XXIII - Secrets of the Darkest Art
With Sirius' robes, the robes that had caused such strife in her mind, now in her very arms, Hermione rushed out of the Astronomy tower in a frenzy. She didn't even take note of the two random Ravenclaw prefects locking lips in the corridors on their nightly patrolling shifts. She just had to get out of this area and back to her dorm, where she could at least try to control her thoughts.
Though the night had already fallen hours ago, Hermione's mind was far from falling asleep once her head found her pillow.
I have to go to someone about this, I'm going to explode. It won't be the worst thing in the world if I open up to someone, right? After all, it's just Amortentia. It's just Sirius Black, for crying out loud.
Using her critical thinking skills outside the classroom, Hermione felt it best fit to seek advice from James on this matter. Though she first thought of Lily, during her time here they hadn't gotten as close as she and James had. Plus, she had given him advice regarding Lily since the start of the term. Maybe it was time to return the favor, in a way. A second set of ears could only help her, and hopefully the male perspective could prove useful as well. James certainly knew more about Sirius than Hermione did. Maybe not about Amortentia, but definitely about Sirius.
So it was decided. She would talk to James tomorrow morning about...it. Whatever it was.
After a long night of tossing and turning, (where she may or may not have dreamt of Sirius), Hermione woke up from her very light slumber to the first snowfall of the winter season. December was upon them, and though she knew she wouldn't be spending the holidays with her family, she was still very excited.
The majority of Hogwarts' students could be seen bundling up in their winter jackets, hats, gloves--you name it--that most certainly had remained at the bottom of their trunks until this morning.
This excitement, however, didn't stop Hermione from pulling James aside from the rest of the group on their way to breakfast that morning. The two stayed behind in the now-empty Gryffindor common room, while Hermione anxious waited to make sure not a soul could hear what she was about to tell James.
"What is it, Harper?" James questioned with a yawn. It was clear he hadn't gotten much sleep last night either.
Hermione paused, took a deep breath, and began. "Do you remember, during my little initiation day-thing, when you and I used Amortentia for one of your pranks? And I smelled a sort of wet dog, for some reason?"
James grinned. "Yeah?"
"And remember in Potions class, the same thing happened?"
"Yeah?" By now, James' grin had progressed into a full-blown smile with a laugh. He knew something, Hermione thought.
"Well, I was with Sirius last night--"
"Yeah you were," he smiled excessively.
"I'm not finished," she said nervously, trying to stay focused while he cheeks flared up and he laughed. "Anyway, Sinistra made up clean up after class, and he had to leave right when we were finished, but he left his outer robes laying on the railing, and--"
"And?"
"And his robes, they smelled like the-- the wet dog," she gulped.
"Oh, did they now...?" he chuckled, while Hermione shot him a quick glare.
"Shut it," she mumbled before saying "Well?"
"Well what?"
"What do I do, James?"
"Harper, you know the inside of your head better than I do. What are you thinking?"
"He's, well, I dunno. We've become closer friends through Astronomy throughout the past term. That's all we are: friends. But he's made me nervous so many times recently, and, the nervousness, it's different and I don't like it. I don't like the idea of Amortentia telling me who I should and shouldn't fancy, that's not how it—how anything—should happen in my opinion. I feel so out of control, I—"Hermione paused and reminded herself about why she was here: for James and Lily's lives, not for a silly boy. "I don't have time for this," she said.
"That's the beauty in it, no one's forcing you to do anything with these feelings."
"Don't call them feelings," she interrupted.
"Fine, thoughts. These thoughts are your own. Plus, Sirius hasn't said anything to me about this, even though it's so bloody obvious that you both smelled each other that day in Potions class."
"He hasn't?"
"Nope, not yet at least."
"Well, I may have heard something, while I'm on the toping of spilling the entirety of my brain. You didn't hear this from me, but on Halloween, I overheard Sirius telling Mary MacDonald that he was interested in someone else after he rejected her. It easily could have been a way to get Mary off of his back, but something tells me that it wasn't," she finished quickly, out of breath now.
"Interesting. I can talk to him about it if you'd like? Without mentioning this conversation of course."
"Merlin, this is Sirius Black we're talking about," Hermione nearly wined with red cheeks. It was no surprise that she was anxious.
But James, supporting both his new friend and his long-reigning best friend, added "is he really that bad?"
"It's not that, it's just," Hermione paused, her mind shifting as she began to think more, "actually, okay. I've got nothing to lose, right?"
"Right. Perfect," spoke James.
"You know, the more I talk about it, the more it all kind of adds up. Everything with the Amortentia, I mean."
"Sometimes confiding in someone is better than keeping everything bottled up, even if it's only one person."
Hermione smiled and nodded towards James with gratitude. This wasn't the James that she had heard about in all of the stories. He was sincere and helpful, not rude and teasing, to an extent, at least. She was thankful for that, and curious as to why the people in her time left out his genuineness in their memories of James Potter.
Even though he hadn't really given her any concrete advice, getting all of this off of her chest helped her begin to come to terms with her 'thoughts,' better yet, feelings for Sirius. So she thanked him, and the two headed towards the Great Hall to grab their first meal of the day.
But on the way, James couldn't help but sneak in a "Sluggy fancies Black!" tease while no one was within listening distance. Finally, the James she had been told about made an appearance. Though it drove her crazy, Hermione couldn't bring herself to deny what he was saying.
Just because she was started to accept what was going on in her head, didn't mean she had to like it. Exactly like she thought before, she had a strict agenda that she had to stick to. This, anything on the topic that she had just discussed with James was so far off of it. She couldn't, she just couldn't. Her priorities needed to be set in order.
She already had the notebook, which had clearly started to drive Peter mental. Next up was diving deep into Emma and the Vanity family. She shouldn't distract herself with Sirius when she had things to do, places to be. So she started to make a plan, which, like most other plans, involved a trip to the library. After her classes were done for the day and before dinner, she headed there promptly.
First, Hermione snagged the Ministry of Magic Directory from the shelves. If anyone in Emma's family worked for the Ministry, their name would likely be in it. But she was without luck; nothing came up under Vanity.
Secondly, Hermione scoured the shelves for anything published under the Vanity name. And nothing, on the non-restricted shelves at least.
Thankfully, the inventory of the restricted section was not hard for Hermione to find, especially while Madam Pince, the librarian, was helping another student on the opposite side of the library. A simple flip to the 'V' category of the inventory's pages would do the trick.
"Vablasky, Valli, Vance, Vanity," she mumbled to herself, "One book written by Edgar Vanity." Hermione let out a sigh of relief upon seeing this name.
Surely this Edgar Vanity was in some relation to Emma? The Wizarding World isn't really that big.
Regardless, Hermione's next step towards success could lie within the pages of this book, if it brought her much luck. So, Hermione set aside Harry's invisibility cloak for yet another midnight trip through the Hogwarts grounds.
The rest of that day, Hermione tried to isolate her thoughts on only Edgar Vanity and whatever could make this book special, and restricted. But the thoughts of Sirius, the thoughts that James had most recent described as "feelings," were more prominent than ever.
These "feelings" prompted Hermione to giving Sirius his dog-smelling robes back. So after dinner, in the short period of rest before the average seventh-year would migrate back to their studies, she gave the robes back to him.
Knee-deep in a game of wizard's chess with Remus, Sirius was more than surprised when a very nervous Harper handed over his missing robes with little to no explanation. He was always happy to see her, always, but she was acting strange this time.
Cheeks bright red, she said, "You forgot these on the Astronomy tower last night." As he stood up, he grabbed the robes from Harper's tense arms casually. And then she walked away without a second thought.
Sirius had never seen Harper so tense before. It was the type of nervousness that reminded him of how he normally acted around Harper herself. Though one thought led to another, Sirius wouldn't let himself get his hopes up. He returned back to the game of wizard's chess with Remus, once again pushing everything to the back of his mind.
Hermione, on the other hand, had let her head take over.
Why was she overthinking everything? It's nothing more than a pair of robes. What's the big deal?
But a part of Hermione already knew the answer to that, which lay in the conversation she had with James earlier before.
Just because she had these...feelings (ew), didn't mean she had to like it. She didn't have to do anything with it, but unfortunately, even she knew that brushing it under the rug wouldn't make it go away. For Hermione, that was a problem for another day.
When nightfall finally rolled around the corner, Hermione found herself counting down the minutes until Lily, Marlene, and Alice dozed off. Though she was eager to sneak off to the library, Hermione kept her composure and was quiet enough to keep the other girls in their slumber.
Sneaking about the castle at night had felt like second nature to Hermione at this point. How many times had she done it? four times? five? Even she had lost count now.
The restricted section of the library was one that Hermione hadn't spent much time in in the past. A simple "alohamora" gave her access to it all, and before she knew it, she was standing in front of the one book written by Edgar Vanity.
Carefully, she pulled the black leathery book from the shelves. "Secrets of the Darkest Art, by Edgar Vanity," she whispered to herself.
Hermione didn't know what else to expect other than a dangerous book since it was in the restricted section, but holding it made her grow nervous.
Was Edgar Vanity a dark wizard? Were the entire Vanity family dark wizards? Still, what would Emma's purpose be in this all? Why would Voldemort want Peter to get close to Emma? Does it have anything to do with what's in this book?
There were so many questions she had, but Hermione hoped that whatever lies in this book would help answer them. After taming the pages, Hermione, still under the invisibility cloak, took a seat and began to read the synopsis and author introduction.
Edgar Vanity, born in 1922, is a historian of the dark arts and advocates for the education of all things dangerous in order to promote awareness, learn how to defend oneself, and create a more knowledgeable Wizarding World. After all, knowledge is power. In this book, you will find every secret that Vanity has collected over the years and how to combat it to the best of your ability.
Hermione took a deep breath after reading the synopsis. She could already feel how dark it was only one page in. Though this volume may promote knowledge, the darkness it contained was certain of enough to keep it hidden in the restricted section, she thought.
It made her nervous, but knowing that this books claims to give all the secrets about the dark arts got Hermione thinking. Was there something in this book that Voldemort didn't want people to know? Is that why he's using Peter to use Emma? So that he could have a quicker way to get to Edgar, rather, get rid of Edgar and his book with less consequences?
She may have gotten ahead of herself, but Hermione couldn't help but wonder:
What was he hiding?
A/N UPDATE (6/21/21): there's so much to unpack in this chapter!! i'm really proud of how it turned out and i hope you enjoy it as much as i do. and YES hermione is finally not living in denial anymore!! proud of her. also i wrote so much dialogue in this chapter and i really don't like writing dialogue so i hope it wasn't too bad lol.
i'm really excited for how the rest of this story is going to play out and i hope you are too! drop a vote if you enjoyed it, it lets me know that you do! and keep commenting, you guys are hilarious. sending love your way!! - callahan.
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