Chapter Text
Hermione did not ask for a man to climb up her tower, but she could undoubtedly say that it did break up her day a bit.
For the last twenty years, the routine had been this:
- wake up
- eat breakfast
- read a book
- sit quietly and focus her magic to reverse time for her mother who liked to look younger than even Hermione some days
- paint a picture
- eat dinner
- dream of leaving the tower
- sleep
- rinse and repeat.
All in a day’s work.
Her mother hadn’t really explained the magic to her—just that when she closed her eyes and focused deeply on her love for her mother, Hermione’s heart would literally glow, and she could watch the wrinkles by her mother’s eyes tighten, the plump cheeks would thin, and the almost imperceptible gray in her hair would return to its natural color.
The reason she lived in the tower her whole life was decidedly less heartwarming.
Muggleborn witches needed to stay inside where it was safe. Wizards at best frowned upon her people’s existence—at worst, murdered them. If anyone of dastardly intentions were to find out who she was born from, they’d kill her, or worse, rip her heart out and feed it to a dragon. Practicing magic held traces, too. She could only use it for her mother.
But today was a different day, a momentous occasion, a day of new beginnings and the start of a bountiful life.
Today was her birthday! Hermione had asked her mother for just one thing, one gift that she would never ask for again: the chance to go outside.
Her mother balked at the idea. Do you want your poor mother to age prematurely, she had asked? Hermione shook her head no, numb with dejection, and focused determinedly while her dear mother held her and fretted about stress lines.
It was the most disheartened Hermione had felt in recent history.
As a replacement gift for so thoroughly rejecting Hermione’s idea, her mother agreed to buy her a new paint set, but not without grumbling that she had to make the journey all the way back to the second farthest town just to buy a little gift.
She left only a few hours ago. Hermione spent the time staring at the ceiling, wondering if anyone would really know if she stepped foot outside. There were wards that prevented vagabonds from coming in, those with ill-intention, her mother said. Every few weeks, Hermione would cast a floating charm on her to exit out of the tower and land on the plush green grass (Hermione assumed, she only knew of wooden slats and stone floors). She would turn and leave without a backward glance.
Which made it all the more surprising for Hermione when she heard shouting from a distance. The tower was cast under a heavy disillusionment charm. It was rare to hear anything other than birds chirping or the rumble of the thin waterfall nearby.
The shouting moved closer—she could hear the rapid beat of hooves stomping past the thick grove that separated her tower from the roads, but it passed almost as soon as it arrived.
She slumped down at the window, perching her head on her crossed arms atop the sill, and gazed longingly at the sky. Every day, the same. How she wished things would change.
“Um, ’scuse me?”
Hermione abruptly sat up and looked back at her room. Nothing looked amiss. But she had definitely heard a voice, gently shouted.
“Down here! Could you help me out a sec? Oh sh—”
The shouting and the presence of hooves suddenly recommenced. Hermione sat frozen at the sill, staring at the grove, waiting for the wave of people and horses to appear and capture her, just as her mother always warned.
But the people didn’t come. Not another peep sounded. The rustles in the bushes died and Hermione could breathe again, could steady the rocketing beat of her heart to the return of safety.
Hermione sighed loudly, releasing a relieved, slightly delirious laugh, thanking the gods that she wouldn’t be stolen away today—of all days—when she heard grunting coming from below her.
She peered over the sill, forgetting in her euphoric high that despite escaping unscathed in the face of invasion, someone had spoken to her.
Not halfway up the tower climbed a person.
She blinked at his struggling form. It looked quite difficult to scale a tower. It would, of course, be easier with magic—
Oh gods, someone was scaling the tower!
Hermione released a belated gasp of shock. Just at that moment, the person looked up at her and bared their teeth—a man, she concluded (she’d never seen one in her life), and she stumbled back, wishing so fervently that her mother was with her now—and ducked behind her large dresser.
She could just make out the man’s words over the knocking in her chest.
“D’you think you could help me out here? A wingardium leviosa or something? I’ll even take a rope if you have it.”
Hermione struggled not to race to the sill and carry a conversation with the man. She would just have to yell. Maybe he’d be afraid of how well her voice carried and leave all by himself.
“What are you doing?!”
“Thought that was obvious,” she heard him wheeze back. The ruffian must not be used to scaling towers. “Really, though, you must have a ladder? How else are you getting back and forth? Don’t tell me I missed the goddamned stairs.”
“I meant, why are you scaling my tower?!”
A short pause ensued where Hermione thought perhaps he had fallen off the side of the tower. Equal parts concern and relief flitted through her at the thought, but anxiety reigned once more when she heard him call out again.
“I’ll talk – at – the top – thanks,” he panted.
Hermione realized with a sharp spike of worry that he sounded much closer than he had before. Hiding behind her dresser wouldn’t cut it; he would still be in the tower, with dangerous intentions, harboring a strength that overpowered hers (just because he was obviously struggling to climb the tower did not undercut the fact that he was still doing it), and she’d just be waiting for him to find her.
No, that certainly wouldn’t do.
Hermione grabbed the shovel in the closet. Her mother liked to plant flowers around the tower and would joke that with the way Hermione stomped throughout the house, it was ultimately a good thing that she couldn’t leave it; she’d ruin the garden with all that clomping. So she took care to step lightly and crossed the room, and pressed herself against the wall at the side of the sill.
She could do this, right? Life and death hung in her use of the shovel. The man would climb up here and do gods know what with her unless she acted first. This was what her mother warned her about.
She would protect herself and then—and then maybe mother would let her see the town. Meet the people. Feel the grass under her toes. If she could handle herself in this dire a situation, she would be utterly convinced of Hermione’s independence, that the fact that she was Muggleborn could not withstand Hermione’s strength.
The first few fingers peeked over the sill. Hermione held her breath. The man grunted and pulled himself up with surprising power, landing nimbly before immediately folding himself in half and resting his hands on his knees, breaths coming and going in heavy pants.
She barely took a second to observe him. Pale hair. Paler skin, if that was possible. Tall. The split second that he had stood up straight before deflating had caused Hermione to lift her head to his looming length. Bent over, a broad back rustled under his rapscallion clothing—an emerald colored fitted leather vest over a simple white tunic, black trousers, riding boots, and a satchel slung across his chest. It looked a little expensive actually, something she never thought a thief would wear—
A thief! A thief entered the tower. She focused her thoughts back to the matter at hand.
As luck would have it, he landed with his body angled away from her. She just had to—with the shovel she would just—
The man must have sensed her stunted advance. He suddenly twisted away, landing further than the shovel would allow her to reach and backed up even more when he saw the weapon she wielded.
“What are you doing?!”
“What are you doing?!” she repeated.
“I’m trying not to get killed by a shovel-wielding psycho!”
“Well, I’m trying not to get killed by the vagrant that scaled my tower!”
“Vagrant?” he frowned. “I don’t smell that bad, do I?” He sniffed himself and frowned harder. “Okay, just because I kind of smell doesn’t mean you can call me a vagrant. Bit rude.”
“Oh, sorry,” Hermione said, a little embarrassed. “No! No, I’m not. You are a vagrant, and I must ask that you leave my tower immediately. Or – or else you’ll die!”
“Yeah, death by shovel doesn’t sound like the best way to go,” he mused. “Look, I just need a place to lay low for a few hours. You put the shovel down and I promise not to do vagrant-like things around you. I’ll even stay right here if it makes you feel better. Can’t do much about the smell right now though, sorry to say.”
Hermione readjusted her grip on the shovel and watched as his eyes flicked to the motion. She raised it higher.
She couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. How could she? The only person she knew was her mother, and her mother never lied to her. She watched the man’s body movements, tried to find a tic that would spell out his intentions.
Well, she supposed she could just ask, couldn’t she?
“What are your intentions here?” she asked in an assertive voice.
The man blinked at her and then—aha! Movement in his lip. He looked like he was trying not to—
“Don’t laugh at me!” Hermione shouted. She could feel her skin heat on her face more than anywhere else. “I’m still holding the shovel!”
“Sorry,” he said. But Hermione had a feeling that he didn’t really mean it. Her mother said it like that her whole life. “Your shovel is very scary. I am very afraid of your shovel.”
“Good!” She shuffled her feet, trying to find the right fighting stance so she’d appear more intimidating. “Well?”
“Well, I thought I just explained. My intention is to lay low for a few hours and avoid the guards before I get out of here.” He explained this to her slowly, as if she was daft and in need of extra time to sort through his words.
“And that’s the only reason you’re here? Not to—not to harm me?” She tightened her grip.
“Nope,” he responded immediately. “In and out of your hair.” His eyes floated up to her mane. “Maybe not the best choice of words.”
She had spent a little extra time on it today, but given her hopes and dreams to go out into the world were dashed—nay, pulverized—she felt a little silly. He was insulting her hair. She hoped not everyone out there was as mean as him.
“How did you get through the wards?” she asked, soldiering on and interrupting his thorough assessment of her curls.
His eyes flicked back to hers. A slight wrinkle in his brow there.
“What wards?”
Hermione looked at him the way one does when a simple question was not then simply answered.
“The wards protecting the tower. The disillusionment and the muffliato and all the rest of them. How’d you get through them?”
The man looked at her the way one does when the person speaking is loony.
“There aren’t any wards. I – well, I just waltzed right in, didn’t I?”
Hermione’s heart rate doubled. He wasn’t a muggle. He asked her to perform a wingardium leviosa so he clearly had knowledge of magical abilities. Perhaps a squib, then? But they should be able to register magical boundaries—or in this case, become confused and repelled at the thought of coming here because of the spells. The fact that he could traipse in and outrightly say that there were no wards…
Her voice rose with every sentence. “That’s not – that doesn’t make any sense. My mother always said there were wards. The tower is protected because of the wards." She was protected because of the wards.
He shrugged. “Sorry.” Again, meaningless. “I’d cast a finite incantantem but I seem to have lost my wand running through the forest.” He peered out the window, standing slightly on his tip toes while still staying in place. “Any chance you can accio my wand over here?”
“Absolutely not,” she scoffed. As if she had zero self-preservation skills. But she did feel marginally better knowing that he didn’t have a wand on him. He still loomed, though he looked like he was trying not to, and he could still overpower her, but the shovel kept him rooted.
He frowned. He seemed to do that a lot. “So, I’ll have to climb back down the tower? Think I’d like to pass on that. Do you really not have stairs?” He glanced around the room, apparently unconcerned about Hermione, who looked just as unconcerned about him for the time being.
There were no wards. Her mother impressed upon the importance of these wards, how they repelled everyone from finding her, how they kept her safe, how ever would her mother keep her safe without these wards? And they didn’t even exist. Those wand movements she had done at the bottom of the tower then—fake, rehearsed, and impossible for Hermione to verify.
She—she trusted Hermione to stay in the tower then. Knew that Hermione would listen unfailingly to her mother. She would never disobey her, would never put herself in harm’s way because that would stress her mother.
Maybe it took a lot of strength to keep the wards intact. The tower was disillusioned after all, with a silencing spell too to make sure that the grounds couldn’t be heard as well. Salvio hexia and more.
They must have worked too, since she’d never had an encounter like this before. So how could he say that there were no wards?
“I’d like you to leave,” she finally said, trying to work the technicalities out in her head.
“I would also like to leave but I fear I do have to stick around a bit. Just until the patrols are off the road. Did you know horses have a keen sense of smell? Ah, that’s probably how they followed me so closely. You wouldn’t happen to have a washroom around here, would you?”
“Oh, yes, it’s just past—no! My mother will be back any minute now—” she lied.
“That way?” he said, beginning to walk towards the washroom. “I’ll just be a sec.”
Hermione waved the shovel, pantomiming the act of beating him over the head with it, and he jolted back quickly.
“Merlin! You could do some serious damage with that. Am I not allowed to use the loo?”
“You’re not allowed to be here at all!”
“You must not receive very many guests. I assure you, this isn’t how one treats another in need of help. Very inhospitable, I must say.”
“This is my tower that you yourself said you just waltzed into!”
“This is your home?” He took another second to glance around the room again. “Quite dingy.”
“Get out.”
“Oh, I’m only joking. It’s actually quite – cozy. What’s that a mural of, if you don’t mind me asking?”
She looked at the mural behind her, a painting of a glittering night sky that she copied from one of her story books when she was a child, and in only a moment, the man raced up to her and began to harshly tug the shovel out of her grasp.
“Insane – I only wanted to use the wash—” he was muttering, but Hermione’s heart was pounding out of her chest, the strength of this man overwhelming her rapidly loosening clutch of the shovel, the terror of being this close to him without something to protect her, her mother hours away not to come back for days, and when she’d arrive, would she see Hermione battered on the floor? All her nightmares come true?
Her panic ratcheted. The man finally seized the shovel from her, pushing her back from him, and when he raised it high in the air, Hermione closed her eyes and cried out in fear.
This was it. Twenty years on this planet, and she had lived them all in her tower. Regret pummeled through her, potential awakened, and in the comforting darkness of her shut eyelids—the only solace she could find—a wave of magic burst out of her, cracking and shattering glass and wood, and a heavy thud sounded across the room.