Unofficial Portkey Archive

Disclaimer: I own nothing of the Harry Potter universe, and I make absolutely no money writing this stuff about it.

A/N: Here we go… In this chapter, we discover a bit about Ron and Hermione's magical 'specialties,' though it may not be exactly what you'd expect… ^_^ I know, I know… but I can't make it like every other fic out there, now can I? This chappie is a bit shorter than I usually post, (about 4600 words,) but it's a surprising one, nonetheless! R & R & Enjoy!

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Chapter 28: Death of a Portrait

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There's so many people dying,
you complain about your situation.
What about me?
Half the world wouldn't know what its like to lose your seed.
Maybe you can understand,
I cannot reach that soul.
You're probably watching over us,
know that i think of you.

It's killing me.

Excerpt from the song 'Speculum' by the band Adema.

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It was mid-afternoon when Hermione finally awoke, stirred from her sleep by the sound of coarse whining echoing around her. Her eyes immediately landed on Harry, who was still securely bound to the bed by a plethora of conjured ropes. He was wide-awake and glaring at her, soundlessly mouthing what appeared to be obscenities at her. Only then did she vaguely recall having been woken by a steady stream of hateful obscenities when he recovered from Snape's stunning spell during the night. Without fully waking, she had cast a silencing spell on him and immediately dropped back to sleep.

Only after she assured herself that he was still tightly bound did Hermione notice what she first thought to be a pile of dirty, gray rags on the floor next to his bed. She didn't know why she was surprised to discover that the pile of rags was actually Kotone, who was sleeping on the floor near Harry's bed. The half-witch was laying on her side and facing away from Hermione, curled up in a ball, with her legs and tail occasionally twitching as she whimpered in her sleep, obviously distressed by whatever dream she was having. Hermione saw that her transfiguration of the girl's clothes had finally wore off, as Kotone was once again wearing the dirty, threadbare nightgown that she had on when Harry carried her from the orphanage two days before.

Hermione swung her legs off the side of her bed tiredly and slowly sat up. She swayed slightly as she righted herself, still feeling the fatigue from the day before. She picked up her wand and pointed it at Kotone, but then lowered it. A silencing spell was simple enough, but she wasn't sure she had regained enough strength for a decent transfiguration. She didn't think she wanted to see a naked half-demon so soon after waking up.

Hermione rose from the bed and approached Harry, sadly looking down at him. Even though she knew she wasn't in love with him anymore, she still cared deeply about him, so it was painful to see the hateful glare he was giving her. She nervously worried her lower lip, and then winced in pain as her teeth met the split in her lip caused by the disarming hex that Harry had hit her with earlier. She lifted her fingers to her mouth and carefully felt along her swollen lip to see how badly it was split, then noticed the smile that crept across Harry's face.

Her breath hitched as she spun away from him, not wanting to see the pleasure that her pain was giving him. She reached down and carefully lifted the fitfully sleeping Kotone from the floor and laid her gently on the bed that she had just risen from. The half-witch let out a soulful whine, kicked her leg a few times, and then settled deeply into the blankets. Giving one last, sideways glance at Harry, she turned and left the room, seeking out the nearest bathroom for a desperately needed bath.

After a long, hot bath, she stepped back into the hallway and saw Kotone's trunk on the floor, which was still open with her robes and things still strewn about. She began gathering the various items, and when she picked up one of the girl's folded robes, she felt something firm wrapped within it. She carefully unfolded the cloth and found the white porcelain mask that she saw Kotone wearing when she was at St. Mungo's. Hermione wrapped it back in the robe and placed it in the trunk.

She then retrieved a tattered brown teddy bear from the floor. She glanced at the bear's smiling face as she began brushing off the dirt and lint that clung to its ratty fur. As her hand was sweeping the toy, she recalled Harry's statement about him dreaming that he was hugging a large, brown teddy bear while he was napping in the cupboard back at Privet Drive. Her mouth curled into a knowing smile, as she guessed that she was probably the reason for that dream.

The smile that came to her so easily vanished as quickly as it appeared when her eyes wandered to the closed door behind which Harry was now confined. With a sigh, she turned to place the stuffed bear into Kotone's trunk, but suddenly threw it down in fright and stepped back when she saw that the bear wore a sad frown instead of the cheery smile it had a moment before.

She stared at the unmoving toy for several long moments before she quickly scooped it from the floor and hastily dropped it in the trunk. She looked again at its face and saw the same sad frown. A nervous laugh escaped her as she assumed that she was imagining the smile that she had seen before and continued picking up Kotone's things.

When she had finished gathering the rest of the items, a thought occurred to her. She reached back in the trunk, withdrew the mask from within the folded robe and carried it down to the second floor, leaving it on the reading table in the library.

After returning to the third floor and stowing Kotone's trunk in a bedroom, Hermione decided to go to the kitchen for some breakfast. On her way, she discovered Luna hovering over Ron, who was still resting on the sofa in the sitting room.

Luna realized that she couldn't leave the house due to the aurors that they could see milling about the street. She flooed her father, which was apparently only open for communication and not for travel, and explained as much of the situation as she could without revealing too much to him. He understood, and told her not to worry about him, after all, he took care of himself all the while she was at school. He did mention, however, the report in that morning's Daily Prophet about the Ministry's capture of over a dozen Dark Wizards in a run-down section of muggle London. Apparently, only one of the captured wizards bore the Dark Mark, suggesting that they were either new recruits or they were purposely left unmarked.

After squaring things with her father, Luna spent the day cooking for and looking after Ron, all the while repeatedly and profusely apologizing to both him and Hermione for falling asleep while she was supposed to be watching Harry and Kotone.

Hermione spent the rest of the day in the library pouring over Kotone's books, stopping occasionally to try one of the methods listed in the book to determine one's magical school. She paid particular attention to the second book that belonged to Kotone's mother. She tried to find the spell that the little girl had attempted, but it didn't seem to be listed amongst the typical spells that Priestesses use. Kotone seemed to be convinced that the spell would have helped Harry if it had worked.

As she delved deeper into the various exercises prescribed in the book, she had assumed that, if anything, she would likely be an Enchantress, thinking that she seemed to excel at casting charms, but many of the 'tests' showed that she could be in the Conjuror class of witches, indicating that her strengths in Transfiguration were equally as powerful. There were a few schools that she didn't bother testing herself on at all, among them were the Abjuror, Necromancer, and Diviner, fully convinced that those fields were totally unsuited to her, or to anyone, for that matter.

Every few hours Hermione would leave the library to check on Harry to make sure he was secure, and to check on Ron to make sure he was comfortable. Kotone spent her time either sitting on the floor beside Harry's bed staring blankly at him, or exploring the unfamiliar house, presumably looking for something to eat because she appeared to have no interest whatsoever in any of the food that Luna had prepared. Hermione was concerned for the little half-witch, who hadn't uttered a word since she awoke earlier in the afternoon.

On one of her breaks, she passed the sitting room, where Ron and Luna were enjoying a few bottles of butterbeer while engaged in a heated game of wizard's chess. She watched the game for a few minutes, amazed at how Ron systematically demolished Luna's pieces. After a series of moves in which Ron looked as though he were barely paying attention, he directed one of his knights to move, where it rather brutally lanced one of Luna's cowering pawns. He brushed his hands together and triumphantly cried, "Checkmate!"

Luna stared at the board with her jaw hanging open. After a few moments, she sighed and said, "I really don't know how you do it, Ronald. Nobody's beaten me in many, many years, and here you beat me five times in a row."

The grin on Ron's face fell at her words and he worriedly asked, "You aren't sore at me, are you?"

"No, of course not. It's just that my father taught me to play when I was little, and he's a grandmaster at this game," she shook her head and added, "I could see you beating me once or twice, but five times? In a row?"

"Well, I guess I'm just lucky, I suppose," he said in a subdued voice as he reset the chess pieces, "I mean, I've never lost a game, you know…"

Hermione rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, come on, Ron, stop exaggerating! You must have lost at least one game. I mean, you had to have learned the game from someone, so you must have lost against whoever was teaching you."

"Well, of course I learned from someone!" he retorted defensively, "My brother Charlie taught me when I was five, and I'm serious! I've never lost a game in my life, even when I was learning!"

"Wait, wait, wait…" said Hermione while rubbing her temple, "You started playing wizard's chess at five?"

Ron nodded.

"And you're seventeen now…"

Again, Ron nodded, but with a slightly amused expression.

"So you're telling me that in about twelve years of playing wizard's chess, you have never lost even one game?"

Ron thought carefully for a few moments before he slowly nodded again and said with a grin, "That's exactly what I'm telling you, I've never lost a game."

Hermione looked at Ron skeptically and asked, "What strategy do you usually use? How many moves ahead do you plan out?"

Ron's grin faded as he shook his head and simply said, "I don't… I just, um, know where to move, I guess."

She furrowed her brow in thought, and then turned to Luna, "Before tonight, when was the last game you've lost?"

Luna concentrated for a moment then said, "I think I was nine… that was the last time my father managed to beat me, but I must have been distracted by a humming horkfly at the time, you know how they…"

"Right…" interrupted Hermione before she bossily commanded, "Play again," pointing to the chessboard while planting herself on the sofa next to Ron.

Ron shrugged and watched as Luna, who had the white pieces, made her first move. Hermione sat beside Ron, doing her best to distract him as he played by asking him a rapid series of mundane questions, trying to keep his eyes and mind from the board as much as possible. In less than thirteen minutes she saw Luna's king dejectedly throw his crown at the base of Ron's rook that had mated him.

Hermione jumped up from the sofa and, without a word, disappeared out of the room and up the stairs. She returned a minute later with Kotone's book in her arms and laid it on the small table next to the chessboard. She then drew her wand and extinguished the lamps around the room except for a single ever-lit candle in a holder on the mantle. She placed the candle on the table in front of Ron, opened the book and began to quickly leaf through the pages.

Ron and Luna shared curious glances, but remained quiet as Hermione found the page she was looking for. She read a few lines, and then looked up at Ron.

"This is going to sound crazy, but I want to try a test on you."

When Ron nodded, she continued, "I want you to face the candle, Touch the tip of your wand to your forehead, close your eyes, relax as much as you can and tell me what you see."

Immediately, Ron said, "Blackness."

With an exasperated sigh, she said, "Come on, Ron! I'm serious. You must see a bit of the candlelight through your lids, don't you?"

With a shrug, Ron said, "Well, yes… a bit I guess… Maybe if you give me a hint to what I should be looking for?"

"Just give it a little time, relax and focus," said Hermione in a calm voice, "Just keep your eyes lightly closed and tell me if you see anything, like a mist, or smoke or maybe lights or patterns… anything that you can describe."

"I'm trying, but nothing's happening!"

"No, don't try…" whispered Hermione, "just let it happen. Don't concentrate on anything yet… just relax and let it happen."

Ron was silent for a few minutes before he spoke, "I see spots. Small and round… swirling around… no pattern, really."

"Good," whispered Hermione, "Are they moving quickly or slowly?"

"Slowly… all the same size…"

"Ok, now choose one of the spots and concentrate on it… try to see if it's moving in any sort of a pattern."

Twenty more minutes passed before he spoke again, "It's growing, bigger than all the others, like it's pushing them out of the… wow…"

Hermione frowned slightly as she leaned in closer to him while whispering, "What happened? What do you see?"

Ron's voice took on an odd quality as he spoke, "I see Kotone inside the spot… It's vague… she's crying… blood…"

Hermione's frown deepened for a moment, and then her face became neutral as she abruptly stood and noisily slammed the book closed, causing both Ron and Luna to start.

"Rubbish… It's all rubbish… all she does is cry and bleed!" said Hermione waspishly as she waved her wand around the room relighting the lamps. She then picked up Kotone's book and started for the door while muttering darkly under her breath.

Before Hermione made it to the door, a streak of black fur scuttled over her right foot, causing her to let out a startled squeal as she jumped back away from the rodent. Hot on the rat's tail was Kotone, down on all fours, with her wild, white hair bouncing around her shoulders and her violet eyes narrowed and fixed on her terrified prey. As the rat scampered under the table and disappeared beneath the sofa, both Ron and Luna stood quickly, bumping against the table, causing one of the butterbeer bottles to fall and shatter on the hard wooden floor.

Unable to stop, Kotone skidded on the slick, varnished wood and crashed into the sofa, falling heavily onto the floor just where the bottle had broken. The little girl let out a pained cry as she lifted her bloodied hand and cradled it to her chest.

As Luna and Hermione rushed to the little girl's aid, Ron just stood and stared down at Kotone with a shocked expression. He pointed down at the injured girl and choked out, "There! That's what I saw! It's like déjà vu or something!"

Hermione froze in place. She slowly laid the book down on the table and shook her head as her frown returned, "Ron, what was your OWL grade in Divination?"

"I failed it, of course… Got a P, both practical and theory," Ron replied, looking a little put out, but then added defensively, "but so did Harry, you know."

"Well, maybe if you actually tried to do the work that you were assigned instead of ignoring the exercises and making up all of your answers, you would have got a better grade!"

"What's this about, Hermione?" prodded Ron, who had the idea that Hermione was trying to hide something from him, "We're not even taking that class anymore, and besides, since when did you care about Divination? You walked out of that class… You never believed a word of it… you always called it 'wooly.'"

Hermione was silent as she tended to the cut on Kotone's hand, but by the look on her face they could tell that something was greatly disturbing her. Fortunately, Kotone's cut wasn't very deep, so it was easily healed. As soon as Hermione was finished, she let out a noisy breath, and then took the seat next to Ron. Kotone, abandoning her hunt for the rat, quietly left the room.

After Kotone disappeared up the stairs, Hermione lifted the book again as she spoke, "That test I had you do is supposed to help to determine what kind of wizard you are, depending on what you see. The most that the majority of wizards would see would be a swirling smoke with no discernable pattern. Different specialized classes of wizards would see different things. When I tried it myself, I saw the smoke at first, but I could also see patterns forming within it. Although it's not conclusive, the test seems to indicate that I'm a Conjuror-class witch, but I'm going to have to research the magic classes and do a few more of the exercises to be sure."

"So then, this test says I'm some kind of Seer?" asked Ron with a touch of mirth in his voice. He couldn't imagine himself dressed as Trelawney, with layers of chains, bangles and beads, sitting in an incense-choked room and spouting on about 'The Inner Eye' while predicting everyone's death.

"Swirling spots with no discernable pattern… a Diviner, actually, and it's not quite what you think. It doesn't mean that you're some sort of side-show fortune teller, it just means that you're more 'in tune' with certain types of magic that deal with certain aspects of the mind. That's probably why you play chess so well, you may subconsciously foresee the result of the game before you even start!"

Despite Ron's disbelieving looks, Hermione went on to explain about the book's contents and what she was learning. She read from the book the list of different 'schools' of wizardry and the various types of magic. Luna seemed unusually focused as Hermione spoke, but Ron found his attention drifting more often than not.

Just as she had predicted, as soon as she got to the various 'frequencies' of magic, something she barely understood herself, Luna's attention seemed to be slipping so she decided to call it a night, offering to test Luna the following day.

Hermione exited the room, leaving Luna to tend to Ron in the sitting room, seeing that he was still recovering from his would and couldn't move around much. She made it back to the room Harry was in, and wasn't surprised at all to find Kotone once again curled in a ball on the floor beside his bed. After ensuring that his bindings were secure, she transfigured her clothes into pajamas and climbed into the other bed without looking at Harry's eyes even once. She was afraid of what she knew she would still see there.

She lay in the bed for several long minutes with the revelations of the past few days still spinning in her head. Knowing that she wasn't going to sleep any time soon, she decided to try the test on herself once again. She got into a comfortable position on her back, cleared her mind and closed her eyes with the tip of her wand on her forehead.

After several long minutes, she saw the dark swirling cloud spinning in her mind's eye. It resembled an oddly curved teardrop spinning around an invisible axis, chasing a very defined, dark spot that was orbiting that same axis with neither phenomenon gaining ground on the other. The only reference in the book to a revolving dot was for the Abjuror Class, but then it should have been accompanied by a whirlpool-like coloured cloud. What she was seeing could not in any way be described as a whirlpool, and there was no color whatsoever, just a dark teardrop persuing a dark spot.

She was about to halt the process to try to get some sleep when she heard Kotone shuffling across the floor. A moment later, she heard Kotone softly say in her deep, grating voice, "Open you eyes, Washi-chan. You will see…"

Focusing her concentration on the central axis point and keeping her wand tip pressed against her forehead, Hermione opened her eyes. A startled gasp escaped her throat as she saw the entirety of the image that was dancing behind her eyes. She was facing the blank, featureless ceiling, and could now see the second portion of the image, and found that there wasn't only one dot, but two… one black and one white, each centered in a reverse-shaded pair of curved teardrop patterns that seemed interlocked with each other as they spun.

She recognized the symbol…

Yin and Yang…

Darkness and light…

Evil and good…

Despair and hope…

Death and life.

The balance… the ultimate neutrality… the perfect judge, jury and executioner. Watching both sides, dwelling in both, but assisting neither, existing in a world neither white nor black, but gray. Balance…

Hermione's face paled as she remembered seeing that symbol in the listed results in the book. She jumped from the bed and raced from the room. After blindly bounding down the stairs, she skidded into the sitting room, not seeming to notice the topless Luna and the mortified Ron as they broke from their embrace.

Tears were falling from Hermione's cheeks as she roughly opened the book that she had left next to the chessboard. After frantically riffling through the pages, she found the section that listed the expected results of that particular, supposedly conclusive test.

"No... It can't be!"

Her mind seized and her breath stopped. She felt as if she were drowning. Her surroundings faded around her until only the book remained, as if she were trapped in some kind of surreal dream world. Was she in some kind of nightmare? She could vaguely hear the worried queries from her two friends, but she couldn't make out the words… they sounded like words, but they made no sense to her.

"No…"

It felt like someone was playing a horrible prank on her. How much stock could she take in what the book told? How much could she believe the information in the book? How accurate was it? The book was old, older than any book she had ever read… Did the house elves copy that page properly? Did she miss something about the test? Did she make a mistake while performing it?

"No…"

Why did she open her eyes? How did Kotone know that she needed to open her eyes to see the complete symbol? Kotone! She was the one who had said Hermione needed to read the book… to understand the book. Did she already know? How did she know? Was she one also? No, Kotone's magic was different from hers, that much she could tell when Kotone tried to help Harry. Is this why she could understand what the half-demon was trying to do? Was this why she knew that it wouldn't work? Was this how she knew that she could make it work?

Hermione flipped through the pages to the next section that listed exercises for the different classes. After reading through a portion of the page, she slammed the book shut and rested her forehead on the closed cover.

After a few deep breaths, she lifted her head and roughly wiped the wetness from her face with her sleeve. She stood unsteadily, walked into the receiving hall and up to the drapery that covered the portrait of Mrs. Black. Ron was leaning heavily on Luna as they slowly and cautiously followed Hermione into the hall. The instant that Hermione threw open the curtains, the Black matriarch began her usual tirade of screeched swears and bigoted insults. Hermione lifted her wand, pointed it at the ranting portrait, and in no more than a whisper, incanted, "Phasmatis Voco!"

The effect was startling and immediate. The woman in the painting froze mid-sentence, her face contorted in a hateful scowl, plunging the hallway into a harsh silence. A translucent image of Mrs. Black drifted out of the portrait and hung suspended in front of the now motionless work of art. It was the 'essence' of the portrait, a photocopy of the soul of the painting's occupant. The mouth of the ghostly image was moving, twisted into what appeared to be a long, drawn-out, but silent scream of agony. A fleeting moment later, the floating image dissipated and vanished in a puff of gray vapor. Hermione had 'killed' the painting.

The silence in the hall was broken by Ron's voice, "Hermione! That was brilliant! How did you…"

Ron abruptly stopped speaking when Hermione let out a loud, pained sob and fled down the hall and up the stairs.

Hermione ran into the shared bedroom, collapsed face-first on her bed and buried her face in the pillow as her chest heaved in anguish. She got her answer. The ability to draw the essence out of the portrait was proof, for not even Dumbledore was able to silence that painting. As much as she wanted to deny it, the horrible truth remained.

It appeared that Hermione was destined to be something that she never dreamed she could possibly be…

A Necromancer.

She calmed herself the best that she could, willing her sobs to subside. She needed more information, she needed more time, and she needed confirmation most of all. There wasn't much taught at Hogwarts about the Necromantic arts, being considered by most Westerners to be the darkest of the dark magicks. She certainly didn't want the idea of her being a Necromancer made public, even if it just turned out to be a label. Maybe the book's definition and the Western Wizarding world's definition of what being a Necromancer entailed were very different. She hadn't even looked in the Necromancer section of the book, assuming that nobody she would ever be likely to meet would be one.

She would have to look in the morning. It was well after midnight and she felt that she had seen quite enough of that accursed book for one day.

Hermione closed her eyes and pressed her face into the pillow, but she could still see the faint, ghostly image behind her eyelids… the slowly spinning Yin-Yang. Sleep would come to her, but it would be a long time before arriving.