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mickume

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Canis Manor on the Thames.

Lord Regulus Black, grandson of Lord Arcturus of the Wizards’ Council and heir of House Black, shook his head in disgust at the letter in his hands.

"Bad news, my lord?"

Regulus glanced in the direction of the sassy voice. His wife—and first cousin—Lady Andromeda was gazing wryly at him from her consort’s seat. She knew who tended to send owls that left Regulus disgruntled, and this was no exception.

"My brother is a fool," Regulus stated without preamble.

"What has he done this time?"

Regulus rolled his eyes. "His latest muddle-headed scheme is to raise Godric’s Hollow against Lord Lucius by romping about the outskirts on the full moon with that werewolf friend. Fortunately, he has not done it. Yet."

At this moment, a figure with long white hair, a heavily lined face, and sinister black eyes entered the great hall. Regulus started, his face paling for a moment, and then his eyes narrowed. He chuckled darkly.

"That’s uncanny, Dora, but you’d best be careful who you let see that impression. I doubt the high lord would take well to mockery, however good."

A smile appeared on the decrepit face. The person’s features transformed, filling out and tightening up into youth and health. The hair changed color and shortened.

Nymphadora Black smirked. "Lord Malfoy takes himself far too seriously."

"Few would agree with that," Andromeda spoke up. "It is amusing here, while we are alone, but you should not stroll about like that."

"Very well. What was this about Uncle Sirius and a werewolf?" Dora asked, changing the subject.

Regulus shook his head. "His latest fool idea to incite an uprising in that town. It appears that he thinks Potter will forbid it. I don’t know why he bothers to write to me with such stuff... he can’t think I would offer my sanction to such an act, especially one that has such a high risk of getting him and this friend of his killed." He scanned the letter again. "Oh, and there is a bit, apparently passed on from Potter’s son, about an assassination attempt on that girl that Grandfather allowed to come to Hogwarts."

Andromeda gave Regulus a pointed look, followed by a quick glance at Dora. "We will discuss this later."

A knock sounded on the tall double doors, echoing down the hall. Dora rose to admit the visitor, a portly wizard bearing a ledger—and a silver tray with three goblets. He bowed to Regulus. "The monthly accounts, my lord," the castle steward said, emphasizing the word pointedly.

Regulus accepted the document and the goblet. "Thank you, Tonks. This contains the information from...?"

Ted Tonks nodded. "It does, my lord."

"And the translation?"

"Yes, my lord. I know how tiresome it can be to read the original." He bowed and presented the remaining goblets to Lady Andromeda and Lady Dora, his gaze softening and lingering on them for a moment, especially the latter. Lady Andromeda’s sharp, clever face softened for a moment as well, but instantly returned to its prior expression of finely honed irony. Tonks bowed, took his leave, and left his lord and ladies to their privacy.

Castle Parselhall at Hangleton.

At the same time that Lord Regulus Black was reading a letter from his disgraced brother, Merope Riddle had a letter of her own from her son.

My lady mother,

I am sorry to tell you that things have not gone entirely smoothly since our return to Hogwarts. This is not because of a problem between Lady Hermione and me, but rather, external events set up by people who want to harm her.

This sounds very dramatic, I know, but it is nothing less than the truth. During a visit to the village of Hogsmeade, a female magical attacker ambushed us in an alley and used extremely violent curses against Lady Hermione. Fortunately she defended herself against the would-be assassin—and I have no doubt that assassination was the goal, given the sort of spells this witch used—but whoever it was Disapparated before we could identify her or even see her face. She wore a large and heavy hood, and the entire nature of the attack indicates that it was planned well in advance rather than the raving of a madwoman or a drunk. I need not put into writing, I assume, who the obvious culprits would be.

Lady Hermione has informed Master Slughorn of the attack and has a promise from him to make inquiries among the students to determine if they know anything. I think this is an exercise in futility, myself. We know who is likely behind it, and I have urged stronger protective measures to her. To be frank with you, Mother, I urged her to consider marrying me early, by which I mean this summer, so that she could finish her education safely inside the walls of Parselhall. She was resolutely opposed to the idea of leaving Hogwarts early. She wants to finish her education here before marrying. I am not telling you this because I want you to force it upon her, but I’m still convinced that it is a good idea. But I would be interested to know if you have any other ideas of how to protect her. We are surrounded by enemies who are very powerful, and they have targeted her. I mean to develop friendships with some of the less toadying young nobles of Slytherin House, now that these at least respect me as one of them, but I think it’s for the best that you should know about everything that is going on.

Merope glanced at Severus, who was standing by, affording her the privacy to read her own letter. He raised his eyebrows at her.

She rolled up the parchment and sighed. "My son is quite a schemer."

Severus waited for her to elaborate on that.

"He tells me that Lady Hermione was attacked in Hogsmeade and proposes several suggestions about how to address it."

"She was attacked?" Severus said, startled out of his usual coolly observant demeanor. "I had no idea that something like that was coming...."

"No one blames you. Your sources cannot know about everything."

Severus nodded. "What does he suggest? If you wish to tell me?"

"The main suggestion is that he and Lady Hermione could marry this summer instead of in three or four years."

Severus considered. "What are your thoughts about that?"

"It might not be the worst idea... but he said that she was against it, because she wanted to complete her education at Hogwarts first."

"What does your son suggest to protect himself?"

Merope scanned the letter again, frowning as she read. "He is concerned with her. He doesn’t seem overly worried about himself."

Severus’s dark eyes narrowed. "I am glad that he is so concerned about her," he said tightly.

"As am I, for obvious reasons."

Severus nodded. "But I think he gravely underestimates the danger to himself. He probably thinks that he won’t be targeted because he was not targeted last year, but last year, he was a half-blood commoner. But although he is a half-blood, he is now a young lord, and he is a key party to a contract that the members of the Wizards’ Council loathe because they see it, rightly, as an act of defiance against their values."

Merope nodded. "I have no intention of pressuring Lady Hermione to give up her education at Hogwarts. I am pleased that Tom cares so much about her, but you’re right. I am not going to tell him this, but I know very well that this family’s dealings with the Wizards’ Council are likely not over. I have not forgotten what you told me last year about the plot to pressure me to marry someone else. Sadly for them, they cannot storm this castle."

Severus hesitated. "And have you discovered the status of your marriage with Riddle?"

She sighed. "I have not had the time to look into the matter. I would be surprised, at this point, if he had not been granted a divorce for "abandonment,’ even though he was the one who abandoned me, but I can’t be sure. I’ve still been setting this holding in order and trying to create loyalty among the village folk."

"And you’ve done very well with that."

It was true. In sharp contrast with Marvolo and Morfin, Merope had treated her Muggle subjects in Hangleton Village well, abolishing the practice of serfdom in her own fief and allowing them to practice trades if they showed talent at something. She also had brought in a Muggle arms instructor to identify and train the most promising in skill at arms. There was simply no reason to waste the skills of talented Muggles in field labor. The error that the previous Gaunts had made was to assume that Muggles could have no skills, that they were merely good for physical labor.

These changes did reduce the number of field hands to work the farms, but the village itself was more resilient—and the peasants were loyal to their liege out of gratitude and respect rather than resentful terror. Merope and Severus had used spells to preserve the crops for longer, since it would take longer for them to be tended and harvested.

All in all, the fief of Hangleton was much stronger than it had been before Merope assumed the high seat—and she was not blind to that fact. Seeing the account books, and personally witnessing the changes with her own eyes, had instilled a growing confidence in her.

It was a confidence that she realized she would need to take on the increasingly fraught political situation.

Tom read the reply letter from his mother, unsure what to think of it. She expressed her deep approval for his concern and affection for Hermione, but urged him not to become so assured that he would be protected from attacks due to having a wizarding parent. In Tom’s opinion, it came across as a subtle scolding for putting himself above Hermione due to blood status.

How could Mother think that, he fumed, especially since she knows what I suggested?

That was the other thing. She had told him, rather sharply, that he had "better not expect me to back you in depriving Hermione of her Hogwarts education if she herself does not wish this"—and that he should not try to make plans for Hermione behind her back.

Mother, you can be such a hypocrite at times, Tom thought grouchily. She had certainly made the biggest plan of all for Tom behind his back, only informing him of it after it was settled. He had not thought about it from this point of view in a while, since he had come to like Hermione, but Mother could be so high-handed sometimes with her secret plans and schemes. That was all very well—Tom respected clever schemes—but she ought to tell him, especially when they concerned him. Even her scheme of surprising him with Hermione’s presence the first evening of his winter visit was something she had done behind his back. She really did like her secrets; she wasn’t yet allowing him to read most of the books about his own ancestors either. It made him wonder just what else she might be withholding from him.

And besides, Hermione had gone to Professor Slughorn in secret and apparently convinced the professor to question their classmates about the attack.

Hermione herself then entered the small room—the same one on the ground floor where they had discussed her conversation with Slughorn—and noticed how irritated he was currently looking.

"What’s the matter?" she asked, taking a seat beside him.

He put the letter aside and wrapped an arm around her waist. "Letter from Mother."

She leaned across him to try to catch a glimpse.

"There’s no need for that," he chuckled, passing it to her.

Hermione laughed in return and began to read. When she finished, she set it down and looked at him.

"She’s right," she said in a low voice. "You are in danger from these people too."

He sighed. "That’s probably so, but I think I can take care of myself."

"So can I!" Hermione exclaimed. "You’ve said yourself that I am magically powerful, and not to boast, but I can see it for myself now that I am here and can compare myself to others."

"Good," he said. "You shouldn’t be modest about that."

"But Tom... the point of this is that you don’t need to—to lock me up in your mother’s castle to protect me! She’s right about that too."

"You would be safer there," he challenged.

She scowled at him. "Perhaps, but at what price?"

"You have seen the library there, many times—"

"I don’t just mean my education, Tom! Are you prepared to... I mean... if we really got married, I might get with child!"

Tom flushed deep red.

"And that would be a real problem for finishing my magical education, wouldn’t it?" she continued ruthlessly, though she was also pink. "Right now I only have to be careful for myself, and I have read about how resilient the bodies of witches and wizards are after about age eleven or twelve. But I have also read about what curses and potions can do to unborn babies, and in any case, I don’t even want that yet! I have heard of it happening to other girls, who were married very early, and it’s just sad to me. I don’t want to think about that yet."

"We could just have a ceremony and avoid—"

"No, Tom. It is not happening. Your mother is not going to force it, and my own parents specifically wanted me to receive a magical education. I am happy that you want so much to keep me safe—I really am—but you need to let go of this idea. We can find other ways. As your mother wrote, you are in danger too, whether you accept that or not."

He sighed, glowering at his lap, not looking at her. She was right, and he knew it, but he really did just want to protect her with whatever means he had at his disposal.

She nudged closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder. "You should start cultivating the people in our House that you think would be potential allies. For my part, I would have Harry, Neville, and maybe that girl Luna. She’s a bit odd, and I have trouble talking with her seriously, but we do need more friends."

Tom was silent for a few more moments before speaking. "You’re right," he said. "I have talked about that, but it’s time for me to do it. My only concern is that it may look like we’re raising an army. The Wizards’ Council may take it as a threat. But," he continued, "if we don’t show visible strength, people like that will just bully and push over and over again."

Hermione nodded in agreement. "Yes, they will."

Tom pulled Hermione into his lap. As she shifted in his arms, she turned to face him, draping her arms around his neck. They exchanged a kiss, an innocent one with lips closed at first, but before long, their affections deepened once again.

After several minutes, they separated, but they stayed with their foreheads resting against each other. The thought momentarily passed through Hermione’s head that if their relationship continued to advance at a rapid pace, they would soon have to be very careful of themselves. But for now, it was pleasant and sweet, and their private moments of affection served only to bring them closer. In the present uncertain environment, that was a very good thing.

Castle Parselhall at Hangleton.

Lord Severus Snape now had a manor of his own within the confines of his liege’s holding. It was the old Prince manor, the one that had belonged to his wizarding family, but it had now been restored to a livable condition. Merope was keeping him on as steward of her property—chancellor, she was now calling the post, as that sounded a bit more impressive—but he could choose to live in the manor rather than her castle now.

He had mixed feelings about that when the magical renovation was complete and she had informed him of it with a smile on her face. He had been under the impression that there was something between them... but then, he supposed, perhaps that was exactly why he should move into his own home. If he could live there but chose to live in her home instead, it sent a clear message—and that was not a message that she seemed comfortable with at this point.

To tell the truth, he was not entirely comfortable with it either. If they married, it would come with significant complications. His lady could not marry him—or any wizard—unless she purposely avoided having additional children, since she was so dedicated to ensuring her son’s prosperity.

Severus could not blame her for putting her child’s interests ahead of her own emotional comfort, but he didn’t like the fact that Armand Malfoy and his circle had even instituted such a law. It was almost Muggle in nature, he thought, which was grotesquely ironic for the blood-obsessed Wizards’ Council. Wizarding law in Britain and Ireland, set by the now-dissolved Wizengamot, had not mandated primogeniture or male preference. Families could choose any child as the heir, or even a cousin, if all the children were unsatisfactory. Sometimes an eldest child wanted to pursue scholarship instead of ruling a holding. Sometimes the child best suited to managing property was female. Granted, the Wizards’ Council had not changed those inheritance laws, but taking that power away from individual families and ranking children by a prescribed formula, according to factors that were accidents of birth, was a very Muggle legal conceit, in Severus’s opinion. Forcibly ranking their legal rights by "purity of blood" felt very much to Severus like the first slide on that slippery slope, if something did not happen to rein in the Malfoy-Lestrange-Black hegemony.

The thwarted rebellion in Godric’s Hollow attempted to do that, he thought, with a twinge of sadness. In his narrative of the history of Godric’s Hollow to the young people over Christmas, he had purposely omitted a key event. Armand Malfoy’s use of temporary stewards and regents had not ended with his placement of Abraxas in the seat. Fifteen years ago, Armand had summoned Abraxas away from Godric’s Hollow to Malfoy Manor, and fourteen years ago, several of the wizards and witches in that village had attempted—in disguise—to stage a rebellion against Raymond Crabbe, who was acting as regent for Lucius Malfoy for a year. The villagers had seized the opportunity that a weak lord outside the family afforded.

Severus had been part of that—and that was the detail he wanted hidden. His own mother had not known that he had Apparated to the site of rebellion, eager to do something to avenge the humiliation of his family at the hands of blood supremacists. Marvolo Gaunt had been a loathsome lord who, although isolating himself from regular communication with his peers (and eschewing marriage alliances with most other families, much to Severus’s horror—and Merope’s), definitely agreed with the views of the Malfoy family. Although Severus was unable at the time to do anything about the Gaunts, he felt that he could do something about the system that had enabled their conduct. Young and angry, he had sneaked out and gone to the town that he’d heard about from his fellow young Gaunt vassal, Peter Pettigrew, who was friends with some of the young wizards of that town. He hadn’t even confided his plans to that fellow, though. No one knew it was he behind that charmed mask—no one except for her. Meeting such a talented Muggle-born witch who had never been allowed to go to Hogwarts—again, due to the Malfoys—had hardened his resolve.

The small group of masked witches and wizards had stormed the castle, the one that had once belonged to Godric Gryffindor, bearing magically lit torches and sending destructive spells over the ramparts. But the flare-up of revolt was put down as quickly as it had arisen, when the lord who emerged from the castle was revealed not to be Crabbe, but Lucius Malfoy himself—the grandson of the usurper. No one could ever figure out how the Malfoy elders had learned of the plans in advance, whether there was treachery in the rebels’ ranks or someone had just been loose-lipped (which was possible, given how Severus had learned of the plans in the first place despite being nowhere near Godric’s Hollow), but there Lord Lucius was. He had killed two of the leaders, the Prewett brothers, and the rest of the rebels had scattered, their identities concealed by masks.

The aftermath had been a shame and a disgrace upon many of the rebels’ honor, he had heard, with people who had been involved in it telling the new lord that their hated neighbors or family rivals had been there instead. Short of questioning every magical person in the town under Veritaserum, there was no way to determine exactly who had been part of it. In the end, Lord Lucius had dispatched his favorite torturer, a squat witch named Umbridge, to make public examples of one or two, with the rest forced to watch. She apparently knew a curse that peeled a person’s skin away inside out starting with an open wound, and no villager had dared to foment rebellion again after that horrific sight.

To this day, Severus wondered about Lily’s son, Harold. He had black hair just like Severus, and the timing was uncertain....

He pushed that thought out of his head. It was just as likely that the boy really was the son of James Potter. He had been engaged to Lily until a couple of weeks before the rebellion, when they’d had an ugly fight. Severus was reasonably certain that they had already consummated their engagement, too. They were back together and married the month after the uprising, after he had returned morosely to Hangleton. Potter also had black hair, and besides, the husband of a married woman was legally the father of her children unless it could be proved otherwise. In any case, all he had heard indicated that she was happy, and Snape’s own heart had at last turned in a different direction over the past year....

His thoughts returned to the present, and his gaze shifted to the letter he had dug out of his desk to re-examine. He did not particularly like Merope’s son, or his betrothed—an arrogant, know-it-all pair if ever there were—but they were still young, and Severus reflected that he had certainly been an arrogant youth. They would learn the hard way, he supposed, that they did not know everything and were not invulnerable. That would be painful for them, but it would do them both good. It was his job to protect them from real harm, and he had just remembered a piece of information that might aid in that goal. He left his manor house and Apparated the relatively short distance to Castle Parselhall.

Lady Merope was pleased to see him, but the pleasure on her face melted away quickly at the sight of his grim one.

"My lady," he began without prelude, "I have reread one of my communications from...." He gazed pointedly at her.

"It was the report from last fall of the meeting at Castle l’Etrange. I had forgotten the fact that Lady Bellatrix Lestrange was very adamant about wanting to kill the young people, even though no one except the high lord himself seemed to support her."

Merope considered this. "Do you think that the assassin in Hogsmeade who tried to kill Lady Hermione was Lady Lestrange? They did think it was a witch...."

"She’s the most likely possibility, since the men in that room who spoke up didn’t want to use violence," Severus affirmed. "My source tells me, and this is actually fairly common knowledge among the magical nobility, that she is... I am not sure if "reckless’ is the correct word, exactly... but she has been known to act alone if she is very determined on something."

Merope nodded again, thoughtfully. "And she might act alone without even telling her daughter. Tom tells me that the young lady is not subtle, so she probably couldn’t be trusted with such knowledge. If the would-be assassin was Lady Lestrange, I wonder if the high lord knew about this...."

Severus sighed. "So do I. He is one who can definitely keep secrets."

Tom’s growing affection for Hermione coincided with a deep, visceral, and empathetic—rather than purely self-centered—determination to keep her safe from the machinations of their enemies.

I still wish that she would consider marrying me early, he thought. Even if they didn’t consummate the marriage that soon—and Tom still found that idea intimidating—people would think that they had, and therefore that she might have conceived... but do they verify that? he wondered. He genuinely did not know if his mother would test that with a charm after they did marry. Sometimes people were actually married—on paper—in childhood, and such marriages might not be consummated for several years... but he and Hermione were considered just old enough. They might be expected to. In fact, Tom thought, a swooping feeling developing in his gut, if we told Mother that we weren’t going to for a while yet, she might insist that Hermione continue to go to Hogwarts despite being married. The only way to ensure that she would get to stay at Parselhall would be to actually do the deed—and then she very well might get with child, just as she said to me. Tom definitely was not prepared for that to happen.