Personal Projects

Chapter 20: Theoretically & Practically

The next two weeks were as busy as the ones that had come before, but also ripe with potential, and full of opportunities to explore it.

Classes and animagus research carried their own sort of potential—potential to learn, to excel, to achieve. But the potential that had Hermione most excited was tied to Malfoy and Theo, and the book Harry had gifted her. Exploring that happened both theoretically and practically.

Theory came first, because Hermione wanted to understand what a triad was and what the wizarding world thought of them. She read the whole book front to back in one sleepless night, and then reread the most interesting chapters again the next. It didn't feel like enough, so after that, she sought out more books to try to find more diverse sources to help her form her understanding.

There weren't many. She started by looking for texts by or about any of the wizards and witches named in the history section of her book. She asked Madame Pince to order in a few technical manuals that had been published by one triad, because they had been responsible for developing a variety of important potions using the complementary skill sets of a Healer, Herbologist, and Potions Master. Those books at least she could pass off as relevant to her Potions lessons.

There was only one magical book that she ordered out of her own pocket, using the income from the Amortentia that Professor Slughorn had sold on her behalf. It was an advanced text on bonding magic that had a section about bonds between more than two parties. It also had sections on marriage bonds and blood bonds that she hoped would help her to understand more about the ancient traditions around ancestral wards and inheritance law that applied to old families like the Malfoys and Notts.

That book also ended up detailing some of the most notorious family lines, which taught Hermione some things she hadn't known before about Draco and Theo.

Draco was not only the Malfoy heir via his father, of course, but technically also the Blacks and the Rosiers through his mother. Narcissa Malfoy had been a Black before marriage, and her sisters Bellatrix and Andromeda didn't have any living heirs that the magic would recognize. Andromeda had been legally and magically disowned for marrying a muggleborn, so even though Tonks and Remus' son Teddy Lupin was a male blood descendent of Andromeda Black, the ancestral magic wouldn't count him as family.

As for the Rosiers... Well, that was because Malfoy's maternal grandmother was a Rosier, and the rest of the Rosiers had died in the war. Hermione knew that, because she had looked into Felix Rosier after the war, and learned that he had no surviving relatives.

She'd looked into him because he was one of the Death Eaters she had killed during the Battle of Hogwarts. His mask had slipped off as he fell and she'd watched his expression go still as he'd died. This was one of the reasons he featured in some of the nightmares she still had sometimes. She'd only learned his name because she'd recognized him in one of the articles that had been published after the war, talking about the fallen on both sides.

Which meant that Hermione was part of the reason that having heirs was so important to Malfoy. As far as she understood it based on what they'd told her, and what she'd since read, the magical inheritance of three of the oldest families rested on Malfoy's shoulders.

It was a lot to take in, especially as she couldn't help but compare it to how little connection she felt to her own roots. He had thousands of years of ancestors and traditions to inform him of the forces influencing who he was and why. All she had were her memories of her parents, which sharply declined in quantity and closeness after she turned eleven.

The information she learned about Theo was easier to digest, at least. She learned that his grandfather, Cantankerus Nott, is believed to have been the very biased individual who anonymously published the Pureblood Directory in the thirties. He was the one who coined the term Sacred 28, though that list was widely contested as invalid and inaccurate.