Chapter Text
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - infinite”.
- William Blake
October 14th, 2008
Before his passing, her father had encouraged her to establish greater ties with her ”other community”. He still struggled to say the word, often choking on perfectly clean air through an empty throat.
Not wanting to offend his fragile sensibilities, especially after her mother’s permanent absence, she took his advice. Albeit long after he would be able to witness it.
It took many weeks for her to consider the fact that she was entirely alone in the muggle world. Nobody would come to comfort her, nobody even knew she existed.
Though, she supposed, the same isolation was mirrored with the wizarding world too. Of course, she’d attempted to retain a small modicum of contact. But upon her revealing to her equally traumatised friend that she would not use magic again, he broke down. Hermione hadn’t attempted to contact him since.
She concluded that the only reasonable, rational interaction with wizarding society after a decade would be through visiting its epicentre. The Ministry of Magic.
Once every few years, she went down the street which housed the phone box. Just to make sure contact existed, that the ministry, in some form, remained.
It plagued her to begin with.
Where were her friends? Did they survive?During the hours in the hospice when her father slept, and counting pixies in her mind could not make her rest, Hermione wondered if they’d tried to seek her afterwards. The wards cast had been difficult, sure enough. But if they cared deeply, could they not work to obliterate them?
Everytime these voices appeared, she soon quelled them with the reminder of her reason to leave in the first place. She did not want them to seek her, yet alone find her. This was the only way to not compromise her wellbeing.
She’d learned more about the ramifications of traumatic experiences during warfare once she went home to her father, devouring alternative sources to sustain the insatiable appetite for education. Working through psychology theses by DPhil students, Hermione found that case studies closely resembled her classmates. One example had an accompanying image; his face was covered, but the flash of red hair made Hermione freeze.
It almost drove her to reopen the network in her fireplace.
Thank goodness her father’s night terrors had not been silenced, and drew her back to her reality, to her priority.
It was only during his inevitable decline, those final weeks of hospice, that she entertained the thoughts of returning. Once his funeral came and went, a sole mourner tending to a family of graves, did she know it was finally time to take her wand from the dresser drawer again.
The humming from the wood had never truly left. Though she often felt a sort of pull, she never touched it. Hermione knew if she had, her father would’ve died alone, and she would have never returned to the muggle world. Though, she had to admit, reuniting with the vine wood created a deep sense of inner solace, even if that peace was instantaneously fractured upon her conscience pressing on her skull.
Wand in hand, her attention turned to her execution of intentions.
She had no hope for the state of the ministry. In fact, a part of Hermione anticipated the hideous statues erected by the Dark Lord to still remain. She’d learned about the cyclical nature of fascism. She did not neglect to notice the parallels between both her worlds, and how little power she appeared to have in either.
It was not difficult to acquire witches robes, having finally scaled the task of sorting her father’s attic after the funeral, and uncovering a trunk of her clothes from her fifth year at Hogwarts. Of course, she used a spell to alter the size. Hermione resented to admit, but the domestic spell books became far more useful, especially when her day-to-day wasn’t occupied with thoughts of an imminent death enacted on behalf of a discriminatory megalomaniac.
Laying out the clothes on her bed, the plainest clothing appealed. Blending in, diverting unwanted attention, was necessary. A cardigan crocheted by Luna Lovegood was strategically placed away from her options. Hermione hoped the girl - no, woman - was well.
The first true trial came from apparating. A decade of fighting the urge to simply disappear on the spot had led her to shun the ability deep inside her mind, behind boxes of memories and such like.
Hermione wasn’t even sure if she could even apparate anymore.
Stepping outside her home, into the front drive, she looked around quickly, before doing a diagnostic on the wards, and casting a Notice Me Not charm. All seemed well. Two doors down, Mrs Fort was singing to her flowers - a tip Hermione had given her, one she’d learned years ago in Herbology. Number Twenty-Six now housed an array of vibrant plants, from rose bushes to potted pansies.
Casting a final glance, Hermione brought her feet together, standing tall and steady. Squeezing her eyes shut, knuckles gripping the charmed bag, she visualised the Holborn street.
A familiar whirring in her ear sounded, and Hermione almost slipped a bare smile. Almost.
After walking past the phone box several times over the last decade, it was no surprise it was still standing. She only grew tenser once she stepped inside.
It was a great relief indeed when the telephone box eventually shifted, once she correctly recalled the code.
Lowering into the ground, Hermione had shut her eyes; she had not chosen to disguise herself, though, in that moment, she wished she had. She’d forgotten how distinct she was in such a small community.
As the marbled floor came into view, the sense of self consciousness heightened, until her eyes opened, and she realised the atrium was entirely empty. There was not a single person there to assess her ageing, altering, or behaviour.
Had it been entirely decimated?
Placing one heel out of the box, she whipped her head from left to right to verify that the atrium was truly vacant. Hermione began to regret cancelling her Daily Prophet subscription. Perhaps some contact would have been harmless.
Finally leaving the box entirely, Hermione noticed how similar it was to the last time she was here. All except the fountain, of course. The golden figures of those in the wizarding world had been restored, pristine and gleaming as they had during her first visit to the ministry.
The only difference between then and now was the lack of people, and that every single lamp in the ministry offices appeared to be unlit. Hermione felt as though she was breaking and entering, like muggles searching an abandoned shopping centre.
In a bid to escape the large, vacancy, she felt possessed to approach the lifts. Even in the rule of Voldemort it had been occupied.
Heels clacking against unsettlingly pristine stone, feet hurriedly carried her. She knew the layout of the ministry, knew where she needed to go next upon her discovery of a non-beating heart of a magical community. She had briefly contemplated the Department of Mysteries, though, if there were no staff, she’d dread to imagine what entities lurked in the vaulted rooms. Especially if something had found the brain room.
Shaking her head, and pressing the button, Hermione tried not to reflect too deeply upon her knowledge. To recognise her memory was to recall why she had needed to memorise this building like the back of her hand.
As she rose, she noticed the stamped-out pieces of paper beneath her feet. The floor was entirely covered in the small memos once charmed to fly themselves. She recalled how, once, a long time ago, she had known the very same spell to dictate such motion of inanimate objects. That when she had encountered them for the first time, here, in a ministry lift, upon her mandatory registration of magic before her first year at Hogwarts, she’d felt compelled to learn the charm.
How she used it to body her sorrow at unrequited love. How the charmed birds chased Ron in fifth year. How they chased Alecto Carrow with a greater viciousness than she had ever known she possessed. How the charmed birds pecked, and gnawed at the woman’s sockets, long after the eyes had been gauged and devoured. How she still felt the same sensation-
The chime declaring arrival interrupted her unwanted nostalgia.
Much like the rest of the ministry, the corridor was empty. Darker, too, she thought, than the last time she’d walked down here. Though, perhaps during the Dark Lord’s reign, this area had been remodeled.
It certainly exuded a sense of darkness. The arches, which she once believed to be red granite, were now a deep obsidian. She had no doubt that the ministry did not have the capabilities to source an extensive supply of the stone. What struck fear into her was that, if her knowledge was as correct as it had been a decade ago, obsidian was a conductive stone, capable of both retaining and transferring power.
Walking towards the single door on the corridor, an unnerving sense of dread filled her. Perhaps, a decade ago, Hermione would’ve moved faster. Maybe she would’ve left, trusting intuition. Yet, she had come all this way. Hermione had this day marked in a red circle within her mind. She could not delay being restored to her other world. Even if it meant neglecting her rationality. In that way, it felt like she was back to her old ways.
Unusually, the door possessed a handle. Wandless magic had made them wholly unnecessary. But, perhaps, it was simply to make the entrance appear more unassuming.
Though, Hermione had concluded, that was entirely contradicted by the plaque above the knob. The very plaque that made her suck in a breath for the first time since she’d descended into the wizarding world.
It had made her pause, even take a step back. Though, she would not let a name from a decade ago prevent her from continuing. It may even be old. Yet, that seemed unlikely due to its pristine condition.
Swallowing her fear, Hermione rapped her knuckle against the wooden door thrice.
It was quickly answered with an “Enter”.
The voice was not recognisable. It quelled her anxiety, extinguished her previous feelings.
Hermione grasped the doorknob, twisted it, and entered. And, as she stepped forwards, it slammed with an echo.
The single entrance on the corridor locked itself, returning its plaque to face an empty crowd.
The engraved words,
“Lord Draco Malfoy,
Order of Merlin First Class,
Former Head of the Department of Mysteries,
and Current Minister for Magic”.
Rang out within her mind as the final echoes of the door bounced off the office’s walls.