magic since he was a baby. He took me under his wing. No one called me mudblood under their breath. I stopped being locked out of the dormitories at night. I could eat in the Great Hall without worrying pumpkin juice was going to be poured over my head. I was a little in love with him, as in love as any eleven year old can be.

He invited me to his family’s manor for break. My parents were thrilled, I finally made a friend. When we got off the Hogwarts Express, his parents wrapped me a hug and prattled on about how much Elias had told them about me. Their house was grand–I wasn’t poor growing up but it felt like a different world, a better world, being surrounded by the magic of their home. They used it for everything. You think you get used to it, going to school and learning about it but being in a house where magic is an intrinsic part of it, nothing prepares you. And they have no idea how lucky they are.” Matilda did not disguise the bitter edge to her tone.

Hermione could see it in her mind's eye, the Burrow when she was eleven and new to this world. Molly’s knitting needles darning one of Arthur’s socks, the dishes washing themselves in the sink, and the way the entire house smelled of fresh bread and sunlight. It was steeped in magic and as soon as Hermione stepped inside she wanted to curl up on the worn bench of the breakfast nook and sun herself in it like a cat. Ron had shrugged, a look of shame creeping over his features, as though to say it's not much with no idea of the wonder she was brimming over with.

Matilda’s voice dropped an octave. “We had dinner in this grand room. It was set for four, which was odd because Elias was an only child. It was after the salad course when a little girl came down. She must’ve only been a year or two younger than me, but she carried herself like every shadow was a monster that could jump out and swallow her whole. Elias turned to me and he looked nervous all of sudden, like his tongue was too big for his mouth. ‘This is my sister, Eleanor.’ And that’s where my memory ends, me at my parent’s house and Hogwarts nothing but a fanciful story made up by a lonely little girl. ”

Hermione pulled back, unaware she had been leaning over the table. “Until I got ahold of this.” Matilda produced a vial from her coat pocket. “It’s when I started remembering Elias that I knew something happened to me while I was there.” Her knuckles clenched white around it and she held it out to Hermione. Her palm was open, but Hermione could see her fingers itching to close back around it. If this contained a memory of what happened to her then it was probably her most precious possession in the world. Hermione took the vial gingerly, watching the silvery gas-like liquid press and retract from the glass like a living breathing thing.

“Matilda steeled herself, “Watch it. Then help me take back what is rightfully mine.”

“I’m not sure I’m the right person for this–” Hermione hedged.

Though that wasn’t entirely true. Hermione’s field of study was dark magic’s effect on the body. There was little she didn’t know about experimental curses that decayed flesh or hexes that corroded the mind until it was little more than grey matter sloshing around inside a person’s skull. But she was not an auror. She was barely a Ministry employee. Hermione had tried the Department for Magical Cooperation right after the war and found she held too much righteous anger towards the other country’s delegates that had done nothing to stop Britain’s army of child soldiers from fighting against one of the most powerful dark wizards that ever lived.

Then Minister Shacklebolt, on his second term then, referred her to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, where she had been immediately censured by Romilda Vane’s father. She had proposed in an all-hands meeting that the very name of their department in of itself did little to advocate for the rights of creatures they supposedly wanted to protect when the name assumed wizard-kind inherently possessed control over them.

The Ministry of Magic could not fire Hermione Granger, best friend of Harry Potter, war heroine, and recipient of the Order of Merlin First Class. Instead, it was agreed upon that it would be mutually beneficial for Hermione to step down and step over into a new experimental role. It was then she settled into a loose employment contract with the Department of Mysteries (no one seemed to truly know what each department did so it was not questioned that they would want to hire an outside consultant) which was how she became a prominent researcher in the field of the effects of dark magic.

“You’re precisely the right person.”

“My work is purely theoretical,” Hermione lowered her voice, “I do not practice dark magic.” Hermione knew her research was only allowed to exist within the Ministry because they believed Hermione (again Golden girl etc. etc.) did not hear the call of dark magic. She did not practice it. She merely studied it. However, it did not fall on deaf ears, it was a seductive whisper, a slippery whirl of perfume on the air, and some days Hermione gritted her teeth against its call.

Matilda raised a thin brow. “I’m not asking you to practice it. I’m asking you to undo it.” Matilda’s expression suggested she knew the truth of her ask. Oftentimes undoing dark magic required the same price as it demanded to cast it.

“And is this–”Hermione raised the small vial “–how you know it was dark magic?

“Yes,” Matilda said.

“And how did you get it?” Hermione asked. The memory inside the vial did not belong to Matilda, Hermione knew that much.

“I stole it,” she shrugged, “Elias owes me much more than a measly memory.” She stood, signaling an end to the conversation. “I’ll be waiting to hear from you. I know what they say about you Hermione and we may not know each other but I know you won’t be able to resist calling me after you watch that.” She threw down a compact cell phone on the table. “You have my number. I trust you know how to use it.” Hermione watched with an open mouth as Matilda disappeared.

“Cancel my appointments, Hewitt!” Hermione slammed her office door. Her normally pressed Ministry issued robes were in disarray. Her hair had fallen from the professional knot at her nape. She had the sinking suspicion that if she reached up and touched her left earlobe she would find the gold hoop Ron had spent a chunk of his Order of Merlin galleons on missing.

Hermione forced herself to take measured steps to her storage room and remove the pensive she had borrowed indefinitely from her co-worker, Bart. Borrowing was a loose term. Stolen might have been more appropriate. But he had yet to notice it was missing. That was two months ago.

She poured the silvery memory into the pensive. The surface rippled. She could turn back. Hermione could choose to not let her curiosity get the better of her. She owled McGonagall requesting Hogwarts class of 1998’s roster, but it didn’t mean she had to dive into the memory of a woman who could be lying or trouble.

In fact, she had an interesting letter opened on her desk now from a witch in Siberia who was testing Gamp’s Law and finding it did not hold up as well to scrutiny as wizards had thought for the last one hundred years. She wanted a research partner. That was the type of assignment that would land Hermione on the pages of history, well the side of history she had always imagined her name on–life changing research, not the wild goose chase of a girl desperate to regain her magic.

“Ms. Granger,” Hewitt knocked tentatively on her door, “You made me promise I wouldn’t let you cancel another lunch with Mr. Weasley.” Her personal life was on a sabbatical and she had, like a proper delegator, tasked Hewitt with its return.

Hewitt’s pleas went unheard as Hermione plunged her head into the pensive.

A man towered over the prone forms of two little girls. Hermione had felt so grown up, her Hogwarts acceptance letter clutched in her fist and the promise of being different and special instead of a girl who sat apart from her classmates at recess, but now looking at the unconscious little girls before her, Hermione felt viscerally how small and vulnerable they were. They were laid on the dining table, the remnants of dinner pushed aside. Plates of crusty bread, mashed potatoes, and meat swimming in blood barely touched on china plates. Pumpkin juice stained the upper corner of the Waterbench girl’s lip the lightest shade of orange. It made her look even younger. Matilda’s, her hair longer and her cheeks rounder, head lolled to one side.

“Will she be okay?” Elias Waterbench was a softer, more feminine version of Draco Malfoy as a young boy. His blonde hair was sandy and swept away from his face. His eyes were earnest and his cheeks had not yet lost the baby fat that had fallen away from the rest of his reed-thin body.

“Sophie will be fine,” the man’s voice was curt. His low brows were a slash across his face, pulling his eyes in too tight to the bridge of his nose. His voice held authority, though it was higher than Hermione expected.

“I meant,” Elias’ voice dropped to barely above a whisper, “Will Matilda be ok?” A woman who must’ve been Elias’ mother shushed him.

He paused his busy hands, putting down what looked like an Erumphet horn, and cut the boy a perplexed look. He wrinkled his nose, “If she dies, it will be swift justice for the magic she stole.”

Hermione sucked in a breath. The evil wizard’s eyes flicked over at her. Just the corner she stood in. But for a moment, his eyes landed on her. His irises were swallowed by black that slowly seeped into the whites of his eyes like an ink spill. Gooseflesh erupted on her skin. His presence felt wrong, like the noose of Salaar’s locket felt around her neck. His gaze slid over her and Hermione wanted to hurl her body over the little girls on the table, though she would be ten years too late to save them from their fate.

When Hermione emerged, her skin was covered in gooseflesh and a name was on her lips–Oberon Adalhard. She knew the name, of course she did, he was famed in pureblood circles and considered a forefather of dark magic research, though he hadn’t been seen outside of his manor in years. Something very wrong had happened on that dining room table ten years ago. Something very dark indeed. Hermione grabbed the mobile and with clumsy fingers typed:

I believe you. I’ll take on your case.

Chapter Text

MEMO

TO: Granger, Hermione, Department of Mystery Consultant

FROM: Nott, Theo, Department of Mystery, Death Room Unspeakable

DATE: November 19th, 2008

SUBJECT: Grindelwald’s Remains

Unspeakable Thompson has requested you return Grindelwald’s remains post haste and assures me he has no memory of signing the release forms to anyone, much less Hermione Granger. I told him, you and he discussed it in great detail at the Ministry Gala last month and that he had, in fact, granted you permission to take the body of the most powerful dark wizard out of the Death room. You are welcome. Now return him.

MEMO

TO: Granger, Hermione, Department of Mystery Consultant

FROM: Nott, Theo, Department of Mystery, Death Room Unspeakable

DATE: November 20th, 2008

SUBJECT: URGENT - Grindelwald’s remains

Unspeakable Thompson is no longer so sure that he did agree to let you take the remains at the gala. Return Grindelwald now, Hermione. I am praying whatever you needed him for has kept him in the same condition that he was lent to you in. Must I remind you that is my head on the chopping block and it’s much prettier than yours.

URGENT MEMO

TO: Granger, Hermione, Department of Mystery Consultant

FROM: Nott, Theo, Department of Mystery, Death Room Unspeakable

DATE: November 21st, 2008

SUBJECT: GODDAMNIT GRANGER!

If you don’t respond I will be forced to take drastic measures!!

MEMO

TO: Nott, Theo, Department of Mystery, Death Room Unspeakable

FROM: Graham, Hewitt, Personal Assistant to Ms. Hermione Granger

DATE: November 21st, 2008

SUBJECT: In reference to your urgent memos to Ms. Granger

Ms. Granger has requested that I inform you that she is unable to give back Grindelwald’s remains at this time due to unforeseen circumstances. Many apologies.

Hermione slid into the booth across from Ron. A now long gone cold cappuccino sat in front of her, a dash of cinnamon sprinkled on top. The sight of it made her heart throb uncomfortably, the organ two sizes too large for her chest cavity. She took a sip anyway before meeting Ron’s eyes.

“You missed our lunch.” He crossed his arms over his large chest. Had he been working out? “And you’re thirty minutes late today.” Hermione winced as Ron laid out her digressions without malice. It was a marked improvement for them as Hermione’s inability to prioritize Ron had been an issue for the last five years of their relationship.

“I’m–” Ron cut off her apology.

“Save it, Mione.” Her heart swelled again and she rubbed at it, before taking a large swallow of water.

“You have me for however long you need me. For the rest of the day!” She tried. “I had Hewitt cancel the rest of my appointments.” She hadn’t, but she could discreetly owl Hewitt and make this white lie the truth.

Ron ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back until it was almost as undone as Harry’s. He chuckled, but it was a sad sound. “What I would’ve given to hear you say that when we were still together.” Blue eyes met her own. They looked brighter than they had in months. His face was less pinched, the corners of his mouth had lost their permanent downturn and his freckles stood out against pale skin as though he had spent several hours outdoors. He looked better without the weight of their relationship hanging over his head. The thought bowled her over.

Ron deserved more than another of her pitiful apologies so she stayed quiet. They had been broken up for over three months now, but untangling years of an on and off again relationship and then five years of living together with a ring picked out and the unspoken agreement that when Hermione’s research paid off they would finally get serious, was never easy. Ron generously offered to move out. It took them less than an entire day to box up his belongings and bring them to a rented room above the Leaky. His quidditch paraphilia had never left the boxes in their spare room, his chess set on the mantle folded up neatly into a carrying case, and his clothes only took up a third of their closet. As Hermione watched them float by her toward the front door she had realized how little of Ron existed in what should’ve been their shared home. Her books lined the walls. Plants and plant cutting she had borrowed from Neville for her potions sat in every available spot of sun. Crookshanks had no less than three cat trees and the spare bedroom was less of a guest room and more of a potions lab to allow for her to bring her work home on the weekends.

“How do you want to do it?” Hermione asked as she cast a discreet warming charm on her coffee. The cafe Ron had chosen was muggle. A trendy industrial space, cut by clean lines and white chairs that looked like they belonged in the Tate and were impossible to sit in for any length of time. Hermione hated it. She missed the days when coffee shops were full of mismatched furniture and Turkish rugs. When the couch you chose had molded to the shape of so many asses before yours that it nearly swallowed you up when you tried to stand. The bright light of this space made her feel like they were preparing for a rocket launch to the moon.

Ron groaned. They had decided to wait to tell Harry and the entire Weasley clan that they had broken up until it was less of an open wound. It had been Ron’s idea, but Hermione had warmed to it. She dreaded the cold shoulder she was bound to receive after they broke the news to Molly.

Hermione’s relationship with her own parents was strained after her choice to obliviate them and their visits were stiff-backed polite conversation about work and the weather. The Weasley gatherings in contrast were boisterous shouting matches, heaping portions of home cooked food that forced her to pop open the top button of her jeans and game nights that inevitably ended with the Weasley siblings screaming at each other good naturedly until someone wound up on the receiving end of a bat-boegy hex. It was not lost on her that losing that warmth felt like more of a blow than Ron’s love.

Ron rubbed the back of his head. “About that—” he trailed off.

“Ron,’ Hermione chided but it lacked any real heat. Their relationship had become a security blanket of sorts. While Hermione had never been able to be the person Ron needed in a relationship, he had been her best friend since she was eleven years old. And she felt she owed it to him to wait to break the news until whenever he was ready.

“It’s my parent’s fortieth wedding anniversary next month. My mum has been making a huge deal of it and my dad gently suggested that we–me, Gin, Percy, and George–plan a surprise party for them.”

“Meaning your mom has masterminded a surprise party for herself.”

“She might’ve.” Ron chuckled, “But, Hermione, nothing will put a damper on the party like the knowledge that we might not be following them down the aisle.”

It was Hermione’s turn to groan. Their entire relationship from the time they were nineteen on had been plagued by loud sighs and finding ripped out pictures from wedding magazines between the pages of her academic texts whenever Molly visited their flat. The gentle hints in recent years, as their thirties barreled down upon them, had become less gentle and more like a forceful shove toward the altar.

“You’re invited to the party,” Ron flashed his teeth in a cheeky grin that had always gotten him out of trouble when they were younger. “As my date.” He made a face and Hermione threw her balled up napkin at him. It bounced off his grinning face. It was the grin that made her fall in love with him. “Please, ‘Mione.” The one that made her forgive him after he was awful to her at Hogwarts.

She would say yes, she knew she would. They were too old to pretend to date to keep their loved ones off their back, but they were also too cowardly to admit the truth to Molly Weasley. “I accept, only because I don’t want to break Molly’s heart.” Or be the recipient of her wrath.

Ron threw the napkin back at her. “You’re just scared of her.”

“No more than you!” Ron laughed and his entire face opened up. It occurred to her she had never made him laugh like that as anything but his friend, and she had a track record of being a rather rotten friend in the past few years. A wave of sadness crashed over her. Her life would’ve been simple if she had been able to love Ron the way he deserved.

“And after, we’ll tell them all that we’ve broken up.” Hermione leveled Ron with a look. It was time. She had no personal interest in dating someone else, but they couldn’t hold onto childish things forever and eventually Ron would find someone and the last thing Hermione wanted was to be an obstacle to that.

“We’ll tell them, I promise.”

Hermione padded down a darkened hallway towards her office. Her date with Ron completed with the assurances that she would head home. Apparently her under eye bags had luggage. But what Ron didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. The rows of cubicles were empty and offices were tightly shuttered for the night. She unlocked her door with a snick.

She felt it immediately. The disquiet of something that didn’t belong. She gripped her wand. The corner of her rug was upturned. The papers that littered her desk, in neat piles that drove Hewitt mad, were knocked askew. Her high backed office chair was turned away, facing the row of windows that looked down onto Diagon Alley.

“‘Ms. Granger has requested that I inform you that she is unable to give back Grindelwald’s remains at this time due to unforeseen circumstances.’” A low drawl sounded from the chair. The impeccable diction of someone who had elocution lessons from a young age. “Many apologies.”

“I never authorized Hewitt to apologize to you.” Hermione loosened her grip on her wand.

Theo spun around and balled the memo up in his fist. “Is it your mission to get me fired?” A pout snuck into Theo’s voice.

“The paperwork is all in order, Theo, I have him for another two weeks. I’ll owl Thompson so he can untwist his knickers.”

“You say that like you haven’t stolen from my department before.” Theo raised his eyebrows at her.

Hermione let out an exasperated sigh, “I borrow!” It’s not my fault, bureaucratic red tape slows everything down to an ungodly pace.”

“You borrow and I take the fall.” Theo muttered under his breath. “What are you doing with Grindelwald anyways? It’s disgusting to keep a dead body in your office.”

“You work in the death room, Theo, your office is full of dead bodies.” Hermione gestured to the narrow discreet door in the corner of her room that traditionally functioned as a secretary's office. “Besides he’s not in my office as I’m sure you discovered, you little would-be-thief.”

Theo followed Hermione through the door without argument or denial of his foiled plan. The pair had become friendly after Theo had caught Hermione sneaking an Egyptian Death Rattle Snake out of the Department. The snakes were extremely rare and only found in sites where great expulsions of dark magic had resulted in an extreme loss of life.

The snakes had originally been confiscated from Hogwarts’ grounds after the battle and Hermione, to Theo’s horror, had sourced a terrarium the size of a large dog crate and lined the bottom with dirt from Hogwarts’ grounds to keep the snakes in. Hermione theorized that the Egyptian Death Rattle fed off of the dark magic somehow which is why they were attracted to dark magical sites. Despite their ominous name, their venom contained healing properties. Hermione was convinced the snakes held the answer to unlocking her stuck research, though none of her experiments bore any fruit. Theo, while entirely unwilling to touch the snakes, had distracted the Unspeakable on duty so Hermione could sneak three of them into her office where they now lived comfortable if not highly observed lives.

Hermione led Theo into a sterile white room, modeled after a muggle autopsy room. In its center, on a slab on stainless steel, lay the preserved body of Gellert Grindelwald. When Grindelwald died at the hands of Voldemort in 1998, he was whisked away by Unspeakables and preserved in the Death Room in the Ministry. Theo, himself, was not quite sure what was done with his body, only that he did not have the clearance to ask or look at Grindelwald’s records. Hermione, however, was not above using her name or credentials to get what she wanted.

“What the fuck, Hermione?” Theo sounded angry. He rarely sounded angry–amused, flirtatious and dastardly but he rarely showed an emotion as gauche as anger. Hermione looked at Grindelwald with fresh eyes. The entirety of his features were purple, the inky cast moved under his first layer of skin almost like a translucent tattoo. The effect was rather horrifying, a fact made clear by the look on Theo’s face. It was also most certainly not the state he had been delivered to Hermione in.

He ran a hand over his face, musing his curls. “What the fuck did you do to him?” He rubbed his eyes before turning his attention back to the body. It was still purple. “Thompson’s going to string me up by my balls. You’ll be responsible for the ending of the noble and pure Nott line!”

“I thought you said you’d be the last to carry the Nott name, so really you have nothing to be worried about.” Hermione had learned little interaction with Theo lacked dramatics and to get to the heart of things you had to ignore his outbursts. Theo did not like being ignored.

“You deliberately misunderstood me.” The color returned to Theo’s cheeks. “I said our children would take your name thus ending the Nott name with me, not that I never wanted to be able to use my balls again.”

Hermione snorted, breaking the cardinal rule of ignoring Nott’s outbursts. “We will never have children, Theo, so that doesn’t really concern me.”

“I find it concerning that you don’t seem to care one ounce about the whole me being strung up by my balls bit.” He glowered at Hermione’s shrug.

Theo approached the prone body of Grindelwald, curiosity overtaking his censure, and leaned forward to examine him. Hermione’s fingers itched to pull him back. “Are you going to tell me why he’s purple?”

“It’s a potion.”

Theo gave her a venomous look.

“I created a potion to identify dark magic pollution within the body. It’s a visual representation of residual dark magic.” Hermione gestured to the intravenous tube that she had connected to an IV drip that administered the potion. “The potion is essentially a bonding agent, it is attracted to molecules polluted by dark magic and so when injected into the bloodstream it finds those molecules and bonds to them, turning them purple. The darker the purple the more corrupted a person is.” Their gaze fell to the man before them, his entire body a shade of eggplant.

“So old Grindelwald here is almost entirely corrupted by dark magic. I could’ve told you that.” Theo ran his tongue over his teeth. “I thought your research was supposed to be groundbreaking.”

“The first stage in curing something is identifying it,” Hermine's tone was tetchy. Theo raised his hands in surrender. “I want to be able to pull the dark magic from a person’s body without harming them.”

“You want to save Grindelwald?” Theo leaned back against the wall, an appraising eyebrow raised.

“He’s already dead,” Hermione deadpaned. “It’s not only the caster who suffers the lingering effects of dark magic. The victim of the spell does too, even if St. Mungos can heal a dark wound, they aren’t able to remove the corruption of dark magic, the lingering side effects. That is what I want to do.” Hermione traced a line down her sternum absentmindedly. The nightmares, the ache deep in her bones and the sweet addictive taste of dark magic on her tongue were all side effects of the curse Dolohov had struck her with during fifth year. Her side effects were mild compared to what others suffered from.

“So how do you remove it? And please tell me it involves me returning this body to my boss, not purple.”

Hermione pressed into her breastbone harder. “I haven’t quite figured that part out. I’ve tried blood transfusions.” Theo looked at her quizzically and Hermione waved him off. “I’ve tried bloody summoning it out of him and nothing works. I’ve hit a wall.”

Theo slapped a hand down on her shoulder. “I haven’t come across a problem that Hermione Granger can’t fix.” It was something Hermione had begun hearing at age eleven and she was quite tired of it now, especially since this particular problem was proving beyond her skillset. But she knew Theo meant well. He was like a gnat, annoying but relatively harmless.

She forced a smile, unable to voice the thoughts that had been circling the drain for weeks. Hermione Granger had been working on finding a cure for dark magic’s effects on the body for over two years and she was no closer today than she was the day she got her first grant. The well of ideas and money were dangerously close to running dry.