Chapter Text
Chapter One: The Spine
An arm was slung about Hermione’s waist, and soft, whuffling snores tickled the back of her neck. With a groan, Hermione rolled away from the too-hot presence at her back and sat up. Ever since the end of the Tower war, sleep had been elusive, at best. Too many memories pressed in on her dreams, and she would wake up crying or in a cold sweat. Hermione rubbed a tired hand over her face.
“You want a cup of tea, Lady Hermione?” A quiet voice asked.
Squinting in the darkness, Hermione could make out the slender frame of one of the younger members of their group. One of Fay’s then. They were always very formal with her—no matter how much she protested.
“Sure,” she agreed in an equally quiet voice. “I’m awake now, whether I want to be or not.”
His economy of movement was graceful in its own way, and Hermione watched the Dunbar man fix her tea in a battered metal cup. She took it gratefully with a murmur of thanks and a nod.
“Where are we headed today, your ladyship?” The Dunbar lad asked.
“We’re headed to check on some crofters,” Hermione murmured. She blew on her tea and took a tentative sip. “We haven’t heard from them since last fall, and Herself is starting to worry.”
“The McGonagall’s worried about crofters?” Fay’s man sounded surprised.
“Look, what’s your name lad?” Hermione demanded.
“Tearlach, your ladyship,” he offered hesitantly.
“Tearlach,” she repeated, trying to commit the lad’s name to memory. “You grew up here, in the Spine. You know how unforgiving our winters can be.”
“Aye, your ladyship,” the lad agreed. “But couldn’t we just send some gliders to go check on them?”
“Gliders don’t do well when they get too high into the Spine. Ice forms on the wings and the pilots end up crashing,” Hermione explained with a shake of her head. She sighed then, feeling ancient compared to the boy who sat across the fire. “Not every problem can be solved with a Gift, Tearlach.”
Far too often, people’s gut reaction to any situation was to have someone Gifted take care of it. In the past, it would have taken money or power to have the Gifted of the Towers at one’s beck and call, but the War had focussed everyone on more immediate issues. In the mountains that made up the Spine of Albion, there had never been a lot of money or power, and they had often had to find other ways to do what had to be done.
The lad made a sound in his throat that was half-scoff and half-agreement.
“Having a Gift certainly never helped me,” he muttered. Hermione froze for just a moment.
“What’s your Gift?” She asked gently.
Once or twice, she had met people who seemed to have an almost worthless Gift. The Towers had given them minimal training and then gently pushed them back out into the world. Sometimes it had seemed to Hermione that being Gifted could be more trouble than it was worth. That thought was small, cold comfort most days.
“Um… I, erm, make things moist?” Tearlach muttered.
“You what?” Hermione asked, not quite believing what she’d heard.
“I have hydrokinesis, but it’s so weak that I…,” here Tearlach trailed off and fell silent.
“You make things moist,” Hermione filled in for him. She bit her lip until she could taste blood. Laughing at the poor lad wouldn’t help. It wasn’t as though she were any better off.
“Yes, your ladyship,” Tearlach sighed heavily.
“Her’ione?” Fay’s sleep-addled voice drifted over to the fire.
“I’m here, Fay,” Hermione called as softly as she could so that she wouldn’t wake any of the rest of their party.
“’S cold,” Fay whined.
“You snore,” Hermione countered drily.
Next to her, Tearlach laughed softly.
“Did you sleep at all?” Fay whispered harshly. She wrapped her blankets about her shoulders like a shawl and crept closer to the fire. “Tearlach, did she sleep?”
“Aye, Lady Fay,” Tearlach reported dutifully. “Her ladyship woke just a wee bit ago.”
“Let’s get the fire going again,” Fay sighed. “We need to get porridge and strong tea going for this lot.”
After breakfast, they saddled up the sturdy mountain ponies that the McGonagall had chosen for them, and headed higher up into the Spine than Hermione had been in a long, long time. Nerves had her looking over her shoulder at every noise, and finally Fay manoeuvered her pony so that they were riding as close together as they could given the narrow trails.
“Something bothering you, my lady?” Fay asked cautiously, her voice low.
“No,” Hermione sighed.
“Cac,” Fay spat. She took a deep breath and then sighed. “When you get a feeling, it’s just as good as a Gift, my lady. So again, is there something bothering you?”
“I don’t know,” Hermione confessed. “I feel… odd. Like we’re being watched or something, but I know that’s mad because there’s no way for anyone to watch us up here.”
Fay’s lips pressed together. “They could if they were using someone who had a strong Gift for Telesthesia.”
“I haven’t felt watched at all until we made it to Hogwarts pass,” Hermione protested. “And you know I can’t sense the Gifted.”
“No, you can’t,” Fay agreed. She closed her fingers around the pommel of her knife. “Maybe an animal-speaker?”
“Maybe,” Hermione agreed reluctantly.
The way her people believed in her was frightening. Hermione was Ungifted. She didn’t have telepathy or telekinesis or telesthesia. She didn’t have any powers at all, but if she told her people she had a bad feeling about something—they paid attention.
With a soft cluck to her pony, Fay moved ahead on the trail. Oliver Wood dropped back to Hermione’s position. She watched the ripple move up the length of their party. Postures straightened. Heads swivelled. Eyes began to track every movement. Fingers twitched and wrapped around sword or knife pommels.
“You have a feeling, Young McGonagall?” Oliver asked quietly.
“Aye, I do,” Hermione replied.
“That doesn’t bode well for our crofters,” Oliver murmured.
“I could be wrong.” It was important, she thought, to remind them of that fact.
Oliver made a grunt of disagreement, and untied the safety strap that secured his axe to his pony’s saddle. Long hours in the saddle riding McGonagall lands made his movements graceful.
“I trust your gut over anyone else’s Gift, Young McGonagall,” Oliver said with a lazy shrug.
“All of you are ridiculous,” Hermione groused as she pulled her long dirk out of its sheath.
The ride to the cluster of crofters’ cottages was tense. The party paused above the glen, and two members slid off of their ponies and melted into the underbrush, the muted colours of their tartan acting as camouflage. The rest of them waited impatiently. Fay drummed her fingers against the pommel of her sword. The hair on the back of Hermione’s neck prickled, and she slid off her pony gripping her long dirk tightly.
Mist began to creep along the ground, moving closer and closer. Anxiety rolled over Hermione and she hissed in irritation. Something wasn’t right. She took a deep breath and tried to settle her mind. Mist didn’t creep like that, not this time of the day, and not this time of the year. That meant only one thing.
“They’ve got at least one strong telepath,” Hermione bit out.
“An empath, too,” Oliver replied. He paused and scowled at the mist. “Hopefully not a telempath.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if there are fewer Gifted?” Hermione asked. Oliver shook his head.
“If they’ve got telepathy and empathy?” He turned to look at her solemnly. “Then we might be dealing with a Prime.”
A shiver of trepidation went down Hermione’s spine. Most of her experience with Primes had been as a child. She had fond memories of the Gifted who wielded incredible power in service to the Towers or the Crown. If there were Primes hiding in this tiny glen, they were traitors to the Crown and renegades from the Towers.
One of the scouts slid out from behind a tree, a grim look on his face. Fay’s expression tightened and she pulled the sword strapped to her back so that she now held her short sword and a longsword. Hermione automatically pulled out her longsword and moved closer to Fay, longsword in one hand, dirk in the other.
“Well?” She demanded.
“Five of them,” Fay whispered as the party gathered close. She glanced at Oliver. “It’s possible that one of them is a Prime.”
“Death Eaters?” Hermione whispered, turning to glance at the scout.
“Aye, my lady,” the scout affirmed.
“The crofters?” Hermione demanded.
The corners of the scout’s mouth turned down. “Dead,” he admitted. “The entire family.”
A quick sweeping glance took in the entire party.
“The Crown has declared that the Death Eater faction of Slytherin Tower are traitors to Albion,” Hermione reminded all of them. “Ideally, we must try to capture them and turn them over to the Crown for trial.”
“Heard and Understood, my lady,” Fay murmured. She locked eyes with her own people. “Capture them if we can, but don’t risk yourselves. If any of you can identify one of them as a Prime, then grab my attention, or Oliver’s. Do not attempt to engage with a rogue Prime.”
Soft murmurs of assent rippled around them. Then everyone slid into the trees, blending into the foliage as they crept into the glen. Fay stuck close to Hermione, but she was used to Fay’s fierce protection. They slipped from tree to tree, moving closer and closer to the crofters’ cottages. Hermione tried to keep her mind calm, like pool of water in a mountain glen. Strong emotion might draw undue attention.
The battle cry of the Dunbars and the McGonagalls rang out in the glen as the clans whirled into furious action. Men and women jumped and spun, their weapons flashing in the sunlight. Hermione tried to move forward so that she could engage the enemy herself, but she was blocked at every turn by a Dunbar or a McGonagall. The fact that she couldn’t get anywhere near the actual fighting was not lost on her. She glared at Fay.
“I do know how to fight, you know,” Hermione snapped. She tossed her braids over her shoulder. “Some people think I’m pretty good at it.”
“If I let you anywhere near these crazy bastards, and one of them managed to get a hit in, do you think they’d live long enough for a trial?” Fay retorted with an arched eyebrow. “The king would have to kill them, or the prince would flay the skin from their bodies in the middle of the court.”
“Don’t, Fay,” Hermione said flatly, the warning clear in her voice.
Normally, Fay would never dream of poking that wound. The dissolving of Hermione’s betrothal to Harry, Heir of Gryffindor, when she failed to Manifest a Gift had been a source of private pain. Most of her friends and family avoided any possible mention, to protect Hermione.
“It’s been ten years,” Fay reminded Hermione. “He hasn’t married anyone in all that time.”
“There was a war on,” Hermione pointed out, ignoring the way her chest tightened at Fay’s words.
“It’s officially been over for almost three years,” Fay reminded her. Hermione wrinkled her nose.
“Three years we’ve spent digging damned Death Eaters out of the Spine,” Hermione protested. She shook her head. “Let it go, Fay.”
Fay turned away, muttering something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like I will if you will, my Lady. Hermione glared at her vassal’s back.
/\/\/\/\/\
When a tired, bedraggled group of McGonagalls and Dunbars rode into the bailey of Catspaw, Hermione expected to see her mother waiting impatiently, tapping her foot. There were people bustling around with purpose, moving as they would on any other day, but Minerva McGonagall, the McGonagall of Catspaw, was nowhere to be seen.
“Hamish! Where’s Herself?” Hermione demanded when they reached the stables.
The stable master strolled to her side with one of his newest stable boys following after him. Young Sachairi was almost bouncing in place, he was that excited. Hamish glanced down at him and sighed.
“Got a visitor,” Hamish explained as he took the reins to her pony.
“Who?” Hermione asked with a frown.
“Dunno,” Hamish replied with a shrug.
“It was a Tower runner,” Sachairi told them eagerly. “I saw the pendant she wore!”
“A Tower runner?” Hermione repeated. She turned to Fay and frowned. “Why would the Towers be interested in Catspaw?”
If anywhere in Albion could be considered isolated and remote—removed from the Towers and the court of Albion’s Gryffindor Palace—it was the Spine of Albion. Catspaw, the seat of the McGonagall clan, hidden away in the recesses of the Spine, was very nearly inaccessible, which was just how the McGonagalls liked it.
“Let’s go find out,” Fay suggested.
“We need to see to the traitors first,” Hermione reminded her. “We’ve got a couple of rooms in the dungeon that dampen Gifts. They can cool their heels there until the Royal Guard can come fetch them.”
After the Death Eaters were secured and placed under guard, Hermione retreated to her rooms. Being on the road for weeks had left her filthy, and she wanted nothing more than a long, hot bath. In the privacy of her bath, Hermione was willing to admit that avoiding anyone from the Towers was an added bonus.
No one could ever accuse Hermione McGonagall of being stupid. She knew how the court and the Tower workers viewed her. It wasn’t a bad thing to be Ungifted. The gods knew that a good percentage of the people of Albion were Ungifted. The problem was that Hermione McGonagall was Ungifted.
The Houses of Ross and Urquart each had long histories of consistently producing Gifted children. The McGonagall clan, as a cadet branch of both houses, had always had Gifted children. It had seemed a safe bet—a sure thing—for the House of Gryffindor to betrothe their heir to the heiress of Ross and Urquart.
When Harry had Manifested at 13 years old, everyone assumed that Hermione would follow soon after, and they’d both set off for the Towers and their required training. A year passed, and then another. Hermione turned 18, but she never Manifested. Harry’s unshakable faith in her eventual Manifestation had been touching–until the Houses of Ross and Urquart decided that enough had been enough.
“Lady Hermione?” Fay called. Hermione shook herself, pushing away the memories that crowded in on her.
“I’m in the bath,” Hermione called back. Fay poked her head into the bathroom and frowned at Hermione.
“You’ve been in here for ages. Herself wants to know where you are,” Fay admonished her.
“Fine,” she groaned. “Tell her I’ll be right down.”
“Wet hair and all, she said,” Fay told her firmly.
“That will look charming,” Hermione huffed. “It will be great gossip for the Towers.”
“Get dressed and stop whinging,” Fay said.
“You are a horrible vassal,” Hermione grumbled as she moved to get out of the tub.
“I’m the worst,” Fay agreed cheerfully. “Now shift your arse.”
Reluctantly, Hermione made her way to the Great Hall. Minerva was sitting in front of the fire in her favourite chair. Next to her, seated in one of the only other chairs in the Great Hall, was a slender woman dressed in the uniform of a Tower Runner. As Hermione drew closer, she realized that the woman’s uniform was trimmed in the silver and green of Slytherin Tower. Hermione frowned and turned to look at her mother.
“Hermione, this is Tracey of Slytherin Tower,” Lady Minerva, the McGonagall of Catspaw, introduced the runner. “Miss Davis, this is my daughter and heir, Lady Hermione, the Young McGonagall.”
“It’s my pleasure, Miss Davis,” Hermione said with a nod. “What brings you to Catspaw?”
“The reconstruction of Slytherin Tower is finally complete,” Lady Minerva explained. “We have been invited to the rededication ceremony.”
“We have?” Hermione’s voice rose in shocked surprise. Lady Minerva’s lips tightened into a firm line and she frowned at her daughter.
The truth was that there had been few occasions for balls or fêtes of any sort during the war. Few invitations had found their way to Catspaw, and after a couple of disastrous experiences, House McGonagall had begun to politely decline them. Eventually, the invitations had stopped coming. Hermione didn’t think they’d received any in the last five years or so.
“The new Mistress of Slytherin Tower is Donata Sinistra. We trained together in the Towers, and she wrote a personal note on the invitation,” Lady Minerva explained. She shifted in her chair. “The Donata is a friend, Hermione, and she has personally asked for my support in this matter.”
“Mum.” Hermione stared at her mother in horror.
“You know that there is still a lot of bad feeling about Slytherin Tower. Some argued that it should never have been rebuilt,” Lady Minerva reminded her. “It took the joint efforts of everyone in Albion to make this happen. This event is being viewed as a way to help Albion heal.”
“I could stay here,” Hermione suggested. She waved a hand around her. “I could make sure that Catspaw runs smoothly while you’re gone. We could consider it a learning experience for me.”
“It’s been long enough, Hermione,” Lady Minerva insisted. “I put up with it during the war, but no longer. You’ve done nothing wrong. You don’t need to hide in the Spine for the rest of your life.”
“Mum, you know that half the court will be there,” Hermione protested.
“Exactly,” Lady Minerva said with an air of satisfaction. “Let them see that the Young McGonagall is the pride of the Spine.”
“Mum,” Hermione tried again.
“We leave in the morning, Hermione,” Lady Minerva informed her in a voice that brooked no argument. “Fay’s packing your things.”
“Why do we need to go?” Hermione protested. “We’re a tiny cadet branch—half the time people forget House McGonagall even exists!”
“Not in the Spine they don’t,” The Tower Runner said with a snort. She looked Hermione over thoughtfully. “I half-expected you to glow with an angelic light or something.”
“Don’t be silly,” Hermione retorted. “That’s Mum.”
“Hermione,” Lady Minerva sighed. “Why are you being so difficult about this?”
“Remember the one ball we attended during the war?” Hermione reminded her mother. “That horrid little girl kept following me around, and if anyone I knew tried to speak to me, she would announce in a loud voice that she was the new heir to Ross, and that they should talk to her instead.” Hermione grimaced. “It was humiliating.”
Lady Minerva sighed heavily. “I spoke to Elinor Ross, and to Ginevra’s mother. Ross does have other choices available.”
“If she pulls that kind of stunt at Slytherin Tower, I won’t be responsible for my actions, Mum,” Hermione warned her mother. “I’m not above challenging her to a duel.”
“If the chit is stupid enough to behave like that at the rededication of Slytherin Tower, you have my permission to defend the honour of McGonagall,” Lady Minerva sighed.
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” Hermione pouted at her mother. Lady Minerva took her daughter’s hand and squeezed her fingers gently.
“It will be Slytherin Tower,” Lady Minerva reminded her. “Most of them will have come from the plains and the fens. You know that Gifted from the Spine usually go to Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. Anyone who might have been at court would have been involved with Riddle’s renegade faction.”
“You believe that most of the people there won’t even know who I am,” Hermione said drily.
“I didn’t know until I got into the Spine,” Tracey Davis spoke up. She grimaced slightly. “I mean, I knew that Lady Minerva was a friend of the Donata, and that she had a daughter, but I didn’t realize that you were the Heiress of Ross.”
“The former Heiress of Ross,” Hermione corrected her absently. The Tower Runner winced sympathetically.
“If it helps, I think the Lady Minerva is correct,” Tracey offered.
“It doesn’t,” Hermione muttered. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I just…”
“I understand, Lady Hermione,” Tracey murmured. She glanced at Lady Minerva. “You mentioned a room?”
“Of course,” Lady Minerva said with a nod. She rose to her feet and looked around the hall. “Senga? Can you please show our guest to a room?”
“Yes, Lady Minerva,” the young woman murmured. She curtseyed and then gestured to Tracey. “If Miss will follow me?”
As soon as they were alone, Hermione turned to scowl at her mother.
“Mum,” Hermione protested.
“Hermione.” Lady Minerva reached out and tucked a curl behind her daughter's ear. “My darling girl, I am asking you to do this for me.”
At that, Hermione’s shoulders slumped.
“Of course, Mum,” Hermione agreed. “Anything for you.”
“Thank you,” Lady Minerva said. She patted Hermione on the shoulder. “Go see Fay. The gods only know what she’s packed for you.”
Hermione winced. “Perhaps I’ll do that.”
“We’re leaving first thing, Hermione. Make sure you go to bed early,” Lady Minerva added as a parting shot.
“As the McGonagall commands,” Hermione said with a deep bow and a flourish.