The Sorting Hat was shuffling the first years. Hermione's fingers found the edge of her goblet and tightened. The Great Hall felt louder this year. More benches. More bodies. More eyes that did not know where to look.
First years stood, waiting for their names to be called, hands twisting fabric until knuckles went pale. Hermione watched the line as if she could solve it like an equation.
Across the aisle, the green and silver table looked like it always did, neat rows and straight backs, an entire house pretending it had never been thirteen and frightened. She caught herself staring and returned her gaze to the first years.
Names rang out. The Hat dropped, a shout, some cheers or an elegant clap based on the house. The rhythm was of a machine, but the faces were not.
Her eyes drifted, uninvited, to the Carrow children. None of them sat near her. Some had been sorted into Ravenclaw, one went to Hufflepuff, and the rest went to Slytherin. Hermione's gaze snagged on the curve of a familiar jaw and the same wide set of grey eyes she saw in the mirror now.
She blinked, her mind went to the last days of last year. The Hall blurred.
Potions had been her last lesson before the week ended. She remembered the heat first. The stone dungeon walls held it, thick and damp, and the cauldrons gave it back in waves. This was not Snape's classroom anymore, not a place where students held their breath and prayed not to be noticed.
Hermione's quill flew. Professor Greengrass paced between tables with a steady gait, sleeves rolled, hands stained from ingredients. She had asked why lacewing flies reacted differently when crushed with silver rather than brass. She had expected impatience.
Instead, she got a detailed explanation.
The professor moved to her station, leaned over her cauldron, read her notes and watched her potion simmer. A small tap of his wand adjusted the heat. He pointed at her notes with the blunt end of his quill.
"Your question is sound. Your assumption," he tapped the parchment. "Is not. Silver is not just a metal. It carries resonance. Read Spattergroit and Salts, third edition, chapter seven. Then look at Tobias Thurkell's notes on sympathetic catalysts. You will understand why the lacewing behaves as if they are listening the Weird Sisters."
He did not praise her. He did not dismiss her. He treated her like she belonged in the room.
Hermione had left that dungeon with her hands smelling of crushed lacewings and her mind burning bright. She had almost forgotten what loneliness felt like.
Almost.
The loneliness waited in the quiet moments. It waited in her dormitory when the other girls whispered about summer homes and family owls. It waited when she tried to sleep, and her mind kept reaching for the sound of her mother's laugh, the way her father hummed when he read.
Occlumency had given her a door she could close. It had not taught her how to fill the room behind it.
She sat in the library that afternoon with a book heavy enough to bruise. Records of the Spanish Inquisition. The translation had a Muggle name on the title page. This was one of the rare non magical books in the library. She ran her finger along a paragraph, then pulled it back as if the ink could burn.
A man had congratulated himself in the margins. He wrote about drowning a Witch who was healing the villagers with the powers she borrowed from the Devil. One of the villagers whom she healed has come to them and reported her; he was burned after they drowned the witch. His soul was stained, according to the Inquisitor.
Hermione had started with a list, because lists calmed her.
Accusations: heresy, witchcraft, blasphemy.
The words looked neat on parchment. The cases did not. Heresy meant a question asked in the wrong room. Blasphemy meant a comment overheard by the wrong man. Witchcraft was different; it could mean a midwife who did her job too well, a healer who stopped a fever without begging anyone's saint for permission or paying the church for snake oils.
Part of Hermione wanted to believe people had changed. That the humanity who built cages and drowning pits was gone. She tried to hold that thought and closed her eyes as it slipped through her imaginary fingers.
People still tortured. People still shouted prayers while they killed others, because it made the cruelty feel clean. The tools shifted, the uniforms changed, the language grew harsher, more guttural. Yet humanity did not change. They were still the same savage group ready to kill, maim and enjoy the suffering of others.
She had come looking for a counterargument. She found a pattern instead, and she hated how easily it made sense.
Hermione's mouth twisted. She forced herself to read another line, then another. Her stomach tightened until she could not pretend it was curiosity anymore.
Defence Against Muggles was a new class, and she had hated the name the first time she heard it. She had told herself it was propaganda dressed as education. She had wanted to prove it wrong.
She had come to the library to build a counterargument. She left with the quiet understanding that cruelty did not need magic to exist.
She closed the book with care. Her hands shook anyway.
She remembered her question to Professor Black about the reason he hates the Muggles. His answer was an elegant one. She still remembers it verbatim. "...It is said that I hate les Non magiques. The Muggle. The No Maj. The Can't Spells. I do not hate them; I do not. For I do not fight out of hatred. I believe that the Muggles are not lesser, but other. Not worthless, but of other value. Not disposable, but of different disposition. Magic blooms only in rare souls. It is granted to those who live for higher things. Oh, and what a world we could make for all humanity, we who live for truth, for freedom... and for love." These were the words of Gellert Grindelwald. A wizard who tried to warn them before the Second World War. She read about him.
She was not sure if she could say she would not hate a race, a group that did all those horrible things she read about while also holding a wand. The imbalance between Magicals and Muggles was illogical. Wizards had the tools to dominate the world, yet they lacked numbers. Muggles, on the other hand, was a shattered community. Some of them, like her family, were decent human beings, while the majority were... she could not find a nice word to describe the rest. The majority of Humans were...
A soft crack made her flinch. A house elf stood beside the table, eyes huge, ears twitching.
"Miss Granger," it squeaked. "Headmistress is summoning."
Hermione's spine went straight before she even stood. She packed her parchments, stacked her books, and smoothed her robes as if fabric could hide nerves.
Headmistress Rosier's office carried a clean bite in the air that Hermione associated with wards. The Headmistress sat behind her desk, as she had grown up there. Another woman stood in front of her desk, hands clasped on her lap, posture perfect.
Hermione curtsied. Her knees bent the way Professor Narcissa Black and later Professor Morozova had drilled into her and the way Professor Lasombra had corrected with a raised brow.
Headmistress Rosier watched her without warmth or hostility, which somehow felt worse.
The other woman turned, and the light caught her hair and the pale line of an old scar near her temple. Her gaze landed on Hermione, then dipped, measuring the set of her shoulders, the angle of her chin.
"My name is Moira Carrow." The words landed softly. "Lady of the Noble House of Carrow."
Hermione kept her hands still. Her heart did not agree.
Moira's eyes held no disdain. They held a kind of tired patience, like someone who had listened to the same arguments for decades.
"I am here to ask whether you will join my family, child. The year ends soon. Those without a decision will go to one of the orphanages the Ministry runs."
Hermione was aware of her situation. She was also aware that the Carrows were part of the sacred twenty eight, and like the rest, they were Blood Purists. She cleared her throat. It came out smaller than she wanted.
"If you would allow me, Lady Carrow." She chose her words very, very carefully. "Your house is… not known for welcoming someone like me. I would like to understand why you would want me."
Moira did not flinch at the label. She gestured to the seat opposite as if Hermione had been expected.
Hermione sat with her back straight and her feet placed carefully, ankles aligned the way etiquette demanded. She had conflicted feelings, part of her was proud that she had learned every little nuance perfectly, another part hated that proud part of doing it right.
Moira poured tea herself. She slid the cup across the desk with two fingers.
"Blood purity is not a tantrum," Moira allowed. "It is not a reason to spit on children. It is a stance. It means we protect our way of life. It means we assume Muggles will do what they have done before when they panic. Burn, drown, slaughter and pray over our screams and call it virtue."
Hermione's fingers tightened around her cup. The porcelain was warm. Her hands were cold.
Moira leaned back, gaze steady. "It also means we do not waste assets. A Muggleborn is not a stain. A Muggleborn is a rare thing that survived a world that did not want it to survive. That matters."
Hermione found no immediate flaw in the logic, and that disturbed her more than if it had been obviously cruel.
Headmistress Rosier watched the exchange silently.
Moira's voice softened by a fraction. "If you join my house, you will learn these. You will gain protection." She focused her gaze on Hermione. "You will gain kin. You will be expected to give something back, of course. Effort, loyalty and discipline. Not worship."
Hermione swallowed. She pictured her parents again, then pushed the image into the room she had built in her mind palace, door shut, latch firm.
"What happens if I refuse?"
Moira did not lie. "You will go to the system, child. You will hope the system is kind, I am not saying it is not. But it can not be the same as having a family."
Hermione stared at the tea until the surface stopped trembling.
She lifted her gaze. "I will join."
Moira's expression did not brighten; it relaxed. The difference mattered to Hermione.
Her summer became a schedule.
The portraits in the Carrow Manor were strangely talkative; not only did they explain many of the reasons for the Magicals and their adopted behaviour over the centuries, but also the misconception about the Blood Purity. They were not against the Muggleborns; they were against the Muggles that came with them. This small detail was making the difference.
Another one of her personal lessons with 'Aunt Moira, ' the lady of the house, corrected her posture without words, a tap to the shoulder, a look that made Hermione adjust. Moira Carrow insisted on being called by her name or, as Hermione was using it, Aunt Moira.
She learned how to greet elders, how to sit without fidgeting, and how to hold silence without looking guilty. She learned the Carrow family tree until she could recite it half asleep. She learned that some smiles were invitations and some were traps.
One evening, Aunt Moira returned from outside with nearly a dozen children in tow. They clustered behind her like ducklings, eyes wide, cheeks flushed from travel.
Aunt Moira's smile warmed, and for a moment, the Lady of a noble house looked like someone's aunt again.
"Come, Hermione," she called. "Meet your siblings."
Weeks passed in peace, learning and mingling with the new kids.
It was time for the ritual of Blood Adoption. Hermione's breath caught. She stood anyway.
The ritual room was warded tightly. The air tasted of copper and incense. The potions sat in a silver cup, its surface dark, almost glossy. Hermione watched Aunt Moira's hands as she let drop of her blood on each vial.
Hermione drank when told. The potion slid down her throat like warm honey and then turned sharp, a sting behind her eyes. Magic shifted inside her, not like a spell, but like her bones had been waiting for an instruction.
Heat surged, then steadied. The Ritualist, a hooded figure who drew the arrays and conducted the ritual itself, was chanting behind her. She caught some of the words in Latin. That was all she could hear as the heat reached unbearable degrees and stopped at the same moment the hooded figure stopped chanting.
Moira stepped into the array after getting a nod from the hooded one. She conjured a tall mirror and let Hermione look at her new self.
Hermione lifted a hand to her hair. It still curled and fought her fingers, but it felt different, like the strands had decided to listen more.
Aunt Moira stepped close, cupped Hermione's cheeks, and searched her face as if comparing it to a memory.
"You resemble Alecto," Aunt Moira whispered.
A single tear sat in the corner of her eye. It did not fall. It held, stubborn.
Hermione's own throat tightened. She could not explain why it mattered, only that it did.
A fresh cheer in the Great Hall pulled her back.
The Hat shouted another house. The first year stumbled toward her house for the coming years.
Hermione's fingers brushed the edge of her sleeve. The Carrow crest sat there now, a small patch that weighed more than it should.
Hermione Moira Carrow.
She rolled the name in her mind and felt the shape of it settle.
She wanted to make Aunt Moira proud. She wanted her new siblings to be safe. She wanted to be useful in a world that was no longer veiled, as her own eyes were open now.
Then her eyes slid, again, to green and silver.
The Slytherin table looked like certainty. Like it always had.
Hermione drew a slow breath through her nose and sighed. There was a longing for those colours in her grey eyes.