Chapter 1: The Wrong Kind of Magic
Chapter Text
The spell shouldn’t have worked.
Hermione had said as much–out loud–just seconds before the room shattered around her. Before the air turned to glass. Before the tang of ozone filled her lungs and time convulsed like something wounded and alive.
She screamed, but no one heard her.
She didn’t fall through space. She fell through years–landed hard on cold flagstones in a corridor that was and wasn’t Hogwarts. The magic in the stones thrummed differently–older, hungrier, like a sleeping creature stirred from centuries of rest. The light was wrong, too: candlelight, soft and golden, casting shadows that flickered and breathed. Not the jittery post-war flicker of half-mended enchantments.
Her palms scraped stone as she pushed herself upright. Her heart pounded in her chest like it was trying to outrun her ribcage. And the silence– that was wrong. Too still. Too clean. Like nothing had ever happened here. Like nothing ever would.
She staggered to her feet, dizzy. Her wand was still clutched in a white-knuckled grip. Her robes, scorched and torn from the explosion in the cursed chamber, looked ridiculous against this unscarred place.
Everything here was intact.
The portraits lining the corridor stirred. Painted faces leaned forward, peering down on her with expressions of mild confusion or cold curiosity.
She didn’t recognize a single one.
Footsteps echoed. A boy rounded the corner–tall, broad-shouldered, with emerald-trimmed robes and a prefect’s pin. He barely looked at her, muttering something about “Mulciber’s idiocy” before disappearing down another hall.
The name hit her like ice water.
Mulciber. A Death Eater. Or– not yet.
Pieces began to snap together in her head. The spell had been unstable. Experimental. The cursebreaker had told her not to cast it–not alone. But the battle was raging, and they’d needed answers.
She hadn’t meant to travel.
But she had.
I’m in the past.
Merlin, I’m in the past.
Panic bloomed beneath her skin. She could ruin everything just by existing–by being seen. By saying the wrong name at the wrong time. She slipped into a shadowed alcove and forced herself to breathe.
A brass plaque on the wall gleamed, recently polished.
1971.
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Her stomach flipped.
She needed a name.
Not her own. That one would be in history books. Muggleborn. Brightest witch of her age. Harry Potter’s friend. A girl with a war trailing behind her like smoke. Someone would recognize her. They’d see the lie before she spoke it.
A name. A face. A story.
But her hands were shaking too badly to think.
She ducked into a disused classroom and slammed the door. A silencing charm. Colloportus. The clock clicked, but her heart wouldn’t slow.
She pressed her back to the door and slid to the floor, gasping like she’d outrun death itself.
“This isn’t real,” she whispered. “It can’t be–”
But it was. The cold of the stones. The wax in the air. The weight of magic not yet spent.
The year was 1971.
The beginning of the First Wizarding War.
She closed her eyes and ran the math. She was fifteen. She’d landed nearly two decades before her birth.
I can’t stay like this. I’ll be found. I’ll be questioned. If I say one wrong thing–
She curled her fingers into her robes and forced herself to think like someone else.
A mission. Treat this like a mission. Like going undercover.
Hermione Granger is a liability.
She needed someone new.
Maris Thorne.
She said it out loud. Tested its shape on her tongue. Soft ‘r.’ Slightly foreign. A transfer student from abroad. Obscure family. Special circumstances. Enough truth to feel real. Enough fiction to stay hidden.
The surname she’d found in the Black family tapestry–an old, forgotten branch, purged for impurity. The name would echo, but not loud enough to trace.
She drew her wand and eyed her robes. They wouldn’t pass scrutiny. The tailoring was post-war, subtly different. She muttered a charm and altered them–sharper lines, heavier fabric, and a fresh-stitched Slytherin crest she hadn’t earned.
It would do.
From her journal, she tore a page and began to write:
She tore a blank page from her journal and began writing the story she would live:
Name: Maris Thorne
Age: 15
Blood Status: Half-blood. Father is magical. Mother deceased. No known relatives in Britain.
Origin: Europe–relocated recently with distant kin.
Admission: Accepted mid-term under exceptional circumstances.
Strengths: Charms. Arithmancy.
Weaknesses: Aloof. Self-contained. Not quick to trust.
Personality (perceived): Intelligent. Cold. Observant. Speaks when spoken to.
She read it twice. Committed every line to memory
It would be enough.
A knock jolted her upright. Sharp. Male voice.
“Oi. Are you there?”
She shoved the paper into her pocket, erased the chalkboard with a flick, and straightened her robes. Then: “Finite Incantatem.”
The door unlocked.
A tall Slytherin boy stood there, freckled, older, smirking.
“You’re the new one, yeah? Transfer.”
She nodded.
“Better, hurry,” he jerked a thumb down the hall. “They’re calling your name.”
***
The Great Hall unfolded before her like a memory rebuilt from scratch. It gleamed. The banners were pristine. The torches burned with clear, steady flames. Everything looked…sharper. More vivid. Unused.
At the far end, the Sorting Hat waited on its stool like a coiled creature.
Hermione lifted her chin.
Maris Thorne. You are Miss Thorne. You’ve always been Maris Thorne.
Her footsteps echoed as she walked. Each one a hammer blow, driving her deeper into the lie.
Whispers bloomed behind her:
“Who is that?”
“She’s not on the list–”
“Transfer, maybe?”
“Look at those robes…foreign, definitely…”
She didn’t flinch.
She sat. The Sorting Hat was lowered. Darkness folded around her like a cloak, and an ancient voice bloomed in her mind like rot in the soil.
“Well, now. This is unusual.”
She gripped the edges of the stool.
“Not your name. Not your time. You’re wearing this mask like it fits. But it doesn’t. Not yet.”
“I need a house,” she thought. “I need to blend in.”
“You don’t belong anywhere, girl. Not in this decade. Not in this story.”
“I do now.”
A pause. Thoughtful. Curious.
“Brave. Sharp. Fierce loyalty…Ravenclaw would adore your mind. Gryffindor, your heart. Hufflepuff, your cause.”
“Not this time.”
“Ah. Slytherin, then. For the lies you’ll live. The truths you’ll bury. The self you’ll let rot beneath the surface.”
It lingered. Then, like a sentence passed:
“SLYTHERIN”
She rose.
Her fingers didn’t tremble.
Across the hall, her eyes locked with another girl’s–dark-haired, proud, seated like a queen among wolves.
Bellatrix Black.
No smile. No sneer.
Just stillness. Focus.
Like a predator scenting a challenge.
Those black eyes didn’t blink. They didn’t release her.
Hermione didn’t smile.
Neither did Bellatrix.
But something passed between them. Unspoken. Electric. Unavoidable.
And deep inside her, Hermione— Maris felt the shift begin.
The kind that rewrites everything.
The kind you don’t walk back from.
***
The descent into the dungeons felt like walking deeper into another world.
The air grew colder with every step, thin and damp and tinged with the scent of moss, soot, and something faintly metallic–like old blood. The torches flickered an eerie green, their flames casting long shadows that writhed like serpents against the stone walls. Every sound-the rustle of robes, the scuff of shoes–echoed too crisply, swallowed too quickly, as though the walls were listening.
Hermione– no, Maris –kept her expression neutral, her posture composed, even as her stomach twisted itself into tight, invisible knots.
She followed the prefects and the other newly sorted Slytherins past a narrow archway that opened into a corridor lined with slick, black stone and low-lit sconces. The others whispered to one another, some casting her sideways glances–curious, wary, and just a little too sharp. She didn’t speak.
The portrait guarding the Slytherin common room creaked open, revealing the space beyond.
It was exactly as she remembered from stories, dreams, and nightmares.
Low-ceilinged and vast, the chamber stretched out in green and shadow. Lantern light reflected off the black waters of the lake that pressed like a second ceiling beyond the enchanted windows. The furnishings were elegant in a way that whispered power, not comfort—high-backed chairs carved from dark wood, velvet cushions untouched by wear, a massive hearth crackling with green-tinged fire. Serpentine carvings coiled across the mantle, and polished stone floors gleamed like wet obsidian.
There were no warm banners. No school colors. No welcome.
The prefect gestured toward the fire. “Gather. First-years. You’ll receive your dormitory assignments shortly.”
Hermione sat stiffly at the far end of a velvet couch, flanked by two girls who immediately leaned into each other and began whispering behind their hands. Their glances flicked her way, measuring, assessing.
She turned them out.
Observe first. Speak later.
She’d memorized the rules she’d created in that dusty classroom minutes ago. Or decades.
Rules that had carried her through the Sorting and now into the depths of this cold-blooded world:
Blend. Lie only when necessary. Never break character. Do not get attached. Survive.
A whisper cut across the room.
“That’s her. The one they added at the last minute.”
“I heard she’s from Durmstrang. Look at the way she walks–too proud.”
“She’s not even pale like the rest of us.”
“She is pretty, though.”
“Dangerous, kind of pretty.”
Hermione kept her hands folded neatly in her lap. Her chin lifted just enough to suggest calm disdain. Every motion–slow, deliberate–like armor being strapped on one invisible piece at a time.
And then, something shifted.
The air changed.
The silence arrived so quickly it felt physical, like a door slamming shut.
She knew before she looked that Bellatrix Black had entered the room.
She didn’t know how she knew. But she felt it–like the oxygen itself had stepped back. Even the fire seemed to draw inward, its glowing dimming to make room for what now stood behind the hearth.
Hermione turned her head.
And there she was.
Bellatrix wasn’t in uniform. She didn’t need it. She wore a high-collared black robe embroidered with silver runes that shimmered faintly in the low light. Her hair spilled in dark curls over her shoulders like unraveling shadow. Her eyes–deep, unreadable–moved slowly across the room, pausing on each face, deciding who was worth remembering.
She didn’t speak.
She didn’t need to.
Conversation evaporated.
No one smiled. No one moved. No one dared.
Then her eyes found Hermione.
Pinning. Cold. Curious.
And something else. Something unreadable.
Why is she looking at me like that?
Hermione shifted slightly, not from fear, but from something more dangerous. Something alive. A thrum just beneath her skin. Like being studied by something ancient.
Bellatrix’s lips curled–barely. Not a smile. Not quite.
She turned without a word and walked slowly past the first-years. But as she passed Hermione, her gaze dragged over her a second time, purposeful, unblinking.
She crossed the room and lowered herself into the tallest chair by the fire, curling into it like a predator in its den. She didn’t speak again.
But she didn’t look away either.
Hermione made herself look away only when the prefect cleared her throat.
“Dormitory assignments,” the girl said crisply. “You’ll be housed in the northern wing with the other first-years. Room three.”
Hermione’s name– Maris Thorne –was read last.
A detail to hold onto. A thread to tether her fiction into reality, she had stepped into. First year at Hogwarts. Good. Her story matched the paperwork that didn’t exist yet.
Students began to stir. Some rose, drifting toward the prefect. Others lingered in clusters. The girls beside her stood and left without a glance.
She rose with them. Smoothed the front of her transfigured robes.
She hadn’t made it two steps when:
“Maris, is it?
The voice was velvet dragged across steel. Calm, low, and loud enough to silence the nearest conversations.
It wasn’t a question. It was summoned.
Hermione froze.
She turned slowly.
Bellatrix Black was still seated by the fire, one leg crossed over the other, her fingers steepled beneath her chin. The flames behind her made her silhouette glow like a painting on fire. Her eyes gleamed in the green torchlight like polished obsidian.
“Yes,” Hermione said. Her voice was steady. Her throat was dry.
Bellatrix tilted her head, studying her like a puzzle with an interesting crack.
“I haven’t seen you before.”
“I transferred,” Hermione replied. “From Beauxbatons.”
A pause.
Then Bellatrix rose.
Not abruptly. Not with ceremony. But slow, deliberately–like she was aware of the way her presence filled the room, stretched across it. Like gravity followed her.
She walked towards Hermione.
Each step echoed with soft finality on the stone floor.
When she stopped in front of her, they were close–closer than necessary. Hermione caught the scent of something dark and herbal on her robes. Clove. Smoked myrrh. And beneath it, something sharper–metallic and strange.
Up close, the silver runes on her collar were clearer: protection, power, and a third symbol Hermione didn’t recognize. She bit down on the urge to name them. To analyze.
Don’t be Hermione. Don’t be the girl who knows too much.
Bellatrix’s eyes swept over her, slow and invasive. Measuring. Cutting.
“Beauxbatons girls,” she said at last, “are usually soft.”
“I’m not,” Hermione said, too quickly.
Bellatrix’s lips curved. Not a smile. But it showed teeth.
“Clearly not.”
Her voice dropped lower, pitched just for them.
“You carry yourself like someone who knows things she shouldn’t.”
Hermione's pulse skipped, then galloped. She kept her face blank.
“Maybe I do,” she said.
Bellatirx’s gaze didn’t flicker. Didn’t blink.
Silence.
Then–closer. Barely. Bellatrix leaned in, her breath warm against Hermione’s cheek. Close enough to smell the smoke in her hair.
“I like secrets,” she whispered.
Hermione said nothing.
Bellatrix drew back slowly, watching her like she might blink and miss something important.
“Maris Thorne”
She said it like a spell, as if testing the feel of it in her mouth.
“We’ll speak again."
And just like that, she turned and disappeared up the stairs, not sparing a glance for anyone else.
Hermione let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
Her body buzzed with something like adrenaline, but colder. Sharper.
Not fear.
Not yet.
Just the undeniable awareness that she’d stepped into a game where the other player already knew all the rules–and might have written some of them in blood.
***
The moment her curtains were drawn shut, Hermione finally let the façade slip.
Her knees bucked slightly as she sat on the edge of the Slytherin bed. The emerald drapes cast strange shadows, filtering the torchlight into dim waves that lapped across the silken coverlet. The mattress gave under her weight, plush but unwelcoming–like everything else in this House. Beautiful in its coldness. Designed to impress, not comfort.
Her hands trembled.
Merlin’s beard, she thought, pressing her palms flat against the mattress to ground herself. What have I done?
She had made it through the Sorting. Had sat beside many names that history would one day brand in fire. She spoke clearly, stepped lightly, and smiled politely. She had survived a meal beneath the careful eyes of children who would grow into killers.
And she had met- really met – Bellatrix Black.
That was the problem.
She wasn’t supposed to like her.
No, not like. Not trust. But there was something about Bellatrix that arrested thought. Something raw and crackling beneath the surface. Hermione had expected venom. She’d even welcome it; cruelty was familiar, navigable. But what she hadn’t expected was the intensity.
The way Bellatrix had looked at her. Like she already knew her. Not from a classroom.
From a battlefield.
Or a ballroom.
Hermione swung her legs into bed and lay back stiffly, the emerald canopy above her pressing close. The stone walls around her radiated cold, and the silence of the dungeons wasn’t peaceful–it was watchful. Even behind the curtains, she could hear the girl in the next bed breathing, sheets shifting. Too close. Too vulnerable. Names she didn’t know. Faces that might one day wear masks.
Except one.
Bellatrix.
Why is she watching me?
Her fingers twisted in the blanket. That moment by the fire had been brief, but Hermione felt the weight of it now–every question just slightly too precise, every pause a probe. Bellatrix was curious.
She was testing.
No– hunting.
She’s dangerous.
Brilliant.
Unstable.
Beautiful, in the way thunderstorms are.
Hermione closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but her mind wouldn’t release her.
She kept seeing Bellatrix’s face– that face–like a lit match before the flame, like a spell paused mid-air. A smirk that hovered on the edge of cruelty. Eyes too dark to reflect anything but fire.
Hermione hated the warmth that flushed beneath her skin.
She clenched her fist and exhaled through her teeth, staring up at the ceiling, where silver threadwork shimmered in the canopy like a constellation she didn’t recognize.
No one can know who I am.
One wrong word. One glance. One breath too modern, too informed–
The thought twisted like a knife.
Even sneezing the wrong way could unravel everything. Destroy the future. Or worse–preserve the past.
This wasn’t about survival.
It was about containment.
She was a girl misplaced in time, carrying truths that hadn’t been born yet. Voldemort hadn’t risen. The war hadn’t started. Harry didn’t exist. Ron didn’t exist. She was surrounded by people who would grow into nightmares–and yet were still children, still whole.
And she was alone. Utterly.
She grabbed a pillow and buried her face in it. Screamed silently until her eyes prickled and her throat burned.
Get through this. One day at a time. One name. One lie. One heartbeat.
But even that wasn’t what unsettled her most.
It was that Bellatrix’s gaze hadn’t been idle.
It had been surgical.
Hermione had seen madness before. In courtroom sketches. In wartime memoirs. In the hollowed faces of survivors.
But Bellatrix’s madness wasn’t yet unhinged. Not loud. Not erratic.
It was coiled. Controlled.
A kind of brilliance sharpened into blade edges.
What frightened Hermione most wasn’t the threat.
It was the pull.
The flutter low in her stomach. The heat behind her ears. Not just terror, but attraction. Not romantic. Not innocent. Something darker.
Bellatrix had looked at her like prey. Like a secret. Like something she wanted.
And for one shameful heartbeat…
Hermione had wanted to be wanted that way again.
The torches outside her curtains dimmed, their green-tinged glow casting shadows that stretched across the floor like reaching hands. Even the castle felt different here. The magic in its bones hummed with something ancient and volatile–like the stone remembered things too dark to name.
There was no trace of Dumbledore’s warmth here. No McGonagall’s cool constancy. No laughter. No light.
No Harry.
No Ron.
She was truly, profoundly, terrifying alone.
*** (Above her, through thick layers of stone and silence, Bellatrix Black lay awake).
Above her, through layers of stone and silence, Bellatrix Black lay awake.
Her body was still. Too still. Only her fingers moved–slow, idle strokes over the shaft of her wand beneath her pillow.
She was supposed to be asleep.
But the girl wouldn’t leave her mind.
Maris Thorne.
The name was a lie.
Bellatrix didn’t know how she knew. She just knew. The name didn’t taste right in her mouth. The syllables were clean. Manufactured. Polished until nothing of the original remained.
The girl’s voice carried a cadence that didn’t belong here. Not quite French. Not quite British. The wandwork–too precise. The posture–too trained. The eyes–too old.
She was sewn together from shadows and secrets.
And Bellatrix had always been good at unpicking seams.
But this wasn’t just another lie to unravel.
This girl–this Maris –was different.
Bellatrix had seen the way the others looked at her. Cautious. Curious. Afraid. That kind of fear only came from power– real power. Not the kind passed down through blood, but the kind earned through knowledge, through silence, through the refusal to break.
And Bellatrix had felt it too. Like a whisper along her skin. Like a spell spoken without words.
But that wasn’t what held her awake.
It was the defiance.
The girl had met her gaze–held it. Not with a challenge, but something else.
Recognition.
Understanding.
Bellatrix rolled onto her side. Bit down lightly on her knuckle to stay grounded.
She had watched girls before. Studied them like riddles. Broken some. Bent others. She knew the shape of weakness when it trembled under her teeth.
But Maris hadn’t trembled.
She had braced.
And Bellatrix wanted to test her again. To dig. To see what was buried under all that control.
She whispered the name into the dark like a secret and a curse.
“Maris Thorne.”
Mine.
People change names all the time. Lied. Pretend.
But this wasn’t a disguise.
This was an intrusion.
The girl smelled like magic that didn’t belong. Power displaced. History is misplaced. She didn’t wear the time like the others did. She wore it like it was burning her skin.
Bellatrix wanted to know why.
She didn’t want to expose her.
She wanted to keep her.
Most things bored Bellatrix. Even pain, eventually dulled.
But not this girl.
There was a depth to her. Wounds sealed over with wit and steel. There was pain, yes–but it was refined. Made useful.
Bellatrix knew what that meant.
It meant the girl had learned to weaponize her suffering.
And that made her dangerous.
And irresistible.
It felt like looking into a mirror that hadn’t cracked– yet.
And that terrified Bellatrix more than anything.
Because if someone else could wear that same mask…
Then maybe she wasn’t the only monster in the castle.
***
When morning arrived, Hermione didn’t feel rested.
The dreams had been jagged and feverish–burning letters, serpents whispering her name, Bellatrix’s black eyes watching from behind every mirror. She woke before the other girls. The dorm was still, thick with shadow and silence, save for the slow, rhythmic breathing of pureblood heiresses tangled in green silk sheets.
Even the air smelled different here–cold, faintly metallic, like stones stepped in secrets.
She sat up slowly, fingers gripping the edge of the blanket.
For one disoriented heartbeat, she forgot who she was supposed to be.
Not Hermione. Not Granger.
Maris Thorne.
The name felt brittle on her tongue. A false thing. A forged identity hammered out of desperation and spellwork.
Dumbledore’s enchantment had done its job well–conjured the appropriate records, histories, even fabricated memories in the minds of staff and students. But it couldn’t quiet the voice inside her that whispered:
You don’t belong here.
Still, she rose. Dressed. Tied the green-stripped Slytherin knot with mechanical precision. Checked her posture. Checked her face.
When she entered the common room, the fire was already lit.
It always burns green here. No warmth. No crackle. Just an eerie, controlled flame that seemed to know things and tell nothing.
And Bellatrix was waiting.
She stood near the hearth, her black robes wrapped around her like armor, arms crossed, one booted foot resting lightly against the stone wall.
She wasn’t watching the fire.
She was watching Hermione.
Again.
Hermione faltered. Just for a moment.
“Early riser,” Bellatrix murmured, her voice low and liquid. “Or did the dungeons keep you awake?”
Hermione drew herself up, letting her lips curve into a pale imitation of confidence. “Couldn’t sleep. New place. New faces.”
Bellatrix stepped forward, a strand of thick, ink-dark hair falling loose across her cheek. Her eyes didn’t blink.
“Funny,” she said. “You don’t feel new.”
Hermione’s breath caught–not from fear, but something far more dangerous.
“Is that meant to be a compliment?” She asked.
“Is it?” Bellatrix said, smiling just with her teeth. “You tell me.”
Before Hermione could respond, a burst of laughter echoed from the boys’ staircase. Evan Rosier and Mulciber stumbled into the room, grinning about something cruel and stupid. Bellatrix's expression shifted instantly–polished, poised.
“Maris,” she said louder now, cool and casual. “Sit with me at breakfast.”
It wasn’t a suggestion.
Hermione nodded before her mind had caught up with her mouth.
***
In the Great Hall, whispers followed them like trailing smoke.
A first-year student was seated beside Bellatrix Black. A Muggle-born sounding name in Slytherin green. Whispers of where, of why, of blood.
Hermione kept her expression smooth. Her jaw was loose. She chewed slowly, answered when spoken to, and tilted her head with practical indifference.
But beneath the table, her fingers curled tightly around her wand.
Bellatrix didn’t say much.
But when she did, her words were always directed towards Hermione.
A casual remark about Professor Slughorn’s voice, “like treacle and pigs.” A quiet condemnation of Ravenclaws who “read everything and understand nothing.” Her voice was calm. Her phrasing is exact. Her opinions were edged with venom.
And always, her eyes lingered.
As though watching to see what Hermione would do with the information.
When breakfast ended, Bellatrix leaned closer. Too close.
Her breath grazed Hermione’s ear. “Walk with me.”
Only a second.
Then she stood.
They strode through the corridors side by side, the castle still humming with early morning quiet. Footsteps echoing. Tension stretched thin between them, taut as a string drawn through a blade.
They didn’t speak.
Not until they reached a shadowed alcove near the Transfiguration corridor.
Bellatrix stopped. Her silhouette was half-cast in torchlight. Her profile was sharp enough to cut glass.
Hermione turned to face her.
“Why are you following me?” she asked.
Bellatrix tilted her head. Slowly. Like a predator examining prey before the pounce.
“You think this is me following you?”
Hermione folded her arms. “You watch me. You test me. You sit beside me. Why?”
A pause.
Then Bellatrix stepped forward.
The shadows seemed to follow her.
“You don’t belong,” she said softly. “You pretend too well. Your voice is precise. Your posture…trained. But you flinch when someone says Mudblood. You eat like you’re expecting poison. And when someone looks too closely, you look like you’re ready to run.”
Hermione’s heart pounded against her ribs like a prisoner trapped in too-tight walls.
Bellatrix didn’t stop.
“You see things you shouldn’t understand. You walk like you’ve been in a war.”
Hermione said nothing.
She didn’t dare.
Bellatrix’s smile shifted–cruel, but curious. A cat who hadn’t decided whether the mouse was a toy or a meal.
“I don’t care what your secret is,” she said at last, voice low. “I only care that you’re interesting.”
Hermione turned, ready to escape.
But Bellatrix’s hand caught her wrist.
Not hard.
But possessive.
“Don’t disappear on me, Maris ,” she whispered. “I hate being ignored.”
And just like that, she vanished into the growing crowd of students gathering for class.
***
That night, Hermione sat on her bed long after lights-out. Still dressed. Still clutching her wand like a lifeline.
The mask of Maris Thorne was holding–for now.
But already, she could feel the fractures forming.
Bellatrix Black wasn’t just dangerous.
She was circling.
Closer.
Always closer.
And Hermione didn’t know which was worse:
The fear of being caught.
Or the fear of being wanted.
Chapter 2: A Serpent’s Welcome
Summary:
Hermione navigates her first full week in Slytherin under the watchful eye of Bellatrix Black. What begins as a silent observation becomes something far more deliberate. Power shifts quietly: in classrooms, in the common room, and between the lines of a nameless book on manipulation. As whispers turn to scrutiny, Hermione realizes that in this House, proximity is dangerous—and Bellatrix is no longer just watching.
Notes:
Hey everyone!
Here’s Chapter 2 – A Serpent’s Welcome 🐍✨This one took a little longer than I planned—turns out it's quite a bit longer than Chapter 1 (Hermione and Bellatrix were very insistent). I'm going to try to stick to posting twice a week from here on out. Thanks so much for the amazing feedback so far—your comments have honestly kept me going. 💚
Hope you enjoy this chapter—it gets…tense.
—E.R.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The Slytherin common room breathed green firelight and quiet judgment.
Hermione stood at the top of the stairwell, her silhouette outlined in torchlight. One hand rested on the cold, curved railing. The other clenched the hem of her robe, knuckles white beneath soft wool. She had dressed before anyone else stirred–silent, precise, like a soldier preparing for foreign soil.
Because that’s what this was.
Enemy territory.
Below, the common room flickered with slow light and slower shadows. The walls were slick black stone, polished like obsidian. The air carried the smell of damp stone, old smoke, and something else–something sharp and metallic, like rusted iron and restraint.
Her fingers trembled as she forced them flat against her thighs.
You’re not Hermione Granger. Not here.
Her body remembers war. The way it lived in your joints. The way sleep became a risk. The way sound could mean death. But here, the war hadn’t happened. Not yet. These were its architects-in-waiting.
And she was walking straight into their den.
She descended.
The lake beyond the enchanted windows pulsed with movement, a green-lit abyss casting rippling patterns across the floor. The glow painted the chamber in shades of drowned jade and dead emerald. The light shifted like breath. Like thought. Like the room was aware.
She counted her steps–not to calm herself, but to mark the moment she crossed a line she could never uncross.
Bellatrix Black was already there.
Of course, she was.
She sat on the velvet couch closest to the fire, framed in green flame, her legs crossed elegantly, one arm slung along the back of the sofa like a throne’s armrest. She sipped from a goblet of something blood-dark. The curve of her mouth was unreadable.
Hermione’s heart kicked. Once. Then again. Too hard.
She approached, her footfalls soft, deliberate. Every step is a test.
“You’re early,” she said, keeping her voice carefully even.
Bellatrix looked up.
Her eyes were dark. Heavy. Unsmiling. She didn’t blink.
“Habit,” she said. “I find mornings reveal who people really are. Before the mask sets in.”
Hermione settled at the far end of the couch, leaving a deliberate buffer of space. It still felt too close. Like sitting beside a fire that hadn’t been banked properly. Fire that watched you back.
“I suppose that depends on the person.”
Bellatrix tilted her head, watching. “Perhaps. But I don’t think you sleep much, Maris Thorne.
The name sent a ripple of tension through her spine. She kept her face still.
“And you do?”
Bellatirx smiled faintly. “Only when I’m bored.”
The fire cracked. A sharp snap, too loud in the hush. Shadows danced across the floor like smoke come alive.
Hermione didn’t answer. She couldn’t trust her voice. The silence between them stretched, but it wasn’t empty. It was thick. Wired. Like a tripwire waiting to be triggered.
Her fingers drifted toward the wand beneath her sleeve. Habit. Not fear.
Bellatrix’s eyes flicked down–caught the motion–and then back up.
But she said nothing.
Then–footsteps.
Evan Rosier emerged from the boys’ stairwell with a yawn and a stretch, his robes half-buttoned, his tie an afterthought. He looked like arrogance made flesh.
His steps slowed when he saw them.
Bellatrix. And the new girl.
Together.
“Well, well,” Evan drawled, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Didn’t know first-years were allowed the good seats.”
“I’m sitting,” Bellatrix said, without looking at him. “She just hasn’t been removed yet.”
Hermione’s eyebrows arched. “Charming.”
Bellatrix’s lips twitched. Almost a smile.
Evan laughed, but it was the kind of laugh that tested fences. “You’ve got a mouth, Thorne. Let’s see how long it stays clever when Travers gets curious.”
Hermione shrugged. Loose. Dismissive. “I’ve met worse.”
A flicker of something passed through Evan’s expression–unease, maybe. It could be confusion, like he’d just caught a whiff of something he didn’t recognize.
Bellatirx’s voice slipped between them like smoke. “Let her be. You’ll only embarrass yourself.”
Evan’s smile thinned.
He looked at her for a beat longer. Then gave a short nod, turned, and walked off with a roll of his shoulder. The door shut behind him with a low thud.
Hermione exhaled. Controlled.
Her gaze cut back to Bellatrix. “Why did you do that?”
Bellatrix leaned forward slightly. Elbows to knees. Goblet dangling from her fingers like a weapon, dressed in silver.
“Because I can.”
“That’s not the whole answer.”
Bellatrix watched her. Something colder now. Something interesting.
“No,” she said. “But it’s the simplest.”
The fire snapped again. A sound like a bone breaking.
Hermione studied her, pulse steady now but skin too tight.
“So what am I? A project?”
“Project?” Bellatrix echoed, as if insulted. “Please. I don’t waste time on lost causes or charity cases.”
“Then why?” Hermione pressed.
Bellatrix set the goblet down. Her posture shifted. Straighter. Still.
“You’re the only interesting thing in this dungeon.”
The words shouldn’t have mattered.
But they did.
They settled under Hermione’s skin like a hex that hadn’t gone off yet.
Before she could speak, more students arrived. The sound of footfalls. Voices. Laughter that sharpened as it approached.
Wilkes. Mulciber. A young Avery. Boys still soft at the edges, not yet hardened by the years ahead–but already hungry for it.
They slowed when they saw the two girls near the fire.
And they stare.
They didn’t say a word.
They didn’t have to.
Bellatrix didn’t acknowledge them. Not even a glance.
But Hermione felt it.
The weight of it.
The whispers hadn’t started yet–but they would.
Bellatrix Black had placed a claim.
In this world, that meant something.
Something protective.
Or predatory.
Maybe both.
Hermione stood, smoothing the front of her robes with careful fingers.
“I should get to class. I don’t want to be late.”
Bellatrix’s voice was soft. “You won’t be.”
“I want to be early.”
Bellatrix didn’t blink. “”Then I’ll walk with you.”
Not a request. Not a suggestion.
Hermione hesitated. Briefly.
Then nodded.
They left the common room side by side.
Through dim corridors, beneath archways etched with centuries of magic. The air was damp, the torches flickering low. They move in silence.
Two shadows.
A procession of implication.
Hermione didn’t look at her. Didn’t speak.
But every turn of the castle watched them. Every portrait. Every polished stone.
Because whatever else Maris Thorne might be…
Bellatrix Black had noticed her.
And in Slytherin, that was how wars began.
***
The walk to Charms was mercifully quiet, though every stone corridor seemed to echo louder than usual.
Hermione kept her eyes forward, hands tucked behind her back in a calculated show of calm. She could hear the faint rustle of Bellatrix’s robes at her side, that constant presence–never leading, never trailing. Just there. Like a second shadow that refused to detach.
The tension in her spine coiled tighter with every step.
The passed no one, bit she felt watched. Not by portraits. Not by ghosts. By the castle itself.
When they entered the Charms classroom, heads turned. First a few. Then more. The quiet murmur of conversations shifted into whisper. A breeze of judgement.
“Isn’t she the–?”
“--Next to Bellatrix again–”
“Thought she was–Thorne, right?”
Hermione’s face remained a mask of mild indifirrence. She scanned the room as if the whispers weren’t about her. As if she hadn’t notice the change. She chose a seat in the middle row–neither bold nor hidden. Not a challenge. Not prey. Just…present.
Then Bellatrix sat beside her.
No question. No announcement. Just a slow sweep of dark hair and the casual sprawl of limbs like she owned the entire bench. Like Hermione had sat beside her.
Professor Flitwick entered with a bright “Good orning!” and climbed his stack of enchanted books. His robes swished with every upward bounce, his wand tucked neatly behind one ear like a quill.
The classroom smelled of parchment, old wood, and something sweetly burnt–wand polish, maybe. Sunlight filtered through the narrow windows, catching on the floating dust like the room itself had paused to watch her.
“Welcome, first-years,” Flitwick beamed. “Today we begin with the basic theory behind wand-lighting charms. A staple of practical magic. The incantation is Lumos –simple, yet vital.”
Hermione bit the inside of her cheek to steady herself. This she could do. This made sense. Spellwork didn’t care what century you were born in. Theory didn’t ask for blood status. Magic, pure magic, asked only for precision.
Flitwick demonstrated with a deft flick of his wand. A glow bloomed from its tip–warm, steady. Like a star being born.
Quills scratched frantically across parchment. The rustle of note-taking filled the room.
Hermione, though she’d known this charm since childhood, copied it slowly, deliberately. As if learning it for the first time.
Then came the paired practice.
And the voice.
“Go on,” Bellatrix murmured, arms folded, her wand untouched on the desk between them. “Let’s see what you can do.”
Hermione’s pen paused.
“We’re supposed to practice together,” she said.
Bellatrix smiled without teeth. “I’m not in the habit of following instructions.”
A knot of emotion formed in Hermione’s throat–equal parts irritation, caution, and something uncomfortably like intrigue. She raised her wand.
“Lumos.”
A soft light flickered to life at the tip. Not blinding, but steady. Clean. Effortless.
Around them, a few students glanced over. One or two blinked. First try.
Bellatrix tilted her head slightly, gaze sliding over her like a scalpel.
Her fingers tapped slowly against the wood grain of the desk. Once. Twice.
Then she picked her wand.
“Lumos.”
Her light flared sharp, too bright–and then fizzled out with a soft hiss.
Hermione blinked. Bellatrix didn’t react. Her face didn’t shift.
But then–she smiled.
Slow. Controlled.
“You’ve done that before.”
Hermione met her gaze evenly. “Lucky.”
Bellatrix leaned in, just enough for Hermione to feel her breath. “Liar.”
Hermione didn’t flinch.
But her fingers did twitch, ever so slightly, around her wand.
Professor Flitwick stopped beside them next, eye twinkling.
“Miss Thorne, is it? Lovely work! Quite stable for a first attempt. Have you practice this before?”
Hermione turned to him, face polite. “No, Professor. I just…read ahead.”
Flitwick chuckled. “Ah! A girl after my own heart.”
She offered a careful smile.
Bellatrix said nothing. But her gaze never left her.
When the lesson ended, Hermione packed her things quickly. She didn’t want to linger. The desk felt too warm beneath her hands, her movements too rehearsed. As if she were mimicking someone who belonged.
“You’re careful,” Bellatrix said, stepping beside her again.
Hermione didn’t respond.
“You hide your light like a coward.”
Hermione stopped. “And you don’t know when to stop.”
Bellatrix smiled. “You haven’t seen me start.”
They reached the corridor, where a small group of older Slytherin clustered by the door. Their voices dipped. Their bodies shifted– not for Hermione.
For her.
Bellatrix moved like silence incarnate. The group parted without a word. Still, their eyes followed Hermione.
Not with suspicion this time.
With calculation.
Bellatrix was drawing a circle around her. A circle made not of warmth, but possession.
And the House was taking note.
***
The morning air outside the dungeons was thick with mist, curling in from open castle windows and low-lying towers. It made the stone corridors feel even older, like walking through breath that didn’t belong to her time.
As they entered the Great Hall, the effect was immediate.
The Slytherin table hushed when they arrived.
Bellatrix slid into her usual place at the center–unchallenged, unspoken for. It was the seat no one dared claim, the saet on one had ever claimed…except, on rare and fleeting occasions, her sisters. Even then, they sat like satellites, not equals–close by blood, but never invited too near. That place beside her had been empty more often than not.
Until now.
With a flick of her fingers, Bellatirx gestured to the space at her side.
Hermione paused only a breath–then took it.
And in doing so, became something worth watching.
Conversations dipped to murmurs as eyes tracked her movement. Maris Thorne. First-year. Unknown. Sitting beside her. Not across. Not below. Beside. A position with no precedent, and no permission spoken aloud.
But Bellatrix had spoken in the only language that mattered here: proximity.
Now, the whispers crackled down the table like a slow-movign spell. Why her? Why now?
Hermione sat with precision–graceful, measured. As if she belonged there. As if the seat had always been hers.
And the game–whatever it was–moved one step forward.
Bellatrix finally spoke. “You handle Charms well. Just careful enough to avoid looking like a Ravenclaw.”
Hernione raised a brow. “You think I care about how I look.”
Bellatrix smirked. “I think you care about control.”
A flicker of surprise passed through Hermione’s mind. But she sisn’t show it. Couldn’t afford to.
A boy across the table slid closer. Slender, pale-haired. Tidy in a way that spoke of practice ambition.
“Maris, right? I’m Hadrian Avery. My sister’s in sixth.”
“I’ve seen her,” Hermione replied.
“You’re the one everyone’s talking about.”
“I’d noticed.”
Bellatrix didn’t look at him. But her stillness was louder than interruption. A predator in response.
Hadrian’s smile faltered. “Saw you in Charms.”
Bellatrix murmured once he was gone, “Be careful with Averys. Their politeness is currency. Spend it wrong, and it becomes debt.”
Hermione cast her a glance. “You’ve memorized everyone.”
Bellatrix smiled like it was a secret.
Earlier in Charms, Hermione had conjured a wandlight that flared sharp–too sharp–then fizzled with a hiss. She had blinked, feigned surprise, kept her face composed. Not too perfect. Not too flawed. Just enough to raise a few eyebrows without inviting questions.
Professor Flitwick had beamed. Bellatrix leaned over and whispered “Subtle. I like that.”
Then came the insult.
“Not bad for a half-blood,” a fourth-year Carrow drawled.
Hermione froze.
Bellatrix turned. “I didn’t hear you.”
“I said she’s not bad–”
“I heard you.”
She rose slowly, not with rage but something colder. A blade taken off the shelf.
“You’d think blood makes you clever? Do you think your father’s name will make me overlook stupidity? Apologize.”
“Sorry,” he muttered, voice small.
Hermione said nothing. She didn’t need too.
Bellatrix walked away. Hermione followed.
Back in the common room, the atmosphere had shifted.
Octavia Nott nodded at her. Rosier didn’t smirk. And Bellatrix beckoned her forward with a curl of her finger.
Hermione went.
Bellatrix handed her a heavy, black-bound book.
‘Read chapter five.”
“Why?”
Bellatrix leaned close. “Because I want to know what you do with it.”
Then she left, robes trailing like shadows.
And Hermione sat there, book in hand, spine straight.
The fire crackled beside her.
And the game continued.
***
The book had no title.
Just black leather, scarred and edged in silver thread. It’s spine creaked when she opened it, pages whispering like old secrets.
Chapter five was titled: Perception and Persuasion: The Art of Truth Without Honesty.
Hermione read it three times that night.
Once quickly, to scan.
Then slowly, to study.
Then again, to understand what wasn’t written.
It wasn’t a textbook. Not exactly. It was closer to a manifesto–a study of how to influence without speaking plainly. How to make your presence felt in a room before you even entered. How to disguise intellect as charm. How to use silence as a knife.
There were no spells.
Just philosophy. Strategy.
And examples of subtle manipulation that send a chill crawling down her spine.
The book understood Slytherin House far too well.
By morning, she had memorized entire passages.
She heard them echo in her head as she washed her face in the dim morning light, as she tied her Slytherin tie with practiced precison.
“Speak less than you know. Let the room learn your value in your absence.”
She whisper them like incantations beneath her breath.
***
The week moved like smoke. Swift. Stinging Hard to follow.
Hermione kept her head down, her posture alert, her tone clipped just enough to earn respect but no challenge.
She was careful with her handiwork–sharp but not showy.
She only answered questions in class when directly asked.
And still, eyes followed her.
The eyes that mattered.
Rosier. Mulciber. Nott. The older Slytheirn weren’t kind, but they were curious. They whispered when she passed. They stopped mocking her name aloud.
Not because they’d grown polite.
Because Bellatrix hadn’t stopped sitting beside her.
Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner.
Always the same seat.
Always just close enough.
She barely spoke to Hermione in public, but her presence spoke for her.
And soon, Hermione began to understand just how much power that silence carried.
***
It started with a seat in the library.
Hermione arrived after lunch, hoping for a quiet hour to review Runes, only to find the corner nook she’s scouted the day before already full of fifth-years.
She turned, prepare to leave.
And for a heartbeat, she wondered– Would Bellatrix help?
Had she imagined the quiet protectiveness, that ownership threaded into silence?
The fifth-years weren’t looking at her. Not directly. But one of them smirked. Another shifted their books to cover the seat she’d once taken.
Then Bellatrix’s voice cut through the stillness like a curse.
“She needs the table.”’
A simple sentence. No inflection.
A pause stretched, tense and breathless.
Then the fifth-years packed up and left, wordless.
Hermione stood frozen. Staring.
Bellatrix just raised a brow. “Sit,” she said, already unfolding a book of her own.
Hermione sat.
Neither of them said another word.
***
By Wednesday, she noticed the shift in the common room.
At first, she thought she was imagining it.
The way people nodded slightly when she passed. The way no one touched her things or rifled through her bag. The way older students glanced at her not with disdain–but with careful calculation.
She was still new.
Still small.
Still “Maris Thorne” with no family ties and no traceable lineage.
But she had proximity to Bellatrix Black.
And in Slytherin, that was currency.
It wasn’t safety.
She was too smart to believe that.
But it was a kind of shield.
And a new kind of trap.
***
In potions, Slughorn complimented her technique while Bellatrix watched with narrowed eyes, silent.
In the corridors, Travers tried to provoke her with a lazy insult–and Bellatrix stepped beside her, hand on her wand, smiling like a wolf waiting for an excuse.
“Careful,” she said to Travers. “She migh outgrow you.”
There was a strange satisfaction in the silence that followed. Hermione didn’t let it show. But inside, she felt the shift–her role changing.
She wasn’t being tested anymore.
She was being placed.
***
Thursday brought Transfiguration.
Professor McGonagall raised a brow at her surname but said nothing. Hermione sat in the second row and practice the match-to-needle spell with steady success.
Only once did her voice hitch.
Only once did she flinch–when another student muttered Mudblood under their breath. Not to her, but about someone else across the room.
It wasn’t directed at her.
But she felt it like a sharp slap to the ribs.
For a moment, a name almost slipped out– Neville.
His face, grim and unyielding, came to her from those long, breathless nights in the Room of Requirement.
Dueling drills by candlelight. Shield charms against blunted hexes.
The smell of sweat and scorched parchment.
The D.A.--Dumbledore’s Army–training not for grades, but for war.
She remember the way Neville had stood beside her when others faltered, wand raised with shaking hands, still daring. Umbridge had tried to silence them, but they had carved out a resistance in whispers and wandlight.
The Department of Mystteries was still ahead of her–technically. But she could feel it rising like a storm pressure in her bones.
The dread of battles not yet fought.
She shoved it down.
Still, she kept her hand from trembling. Repeated the spell. Turned the match into a perfect silver pin.
McGonagall paused behind her.
“Very precise,” she murmured. “But too quick, Miss Thorne. Take your time. Let the magic settle before commanding it.”
Hermone nodded. “Yes, professor.”
She cast again.
Slower. Controlled.
Perfect.
When she glanced back, she saw Bellatrix across the room–leaing in her chair, half-bored, half-smirking.
But her eyes were on Hermione.
Again.
Still.
***
By Friday evening, Hermione was exhausted.
Keeping up the pretense took everything she had. From her clipped speech to her posture to constant vigilance that lived behind her eyes,
She barely slept.
Sje rarely relaxed.
And yet…
She didn’t feel like prey anymore.
Not entirely.
Not when she passed through the corridors and students shifted aside without thinking. Not when Bellatrix silenced a second-year who sneered at Hermione’s accent. Not when the professors began calling on her more, and even Flitwick asked if she’d studied privately before Hogwarts.
She didn’t answer that question.
She had just smiled.
But late at night, when the castle quieted to stone and heartbeat, Hermioen felt the weight of what she was becoming.
She missed laughter–not the polite kind of exchange behind veils of intent, but the kind that cracked through stress like sunlight through frost. She missed words that didn’t feel like weapons. Friends who didn’t scan her for angles.
The simple clarity of a life where right and wrong, though tangled, had still felt graspable.
Here, in this house of masks and ambition, everything was barbed. Every nod, every silence, a test. There were no idle glances. No harmless gestures. Only transactions. Only games.
And she–Hermione Granger–was learning to play them.
She didn’t smile unless it served. She didn’t speak unless silence cost her more. She studied posture, tone, timing–untl deception felt like instinct.
The warmth hadn’t left her.
But she could feel it folding in on itself, like parchment sealed around a secret.
And the worst part?
It was working.
***
That night in the common room, Bellatrix spoke again.
They were alone by the fire, the other students scattered in groups or already gone to bed. The flames cast long shadows against the green marble.
“Most people break in the first week,” Bellatrix said. Her voice was calm. Curious. “Not all at once. Just cracks. Stumbling in class. Crying in the dorm. Or hiding in the library because someone called them a name.”
Hermione didn’t respond.
Bellatrix glanced over.
“But not you.”
Hermione shrugged. “Maybe I’m used to it.”
Bellatrix tilted her head. “Used to what?”
“Pressure,” Hermione said evenly. “Expecations. Survival.”
A flicker of interest sparked in Bellatrix’s dark eyes.
She leaned forward.
“Where were you trained.”
Hermione met her gaze. Steady. Careful.
“In shadows,” she said quietly. “Like you.”
A beat of silence passed.
Then Bellatrix smiled. Not wide. Not kind.
But interested. Genuinely.
“Maybe you are one of us after all.”
Hermione swallowed.
The words landed like a stone in her chest.
Because they weren’t praise. They weren’t a promise. They weren’t approval.
They were a test. A warning. A future she hadn’t chosen–already tightening like a chain.
***
The common room had gone still after Bellatrix’s final words.
She hadn’t lingered. She hadn’t waited for a reaction. She simply stood–robe sweeping behind her like the closing of a curtain–and walked away without turning once.
And Hermione had remained by the fire long after, unmoving.
The green flames cracked softly. Shadows warped along the stone, distorted by the glassy ripple of the Black Lake pressing against the windows like something waiting to be let in. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap, but her fingers kept curling inward, then releasing. Over and over. The only movement in her still frame.
“Maybe you are one of us after all.”
Hermione hadn’t replied. She hadn’t trusted herself to. The words had lodged under her ribs like a buried hex.
They weren’t meant to comfort. They weren’t even meant to threaten.
They were a mirror.
And in that moment, Hermione wasn’t entirely sure she disliked the reflection.
She didn’t sleep that night.
She climbed into the bed and lay beneath the emerald canopy, eyes fixed on the folds above her, unblinkking. The silence of the dormitory was suffocating. Even the breathing of the other girls felt intrusive–slow, contended, like they belonged here in a way she never could.
She had told herself this was about the mission. About preserving the timeline. About gathering information.
But her skin still buzzed with the memory of Bellatrix’s voice. The way she had said “one of us” not like an accusation, but an invitation.
Hermione had spent years learning what power looked like.
It didn’t always come from violence. Sometimes it came from charm. Sometimes from silence. But in Bellatrix Black, it came from something else entirely–an unapologetic hunger. A sense that everything in the room could belong to her, if she simply decided it should.
And now Hermione was part of her orbit.
Or her game.
She wasn’t sure which was more dangerous.
***
Saturday arrived cloaked in cold mist, the kind that clung to robes and settled in stone. The castle’s bones felt older today. Heavier. As if Hogwarts itself had roused from some long memory and remember it was a fortress, not a school.
Hermione moved through the halls with quiet precision. She skipped breakfast. She didn’t want to see Bellatrix. Didn’t want to guess what mood she’d be in–or worse, what role Hermione would be expected to play.
Instead, she sought solitude in the back corner of the library, deeper than she’d ever dared go.
The section smelled of damp parchment and iron clasps. She selected a book on magical law she didn’t intend to read and opened it purely to avoid being disturbed.
But solitude, like science, was temporary in Slytherin.
“Didn’t expect to find you buried in property codes and bloodlines precedents,” said a smooth voice behind her.
Andromeda Black.
Hermione glanced up. “Maybe I like being bored.”
Andromeda arched a brow and sat across from her without waiting for permission. She wore her Slytherin tie loose around her neck and looked like she’d walked out of a fashion sketch, all soft waves and sharp smirks.
“Boredom’s not the world I’d use for you,” she said. “You’re too…tuned. Like a wire under tension.”
“I’m new,” Hermione replied flatly. “Everyone’s watching.”
“And one in particular’s watching a lot closer than the others.”
Hermione closed the book. Slowly. “Is this about Bellatrix?”
Andromeda tilted her head. “My sister plays games. You’ve noticed.”
“I’m not sure if I’m the board or the opponent.”
Andromeda smiled. “You wouldn’t be sitting here asking that if you were just the board.”
A silence fell between them. Not uncomfortable. Just thick.
Hermione studied her carefully. She was different from Bellatrix. Softer in some ways, sharper in others. Where Bellatrix hunted, Andromeda assessed. Weighted.
‘You’re not like her,” Hermione said.
“I used to be.”
Hermione blinked.
“I was the shadow behind the flame. Then I realized fire burns even what stands behind it.” Andromeda’s fingers trace the edge of a page. “But don’t worry. I’m not here to warn you away. I just want to see the girl my sister won’t shut up about.”
“She talked about me?”
Andromeda laughed. “Bellatrix doesn’t talk. She circles. She watches. She rearranges her entire morning just to end up walking beside you in the corridor. That’s her version of interest.”
Hermione said nothing.
“You’re clever,” Andromeda said finally. “But be careful. My sister doesn’t get curious. She gets obsessed. And obsessions–especially the ones she doesn’t understand–turn to violence when left unchecked.”
She rose then, leaving Hermione alone with the scent of old books and the distant echo of a truth she hadn’t been ready to hear.
***
Dinner was worse.
Hermione arrived later than usual, hoping the Slytherin table would be too deep in gossip and food to notice her.
But Bellatrix noticed.
She was seated exactly where she always sat–middle of the table, commandingly casual. And she didn’t move as Hermione approached. Didn’t say a word.
Just slid her plate three inches to the left.
Making space.
Hermione hesitated. Every instinct screamed not to take it. Not to reinforce the bond, the illusion of allegiance. But she sat anyway.
Because refusing would be a bigger statement than accepting.
“Late,” Bellatrix murmured without turning.
“Wasn’t hungry.”
“You never are.”
Silence fell between them.
Then, without warning, Bellatrix reached forward and plucked a grape from Hermione’s plate.
A test.
Hermione let her.
But her hand moved half a second later, stealing it back with deliberate showness before it could reach Belatrix’s mouth.
Another test.
Bellatrix paused.
Then smiled.
“Careful,” she said. “People might think you’re growing teeth.”
“Better than growing fangs,” Hermione replied.
Bellatrix laughed. Low. Delighted.
The others at the table stared. And whispered. The Slytherin rumor mill ran faster than the Hogwarts Express, and tonight it was powered by something new:
A girl with no history who had become Bellatrix Black’s favorite piece on the board.
***
Later that night, as curfew wrapped around the corridors like a soft noose, Hermione curled into a shadowed alcove just off the main hall. She didn’t want to return to the dormitory. Not yet. Her thoughts were too loud. Her body too weird.
She needed space to unravel.
That’s when she heard footsteps.
Not loud.
Not rushed.
Just…deliberate.
She didn’t run.
She didn’t need to.
“I know where you go when you disappear,” Bellatrix said behind her. “But not why.”
Hermione closed her eyes briefly. Then opened them.
“Maybe I’m hiding.”
“You don’t strike me as the hiding type.”
“No?” Hermione asked, voice soft.
Bellatrix stepped into view, leaned against the opposite wall, arms folded.
“You wear a different mask every day. But the eyes stay the same. Like you’re watching for the next explosion.”
Hermione said nothing.
Bellatrix tilted her head. “Were you in one?”
Hermione met her gaze. “You tell me.”
Bellatrix exhaled, the sound strangely quiet in the stone corridor. “You’re not like the others. Even the ones who try to be dangerous. They play at it. You…feel like a closed door with something sharp behind it.”
Hermione’s throat tightened.
She thought of Harry. Of Ron. Of the DA. Of blood on tiles and shouts in the Department of Mysteries.
Not yet. But soon.
“I’ve lived through worse than anything this castle can throw at me,” she said.
Bellatrix’s smile faded slightly.
“I believe you,” she said. Then added, after a pause: “And I still want to see what’s behind the door.”
***
When Hermione returned to the dorm, it was nearly midnight. She undressed by wandlight, her motions methodical, her mind elsewhere.
She slid into the bed, the green curtains drawn tightly around her.
She lay still for a long time.
Until a single thought surfaced, uninvited:
She sees me.
And worse:
She likes what she sees.
The danger wasn’t being discovered anymore.
The danger was becoming something worth discovering.
And Bellatrix Black was no longer just watching her.
She was studying her.
And somewhere–deep down where she didn’t want to look–Hermione had started watching back.
Notes:
Thank you for reading!! 💫
As promised, this chapter went deeper into the shifting dynamic between Hermione and Bellatrix, with some Andromeda spice added in. If you noticed the tension building, good—you were meant to. 😈
Let me know your thoughts—comments, theories, favorite lines. I read every one.
Next chapter coming soon—I’ll aim to post again in the next few days!Until then: stay sharp, stay masked. 🖤
—E.R.
Chapter 3: A Thorn in Her Side
Summary:
The room tilts. And everyone watches who survives the shift.
Whispers ripple through Slytherin: Bellatrix has chosen. But no one understands the game—not even Bellatrix herself. Not Narcissa, who sees too much. Not Andromeda, who touches too closely. And not Maris Thorne, who never flinches.
One duel. One seat. One dare. And something breaks open beneath the surface.
Power isn't given. It's invited. And the invitation may have already been answered.
Notes:
Hey everyone!
Here’s Chapter 3 – A Thorn in Her Side 🖤🔥This chapter got away from me a little (in the best way). It ended up being four separate scenes because, well… when Bellatrix, Andromeda, and Narcissa all decide they have opinions? You let them talk. And Hermione—sorry, Maris—isn’t exactly backing down either.
Thank you again for all the comments and support—you’ve turned this into something I genuinely look forward to writing every week. This chapter leans in. Eyes watching. Lines blurring.
Hope you enjoy the shift.—E.R.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
A week later
“You can only keep a mask so long before it becomes skin..”
***
The weeks passed like a slowly dragged knife. Not fast enough to bleed her out–but deep enough that Hermione couldn’t tell if she was adapting or unraveling.
She hadn’t spoken to Bellatrix since that night in the common room–the firelit conversation that ended with a prophecy disguised as praise.
But Bellatrix didn’t need to speak. She watched.
In the Great Hall, across the length of the Slytherin table, her gaze would land with the precision of a hex. During shared free periods, when the seventh years claimed the tall-window alcoves and first years clustered in hearth-lit corners, Bellatirx always positioned herself where she could see her. Even in passing between towers, Hermione sometimes caught a trailing black cloak, an angle of shadow that lingered too long.
Not close enough to be questioned.
Close enough to be intentional.
She performed Maris Thorne with growing ease, and that terrified her more than anything.
The posture. The clipped tone. The neutral brow. The faint sneer of amusement that passed for civility here. All of it had become muscle memory. She hadn’t tripped once in public.
But the weight of it…
Gods, the weight.
Each morning, she woke with the taste of iron in her mouth and a name on her lips that wasn’t hers. Her hands moved automatically–braiding her hair the Slytherin way, pinning her badge at a perfect angle, buckling polished shoes as if each action might protect her from being seen too clearly.
Even her robes felt like lies. Fitted perfectly. Pressed to standard. A second skin stitched with borrowed history.
By Wednesday, her hands trembled when she tied her tie.
It wasn’t visible. She didn’t let it be.
But the cracks had started to form.
It was in Charms that the first one split open.
They were running Lumos and Nox drills again–this time with partner feedback enchantments. First-years paired off across rows, and Professor Flitwick walked the aisles with an enchanted quill that recorded wand accuracy and energy balance.
Hermione had been paired with a Ravenclaw boy–small, mop-haired, ink on his cuffs. He smiled shyly when their names were read aloud.
“You can go first,” he offered politely.
Hermione nodded. Her wand moved with precision.
“Lumos.”
The light sparked–bright, clear, precise.
“Nice,” the boy said, blinking against it. “Most of us can’t hold it that steady yet.”
She looked at him.
Not for long.
Just long enough.
“Thank you.”
She didn’t smile.
But it was close.
Too close.
Bellatrix wasn’t in the classroom–seventh years weren’t scheduled then–but Hermione felt the slip like static against her skin. The softness of tone. The edges were rounded just slightly.
Her next Lumos flared too fast and too bright, for a moment illuminating the ceiling with a sharp, unnatural white.
Flitwick turned. “Miss Thorne–control.”
“Yes, Professor,” she said smoothly, lowering her wand.
The boy blinked. “You okay?”
She forced something between a nod and a shrug. “Too much wand pressure.”
But when she left class, a flicker of movement ahead warned her too late.
Bellatrix stood at the corridor’s bend.
Not leaning. Not smiling.
Standing like a shadow summoned with intent.
“You almost smiled,” she said.
Hermione didn’t flinch. “It was polite.”
“Polite is dangerous.” Bellatrix stepped forward. “Polite makes people think you have something to give.”
“I was being careful.”
“No,” Bellatrix said, her voice like velvet over steel. “You were being soft. And soft is bait.”
Hermione’s jaw clenched. “It won’t happen again.”
“It will,” Bellatrix said. “Because you still want to be liked. That’s the crack in your armor. You haven’t bled enough to seal it.”
Then she turned, robes whispering behind her like the end of a sentence.
Hermione didn’t go to dinner that night.
She sat in the farthest corner of the library–the east stacks with high windows no one ever looked through–and trace her fingers along the burn mark etched in the desk. It smelled of dust and something older. The scent of ink, iron, and forgotten warnings.
She didn’t open the book in front of her.
She didn’t need to.
Bellatrix had already written enough into her bones.
Bellatrix POV Fragment
As they entered the Great Hall, the effect was immediate.
The Slytherin table hushed.
Not completely–Slytherins didn’t silence themselves like Hufflepuffs at a prefect’s glare–but the noise shifted. Blunted. Curved around the presence of something unusual. Something that demanded attention, even without asking for it.
Bellatrix knew what they were seeing.
They saw her–unchallenged, unspoken for–taking her usual place at the center of the table like a queen reinhabiting her throne. But they saw something else, too.
They saw the girl beside her.
Maris Thorne. First year. No known bloodline. No family was seated further down the bench.
Not right to be there.
And yet she sat, back straight, mouth silent, eyes neither lowered nor raised in defiance.
Bellatrix hadn’t told her to follow. Hadn’t slowed her step. Hadn’t offered a smile.
Only a flick of her fingers.
An invitation no one else had ever received.
And Maris had taken it.
The seat to her right had always been empty.
Not because it was reserved.
Because it was untouchable.
Her sisters had sat there on occasion, years ago–Andromeda out of habit, Narcissa out of mimicry–but never with permanence. Never without cost. They were family, yes, but even family burned if they hovered too close.
This girl wasn’t family.
Which made her presence more dangerous. More interesting.
Bellatrix didn’t look at her.
Not obviously.
But she watched–peripherally, precisely.
She saw the girl’s fork move with clean, quiet precision. Saw the way her posture mirrored Bellatrix’s own. How she met the glances of older students without daring them. Not defiant. Not submissive.
Composed.
Measured.
She hated measured things. They reminded her of books with locked spines and spells you weren’t meant to cast aloud.
But this one–this girl–was different.
Too precise to be harmless.
Most of the little Slytherins slithered around with noise and bravado, mistaking volume for power. But Maris …Maris is a lockbox pretending to be a book. She offers just enough page to read, but she’s hiding the story.
And Bellatrix can’t stand not knowing the ending.
She doesn’t need to be in the same room to notice things.
The corridors talk. So do the younger students. Especially when something shifts.
She hears about the Charms exercise before she sees it. But when she does–when she rounds the corner just in time to see Maris walking away, posture a touch too alert, like prey pretending it wasn’t startled-it confirms everything.
She’d seen her with the Ravenclaw. Heard about the spark.
Too quick. Too bright. Too close to real.
And the way she’d look at him afterward–
Not flirtation. No warmth. Just… human.
And Bellatrix had felt it. The sharp twist behind the ribs. That thing that whispered–
Don’t look at him like that.
Not to protect her. Not to punish her.
To claim something.
It wasn’t jealousy. That would’ve been easier.
No, this was worse.
It was interest .
Unwanted. Undecided. And crawling beneath her skin like a spell gone sideways.
She doesn’t know what to do with it.
Only that she will.
Because whatever Maris Thorne is…
She isn’t harmless.
And Bellatrix doesn’t lose to things she doesn’t understand.
*** The Next Day
By Thursday, the whispers returned.
But they’d change shape.
“She’s Bellatrix’s project.”
“No, her shadow.”
“No–her mirror.”
Hermione heard it in the corridors outside Transfiguration. Whispers hissed like steam from the marble walls.
She didn’t turn.
Didn’t flinch.
But the word echoed through her the rest of the day.
Mirror.
Bellatrix’s opposite. Bellatrix’s echo.
Bellatrix’s reflection.
The idea coiled in her ribs like a parasite.
Because it meant she was no longer outside the story.
She was written into it.
And part of her…was letting it happen.
She had stopped flinching at blood purity jabs in class. Stopped correcting professors on attribution errors. Stopped answering questions that didn’t need answering.
It wasn’t submission.
It was survival.
And Bellatrix saw it.
During Defense on Friday, Professor Shafiq–imperious and distant–called for a first-year to demonstrate Protego on short notice.
Hermione rose at once.
She cast it cleanly. The stun hex shattered against her shield like a thrown plate.
A few murmurs. One small applause.
From the back balcony–reserved for older students–Hermione felt it before she saw it.
Bellatrix.
Watching from above like a haw waiting for the twitch of prey.
Their eyes met.
Bellatrix tilted her head.
And smiled.
Not wide.
Not cruel.
But satisfied.
Hermione sat again, pulse tapping hard against her ribs.
That night, a folded piece of parchment appeared on her bed.
No name. No seal.
Just five words.
Study Hall. Dueling Floor. Fifth Bell.
She went.
The stone-floored chamber was empty at first.
Then Bellatrix appeared, robes floating like smoke, wand already in hand.
“Thought I’d forgotten you?”
Hermione raised her wand. “I don’t think you forget things.”
Bellatrix smirked. “Good. Then you know the rules.”
“No scars.”
“No explanations.”
The first hex came fast.
Hermione dodged.
The second–a trip jinx–she blocked, then returned with a quick Impedimenta.
Bellatrix blinked.
Then grinned.
For fifteen minutes, the chamber echoed with light and sound–red bolts, silent curses, bright blue bursts. Hermione fought like a girl who had already survive worse.
Bellatrix pressed harder.
Until–
Hermione vanished behind a pilar.
Reappeared behind Bellatirx.
“Expelliarmus!”
Bellatrix wand skittered across the floor.
A long pause.
Bellatix didn’t move.
Her wand lay ten feet away, gleaming against the stone like a challenge left unanswered.
Hermione waited.
Chest heaving. Wand still raised.
Sweat traced a line down the back of her neck. Her grip had started to ache, but she didn’t lower it. Not yet. Not until Bellatrix–
Laughed.
Soft. Unbelieving. Not mocking, but sharp-edged, like glass caught in a velvet glove.
“You little…” Bellatrix stepped forward, slow and loose-limbed. “You really don’t break.”
Hermione said nothing.
“You didn’t yield. You don’t show off. You don’t run.” Bellatrix’s voice dropped into something breathier, stranger. “You dare me to keep trying.”
Her eyes glittered as she retrieved her wand–no theatrics, no rush. Just a slow, deliberate bend to the floor, never taking her eyes off Hermione.
Hermione’s heart thudded.
She should’ve looked away. Should’ve turned. Should’ve run.
But her feet stayed planted.
This wasn’t triumph.
This wasn’t even relief.
This was the moment after lighting–when the air still rings, and you wonder if the thunder is coming next.
Bellatrix straightened. Her grip on her wand tightened just once before she tucked it away, a quiet concession.
“You’re not mine,” she said.
A beat.
Then:
“But you’re not theirs either.”
Hermione felt those words settle inside her like a key turning in a door she didn’t remember locking.
Her throat was dry. Her skin tingled with adrenaline that hadn’t found an exit.
She let her wand drop. Only slightly.
“You don’t get to decide that.” she said.
Bellatrix smiled–not wickedly, not charmingly. Just…knowingly.
“Of course not,” she said. “But you’ve already decided for yourself.”
Hermione stared.
And the worst part–the part she would deny later, even to herself–was that Bellatrix wasn’t wrong.
Because something inside had shifted.
Something fundamental.
*** Hermione–Inner Monologue (Later That Night)
That night, Hermione sat on the edge of her bed in silence.
The curtains drawn. The castle hushed.
She hadn’t changed out of her robes yet. Dirt clung to the hem. Her braid had come loose during the duel, and strands of hair clung to her damp neck.
She stared at her wand, fingers wrapped tight around the grip.
She had disarmed Bellatrix Black.
She had fought her. Matched her.
Survived her.
But it wasn’t pride that filled her.
It was fear.
Because that wasn’t the real battle.
That was training.
She could feel it now–plain as a spell humming through bone. Bellatrix wasn’t just testing her. She was conditioning her.
And Hermione…wasn’t resisting.
The edge between who she was and who she needed to be had blurred so completely she could no longer tell where Maris Thorne ended and Hermione Granger began.
She had played the part of a Slytherin girl for so long that the lines of loyalty, identity, instinct–everything–had melted into instinct.
She hadn’t flinched when the hexes came. She hadn’t hesitated to aim at Bellatrix’s back.
And worst of all–
She didn’t regret it.
Not the duel. Not the deception. Not the rush of power when her spell had landed, true and precise.
Some part of her had liked it.
And that part…that part was still burning behind her ribs, whispering—
This is what it feels like to be feared.
**Bellatrix – Post-Duel POV Fragment**
She wasn’t angry.
Not exactly.
Being disarmed had only scratched the surface of what she felt.
It wasn’t humiliation. It wasn’t rage.
It was…fascination.
Maris had watched her. Read her timing. Learned from her movements like a second language.
And then she’d use it.
No plea for mercy. No theatrics. Just silence. Calculation. Strike.
Like Bellatrix had taught her.
Like Bellatrix had wanted her to.
And that should’ve made this victory hers.
But it didn’t feel like victory.
It felt like equilibrium.
Like watching someone climb the stairs towards you–and realizing they weren’t stopping.
She hadn’t expected to be matched.
Not by a first yer. Not by her.
And certainly not in a way that left her feeling like she was the one being studied.
That feeling–that crack in the control–unnerved her.
But it also thrilled her.
Because whatever Maris was–whatever perfect little fiction she wore like a second skin–it wasn’t real.
Bellatrix knew that.
And yet, she couldn’t see the seams anymore.
And that was the problem.
This obsession–whatever it was–wasn’t romantic. Bellatrix wouldn’t insult herself with that. She didn’t want her. She wanted to understand her. To define her.
Because Maris Thorne didn’t fit.
She didn’t fit the hierarchy Bellatrix had ruled for years. Ddin’t behave like a first year, didn’t fear like one, didn’t yield like one.
She was too composed. Too precise.
Too…familiar.
Like a mirror made from cracked glass.
And Bellatrix couldn’t decide what was worse: that she saw herself in the girl, or that the girl might see through her.
She’d have to be careful now.
Not because Maris was dangerous.
But because Bellatrix wanted her to be.
Because if she kept shaping her like this…
One day, she wouldn’t be able to tell where the girl ended–and the weapon began.
Scene Two: Common Room Games
The Slytherin common room was not designed for warmth.
It’s beauty was cold, deliberate–stone walls etched in serpentine relief, arched windows showing only the black, rippling depths of the lake. At night, the green glow of the enchanted fireplace bathed everything in sickly emerald, throwing long shadows over velvet chairs and angular tables.
But Slytherins were nothing if not excellent liars. And so, on certain nights–especially Saturday nights like this one–the room pretended it was comfortable.
Lamps dimmed with precision. Goblets appeared on trays no one had summoned. The music of murmured conversations filled the air, layered and slippery. Even the fire cracked obligingly, as though trying to mimic Gryffindor coziness in a Slytherin dialect.
Hermione walked in like she belonged
Not slowly. Not too fast. A calculated pace. Just enough time for them too look.
And they did look.
They always looked now.
Her robes hung crsiply, badge gleaming. Her hair braided tightly. Her eyes steady. She didn’t nod to anyone. Didn’t smile. Just made her way to a chair nestled between a towering bookcase and the fire’s outer reach.
Visible. But not centered.
Power-adjacent.
The chair had high sides. Velvet worn smooth beneath ancient fingers. She liked its partial concealment, the illusion of cover. But she didn’t sit back. Her spine stayed straight, her hands resting where everyone could see them.
She felt the heat of the fire at her shoulder. The lake water pressed silently behind the glass, heavy and constant, a reminder that they were all submerged here–watching one another breathe through gills disguised as charm.
Across the room, Lucius Malfoy lounged on the dark green sofa like a boy born to velvet and old money. His boots were polished to a shine, his posture bored and imperial. Narcissa sat beside him, pale and silent, her expression blank as old marble. She hadn’t spoken a word, but her gaze had already swept the room and marked the hierarchy.
Severus Snape–just eleven, but already honed like a needle–sat curled in the far corner with a book open on his knee, his eyes half-lidded but clearly tracking everyone. He said little, but Hermione knew better than to mistake silence for inattention. He was already taking mental notes that would outlive most of his classmates.
Even Rosier leaned on the arm of another chair, whispering something to Mulciber that made both of them smirk.
She felt them notice her.
The person who had sat at her right hand in the Great Hall, and hadn’t been flayed for it.
She didn’t acknowledge it.
But she was aware.
Oh, she was aware.
Every shift of weight. Every glance redirected and then pulled back too quickly. The way someone’s voice dropped when she passed. The sudden hush when her bootsteps reached the center of the rug. This was Slytherin performance at its finest–no one ever looked directly, but everyone saw.
This was not a sanctuary.
It was a stage.
And if she played it right, it would keep her alive.
She crossed her ankles. Adjusted the fall of her sleeve. Tilted her face just so, toward the fire’s glow. It warmed her cheek, but did nothing to ease the cool prickle of eyes on her skin.
Her thoughts skittered like stones skipping water.
Had Bellatrix noticed the disarming spell for what it was–an improvisation, not a trap?
Would Narcissa glance her way again? Or was that flicker earlier just curiosity?
Was Snape watching out of suspicion–or fascination?
Hermione exhaled slowly.
Here, everything meant something.
How long she held her goblet. Whether she drank. Whether she offered a spare comment to Andromeda, who was still absent. Every gesture was a variable. Every silence, a choice.
She let her fingers brush the binding of the book on the side table– Advanced Hex Reversal: Theory & Precision . She had no intention of reading it, but the spine was cracked, and the implication of having brought it with her was enough.
She wasn’t just performing now.
She was performing someone performing.
That, she was learning, was how Slytherins survived.
The green flames hissed and licked the hearthstone.
Hermione turned her head slightly and scanned the room once more.
No sign of Bellatrix yet.
But her presence hovered like static–just behind the curtain of the night.
And that is when Andromeda Black arrived.
She didn’t enter like her sister.
There was no chill in the air. No warning in the spine.
Only the soft shift of silk and the faintest pause in conversation.
She moved like she already belonged in the space between thoughts.
Hermione caught the motion at the edge of her vision–dark braid, loose collar, that particular grace unique to people who knew they were being watched and knew exactly what they wanted to do with that attention.
Andromeda didn’t stop at the drinks table. Didn’t linger near the others.
She made her way directly toward Hermione.
And sat.
No words at first. No greeting.
Just a faint creak of leather as she leaned back into the seat beside her–close, deliberate, elbow nearly brushing Hermione’s.
It wasn’t intimacy.
Not yet.
It was study.
And then, casually–
“Still pretending to read books you don’t open?”
Hermione didn’t glance over. “Still pretending you’re not circling me?”
Andromeda laughed, soft and unexpected. “Touche.”
She reached for the book Hermione had only touch moments before. Their fingers nearly met.
That close.
Her wrist turned slightly in the motion–and that’s when Hermione saw them.
Fine lines inked in black.
Runes curling over the inside of her skin–subtle and deliberate. Magical script that shimmered faintly when the firelight hit it just right.
Not for decoration.
Not for show.
Hermione’s breath caught.
The runes weren’t for anyone else in the room.
Which meant they were for her.
Or they were a warning.
“Something on my skin bothering you?” Andromeda murmured without looking up.
Hermione’s voice was low. Even. “No.”
“Good.” she said, finally cracking open the book. “I’d hate to think you scare that easily.”
“ I don’t scare. I calculate.”
Andromeda looked at her then. “ That’s what makes you dangerous.”
Hermione blinked. “You don’t seem frightened.”
“I’m not.” Andromeda gaze lingered. “I’m curious.”
Her hand moved again–barely–but this time it passed across the back of Hermione’s own, just as she turned a page.
A graze.
Intentional.
Hermione didn’t move away.
Didn’t lean in.
Just held still, spine straight, face composed–but her mind raced, cataloguing everything: the temperature of Andromeda’s skin, the flick of her eyes, the soft, sharp scent of peppermint ink clinging to her robes.
The girl was testing her.
That was clear.
But Hermione wasn’t sure if she was being tested for weakness…or compatibility.
“You’re different from the others,” Andromeda said finally. “Not just the first-years. All of them.”
“I blend well,” Hermione said, voice light.
“No,” Andromeda said, voice lower now. “You tilt the room.”
Hermione didn’t respond.
She couldn’t. Not without giving something away.
She kept her expression neutral and turned a page she wasn’t reading.
Andromeda waited a beat, watching her with unnerving stillness.
Then: “Most girls who get her attention try to chase it.”
Hermione’s fingers stilled on the page.
Andromeda’s voice was smooth. Not mocking. Not kind. Just informed.
“Some start imitating her. Others try to bait her–play defiant, throw a hex in the corridor, toss her name like a gauntlet and hope she bites.”
Hermione didn’t look up. “And what happens?”
“They get bored. Or they get burned.”
Andromeda’s eyes glittered like green fire.
“But not you. You’re just… quiet. Calculated. You speak like every word is pre-paid.”
Hermione exhaled slowly through her nose. “I thought Slytherins respected restraint.”
Andromeda laughed again–low, close to her throat. “Oh, we do. That’s why we’re all watching you.”
Her fingers drummed once on the book’s spine. “You’re either the best liar in the room or the most dangerous truth.”
Hermione looked at her then. Direct. Steady. “Which one are you betting on?”
Andromeda’s lips parted, but she didn’t answer.
She only leaned back, curling one leg under the other, letting the firelight strike her face at a more flattering angle.
Hermione noticed. Of course she did.
It was the sort of movement you make when you know you’re being watched–and want to reward the gaze.
The girl was practiced.
Not like Bellatrix, whose power was so raw it came off her in waves.
Andromeda’s danger was quieter.
More patient.
The kind that doesn’t break rukes–it slips around them.
And she wasn’t playing fair.
The graze of fingers earlier hadn’t been accidental.
And when she reached forward now to adjust the lapel of her robe–slowly, her wirst turning again to reveal that runic tattoo–Hermione realized it was deliberate too.
A spell of some kind.
Or a story.
One meant to be noticed.
Hermione didn’t ask. Didn’t give her the satisfaction.
Andromeda leaned slightly closer, and her voice dropped just enough to separate their conversation from the ambient room noise. “You know what people are saying, don’t you?”
Hermione tilted her head just slightly.
“They’re saying your Bellatrix’s project.”
Andromeda smiled thinly. “Or her shadow.”
Hermione said nothing.
Andromeda waited. Then leaned in just a fraction more, breath brushing Hermione’s cheek.
“They’re wrong, of course. She doesn’t make projects.”
Hermione’s voice was ice. “She makes weapons.”
A pause. A real one.
Andromeda pulled back slightly, studying her again–but now something in her face had shifted.
Approval?
Interest?
It was hard to say.
“I knew there was a spine under all that silence,” she murmured. “I just wasn’t sure who put it there.”
Hermione resisted the urge to rub the back of her neck.
“I’ve survived worse than this House.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Andromeda said. Then, more quietly, “But survival isn’t the same thing as belonging.”
Hermione’s throat tightened.
Because it was true.
The act– Maris Thorne –was holding.
But the cost was increasing.
And every second she sat her, in the firelit game of veiled tension and verbal fencing, she could feel something shifting in her spine.
Not fear.
Not quite.
It was the growing realization that these girls–Andromeda, Narcissa, Bellatrix–weren’t simply threats.
They were mirrors. Each one reflecting a version of something she might become, if she wasn’t careful.
“Tell me something,” Andromeda said suddenly.
Hermione turned to her, wary.
“You knew exactly where to sit when you walked in. Not too close to Lucius. Not too far from the hearth. Book already placed. Hair braided to suggest discipline but not vanity.” Her head tilted. “Who taught you that?”
Hermione hesitated.
Then, simply: “Observation.”
Andromeda’s smile was soft this time. “That you’ve been watching is no surprise.”
She reached forward again–slow, unhurried–and this time her fingers brushed Hermione’s wrist where it rested on the armrest.
The contact was feather-light. Deliberate.
And Hermione’s skin remember the touch longer than it should have.
She didn’t pull away.
But she didn’t lean in either.
A silence stretched between them.
Andromeda watched her. Still smiling. Still testing.
Hermione tried to steady her breath.
This wasn’t Bellatrix’s fire. It wasn’t intimidation or cruelty.
It was something slipperier.
A different kind of trap.
And Hermione had no idea whether she wanted to spring it or avoid it.
“You’re not like her,” Hermione said at last.
“Who?”
“Your sister.”
Andromeda’s eyes darkened. “No.”
Hermione held her gaze. “You used to be.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a memory. Echoing from the conversation they’d shared in the library last week.
Andromeda nodded once. “Briefly.”
“Why did you stop?”
Another pause.
Then: “Because Bellatrix consumes everything she touches. And I wanted to remain myself. ”
Hermione didn’t answer.
Because that, right there–that was the question burning under her own ribs now.
Could you orbit Bellatrix Black and still keep your name?
Could you be seen by her…and not burn?
A log cracked in the hearth.
Andromeda’s eyes flicked toward the sound, then back to Hermione, the flicker of something unreadable still playing at the corners of her mouth.
But the moment was ending. Hermione could feel it.
Tension shifting. Air thinning.
The performance was resuming.
She straightened, carefully disengaging her wrist from the subtle trap of Andromeda’s hand without haste or alarm. As though it had simply run its course.
She adjusted the book in her lap. Unread, but not unnoticed.
And that was when Narcissa moved.
She crossed the room like a girl gliding through her own portrait–silk-blonde hair sharp against the green gloom, posture perfect and spine as straight as the blade she hadn’t yet learned to wield.
Lucius followed at a slower pace, elegant and bored, like a prince indulging an audience.
“Still keeping court, Andromeda?” Narcissa asked, voice like glass cooled to room temperature.
Andromeda tilted her head. “Still learning to knock before you interrupt?”
Narcissa ignored the jab.
Her gaze slid to Hermione.
Not a glance. A measuring. Like she was trying to appraise an object without touching it.
“You’re the one who dueled Bella.”
Hermione didn’t blink. “Yes.”
Narcissa’s eyes narrowed faintly. “You’re younger than I thought.”
“I’m exactly as old as I need to be.”
The reply landed in the room like a pin dropped in a gallery.
Andromeda smiled faintly. Lucius raised one elegant brow.
Even Severus Snape stirred from the corner, eyes catching the exchange like a cat watching a pendulum swing.
Hermione met each gaze.
One by one.
Measured. Deliberate.
She was no longer acting like she belonged.
She was starting to act like she might belong more than they did.
Lucius finally stepped closer. He didn’t address her at first. “We were just talking about Bellatrix.”
“Oh?” Andromeda asked, too tightly.
“She’s been…focused, lately. Singular.” His eyes didn’t leave Hermione. “Your doing?”
Hermione lifted her brow. “I don’t tell Bellatrix Black what to focus on.”
Lucius gave a small, condescending smile. “No one tells Bellatrix anything. But distraction isn’t the same thing as influence.”
“And you would know the difference?”
The question was quiet.
But it cut.
Lucius studied her for a beat too long. “Charming.”
He looked to Narcissa. “She’s clever.”
“She’s dangerous,” Narcissa said, still not addressing Hermione directly. “Even Bella sees that.”
“She would,” Lucius murmured. “She sees herself in knives.”
Andromeda stood.
Not quickly. But with intent.
“I think what bothers you both,” she said, smoothing her robes, “is that Bellatrix didn’t find her first.”
Lucius scoffed.
Narcissa’s lips pressed into a line.
Hermione didn’t move.
Andromeda leaned down, brushing Hermione’s shoulder with her fingertips. “You coming to dinner?”
Hermione hesitated.
Then: “Not yet.”
Andromeda smiled. “Suit yourself.”
She turned. Left.
And for a few seconds, no one moved.
Then Severus stirred again, unfolding from his perch by the fireplace and drifting nearer–not to intrude, but to watch more closely.
He said nothing. Just stood behind the velvet armchair nearest the group, eyes dark and gleaming like something always listening.
Hermione acknowledged him with the barest nod.
And he returned it.
Nothing more.
But something passed between them–recognition, perhaps, or something close to it. A quiet acknowledgement that performance was its own language. And both of them were fluent.
Lucius finally broke the silence.
“She’s novelty. That’ll wear off.”
Narcissa’s eyes didn’t leave Hermione. “That seems to be the advice of the hour.”
A moment passed.
Narcissa inclined her head–just slightly. And that, Hermione realized, was as close to approval as she would get.
Then they turned and walked away, silver and silk.
Severus stayed a moment longer.
Hermione watched him.
He said nothing.
Then, with the faintest tilt of his head, he followed after them, cloak trailing like a shadow cut in half.
And Hermione was alone again.
Except she wasn’t.
Because the room hadn’t let her go.
The moment had expanded, thinned, then settled again–like a spell she hadn’t meant to cast but now had to carry.
She felt the weight of every eye pretending not to look.
Every pair of lungs holding still for just a second longer.
Bellatrix had not entered the room yet.
But her absence had shaped.
Like a held breath before the break.
And Hermione realized–perhaps too late–
She had tilted the room again.
And this time, it might not tilt back.
The common room held its breath.
The hearth crackled. A log split with hallow pop. Somewhere near the staircase, a first-year coughed once, too sharp, and quickly smothered it in their sleeve.
Hermione didn’t move.
Her fingers rested lightly on the spine of the untouched book. Her back remained straight. Her eyes scanned the green-tinged shadows cast by the long serpentine sconces–but she didn’t let them drift toward the door.
She didn’t need to.
Because the air shifted first.
A silence more precise than quiet. Not absence–but intent.
Then came the footsteps.
Measured. Deliberate. A soundless declaration.
Bellatrix Black entered like a secret the room had been keeping. She didn’t glide–she strode, slow and exact, every movement stripped of wasted effort. Her robes, dark as ink and trailing like smoke, didn’t flutter so much as slice the space around her.
She did not look around.
She didn’t need to.
The room saw her.
And like a tide adjusting to the moon, the room rebalanced. Conversations faltered. Glances reoriented.
Even the fire seemed to shrink a little.
Hermione inhaled through her nose. Soft. Steady.
Bellatrix stopped just inside the threshold, one gloved hand curled loosely at her side, the other resting on her wand hilt–not in threat, but habit.
Still, no one spoke.
Hermione didn’t know what the others saw. But she knew what she felt.
She felt noticed.
Not just by Bellatrix–but by the entire room, now waiting to see what she would do. What Bellatrix would do. How the line between them–so volatile, so charged–would redraw itself in public.
Bellatrix’s gaze moved finally.
Not to the center of the room. Not to Severus’s abandoned corner or Lucius’s vacant sofa.
To her.
Hermione.
A single glance. Razor-sharp. Unblinking.
Then she moved forward. No words. No warning.
She walked past the velvet chairs and twisted iron lamp stands like they weren’t there–until she stood in front of Hermione’s seat.
Still, she didn’t speak.
Hermione looked up.
“Bellatrix,” she said. Not a greeting. Not a question.
A recognition.
Bellatrix tilted her head. Her expression unreadable.
“I heard,” she said quietly, voice soft but serrated. “My sister was amusing herself.”
Hermione didn’tr answer.
Bellatrix took a single step closer. Too close.
“You let her.”
Still, Hermione said nothing.
Because there was no right answer.
Bellatrix didn’t ask questions. She set traps with punctuation.
And now she was watching.
Not her posture. Not her mask.
Her.
The quiet inside Hermione’s chest turned brittle.
Bellatrix leaned in slightly, fingers brushing the back of Hermione’s chair, not touching her–but enclosing her all the same.
“I don’t like sharing what’s interesting,” she said. Not cold. Not warm. Just true.
Hermione’s voice was level. Barely: “I’m not yours.”
Bellatrix’s smile–sharp, brief, feral–flickered like a blade catching light.
“No,” she murmured. “Not yet.”
The words struck like a spell.
Hermione froze–not visibly, not fully. But something behind her ribs stopped moving.
Because Bellatrix wasn’t teasing.
She was warning.
Marking territory with nothing more than a phrase and the way her shadow cut across Hermione’s lap like a chain.
“Stand,” Bellatrix said.
It wasn’t a command. It was a dare.
Hermione rose. Slow. Controlled.
Bellatrix circled her once. Not predatory.
Appraising.
Then she stopped, barely a foot away, eyes locked to Hermione’s.
And, low enough that only Hermione would hear it–
“Good girl.”
The words didn’t praise.
They claimed.
And Hermione, who had survived everything that’s been thrown her way, felt something much more dangerous than fear:
She wanted to deserve it.
Bellatrix didn’t linger.
She turned. Robes sweeping, hair a storm-black ribbon down her spine.
She walked to her usual place by the fire.
The seat no one dared approach.
Except now…
She gestured.
A flick of her fingers.
Hermione’s pulse stuttered.
Not again.
Not here.
Not in front of everyone.
But she moved.
Because to stay standing would be defiance. To walk away would be weakness.
So she crossed the room–deliberate as ever–and sat in the chair Bellatrix indicated.
The right-hand seat.
The throne’s mirror.
Around them, conversations resmued in strained murmurs. Eyes slid away. Postures eased. But nothing relaxed.
Bellatrix didn’t speak to her again that night.
She didn’t need to.
Because the message had already echoed loud enough:
She was hers to study. Hers to shape. Hers to test.
And Hermione?
Hermione had tilted the room.
But Bellatrix had tilted her.
*** Bellatrix – POV Fragment
She didn’t watch her walk across the room.
Not directly.
That would give too much away.
But she didn’t need to look.
She could feel it–every step Maris took towards her seat, as if the floor itself shifted under her boots. As if the room had held its breath all over again.
The other students saw the seat. The gesture. The place of honor that wasn’t really an honor at all.
They saw submission, maybe.
They always did.
But Bellatrix wasn’t looking for obedience.
She was looking for fractured points.
And Maris Thorne was full of them.
She’d heard about the Ravenclaw boy. The Charms class.
She’d heard about Andromeda, too.
And that…had scraped something under her skin.
Her sister had always known where to aim her cleverness. But she didn’t get to play with this one.
Because this one wasn’t a toy.
She was an equation that hadn’t solve itself yet. A spell still coalescing.
Bellatrix could feel it in the girl’s posture, even now. Rigid, but not afraid. Controlled. Composed. Holding herself like a weapon someone else hadn’t learned to wield.
She could work with that.
If she wanted to.
If she let herself.
But what unsettled her–what truly unsettled her–wasn’t the control.
It was the echo.
Because when she’d circled Maris like a predator teasing the leash, the girl hadn’t flinched.
She’d met her eyes.
Stood still.
Took her seat.
Good girl.
Bellatrix hadn’t meant to say it. Not really.
But it slipped out like something old. Something instinctive. Like a secret she hadn’t known she was keeping.
It tasted like ownership.
And it left her unsettled.
Because this obsession–whatever it was–wasn’t about affection. Or attraction. Not yet.
It was about power. Presence. The discomfort of being mirrored by something that should be beneath her.
She was Bellatrix Black.
Seventh year. Duellist. Pureblood heir.
No first-year should hold her attention for this long.
And yet.
She hadn’t looked away all night.
And she wasn’t about to start.
Scene Three : The Interrogation in Velvet
Bellatrix didn’t linger after the rest of the room exhaled. She stood–unnannounced, unninterested in conversation–and walked out with the same cold precision she’d entered. Her robe brushed velvet and stone, boots silent over mosaic floors. A path carved through the Great Serpent’s spine.
She didn’t look to see who followed.
She already knew.
The corridor leading from the common room twisted left, then narrowed into an arched stone throat that opened into one of the old observatory galleries–unused by anyone who valued warmth, haunted by the echoes of past prefects and plans. It was her favorite place to be alone.
But tonight, she would not be alone.
Andromeda was the first to appear–silent as a trained memory charm. She stepped into the dim alcove like she belonged to its shadows. Her braid hung loose this time, and her robe was unfastened at the neck, casual in the way that always carried intent. Her mouth curled faintly at the corners, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes.
Bellatrix didn’t turn.
And then, as expected–Narcissa. Quieter. Colder. Her presence arrived before her voice, like the chill in the dungeon walls right before the torchlight dies. She stepped beside Andromeda, not close enough to touch, but aligned–like soldiers trained under a shared banner despite loathing the colors.
Bellatrix waited until both sisters had fully stepped into the archway’s circle of silence.
Then she spoke.
“Come here to take my leash, Cissy?”
Narcissa’s lips didn’t move. Her hands, folded over her robes, remained perfectly still.
“I don’t leash rabid things,” she said. “I watch them. From a distance. And then I ask why they’re foaming.”
Andromeda tilted her head, studying Bellatrix with a gaze that felt surgical. “You made a move tonight.”
Bellatrix turned slowly, a shadow shifting against older shadows, until her full attention settled on the both of them. The corner of her mouth twitched.
“I made a lot of moves.”
Narcissa’s tone was flint over silk. “Not like this.”
Bellatrix raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
Andromeda stepped closer. You marked her.”
Silence.
Not loud. Not theatrical. Precise.
Bellatrix didn’t blink.
“She took the right-hand seat,” Narcissa continued. “You offered it. You didn’t even gestured this time. You commanded. And she obeyed.”
Bellatrix’s fingers curled slightly at her side, the only giveaway that anything had landed.
“She stood when you told her,” Andromeda said, stepping nearer. “She followed you without a word. No complaint. No confusion. That wasn’t a power play.” Her voice dropped. “It was something else.”
Bellatrix smiled thinly. “Is that so.”
“It’s not dominance,” Narcissa added, cold. “It’s possession.”
Bellatrix’s eyes flashed–not anger, but something harder to classify. Not defense. Not denial. A kind of careful silence.
“She’s a first-year,” Narcissa went on. “Unknown bloodline. No family name. No allies. No power base. And somehow you’ve made her the axis around which Slytherin is currently spinning.”
“She made herself the axis,” Bellatrix said calmly.
“No,” Andromeda said. “You let her.”
Bellatrix voice sharpened–only slightly. “She earned it.”
Narcissa exhaled like a disappointed professor. “You don’t give that seat to anyone who earns things. You’ve burned people for less. You threatened Rosier with a blood-slicked quill just for sitting too close.”
Andromeda cut in. “So why her?”
Bellatrix’s pause wasn’t long.
But it was long enough.
“She listens,” Bellatrix said. “She watches. She learns.”
“She’s a child,” Narcissa snapped. “You’re not mentoring her. You’re molding her.”
“She’s dangerous.”
“You want her to be dangerous.”
Bellatrix’s smile didn’t soften. “That’s the point.”
Andromeda let out a breath, half a laugh, but it had no amusement in it. “This isn’t some dark mentorship fantasy, Bella. You’re not taking in a wounded crow. You’re dragging a mirror into your sanctum amd polishing it until it reflects you.”
“She reflects nothing, ” Bellatrix said. The words came fast. Too fast.
Andromeda arched one brow.
“She reflects everything, ” Narcissa said, her voice low and cold. “That’s the problem.”
They stood there, the three of them–air crackling with unspoken arguments, the ancient stones of the gallery pressing inward like eavesdropping old men. The torchlight trembled in the stillness.
Finally, Andromeda stepped forward. Closer than before.
“I watched you,” she said. “Watched your posture when she walked to that chair. You didn’t breathe.”
Bellatrix said nothing.
Andromeda didn’t smile. “You think this isn’t personal. You think you’re playing a game. But Bella…” Her voice dropped, feathered-soft. “You’re being played.”
Bellatrix’s mouth twisted. “By a first-year?”
Andromeda didn’t flinch. “By whatever you think she is.”
Narcissa crossed her arms. “This House watches everything. You’ve made her your shadow. The moment she steps wrong– you will be blamed. Not her.”
“Then I’ll correct her,” Bellatrix said smoothly. “Or remove her.”
“You won’t,” Andromeda said.
Bellatrix’s gaze snapped to hers.
Andromeda held it. “Because you’re already too far in.”
A silence heavier than any spell cloaked the room.
Then, quietly, Narcissa said, “She’s not yours, Bella. Not like that.”
“She is what I say she is,” Bellatrix murmured.
“No,” Andromeda said, stepping back now. “She’s what you want her to be. And that’s the most dangerous thing of all.”
They turned to go–first Narcissa, then Andromeda. But before they reached the corrido’s mouth, Bellatrix’s voice came, quiet and unhurried.
“I saw something in her eyes.”
They stopped.
Andromeda turned. “What?”
“Stillness,” Bellatrix said. “Like a pond. But not calm. Deep. Cold. Waiting.”
Andromeda’s mouth parted slightly.
Bellatrix’s gaze stayed fixed on the wall. “You don’t teach that. You don’t learn it. It’s born in bone. And she has it.”
Narcissa looked at her sister for a long, breathless beat.
And then: “That’s not power,” she said. “That’s loneliness.”
Bellatrix didn’t respond. Not as they walked away. Not even after the corridor swallowed them whole.
She stood there in the hollowed dark, the green torchlight catching on her collarbone like a bruise. Her hand curled tighter around her wand.
She wasn’t molding a girl.
She was uncovering one.
And if the others couldn’t see that…
Then maybe they weren’t looking close enough.
The corridor had gone quiet again. Only the low hiss of torches and the distant murmur of water echoed through the stone throat of the dungeon’s upper level. Bellatrix stood motionless in the gallery alcove, watching the space where her sisters had vanished.
She didn’t move.
Not until the cold began to crawl past her collar, reminding her she was still standing in the remains of someone else’s judgement.
Then: a shift.
Bellatrix stepped forward. Smooth. Decisive. Her mind already elsewhere– downward, inward, back –to where the scent of green fire and old velvet still clung to the walls of the common room. To where Maris Thorne had sat–back straight, hands, visible, mask seamless.
Not defying.
Not obeying.
Belonging.
And that was what unsettled her most.
The sense that the girl had already stepped into the space Bellatrix thought she was building for her.
She was already inside the throne room.
And she hadn’t knocked.
Bellatrix took one last glance down the corridor–toward the direction Andromeda had taken.
Andromeda, who had leaned too close. Spoken too softly. Brushed wrists and spun runes beneath her sleeves like secrets looking for skin.
Bellatrix’s fingers twitched once at her side.
Then she turned sharply and walked away.
She caught Andromeda near the library stairwell–a place of half-light and high arches, where whispers often turned into rumors before reaching the top step.
Andromeda didn’t flinch when Bellatrix appeared.
She was leaning against a carved balustrade, arms folded, expression unreadable.
“I thought you’d follow her,” Andromeda said, not turning.
“I am,” Bellatrix replied.
“But you stopped to scold me first?”
Bellatrix stepped forward. Close enough that the space between them became weighted. “You crossed a line.”
Andromeda didn’t blink. “Which one?”
Bellatrix’s voice stayed even, but the temperature of it dropped. “Don’t touch her like that again.”
Andromeda finally turned to look at her, smile slow, tired. “I barely touched her.”
“That’s not the point.”
“No,” Andromeda said softy, “it’s not. The point is that you noticed.”
Bellatrix’s jaw tightened.
Andromeda took one lazy step toward her. “She’s not a spell you can lock in a drawer. She’s not something you can hoard until you understand it.”
“She’s not yours to test,” Bellatrix snapped.
Andromeda tilted her head. “And she is yours?”
A pause.
Then Bellatrix said, very quietly, “She’s mine to watch. ”
The words hung there.
Unmoving.
Sharp.
Andromeda exhaled. A single breath through her nose. “Be careful, sister,” she said. “You’re starting to sound like she matters .”
Bellatrix turned.
She didn’t answer.
She didn’t need to.
She found Hermione ten minutes later—exactly where she thought she’d be.
The far corridor behind the second-floor dueling gallery—where the torches burned lower and the floor stones stayed damp long after cleaning spells had passed through. A place people didn’t go unless they wanted to vanish for a while.
Hermione was sitting against the wall, knees drawn up, wand resting across her lap. Her braid was still tight. Her eyes were still alert. But the mask had slipped slightly at the edges.
Not gone.
Just…thinner.
Bellatrix stopped five paces away.
She didn’t speak right away.
Hermione noticed her but didn’t startle. Didn’t rise. She only looked up, steady, like she had expected this.
“You followed me,” she said.
“I always follow what I don’t trust,” Bellatrix replied.
Hermione’s lips twitched—not into a smile, but something wry. “Then you’ll never stop following anyone.”
Bellatrix stepped closer.
Two paces now.
“Maybe,” she said. “But you’re different.”
Hermione looked down at her wand. Turned it between her fingers. “How?”
Bellatrix tilted her head, eyes narrow. “Because I can’t decide if you’re a blade being sharpened… or a mirror being tilted.”
Hermione said nothing.
“Either way,” Bellatrix continued, softer now, “you reflect too well.”
Hermione’s voice was low. “So do you.”
Another pause.
Then Bellatrix crouched, slow and smooth, until they were nearly eye to eye. She didn’t touch her. Didn’t breach the space. But the weight of her presence closed the gap.
“You sat when I told you,” Bellatrix said.
Hermione met her gaze. “Yes.”
“You stood when I asked.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t flinch.”
“No.”
Bellatrix studied her. Eyes flicking between hers, as if searching for the flaw in a forged blade. “Why?”
Hermione exhaled. “Because it was the only move that kept me alive.”
Bellatrix’s smile was strange. Not pleased. Not amused.
Satisfied.
“And if I told you to kneel?”
Hermione blinked once.
Then, evenly: “You’d have to earn that.”
Bellatrix let out a breath like a laugh, but it was too soft, too tight.
She rose. Straightened. Looked down at her again with something unreadable in her gaze.
“You’re not afraid of me.”
“No,” Hermione said, her voice like flint.
“Good.”
Bellatrix turned, robes whispering like secrets over stone.
Then she paused.
Glanced back.
“Don’t talk to Andromeda like that again.”
Hermione’s brow furrowed faintly. “Like what?”
“Like you’re equal.”
And with that, she vanished down the corridor.
Hermione sat still long after she’d gone.
The torchlight flickered.
The silence returned.
But the temperature of the air had changed—charged, fractured, waiting.
She didn’t rise.
Not yet.
Not until she could be sure the walls would stop listening.
***
The tower was hers.
Not officially. Not by right. But by presence.
It had been forgotten decades ago—meant for astronomy students before the newer observatory was built on the east wing. Now it stood empty, the floor half-rotted, the window panes warped with frost, the ceiling open just enough to let the sky press through like a whisper.
Bellatrix had claimed it her third year. No one else dared climb the spiraled staircase past the seventh floor, and if they had, the wards she’d set—silent, subtle, cruel in the right light—would’ve sent them back down with less blood than memory.
Tonight, she stepped into it like a ritual.
The door closed behind her with a sound like a spell finished. She didn’t light the torches. The moonlight was enough—thin, washed bone-white through the clouded glass, slicing the room into fractured shadows.
She crossed to the far wall, where an old desk leaned half-collapsed against a pillar. Her gloves came off slowly. One finger at a time. Then she laid her wand beside them—deliberate. Clean.
Not a concession.
A pause.
And only then did she sit.
There was a silence to this place that didn’t feel empty. It felt watchful . Like the tower remembered the weight of secrets, and Bellatrix’s presence simply added another layer to the archive.
She breathed once.
Twice.
Then she leaned her head back against the stone.
And she saw it.
Not the corridor. Not her sisters.
Her.
Maris Thorne. The name still felt wrong.
She saw the way the girl had looked at her—not in challenge. Not in fear. But with that awful, steady stillness. Like she was waiting to be seen.
Not claimed.
Not broken.
Seen.
Bellatrix closed her eyes.
You sat when I told you. You stood when I asked. You didn’t flinch.
The words still hung in her mouth like the taste of iron. Because the girl hadn’t responded like a servant. Or a soldier. Or even a rival.
She had responded like someone choosing.
That’s the danger , Andromeda had said. You think you’re shaping her. But she’s already written the ending.
Bellatrix hated mirrors.
Even magical ones.
They made her skin itch—because they never lied, not to her. And this girl—Maris—felt too much like reflection. Like something carved from the same bone, then dressed in softer skin and sharper restraint.
Bellatrix had thought she was testing her.
But what if she wasn’t?
What if the girl was letting herself be tested—not to survive, but to observe ?
What if she was learning Bellatrix the way Bellatrix had learned others for years? The rhythm of movement. The tempo of cruelty. The pattern of praise just sharp enough to slice.
Good girl.
She’d said it.
Not to break her.
Not even to reward her.
She wasn’t sure why she’d said it.
That’s what scared her.
Because she knew what came next—she always knew. A favor. A fear. A flaw revealed. That was how power was kept.
But Maris hadn’t asked for anything.
She’d taken the seat. She’d obeyed. She’d fought back. She’d accepted the attention. But she hadn’t leaned toward it.
Not once.
And that—more than anything—unsettled Bellatrix.
Because if the girl had flirted with power, craved it, needed it, Bellatrix would’ve known exactly what to do.
But Maris?
Maris was self-contained.
And self-contained things were harder to unravel.
Bellatrix stood.
Paced.
The moonlight followed her across the broken planks like a silent familiar.
She could hear Andromeda’s voice again, low and cutting: You don’t want a weapon. You want a reflection.
No.
Not a reflection.
A variable.
Bellatrix didn’t believe in chaos. She believed in risk.
Risk is controllable. Chaos is not.
And that was what Maris was beginning to feel like— not a controlled risk.
A deviation.
A deviation in Bellatrix’s own pattern. And that terrified her more than she’d ever admit to either sister.
She sat back on the desk, one boot pressed to the edge of the floor beam, and stared at her wand. The handle was worn smooth by her grip. Her name was etched inside it—invisible unless heated.
She wondered what Maris’s wand would say if she cracked it open.
Would it whisper the name she gave? All polish and poison, neat as a bloodline pedigree."
Or something else entirely—something unnamed, something dangerous because it had no name yet ?
Her fingers closed around her wand slowly.
She would find out.
She had to.
Because if she didn’t, this girl would keep tilting the room—and one day, it wouldn’t tilt back .
She’d seen it in her sisters’ eyes. In Narcissa’s narrowed gaze. In Andromeda’s barely-concealed curiosity.
They had seen it, too.
Maris wasn’t just surviving the Black sisters.
She was beginning to divide them.
And Bellatrix—who had never been caught off-balance in her life—was starting to feel it. The sway. The shift.
The silence in her own chest that whispered:
You’re not shaping her.
You’re orbiting her.
Bellatrix exhaled through her teeth.
It wasn’t weakness.
Not yet.
But it was something close enough to study.
***
The library was nearly empty by curfew.
Not the main stacks—those were always crowded with crammers and group projects and perfunctory nods to scholarly chaos. No, she sat in the far rear study carrels , where the desk lamps burned soft and gold and the silence didn’t beg for conversation.
She wasn’t reading.
A book sat open before her— Darkwater Lineage and the Southern Charms Collapse , chosen purely for its spine and dust—but her quill was nowhere near it.
Instead, she had pulled a small notebook from her bag. Not the usual notes. Not spellwork. Just a plain leather journal, spine stitched by hand. Something she’d started out of necessity and continued out of instinct.
It wasn’t enchanted.
Which made it the only honest thing she carried.
She turned to a clean page.
And wrote:
Maris Thorne
– flawless diction
– perfect posture
– neutral expressions
– doesn’t flinch
– doesn’t beg
– doesn’t look over her shoulder anymore
Then, after a pause:
Hermione Granger
– remembers
– calculates
– regrets less than she should
– fights too well for a first-year
– misses softness
– doesn’t ask for it
She stared at the list.
Then slowly crossed through neither name.
Not erased.
Just…uncommitted.
Her quill hovered.
In her mind, she heard Bellatrix again.
You let her.
You didn’t flinch.
You sat when I told you.
And worse— “Good girl.”
Hermione clenched the quill until the feather bent.
That voice—
It didn’t leave.
Even now, it circled her like perfume that clung too tightly to her robe. Bellatrix hadn’t hexed her. Hadn’t threatened her. She had done something worse.
She had seen her .
Not the disguise.
Her.
And Hermione wasn’t sure which part she was more afraid of—the fact that Bellatrix had seen through her, or the fact that she might have wanted to be seen.
She turned to a new page.
She wrote:
Don’t want to belong.
Just don’t want to be invisible.
Then, softer:
She doesn’t own me.
I chose to sit.
I could’ve walked away.
A long pause.
Then:
So why didn’t I?
Hermione closed the journal.
She didn’t lock it.
Didn’t ward it.
Just slid it back into her bag, spine-down.
The library was quieter now.
Far above, a clock chimed the eleventh bell. Final curfew.
She rose from her seat—shoulders still straight, hair still braided in the Slytherin style—and moved through the shelves like smoke.
When she passed a mirror—half-glassed, warped with age—she didn’t look at it.
Because she wasn’t sure which girl she’d see.
Notes:
Thank you for reading!! 💫
As promised, this chapter pushed deeper into the Bellatrix-Hermione dynamic—sharper, messier, more dangerous. And yes… the sisters had feelings about it. If you felt the ground shift beneath their feet, you’re exactly where I wanted you. 😈
Let me know your thoughts—favorite moments, wild theories, lines that made you pause. I absolutely read them all.
The next chapter is already brewing—expect it in the next few days.
Until then: trust nothing, watch everything. 🖤
—E.R.
Chapter 4: Chapter 4: Coiled Shadows
Summary:
In the wake of Bellatrix’s absence, Hermione navigates a shifting Slytherin hierarchy with calculated silence. The common room watches her differently now—neither with fear nor allegiance, but with careful attention. An empty piece of parchment left by Andromeda becomes a message in itself: power unspoken is still power wielded.
As Hermione steps into solitude, she confronts the growing cost of her disguise. A confrontation in the corridor reveals she’s become a symbol—too close to Bellatrix for comfort, yet still untethered. When whispers of a brutal punishment reach her, she realizes she’s being used—as bait, as shield, perhaps as something else.
Her response is deliberate.
In the library’s south wing, Hermione pens not a confession, but a warning. She hides it in a book for Bellatrix to find—and Bellatrix does. She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t burn it.
She keeps it.
The game between them sharpens into a wordless exchange. Hermione is no longer just watched—she’s chosen to be seen.
Notes:
Hey everyone!
Here’s Chapter 4 – Coiled Shadows 🐍🖤This one takes its time—intentionally. The stakes are quieter now, but deeper. The house has shifted, the watchers are watching, and Hermione? She’s not just surviving anymore. She’s starting to respond.
As always, thank you for every comment, every theory, and every whisper of encouragement. I read all of them, and they truly keep this story alive.
Hope you enjoy this slow-burn chapter. Let the shadows coil tight.
—E.R.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 4: Coiled Shadows
Scene One: The Quiet Shift
She entered the common room like she always did: composed, quiet, never first–but never last.
It had been three days since Bellatrix had spoken to her.
Two nights since she’d appeared at all.
And yet, nothing had changed.
The chair to Bellatrix’s right–the one no one had dared occupy before, the one Hermione had been told to sit in–was still empty when she arrived. It wasn’t marked. It wasn't named. But somehow, it remained untouched.
Like it had absorbed her shape and refused to forget it.
Hermione didn’t hesitate. She crossed the rug, passed Severus’s reading corner, nodded once to Narcissa where she sat with Evan Rosier, then took her place.
The seat gave slightly under her weight.
So did the room.
Not visibly. Not vocally. But she felt it–the hush of attention, the shift of peripheral eyes, the way posture adjusted around her presence.
Bellatrix Black wasn’t here.
But her absence felt deliberate. Like a test she didn’t need to grade in person.
Hermione folded her hands in her lap. She didn’t take out a book. Didn’t reach for her wand. She just…sat.
And let them look.
They did.
Older students nodded as they passed, not with respect but with recognition. Acknowledge the variable. Track the unknown.
Younger ones kept their distance. Even the second-years, emboldened by gossip and late-night stories, gave her a wide berth now.
No one joked about Bellatrix’s “project” now.
Because jokes implied play.
And no one was certain that this was a game.
She heard Lucius Malfoy speak her name once, softly, and not directly.
It drifted like smoke across the hearth space. One of his clipped, cold assessments: “She holds herself like she’s being watched, even when she’s not.”
To which Narcissa murmured. “She always is.”
Hermione didn’t turn.
Didn’t flinch.
Because they were right.
She was being watched.
Just not by them.
The fire crackled low and cold-green in the Slytherin hearth. It cast long shadows across the room, and the windows were thick with lakewater ripples.
Outside, the world moves on.
Inside, the castle waited.
Hermione adjusted the hem of her robe.
It was perfect. Of course it was. Everything was. Hair braided tightly. Badge aligned. Boots polished. Her fingers didn’t tremble anymore–not when she poured tea. Not when she walked past Bellatrix’s sisters. Not even when Professor Shafiq asked her to demonstrate Disarming techniques with only a single breath of warning.
What unnerved her now…was the silence.
Bellatrix hadn’t appeared in the common room for two nights.
Hermione told herself that it was a blessing. Less pressure. Fewer eyes. One fewer mind trying to scrape the truth from her face.
But the truth?
It was worse.
Because absence wasn’t safe.
It was a strategy.
She’s watching from somewhere else.
She doesn’t need to be here anymore. I’m doing it for her.
Hermione exhaled through her nose.
She didn’t look around the room again. Didn’t give them the satisfaction.
Instead, she focused on the flickering of the fire. The shadow of her reflection in the glass. It didn’t look like her anymore.
Not exactly.
It looked like a girl who belonged.
And that terrified her more than being caught.
She noticed Andromeda twenty minutes later.
Not with sound. And not directly.
With motion.
A soft step behind her. Not lingering. Not close enough to acknowledge.
Then again, ten minutes later. Another pass. This time slower. No glance. No words.
Hermione didn’t move.
She only shifted her gaze downward.
And saw it.
A folded slip of parchment rested near her book.
Left with the same precision, someone might place a hand on a pulse point.
No seal. No ink.
She didn’t reach for it.
Not yet.
Because the message wasn’t in the writing.
It was in the gesture.
She let it sit there.
Long enough for at least two others to see it.
Long enough to make it clear that she could wait.
She didn’t need to be curious.
Because curiosity was dangerous.
And the only thing more powerful than a girl who asks the right question…
Is the one who doesn’t need to.
She didn’t touch the parchment for almost twenty minutes.
Not even to reposition it. Not even to pretend disinterest. It stayed exactly where Andromeda had left it–precisely placed, just off-centered, aligned with the edge of her book as if to say , you won’t ignore me. You’ll choose not to. There’s a difference.
Hermione didn’t reach for it.
Because that would have meant she wanted something.
And she was beginning to understand that in Slytherin, wanting was the fastest way to lose.
So she let it rest.
A single piece of parchment. Blank. Folded once. With a corner turned just slightly, as if someone had paused mid-thought and never finished the message.
She knew better.
That kind of half-mark was always intentional.
Like a footstep that stops behind you long enough to make your skin think in warning.
The fire was burning low tonight, thin green light casting vertical shadows across the velvet-backed chairs. The hearth hissed softly behind her shoulder, a steady pulse like breath in a closed throat.
Outside, the lake shifted.
Inside, nothing did.
But Hermione felt everything.
The glances. The calculations. The tightening and loosening of posture as she moved–or didn’t.
And now this.
This quiet object was placed between her hands like a knife with no handle.
It wasn’t a message.
It was a test.
A trap.
A mirror.
And it wasn’t Andromeda’s game, not entirely. Hermione could feel the House in it. The subtle machinery of Slytherin is working behind every gesture. A culture honed over centuries, where affection was currency and precision was protection. Where the only thing more dangerous than being hated was being valuable.
She crossed her legs. Adjusted the cuff of her left sleeve. Let her chin lift just slightly in the firelight.
Across the room, Evan Rosier watched her for a beat too long before whispering something to Mulciber. Neither laughed.
Snape noticed. He always did.
Perched in his habitual corner chair, he observed from behind the cover of Moste Potente Potions , his fingers still on the same paragraph he’d marked fifteen minutes ago. His eyes flicked up as Hermione repositioned her hands beside the parchment.
He was tracking her. Not emotionally. Not even competitively.
Strategically.
He was eleven, but not harmless. A creature built of memory, silence, and mathematics. He saw patterns. And Hermione was rapidly becoming one worth solving.
She let him watch. She offered no reaction.
If she were going to be used, she would choose the terms.
Two girls passed behind her on their way to the back alcove–sixth-years, sleek and sharp and tired of pretending they weren’t listening. One of them cast a glance at the parchment.
The other followed her gaze.
Hermione didn’t turn.
She didn’t need to.
The piece of paper had become a character in the room. Silent. Powerful. Watched.
Exactly like her.
The chair to her left remained empty.
Not because it was reserved.
Because no one wanted to sit too close.
And that absence, more than anything else, told the truth:
Bellatrix might not be here.
But her presence hadn’t left.
Two nights.
That’s how long it had been.
No sighting. No encounter. No brush of robes in the corridor. Not even a flicker of shadow behind the glass.
But the silence wasn’t absent. It was deliberate.
A withdrawal.
A shift in angle, not interest.
Hermione felt it like pressure on the back of her ribs. Something that hadn’t been removed–only redistributed. The feeling of being watched from elsewhere.
And it was worse.
Because this…this wasn’t a confrontation.
It was distance.
Controlled, cold, calculated distance.
Like being studied behind a pane of glass.
Not because you were dangerous, but because you might become.
Hermione tapped one finger against her knee in a rhythm no one could hear but her.
One-two. Pause. One-two-three.
The room moved around her, but she didn’t move with it.
Not until Andromeda passed a second time.
Slower.
No glance. No comment. Just presence.
Hermione felt the silk of her robes brush the air behind her. A soundless declaration.
And a second confirmation.
Whatever this paper was, it wasn’t meant to be opened.
Not immediately.
That would make her reactive.
And Hermione Granger– Maris Thorne –was learning to be the kind of girl who didn’t react first.
So she stared at it.
And let time do the work.
When she finally reached for it, it wasn’t out of curiosity.
It was because it was time.
She lifted it slowly. No flourish. No drama. The paper was cool against her fingertips, texture slightly waxed, thick enough to suggest value but not thick enough to hold enchantment.
No markings.
No ink.
She unfolded it.
It was blank.
Of course it was.
And that blankness echoed louder than words could.
Because this wasn’t a message.
It was a mirror.
Andromeda didn’t want to tell her something.
She wanted to see what Hermione would project into the space left open.
Hermione sat with it open for a long moment.
Then, without so much as a twitch in her expression, she refolded it precisely along the same crease and set it back on the table.
Not in front of her.
Beside her.
Where someone else might reach for it later.
Because not answering was an answer.
Because restraint was a performance.
And because in a House like this, the first person to speak always risked revealing too much.
Fifteen minutes later, she stood.
She moved without pause, without a glance.
Didn’t take the parchment with her.
Didn’t leave a mark.
Just exited with the same rhythm she’d entered–controlled, silent, framed in green firelight.
Snape’s eyes tracked her until the door closed.
Narcissa did not look up, but she stopped talking mid-sentence.
And across the room, three young students whispered too softly to hear.
Hermione stepped into the corridor.
The air out there was cooler. Quieter. But the pressure didn’t ease.
Because the parchment was still behind her.
And the silence in front of her wasn’t relief.
It was the next act.
She paused just outside the classroom door.
A single torch sputtered.
The damp stone smelled sharper here. The castle is settling.
Empty.
And she let the weight of absence press in–where she had thought space.
Pressing her back to the cool wall, Hermione closed her eyes.
It had started a little over a week ago.
When she’d chosen to become Maris Thorne.
A mask, a pattern, a series of practiced tones in her voice.
Polished, precise, unreadable.
But she’d worn it so well she’d nearly ceased to feel her heartbeat.
Or her reflection.
She pushed off the wall and stepped away.
Feet echoing on flagstone.
Each tap was a reminder that she was still human.
Still alive.
Still here.
She walked to the window overlooking the lake.
Moonlight glimmered across the water, silver threading along its gentle sway.
Not bright enough for clarity. Soft enough to hide movement.
Which suited her.
Hermione pressed her palm to the glass.
Cool. Familiar.
The world outside moved.
Quiet wings of owls, shifting leaves, the slosh of boats on the far shore.
Inside, she was untethered.
She thought of Maris and Hermione as two lives she carried.
One honed to serve.
The other to survive.
She didn’t know where one ended and the other began anymore.
Her reflection in the glass was fractured.
Half-hidden in shadow.
Half-spotted by firelight.
Like her identity, partial, unstable.
Her fingers returned to trace the braid behind her ear.
There. A stray strand, out of place.
Tiny. Human.
She exhaled.
“I’m here.”
The sound escaped before she could stop it.
A stutter in the silence.
Her voice. Fragile but true.
Slytherin didn’t ask for voices.
It demanded performances.
Whispers of control.
Eyes that didn’t blink.
Hearts that didn’t shift.
Her hand dropped.
The reflection wavered.
She turned.
Slow steps carried her to the far corner of the classroom, where moonlight passed through cracks in the shuttered windows.
She crouched.
Pressed her forehead to the floor.
Lights burst behind her eyelids.
Memories–
Sprawling corridors of Grimmauld Place.
Her parents’ letters.
Sirius grin.
The veiled threat of Azkaban’s memory.
The break from time, and the glimpse of corridors of the Department of Mysteries.
Everything she had survived.
Nothing she forgot.
She exhaled these memories like smoke, clearing her vision.
Because she could not forget.
Wouldn’t forget.
She stood again.
Stronger.
More resolute.
She touched her braid again and tucked it behind her ear, straightening her shoulders.
She raised her chin.
Not as Maris Thorne.
Not like anyone else.
Just Hermione Granger.
She reached into her robes out of habit–
But her fingers found nothing.
She had left the parchment. On purpose.
Not out of carelessness. Not even defiance.
Because sometimes, power isn’t in what you keep.
It’s in what you walk away from.
It had served its purpose.
It had reminded her of a choice.
She took a last, slow breath.
And walked back into the corridor.
The corridor felt colder now, as though her resolve had drained the warmth. Footsteps echoed beneath polished boots, but she kept her pace steady, controlled.
She rounded the bend and reached her dorm door. Hands still clenched at her sides, unlocked it in one fluid motion.
Inside, the dorm was hushed. Cots stood in silent rows; small lamps burned golden, as if on guard. Clothes hung neatly; trunks sat closed. It was the same, but different.
Beside her pillow rested a small silky packet wrapped in dark velvet and tied with emerald ribbon.
She froze. Fifteen-year-old heart in an eleven-year-old’s body.
Not Maris.
Not Hermione.
Just a girl caught in between.
She stepped into the room, closing the door softly behind her.
“No one’s come here,” she told herself.
No footprints. No scent. No postmark.
Just velvet thread and the weight of expectation.
She slipped off her shoes and stood on bare wood. The air felt lighter, like she was stepping out of a long shadow.
A glance around: every robe, every chest, every trunk–the uniform illusion remained intact.
She moved to the bedside chest. Her fingers brushed the ribbon.
When she untied it, the box was empty.
No message. No illusion. Just hollow velvet.
Her breath caught–not fear, but awareness.
She held Maris’s expression in the glass, tight-lipped, composed. But her eye,s looking back, weren’t eleven.
They held the weight of someone who’d seen too much, too soon.
She set the empty box aside.
Slipped out of her outer robes and folded them neatly into the trunk marked “M.”
Now unclothed but for a simple night robe, she took the velvet bundle between trembling fingers.
The wand she kept was smaller, simple crafted to look like a first-year’s. It didn’t hum with the same instinctive energy as her real one.
It obeyed, but it didn’t belong.
Just like her.
And that was the point. Hermione Granger was not allowed to surface. Not here. Not now.
The part of her had to remain buried in memory, lest the disguise crack.
She sank onto her cot and studied the velvet bundle.
Next to it lay the small journal she’d brought: What I remember (Maris).
She opened it and wrote in careful script:
First night back. The corridor is colder than the classroom. A gift appeared. An empty gesture. The wand stings with wrongness. Not my own. I’m still Maris. But the girl underneath is fraying. This is a choice. Control. And it hurts.
She closed the journal, letting it rest beside the empty box.
Three lamps clicked off. The room darkened. Only soft moonlight filtered through the curtains.
She pulled the velvet bundle to her chest. It slipped from her hands and fell open, ribbon loose, velvet flattering on the blankets.
She lay down, eyes staring upward into the hush.
Not a Linching point–for once, she didn’t do anything spectacular.
She just existed.
And as she drifted toward sleep, she held a single truth in her chest:
Power wasn’t just a rumor.
It was her voice–
And sometimes…her silence.
Scene 2: Notes and Names
POV: Andromeda (observing Bellatrix)
The stairwell was deserted. Two flights above the potion classrooms–a forgotten niche of castle quiet–its walls ringed with dusty vials and strewn with the shattered remains of cauldrons long since forsaken. From a hidden pipe in the stonework, water dripped faintly. Tap, tap… the echo of Andromeda’s boots softened against crumbling steps as she ascended, cloak brushing the centuries-old walls with a hushed whisper.
Her breath puffed in small, measured fogs. She knew she should hesitate before entering, but she didn’t. Bellatrix had summoned her here. That meant there was work to do, truths to surface.
At the landing, her foot paused. A single torch flickered in its sconce, halfhearted and dull. Another caught the wind from a half-open window–its flame slanted, catching pale moonbeams that threaded through the barred glass. Shadows stretched with every tiny breath of air. From her left, a distant water drop struck the empty floor, then fell silent again. Time seemed to slow. Even the stones held their breath.
Andromeda stepped forward. Bellatrix was already here.
She stood, back partially turned, perfectly still, rigid as a carved idol, but breathable steel. In one gloved hand, her fingers hovered at the hilt of her wand–ready yet unused. The other, pale and slender, lay lightly on a broken vial perched on a moss-flecked shelf; so gently she might have shifted the world by stirring it.
Her posture was unyielding. Spine straight as a blade. Shoulders squared. Head tilted just enough so that when the flicker of torchlight caught her dark lashes, it illuminated an expression that belonged to a predator unafraid to deep-think prey.
A slow curl of black braid fell over her shoulder, each strand cultivated, immaculate, and unadorned, save for twilight. Her presence did not demand attention. It drew it quietly.
A breeze from the stairwell caught those braids–liquid night–enough to catch the light. Enough to show her presence without announcing it.
This place was their sanctuary. Their vaulted chamber beyond any listening ears–marble and mortar that could echo their words without repeating them. Here, truths could be spoken softly and recalibrated. Here, secrets were mortal and still safe.
Andromeda’s chest tightened. She didn’t need to speak to understand what was expected. This was no leisurely chat. This was where words were weighted. Where precision was called for. Where sisters set cold hearts to heated truths.
She stepped fully into the torchlight. Her gaze traced Bellatrix’s sculpted profile–half-statue, half-beast, all control.
“Evening,” she said. Her voice folded into the stone’s hush.
The torch trembled.
Bellatrix’s head tilted: slight, reserved. Awareness registered, nothing more. No warmth. No invitation to fold. One gloved hand still rested on the wand’s hilt; the other, lightly poised, did not shift.
“Evening,” came the answer. Low. Precise. It was not a question. No warmth. No invitation. Just recognition.
Between them, silence was not empty. It was charged. Flickering. Heavy.
Two sisters–blood still bonded but paths diverging–stood and held the moment. Same lineage, different destinies. The alchemy of their history hovered in the reeking eddies of dust and mortar.
Within the space, it was understood: this would not be casual. They had come here for focus, for truth, so precise that the quiet itself would bear its weight.
Bellatrix’s robe didn’t shift, her spine didn’t bend–but her voice carried the thread of something deeper.
“How is our little experiment adjusting?”
Then Bellatrix added, softer: “Does she still write in that absurd leather journal?”
Andromeda’s gaze flicked upward, curved to lace Bellatrix’s somber expression. She felt the weight of the words more than heard them. The jar of broken potion glass and mossy shelf became symbols: Jar of curiosity, shelf of opportunity.
She smiled. A slow, knowing curve. “You mean the girl you haven’t stopped tracking–since the duel, since she sat in your shadow in the common room.”
Bellatrix’s glove tightened on her wand’s hilt.
Andromeda held that moment, unrushed, comfortable.
“I’ve heard,” she said lightly, “that she’s quieter than the others. Her silences are sharp–they cut the air.” She tilted her head. “She still writes. Always in that journal of hers. I hear she noted every word Bellatrix Black said to her that night.”
Bellatrix’s shoulders shifted–not enough to break the posture, but enough to register.
“She’s getting too comfortable,” she said, low.
Andromeda’s smile deepened. “Or maybe she’s just surviving.”
A shadow passed across Bellatrix’s face, like lightning behind a cloud.
The silence snapped.
Bellatrix turned, knife-sharp eyes meeting Andromeda’s. “Survival isn’t passivity,” she said. Her voice hardened. “And comfort is not control.”
“No,” Andromeda agreed, tilting her head. “But telling the difference is.” She stepped closer: torchlight caught the gold in her braid. “Should we be worried?”
Bellatrix’s mouth quirked, half-smile–a flicker of predator’s pride.
“I don’t worry,” she said.
“Not about her.”
She tapped the shelf with a slender finger: broken glass, shattered reflection. “I observe.”
Andromeda reached out, tracing a finger across a narrow crack in the stone. “You’re intervening, not observing.” Her voice softened. “And you called it an experiment.”
Bellatrix inhaled. “Nomenclature matters,” she murmured. Then almost kindly:
“She’ll prove herself yet.”
No more words. Only the drip, drip of water from the pipe–and the echoing promise of what came next.
Bellatrix watched the drip, drip of the water, throat tightening around her next words.
Andromeda stepped forward, a light challenge in her tone. “You could just ask her.”
Bellatrix didn’t look back, but the tremor of her hand told them all. “I don’t feed stray dogs who haven’t bitten yet,” she murmured without changing her stance. A dismissive flick of the hand, as if tossing away an idea.
Andromeda’s lips curved. “She hasn’t earned an answer.”
Bellatrix didn’t argue–but she didn’t lower her gaze, either.
Andromeda raised a single eyebrow, stepping closer so the torchlight caught the gold in her braid. “That’s odd,” she said quietly. “Because you’ve earned answers. Reports from Charms. Notes from Magical Theory. History. You know when she skipped breakfast in Transfiguration today.”
Bellatrix’s breath halted for just a heartbeat. “Her schedule is…available.” Her voice held the edge of steel pretending to be glass–controlled, precise. “I have informants.”
Andromeda smiled the faintest smile–her expression cool but amused. “Informants. You turn her life into a dossier, Bella. You track her meals, her attendance, her reactions–but can’t ask her a single question?”
Silence stretched again. Only the distant drip filled the air.
Bellatrix finally turned to face her sister fully–gloves concealed trembling–eyes narrowed into sharp slits. “If I spoke, I’d have to respond,” she said softly. “Questions require…acknowledgement. I prefer observation.”
She stepped past Andromeda to the broken shelf, touching the broken vial as though to find meaning in its shards.
Andromeda shook her head, expressing soft but firm. “That’s what I mean. You’re uncomfortable because you know more than you should. You’re scared of what you’ll find if you pry.”
Bellatrix paused, browsing the jagged edge of memory in her mind. She didn’t reply.
Andromeda’s voice dropped deeper. “She’s a first-year, Bella. You’re a seventh. You haven’t taken a class with her. You don’t need a schedule to watch her.”
Bellatrix turned toward the stairwell. Eyes flicked to the darkness beyond, almost regretful. “She’s not just anyone.”
Andromeda’s voice was low, provocative, but controlled. “And yet, you refuse to name her.” She stepped back, letting the walls swallow her presence. “For now.”
The space held its breath. Andromeda left. Brief footsteps receded. Bellatrix remained–alone with drip, drip, and her quiet resolve.
The stairwell felt emptier now–echoes bouncing off cold stone, torchlight flickering in the hush. Bellatrix stood still, letting the drip of water cinch her thoughts in tight loops. The sound was deliberate, like time itself folding in. She hadn’t spoken of Maris in two days–hadn’t sought her out or sent a messenger. But the absence made the interest sharper.
She let Andromeda’s word echo: “You’re uncomfortable because you know more than you should.” She passed a gloved fingertip to the cracked vial. Broken edges glinted. “Observing,” she murmured to the moss and mold. “Not feeding.” The lie tasted thin in her mouth.
She rotated the vial between her fingers–tiny flakes of glass under moonlight. It was telling: collecting shards, tracing fractures. Much like Maris, picking up splinters of power and control.
A memory pulsed: Maris’s posture in Charms. How the wandlift had faltered ever so slightly. A flicker of worry when she realized someone had seen. Maris Thorne is adjusting. The image trembled under her skin.
She exhaled slowly, but the corridor didn’t catch her breath. It stayed suspended, waiting.
Bellatrix stepped past the shelf and into the center of the landing. Monkfish shadow pressed against her robes. She raised a gloved hand and closed her fingers as if gripping something unseen. Observation. She let her gaze fall to the cracks in the flagstone, tracing thin seams as rigid as the girl at the common room table.
She took another breath. The truth settled. It was no longer about defense. It was about hunting. About being sure. About watching for the moment, the blade revealed the hand that forged it.
Beyond the stairwell door, castle stillness pressed outward. Slytherin corridors slithered with rumor. Bellatrix remembers what Andromeda had said: “You’re turning her into a story before she has a name.”
She turned then, slow, deliberate. Held the thought behind her eyes. Names are lies. Reputations are useful. She murmured it again. She’ll prove herself yet.
This time, the words weren’t distant. They were an invocation. A reckoning.
In the silence, she stepped forward–toward the exit, toward the corridor where Maris was waiting. Two days unseen. But not unknown.
Bellatrix walked out, boots soft on stone, and the drip, drip followed behind her–like a heartbeat of anticipation.
Scene 3: Accusations in Disguise
Setting: Hogwarts corridor, late evening
POV: Hermione/Maris Thorne
The hour was late. Torches burned low in the upper corridors, flame wavering like nervous hearts. Portraits nodded their silent approval to passing figures; the only sound was the faint swish of robes and the distant echo of distance echo of dripping water somewhere deeper in the castle.
Hermione walked slowly but deliberately, the hem of her Slytherin robes brushing the dark stone. Her thoughts were still wrapped around the day’s conversations, the common room silences, the way seats had subtly shifted when she entered. It was no longer about being invisible. Not entirely.
Maris Thorne was being watched.
She reminded herself: composed. Measured. Strategic.
She turned a corner near the sixth-floor landing and froze.
A prefect stepped forward from the shadows. Not a Black, and not fierce like Narcissa—Moray, she thought. Older. Thin-lipped and pale-eyed. The kind of prefect who didn’t need to raise her voice to ruin someone.
“Miss Thorne,” the prefect said quietly, voice calm and unhurried. “A moment?”
Hermione gave a brief, polite nod. “Of course.” Her tone was perfectly level, touched with the kind of respect of a first-year student. She adjusted her posture—shoulders square, chin neutral.
They walked side by side under a stretch of dim sconces.
“Some of us have noticed,” the prefect began, “your…placement in the common room. And in the corridors. Often alone. Often not.”
Hermione kept her expression open, questioning.
The prefect didn’t smile. “It’s the company you keep. Or rather, the company you sit near.”
Hermione’s tone was airy, but not foolish. “I wasn’t aware the air near someone could cause such concern.”
“Proximity has implication,” the prefect said, watching her closely. “When the proximity involves Bellatrix Black, people notice. And people…wonder.”
Hermione let the silence stretch. Then, with a faint smile, she answered. “In Slytherin, wonder can be useful. So can caution.”
The prefect tilted her head, noncommittal. “Just make sure you don’t mistake one for the other.”
Hermione nodded once, slowly. Measured. A first-year deference hiding a strategist’s calculus.
The prefect’s final words, just before turning the corner: “Houses notice, Maris. Keep your place.”
The corridor emptied behind her.
Hermione stood for a second too long, fingers tightening on the strap of her satchel. Her breath didn’t shake, but her chest tightened.
Is this a test? A message? A warning?
She heard it again:
“You’re not theirs—but you’re not mine either.”
Bellatrix’s voice, weeks old now, still echoing. Still accurate.
She walked on, heart pounding, mind racing. The castle didn’t seem quite as quiet anymore.
Hermione reached the edge of the common room—empty now, chairs overturned, candles guttering, salt-gold light across the polished floor. She stepped around a low table and moved toward an unused desk, mind racing with the prefect’s words.
A figure rushed toward her—a second-year, eager and wide-eyed. They nearly collided.
“Miss Thorne–sorry to bother you–” the student whispered, voice pitched too high, eyes darting around.
Hermione paused, gently placing a hand on the girl’s arm to steady her. It’s quite all right.”
The girl swallowed. “Did you…Did you hear? Fifth-year Rowland was shattered on the dueling floor last night. They banned him from dueling.” Her eyes flicked to the doorway again, voice pitched lower. “They say the punishment was…harsh.”
Hermione’s breath caught, chest tightening, but the mask held: a subtle nod. “Rowland…right.’
The girl leaned closer. “They said it happened just after someone saw you near the dueling wing. Right before curfew. You were walking alone.”
The implication was a stone dropped in still water.
Hermione stilled.
The timing matched. Bellatrix hadn’t been in the common room that night. And now–Rowland, a fifth-year, punished beyond House standard. No names tied. Just shadows, and whispers, and carefully traced connections.
She remembered Bellatrix’s voice in the dueling hall:
“They’ll bite…I want to see how sharp the teeth are.”
Panic simmered. She wasn’t just being watched. She was being used–either as bait or as a buffer.
Still, her voice stayed calm. “Thank you for telling me.”
She offered a quiet smile, brushing loose hair behind her braid. The girl’s gaze lingered, uncertain–before she turned and darted away.
Hermione watched her go, her own feet fixed, mind spinning. The corridor seemed narrower now. Shadows lengthened. Air thinner.
She exhaled. Carefully.
Then stepped forward–measured, cautious.
She senses the castle contracting around her. The game deepens. Every step is now a move, even if she doesn’t yet see the board.
Hermione moved with calculated stillness until she found a quiet refuge–a narrow alcove beyond the common room, where a single desk waited beneath a high window. Moonlight cut a pale line across its surface, illuminating dust motes dancing in the cold air.
She sank onto the edge of the seat, pressed both palms to the desktop, and closed her eyes for a moment. Every nerve thrummed–corridor walls still felt like they’d shrunk around her. Shadows seemed to press in. Her ribs clenched with the weight of uncertainty.
From her pocket, she extracted the small Slytherin-green journal– soft leather, edges worn, everything inside carefully chosen to blend in. She opened it to a blank page, slid her wand from her sash, and let ink run as quickly as words could come:
“They were punished last night–no name aligned, but the pattern is clear.”
“I can’t tell whose shield I am: protector, diversion, or target.”
Her breath trembled. She closed her eyes, re-read it, then paused.
Every instinct told her to choose:
Approach Bellatrix?
Dangerous.
Avoid Bellatrix? She exhaled slowly.
Might lose the only attention keeping her shielded.
Pretend confusion? A sobering thought.
Might seem vulnerable–maybe too weak to be tolerated.
There were more than choices. They were forks in her fractured existence. She had come here to outsmart them, not break under them.
She rested her wand on the desk, doodled a small snake curling into itself.
Then she steadied her hand, wrote slowly, deliberately:
“I am not her shadow. But I cast one anyway.”
She closed her journal with methodical care and tucked it back into its hiding place.
Moonlight washed over her face. Her shoulders squared. A single swallow, and she whispered to the silent corridor:
“Whatever comes next, I will own it.”
She stood, exhaling the final static from her chest, and pushed away from the desk.
Her footsteps returned to their slow, measured rhythm. She was both resolute and undeniably vulnerable.
But as she stepped into the corridor, the shadows no longer seemed to close in behind her. They peeled back–tentatively. She walked knowing the game had grown sharper, but so had she.
Her footsteps carried her away from the alcove, out into the stone corridor. Torchlight flickered across her face, catching in those deep-cut cheekbones and the tight concentration in her eyes. She didn’t hurry, but she didn’t pause.
The corridor stretched before her, empty yet not silent. Each step echoed, a soft metronome keeping time with the purpose buried in her chest. The warmth of the torches offset the night-cold of the walls–but couldn’t conceal the tension that coiled at her back like a hidden serpent.
She noticed how the portraits tilted slightly, camels of curiosity more interested in this pass-through than in any night’s chatter. The feeling wasn’t new: she’d tilted the room before. In the common room. In the corridors between classes. Now, she tilted the hallway, quiet and precise. Unyielding.
She’d walked alone. Too close to Bellatrix. Too noticed to be safe.
But she wasn’t broken.
Not yet.
Belief in her plan steadied her pulse.
Beyond the low arch, she glimpsed the Slytherin common room door–a portal to politics, power, performance. She didn’t enter it. Not tonight. She made that choice already.
She was untethered. Neither fully her own, nor fully under someone else’s shadow.
Neither Bellatrix’s nor the House’s.
She was something else.
Her gait sharpened. Shoulders squared. The torchlight carved dark lines across her features, like runes.
Maris Thorne, forging forward. A first year in name. But she moved with the years more than that–more than anyone guessed. And now–
“Next step: precision without permission.”
She let the thought settle.
No one could steel her–but she would move like mentorship in motion. Silent. Calculated. Unclaimed.
Behind her, the darkness drew back. The intricate web of whispers and watchful eyes remained–but they were just players on her field now, not keepers of her fate.
She kept walking.
Interlude–The Book Returns
3rd-person, neutral POV
The tower room was locked.
More than that–warded.
Layered spells, bound with Bellatrix’s signature, curled through the walls like smoke, woven into stone. No student should’ve crossed that threshold. No professor would dare without cause.
And yet, the desk was no longer empty.
In the center, just beneath the faint gleam of moonlight from the high stained-glass arch, sat a book. Advanced Hex Reversal: Theory & Precision. Its spine cracked back on a page Hermione Granger had studied. Poured over.
The corner was dog-eared.
But it wasn’t the page that made the silence hum.
It was the rune drawn in the margin.
Faint, precise, nearly invisible. The ink shimmered faintly silver. A symbol not part of the original text–looped, curling serpentine.
The same rune that curled around Andromeda Black’s wrist in soft scar-flesh.
There were no footprints. No signs of intrusion. No breached defenses. Bellatrix’s wards still pulsed faintly at the edges of the stone–unbroken.
And yet someone had placed this book on her desk.
Someone with permission. Or with a key.
The desk bore no dust now. Just the presence of something meant to provoke a reaction.
To be found.
Someone was playing all sides.
And they had left no name.
The wards remain sealed. The mark remains unclaimed. The war of symbols has begun.
Scene four–A Message in the Library
POV: Hermione (as Maris Thorne)
The south wing of the library was nearly deserted–deliberately so. Evening had crept in, extinguishing lamps in outer alcoves. Here, among the towering arithmancy stacks, the darkness was soft, porous, whispering with half-forgotten spells. Hermione chose a dim corner near a narrow window, where the moon carved pale lines into old wooden desks.
She placed her satchel and the emerald-green journal on the desk, brushing a stray curl behind her ear. Her robes still smelled faintly of cologne and ink, memory of the corridor’s confrontation still simmering in her chest. But she moved with purpose. Carefully. Purposefully.
Sitting, she arranged her supplies–quill, ink pot, empty parchment–as if performing a ritual. Not for show–this time, it was for clarity. She inhaled, sounding her pulse.
She waited.
There should be noise: footsteps, whispers, the rustle of pages turning. But nothing came. She hadn’t heard footsteps follow her in; no one had called her name. And yet…she felt the weight of eyes–light, astute, waiting. Not aggression. Observation.
She resisted the temptation to look over her shoulder. That would concede she was disturbed. Instead, she drew a line in the leather binding of her journal and opened it flat. She positioned the blank page before her and lifted the quill.
With her quill hovering, she paused. The undercurrent was strong, but she let it guide her ink. A subtle acknowledgement to whoever watched, in hidden form: she had designed, and she would use it.
That deep inhalation steadied her. She wrote–no thoughts, but a challenge. The page absorbed her determination like a dark crystal.
She closed the journal. Laid the quill aside.
No message to herself this time.
The corridors waited beyond the stacks. The game had changed direction, and she had responded.
She did not walk far.
The journal was already in her bag, the quill sealed. But her hands weren’t finished.
At the edge of the south stacks, she paused before the theory shelves–slipped the bag open again. Her fingers slid beneath parchment, pulled out a page she’d written earlier.
Not a confession.
Not a thought to return to.
Just one sharp, surgical cut in black ink:
“If you want something obedient, find a ghost.
If you want something dangerous..
Try me.”
Her handwriting was sharp. Practiced. Calculated.
The folds were clean, each one pressed with deliberate, ritual stillness. Her movements didn’t waver. She knew what she was doing. She had meant every word.
She drew an old hex theory text from the shelf–one she had studied, one she knew might catch someone’s interest. It was thick, under-checked, and shelved low enough that only someone careful would pause long enough to find what she left behind.
She slid the page between its leaves, hiding it inside a chapter on magical disobedience and redirected power. The symbolism was intentional.
Then she closed the book with a breath just short of a sigh.
Her palm flattened over the cover. One second. Two. She shelved it in silence.
No one spoke behind her. No figure moved in the shadowed stacks. And still, the air pressed close. Watching.
She didn’t look back.
This wasn’t a message to herself.
It was an invocation. An invitation. A warning.
And she had left it there with intention.
Power wasn’t always shouted. Sometimes, it waited–folded, hidden, sharp enough to draw blood if touched carelessly.
Hermione adjusted her bag again, turned, and walked from the row as if nothing had happened.
But something had.
And someone would find it.
Hermione stepped back from the shelf as though she’d simply replaced a volume she’d found interesting. The torchlight glinted off her robe’s edge. Her pulse had slowed to a pragmatic rhythm, but she could still feel the echo of power–sharp and steady–folded between the pages she’d left behind.
She crossed the narrow aisle and passed a row of tall, silent stacks. Dust motes drifted in lazy arcs, as if to bear witness. The usual whispers of parchment turning and distant candle-snuffs were absent–someone had stepped away. The absence felt too precise to be a coincidence.
No one followed. No steps snapped behind her.
Still, she didn’t exhale fully. Because she knew the message wouldn’t remain hidden for long. She’d directed it at someone–someone whose gaze she sensed at the edge of her awareness these past nights. Someone who had been watching: not just her movements, but her choices.
As she left the south wing, her hand lingered on her satchel strap, steadying herself before stepping out of the pale circle of light. Overhead, the vaulted ceiling swallowed the torchlight’s rumble. The corridors stretched beyond wide and expectant.
She kept her posture measured: head held, boots silent. It was not arrogance. It was intentional.
No glance back. No recheck not this time. She’d already chosen her path.
Behind her, the library exhaled quietly. A volume sat closed, its pages secrets and waiting. A challenge cast. A boundary was drawn.
Hermione merged into the castle’s corridors, carrying in her gait the newly tempered edge of someone who had responded. The cards were down. The game had changed.
Behind the farthest stacks of the south wing, in an alcove unseen by most, a shadow detached itself from the darkness. Bellatrix Black stood perfectly still, her robes swallowed by the gloom. Her presence was a quiet echo of power–each stitch of her cloak sealed with intent. She had watched Maris (Hermione) move away. She had seen more than Maris (Hermione) knew.
Her pale fingers caught the edge of the vaulted wood paneling. Torchlight from the corridor glinted off her braid like mercury. Without sound, she noticed the spacing on the shelf, the slight shift where a volume had once sat– theory text on magical disobedience. The same one Maris (Hermione) had chosen.
The book slid into her hand as if summoned.
Her heart did not race.
She turned it through her gloved palms–leather binding snug, spine intact. Her wrist brushed the book’s edge, and she studied the shelf’s grooves, unmarked. The wards in her tower had been unbroken; here in the library, she was unprotected–but only within a world she chose to observe.
Bellatrix opened the book, page after page, until she found the torn sheet. Her eyes narrowed at the first line.
“If you want something obedient, find a ghost.”
Her breath was soft, measured.
“If you want something dangerous…Try me.”
The ink was Maris’s (Hermione's). No flourish in the G. No hesitation in the Y.
Bellatrix traced the final sentence with her thumb. She didn’t smile. There was no need. Instead, she folded the page carefully, pressed it inside her glove, and slid it beneath her robe’s folds–close to her heart, like a promise.
When she closed the book, it made no sound. She replaced it on the shelf with perfection–spine aligned, corners flush–as though it had been left there deliberately.
But she still lingered. A moment longer than anyone else would permit. The shadows around her felt pliable, conspiratorial. Her eyes roamed the stacks. She could feel anticipation coil in the air–someone had thrown the die. Someone had declared intent.
Behind her, the library exhaled.
Bellatrix’s lips curved almost imperceptibly.
She did not burn the message.
She kept it.
Then she faded from the stacks, disappearing down the corridor. The stones swallowed her, but her absence left a trace like smoke.
Maris’s (Hermione’s) challenge was issued. The game had changed. And now, the player across from her had taken the card and folded it inside her hand.
Notes:
Thank you for reading!
Sorry it took me so long to upload this chapter. This week’s been… not great. But I’m grateful you’re still here, still reading, still following these two through every quiet look and sharpened word.This chapter shifted the tone a bit—less fire, more pressure. But sometimes that’s how power builds.
Let me know what lingered with you—your thoughts, your favorite lines, or theories. I’ll be back with the next one soon.
Until then: eyes open, wands ready. 🖤
—E.R.
Chapter 5: Echoes of the Name
Summary:
Hermione, living as Maris Thorne, finds her carefully constructed identity tested in the unforgiving halls of Slytherin. Whispers of "Mudblood sympathizer" follow her, while the silent, watchful presence of Bellatrix Black turns every interaction into a calculated challenge. Through a symbolic tarot reading and a tense magical demonstration, Maris navigates the subtle cruelties and power plays of the House, proving her mettle while carefully concealing her true strength. Meanwhile, Bellatrix's own attempts to sever her unsettling fascination with Maris lead to unexpected revelations, as Narcissa Black offers a chilling insight into why the young first-year has become such an unbreakable reflection. The game has begun, secrets deepen, and the true cost of their entanglement starts to surface.
Notes:
Hey everyone! 👋 So, so sorry for the radio silence last week! 😅 Life got a little chaotic, as it tends to do. But I'm back with Chapter 5, and I really hope you enjoy it! ✨ This one dives deep into Hermione's struggles and sets the stage for some intense moments.
Thanks so much for your patience and for sticking with the story! Your support means the world. ❤️
Happy reading!
E.R.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Scene 1: Stone and Static
POV: Hermione (as Maris Thorne)
The corridor beyond Ancient Runes felt colder than its stones, a chill that seeped not from the deep winter air outside, but from something more fundamental within the castle's ancient arteries. Midmorning light, thin and pale, struggled to pierce the high, narrow windows, casting a weak, watery sheen across the polished floor. Dust motes, disturbed by the unseen currents of student traffic, danced in the hesitant beams, swirling like countless, glittering particles of suspicion, caught and held captive in the air.
Hermione stepped out with measured calm, her shoulders squared, a faint, almost imperceptible line etched between her brows. She intentionally didn’t rush. Maris Thorne didn’t hurry. Maris Thorne moved as though every step was both a promise whispered to the future and a challenge silently laid before the present. Her gait was precise, her back ramrod straight, a careful study in controlled indifference. Each footfall echoed with a crisp, almost brittle resonance against the flagstones, a sound that seemed to speak of an unyielding resolve. She felt the subtle shift in the magical currents around her, the lingering hum of the classroom behind, but her focus was already ahead, on the labyrinthine twists of the castle, on the masks she had to maintain.
A cluster of Slytherins, seemingly materializing from the shadows of a nearby alcove, dropped into place around her, their presence a sudden, jarring intrusion into her carefully cultivated quiet. Fifth-years, their dark robes swishing, compared dueling rosters with an air of casual superiority, their voices low and conspiratorial. Fourth-years traded rumors, their whispers weaving a tangled net of half-truths and embellished gossip. Their conversations, clipped and sharp, cut snippets of an unsettling familiarity into the otherwise hushed silence of the corridor.
“Bletchley got paired next with – sorry, not Rowland. He’s banned.”
A laugh, sharp and mismatched, grated against Hermione’s ears, too loud, too unfeeling. It was the kind of laugh that tasted of victory at another’s expense, a sound she had grown to dread and, simultaneously, to recognize as a dangerous signpost in this new, unsettling landscape.
“Good. That fool’s still healing. I heard it was Black who turned him on his backside.”
Hermione’s foot faltered – an imperceptible half-stutter, a mere ghost of hesitation that only she would have noticed. Her carefully constructed facade threatened to crack, but she tightened her grip on her satchel strap, forcing her muscles to obey, maintaining her pace with an almost painful effort. Her eyes, in profile, caught a fifth-year’s smirk, a fleeting, almost predatory gleam that confirmed the malicious satisfaction in their words. The names – Rowland and Black – wove a pattern she knew all too well, a pattern spun from violence, from power, and from the calculated cruelty of her House.
She knew she should not care. She hadn’t left yesterday’s message by mistake; it had been a deliberate, desperate gamble. But the memory of that message, of her own audacious challenge, echoed in the hollow space beneath her ribs. The dark joke, the casual dismissal of another student’s suffering, came at a cost she felt all along her spine, a cold, creeping sensation that spoke of moral compromise and the insidious rot of this place.
Further ahead, the chatter continued, their voices carrying easily in the stone corridor, each word a tiny, invisible barb.
“Library time’s curving weirdly. Maris Thorne, first-year – can you believe it? Cross-book study with serpent tongues?”
Another laugh, sharper this time, laced with an unmistakable sneer. It was a laugh that stung, designed to belittle, to mock her quiet industriousness, to question her very nature.
Maris’s breath dipped, a shallow, involuntary gasp that she quickly suppressed. They didn’t call her Hermione – only Maris Thorne. But their insinuation was teeth, soft and subtle, yet cutting with the precision of a well-aimed hex. They whispered of her perceived unnatural abilities, her quiet diligence, twisting it into something unsettling, something other . It wasn't praise; it was an accusation, implying she dabbled in dark arts merely by applying herself to her studies, by excelling in a way they deemed suspicious.
Then another whispered chunk, like a curse misspoken, drifted back to her, carried on a gust of displaced air:
“Mudblood sympathizer.”
It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t aimed particularly at her, not directly. In fact, it might not even have been about her at all, merely a casual epithet thrown out into the ether, a common currency of disdain within these walls. But the timing latched onto her with chilling precision. The words flew just as she passed, as though they’d anticipated her presence, a perfectly synchronized, venomous dart. She imagined them drifting on her robe’s hem, clinging to the fabric like invisible, poisonous spores, tainting her very being.
She didn’t stop. She didn’t look back. Her posture remained impeccable, her face a carefully constructed mask of disinterest, devoid of any betraying flicker of emotion. But beneath the guise, something burned. It wasn’t just anger, though that was there, a hot coal deep within her. It was a cold, quiet fury, laced with the bitter taste of helplessness and a profound sense of injustice. The words, intended to wound, instead ignited a spark of defiance she hadn't realized still existed so fiercely within her.
And then she saw Bellatrix.
Standing apart near the stairwell that coiled upward into the castle’s upper reaches, dark braid catching the faint light from a distant torch, her posture silent and perfectly still. Like a statue carved from night and velvet, unyielding and eternally watchful. She was overhearing too; her head was angled just so, a subtle shift in her shoulders indicating her awareness of the whispers. Yet, there was no reaction – not a blink, not a twitch of a muscle. Not even a tightening of that signature, cruel smirk. Her face remained a flawless canvas of cold detachment, as inscrutable as the ancient stone around them.
Bellatrix, who had watched Rowland fall. Who had orchestrated his expulsion – silent, deadly, a predator observing its prey. Who had lingered in the south wing to read Hermione’s desperate, audacious warning. Who held every word Hermione had given her close, the unspoken promise of a dangerous game.
Yet, at the moment a slur, a word that represented everything Hermione stood against, drifted through the corridor, Bellatrix said nothing. The simple choice to stay silent hung heavier than any response, heavier than any cruel taunt or open sneer. It was an act of profound indifference, or perhaps, a deeper, more calculated observation. It implied that Bellatrix either didn’t care, or, more chillingly, that she was gauging Hermione’s reaction, testing the mettle of the girl who dared to challenge her.
Maris continued forward, boots echoing on stone, the sound a steady rhythm against the chaotic drumbeat of her heart. Corridors after corridor extended before her, each turn mirroring the last, a seemingly endless labyrinth of the castle’s ancient bones. Portraits, their painted eyes seeming to follow her every move, whispered unheard judgments. The very stones, ancient and imbued with countless lives, seemed to store her breaths, to witness her every suppressed emotion. She felt watched, judged, and impossibly, utterly alone.
She wasn’t crying. Not yet. The tears were there, a hot pressure behind her eyes, but she held them captive, a silent war waging behind her calm exterior. Her chest felt tight – rubbed raw from holding steady, from maintaining the brittle shell of Maris Thorne. Her jaw worked once, a subtle clenching and releasing, holding the precarious shape of calm, a deliberate act of self-control. Every fiber of her being screamed to react, to lash out, to defend, but Maris Thorne did not do such things. Maris Thorne was a cold, precise instrument.
She thought of yesterday’s message, the audacious challenge she had scrawled onto parchment and left for Bellatrix to find:
“If you want something dangerous… Try me.”
The words, so bold and defiant yesterday, were sharpened now, honed to a razor’s edge by today’s echoes of prejudice and Bellatrix’s chilling silence. They felt less like a challenge and more like a binding vow, a promise she was now compelled to uphold, even if it meant risking everything.
She clenched her satchel strap, the worn leather biting into her palm, a physical anchor against the swirling maelstrom within her.
Because making a promise meant testing belief. Not just Bellatrix’s belief in her, but her own belief in herself, in her capacity to endure, to fight, to be .
And if Bellatrix – who saw everything, who missed nothing, who understood the intricate dance of power and fear within these walls – would not speak up, Maris might have to. The thought was a cold, stark truth, chilling her to the bone. Her existence here, her careful plan, depended on a delicate balance, and Bellatrix’s silence had just tipped the scales.
She exhaled slowly, a silvered breath momentarily visible in the damp, ancient air of the corridor. The long stretch of stone extended before her, heavy with unspoken questions, with the weight of choices yet to be made.
She didn’t return to the dormitory. The walls there were too full of watching, of unseen eyes, of whispers that carried too easily on the currents of the air. It was too public, too exposed, too vulnerable for the unraveling she felt beginning within her.
Instead, she slipped away, her movements as fluid and silent as a shadow, navigating the labyrinthine passages with an instinctive knowledge she hadn’t possessed a few months ago. She found solace in the forgotten corners of the castle, gravitating towards a small, unused study chamber tucked off the side of the Charms corridor. It had once been an auxiliary room for practical spellwork, now abandoned to dust and memory – two narrow, scuffed tables, a single window clouded with the grime of time, and the faint, persistent scent of old chalk and forgotten spellwork clinging to its corners like a persistent ghost.
Hermione shut the heavy oak door behind her, the latch sliding into place with a soft, almost imperceptible click. Her wand, tucked deep into the inside seam of her robe, stayed hidden, but her fingers brushed against its familiar, smooth core as she murmured a soft locking spell. No light, no glow – just a pressure shift in the room, a subtle hum in the air as the space sealed a little tighter around her, insulating her from the castle’s ceaseless murmur. It was a small, fragile bubble of privacy, but for now, it was enough.
She crossed to the nearest desk, its surface scarred with generations of student carvings, and dropped her satchel onto its edge with a soft thud. She sat, not in the ergonomic, comfortable posture she typically adopted for study, but rigid, perched on the edge of the hard wooden chair, as if bracing herself for an unseen blow.
The journal came out first. The Slytherin-green cover, embossed with a silver serpent, had begun to wear slightly at the corners, its once pristine sheen dulled by countless hours of handling, a silent testament to the burden it carried. She didn’t open it to write. Not yet. She needed to remember first.
Instead, she flipped back through the stiff parchment – weeks of meticulously coded entries, cryptic thoughts, snippets of strategies painstakingly devised and rehearsed. Her own handwriting, precise and elegant, flowed across the pages, a familiar yet alien script. She passed page after page without reading them, her gaze skimming over the lines, searching. It wasn’t about memory of events, but memory of a decision, a justification.
And she found it, three pages back from the incident with the enchanted parchment, tucked carefully in a line of rehearsal notes, a quiet instruction to herself:
“If asked, half-blood. Easier to defend than full.”
Hermione stared at it, the neat, dark ink seeming to pulse with a life of its own on the page.
She had chosen those words. Chosen the identity. Deliberately. Not out of shame, not out of a desire to truly deny her heritage – but out of calculated safety. It had been a tactical maneuver, a way to explain her unusual spellwork, her prodigious knowledge, her innate magical talent, without raising immediate, damning questions about her origins. It was something respectable. Credible. Palatable, even to the most prejudiced pure-bloods, a convenient half-truth that allowed her to exist within their narrow, dangerous world.
She’d told herself it wasn’t a lie. She wasn’t denying anything; she was simply… simplifying .
But it wasn’t the truth either. Not the whole truth. It was a carefully constructed omission, a deliberate misdirection.
And it had earned her silence. It had given her a margin to exist within, a precarious foothold in this treacherous terrain. But silence, she was learning, could still echo. Silence could still trap you, bind you with invisible chains of complicity and fear.
And now it had.
Because whatever credibility she’d earned, whatever grudging acceptance her ‘half-blood’ status might have afforded her, wasn’t enough to protect her from the insidious murmurs that crawled like a silent, pervasive fungus through the House of Slytherin. It had started as curiosity – her unexpected talent, her surprising prowess in dueling, her uncanny ability to grasp complex spellwork. Then it became unease. Now: suspicion, a cold, probing tendril that sought out any perceived weakness, any deviation from their rigid norms.
The phrase “mudblood sympathizer” hadn’t stung merely because it was accurate in its intent, though it was profoundly so. It stung because it revealed a crack in the armor she’d built, a vulnerability in the carefully constructed persona of Maris Thorne. It showed that her disguise, her clever strategy, was not as impenetrable as she’d hoped. It showed they were looking for a reason to dismantle her, and her silence, her careful non-alignment, was not a shield, but an invitation.
She closed the journal halfway, the parchment rustling softly, a whisper of defeat. Her breath was shallow, caught in her throat. Her pulse felt even shallower, a faint flutter against her ribs, as if her heart itself was attempting to shrink away from the harsh reality.
Bellatrix hadn’t spoken because Bellatrix didn’t need to. Bellatrix understood power, and Maris’s vulnerability was a form of power for her. And Hermione couldn’t speak – not truthfully, not with her real name, not with her real origins – because every single word risked unraveling the fragile thread she was balancing on, risking the entire, desperate gamble that had brought her back to this terrifying past.
Her thumb traced the edge of the page again, a repetitive, almost desperate gesture. The phrase repeated in her head, a mocking refrain:
“Half-blood.”
It felt thinner now. Less of a shield, more of a filter. A convenient distortion that had served its purpose, but was now dangerously close to betraying her. It was a lie by omission, and the weight of that omission felt crushing.
The name she wore – Maris Thorne – fit over her like spell-taped skin, a second skin, thin and taut. Adequate until tested.
And she could feel it testing now, not just by the whispers in the corridor, but by the watchful silence of Bellatrix, by the chilling indifference of this world.
In the corners of her mind, a cold, certain dread bloomed. She knew Bellatrix was watching not her spells, not her dueling form, but her fractures . Bellatrix was searching for the hairline cracks, the subtle tremors beneath the surface, waiting for the moment they would expand into a chasm.
Her mask wasn’t slipping, not outwardly. But the immense weight behind it was shifting, pressing down, threatening to overwhelm her, to reveal the true Hermione Granger beneath.
And if it cracked –
She didn’t want to think that far ahead. The consequences were too vast, too terrifying, threatening to unravel not just her identity, but the very fabric of time she had so desperately tried to mend.
The pages of the journal stilled beneath her hand, but the weight of them pulsed like a second heartbeat, heavy and insistent. Hermione sat perfectly still, her eyes fixed on the word half-blood – her own handwriting, her own carefully devised strategy – but it no longer felt like hers. It felt like a cage she had built for herself, a set of invisible bars that now constricted her, threatening to suffocate the very essence of who she was.
A soft hum filled her ears, a sound that wasn’t sound, exactly. Not magic either, not a spell reverberating in the air. More like a memory rising from somewhere it shouldn’t, a deep, resonant frequency of the past insisting on its presence.
She blinked – and the room spun sideways, not physically, but temporally. The mundane reality of the study chamber warped, giving way to a scene etched in her very soul.
“Hermione!”
Harry’s voice, raw with desperation and fear, shouting across the broken tile of the Department of Mysteries. The hallway, shattered and treacherous, glittered like obsidian, pulsating with the raw, untamed power of ancient spells, each beat a painful throb against her temples. The air tasted of ozone and despair.
Ron’s laugh, unguarded, booming with pure, unadulterated joy, bouncing down the Gryffindor staircase during a late-night dare, a golden echo of a time that felt impossibly distant, impossibly innocent.
Dumbledore’s eyes – knowing, calm, yet too tired, too burdened with the weight of prophecy and loss – when he’d handed her the fragmented grimoire in the Tower’s highest room, the moonlight spilling through the window illuminating the dust motes dancing around his silver hair like ethereal guardians.
“You’ll only have a window,” he’d said, his voice a low, grave rumble, barely above a whisper. “A small one. Don’t waste it.” The weight of his words, of the trust he placed in her, pressed down, a crushing responsibility.
Then the chamber with the rune-etched floor, cold and foreboding, the unstable circle meant for six spellcasters – and only her there, crouched alone in the desolate middle, breath sharp with desperation, the chill of dread seeping into her bones. Her fingers, trembling slightly, traced the intricate, glowing patterns on the stone, each line a pathway to a forbidden, dangerous past.
She’d cast it. The spell, a dangerous, complex piece of ancient magic, meant to reach through layers of enchanted time, designed to make buried truths visible. To draw forward forgotten magic carved into stone and shadow, to pull knowledge from the very fabric of history. It was a spell of last resort, a desperate gambit to prevent a future she couldn't bear.
It had pulled her back.
But it hadn’t given her a map. It hadn’t given her comfort. It had merely given her a burden, a terrifying knowledge of a future that was both inevitable and, she hoped, alterable.
She jerked forward, a sharp, physical jolt – back in the present now, her hand pressed hard against the scarred desk, her knuckles white. Her vision shimmered, not with residual magic, but with unshed grief, with the ghosts of what was to come.
The room was still small, dusty, and forgotten. The table was still empty, save for her journal. But her throat felt choked with years that had not yet happened. People who hadn’t yet died. A war that hadn’t yet begun, but whose tendrils she could already feel, reaching into the innocent corridors of her past.
And she –
She was a lie. A living, breathing falsehood in the heart of her enemy’s stronghold, a dangerous anachronism.
Even her name didn’t hold. It felt like a borrowed cloak, flimsy and ill-fitting.
“Maris Thorne,” she whispered aloud, the name alien on her tongue, like a question rather than a statement. It didn’t ring hollow – but it didn’t echo either. It just… existed. A neutral, functional sound.
She closed her eyes, the familiar darkness behind her eyelids a brief reprieve from the harsh reality of her surroundings.
Her lips moved again, this time softer. Almost without meaning to, a deep, involuntary whisper, a confession to the silence:
“…Hermione.”
The syllables, her true name, fell like lead, heavy and resonant in the small, still room.
She hadn’t said her real name aloud in days. Maybe longer. The silence had stretched, becoming her normal. It caught in her throat, a physical obstruction. It felt heavier than she remembered, burdened with the weight of her past, her losses, her impossible mission.
She opened her eyes, jaw clenched, the burning behind them intensifying.
She couldn’t cry. Maris Thorne didn’t cry. Maris Thorne was logical, composed, unwavering. Hermione might have, would have, dissolved into silent, desperate tears. But Maris had built a different shape for herself – one Bellatrix couldn’t smell fear on. One who learned quickly, answered softly, dueled clean, and showed no weakness.
And yet –
The name, Hermione , still lived inside her like a candle guttering in its last inch, refusing to be extinguished, casting a faint, flickering light on the truth of her being.
She pressed her fingers flat against the desk, feeling the cool, rough grain of the old wood. Her breath slowed again. Measured. Reclaimed. A deliberate act of self-possession.
She was not Hermione here. She couldn’t be. Not fully. She knew that intellectually, viscerally.
But Hermione wasn’t gone either. And pretending otherwise, pretending to be entirely Maris, to fully abandon her past self –
That was the real fracture. That was the crack that Bellatrix was seeking. The internal division was the true vulnerability.
She closed the journal slowly, the sound of parchment brushing against parchment like breath through a veil, a soft, hushed sigh in the quiet room. Her fingers hovered a moment longer at the spine – then withdrew, careful and clean, as if severing a connection, yet knowing it was only temporary.
The desk still bore the faint indentation of her grip, a silent testament to the intensity of her recent turmoil. Her wand, tucked safely into the inside seam of her robe, remained untouched. She hadn't reached for it, hadn't needed its magic for this internal battle.
This part was hers alone. A battle of will, of identity, of pure, unadulterated resolve.
She reached for composure like a blade – tested its edge, checked the weight, felt the familiar cold steel of self-control settle in her mind. The memory of her name still tingled behind her teeth, a faint ghost of a taste, but she swallowed it. Pressed it down. Not to forget it – never to forget it – but to store it properly, to compartmentalize it, to protect it until it could be safely revealed.
There was no safety in rejection, in denying who she was. Only in recalibration, in understanding the delicate interplay between her true self and the necessary disguise. She had to integrate, not erase.
She stood. The small, confined space of the study chamber seemed to expand slightly, giving her room to breathe, to simply be .
And with each movement – lifting the journal, sliding it back into her satchel, smoothing the front of her uniform with precise, almost ritualistic care – she built the walls back up. Not thick, not impenetrable, for she knew now that true impenetrability was an illusion. Just firm enough to carry her forward, to deflect the immediate blows, to endure.
She walked to the smudged mirror in the corner, a relic of a forgotten student, its glass warped slightly with age, reflecting her with a ripple at the shoulders. It made her look shorter, less steady, younger, a distorted image that was both accurate and cruelly misleading. The Maris Thorne she projected was older, more poised, more formidable. The mirror showed the ghost of Hermione.
She adjusted the fall of her hair, a simple, mundane act that grounded her.
The face that stared back wore no grief. It wore Maris. A calm, almost blank slate, devoid of the turmoil that raged beneath. Maris Thorne, who didn’t blink when older students tested her. Maris, who didn’t flinch when the prefects muttered sideways glances, their suspicion palpable. Maris, who didn’t cry after hearing slurs – because she wasn’t supposed to care. Maris was a weapon, precise and unfeeling.
But Hermione did care. Hermione felt everything.
And that meant Maris needed to be sharper. Not just in spells, but in discernment, in strategy, in choosing her battles.
Her fingers moved slowly, a deliberate decision taking root. She took the journal out again, flipped to a clean page. The stark white parchment awaited her, a blank canvas for her burgeoning understanding.
Then, with neat, economical strokes, she wrote:
“Control is not silence. Control is choosing which echo survives.”
She didn’t sign it. Didn’t date it. It was a universal truth, a new mantra, a principle distilled from the crucible of her pain and fear. But the act of writing, the physical manifestation of her resolve, grounded her again, anchoring her in the present, giving shape to the chaos within. It was her declaration of war, not against others, but against the insidious erosion of her self.
She closed the journal. Fastened the strap of her satchel, the click sounding definitive in the quiet room.
And moved to the door.
No hesitation in her gait. No last, lingering look at the distorted mirror. The image of Maris Thorne was now firmly fixed in her mind, a template for the battle ahead.
She unlocked the room with a flick of wandless magic, a silent, economical gesture that spoke of power and precision. Her pulse was steady now. Not empty – just composed, ready.
In the corridor outside, the castle had settled back into its late-morning stillness, a brief respite between classes. Torchlight flickered across the damp, ancient stone, casting dancing shadows that seemed to writhe and stretch like unseen creatures. Somewhere, distant footfalls echoed, fading into the background hum of the castle. The air felt heavy, yet expectant.
Hermione turned to walk, her mind already calculating her next destination, her next move – and nearly collided with a figure just outside the doorway.
Andromeda Black. Poised. Leaning faintly against the opposite wall, like she’d been waiting. Her dark hair was neatly pinned, her expression calm, yet there was a keen intelligence in her eyes that missed nothing.
Andromeda’s eyes scanned Hermione’s face once – delicately, almost imperceptibly, like she could smell memory, or perhaps, the lingering residue of a profound emotional struggle. Her gaze was soft, but piercing, unlike Bellatrix's hard, assessing stare.
“You look like someone who’s remembering something she shouldn’t,” Andromeda said softly, her voice a low, melodic murmur that carried surprising weight in the quiet corridor. It wasn’t an accusation, but an observation, almost laced with a faint sorrow.
Hermione’s lips curved with precision, a small, controlled movement that didn’t quite reach her eyes. The smile was a shield, carefully constructed, revealing nothing.
“Then I’ll try to forget it before dinner,” she replied, her voice smooth and even, betraying nothing of the internal tremor Andromeda’s words had caused. It was a dismissal, polite yet firm, meant to close the conversation.
Andromeda didn’t move, her stillness unnerving. Her gaze held Hermione’s for another beat, then her voice lowered a shade further, almost a whisper, yet it resonated deeply in the silent corridor, carrying an ancient warning.
“Be careful with old ghosts, Maris. Some names remember being buried.”
Hermione nodded once. Not grateful. Not dismissive. Just enough. Just the precise amount of acknowledgement that confirmed she had heard, that she had understood, without inviting further intimacy or revealing anything more. The words resonated, a chill spreading from her spine. Some names remember being buried. It was a truth she lived every second.
Then she turned and walked away – back straight, gaze level, footsteps clean and unwavering on the stone. She didn't hurry, didn't falter.
And she didn’t look back. She couldn't afford to.
Scene 2: The First Cut is Measured
POV: Neutral Third (Leaning into Hermione’s perceptions)
Hermione stepped into the Slytherin common room just after midday. The ambient gloom of the dungeon setting was palpable, a constant, cool embrace that permeated the very stone. The common room, typically a hive of low murmurs and subdued activity, seemed to hold its breath. Firelight, usually a vibrant, roaring presence, was muted to a low, emerald glow, flickering like quiet, knowing embers in the enormous fireplace that dominated one wall. It cast dancing shadows that stretched and retracted like living things across the polished black stone and the worn velvet of the furniture. She paused at the periphery of the vast chamber, her gaze sweeping across the space with a precision born of necessity, cataloging every face, every posture, every subtle shift in allegiance. Conversation, which had been a quiet hum, paused for a collective breath. Or perhaps, Hermione realized with a chilling clarity, it simply held, suspended in the heavy air, waiting for her. There were no warm welcomes, no concealed smiles, no casual acknowledgements. Only a watchful, almost predatory silence.
Bellatrix sat at the absolute center of the room’s subtle power dynamic, enthroned in an ornate, high-backed chair that seemed carved specifically for her. Her head was poised delicately, an alabaster sculpture against the dark wood, and one gloved hand dangled negligently over the armrest, a dark, silent promise of power. She regarded Hermione with an unreadable half-smile – calm, patient, and terrifyingly predator-like, as if Hermione were a particularly interesting specimen under a magnifying glass. When Hermione’s eyes flicked, almost instinctively, to Narcissa, she found her sister not idly observing the room, but studying her instead. Narcissa’s meticulously styled blonde hair caught the muted firelight, gleaming like spun moonlight, and her expression, while polished and perfectly composed, was openly critical – delighted with the escalating stakes, subtly amused by the palpable tension, a connoisseur of quiet cruelty.
A circle of older Slytherins lounged nearby, their postures relaxed, almost languid, but their eyes were sharp, their attention undeniably drawn to the unfolding drama. One of them, a sixth-year with an unnervingly casual air, brought out a deck of hand-cut spell-tarot cards – slightly illegal, whispered to be gifted only among the higher years, passed down as tokens of dark trust. She fanned them with a practiced, almost sensual flourish, the deck rustling softly but tensely, like a collection of whispered rumors given physical form, each card a potential secret or prophecy.
Hermione chose a seat along the long, serpentine bench opposite the Blacks, maintaining a deliberate distance, equidistant from both sisters. She sat with intentional poise – hands folded neatly in her lap, expression neutral, a mask of calm composure. There was no tremor in her voice when she offered polite nods to the few students who met her gaze, acknowledging her presence without inviting intimacy. She felt the weight of their combined scrutiny, the quiet hum of judgment, but Maris Thorne did not falter.
"Maris Thorne," the curator of the cards purred, her voice a low, almost hypnotic sound, extending the fanned deck towards Hermione with an elegant, almost theatrical gesture. "We were just about to –"
Narcissa interjected, her voice smooth as glass, cutting across the other girl’s words with effortless authority. "Let’s read someone interesting. Maris." Her gaze, colder than any ice, dared Hermione to refuse.
The deck shifted in the card-reader’s hand, a ripple of anticipation passing through the assembled students. Hermione’s pulse, which had quickened a moment before, found a tutor’s rhythm again, slowing to a steady, controlled thrum, a silent promise of inner strength. The cards splayed face-down on the velvet-green table between them, their scattered positions seeming to hold a lingering surprise, a hidden meaning. The air thrummed with unspoken expectations.
A student wearing a vivid emerald scarf, his eyes glittering with malicious glee, flipped one of the cards. It landed face up with a soft thud: Two Faces .
A collective breath passed through the onlookers, a subtle, almost imperceptible exhalation of intrigue.
The reader, her voice suddenly imbued with a dramatic solemnity, murmured: "Duplicity, hidden intentions. A telling choice." Her gaze, sharp and knowing, flickered to Hermione, then back to the card. A low, appreciative hum rippled through the small audience. The implication was clear: Maris Thorne was not what she seemed. She was deceptive, a manipulator of appearances.
Another student, a girl with sharp features and even sharper eyes, reached out and flipped a second card: The Blade, reversed .
"Stagnation in ambition. Cuts that fail to land," the reader intoned, her voice laced with thinly veiled derision. A ripple of suppressed laughter drifted through the room like a cold mist, chilling the air. The message was unmistakable: Maris’s attempts to gain power, to assert herself, were futile. Her blows would miss their mark. She would be ineffective. It was a prediction of failure disguised as a reading.
Then, with a flourish that seemed weighted with finality, the reader herself flipped the last card: House in Ash .
Bellatrix’s posture, which had been rigidly still, eased almost imperceptibly, a subtle shift of her shoulders, a slight tilt of her head. Around the circle, others giggled, or gasped too softly to register beyond a faint intake of breath. It was treated like a parlour game, a harmless diversion. Yet the ominous weight of the images, their combined narrative, was clear: someone here was being painted as dual, dangerous, an eroding force, a threat to the very foundations of their home, their House. Hermione felt the accusation like a physical blow. Her presence, her very existence, was being declared a destructive force. Watching their posture, Hermione maintained her outward composure, her head held high, her spine steady. Her lips curved into the smallest, most controlled smile – a precise, almost imperceptible twitch of muscle, a performance designed to convey an inner amusement rather than distress. It was a silent challenge, a reminder to the room who she could be, what she might be capable of.
Bellatrix didn’t speak a word, her silence more potent than any utterance. Her gaze, dark and penetrating, traced the delicate rim of her wine goblet before settling once more on Hermione. That half-smile flickered again across her lips, still not reaching her eyes, which remained cold, assessing, and utterly devoid of genuine warmth. Beneath the surface, Hermione felt a meaning swirling, unspoken yet undeniably present: It’s working. Your performance is noted. The game has begun.
Narcissa, ever the subtle manipulator, leaned in, her voice dropping to a register so low that only Hermione could possibly hear it, a silken whisper that seemed to slither into her ear. “Interesting spread, Maris. Care to interpret?” Her eyes, glinting with malicious pleasure, dared Hermione to stumble, to reveal her true hand.
Hermione’s voice was cool, a perfect match for Narcissa’s icy tone. “Every cut leaves a pattern. Some reveal more than they conceal.” Her gaze met Narcissa’s, unwavering, holding the challenge. It was a veiled threat, a promise that while they might think they were exposing her, their own vulnerabilities were now visible to her. She was a keen observer, and she was watching them too.
The surrounding students watched her, a mix of hate, curiosity, and uncertain allegiance flickering in their expressions like nervous flames. No one laughed. No one met her eyes directly, their gazes sliding away, uncomfortable under the weight of her steady observation. She had turned the tables, forcing them to consider her words, to wonder about her true depth.
Bellatrix shifted in her chair, a slight, almost imperceptible movement, yet the room seemed to exhale against the immense gravity she exerted, the silent force of her will. The moment had passed. The spell-tarot cards were swept away from the velvet-green table with a dismissive gesture. Talk resumed – but lighter, more subdued than before. Fragments of conversation brushed past Hermione like a reluctant breeze, hesitant and uncertain. The atmosphere, while still tense, had changed. She had passed the common room’s test.
Bellatrix raised a single, perfectly arched brow, her gaze sharp, piercing. Hermione met the gaze – steady, unwavering. She breathed in, and every knot of tension she had felt, every subtle tremor of fear, felt measured, controlled, deliberately suppressed. She held herself perfectly still, a statue of quiet defiance.
The message had landed. Her carefully constructed response, her controlled display of composure, had been received.
Later that afternoon, Hermione navigated the lower-level corridor near the dueling practice hall. The stone passage was darker here, imbued with the damp, earthy scent of ancient foundations and the lingering scent of spell-work. Damp torches, spaced sparingly along the walls, cast long, tugging shadows that wavered and danced with every unseen current of air. Each footstep echoed soft enough to rattle nerves, a solitary sound in the oppressive quiet. She’d been “invited” – more accurately, edged into a small cluster of older Slytherins – to observe hex-testing drills. This was strictly third-year and above territory, a space usually off-limits to first-years, especially those as conspicuously talented and quietly feared as Maris Thorne.
Hermione knew she shouldn’t be here. She understood the implicit danger of pushing boundaries, of drawing too much attention. But the invitation had come from a third-year with a half-smile and an unnerving, dark curiosity, his eyes challenging her to refuse. It was a test, subtle yet undeniable. She followed, her posture straight, her lips set in a neutral calm, every step deliberate and precise, designed to convey confident indifference. She was a shadow among shadows, blending yet standing out.
They passed the heavy, reinforced hall doors, which stood ajar, allowing the muffled voices from within and the sharp, percussive collision of hexed targets to grow louder, filling the corridor with a cacophony of controlled magical violence. A student paused at the entrance, turning to offer Hermione a place at the very edge of the training circle, his smile thin, almost condescending. “Show us what the first-years do,” he said softly, his voice dripping with challenge, the words laced with thinly veiled contempt. It was less an invitation and more a dare, a deliberate attempt to put her on the spot, to expose her.
Within the expansive hall, everyone circled a crude wooden bund – a heavily warded test object, scarred and splintered from countless magical assaults. Bellatrix stood to one side, quiet as a statue carved from shadow and ice. Her presence stretched across the room like a tangible force, a curve of dark moonlight, dominating the space without effort. She didn’t speak, didn’t gesture, didn’t move. She simply watched, her gaze missing nothing, her stillness more intimidating than any overt display of power.
Hermione lingered near the doorframe, remaining in the periphery, observing the swirling currents of power and expectation. The air in the dueling hall smelled of damp wood, the metallic tang of magic, and a faint, unsettling hint of formaldehyde from removed potion samples in the classrooms above. She instinctively tightened her cloak around her shoulders, a small, unconscious gesture of self-protection against the physical and emotional chill.
A higher-year, tall and sneering, stepped forward from the circle, addressing her directly. “Maris Thorne, would you like to try?” His tone held enough feigned ease to cunningly veil the trap, making it seem like a casual offer. “Basic third-year run,” he said lightly, his eyes daring her. “Safe spellwork. No flair. Let’s see what you’ve got, Thorne.”
It was a ward-disarm test – subtle, nuanced, and rarely given to anyone under third-year, requiring a precision and control typically beyond a first-year’s capabilities. Hermione considered declining – a safer option, certainly, one that would avoid immediate scrutiny. But she knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the bone, that a decline would look like fear, and fear would weigh more in this House than any silence, more than any perceived weakness. It would be an admission of defeat.
She stepped forward, leaving the relative safety of the doorway, moving into the direct line of sight. Her heart, which had been fluttering with suppressed anxiety, muted to a regular, steady thrum, a controlled beat.
She raised her wand, her arm steady, her grip firm. Candlelight from the surrounding sconces flickered across her green-gray eyes, catching the faint glint of determination there. She whispered, “Aperverto,” her voice low, almost inaudible, focusing her intent. A soft crackle of energy lit the ward’s edge, a faint shimmer of blue light.
It held. The ward, designed to withstand initial attempts, remained intact, mocking her first effort. A ripple of suppressed smirks passed through the observing students.
She tried again, murmuring “Serplicis,” a more complex, intricate charm, focusing on precise magical pressure rather than brute force. A fine fracture, delicate and deliberate, skated across the ward’s shimmer – displaced, but not shattered. It was a partial victory, a subtle demonstration of skill rather than overwhelming power. She showed she could wound, not yet destroy.
She tapped the wand again, a quick, almost imperceptible motion. The ward dissipated, shimmering out of existence like disturbed water. She’d succeeded, quietly, efficiently.
The third-year who had challenged her smirked, a grudging acknowledgment. “Not bad for a first-year,” he conceded, his voice still laced with faint surprise, but also a new, cautious respect.
A third, more powerful attempt could have smashed it fully, proven her too strong, too dangerous, too conspicuous. Instead, she stepped back – shoulders aligned, wand still. She didn’t overstep. She didn’t show off. She let it be enough, a perfectly calibrated display of ability and restraint. She had demonstrated her competence without revealing the full depth of her power.
A lower-year, eager to prove himself, rushed at the target bund with a clumsy, over-eager hex. A burst of wild, uncontrolled purple sparks cut through the air, hitting nothing but the opposite wall, a wardrobe nearby groaning under the minor hex discharge.
Hermione stepped further aside, melting back into the periphery, allowing the chaos of less disciplined students to unfold. Others crowded in for the next attempt, eager to impress, their ambition outweighing their skill.
Bellatrix remained silent, a watchful, dark presence – but her glance found Hermione, calm and critical. Her gaze was enough to hold the room still, to make every student aware of her silent judgment.
When the next student failed – the ward snapping back with a dull thud, a minor hex discharge hitting him squarely in the chest, making him yelp – someone laughed, a nervous, involuntary sound. Bellatrix’s eyes, cold and piercing, caught Hermione’s across the circle. Their gazes met and held long enough for a heartbeat, a profound, silent exchange that transcended words.
Then Bellatrix spoke, her voice low, clear, and perfectly precise, cutting through the murmurs in the hall.
“Some blades dull themselves too early. It’s a pity.”
Quiet, precise – no accusation, no overt praise. Just an observation, a cold assessment of the failed student, but also, Hermione understood, a subtle, coded message directed at her. It was an acknowledgment of Maris’s restraint, a subtle warning against complacency.
The effect hit Hermione like a measured strike, precise and impactful. She met Bellatrix’s gaze in return, unwavering, her own expression as unreadable as Bellatrix’s. She didn’t answer. No flinch, no nod, no acknowledgment beyond the silent connection of their eyes. She understood.
She had obeyed. She had played their game. But she had also chosen how far to go, how much to reveal, how much to hold back. She had shown restraint, and Bellatrix had noticed.
Behind her, hushed murmurs circled, mixing admiration for her skill and renewed suspicion about her true nature. The room breathed tension again – wariness reborn, the undercurrent of unease returning with a vengeance.
Bellatrix turned away, signaling the end of her direct attention. Other students shuffled toward the exits, their movements relieved but still cautious. Hermione melted into the back, wand lowered, heart steady in its cage, a silent, rhythmic beat of survival.
The test had been given. The message passed. The unspoken communication between them was clearer than any words.
She left the practice hall as silently as she’d entered, her presence fading into the background. The corridor swallowed her, its shadows offering a temporary, fragile reprieve.
Hermione slipped out of the dueling hall’s arches, her dark cloak draped over her shoulders like a second skin, a comforting weight. The torches in the main corridor cast long, wavering shadows, making the familiar passage seem unfamiliar, a labyrinth of shifting light and darkness. Students filtered past, their eyes busy – some stealing curious glances her way, attempting to gauge her reaction, her emotional state. She didn’t look back, maintaining the illusion of calm, her focus resolutely forward.
A side corridor stretched ahead, dim and quiet, a welcome respite from the recent scrutiny. She paused, closed her eyes for a brief moment, and leaned against the cold stone wall, allowing herself a fleeting instant of vulnerability. Her wand-light, which she’d been subconsciously keeping ready, dimmed, reflecting her inner exhaustion. The hum of practice halls faded, replaced by the slow, rhythmic drip of distant water echoing through unseen pipes and the pulsing, ancient hush of the castle’s very breath, a living entity around her.
Hermione reached into her satchel and pulled out her journal – its emerald cover smudged from constant handling, its corners folded and worn, a testament to its frequent use. She fled the harsh scrutiny of the duel, the mental and emotional strain, only to return here, to the solace of ink and memory, to the quiet contemplation of her own coded thoughts. She opened it, finding the last phrase she wrote, her silent mantra:
“Control is not silence. Control is choosing which echo survives.”
She stared at the words, as if they’d moved on the page since last night, as if their meaning had deepened, become more profound and terrifyingly relevant. Her pulse fluttered, a faint tremor in her fingertips. A pinch of hot, aching heat gathered behind her ribs, a physical manifestation of the immense emotional burden she carried.
Her hand trembled as she lifted the quill, poised above the clean parchment. But no words came. Not yet. Her mind, usually so sharp and overflowing with ideas, was momentarily blank, overwhelmed by the sheer weight of her situation.
She closed the journal and hugged it to her chest, pressing it against her heart, a desperate attempt to contain the turmoil within. She didn’t cry. She wouldn’t. Maris Thorne did not cry. She steadied her breath, forcing a controlled rhythm into her lungs, and allowed the edges of her mask to fray – just enough, in the sanctuary of this hidden corridor, to feel the raw tension thrumming under her skin, the aching exhaustion of constant performance.
Distant footsteps echoed, growing nearer. Hermione snapped back to awareness, immediately pulling herself deeper into the corridor’s shadow, stepping towards a blocked-off stairwell window. Gray, diffused light leaked through the ancient glass, painting her in flat, almost monochrome tones, making her look paler than usual – like a ghost, a specter haunting the halls of her own past.
Her thoughts drifted, unbidden, to names. Names long-forgotten, whispered only in hushed tones, nearly erased from mainstream wizarding memory. James. Lily. Sirius. Remus. They had walked these very corridors long before her time, their laughter, their struggles, their triumphs echoing in the stone. They’d been peers with her teachers, her elders, their lives intertwining with the very history of this war. Some had saved the world; some had been tragically lost in the fighting. Their names trembled with legacy, with sacrifice, with secrets, with a weight that pressed down on her from the future.
She wondered who, among the faces she saw daily, would be next to carry such a burden. Which names around her promised unwavering loyalty – and which would crack first under sorrow, under pressure, under the insidious influence of this place. The thought was a chilling one.
The corridor was silent but for her breathing, steady but not calm, a constant reminder of her precarious existence.
In her mind, she ran through faces, cataloging them, assessing their potential weaknesses and strengths. Blaise, whose father she’d heard deserted the Ministry’s more tolerant branch, a lineage of quiet rebellion. Daphne, the girl who’d fallen awkwardly into her arms in Potions last month, a fleeting moment of human contact in a sea of hostility. All of them had homes, families, reputations she could dismantle with a single, carefully placed whisper, if she wanted.
But she didn’t want that. Not yet. Not unless absolutely necessary. Her mission was to change the future, not to replicate its inherent cruelty.
She closed her eyes again. The quiet cloaked her, but not fully. She knew, with chilling certainty, that castle ears carried everything, that hidden eyes glanced down every corridor. Someone would have noticed her lingering, sooner or later. Her presence was too anomalous to go entirely unobserved.
The journal felt heavy in her arms, a burden and a solace. She opened it again – flipped through entries, skimming tactics, subtle defenses, reminders of distraction spells she’d perfected during her accelerated, desperate study. The Guilded Spell she’d adapted from her fragmented grimoire – a spell of revealing ancient inscriptions in carved stone, unstable and dangerously powerful, yet crucial to her understanding of the past and future. She glanced at her wand, safe in the inner fold of her robe. She’d used it once, to ward herself from memory echoes. Twice to test the practice hall seal. Once to lock this door’s latch, securing her temporary refuge. Never without watching eyes.
She exhaled slowly, a long, weary sigh. She saw the final pages of her last fight there – how the ward had fractured with her subtle touch. How Bellatrix had smiled at her victory and its restraint, a silent acknowledgment of Maris’s calculated display. How she’d immediately, in her mind, renamed herself blade, shadow, weapon, embracing the identity this new world demanded.
But here, now, in the quiet, the mask pressed too hard. The pieces rattled, threatening to come undone. The strain was immense.
She pressed her hand flat against the cold, rough wall, finding a solid anchor. Stood. Straightened her back, drawing on an inner strength that felt almost depleted. Softly curved her lips into practiced neutrality, a final act of deliberate composure.
She tucked the journal away, clipping it shut with measured slowness, a definitive action.
In the dim corridor light, she looked at her reflection in a high-placed bronze sconce – a face fixed, polished, resolute. No grief. No doubt. Only the blank, impenetrable mask of Maris Thorne.
But she felt them both, swirling beneath the surface, a constant, aching presence.
She took a step forward – out of shadow and back into the regulated, observed light of Hogwarts, into the world where every glance shaped her, every whisper defined her.
The echoes in her mind weren’t gone – but they wouldn’t anchor her. She would choose which ones survived, which ones she allowed to shape her path.
Still. The weight of the mask had never felt so heavy, so stifling, so utterly exhausting.
Hermione moved forward. Not empty – but recalibrated. Every step a test. Every breath held reckoning, a silent tally of the cost.
Twilight draped itself across the Slytherin tower, painting the ancient stone in hues of deepening grey and indigo as Bellatrix Lestrange climbed the winding stairs alone. Each step fell precisely – soundless on the worn stone, a testament to her inherent grace and dangerous stealth. The torchlight flickered against the intricately carved serpents that marched in endless procession beside the stairwell, their emerald eyes cold and unmoved, like ancient observers carved from prophecy itself, silently bearing witness to the dark intentions of those who passed.
She arrived at her private chamber, the scent of jasmine and old parchment greeting her like a familiar memory, an intimate welcome. She paused at the threshold, her gloved fingertip tracing an almost imperceptible pattern along the doorframe, a brief, silent ritual of demarcation, then entered.
The room was as she had left it: austere, meticulously ordered. Tall, narrow windows overlooked the lake’s dark, restless ripples, reflecting the nascent moonlight like shards of shattered glass. The walls were lined with mirrored racks holding a formidable array of dueling wands and luxurious sable robes, each meticulously arranged. A single, heavy desk stood at the room’s center, its surface devoid of clutter save for one item: a thick, spell-locked book. No extraneous objects, no trivial distractions. Just space folded around intent, a testament to her singular focus.
She peeled away her gloves with decelerated care, the fine leather slipping away like a second skin, revealing the white-pale, almost translucent working of power in her wrists, the subtle veins pulsing beneath the surface. With surgical precision, she slid her fingers beneath the cuff of her robe and withdrew the folded page Maris had tucked into the theory text – the full, audacious phrase still crisp on the parchment, a challenge laid bare:
“If you want something obedient, find a ghost… If you want something dangerous… Try me.”
Bellatrix pressed the paper against her palm, letting the sharp folds press against her veins, feeling the slight indentation it left. She did not smile. She did not curse. Instead, she drew it into herself – as if mapping its rhythm into her very pulse, absorbing its defiant energy. It was a rare, raw display of an almost intellectual hunger.
Behind her, the single lamp flickered, casting dancing shadows across the walls, making the serpent carvings seem to writhe. She stepped to her desk, unfolding the parchment slowly, meticulously. Each word, each defiant curve of Maris’s script, burned silently in her mind, calibrating a new set of stakes, raising the ante of their unspoken game.
She moved deliberately to the spell-locked book – a thick volume bound in deep green dragonhide, its surface smooth and cold, titled Infernal Strategies & Deceptive Duels . It was one of her private tomes, sealed to all but her own unique sigil, filled with the darkest of magical theory and the most intricate of combat tactics. With a whispered phrase, barely audible even to her own ears, the intricate lock clicked, yielding with a soft thud. She placed Maris’s note inside, hugging it to a page marked with her personal divination manifest, a page where she tracked predictions and their unfolding realities.
She paused, her gloved fingers – for she had already replaced them – caressing the smooth, cold leather of the book’s cover. The tower’s silence waited, immense and expectant, like a blade she herself had prepared, honed to a razor’s edge.
Bellatrix didn’t speak aloud, but the parchment, lying open within the tome, seemed to hear her whispered thought, a cold, unwavering vow:
“Let’s see how far you’ll let me cut.”
The words shaped themselves on her lips like a binding oath, a promise of pain and exposure.
Bellatrix straightened, her expression cool – eyes narrowed against memory, against the subtle stirrings of caution, against the building wave of anticipation. She was ready.
She moved to the window. The lake below shimmered under the burgeoning moonlight, a vast, dark expanse mirroring the depths of her ambition. Slytherin sensations – immortality, pure ambition, an insatiable hunger for power – rolled through her, ancient and potent, strengthening her resolve. She permitted herself a slow, deep breath, drawing in the cold, clear air.
Above the water, the dark tower itself seemed to exhale, a silent, powerful sigh that resonated with her own dark purpose.
She did not lock the spell-book after placing the note. Not yet. She wanted it accessible. Vulnerable, ironically, to Maris’s potential next move. For later.
Maybe Maris would attempt another folded message, emboldened by the silent challenge. Maybe she’d test the wards of Bellatrix’s personal chamber, seeking a deeper penetration. Maybe she’d finally unravel and leave another, more revealing trace of her true self. Bellatrix wanted her to try. She wanted Maris to make a mistake.
Bellatrix’s lips twitched, a fleeting, almost imperceptible ghost of a smile, at the memory of the duel – the ward test – Maris’s slight stumble, the audience’s uncertain murmurs, Bellatrix’s cryptic praise. It had been enough for that moment, a perfect initial cut.
But now… the challenge was laid bare, the unspoken game clearly defined.
Tonight, she would prepare. Tomorrow, she would set the next blade in motion. She would not wait.
She left the manuscript open to the note’s page, her smile imperceptible, hidden from the world.
Then she slid her gloves back on, precisely, meticulously, each movement a deliberate act of returning to her polished, dangerous persona.
And exited into the watching shadows of the tower corridors – predator leaving her prey to wonder where the next cut would come.
Bellatrix has accepted Maris’s challenge. The blade is now in motion – and the game will sharpen with every step, in secret wards, silent stares, and calculated tests.
Scene 3: The Mirror Ritual
POV: Bellatrix Black
Night in the Black sisters’ shared dormitory felt less like a mere passage of time and more like a sacred, charged space – imbued with the heavy, intricate residue of generations of ancestral magic, ambition, and unspoken darkness. The air itself seemed to hum with a low, resonant frequency, a constant reminder of the lineage that bound them. Candles, tall and slender, licked the air with their eager flames, casting a shifting, liquid light in carved bronze sconces set into the ancient stone walls. Their glow caught the polished edges of bell-like necklaces suspended from the heavy four-poster beds, highlighting the intricate silverwork, and illuminated the contour of tapestry drips, depicting scenes of forgotten Black family triumphs and grim, unyielding loyalties. High on the walls, council portraits of long-dead Black witches and wizards watched, their painted eyes faint pinpricks of light in the half-gloom, appearing both judgmental and complicit, silently overseeing the current generation’s machinations.
Bellatrix knelt on the cleared floor between her intricately carved, dark wood bed and Narcissa’s equally opulent one. The space, usually impeccable, had been meticulously prepared. Mirrors, their surfaces polished to a black sheen, were angled precisely around her, reflecting fragmented images of the room and the flickering candlelight, distorting reality. Her robes, dark and heavy, lay silent, undisturbed by any movement. The sharp, acrid scent of ash mixed with the faint, earthy smell of chalk filled her hands, clinging to her skin. She drew the ritual circle with practiced, almost unconscious ease: five segments of chalk, pure white against the dark stone, followed by five segments of fine, dark ash, spiraling outward like a serpent’s labyrinth, each line drawn with a ritualistic precision that spoke of profound intent and long-honed discipline. This was not a casual undertaking; it was a desperate, calculated attempt to reclaim a slipping truth.
Around the meticulously drawn circle, she placed the nexus of her focus, each object chosen for its symbolic weight, its tether to the threads she sought to manipulate or sever. First, her wand – obsidian, dark as a moonless night, with delicate silver filigree tracing ancient runes along its length. It was an extension of her will, a conduit for her purest magic. Next, one of her dueling gloves, meticulously crafted from dragonhide, lying open and empty on the cold stone, a symbol of control, of her ability to conceal and contain, contrasting sharply with the other glove, which remained on her left hand, a second skin. Then, the hidden library note, Maris’s audacious challenge, folded neatly and faintly creased from its journey, the very source of the unexpected fascination she sought to understand and, if possible, banish. Beside it, a mirror shard from a broken Slytherin heirloom, its silvered surface cracked but still capable of reflection, a piece of inherited truth and fractured identity. Her silver snake ring, an ancient Black family sigil, lay cold and heavy, representing lineage, loyalty, and the unbreakable vows she lived by. Finally, a single, precise drop of her own blood, seared onto a piece of vellum with a heat charm, crimson against the parchment – the ultimate tether, a binding element, a sacrifice of self.
Every object symbolized a delicate, dangerous tether between control and distraction, between the crushing weight of legacy and the current, unsettling obsession that gnawed at her. She needed to understand why Maris Thorne, a mere first-year, had become such an intrusive, compelling presence in her thoughts. This ritual was meant to distill, to clarify, to banish the unnecessary.
She breathed in deeply, the cold air filling her lungs, a deliberate act of centering. She lifted her head, her gaze sweeping across the carefully arranged components. Then, with a voice low and deliberate, almost a whisper, she began the incantation, the ancient Latin syllables falling like stones into the heavy silence:
“ Oblivio vinculum, solus anima libera… ”
Forget the tether, free the soul. The words were chosen with meticulous care – not to banish power, not to erase memory, but to quell the insidious emotional pull, the inexplicable fascination Maris Thorne had ignited within her. Bellatrix sought to sever the thread of obsession, to regain the cold, clear focus she demanded of herself.
The chalk circle on the floor glimmered with a faint, almost ethereal light, a subtle phosphorescence. The ash trembled, as if stirred by an unseen breath, responding to the ancient magic she invoked. Her magic flowed, shaping the air, bending reality to her will. But when her gaze, sharp and intent, settled on Maris’s note, the ink, which had been black in the muted daylight, flared with a soft, pulsing crimson glow, an unexpected, vibrant pulse against the pale parchment. And through the small, ancient mirror shard, for a shocking, disorienting flicker, she saw not her own steely, familiar eyes – but Maris’s calm, unreadable green-gray gaze, unwavering and knowing, staring back at her from the depths of the polished glass.
Bellatrix’s jaw ticked, a muscle twitching almost imperceptibly beneath her pale skin. A wave of profound frustration, cold and sharp, washed over her. This was not what the ritual intended. This was not what she sought to achieve. She closed her eyes, letting the incantation brush past her teeth again, a desperate attempt to reassert control, to force the magic to obey her true will. She expelled a quiet breath, slowly, deliberately, trying to ground herself, to dispel the unsettling vision. Let the energy flow through her veins, a cold current of power. Let the candles flare and shrink, their flames dancing wildly, mirroring the turmoil within her.
When she finally reopened her eyes, the mirror shard remained dark, reflecting only the muted light of the room. The ash settled back into its motionless pattern. Her reflection returned – stark, unyielding, but subtly altered by the unsettling vision. The magic had not banished the connection; it had intensified it.
She rose, her movements slow, precise, like a predator circling its prey. She moved to the shard, knelt, and ran her gloved fingertip over its cold, sharp edge. No trace of Maris remained in the reflection – but the shard trembled faintly in her palm, transmitting faint, unsettling vibrations through bone, a resonance that echoed deep within her.
Bellatrix spoke softly, a quiet realization, a truth whispered only to herself in the stillness of the chamber:
“You don’t sever something that’s still forming.”
The words were an admission, a concession to the unexpected power of Maris Thorne. Her initial assessment of Maris as a mere child, a nuisance, was proving dangerously inadequate. This fascination wasn’t a static entity to be cut; it was a living, growing thing, still taking shape, still unfolding, and therefore, fundamentally unseverable by such means.
She began to scoop up each object from the circle, her movements meticulously precise, almost ritualistic in their own right: the note, her own blood-stained vellum, the mirror shard, the snake ring, her wand. She folded them into an intricately keyed satchel at her waist, a place of concealment and guarded power. One glove went on, then the other, restoring her immaculate, impenetrable exterior.
The candles, having flared during the vision, guttered briefly, then steadied, their flames burning with renewed, unwavering intensity, reflecting the recalibration within Bellatrix.
She left no chalk behind – meticulously wiped it all away with her sleeve, erasing every trace of the ritual's runes. Nothing remained on the floor but the smooth, dark stone. Nothing but memory, burned into her mind, and the disturbing echoes of an unwanted reflection.
Bellatrix’s attempt to sever fascination had not ended in emotional detachment, but in deeper, more profound entanglement. Her obsession remained, not banished, but subtly warped, its unwelcome reflection beginning to infect her own identity.
Moments after the final candle guttered into a soft, steady glow, the heavy door to Bellatrix’s private dorm creaked – barely enough to register, a subtle shift in the air rather than an announcement of a guest. It was a familiar, almost silent entry that spoke of an intimate knowledge of the space. Narcissa entered, her posture effortlessly perfect, a testament to years of rigorous pure-blood upbringing. Her blonde hair, brushed until it caught the muted light like silvered silk, gleamed with an almost ethereal glow. Her robes, unlike Bellatrix’s, bore no smudges of ash or hurried ritual; they fell in elegant, unblemished folds. She carried herself with an inherent ease, an almost languid grace, that paradoxically sharpened the room’s already taut tension, her very presence a judgment.
Bellatrix remained kneeling in the empty ritual circle, the satchel of artifacts at her knee, an unexpected picture of vulnerability. Her breath, which had been ragged with the aftermath of the ritual, slowed to a steady, controlled rhythm, a deliberate effort to regain her composure. She expected disdain, perhaps a cutting remark, or at the very least, a cool, judging distance from her sister. Instead, Narcissa approached with a gentle confidence, her movements fluid and unhurried. Her eyes, sharp and perceptive, flicked first to the chalk-etched floor, noting the recent ritual, then to the folded note clutched neatly within Bellatrix’s gloved hand, the source of her current preoccupation.
Narcissa’s fingers extended, delicate and pale, brushing the very edge of the paper Bellatrix held. It was a touch that was both tentative and possessive, a subtle probe. Bellatrix’s throat tightened, a visceral reaction to the unexpected intimacy, to the intrusion into her private struggle – but she did not flinch. Her grip, however, stiffened almost imperceptibly, and she instinctively withdrew the note, clutching it closer to her chest, a silent assertion of ownership, of a secret fiercely guarded.
Narcissa smiled faintly, a subtle curve of her lips that held no apology, no reproach, only a deep, unsettling understanding. Her question, when it came, was dressed in polite curiosity, yet it cut with a surgical precision.
“You only keep trophies from enemies. Or lovers,” she said softly, her voice even, devoid of inflection, yet imbued with a profound, almost dangerous insight. “I wonder which you think she is.” Her gaze, cool and unwavering, bore into Bellatrix, forcing her to confront the unsettling duality of her own feelings.
Bellatrix’s grip stiffened further, the parchment of the note crinkling audibly beneath her glove. The words struck her with the force of a hex, an uncomfortable truth she had been desperate to avoid.
“She’s a child,” Bellatrix replied, her tone carrying an undeniable authority – measured, cold, and deliberately impenetrable, an attempt to reduce Maris to a category she could dismiss, a challenge she could easily overcome. She sought to control the narrative, even to her sister.
Narcissa’s gaze, unperturbed by Bellatrix’s attempt at deflection, slipped to the satchel still resting at Bellatrix’s knee, where she continued to clutch Hermione’s note, a silent testament to its importance.
“Child,” Narcissa repeated, the single word echoing Bellatrix’s, yet imbued with a subtle, mocking emphasis that undermined its dismissive intent. She settled onto the edge of a nearby stool, her posture effortlessly elegant, her eyes locking onto Bellatrix’s with an intensity that demanded honesty.
“But—” Narcissa paused, letting the unspoken words float between them, allowing the silence to stretch, to amplify the weight of what she was about to say. “No. She’s a reflection. That’s why it bothers you.”
Bellatrix’s jaw clenched beneath her mask of control, the muscle working furiously. The truth of Narcissa’s observation was like a shard of ice in her gut. A reflection. Of what? Of herself, before the world had hardened her? Or of a potential future, a path untaken?
“She’s… new. Unformed,” Bellatrix said, her voice low, a desperate attempt to categorize Maris as something she could still mold, still control, still dismiss. It was a refusal to acknowledge the inherent, nascent power Maris possessed.
Narcissa’s eyelids lifted slightly – no mockery, only a quiet, profound understanding, a knowing empathy that Bellatrix found both unnerving and inescapable.
“She’s not formed,” Narcissa repeated, the words a soft, insistent whisper, “because she hasn’t been fully named. Not by you. Not by the house yet. And she sees you. Not the mask, the blood.” This was the core of her sister’s insight, a piercing revelation. Maris, this young girl, saw beyond the carefully constructed facade of Bellatrix Black, beyond the notorious reputation, the cruel smirk, the hardened exterior. She saw the raw essence of Bellatrix Black, the ambition, the deep-seated pride, the untamed magic of their ancient lineage. And that terrified Bellatrix, because to be seen was to be vulnerable. To be seen by someone who was not yet "named" by their world meant she possessed an independent gaze, an uncorrupted judgment.
Bellatrix’s fist closed, tightening around the note. The parchment crinkled audibly beneath her glove, a fragile protest against her sudden, desperate grip.
“I didn’t leave that note as an invitation,” Bellatrix whispered, her tone taut with a frustrated anger that bordered on desperation. “I left it to see where strength lay.” She needed to believe it was a tactical maneuver, nothing more.
Narcissa pushed to her feet, her movement fluid, graceful.
“Strength?” she asked, almost kindly, a soft, dangerous inflection in her voice that belied the cutting nature of her question. She stepped closer, letting the torchlight soften the sharp angles of her face, making her seem almost gentle. “Or interest?” The word hung in the air, a profound accusation, a challenge to Bellatrix’s meticulously guarded self-perception.
Bellatrix said nothing. There was no answer she could offer, no denial convincing enough, no lie that would suffice. Narcissa had seen through her, into the very core of her motivations.
Narcissa’s smile deepened, a subtle, knowing curve that held sympathy unclaimed yet undeniably present. It was the smile of someone who understood a difficult truth, who recognized a similar struggle.
“Reflections can fracture,” she warned, her voice more intimate than sisterly, a profound insight offered without judgment. “Be careful how you look back.” It was a warning that spoke of the dangers of self-discovery, of seeing something in another that threatened to break apart one's own carefully constructed reality. What if the reflection wasn't just Maris, but a part of Bellatrix she had suppressed? And what if that part, once seen, demanded to be acknowledged?
She turned and left, closing the heavy door behind her with a silk silence that left Bellatrix alone in the charged space, the quiet amplifying the unsettling truth of Narcissa’s words.
Bellatrix sat perfectly still until the click of the latch echoed, a tiny, final punctuation mark in the vast silence. Then she rose with slow, deliberate movements, each muscle stiff, as if her body had forgotten how to move naturally. She slipped Maris’s note from beneath her glove, feeling the subtle release of pressure. She stood in the center of the chalk circle, candlelight flickering against her face, casting dancing shadows in her hollowed eyes.
Alone, truly alone, she unfolded the note again, her fingers tracing the defiant lines of Maris’s handwriting:
“If you want something obedient, find a ghost… If you want something dangerous… Try me.”
Bellatrix refolded it with calm precision, her movements almost tender, as if handling a precious, volatile object. She slid it into a hidden seam along the inside flap of the satchel, its new, more secure hiding place. One glove came off, then the other, both stored away, signaling the end of her formal facade. She pressed the note again to her chest, feeling its slight bulk against her heart, and closed her eyes, allowing herself a rare moment of unguarded truth.
A single tear – not of weakness, not of sorrow, but of an intense, almost painful focus, a recognition of a profound, unsettling truth – slid down her cheek, tracing a cold, solitary path. It was a tear of pure, unadulterated acceptance, a concession to the power Maris now held over her thoughts. She brushed it away with a practiced, almost dismissive gesture, leaving no lingering trace.
“You’re neither,” she whispered, the words a raw, private admission. Maris Thorne was not merely an enemy to be conquered, nor a lover to be possessed, nor a child to be dismissed. She was something else entirely, something unique and deeply unsettling, a catalyst, a mirror.
She folded the note and enveloped it against her heart, absorbing its defiance, its challenge, its disturbing truth.
She stepped out of the circle, her movements deliberate, heavy. Concluded the ritual for this night. Not with triumph, for there had been no victory here, no banishment. But with acceptance, a grim, unwavering acknowledgment of her new reality.
Her obsession had not been banished. It had found more shape, more definition, more dangerous contours. It had evolved.
She held Maris’s message against her heart and breathed it in like a spell, a dark enchantment binding her.
She had not severed the reflection. She had sharpened it, and in doing so, sharpened her own perception of herself.
Bellatrix knelt back within the chalk and ash circle, the floor's intricate pattern still whole, undisturbed but for the empty space where she’d stood, a ghost of her presence. Her bare fingers sank into the fine, cool chalk – a deliberate press, as though she sought to anchor herself, to ground her tumultuous thoughts. The dust yielded slightly beneath her touch, a yielding that mirrored her own internal shift.
Above the chalk labyrinth, the candlelight trembled, responding to unseen currents in the air, or perhaps, to the profound, residual magic of the failed ritual. The ritual had utterly failed to sever what entangled her – but it had, undeniably, drawn the threads tighter, weaving them into an intricate, unbreakable knot.
She reached into her satchel and withdrew Hermione’s note once more, her movements almost compulsive. She didn’t read it – she had memorized its tone, its defiant message, its every nuance fully. Instead, she eased it back into its new hiding place, the internal seam of the spell-locked book atop her desk. It was intact. Full of power. She would not erase it. That would break the momentum she’d created, the dangerous, thrilling game she now found herself inextricably part of. That would break purpose.
Ink, blood, emotion – the note was now a living artifact rather than a mere crumb of bait, a piece of Maris’s essence, compelling and dangerous.
Bellatrix rose and approached the mirror shard that sat on her desk, the fragment of ancient Slytherin heritage. She ran her gloved fingertip along the cracked edge, where moonlight, now filtering through the high windows, flickered with shimmering reflections. She inhaled slowly, noticing how the remaining candles in the room tipped slightly, their flames trembling with an unsettling clarity, as if they too sensed the shift in the magical atmosphere.
She held her gaze steady on the mirror’s surface – and for a moment, the reflection shimmered. Not her, not entirely. But Maris – silent, poised, half-shadowed, her green-gray eyes holding a depth that both fascinated and infuriated Bellatrix. It was a fleeting, intrusive image, a ghost of the morning’s unsettling vision.
She blinked. The shard stabilized, returning her own image. Her face stared back. But it wasn’t the same Bellatrix Black who had begun the ritual.
Her cheeks looked subtly hollowed, as if carved by an unseen hand. The fierce, almost predatory brilliance of her eyes had dulled, replaced by a colder, more reflective glint. The mask she wore – the sharp angles, the dark clarity of her features, the cruel, unyielding expression – had softened around the edges, a subtle blurring of her carefully constructed facade.
She lifted a gloved finger and touched her own reflection’s lip, feeling the cool glass. No trace of the tear she had shed remained on her physical face. No outward sign of cracking – but something whispered beneath the surface of the glass, something deeply unsettling: the spiral had begun. The reflection was infected.
Bellatrix’s breath caught, a sharp, involuntary intake of air.
“She’s getting in,” she thought quietly, the realization a cold dread. The connective strands, the invisible threads Maris had woven, were deeper than she’d ever thought possible, burrowing into her very psyche.
“And I let her.” It was the ultimate, bitter truth. She had allowed this. She had invited it, with her challenge, with her curiosity, with her relentless pursuit of this mysterious first-year.
The candle beside the mirror flickered violently – unexpected, abrupt, almost extinguished by an unseen force. Bellatrix gloved both hands instinctively and caught its flame, steadying it with a deliberate act of will. She stared down at the flame, her mind spinning with a complex mixture of intention and hesitation. The fire was hers to control.
She knelt again, settling into the familiar posture, and smoothly ran her gloves over the chalk lines, erasing imperfections, restoring order, but preserving the fundamental shape of the circle. The circle must remain whole – this was not confession; this was preparation. Each line, each deliberate movement, was a commitment to the game, not the end of it. The game had merely entered a new, more dangerous phase.
She tapped her snake ring twice against the mirror’s back – a soft jingle, a low, resonant sound that seemed to speak to ancient magic. That artifact remained silent, effective. Focused. A reminder of her immutable lineage.
Another candle guttered. A tiny wisp of smoke curled upwards, then a final flicker, then dark. The magic of her own making, of her own chamber, rebelling against her, sensing the shift within her.
She didn’t move to relight it. Instead, she swept her gaze across the ritual space: the remaining ash, the gloves folded neatly at the edge of the circle, her wand resting like a silent spear, waiting for its next command. The mirror shard, dark and pure, looking back, its truth undeniable.
She pushed herself upright in the center of the circle, her posture regaining its previous rigid control. Her hands hovered at her sides – steady, poised.
The chamber swallowed her steps as she exited the ring, crossing into the stilled darkness beyond its boundary, leaving the ritual space behind.
A final candle sputtered and died, its flame winking out. No sound. No warning. Just extinction.
Bellatrix paused at the threshold of her room.
The ritual circle was empty – yet she felt its resonance. She carried it in her heart, in her thoughts, in her recalibrated desires. The understanding she had gained was now a part of her, an undeniable, unsettling truth.
She turned and closed the heavy door behind her, the last candlelight gone, the chalk lines still visible to her inner eye, a ghost of the night’s failed endeavor.
But in the dark, nothing was truly erased. The game had merely begun.
Bellatrix’s ritual fight to sever her fascination falters entirely – Narcissa’s insight confirms Maris is no longer child nor enemy, but a mirror she cannot break. Bellatrix steps away into quiet, carrying both ritual and realization forward, knowing the entanglement has only deepened, and the gameboard is now truly set.
Notes:
Hey everyone! 👋 I hope this chapter makes up for the wait – it's officially over 10,000 words! 🎉 Get ready for some deep dives and intense moments.
Just a heads-up, I'm actually heading off to Hawaii this Friday! 🌴☀️ So, I'm not sure if I'll be able to post a new chapter next week, but I promise to make it up to you all as soon as I'm back. Thanks so much for your amazing patience and support! ❤️
Happy reading!
E.R.
Chapter Text
Scene 1: A Glimmer of the Unseen
POV: Hermione (as Maris Thorne)
The library’s south wing was a sanctuary she had claimed out of necessity, a quiet corner where she could pretend to be just a girl with her books and not a ghost with a mission. The towering arithmancy stacks smelled of old paper and dust, a scent of quiet neglect that Hermione found, ironically, comforting. The afternoon light, filtered through a high, arched window, cast pale golden lines across the polished floor, illuminating the silent, shifting particles of dust in the air. These tiny, glittering motes seemed to her like the countless suspicions of her House, suspended and waiting. She sat at a carrel, a heavy, leather-bound volume open on the scarred wood before her. Her heart, a frantic hummingbird trapped in her ribs, beat a silent tattoo against her composure. It had been days since Bellatrix had spoken to her, since that final, chilling declaration that Maris was “one of us.” The silence, she had learned, was a form of pressure. It was a held breath, waiting for her to break.
Her hands, resting on the open book, were steady. But her mind was a whirlwind of calculations, a frantic dance of risk assessment. The quiet of the library was a fragile thing, a temporary shield. She knew she was being watched, not by a single pair of eyes, but by the entire House. Her proximity to Bellatrix had made her a public figure, a piece on the board. The simple act of sitting here, alone with a book, as a performance. She had to appear diligent, intelligent, and completely self-cotained. She had to be Maris Thorne, the clever transfer student, and not Hermione Granger, the girl who had seen too much. The cognitive dissonance of her life was a constant, low-level thrum of pain, a dull ache in her joints from the sheer effort of keeping up the mask. She was a girl of the future, yet she was forced to stand apart from them, to watch them with a terrifying, future knowledge. The irony of it all was a cold, sharp blade to her soul. She was a girl of Gryffindor courage and Ravenclaw wit, trapped in a House that demanded she became a creature of cunning and ambition. And she was succeeding. That was the most terrifying part of all. The mask was fitting to well.
She had chosen her books with delicate care. The one before her was an obscure text on magical law, its dense pages a perfect excuse for her focused intensity. But her eyes weren’t truly reading. Instead, her mind was frantically replaying the runes and incantations of the spell that had brought her here. She felt the ghost of its magic humming in her memory, a dangerous, ancient power that she was desperate to understand. The “Guilded Spell,” a ritual of revealing buried truths, was the key to her past. It was also the key to her future. It was the reason she was here, and she had to figure out how to master it without letting the castle's old magic splinter her into dust. The incantation pulsed faintly in her thoughts, its syllables tasting of stone and silence. She had to learn its secrets, but every time her mind brushed against the spell, a faint tremor ran through her arm, a whisper of the raw power it contained.
A soft, almost imperceptible shift in the air caught her attention. It wasn't a sound, but a feeling—the drop in temperature, the prickle of awareness on her skin. The quiet of the library was so complete that the distant drip of water in the dungeons below seemed as loud as a hammer blow. She didn't look up, but her hand, which had been resting on the desk, slid slowly to her side, fingers grazing the subtle ridge of her wand beneath her robes. She knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the bone, that the silence in the stacks had just ended. She had not heard footsteps, but she had felt the arrival. Bellatrix Black.
Bellatrix didn't announce her presence. She simply was. She moved from the shadows of a far aisle, her robes a whisper of black on polished stone. Her face, a flawless mask of cold indifference, was turned toward Hermione, but her eyes, those sharp, obsidian voids, were fixed on the book on the table. She came to a stop just a few feet away, her posture a study in effortless, casual dominance. Her presence was so potent that the very dust motes in the sunbeams seemed to still.
"I found your message," Bellatrix said, her voice a low murmur that seemed to settle into the air like fine dust. "An interesting location for it."
Hermione looked up slowly, her expression as blank as a new sheet of parchment. "A library is for messages, is it not?"
Bellatrix's lips curved, a sliver of a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Not this kind. This kind is for those who search. Those who want more than simple answers." She glided forward, her shadow falling over the book on the table, obscuring the title. "An invitation to violence. Or to a dance?" Her gloved hand reached out and settled on the book's cover, her fingers tracing the title with a slow, possessive gesture. The weight of her presence, both physical and magical, pressed down on Hermione, a pressure that was both a test and a claim. "So, you're looking for a duel, are you? In a library. How very clever of you. You like to choose the playing field, don't you, Maris Thorne?
Hermione's heart hammered against her ribs, but her face remained a careful sculpture of calm. Bellatrix had read the subtext of her message with unnerving precision. She didn't want a duel. She wanted to be seen, to be heard, to have her message understood. And Bellatrix understood it perfectly.
"I like to fight on my own terms," Hermione said, her voice as flat as stone. "You should appreciate that."
"I do," Bellatrix said, her gaze fixed on Hermione's face, searching. "I appreciate it immensely." She leaned in, her voice dropping to a near-whisper. 'You see, Maris,' Bellatrix murmured, her voice a low purr against Hermione's ear, 'I'm not here to test you. Not anymore. I'm here to claim you. And you already know you are mine.'
Hermione's entire body went rigid. The breath caught in her throat. The words were a physical blow, more potent than any hex.
"I don't belong to anyone," she whispered, the defiant words a ghost of her former self.
Bellatrix’s half-smile deepened. "Of course not. But you’re a rare thing, Maris. A rare, dangerous, and very interesting thing. And rare things are meant to be kept." Her hand remained on the book, a silent declaration of ownership. "Like certain arcane secrets, for example. I've heard you've taken a particular interest in some rather obscure branches of magic. The Guilded Spell, perhaps? A very dangerous, very old piece of magic. It requires a certain... disposition to even attempt. I wonder what you hope to find with it."
Hermione’s blood ran cold. The Guilded Spell. How could she possibly know? It was a secret she had barely dared to write down. Bellatrix's words were not a guess; they were a fact. Bellatrix wasn't just observing her; she was somehow gaining access to her deepest, most guarded thoughts. The realization was a wave of pure, unadulterated terror. Her carefully constructed facade of Maris Thorne felt like a house of cards in a hurricane. She thought of Andromeda’s warning— Be careful how you look back. Bellatrix wasn't looking back; she was somehow looking in.
"You speak in riddles," Hermione said, her voice a forced imitation of indifference.
Bellatrix laughed softly, a low, unsettling sound. "And you, Maris Thorne, are a riddle I find myself entirely compelled to solve." She finally moved, pulling the book from the table with a slow, deliberate movement. Her shadow, which had been a shroud over Hermione, now seemed to stretch and contort, a dark, possessive veil. She didn't touch Hermione, but her presence was a physical claim. She was circling, a predator surveying her newly acquired prize.
"You're not a project," Bellatrix said, her voice dripping with a chilling sincerity. "Projects are predictable. Projects are built. You... you are something else entirely. You are a variable. A rare, unique variable. And I... I will protect you. I will teach you. I will keep you safe from those who would not appreciate your uniqueness." Her gaze was intense, a hungry fire in the depths of her eyes. "You see, there are many who would see you as a threat. Many who would see you as a challenge. Many who would try to break you. But I... I see you as a gift. A gift that I will keep. A gift that is mine to keep."
Hermione's mind was racing. Bellatrix's words were not a threat, they were a promise. A promise of a dark, possessive mentorship that would consume her entirely. She was no longer just a ghost in the past; she was a a possession. A rare, valuable object that Bellatrix had claimed for herself. And the thought of what that meant, of what she would have to do, what she would have to become, to survive this, was a new, terrifying reality. The silence, she realized, had not been a test of her patience, but of her worth. Bellatrix had been waiting, circling, gathering information, not to break her, but to confirm her value.
As if on cue, the silence in the library was shattered. Loud, booming voices echoed from the main entrance, a cacophony of laughter and boisterous shouts. The Marauders. Hermione's blood ran cold. She knew those voices. They were like a distant, beloved song that had been silenced for years, and now played in a time and place where it didn't belong.
Scene 2: The Vow in Public
POV: Neutral Third (leaning into Bellatrix’s Perceptions)
The library doors groaned open, and the world shifted. The quiet tension between Bellatrix and Maris was obliterated by a tidal wave of Gryffindor noise and chaos. The Marauders—James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew—stormed into the aisle, their robes a bright, chaotic splash of Gryffindor red and gold against the quiet dignity of the Slytherin dungeon. Their laughter, loud and unapologetic, echoed off the high, vaulted ceilings, a jarring intrusion into the hushed atmosphere. They moved with the reckless abandon of boys who had never known true fear, jostling each other as they searched for a place to study, their carefree, youthful energy a jarring intrusion into the hushed, calculated atmosphere. They were a vivid, jarring burst of life in a place that reveled in shadows and muted tones.
"Sirius, you're the one who said the library was a good place to hide from Snape!" James's voice was loud and full of a misplaced confidence that only he could possess, his face alight with a boyish, reckless grin. His hand was on Sirius’s shoulder, a gesture of easy camaraderie that Bellatrix despised.
"And you're the one who thought he'd be looking for us in the Potions storeroom!" Sirius shot back, his own grin wide and carefree, his dark eyes dancing with mischief. His laughter, a sound Bellatrix had once found so infuriatingly familiar, now tasted of betrayal. He was supposed to be hers, a true Black, a pillar of their house, and instead, he was this, a fool cavorting with blood traitors and half-breeds.
Their laughter died as their eyes fell on Bellatrix. And on Maris. The change in the room was immediate, like a needle scratching across a record. The air, which had been vibrant with their energy, went still and cold. Their playful bravado evaporated, replaced by a cautious, almost instinctive hostility.
Sirius's smile vanished entirely. His face, a mirror of Bellatrix's own in a different, more defiant light, hardened into a cold mask of animosity. The familial resemblance, Bellatrix noted with a twist of bile in her stomach, was still painfully clear in the sharpness of his jaw and the arrogant set of his shoulders. He took a step forward, his eyes flicking between the two girls, his gaze lingering on Maris for a moment, a flash of appraisal in his eyes that Bellatrix read instantly as a challenge. He didn’t see a person; he saw a curiosity, a new object of Bellatrix's cruelty. His grin, a cynical twist, returned.
"Well, well, if it isn't my favorite cousin," he said, his voice laced with a bitter sarcasm that grated on Bellatrix's nerves. "And she's found a new pet. How charming. Trying to train them to sit on command now, Bella?" The words were a direct assault, not just on Bellatrix, but on everything she represented. He was mocking her, using her own pure-blood rhetoric against her.
Bellatrix's face, which had been a study in serene indifference just moments before, twisted into a snarl. Her eyes, filled with a sudden, all-consuming fury, bore into Sirius. She hated him more than anyone on earth, this boy who had abandoned their pure-blood legacy, their family, their very name, for a group of blood traitors and mudbloods. His rebellion was a personal betrayal, a wound she carried like a scar. Her possessiveness over Maris was now a weapon she could wield against him, a way to prove that she was still the one in control, still the true heir to their dark heritage.
"Stay out of this, little dog," she hissed, her voice low and dangerous, each word a physical blow. "This is none of your concern." Her hand, which had been resting on the table, now clenched into a fist, her nails digging into her palm through the fine leather of her glove.
James, who had been watching the exchange with a bewildered expression, stepped forward. He didn't understand the complex, poisonous dynamic between the two cousins, but he saw Bellatrix’s sneering face and a terrified-looking first year. "Hey, leave her alone, Bellatrix. She's a first-year." He was a boy of simple, direct chivalry, a quality that Bellatrix found both infuriating and pathetic. He was the kind of boy who would rush in to save a girl from a bully, a gesture she found weak and foolish.
Bellatrix didn't even look at him. Her gaze remained locked on Sirius, and her voice dropped to a terrifying whisper. "You have no right to speak to me, blood traitor. You forfeited that right when you turned your back on our name." The words were an invocation of a past that Maris, a girl from another time, could not possibly understand. It was a verbal duel fought with the ghosts of their family's history, a battle for the soul of the Black name.
"And you have no right to speak to a girl like that," Sirius shot back, his own eyes burning with a righteous fury. "She's not yours to order around." His hand was now on his wand, a subtle, defiant gesture that Bellatrix read instantly as a threat.
"Isn't she?" Bellatrix's voice was a silky, dangerous thread. "You're all the same, aren't you? So quick to claim what you don't understand, what you don't deserve." She took a step toward Sirius, her body radiating a palpable heat, a dark, tangible fury that was a physical thing in the quiet library. The students around them, the few who were still there, instinctively shrank back, their own faces pale with fear. "This girl... this girl has more fire in her than you ever will. She's not a toy, she's a weapon. And she's mine." The words were a public, brutal declaration of ownership, a brand seared onto Hermione in front of all of them.
Hermione's heart stopped. Bellatrix's words were a public, brutal declaration of ownership, a brand seared onto her in front of all of them. She was no longer just a secret. She was a pawn in a larger game, a public symbol of Bellatrix's power and defiance. The weight of it all was a physical thing, a crushing pressure on her chest that made it difficult to breathe. She was a ghost in the past, a ghost in the present, a ghost in a war that was not her own. The irony of it all was a cold, sharp blade to her soul. She was a girl who had come back in time to stop this war, and she was now an active, unwilling participant in it.
Sirius's face went white. He opened his mouth to retort, but Remus, ever the voice of reason, placed a hand on his arm. "Sirius, don't," he murmured, his eyes flicking from Bellatrix's terrifying rage to Hermione's composed, yet brittle, facade. "It's not worth it." Remus was the only one in the room who seemed to understand the true nature of the battle. He saw the cold calculation in Bellatrix's eyes, the terrifying, possessive fire that burned beneath the surface. He saw the stillness in Maris Thorne's face, a stillness that was far too old for a first-year. He knew this was a game he didn't want his friends to play.
Sirius didn't listen. His gaze, full of a cold fury, remained locked on Bellatrix's face. "You disgust me," he said, the words a quiet promise of a future conflict. "And everything you stand for." He was not just speaking for himself. He was speaking for all of them, for the world he had chosen over his own blood.
Bellatrix's lips curled into a smile that was all teeth. "And you, dear cousin, are a pathetic, worthless coward. You'll regret the day you chose them over me." The words were not a threat; they were a prophecy, a dark and terrible promise of a future that she would one day make a reality.
The standoff was over. The Marauders, sensing the danger, backed away, their laughter and bravado replaced with a grim silence. They retreated, their youthful light a fading memory in the shadowy depths of the Slytherin dungeon. As they left, Hermione saw Sirius's eyes on her. For a moment, their gazes locked. She saw the confusion, the pity, the raw understanding in his eyes. He didn't see Maris Thorne, the polished, aloof first-year. He saw a girl who was in over her head, a girl who was caught in a war she hadn't started.
The Marauders vanished around the corner, leaving the library in a strained, unnatural silence. Bellatrix's fury, which had been a raging storm just moments before, subsided, leaving behind a chilling calm. Bellatrix's gaze, a slow and predatory sweep of the quiet room, finally settled on Hermione. Her lips curved into a triumphant half-smile. "See?" she said, her voice a low murmur, dripping with satisfaction. "Now everyone knows. You belong to me."
Hermione didn't respond. The words were a weight on her shoulders, a chain forged in public. She was no longer just a secret. She was a brand. The students who had been watching, now a small, hushed audience, stared at her with a mix of awe and fear. They had just witnessed a public, brutal declaration of ownership, a vow of possession that was more binding than any magical contract. She was no longer a ghost; she was a piece on the board, a pawn in a game that was bigger than her mission. And she had just been claimed by the most dangerous player of all.
Scene 3: The Aftermath is a Promise
POV: Hermione (as Maris Thorne)
The library doors, which had groaned open with the clamor of the Marauders, now shut with a heavy, final thud that seemed to swallow the last echoes of their laughter. The air, which had been a vibrant, hostile chaos just moments before, now settled into a strained, unnatural silence. Hermione sat perfectly still at the carrel, her hands flat on the scarred wood, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs. Bellatrix stood before her, a dark shadow in the pale, afternoon light. The fury that had consumed her in the confrontation with Sirius had subsided, leaving behind a chilling, triumphant calm.
Hermione was no longer a ghost in this past. She was a public figure, a piece on the board. The confrontation had been a brutal, calculated move, a public declaration of ownership that had been witnessed by the Marauders and by the few other students who had been in the library. She was now a brand, a symbol of Bellatrix’s power and defiance. The weight of it all was a physical thing, a crushing pressure on her chest that made it difficult to breathe. She was a girl who had come back in time to stop a war, and she was now an active, unwilling participant in it, a pawn in a game that was older than she was. The sheer irony of her situation was a cold, sharp blade to her soul. She had sought to save a world, and instead, she had become a commodity in its earliest, most venomous conflict. Her mind, a fortress of logic and planning, was now a prison, replaying Bellatrix's words over and over, each phrase a new, invisible chain.
Bellatrix’s gaze, a slow and predatory sweep of the quiet room, finally settled on Hermione. Her lips curved into a triumphant half-smile, a sliver of a grin that didn't reach her eyes. The fire of her rage was gone, replaced by the glacial ice of victory. "See?" she said, her voice a low murmur, dripping with satisfaction. "Now everyone knows. You belong to me." The words were a weight on Hermione's shoulders, a chain forged in public. She was no longer just a secret; she was a brand. The students who had been watching, now a small, hushed audience, stared at her with a mix of awe and fear. They had just witnessed a public, brutal declaration of ownership, a vow of possession that was more binding than any magical contract. She was no longer a ghost; she was a piece on the board, a pawn in a game that was bigger than her mission. And she had just been claimed by the most dangerous player of all.
Hours later, long after the curfew had sounded and the castle had settled into its midnight slumber, Hermione sat by the fire in the Slytherin common room. She was alone. The other students were in their beds, their breathing a soft, rhythmic hum in the quiet darkness. But she couldn't sleep. The words from the day's confrontation echoed in her mind, a relentless, painful refrain.
You belong to me.
The public declaration had been a brutal, calculated move. Bellatrix hadn't just claimed her. She had used her as a weapon against her own blood. She had made her a pawn in a game that was older than she was, a game that had been going on since before she was born. And Hermione, the girl who had come back in time to stop this war, was now an active, unwilling participant in it.
She felt a sense of profound isolation, a deeper kind of loneliness than she had ever known. She had no one. Her friends, her family, her very past—they were all a world away, a future that may never come to pass. She was alone, in a house of future monsters, with a girl who was both her protector and her captor.
A soft sound in the darkness made her look up. Bellatrix was standing there, a shadow in the green light of the fire. She didn't approach, but her presence was a physical thing, a weight on the air.
"You're still awake," Bellatrix said, her voice a low murmur.
Hermione didn't respond. She had nothing left to say.
Bellatrix stepped forward, her movements a fluid, graceful dance of a predator. She came to a stop in front of Hermione, her face a study in a cold, analytical satisfaction.
"You performed well today," she said, her voice soft, almost approving. "You didn't flinch. You didn't run. You held your ground."
Hermione's throat tightened. Bellatrix wasn't mad at her. She was pleased. This whole thing, the confrontation with Sirius, the public declaration—it had all been a test. And Hermione had passed.
"I don't know what you want from me," Hermione whispered.
Bellatrix's smile was a flicker in the darkness. "You'll learn," she said. She knelt, her face coming to the same level as Hermione's, her eyes filled with a terrifying, hungry intelligence. "You're a rarity, Maris Thorne. You have a fire in you that most people don't. A power that they can only dream of. And I... I want to see what you can do with it."
She reached out and, with a slow, deliberate movement, placed her hand on Hermione's cheek. It wasn't a comforting touch; it was a brand.
"This is not a game, Maris," Bellatrix said, her voice a promise and a threat. "This is a vow. A vow that I will protect you from those who would harm you. A vow that I will guide you. And a vow that you... are mine."
Hermione's eyes widened. The words were a final, terrifying truth. The game was over. She was not a player. She was a piece. And the board had just been set.
Bellatrix rose, her shadow falling over Hermione like a shroud. She stood there for a moment, watching, then turned and walked away, her steps echoing in the quiet darkness of the common room.
Hermione was left alone, a girl with a new name, a new identity, and a new, terrifying master. She was a girl who had come back in time to save a world that was already burning. But she was not in control. She was an echo, a memory, a ghost in a machine. And the unspoken vow had just sealed her fate.
Scene 4: The Unseen Battle
POV: Bellatrix Black
The common room’s velvet and stone felt like a cage after the exhilaration of the library. Bellatrix had walked out, leaving the girl to her quiet dread, and found herself on the long, winding path to her own private sanctum in the Slytherin dungeons. The anger still thrummed in her veins, a low, vibrant hum of satisfaction. The confrontation with Sirius had not been an attack; it had been a declaration. A public reminder to her cousin, and to the entire House, that there were lines he could not cross, and that she was the one who drew them. The victory was not in the words she had spoken, but in the silence that had followed. She had taken a piece from him without a duel, a subtle and powerful act of dominance, and she had done it all in front of an audience that would remember her command long after they had forgotten his defiance.
She arrived at her chamber, the air within still smelling faintly of jasmine and old parchment, a scent that now seemed tainted by the ghost of Maris Thorne. The chamber was her fortress, a place where she could shed the masks she wore and tend to the dark, intricate machinery of her ambition. She moved with a purpose that was both methodical and fueled by a raw, unyielding energy. Her gloves came off, one by one, each finger a slow, deliberate act of removing the mask she wore for the world. The gloves were a ritual—the final layer of her polite, pure-blood façade. Her wand, the obsidian core humming with her recent fury, was placed on a mirrored rack beside a dozen others, each one a different tool for a different kind of violence. She sank onto the edge of her bed, the green velvet cool against her back, and let the chaos of her mind settle. The low thrum of the dungeons and the distant drip of water in the pipes were her only companions, a rhythm of coldness and decay that she found, ironically, soothing.
You're a pathetic, worthless coward. You'll regret the day you chose them over me. The words still echoed in her mind, a cold, satisfying refrain. But beneath the satisfaction was a deeper, more unsettling truth. The anger, she realized, hadn't been about Sirius alone. It had been about Maris. Her cousin's insolence had been a direct challenge to her claim. He had seen the girl, had recognized her as an outsider, and had dared to interfere. Bellatrix's fury had not been a defense of her honor, but a defense of her property. It was a dark, possessive fire that she hadn't known existed until that moment, a fire she now recognized as an essential part of her own dark design. Maris was a secret she had meant to keep hidden, a variable to be studied in private. Sirius's intrusion had forced her hand, but it had also, in a way, clarified her purpose.
She rose and walked to her desk, the heavy, spell-locked book of Infernal Strategies still lying open. She had left it that way, a silent, half-breathed vow of her own, an open invitation to herself to continue the game. Her gaze, cold and analytical, fell on Maris’s note, the audacious challenge she had tucked inside. If you want something dangerous... Try me. The words, which had once been a flicker of curiosity, now felt like a binding contract. The girl had dared her, had challenged her to a game of power and cunning, and Bellatrix, in her confrontation with Sirius, had just upped the ante. She had made the game public. She had made it a war. The girl's defiance was no longer just a puzzle; it was a promise.
Bellatrix closed the book with a slow, deliberate thud, the sound echoing in the silent chamber. Her rage was gone. It had been replaced by a cold, surgical calm. She was no longer just observing Maris Thorne. She was analyzing her. She was dissecting her every move, her every word, her every quiet moment. She was a puzzle, a complex, frustrating, and utterly compelling puzzle. Bellatrix had to solve her. She had to understand the source of her stillness, the reason for her defiance, the depth of her power. She had to know what was behind the mask, what was behind the eyes that looked at her with a terrifying, unflinching recognition. The kind of recognition that had made her say "Good girl" after Maris had stood her ground. That one phrase, so soft, so out of character, now haunted Bellatrix more than any hex.
She moved to the tall, narrow window that overlooked the Black Lake, its surface now a silent, ink-black mirror reflecting the nascent moonlight. She saw her own reflection, stark and unyielding. The sharp angles of her face, the dark, piercing eyes, the cruel, precise set of her mouth. This was the face she presented to the world. The face of Bellatrix Black. But in the depths of the reflection, a new, unsettling image shimmered. The image of Maris Thorne, a girl who looked at her with a terrifying, hungry intelligence, a girl who, in her silence and stillness, was beginning to reflect a part of Bellatrix she didn't want to see. The girl was a mirror, a tilted, warped, and dangerous mirror, and Bellatrix, in her attempt to possess her, had just given her a front-row seat to her own soul. The girl was not just a threat to her; she was a threat to her entire understanding of herself.
Bellatrix's throat tightened. The girl was not a toy. She was not a project. She was a threat. A threat to Bellatrix's carefully constructed world, to her power, to her very sense of self. She could not, would not, allow her to go unchecked. She had to break her. Or, more terrifyingly, she had to become her. She had to absorb her, to understand her, to make her a part of herself. The thought was a cold, sharp blade to her soul. She would do whatever it took. She would win. She would always win.
She turned from the window and walked back to the center of the room. She stood there for a moment, her hands at her sides, her posture a testament to a dark, unyielding resolve. She was not just Bellatrix Black, the seventh-year Slytherin. She was Bellatrix Black, the heir to a dark legacy, the girl who had been chosen by a darkness she hadn't yet named. She was a predator, a queen, a weapon. And she had just found her new favorite toy. The game had just begun.
Notes:
Hello everyone, I am back after being away for a while. Here's chapter 6, and I hope you enjoy it. I might post chapter 7 by tomorrow or Saturday. Hope you enjoy this chapter.
E.R.
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