Mini-Round Two Queen of Reviews Special Prize (part two)
The exchange_bingo mods are proud to present part two of pennswoods's Special Queen of Reviews Prize
~with jazz hands and a drum roll~
Title: Vox
Author: dacian_goddess
Rating: PG-13 (only for now, I promise!)
Word count: 1,505
Disclaimer: Look, if JKR were writing fanfiction, she’d probably not be playing in this ship’s sandbox. That aside, the following narrative poses no danger to body image of the feline kind.
Warnings: Too-mild language and the makings of smart-arsed half-Kneazles
Summary: Hermione begins receiving the oddest in coded communication. There may be many things she’s able to resist, but a good mystery isn’t often likely to be one of them.
Author’s Note: Part two of pennswoods’s gift as the second SS/HG Exchange Bingo Mini-Round winner. I can appreciate that we’re in the middle of said Exchange’s season of bounty, and everyone must be reaching saturation point with the multi-chaptered ficcage. To make matters worse, this is split into chapters because it - shock, horror et al - isn’t finished. So, if you’re about to, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy.
All my thanks to dreamy_dragon73 for being fabulous and encouraging and having just the right dose of (as it turned out, Muse-unstopping) input.
~*~
It was waiting for her when she got home that evening, looking dull and a slight bit dusty and otherwise perfectly innocuous. Hermione, tired as she was from a long and borderline torturously dull day at work, had very nearly missed it. She’d been feeling like she only had eyes for the lock, and her key going in it, and the doorknob that would shimmer subtly with magic and then let her in. Only, she had to have underestimated the span of her attention, because there a foreign object was, and notice it she did.
A bottle: clear, glass, old-fashioned, looking like the chemist’s flasks of old, afloat and bobbing mid-air at the same level as the peephole.
Hermione squinted. For a fraction of a fraction of a moment, her tiredness won out and she smiled inanely, feeling that distant, dim sort of disconnect that meant she wasn’t parsing the sight. There couldn’t be an outmoded Muggle bottle weaving about, suspended, as though cast on invisible waters which stagnated just outside her door.
An equal measure of a fraction later, her wand was out and she was casting.
Whoever it was had left this on her doorstep, they were good. They were also - whether surprisingly or un-so, Hermione couldn’t much say yet - very clever. Her little mystery present had proved impervious to basic Revealing, Summoning or Vanishing, or to being encased in a protective bubble; even one of her own design. But then, it had obediently followed her inside once she’d muttered a vexed ‘Sod it,’ got the door open and stepped through. It was also, to the sender’s credit, free of jinxes, curses, hexes or any other spells that might be activated by near proximity or outright touch. Hermione had tested twice, and was trying to convince herself that a third time would not be the charm - so to speak.
That left invisible poisons, and Hermione with a hastily rummaged-for bezoar in her hand, just in case.
Breathing deeply to centre herself, she reached out, some twenty centimetres in front and precisely at eye level. The little bottle immediately floated away and out of her grasp. All right; that was odd… Supposing her movement had been too tentative, Hermione tried again with a surer hand. The bottle moved away even faster, even farther.
Her captive audience -consisting of a recumbent Crookshanks who was just shy of spilling over his perch on the windowsill - gave her a sideways tilt of the head, a twitched tip of tail, and a meow that managed to sound very amused.
Right, then; third time, again and most determinedly, not the charm.
Hermione mentally rolled up her sleeves, thrilling at the frisson of excitement she felt building up. So, a delivery medium that was shy to the touch; this one might probably count among the hardest since the century of Hephalitus the Hirsute, with his penchant for assigning executions which took after the right or wrong answers to his riddles, that an intended victim will have had to work to get themselves poisoned. Perhaps not safely, then, but the possibility could nonetheless be ruled out.
It was the behavioural dependence, uncommonly complex, that gave her two very distinctive other options that she could take into account, as far - or near, the case being - as she saw it. The first, and straight off the one she felt more comfortable discounting, was human transfiguration. On the one hand, people who transfigured themselves into seemingly inanimate objects handily retained their sentience. On the other hand, as a manoeuvre, the transformation tended to carry its fair share of risks, which became all the more dangerous when considering the difficulties inherent to compacting a living body to such a size. Hermione for one couldn’t think of anyone who personified that combination of skill and utter recklessness.
She was left, then, with specificity: this bit of mystery had to be keyed specifically to her - and that, already, greatly reduced the number of people who could have sent it. They would need to be marginally talented, certainly powerful, and - above all - somewhat more familiar than average with her magic at its barest. This latter was the real trick: neither easy to master nor workable without a great deal of contact with her person.
Maybe out of some brief sense of misplaced sentimentality, maybe out of a sudden wave of amusement tickled out of her by weariness, Hermione briefly gave herself over to an impulse. Without prompting, she entertained the notion that Ronald might have set this up for her. They’d been together long enough now for him to know how much she enjoyed even the idea of little mysteries like this, and how much she appreciated the challenge of… Well, honestly: close enough to any challenge that was fair.
It was a generous bit of wishful thinking, true, but she came by it honestly. The slightly sad fact was, she missed being in a relationship that worked.
Ron had been gone two days now and she was already starting to circle back to the usual impression that she missed him. He was away all week at a leadership seminar for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement; her fault, he’d grumbled good-naturedly, for attempting to introduce Kingsley to notions like these over and over until they took. Kingsley, who had recently begun discussing with her some former stint of his in the Prime Minister’s office and the concepts he’d encountered there, had been independent in his reached decision for reform and a semblance of modernisation.
Absence, she had found through these more recent stages of her and Ron’s relationship, made the heart grow inordinately fonder. He’d be away, and she wouldn’t (unless they counted frenzied nights spent sleepless at the office, knee- and then neck-deep in books and parchment, tongue bathed in tea that could double for astringent), and they would both grow to think they missed each other more than the reality of their subsequent reunions would suggest. More, truth be told, than the lukewarm passion of their day-to-day relationship could presume to suggest. It was a pattern, rigid in form despite varying content, and this week no different. She readily missed him now, in presence and companionship and the stress-relieving exhilaration of a shag or several, but once he made it back there would be no hiding from the tired routine of their casually unromantic, just-shy of platonic, interaction.
What was worse than her slight bout of despondency just now was that she didn’t have anyone on hand for a girls’ night that might cure it. Ginny was away on her second, second honeymoon (or, as they’d decided to name it from then on, ‘our yearly romantic fortnight away from you lot’). Luna had roped Padma into a month spent trekking the wilds of the Carpathians in search of something that had at the time sounded like immortal sheep. Daphne, at least, was home, but she would be too busy planning her newest event idea of a ‘Slytherin Saturday’ for the coming weekend to allow herself any occasion to decompress.
So, then, she was left with the solace provided by her mystery surprise.
-And, of course, the wise company of her clever half-Kneazle.
“You don’t really think it’s from Ron either, do you Crooks?”
In answer, Crookshanks swiped a swift paw over his nose, squinted, and gave her a quiet, protracted, “Mrrow.”
“No, I didn’t think so, you clever boy.” And she just had to reward him with a nice, long scritch behind his ear, just the way he liked. He didn’t purr, of course. Crooks was too dignified these days for purring; but he closed his eyes and leaned into her touch until she stopped. “No sense putting it off, then, is it?” His tail swished in a looping arc and whacked her along her upper arm. “Point taken.” She snickered.
The bottle was no longer approached cautiously. Instead, with her eyes slightly narrowed, Hermione took steady, even steps towards it. Once she was an arm’s length away, she rapped the surface one time with her outstretched wand.
“Let’s see what you have for me, then, my little riddle in a bottle…”
She stilled, with immediate realisation, and a quiet gasp escaped her lax mouth. It, along with the whisper that followed, was obscured entirely by the deep, sonorous ding reverberating under and into the tip of her wand.
“Riddle in a-”
But the realisation had sparked too late for Hermione to say she’d had it figured. The cork popped into inexistence, the glass started building up a mute glow as dull and translucent as its own surface, and a width of parchment that resembled an aged telegram slowly unfurled out of the wide mouth of the vial.
How quaint, Hermione thought, but she was grinning in delight and humming, not quite under her breath, words and bars by turns the way her mind remembered them: ‘message in a bottle’.
From the safe distance of his cosy, off-white perch, Crookshanks squinted again, quite meaningfully.
~with jazz hands and a drum roll~
Title: Vox
Author: dacian_goddess
Rating: PG-13 (only for now, I promise!)
Word count: 1,505
Disclaimer: Look, if JKR were writing fanfiction, she’d probably not be playing in this ship’s sandbox. That aside, the following narrative poses no danger to body image of the feline kind.
Warnings: Too-mild language and the makings of smart-arsed half-Kneazles
Summary: Hermione begins receiving the oddest in coded communication. There may be many things she’s able to resist, but a good mystery isn’t often likely to be one of them.
Author’s Note: Part two of pennswoods’s gift as the second SS/HG Exchange Bingo Mini-Round winner. I can appreciate that we’re in the middle of said Exchange’s season of bounty, and everyone must be reaching saturation point with the multi-chaptered ficcage. To make matters worse, this is split into chapters because it - shock, horror et al - isn’t finished. So, if you’re about to, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy.
All my thanks to dreamy_dragon73 for being fabulous and encouraging and having just the right dose of (as it turned out, Muse-unstopping) input.
~*~
It was waiting for her when she got home that evening, looking dull and a slight bit dusty and otherwise perfectly innocuous. Hermione, tired as she was from a long and borderline torturously dull day at work, had very nearly missed it. She’d been feeling like she only had eyes for the lock, and her key going in it, and the doorknob that would shimmer subtly with magic and then let her in. Only, she had to have underestimated the span of her attention, because there a foreign object was, and notice it she did.
A bottle: clear, glass, old-fashioned, looking like the chemist’s flasks of old, afloat and bobbing mid-air at the same level as the peephole.
Hermione squinted. For a fraction of a fraction of a moment, her tiredness won out and she smiled inanely, feeling that distant, dim sort of disconnect that meant she wasn’t parsing the sight. There couldn’t be an outmoded Muggle bottle weaving about, suspended, as though cast on invisible waters which stagnated just outside her door.
An equal measure of a fraction later, her wand was out and she was casting.
Whoever it was had left this on her doorstep, they were good. They were also - whether surprisingly or un-so, Hermione couldn’t much say yet - very clever. Her little mystery present had proved impervious to basic Revealing, Summoning or Vanishing, or to being encased in a protective bubble; even one of her own design. But then, it had obediently followed her inside once she’d muttered a vexed ‘Sod it,’ got the door open and stepped through. It was also, to the sender’s credit, free of jinxes, curses, hexes or any other spells that might be activated by near proximity or outright touch. Hermione had tested twice, and was trying to convince herself that a third time would not be the charm - so to speak.
That left invisible poisons, and Hermione with a hastily rummaged-for bezoar in her hand, just in case.
Breathing deeply to centre herself, she reached out, some twenty centimetres in front and precisely at eye level. The little bottle immediately floated away and out of her grasp. All right; that was odd… Supposing her movement had been too tentative, Hermione tried again with a surer hand. The bottle moved away even faster, even farther.
Her captive audience -consisting of a recumbent Crookshanks who was just shy of spilling over his perch on the windowsill - gave her a sideways tilt of the head, a twitched tip of tail, and a meow that managed to sound very amused.
Right, then; third time, again and most determinedly, not the charm.
Hermione mentally rolled up her sleeves, thrilling at the frisson of excitement she felt building up. So, a delivery medium that was shy to the touch; this one might probably count among the hardest since the century of Hephalitus the Hirsute, with his penchant for assigning executions which took after the right or wrong answers to his riddles, that an intended victim will have had to work to get themselves poisoned. Perhaps not safely, then, but the possibility could nonetheless be ruled out.
It was the behavioural dependence, uncommonly complex, that gave her two very distinctive other options that she could take into account, as far - or near, the case being - as she saw it. The first, and straight off the one she felt more comfortable discounting, was human transfiguration. On the one hand, people who transfigured themselves into seemingly inanimate objects handily retained their sentience. On the other hand, as a manoeuvre, the transformation tended to carry its fair share of risks, which became all the more dangerous when considering the difficulties inherent to compacting a living body to such a size. Hermione for one couldn’t think of anyone who personified that combination of skill and utter recklessness.
She was left, then, with specificity: this bit of mystery had to be keyed specifically to her - and that, already, greatly reduced the number of people who could have sent it. They would need to be marginally talented, certainly powerful, and - above all - somewhat more familiar than average with her magic at its barest. This latter was the real trick: neither easy to master nor workable without a great deal of contact with her person.
Maybe out of some brief sense of misplaced sentimentality, maybe out of a sudden wave of amusement tickled out of her by weariness, Hermione briefly gave herself over to an impulse. Without prompting, she entertained the notion that Ronald might have set this up for her. They’d been together long enough now for him to know how much she enjoyed even the idea of little mysteries like this, and how much she appreciated the challenge of… Well, honestly: close enough to any challenge that was fair.
It was a generous bit of wishful thinking, true, but she came by it honestly. The slightly sad fact was, she missed being in a relationship that worked.
Ron had been gone two days now and she was already starting to circle back to the usual impression that she missed him. He was away all week at a leadership seminar for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement; her fault, he’d grumbled good-naturedly, for attempting to introduce Kingsley to notions like these over and over until they took. Kingsley, who had recently begun discussing with her some former stint of his in the Prime Minister’s office and the concepts he’d encountered there, had been independent in his reached decision for reform and a semblance of modernisation.
Absence, she had found through these more recent stages of her and Ron’s relationship, made the heart grow inordinately fonder. He’d be away, and she wouldn’t (unless they counted frenzied nights spent sleepless at the office, knee- and then neck-deep in books and parchment, tongue bathed in tea that could double for astringent), and they would both grow to think they missed each other more than the reality of their subsequent reunions would suggest. More, truth be told, than the lukewarm passion of their day-to-day relationship could presume to suggest. It was a pattern, rigid in form despite varying content, and this week no different. She readily missed him now, in presence and companionship and the stress-relieving exhilaration of a shag or several, but once he made it back there would be no hiding from the tired routine of their casually unromantic, just-shy of platonic, interaction.
What was worse than her slight bout of despondency just now was that she didn’t have anyone on hand for a girls’ night that might cure it. Ginny was away on her second, second honeymoon (or, as they’d decided to name it from then on, ‘our yearly romantic fortnight away from you lot’). Luna had roped Padma into a month spent trekking the wilds of the Carpathians in search of something that had at the time sounded like immortal sheep. Daphne, at least, was home, but she would be too busy planning her newest event idea of a ‘Slytherin Saturday’ for the coming weekend to allow herself any occasion to decompress.
So, then, she was left with the solace provided by her mystery surprise.
-And, of course, the wise company of her clever half-Kneazle.
“You don’t really think it’s from Ron either, do you Crooks?”
In answer, Crookshanks swiped a swift paw over his nose, squinted, and gave her a quiet, protracted, “Mrrow.”
“No, I didn’t think so, you clever boy.” And she just had to reward him with a nice, long scritch behind his ear, just the way he liked. He didn’t purr, of course. Crooks was too dignified these days for purring; but he closed his eyes and leaned into her touch until she stopped. “No sense putting it off, then, is it?” His tail swished in a looping arc and whacked her along her upper arm. “Point taken.” She snickered.
The bottle was no longer approached cautiously. Instead, with her eyes slightly narrowed, Hermione took steady, even steps towards it. Once she was an arm’s length away, she rapped the surface one time with her outstretched wand.
“Let’s see what you have for me, then, my little riddle in a bottle…”
She stilled, with immediate realisation, and a quiet gasp escaped her lax mouth. It, along with the whisper that followed, was obscured entirely by the deep, sonorous ding reverberating under and into the tip of her wand.
“Riddle in a-”
But the realisation had sparked too late for Hermione to say she’d had it figured. The cork popped into inexistence, the glass started building up a mute glow as dull and translucent as its own surface, and a width of parchment that resembled an aged telegram slowly unfurled out of the wide mouth of the vial.
How quaint, Hermione thought, but she was grinning in delight and humming, not quite under her breath, words and bars by turns the way her mind remembered them: ‘message in a bottle’.
From the safe distance of his cosy, off-white perch, Crookshanks squinted again, quite meaningfully.