Dodging Prison and Stealing Witches

Chapter 45: Hermione's Quest - Part 2

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text
In 1740, the third-to-last member of the Ancient and Noble house of Pithy, the then Lord Pithy, peacefully passed away as the result of being gored by an enraged tebo while hunting in deepest Africa.

The mantle of Lord then passed to his brother, the second-to-last member of the ancient line, who immediately got twenty of his best mates together, went out for a dignified mourning drink, got rip-roaring drunk, and, while trying to impress a lady of easy virtue, splinched himself into the bottom of an abandoned mine, and was only found when the rain washed out his drowned, and very dead, head several days later.

The last member of the now rather endangered house—the previous lord's sister—quickly took it upon herself not to rest until she had secured the house's future. Given that her marriage contract did not allow for any children by her maiden family, and as there was no Lord Pithy to grant her request for a divorce, she plotted to do this by freeing herself of her current shackles in the only other way that would work.

It was just a shame her trusted maid put the basilisk venom in the wrong goblet.

Thus the Ancient and Noble house of Pithy came to an end, and with its passing, all the accumulated family magics were released to the world. Often this would change nothing, since even extinct, one still needs to know how to cast the family magic in order to make use of it, but in this case, the same maid who mixed up the poison, also had access to her mistresses' secret diary, which contained many of the magics of the now dead house.

Not really knowing the value of what she had, the maid sold the diary to a friend for five galleons. The friend then took it to a dealer she knew in Knockturn Alley, who paid her fifty galleons. Finally, the book was purchased by a well-to-do muggleborn who, drunk on the ideals of the muggle enlightenment, then did something almost unheard of in the wizarding world, up to that moment.

He published it.

Five-hundred years of accumulated magic in the subject of occlumency—particularly in regards to the field of arithmancy—were unleashed upon the wizarding world, and the arithmancy revolution began.

Deep within the Hogwarts library, deep within the library of her own mind, Hermione Granger was treading the path of countless arithmancers since that day over 250 years ago. Of course, all of those others tended to be in their twenties before even attempting the mind magics she was now.

Across the blackness of her consciousness, lines formed shapes, broke apart, whirled around, and formed new shapes, in a never-ending kaleidoscope of potentiality. The potential was in cracking the code on the ancient Nordic writings. She'd been at it for weeks now, and was starting to get frustrated — both with her lack of progress, and with her now chronic magical exhaustion. Using her powers continually at this level was far beyond what she'd ever asked her brain to handle before.

But she would succeed. She had to. Harry was relying on her.

— DP & SW: NRiCaD —

In his own little slice of Magical Britain, Mister Bentley tended to the lawn he'd been meticulously cultivating since even before he'd become Magical Britain's top civil servant. That was a good analogue for Magical Britain itself, he thought, carefully uprooting an errant weed-bud with a skilful jab of his wand — a well-maintained lawn. Like a lawn, Magical Britain had a history. Poisons, carelessly added, took decades to seep away, everything should be neatly trimmed, and, occasionally, you needed to add something truly foul smelling to get the best long-term results — no matter how much Mrs Bun might voice her mild disapproval over the garden wall they shared, bless her. In fact, now that he came to think about it, Mrs Bun was a perfect example of an outstanding blade of grass on the lawn that was Magical Britain.