To their surprise, Albus Dumbledore himself showed up through the portrait hole about twenty minutes later, his long silver-and-blue robes brushing the floor, with a stern McGonagall flanking his side.
The old Headmaster stepped into the center of common room, his half-moon spectacles catching the dying embers of the fireplace.
"I figured, since the both of you are the closest friends with Harry, you should both be made aware of the situation tonight," Dumbledore said, his voice carrying a quiet gravity. "Arthur Weasley was indeed severely attacked tonight while on duty, and he has been safely taken straight to St. Mungo's Hospital for treatment. His entire family, alongside Harry, will all be staying for remainder of the month at usual headquarters." He paused, and both teenagers instantly figured he meant the warded walls of Grimmauld Place. "So, while you are on your upcoming Christmas break, if wish to drop in and give best wishes to Arthur and his family, do not hesitate."
"It was him who ordered it, wasn't it, Professor?" Lucifer asked bluntly, his eyes locking onto the old man's face. "The snake."
Dumbledore remained silent for a long beat, his blue eyes losing their usual twinkle. "Yes..."
Lucifer let out a sigh, rubbing his eyes due to how incredibly late the hour had gotten. "Thanks for coming down to tell us the truth, Professor."
"Of course. Well, I wish you both a safe, peaceful, and Happy Christmas," Dumbledore said softly, and he turned on his heel to leave the Gryffindor Tower without saying another word.
"I strongly advise the both of you to try and get some more sleep before dawn, if you can manage to," Professor McGonagall added with a rare trace of maternal gentleness, before turning to return to her private faculty chambers.
"I'm wide awake now, Lucifer... I won't be able to get back to sleep after that news," Hermione said, her shoulders slumping as the adrenaline began to fade.
Lucifer turned his body to face her. "Some time over the holiday break, we should definitely go down and see the family at St. Mungo's, pet. Just to check up on Arthur's recovery and ask Harry for more specific information regarding what he felt."
He quietly wondered to himself whether the 'Potter lineage' happened to have any rare Seer blood running through the family tree, or perhaps a famous prophet hidden somewhere along the historical line.
But according to Harry's words, the experience didn't seem like a standardized prophecy at all; he wasn't seeing the future before it occurred, exactly what was happening in real-time.
The magic was vastly different. Still, the talent was exceptionally strange. Did the 'Boy Who Lived' possess other secret, suppressed traits?
In the Wizarding world, it wasn't unheard of for a rare wizard to be born with distinct, inherited magical abilities. Nymphadora Tonks herself was a full Metamorphmagus, able to alter her physical appearance and hair color at will, a talent that was as completely natural to her biology as breathing.
Lucifer had long since suspected Harry might host a similar anomaly; the boy just wasn't aware of being 'Metamorphmagus' yet, and those latent abilities seemed to be heavily suppressed by the dark magic, unlike his explicit Parseltongue ability. 'The Chosen One indeed,' he thought dryly.
"Yeah... Dumbledore didn't tell us the whole story, though I'm certainly not surprised by his secrecy anymore," Hermione said with a loud huff of irritation. She pulled textbook out of her school bag, walked over to the velvet sofa in the common room, and sat down to read through the dawn.
xxxxxxx
When the light finally arrived over the mountains, the castle became a bustling hub of activity. Every student who would be going home for the Christmas holidays packed their school trunks, and they were taken down snowy tracks to Hogsmeade Station to board the Hogwarts Express back to London.
The entire train ride back, Hermione remained curled up comfortably inside Lucifer's lap, her boots kicked off as she read through her advanced books.
She leaned up to kiss his lips from time to time, her fingers twisting through his hair. Down on opposite bench, Ron Weasley spent entire journey glaring at their position with an intense, venomous fury, looking thoroughly disgusted by their display.
Lucifer ignored his presence, mind continuously looping back to his horrific Boggart nightmare.
Whenever he looked down at Hermione sitting safely on his lap, he felt an overwhelming desire to protect her body with every shield spell that would keep her alive.
He knew his clever, brilliant girl could handle herself fairly well with a wand, but he couldn't lose her to the dark; refused to ever.
The winter day trudged on as the two of them read to pass the time, and the locomotive eventually hissed to a halt inside the bustling, crowded station of King's Cross.
They had long since taken their school robes off, so Lucifer easily hoisted Hermione's bags for her, and they stepped off the train platform into the slowly fading yellow sunlight of London. She led the way to the solid brick barrier, stepping through the magic seconds before he did.
When he passed forward through the bricks and found himself off of Platform 9 3/4, Hermione had already gotten a head start down the station lane, as she had immediately spotted her mother and grandfather waiting by the entrance.
Lucifer walked at casual, relaxed pace so as to not jostle or damage her belongings, and he soon found himself standing right in front of the Grangers.
"Mum! Grandpa!" he heard her call out happily when got close enough to their huddle. Wendell Granger wrapped his arms tightly around his pumpkin, laughing warmly.
Jane Granger looked over her father in law's shoulder to wander her eyes onto Lucifer's messy hair. "Good evening," she said with a bright smile. "I hope you are doing well?"
"As well as I can be under the circumstances, Mrs. Granger, thank you," Lucifer smiled back politely, consciously choosing to use the formal title instead of calling her by the first name she had explicitly asked him to use during their long car drive before their summer trip to Italy for vacation.
"Well, shall we get going to the car then before the traffic peaks?" Grandpa Wendell said, clapping his hands. Hermione and Lucifer nodded in eager agreement.
He followed the family out to the parking lot, carefully arranging her heavy school trunks inside the trunk of the car. Crookshanks was obviously riding up in the main cabin with Hermione, while his owl, Rowena, was already safely on her independent wing, way to the Granger residence.
He climbed into the back seat directly next to Hermione, who immediately proceeded to talk rapidly about her school year so far, expertly avoiding any mention of the Ministry's denial of Voldemort, the 'Daily Prophet's' attacks on her brother like friend Harry altogether, or the critical fact that their daughter was currently part of an illegal, secret underground school club.
What she did talk a lot more about was how incredibly boring one specific class was because she didn't get to use her practical wand magic. When prompted by her curious parents, she quickly stated it was 'History of Magic.'
She had praised the 'Defense Against the Dark Arts' department so much in her past video calls because of how fun the practical spell learning was under Lupin, Barty Crouch Jr, and Mrs. Weasley, so it would look entirely weird to suddenly claim she disliked that period, choosing Binns as her target instead.
"History of Magic is the one where you have that old, ghostly professor, right?" Jane asked, turning halfway around in her front passenger seat to talk to the kids.
"Yeah, it wasn't so bad for a while during our early terms, Mum, but lately it's just... a drag," Hermione said, her answer surprising her family.
"That is so unlike you, Hermione," Wendell said, his full attention focused on the road ahead as his hands steered the wheels. "Normally, you love learning, no matter how dull it seems to the other children."
"Trust me, if you had to sit through a three-hour lecture with Professor Binns while he drones on in a flat, monotonous drone about the minor Goblin Rebellions of the 1400s, you would have a very hard time finding the fun as well," Lucifer said with a dry chuckle, looking out the glass window as the snowy London scenery flew past the wheels.
"Easy for you to say," Hermione said, a distinct hint of awe and jealousy in her sharp tone. "You just sit in the back of the class and carelessly doodle pictures on your paper the entire hour."
Jane gave him a highly curious, amused look from the front. "You don't pay attention to the lectures, Lucifer?"
"It's not that he's being rude, Mum, he simply has nothing left to learn in that class," Hermione said with a mild, sharp hiss in her tone, looking like a pouty Miss Know-It-All.
"I have already studied the Ministry curriculum up through Seventh Year in every class I am currently taking," Lucifer explained smoothly, trying his best to not look smug and upset her pride further.
"So... are you not allowed an early graduation from the school?" Wendell asked him over his shoulder, curious about the Magical system.
"No, I asked Professor McGonagall about options, but she stated Hogwarts doesn't allow for accelerated graduation," Lucifer said. He turned his head to look directly into Hermione's eyes, a soft smile playing on his lips. "Not that I would have ever chosen to do so and leave early anyway."
Jane smirked knowingly to herself and turned back around in her passenger seat. A while later, the tires crunched over the gravel as they finally arrived at the cozy, familiar Granger household.
xxxxxx
He had been to Hermione's home before, but suddenly felt an unfamiliar wave of tightness in chest.
He was nervous, far more than he realistically expected to be, at any rate. As he lifted her heavy school trunks out of the car's back, a prickling sensation washed over the back of his neck, telling him he was being watched.
Lucifer turned his body around slowly, his eyes scanning the perimeter, but the gravel driveway and surrounding hedges revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
He glanced straight up toward the eaves of the roof and spotted a grand bird staring down at his position.
"How long have you been perched up there for, girl?" he muttered under his breath.
Rowena said nothing in response, merely clicking her beak once and staring down at him with a critical glare. Lucifer shook his head, hoisted the luggage into his arms, and walked over to where Hermione and her mother were standing near the front steps, having not quite made it up to the door yet.
"Well... Hermione..." Jane started, her fingers nervously smoothing her coat, but she didn't seem quite sure of how to phrase what she needed to say next.
But before she could form the syllables, someone unlocked and opened the front door of the house from the inside.
"Jane, what's taking you so long out, oh, sorry. I didn't realize I was interrupting a moment," A tall man said, stepping out onto the threshold.
Lucifer's eyes went over, and the man awkwardly stared right back, this stranger's presence was one of precise reasons he had felt so intensely uncomfortable about his holiday back in the Common room.
"Mum? Who on earth is that?" Hermione asked, her voice dropping as she looked back over her shoulder at her mother, spine stiffening as her back remained turned to the stranger inside her home.
"Your father passed away years ago, Hermione, and... well, I eventually started dating again..." Jane said quickly, her voice soft as she tried to cushion the sudden emotional blow as much as she humanely could.
Lucifer noticed the rapid shifts across Hermione's face.
Her expression hardened into a complex, cold look that he couldn't properly read. "That man... that's your new boyfriend?" She asked, voice tight as she desperately tried to maintain her calm.
"Yes," Jane whispered, her eyes pleading for understanding.
For some unbidden reason, a heavy wave of pure betrayal washed over Hermione's chest. Logically, she knew that wasn't the case, her mother had every right to move on, but if Jane had simply chosen to tell her the truth through the mirrors before now, before she packed her bags and came home for the Christmas holidays, she wouldn't feel this sudden, crushing weight in her throat.
"You can't honestly expect me to just celebrate the holidays with some total stranger... you don't actually expect that of me, do you, Mum?" Hermione asked, her voice cracking ever so slightly as tears threatened to spill.
"No, sweetie, of course not. We, we aren't asking you to do that at all," Jane said frantically, stepping forward to try and calm her daughter's rising panic.
Lucifer walked over to her side with a smooth stride, setting bags down onto the gravel path. He placed a large, firm hand against her trembling shoulder,"Hey, pet..." he spoke calmly, his voice a solid vibration against her nerves.
Hermione looked up into his eyes, the tears officially starting to form in her amber orbits, blurring her vision. She took a slow breath in through her nose, then exhaled slowly, fighting the tightness in her chest. "I'm sorry... sorry, Lucifer. I... I don't mean to be a total crybaby about this right now..."
Jane immediately stepped in, wrapping her arms tightly around her daughter's shoulders. "No, no, sweetie, you're not a crybaby at all... How about you and Lucifer head inside, go up to your rooms, and unpack your trunks? We can sit down and talk about all of this after you've done that, okay?"
"Okay..." Hermione whispered against her mother's shoulder. She turned her face back to look up at Lucifer, fingers catching his sleeve. "Come on, let's go inside the house."
He gave a slow nod, picked her luggage back up into his grip, and walked with her past the threshold. The man had long since retreated back into the depths of property, out of sight by the time they touched the hallway floor.
xxxxxx
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