Chapter Text
Fallen Idol
Chapter One: Dead-Ends
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London, 2003
Sundays were her favorite.
Not for any profound reason, just.
She loved work, and she appreciated leisure. So Sunday, being the day before Monday, was a day meant for relaxation while simultaneously in anticipation for the next day.
A strange limbo Hermione liked to savor.
She drank tea just now, during the evening. Earl Grey, though it had caffeine. Hermione didn’t think she’d mind. She rarely slept much these days as it were. A soft solace to her lack of rest was her attentive tending to Crookshanks curled at her side, praising him with gentle pats and strokes between notetaking.
The ol’ boy was still alive.
Hermione didn’t question it. Life went on—gratefully—and that was that.
The Department of Mysteries often swallowed her time, and her secret miseries.
The sunset swelled late into the June night, warm through the windows.
Crookshanks, wrapped in warmth.
Her tea, merely lukewarm.
Her heart was another thing.
Everything around her was built to make her content. She’d made certain of that.
But she just wasn’t.
As she settled into her quilts hours later, the cold rush of grief threatened to take her again—
realizing for the third week in a row how empty the other side of the bed was.
Sheets frozen, as if they meant to keep his memory.
“I’d honestly be alright if I never saw you again!”
That was one of the last things she’d said to him, the echo of it bleeding through every time she tried to close her eyes.
Hermione had traced the scar on her arm to sleep.
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For months her assignments had been tedious. Dull.
Unevocative, if she were being honest. It was all she could do to find things to entertain her not so quiet mind.
She had seen Ronald, since then. Occasionally, they had passed one another in the corridors. Had seen each other across the atrium after arriving through the Floo.
Most of the time, he was busy on Auror duties anyway, and always walking with Harry.
Harry never pressured Ron to seek her out, and continued to remain a supporter to them both, no matter what anyone had decided. Ginny too. It went without question, really.
Yet no matter what anyone thought, or if Hermione felt like she had support—
she had every valid right to have ended things when she did.
“Ron just needs some time to cool off, I’m sure,” Harry had said. “And so do you.”
Cool off?
Oh, it’d cooled off alright.
Ron had hardly looked at her the way he’d used to. Hermione—could hardly look at him at all and she hadn’t even been able to articulate to him why.
After everything, it felt like they’d completely taken each other for granted.
She just couldn’t have that.
In the bottom of whatever it was she was made of, Hermione knew she wanted more.
She just didn’t know what more was, or what that’d even meant, but she knew it in the fabric of her soul.
Hermione entered the lift that Monday next, catapulting down to Level Nine.
The speakers crackled and hissed as she strode back out through the lift—
“Department of Mysteries.”
—and headed to her personal laboratory to prepare her day.
Kingsley was at the door just as she swished her wand, unlocking her beloved chamber.
"Morning to you, Hermione,” he said warmly.
“Kingsley,” she greeted, palm already out to receive whatever contraption he had ready to give her. “And this?”
“Well.” He began with a slight grimace. “No one really knows. It’s been passed around a lot. Croaker gave it to me yesterday. He believes it’s a dead-end, but I’m not so sure.”
Hermione turned the cool metal around in her hands, feeling the intricate, rough lines of it—noting the symbol in the center. A sigil.
The Eye of Odin, she already knew.
Ancient Runes had covered Norse symbology extensively. Most magical historians considered Odin a mythological construct attached retroactively to early rune systems.
Still intriguing though.
What was more, it vibrated faintly to her touch—as though recognizing an innate magical signature.
It wasn’t dark magic, though it didn’t make her feel good either, necessarily.
A strange feeling climbed her throat. Something about its presence was already itching beneath her skin, and that alone piqued her interest.
“I’ll see what I can find,” Hermione said with a resolute blink.
“When you have time,” said Kingsley, stepping away.
Time, Hermione thought.
That, she had in spades.
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She’d fiddled and fidgeted with the barmy thing for several days, but nothing ever happened.
None of her spells ever took. No manner of wand-waving worked.
It didn’t seem volatile, exactly, but she handled it very carefully, wondering what she was missing—if there was even anything to miss.
She tried different things on different days, on varying lunar cycles, and wondered if maybe it was just a dormant thing that wasn’t ready for its purpose yet.
Or, that its purpose wasn’t ready for it.
Either way, it’d caused her much more frustration so far than it was worth. She kept it near. She did not abandon it, but she rested it on one of her shelves until her next experiment.
Hermione had a very neatly organized system, and so she put it at the front of the other things she’d catalogued under ‘until further notice’.
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