Chapter Text
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder .
But Hermione Granger’s heart wasn’t fond of much these days—except, perhaps, the four walls that cocooned her in work and willful silence. And her absence? Well, out of sight, out of mind, she supposed. After all, grief, guilt, and unchecked emotional baggage could be managed if one cataloged them properly. Boxed it up. Filed it under irretrievable and buried it under deadlines.
Her office at Oxford was a study in organized chaos. The small, book-lined room smelled of parchment, ink, and old stone, with shelves that bowed slightly under the weight of countless volumes—some academic, some magical, though none of her colleagues would ever know the difference. Stacks of papers teetered on every available surface, half-marked essays mingling with site reports and excavation notes. She scattered artifacts from various digs throughout the room; some were neatly cataloged, others awaited her scrutiny. A half-cleaned terracotta figurine sat beside her mug of now-cold tea, and a delicate bronze brooch from a recent expedition rested near her elbow.
Seated at her cluttered desk, red pen in hand, Hermione’s brow furrowed as she corrected a particularly atrocious misuse of historical context. The overhead light cast a warm glow on her wild curls, which she had hastily pinned back with an old quill, though several unruly strands had already escaped. Her Oxford professor’s robes were draped over the back of her chair, abandoned in favor of a simple linen blouse and a pair of tailored trousers, practical yet effortlessly academic.
She sighed, adjusting her reading glasses as she reached for another paper. A small part of her missed the thrill of the field, the rush of uncovering something lost to time. But this? This was important, too—shaping young minds, ensuring the past was not only preserved but understood.
The Second Wizarding War had hollowed Hermione out in ways she rarely spoke about. The war demanded her intellect, courage, and unwavering resolve. She had given all of it, piece by piece, until almost nothing was left. By the time Voldemort was defeated, the weight of survival pressed down on her with an unbearable finality. There was no joy in victory, only exhaustion.
At first, she had done what was expected. She returned to Hogwarts, finished her N.E.W.T.s, and accepted a position at the Ministry of Magic, believing she could help rebuild the world that war had shattered. But the Ministry was a graveyard of ghosts, whispered politics, and endless bureaucracy. It was stifling. The corridors echoed with the past, with names that would never be spoken again. Every time she passed a desk that should have been occupied by someone now buried beneath a war memorial, she felt the weight of it press heavier on her chest.
She couldn’t breathe there.
So she left.
It began as a break—a research grant, a brief escape into Muggle academia. But the more time she spent in dusty archives and on excavation sites, the more she realized how much she needed this. The past held stories that weren’t hers, that weren’t tied to grief and war. She could lose herself in studying civilizations long gone, in puzzles that had nothing to do with blood purity or resistance movements.
Oxford had offered her a place to be—to exist beyond the title of war heroine, beyond the expectations of what a brilliant young witch should do. She wasn’t Hermione Granger, the Brightest Witch of Her Age. She was just Professor Granger, archaeologist, historian, and scholar. And for the first time in years, that was enough.
Standing up and stretching languidly, Hermione glanced at her watch–8:32 PM–before she reached for her coat. She knew she’d need to help ward off the autumn chill when her mobile buzzed on the desk.
She glanced at the screen. Sara Kentwell.
Her brows lifted in surprise. It wasn’t unusual for her Muggle friend to reach out, but it was late, even by her night owl standards.
She answered. “Sara, what’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing’s wrong exactly,” Sara’s voice came through, breathless. “But I just received something strange, and you were the first person I thought of.”
Hermione frowned, shoving her arms into her favorite gray peacoat. “Strange how?”
“Um—well,” Sara hesitated, unsure how to describe exactly what she saw to her friend and colleague. “I’m fairly certain it’s a page from a book. Came in as an anonymous donation to the university’s collection.” There was a pause. “I—I can’t explain it, Hermione, but there’s something off about it. It won’t photograph properly, the text seems to shift when I look at it, and I just don’t know what to make of the damn thing.”
Hermione stood up straighter, her heart hammering.
She swallowed. “Where are you now?”
“My lab,” Sara said.
Sara’s voice was hushed yet urgent, sending a familiar thrill of anticipation through Hermione’s veins. She had spent years trying to carve out a life away from war and magic, immersing herself in the tangible past—artifacts, ruins, and history that didn’t shift and change with a flick of a wand. But old habits die hard.
“At this hour?”
“You know better than to lecture me about being a workaholic, Hermione,” Sara teased. “I need your eyes on this.”
Sara had little patience for dramatics but an endless well of sarcasm, which she wielded like a weapon. She could reduce an overeager undergrad to a stammering mess with a single unimpressed look, yet she was fiercely loyal to those she deemed worthy of her time. She had been there for Hermione during her worst days, not with empty platitudes or pitying glances, but with wine, takeout, and the quiet, steady presence of someone who simply understood.
This was important to Sara, and what mattered to her was equally crucial to Hermione.
Hermione’s grip tightened around her phone. She had a sinking feeling she already knew what she was about to walk into, and she didn’t like that Sara had gotten roped in.
“I’ll be right there,” Hermione said without hesitation, reaching for her satchel hanging from her chair.
“Really?” Sara sounded relieved. “I mean, I knew you liked the odd and unexplainable, but—”
“Sara, you’re saving me from subpar first-year uni student essays who don’t give a blither about why the discovery of Göbekli Tepe changed everything we know about Neolithic civilization and are simply taking my class as an elective credit,” Hermione cut in smoothly, forcing a casual tone. “That, besides, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s an unsolved mystery.”
Sara chuckled. “Well, this one’s certainly baffling me. I’ll see you soon, then?”
“Soon,” Hermione confirmed before hanging up.
Hermione locked her office for the night and headed out into the fresh air. She walked up to a wrought-iron gate, its metal cold beneath her fingers as she pushed it open. The gate revealed a courtyard flanked by ivy-clad buildings. The lanterns that lined the path flickered with warm, golden light, their glow reflecting on rain-speckled cobblestones.
Sara’s lab was housed in one of the older buildings—part of the university’s archives, an annex of twisting corridors and tucked-away rooms where scholars spent hours deciphering texts that time had tried to erase. She passed under an elaborate stone archway adorned with weathered carvings of grotesques and heraldic crests, the symbols of centuries-old patrons who had long since turned to dust.
Hermione trailed her fingers along the limestone walls as she walked. Cool, solid, ancient. Scanning her badge to allow herself entry, the air became immediately warmer, tinged with the scent of ink, parchment, and something faintly metallic—likely from the restoration tools used in the lab. Her footsteps echoed along the polished stone floors, past a grand staircase lined with dark wooden railings. Despite the modern world humming outside, within these halls, time felt slower.
She took a side passage, one lined with narrow windows framed by leaded glass, the view distorted into rippling grays and greens from the rain outside. A series of locked doors lined the corridor, each marked with a brass nameplate, most belonging to professors and researchers.
Hermione approached the unassuming door at the very end of the corridor. There was no nameplate or markings—just a simple, sturdy oak door with a modern keycard scanner beneath the handle. Waiting beside it, arms crossed, and expression as unreadable as ever, stood Sara Kentwell.
Her close friend and colleague was the very definition of no-nonsense. A preservationist at Oxford University, Sara was known for her razor-sharp intellect, dry wit, and an unshakable sense of calm even when the world was crumbling—sometimes literally, given her work in artifact restoration. She was meticulous to the point of obsession, with a fierce respect for historical integrity and a firm refusal to entertain anything remotely sensationalist. To colleagues, she was brilliant but slightly intimidating; to students, she was the standard they all strove to meet.
With her ever-present dark-rimmed glasses perched on her nose and a wardrobe of ink-smudged linen shirts, Sara moved through Oxford’s dusty archives like a sentinel of the past, but her friendship with Hermione was firmly rooted in the here and now. It had been forged in the quiet aftermath of grief when Hermione learned of her parents’ deaths, and Sara, with her steady presence and quiet compassion, became the anchor Hermione hadn’t known she needed.
Sara didn’t believe in magic, but she did believe in Hermione. They shared late nights over tea and manuscripts, inside jokes about cursed papyri, and a reverence for historical nuance few others could match. When Hermione spiraled, Sara was the one to tether her. And when something strange or inexplicable crossed Sara’s path—like the eerie book that had arrived without a sender—Hermione was always the first and only person she called.
“Security’s a nightmare now, as you know,” Sara muttered in greeting, fishing her ID from her lab coat pocket and swiping it. The lock beeped, and with a quiet click, the door swung open. “Thought I’d save you the trouble of needing to ring me again.”
Hermione smiled as she followed behind Sara. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were anxious.”
Sara laughed, “Me? Anxious? Never.”
Inside, the lab starkly contrasted the grand, old-world aesthetic of Oxford’s exterior. It was all clean lines and sterile white light, with shelves stacked high with preservation supplies—gloves, acid-free paper, and magnification lenses. Along the far wall, carefully climate-controlled cabinets housed fragile manuscripts and artifacts in various states of restoration.
“I received it this morning. No return address, no note—just this,” Sara explained, her arms crossed as she leaned against her desk. “At first, I thought it was just another manuscript folio, maybe something someone found in their attic. But look.”
She turned the page toward Hermione, her fingers careful, as though afraid the parchment might dissolve into dust. The text was barely visible—a faded scrawl in a language Hermione didn’t immediately recognize. But it wasn’t the text that caught her attention. It was how the ink shimmered beneath the sterile light, like something alive.
Hermione sucked in a breath.
Even from the threshold, she had felt it. This was magic.
The air felt thicker here, heavy with the kind of weight she associated with old magic—the kind that remembered.
Hermione approached the display table with measured steps, her pulse steady but heightened by something she couldn’t name. The page—if that was even the right word for it—rested beneath a soft cone of overhead light, casting elongated shadows that flickered subtly as if the room itself were reacting to its presence.
She masked her reaction, keeping her expression neutral. “You said this was donated?”
Sara nodded. “Left in an envelope at the front desk. No name, no sender.”
Hermione bit the inside of her cheek. This wasn’t a coincidence. Someone wanted her to see this.
“Interesting,” she murmured.
Sara crossed her arms, watching closely. “So? Any idea what we’re dealing with?”
Hermione exhaled slowly. “Not yet,” she admitted. “But it shouldn’t be here.”
Sara huffed a quiet laugh. “That much was obvious when half the department couldn’t even see the bloody thing. You’re the first person—besides me—who’s acknowledged that it’s more than just an empty display.”
Hermione’s brow furrowed at that. “No one else could see it?”
Sara shook her head. “To them, it was blank. No markings, no text, no anything. I had one professor tell me I was playing a practical joke, which you know I just adore.”
Hermione’s lips pressed into a thin line. That changed things. In her experience, any artifact that hid itself from the unworthy was dangerous, often tied to ancient wards or enchantments. And yet, Sara had no magical training and had seen something on those pages, even if it had only been briefly. She reached into her bag, withdrawing a pair of dragonhide gloves. Whatever this was, she wasn’t about to touch it barehanded.
A sharp, electric shiver ran up her spine as Hermione's fingers brushed the surface. A deep, pulsating glow spread beneath her practiced gloved hand, crawling across the page like veins of molten metal—as if it were alive.
Carefully, Hermione leaned closer and swallowed anxiously. The page was uniquely made. It wasn’t parchment or papyrus but a thin, flexible sheet of a silken metallic substance impervious to decay. The script was erratic and slithered across the pages in an unfathomable language, twisting like serpents of ink that refused to be confined to mere symbols.
The room shifted around her, the air pressing even further inward, bending reality for a single, breathless moment. Suddenly, etchings of forgotten constellations, geometric patterns that seemed to hum with latent energy, and depictions of beings with elongated limbs and too many eyes began to adorn the margins. Some images seemed crude, almost primitive, while others displayed a level of craftsmanship too precise for any known ancient tool.
Then, just as quickly as it had begun, it stopped.
Sara stared. “See anything?”
“Not a bloody thing,” Hermione lied.
Sara huffed, crossing her arms. “Well, that’s anticlimactic.”
Hermione forced a chuckle, stepping back from the plinth as she schooled her expression into something neutral. She removed her gloves. If Sara noticed how white her knuckles were, she didn’t comment.
“I was hoping for a dramatic whoosh of glowing runes or a secret message appearing out of thin air,” Sara continued, nudging the page lightly with a gloved finger. “But, no, just an old, weirdly unsettling ancient Post-It that half the department can’t even see.”
Hermione exhaled through her nose, offering a nonchalant shrug. “It’s old, I’ll give it that. It could be pre-Bronze Age, but I’ll need to do more research. I will say this, though, that it vaguely reminds me of the pages from those grimoires we saw last year on display at the Art Curators Conference in New York.”
That wasn’t entirely a lie.
Because what she had seen—seen what had flared across the pages in an ink darker than the void itself—was impossible. The language wasn’t just ancient. It wasn’t just old magic. It was something more. Something forgotten. As much as she trusted Sara, Hermione knew one thing with absolute certainty. This page was never meant to be in Muggle hands.
Sara sighed, rubbing the back of her neck. “Figures. I get my hands on something extraordinary, which turns out to be another ‘lost to time’ mystery with no immediate answers.” She shot Hermione a wry look. “You sure you’re not just keeping secrets to make this more dramatic?”
Hermione smirked, masking the unease curling in her stomach. “Would I do that?”
“Yes,” Sara deadpanned.
Hermione laughed, but her fingers still tingled where they’d touched the recto. The words she had glimpsed were shifting in her mind, rearranging as if waiting—expecting—to be understood. That was a dangerous trajectory of thought. And yet, despite every logical instinct screaming at her to leave it alone, she knew she wouldn’t.
“Let me take it with me,” Hermione said, tone light but firm. “I’ll consult a few colleagues and see if I can get one of them to give me some insight.”
Sara hesitated, then shrugged. “Fine by me. I can’t exactly display an invisible folio, can I?” She turned to grab a thin storage case. “Just don’t tell me if it’s cursed. I’d rather stay blissfully ignorant.”
Hermione smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. Something told her that ignorance was the least of their concerns.
“You know we’re both far too logical to really believe in the mystical and unexplained,” Hermione joked. “I simply enjoy it as a hobby.”
Sara snorted, handing over a leather padfolio. “Right. Because logic always explains why half my department couldn’t see the bloody thing.”
Hermione gave a sly smile, carefully securing the book inside the case. “Selective perception? A trick of the light? Mass hysteria?”
Sara leveled her with a dry look. “Uh-huh. And you’re just carting it off because you love a good light trick?”
“I do have a fondness for peculiar artifacts,” Hermione teased, clicking the case shut.
Sara sighed. “Fine, go do your research. But when you inevitably discover that it’s some cursed doomsday instruction sheet, I want plausible deniability.”
Hermione chuckled, but the weight of the page, safely nestled inside the padfolio, felt heavier than it should in her grip.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she murmured. “I’ll let you know after the world ends. Now, I don’t know about you, but I could use a huge glass of wine.”
Sara looked at her watch, now well past 9 PM.
“Goodness, it is late.”
Hermione waved a dismissive hand. “It’s five o’clock somewhere, and I willingly took possession of a potentially cursed, possibly pre-Bronze Age artifact that no one else can see. I have earned a drink.”
Sara laughed, shaking her head. “Fair enough. But if we’re doing this, we’re getting the good stuff. None of that cheap supermarket rubbish you had last time.”
“I was in a pinch!” Hermione protested.
Sara rolled her eyes. “You’re a bloody artifact expert, not a uni student living off instant noodles. We’re getting a proper bottle of Bordeaux.”
Hermione linked arms with her friend, grateful for the normalcy of Sara’s company, grounding, familiar, and so blissfully unaware of the storm brewing beneath the surface.
“Lead the way, but I want to enjoy it by Black Flame Candlelight,” she said with a grin.
Sara chortled and shook her head.
Hermione had a feeling she wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. And deep in her bones, she knew this was only the beginning.