Ch 617 – Paying visit to Gilderoy
Warning - Lucifer, the Devil is Billions of years old.
Hermione with multiple personalities, her character's real age during sexual intercourse is 18+
(Hermione - Blessed by Amenadiel, time works differently for her, she has already surpassed age of 18+)
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"Where were you two headed on Boxing Day?" Neville asked, changing the topic as he adjusted his robes.
"The Weasleys," Hermione said, her voice bright after she had calmed down from the tension, "Lucifer and I were debating how best to go about getting their safely, but since his Adult Wizarding Status is back in place, we'll just be 'Apparating' straight to their front steps.”
"I heard a report from Alastor Moody that you already know how to Apparate," Amelia said, looking closely at Lucifer's profile, "He stated to the Order that he first witnessed your magic warp at the Quidditch World Cup, right when Barty Crouch and many other Ministry wizards fired a barrage of stunning spells at your friends.”
"In truth, it was strictly Hermione I was protecting from the crossfire," Lucifer admitted freely, causing his gorgeous girlfriend's cheeks to instantly turn a vibrant shade, “I didn't want to hurt Ministry wizards, but if they had attacked her again, I would have retaliated.”
"Well, we won't take up any more of your morning time, Lucifer. I'm sure you have a great deal of catching up to do with your friends. Take care, both," Amelia said, wishing them well. Her fingers inconspicuously touched the silver pendant resting against her collarbone; for some unknown reason, her instincts were having an ominous feeling that her life had just been spared from a dark future.
"Thank you, Madam Bones. You four take care as well," Lucifer said smoothly. He reached out, wrapping securely around Hermione's waist to pull her close, "Ready to clear, pet?”
She turned her blushing face up to look into his eyes, others present were staring for being called an animal so publicly, “Ready.”
The very next thing the two teenagers knew, the shadowy interior of the pub vanished with a thunderous 'crack'. Lucifer had Apparated them across London, their boots landing straight onto the snow-dusted front steps of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.
He stepped up to the dark threshold, placing his wand tip flat onto the wood. Inside the structure, iron locks began to automatically turn and unlock. A second later, the door's final hidden safety latch clicked open with an echoing sound, allowing both of the fifth-years entry into warded home.
"Ladies first," he murmured with a smirk, pushing the oak door wide open for her.
"Such a gentleman," Hermione smiled, fingers adjusting her bag as she stepped past his shoulder into the hallway of the building.
xxxxxxx
She saw that dark, cavernous interior of the Black ancestral home hadn't changed since the summer, not that she really expected it to under the circumstances. Sirius was kept far too busy 'doing nothing' of value to clean up the property.
For several seconds, Hermione felt worried for Madam Bones, what had she seen in the notorious Sirius', she couldn't utterly fathom? Was she given a 'Love Potion' or what?
Lucifer pulled oak front door closed behind them with a solid, echoing thud, leaving Hermione's school trunk standing right in front, "Hello!?" he called out, voice carrying straight down the gas-lit hallway. Since he had gotten rid of Sirius's mother's screaming portrait during previous visit, there was no risk of triggering any blood-curdling screams from the wallpaper.
Within seconds, the sudden sound of footsteps was heard rustling around in multiple directions above their heads.
Molly Weasley soon appeared from the basement kitchen, a dish towel clutched in fingers as she hurried down the hall to greet them. "Oh, it's you two! I am so glad," she gasped, engulfing each of them in a near death grip that threatened to crack their ribs, “Ron will be happy to see you," She said to both of them, but her mother's eye was looking pointedly at Hermione's face as words left her lips.
“And Harry... oh, the poor boy simply won't come out of his room.. he did briefly step yesterday for Christmas dinner, but the time we got back from St. Mungo's, he shut himself off from the world...”
"How is Arthur doing?" Lucifer asked, addressing the Weasley patriarch directly by his first name without formal hesitation.
"He's fine overall, thank goodness... but the man won't stop reopening his wounds by trying to inspect them," Molly sighed heavily, her shoulders slumping. "And would you honestly believe he allowed them to use a Muggle treatment on skin? Something called 'stitches', honestly... I can't understand what he was thinking..."
"Well... for non magical flesh lacerations, stitches work great," Lucifer said flatly, words leaving her ears effectively deaf for a long while as her brain tried to interpret a concept she simply couldn't come to terms with under her worldview.
"But his wounds are magical in nature, aren't they, Mrs. Weasley?" Hermione asked, shifting the focus of the topic before the mother's face could brighten up into another defensive shade of color over Muggle medicine.
"I believe they were, given that they were inflicted by a venomous serpent?" Lucifer rounded up right after her, cutting off the space before Molly could even respond to the previous question.
"How did you—" She was about to ask, her jaw dropping slightly as she found herself looking even more thoroughly mystified and stupified by teenagers standing at her front door.
"Harry told us the details in a letter," Hermione lied openly, her face maintaining composure though she felt a tiny spike of internal guilt later inside her chest.
In objective reality, Harry hadn't written a line to her about a giant snake attacking Ron's father, but Lucifer's deductions had as much based on atmospheric strings. Since the boy seemed to be receiving accurate 'Divination'-type visions without even trying, his assumptions were always correct.
The boy had even quietly supplied a crate of rare, raw monster meat, couscous, and fresh giblets to Hagrid as a secret Christmas present for Fluffy earlier in the week; being perfectly honest with herself, Hermione had forgotten about the giant three-headed dog entirely from her memories of first year, a reckless midnight excursion that could have easily gotten them mauled to pieces, or worse expelled from Hogwarts.
"Oh... well, I truly wish he hadn't written about such gruesome details... but maybe now that you both are here, you can find a way to coax him out of his shell?" Molly asked pleadingly, eyes searching their faces.
"We will do our best, Mrs. Weasley," Lucifer stepped forward to offer her a nearly pitiful, light thump on the back of her robes, noting with a dry cynicism how deflated and exhausted the poor woman looked right now under the pressure.
"Oh, thank you, thank you," She said softly, giving each of them another sudden embrace before disappearing back down the stairs to where she had come from to check on cauldrons.
Hermione turned her face to look straight at Lucifer, brows drawing together as they stood alone in the corridor. "Why do you think Harry has shut himself away from everyone like this, Lucifer?"
"The boy is very likely thinking that he was the direct entity to cause harm to Arthur, pet," Lucifer said, laying out his views as he adjusted jacket collar. "Because of erratic connection to Voldemort... he would have seen assault play out strictly through that snake's eyes the way vision sounds. So, he believes 'he' was the one who did the biting... and feels guilty."
He stated his thoughts openly; after all, who else but he could understand emotions of guilt, and the weight of that monstrous curse trapping a soul better than anyone alive or dead?
"Oh, Harry..." Hermione whispered, her voice dropping into a sad tone. She felt bad timing for having sent him a cheeky Muggle Christmas present earlier in the week, well, at least she had figured his snowy owl, Hedwig, would be pleased with the treats she had packed inside the box, "Let's go find him. He's probably hiding in same room from summer, or on a much higher floor if he's avoiding the family.”
They stalked up creaking, dark staircases until they finally reached the landing they had stayed on over summer holidays. She quietly asked Lucifer to place her traveling trunk flat onto the four-poster bed she had used last time, before turning to stand directly in front of Harry and Ron's bedroom door.
She raised her knuckles, knocking gently against the wood.
"Harry...?" She called out quietly, her voice crisp. "You bloody, four-eyed idiot, I know for a fact you are sitting right inside there. Come out and talk to me this instant."
A long beat passed before they heard the distinct sound of slow footsteps shuffling across the floor carpets. The door was pulled open a fraction, just as Lucifer stepped up right behind her shoulder to form a unified front.
"What are you doing here?" Harry asked blankly, his green eyes blinking behind his round frames. He looked a bit worse for wear, dark circles lining his eyes, and it was glaringly clear from his defensive posture that he didn't appreciate being made fun of his glasses right now.
"I'm strictly just here for the free food, Potter," Lucifer drawled, a lazy smirk on his lips that caused Hermione to let out a sigh and shake her head in exasperation.
"Don't mind his antics, Harry. We wanted to come down and see firsthand how everyone is doing after the attack," She said, offering her boyfriend the most exaggerated eye-roll in entire history of Gryffindor house to this day.
"Well... I'm doing about as well as can be expected for someone who attacked Mr. Weasley in his sleep..." Harry said predictably, voice dropping into hollow. He was visibly missing the old patriarch's presence, quietly wondering what his final fate would have been if the vision hadn't hit his scar. "I can talk to snakes, Hermione... it would have been better if vision had been from Boa constrictor I accidentally freed from the zoo before Hogwarts started----”
"That is bullshit, Potter, and you know it," Lucifer cut him off cleanly, carrying intensity that forced the boy to snap out of his spiral, while strained lips to keep from laughing at the ridiculous human dramatic display; his eyelids didn't even twitch as he vividly remembered the flashy lines they had discussed regarding his 'Parseltongue' abilities during Lockhart's disastrous Dueling club back in their Second year.
"You didn't attack Arthur, regardless of what graphic details you saw in that dream or vision, or whatever specific term you want to label. Look, if Voldemort didn't intentionally choose to flash your scar, then he wished for Arthur to die without an alarm being raised. But if he 'did' purposefully choose to show, then what... was his strategic reason for doing so? It's a textbook psychological trap to isolate you.”
Harry stepped aside from threshold, blinking, allowing the both of them to walk inside the room, "Why am I not surprised you have already come up with theory like this, Morningstar?"
"Because it's me, Potter," Lucifer smiled charmingly, stepping past the door right behind Hermione, who kept looking back over her shoulder at his forehead as if she wanted to drill her vine wand straight into her boyfriend’s brain to see his thoughts.
“I've honestly not had much of appetite the time I've been sitting here or down at St. Mungo's," Harry sighed, running a hand through his messy hair, "Speaking of hospital... there's a specific long term patient staying inside the closed ward that we all know quite well—"
"Hermione? Lucifer?"
The familiar cracking voice of Ron Weasley suddenly interrupted from the open doorway. "What are you two doing here?" he asked, stepping into the room. His eyes lingered on the brunette's face for a bit too long, fingers tightening around his pockets as jaw tensed.
"We've come down to see how everyone's doing after the match," Lucifer answered, eyes calmly racking over the ginger boy's thoroughly disheveled face and rumpled clothes, looking as if he had been discarded from main conversation downstairs. He guessed the boy had been spending his hours arguing with either Pigwidgeon or the bloody Potter.
"Who is staying at St. Mungo's, Harry?" Hermione asked, her attention snapping back to the secret.
"Gilderoy Lockhart," Harry said, causing her eyes to go wide in shock.
"Lockhart is actually inside St. Mungo's right now?" She asked, looking completely dumbfounded. "Wasn't the fraudulent man sent straight to Azkaban cell for stealing other people's memories and lives?"
Up until this very year, her inner thoughts had been silently enjoying mental image of Gilderoy’s daily suffering behind bars for his betrayal.
"I guess the Ministry guidelines state the bloke would have memories intact to wind up serving a legal sentence in Azkaban," Lucifer said neutrally, reading the immense confusion written across her face. He wasn't surprised by the hospital placement at all, though he still maintained that the fraud deserved to be obliterated for previously attempting to steal his daughter, Usagi, from him, at least the whipping had left satisfaction.
"It doesn't help that the clean witted nurses there continuously feed into his grand delusion of being some kind of international hero he's not," Harry said, making a motion of wiping his glasses against his shirt. It looked to their eyes like their friend had seen something bad inside that medical ward, and his brain desperately wanted it erased from memory files, “I don't even think any of the witches knew Lockhart was a fraud.”
"As much as I detests the garbage printed inside the 'Daily Prophet,' at least some important political news can be properly ascertained if you know how to read," Lucifer said reluctantly, before casting a slow, meaningful glance at his girlfriend that silently signaled to explain reason behind their sudden transit.
“...Something happened to us on Boxing Day morning, Harry," Hermione explained, her voice dropping into a saddened, that perfectly matched Molly's deflated state from downstairs. The deliberate shift in her tone worked, instantly making Potter feel conflicted guilt for having ignored his friends' safety while wallowing. "A rogue Dementor attacked right in a Muggle park, and Cornelius Fudge used it to revoke Lucifer's Adult Wizard status. When he was forced to cast a Patronus out in public... squad of Ministry witches and wizards appeared almost immediately after he received an emergency tracking owl that read similar to your notice, Harry.”
Harry’s jaw tightened, eyes widening behind his frames as he processed the Ministry's escalation.
"And the Department wasn't even given a proper trial date, Harry," Hermione continued, her breath quickening. "They forcefully took him to Courtroom Ten, and had Madam Amelia Bones not personally shown up to override Fudge, well... Lucifer stated he would have fun fighting way out of building through their corpses.”
"The pink toad Umbridge was sitting on the front bench, and she thought she had rules going her way," Lucifer said with a dangerous smirk, “Hoped I would be expelled or sent to cells, but then Madam Bones came and gave her a cockroach to chew on for her overreach.”
At the graphic description of the confrontation, his girlfriend made a dramatic act of fake vomiting, which caused Harry to let out a content smirk of amusement across his face.
But as she straightened back up, noticed that Ron Weasley had gone deathly quiet in the corner of the room, his fists clenching as he stared at the floor.
"Is everything alright with you, Ron?" She asked, her voice softening.
"Huh?" Ron snapped out of thoughts, his head jerking up, he blinked rapidly. "Oh, er, yeah, perfectly fine, Hermione," he said, the lie completely unconvincing to anyone with ears.
"Everything is not, Ronald, not when your father has just gotten attacked," Hermione said, entirely misreading the ginger boy's tense silence as that of shock and grief over Arthur's condition. For a brief, well-meaning thought, she almost found herself wanting to write down her Muggle therapist Linda's telephone number to hand over, help him handle unexpressed trauma.
"Right... right, of course," Ron replied through his teeth, jaw tightening as his eyes darted away from her face toward the door. "I've just... I've just been trying my best to occupy with chess sets to cope with stress, is all."
Hermione knew with defensive certainty that Ron was out lying, but about what specific secret he was hiding behind, didn't have a clue.
xxxxxx
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