Touchstone || Dramione

Chapter I: Truth

"Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."

KJV BIBLE

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MAY 2002 (PRESENT)  

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Truth is a neutral killer, she's come to realize. It never chooses a side, yet all outcomes are doomed lovers of its adulterous appetite.

Over the past three years, Hermione Granger has learned more about the truth than she's ever desired despite her insatiable thirst for it. There are a million words to a thousand sayings spouting from hundreds of pretentious mouths about wisdom, growth, and age. Many of those mouths have never tasted the red of war, or the shame of a failure costing a life. She once felt her words to be more important than the books she plucked them from. They were her sword and her shield, her entirety.

With Riddle's growing monopoly over what's left of Wizarding Britain, and his sure grasp on the Wizengamot, it's open season on any and all who so much as look at a Death Eater wrong. Those in the Wizengamot who'd opposed him (and there weren't many) have effortlessly and violently been replaced. Use of the Imperious Curse has been branded as obsolete. Only those loyal to the cause can remain. Britain has become a very dangerous place to be a Phoenix or a Phoenix sympathizer.

In this instance, it seems that pureblood is a trifle issue. This issue, among others, are why Nott and fellow purebloods with the gall have turned spy for the Order. It's self-preservation at this point. There aren't many and Hermione is unaware of any aside from Nott himself. It's safer that way.

As with all ideological wars, the tyrant forsakes his doctrine for a much more voluptuous companion. Power. It's his loyalists left still believing that doctrine. Useful idiots.

What had once been Professor Trelawney's class room is now a festering quagmire of flesh and bone. Some baubles and lasting crystal balls grace the tables that aren't overturned and splintered. The early morning sun shines through filmy windows onto a crumpled man wearing a bright orange band on his arm. Goyle Senior lumbers over him like a rotund jester teetering for a drunken king. The fallen man's eyes have gone white, corpse eyes.

Hermione swallows thickly, schooling her face into apathy as Nott performs the Cruciatus Curse on the remaining victim, not a Phoenix member, but a sympathizer. Madam Puddifoot. Hermione instantly recognized her but the same couldn't be said for the woman. Previous torture has left her a slobbering mumbling mess. Her head lulls emptily as Nott lowers his wand and Hermione's stomach writhes defiantly, assuring her that she's about five seconds from vomiting. She takes a deep steadying breath and squares her shoulders.

The look on Nott's face could be seen as ruthless hostility, but Hermione knows better. Sometimes, though, her imagination runs wild and she finds herself wondering if he enjoys this, if the Dark Mark on his arm holds more reverence for him than the resistance he now serves. But then she remembers the look on his face the day he joined, the shattered shards of a past ruptured and razed to dust.

That night in the broom closet, six months ago, she'd questioned Nott if he'd been ready for this plan. What she hadn't wanted to admit, what she'd run from like the plague, was that she hadn't been ready. As is in her nature, charge on through the fear and rest assured that it will be conquered. Right? Surely. Any Gryffindor believes in their bravery. How naïve—like the day Grimmauld Place cratered into the ground. That kind of bravery?

Finally, she understands the weight that burdened Harry's shoulders.

So many have died. The world she's grown up to is a smashed and wrecked reminder, pummeled to the ground as a once mighty cathedral immersed in lustful flames. Countless skeletons and burned faces, broken hearts and scornful screams.