"He's a what?" Draco asked again, cutting Hermione off in mid sentence.
Hermione took a deep breath and repeated, "I think he's a Knight of Aequitus."
She smiled a brilliant smile at him as if this should all be making sense to him since it obviously was to her. Draco could feel himself begin to scowl; it wasn't often that he didn't know something. Hermione seemed to notice his expression and suppressed her liquid delight. The tone she took now was a favorite of hers, the teacher. Oddly enough though, Draco discovered that it didn't bother him nearly as much as it did once.
"There really isn't much known about them to tell you the truth." Hermione began her lecture slowly. "I know that they were a very secret order of wizards that began either in the late 14th century or very early in the 15th century. It was during the early 15th century when several very powerful wizards took over what was then the early beginnings of the Ministry of Magic."
"What? I never heard about that. Old Binns keeps going on and on about goblin revolutions and ogre atrocities, but he never mentions the interesting stuff." Draco scowled once more, putout that he had never been informed of this interesting little tidbit.
"Well," Hermione's voice caught his attention again, "You aren't very likely to hear about it our History of Magic class. The ministry likes to keep its sordid past secret. It's just like how they treat house-elves."
Draco groaned, "Hermione."
"I mean, they act like if you just ignore the presence of house-elves it makes it all right to keep them as slaves."
"Hermione"
"Just another little piece of their dirty laundry that those ministry officials don't want aired. Not that they would know anything about dirty laundry."
"Hermione!" Draco snapped in exasperation.
"What?" Hermione flushed when she realized how off-topic she had gotten. "Well, as I was saying, the highest ministry seats came into possession of some really awful people. Terrible, dark wizards."
"Really? I'm surprised that Lucius never bragged about them to me. He was always pointing out successful dark wizards, I think he wanted me to use them as a role-model." Draco propped his feet on the table and gave Hermione a wolfish grin which she ignored.
Pretending that she hadn't heard a single word that he had said she continued. "The Knights of Aequitus did their best to thwart the Ministry while it was under the control of these wizards. Most of the information that I've been able to dig up on them, and it hasn't been much, says that they were akin to the aurors that we have today, but I think that there might have been more to it all then that. I really should have recognized the symbol right away."
"And you managed to figure this all out because of a little picture that you can hardly see that the old coot probably doodled one evening over his nightly cup of absinthe?" Draco drawled in his most superior voice, it wasn't that he wanted to make her angry; Draco just enjoyed bantering with her sometimes.
Hermione wasn't going to rise to his bait though. "No, of course not, the picture was just the key. The rest I knew from class."
"Class? But you just said that Binns wouldn't teach anything about it."
"Well," Hermione looked away nervously, "I didn't say that it was a class here at Hogwarts."
"I'm sorry I didn't realize that you had time for two different schools."
"I have a lot of free time over the summer." She muttered not looking at him, a sure sign that she really didn't want to talk about it. Which, of course, only made Draco even more interested.
