Ascent

Chapter 14

Relax, Hermione whispered quietly as she slipped from her own body and into his. We've done this before.

Voldemort did not respond to her in any form, and Hermione did not know whether he resented what he believed to be a patronizing tone or whether he was actually listening to her. Either way, while the more sensitive cores were harder to reach, she did not have near the trouble that he had given her last time. Instead, his mind and body opened up to her willingly, if reluctantly, and she treated his acquiescence with the quickest a search where he least wanted her, but she had to check at the places where she had noted the decay early in the evaluations, the hands, heart, head, ankles, and groin. She had to check each place again to be sure, this time more carefully, although she could feel him tighten up again in restlessness and frustration as she lingered where she was not wanted.

Almost too abruptly, Hermione pulled out of him and back into herself. She stumbled back and fell off the bed, shivering in reaction to both the severed connection and the abrupt exit. The concavity of Voldemort's abdomen swelled in deep, fast breaths, as though he had been running, and the pale flesh had taken on a grayish flush. He pushed himself into a sitting position and looked at Hermione with a sort of disoriented confusion. With the sinuous flush moving over his body, it was as though the cold were pushed away in its wake. He wondered if the heat was from her, whether she left it behind.

Hermione's fingers curled in her hair, and she was tempted to pull it all out. Damn it damn it damn it damn it damn it. It went through her head like a mantra as the import of the situation weighed down at her. No matter how she looked at it, this was going to be ten times harder than developing the potions to remove those immortality spells, and that had been almost impossible. Voldemort was a genius, but an impractically stupid one for trying out his immortality and transfiguration experiments on himself without knowing their effects on his magical foci. He had not even considered how strengthening himself would inevitably tear his incompatible physical form into pieces.

"You've really done a number on yourself," she muttered when her trembling finally settled into something manageable.

"And what, pray, have I done to myself this time?" Voldemort asked, feeling better than before and thus ready to be annoyed with her reticence. He did not need a story - he wanted a straightforward diagnosis.

"You were a sublime idiot," Hermione answered. She kept her voice at a monotone, but the underlying frustration - even fury - was nonetheless evident. "A spectacular fool." She forced herself standing, leaning against the wall while her feet and legs adjusted. "How could you possibly be this stupid, Voldemort? I was under the impression you had more intelligence than your mindless followers."

"Did something in my body cause you to channel Severus or have you simply decided to ignore my presence here altogether while you rant about my shortcomings?" Voldemort said. "Get to the point, Hermione."

"All of that transfiguration and you didn't once try to experiment on something else to see how it affected their magical signature?" Hermione asked. "In trying to make yourself stronger, you've nearly destroyed what makes you a magical being, and what do I find after removing the immortality spells shielding the full extent of your magical decay?" Hermione pounded her fist into the wall. "That removing the immortality spells effectively sped the decay up, and they held together your two forms - magical and physical - together all the time. Your transfiguration spells were the most destructive to your body, but the immortality spells kept your two forms knotted together. The knots aren't good, but they're certainly better than becoming untied altogether. The two forms aren't supposed to be so divisible - they should meld together, overlap as if they are one form. Yours are almost completely split except in your core areas, and coincidentally, that's also where the decay focuses."

"Hermione," Voldemort said slowly. "I work the other way - give me a reason, explain after."

"Fine," Hermione said. She ground her teeth for a moment as she searched for the right words, because she worked the former way - she talked her way through things until she reached a conclusion. "If I don't find a way to handle your decay, you would regress at an accelerated rate and could lose your magic altogether. That's what all of your bolstering and self-defenses have done - they've nearly destroyed you, and damn it, it took me weeks to figure out the immortality spells, and they were the most comprehensive. I'm not sure if I have time required to create some sort of antidote before the decay progresses too far. So aside from a number of Restorative Draughts, I can't think of how to slow the decay, and it's dangerous to use any kind of magic at all at the risk of stimulating the progression. There are general Muggle remedies, but I'm not sure how they'd react to your body, which isn't exactly human." Her head fell back and hit the wall with a dull thud that sounded more painful than it was. "I could hit you if the contract would let me."

Voldemort sat there for a moment, digesting the decidedly horrible diagnosis with his hands clenched in the comforter at his sides. He was not so much angry at Hermione, although irrational resentment began to build behind the electric pulse of fear that seemed to grow louder and louder in his ears. He did not want to be angry at himself, he wanted to be angry at Hermione - wanted to strike her down until she was the cringing, naked thing that she had been. He would have to find another outlet if he were to maintain some semblance of control, particularly before his followers if they were whispering of the possibility of his weakness.

Rumors, rumors, they were no longer rumors, and that galled him as much as anything - the flush fell away at an instant, leaving him as cold as he began. He was not accustomed to the chill at all, and he wondered at its meaning and whether it would ever leave.

"My magic... I might lose my magic," Voldemort said flatly. Although inflection matched that of statement, the assumption was interrogative.

"Perhaps," Hermione said. "All I know is that your two forms have almost completely severed themselves from each other aside from the stronger cores that already fester in decay. If I do something wrong, the knots there may unwind entirely so that your physical self separates from the magic. I don't know what would happen to you if your two forms split. All I know is that unless I managed to put the two together again in spite of the decay, you would lose a great portion if not the entirety of your magic. Particularly the myriad of transfigurations. I don't want to imagine what it would be like for you to be stripped of all of your magic if your side effects for the removal of the immortality spells were so extreme. Or, for that matter, what it would do to me."

"If you had not removed the immortality spells..." Voldemort began.

"I might not have seen how terrible the decay and connections were. The removal may have accelerated the decay, but you would have eventually reached it. And the connections were a few days ago as they are now. I did nothing to those. You did that on your own." She made herself walk forward to assess and adjust herself. It was amazing how this time differed from the first - she had been half paralyzed when they experienced their initial evaluation that coupled their contract. "The truth is, Lord Voldemort, that you did all of this on your own, and have no one to blame but yourself, so don't you dare think to give me the fault. I just..." She brought her fingers to the sides of her head. "I just need to think."

Voldemort was ready to strangle her now. "So what exactly do you recommend I do, Hermione?" he asked irritably. "I don't want to lose my magic, and I'd rather not make matters worse by doing something that will speed up the process of decay. Stop scrambling around like a two-headed mouse, stop seeing the illness, and think of some of the repressants that might be administered."

"Stop using magic," Hermione snapped. "That's the best way to slow the decay, because with every spell cast or potion taken, your magical body pulls away from your physical body even more. It'll buy me time anyway."

"Is that all?" Voldemort asked. "Stop doing magic to prevent the loss of my magic." Voldemort managed to keep his voice from dripping sarcasm, but it seeped through anyway, and Hermione glared at him.

"I'm not mad at you," Hermione said. "I'm frustrated with magic, and as remarkable as it may seem, I don't want you to die as of now, although if you keep being self-destructive and accusing, I might consider letting you be because your unintentional suicide may be just as beneficial for you as trying vainly to help. You're too intelligent for your own good, you kow. If you hadn't made up intricate spells and enchantments to achieve what other wizards never could do, you wouldn't be in this predicament, and I wouldn't be struggling to figure out what the hell you've done."

Voldemort pushed himself standing and slipped his arms back into the sleeves of his robes, tying the too thin fabric around the coldness of his body. It looked and felt like marble to him, and although he could not shiver like Hermione, he had trouble walking against the stiffness toward one of the two chairs in front of the fireplace where he had left the warm blanket. The fire felt too good to leave, so he settled back into the chair in which Hermione found him in the first place, taking advantage of both sources of warmth, as well as they could warm him at all, since the cold came from within.

"When was the last time that decay and form split to this degree?" Voldemort asked.

Hermione paused in her pacing and thought. "Never," she admitted.

"Then how was I supposed to anticipate it?" Voldemort asked. "I've no Inner Eye, and I would not dare to experiment with strengthening and immortality spells on other creatures - I would not want to create my own enemy. I've already done that once. I don't need to make an army."

"I told you I wasn't mad at you," Hermione said, sinking into the chair with her posture as bad as she could make it. Her chin sank down to her chest and her eyes closed.

"Well, now that you've calmed down, tell me several of our options, aside from eschewing magic altogether - I cannot maintain a magicless existence in my position, although I will attempt to keep my magic to a minimum," Voldemort said, conceding the point and endeavoring to make himself sound agreeable, even if they both knew that he was not.

"As I said, maybe some Muggle remedies that replenish energy, although nothing they have compares to a simple Restorative Draught or Strengthening Serum, the latter of which I understand you have in abundance. We might try both of them and assess their effects on you as closely as possible." Hermione sighed. "Those are the simplest solutions. I'll have to study your transfigurations in more depth, and as repugnant as I consider experimentation on living creatures, I may want some basic rodents to work with in terms of the steps you took and ways to bind the side effects. It may be belated, but I may be able to stop the decay in its tracks. Maybe. But to be honest..." She looked into the fire, her hands clenching the arms of the chair. "I don't think I can," she finished quietly.

Voldemort's hands clenched the arms of his own chair to mirror hers, and although he was sorely tempted to vent his anger on her, he knew better, for more than just political reasons. From the earnestness of her tone and inflection, she was as concerned for his welfare as he, and she had a sense of despair that she could not help. It was times like this when there was just this room and the two of them, none of the war raging beyond their quarters. It was not comfortable by any stretch of the imagination, but Voldemort felt almost satisfied that she could keep part of herself here and here alone when so much of her past revolved around worldwide events. It had taken time, yes, but even if she kept some of her real opinions to herself, she maintained an equitable politick standard where his health, his life, was concerned.

"If you don't mind, Lord Voldemort, I think I'd like to get out of this fortress again. This time to... to visit Severus. He'll help me procure the best animals for experimentation, and he'll be able to deal with my idealistic nonsense with just enough sarcasm to express his disgust - but he'll find what I need." She adjusted her position in the chair until she was sitting properly in the seat. She stared into the fire with a countenance no longer clenched and furious, but more introspective. It was that cataloguing gaze of the insatiable appetite of curiosity - this was Hermione harkening back to the day when she still wore shackles and translated the entirety of Severus's journal.

"I would prefer if you would stave off the visit until after the feast when I assure everyone that I'm just as strong as I used to be." Voldemort gave a short bark of dry laughter that did not become him at all. Hermione looked at him sidelong in half-concern - in comparison with his impending total self-destruction, it was a small thing, so she could not gather up enough worry about a strange tone in his voice.

Hermione nodded then. "That'll be... acceptable, I guess. I want to do it sooner rather than later, but this will give me the time to prepare a list and decide the best way to, well, approach Severus on neutral ground without him biting my head off like..." Like he did last time was what she was going to say, but she thought she would keep that to herself.

"If we're going to have random animals running through the fortress..." Voldemort began dryly.

"It'll be my sanity they wonder about," Hermione said. "I've nothing else here, and I'd like to start writing a request to Severus and... get started on analyzing the transfiguration spells this time as well as I can without subjects."

"I'd like to be left alone," Voldemort interrupted.

"Yes, I suppose you do," Hermione said. She headed back to the door that led to his bathroom, then her quarters. She paused at the handle. "I still don't like you, but I'd like to say that I hate this is happening to you."

Voldemort did not respond to the pitiful attempt at diplomacy and condolences, as sincere as they might be, and Hermione shut the door behind her without another word.

***

By this point, it took house elves to maintain the cleanliness of the fortress and to manage the hunger of its occupants. Hermione was aware of their presence now, although she had forbid the first one she saw in her quarters to ever come back again. Maybe a little too harshly, but she had been taken aback by both the presence of house elves in the fortress - how naïve she had been to think the fortress got by with magic alone - and the fact that they were in a room that she preferred to keep cloistered from all prying eyes. She would not think a house elf could spy, although there were always exceptions like Dobby, but she preferred to never take chances when it came to such sensitive material as Voldemort's notes and her own. Cleaning her room on her own gave her the chance to think while doing something productive without her hands, like not pulling out her hair or engaging in other maddening, picking, pernicious activities.

A few hours before the feast found her cleaning her room like a cleansing dervish. Before, books had been strewn about her desk and the floor around it, her bed had been constantly unmade, and dust piled on every corner and wooden piece of furniture that she did not use regularly. She spent the time replacing the books back into the bookshelves in some semblance of order, dusting the furniture with a few household charms, and tucking sheets under the mattress. She thought that she might have been nervous about the feast a few weeks ago, but she could not find it in herself to do much more than continue her train of thought on the part of Voldemort's predicament.

She discovered that the best thing she could do was forego her usual habit of writing on scrolls of parchment for random notes and instead charmed her usual journal into a smaller size to keep in her shoulder bag. It looked almost like her satchel from school, but it was slightly more expensive and more practical for travel - not that backbreaker in which she kept so many texts back at Hogwarts. As she reached the point of cleaner rooms and not much to do but wait, she slipped her journal into the bag and turned to her wardrobe. Were she an ordinary Medicus, she would think nothing of wearing more formal robes for feasts and parties. It was what was expected of her. But it seemed almost pretentious and desperate for her to do so for a Death Eater feast. She could dress for Voldemort, but it felt strange to dress for them, no matter how grudgingly some of them were beginning to tolerate her presence as a permanent fixture around Voldemort. She was there, and that she was there at all was well-known and felt. There was sometimes the soft sound of quiet feet by her door that could not be dismissed as Draco's gang, Wormtail, and certainly not Carmen, who had no footsteps at all. She was a curiosity, a point of resentment and contention, but also the subject of wonder and intrigue. She wondered if it had hit the Death Eater gossip column that she and Voldemort had wild, torrid sex - if it could occur to the Quibbler, surely it could occur to Voldemort's followers. And with a place like the Harem and groups like the Cat's Paws, it must be impossible for his followers to never have thought of the possibility, as ridiculous as it may be. Everyone loves a sexual scandal, especially when too many people were confined to one place.

Hermione turned toward the sound of those quiet footsteps at the door, but this time, the person stopped and knocked. Hermione knew instinctively that Wormtail waited for her on the other side, and her stomach sank. She had to admit that being with him was not as bad as it used to be, especially after he had helped Katherine take care of her - Wormtail was adept at taking care of people, Hermione thought dryly - but she still could not help but cringe when he was around. She noticed that most people cringed when he was around, so it was more than likely that everything about him was unlikable.

Wormtail opened the door himself when Hermione did not answer it. She was standing in front of her wardrobe, still trying to decide whether to go in clean work robes or in one of her more formal sets. When he saw that she was decent, he opened the door more and stepped through. He did not approach her, just stood there with his hands half-wringing and his head bowed.

"I've been told to, erm, e-escort you to the feast," Wormtail said.

"I need to change," Hermione said evenly. "Wait outside for me. I'll be out in a few minutes." It made Hermione's stomach heave as Wormtail's face turned a light shade of red, but he complied, closing the door behind him.

With Wormtail outside of the door, she felt compelled by urgency to just change into the formal robes. They were not anything that the Malfoy family would call expensive, but the Medicus Order was not supposed to show an excess of wealth. Their social position meant little when their honor in the wizarding world was so low to begin with. Still, she might as well try to make a sensibly good impression to contrast with the last time she had feasted with the Death Eaters. She did not want to be loved, she decided, but undisturbed would be nice. Sighing, she slung her bag over her shoulder with a quill and Unspillable Ink. She would prefer to use a pen - the more years she used quills and parchment, the more she wished pens and paper would catch on the wizarding world, especially since they traveled better - but she knew better than to retain Muggle habits when it was such a volatile subject.

Hermione exited the room without properly looking at Wormtail as he led her to the dining hall reserved for Death Eaters. Voldemort was waiting for her, but at least she was not late this time, and she was in her previous spot to the right of Voldemort and to the left of Carmen, who applied himself to serving Hermione a touch of salad and buttering her roll. In spite of his scarring, Hermione could almost believe he was one of the more charming men she had ever met. Everything he did seemed smooth, even his cocked smile and perpetual squint. He was easily the most tolerable of the Death Eaters - mostly because he was a Death Eater only because of his Dark Mark, which Hermione had found quite an interesting development, to say the least.

"Thank you," Hermione murmured, and she pulled out her journal to look over her previous notes to find some sort of easier connection, something she had been trying to do for days in almost manic desperation. She wished that she did not have to be here for the feast. It was productive for Voldemort's image, but not for his cure. She could hardly think when the older Death Eaters save the Lestrange couple and Macnair glared at her and the younger Death Eaters just waited. She had an idea that she had been the topic of heated discussion lately. The atmosphere was tightly strung as the main course magically appeared on their plates, and Hermione sensed something was going to come to fruition that evening, if just for the cathartic effect of unleashing repressed frustration against Voldemort's situation. Somehow, Hermione knew that whatever needed to happen would happen before they reached the dessert.

Hermione looked up from her journal nervously at her barely touched plate and Voldemort's seeming coolness. His plate was exclusively rare meat, and Hermione raised an eyebrow. She would have to look at diet as well. It had not really occurred to her to notice Voldemort's eating habits, as well as she knew him, and his diet could not be helping his condition. Even if it was not causing the decay, it was certainly hurting his chances of improvement. She wrote the abbreviated thought down in the margin of her latest entry, and when she looked up, she noticed that the entire hall was still. Voldemort looked almost like a statue, although his eyes burned like a fever - Hermione realized that his glamours he cast upon himself to indicate better health did not fool her. She could see beyond his attempts to mask his weakness, and Hermione wondered why she had not seen the change in him before. There had been a time when he exuded power, and now, while he still possessed the greatest power that any wizard could hope to carry, it was clearly a heavier load than he was physically capable of bearing now. His power now came from him in discordant waves. She could see sickness all over him. She only needed a comparison - it had been so long since she had looked straight at him, truly at him.

She was momentarily mesmerized by the sight that her attention wavered from the demanding silence centered behind her.

But her hand was on her wand as she felt the length of another against her cheek.

"I think we have had enough of this farce," Lucius said softly enough that his voice practically purred with poison, but somehow the words filled the room, and none of the Death Eaters missed a bit of it. "If our lord is so weak that he needs this Mudblood Medicus we once saw as clear as crystal as our lord's slave... why, then he should not be our lord. He cannot be."

The audacity of Lucius's statement made Hermione tense more than the threat of his wand. She knew more than anyone how precarious his position was now - she, after all, knew that although Voldemort was to limit his magic, he certainly was not going to let subordination go unpunished, especially when subordination lowered itself to questioning his totalitarian authority. She looked at Voldemort, but he did nothing at all, simply watched Lucius with an almost amused look in his eyes - just waiting for his following to have his say before said follower realized exactly what he had done.

"I have had this girl in my rooms, when she was just a slave of a thing. She's sunk so low as to be in Wormtail's bed," Lucius continued, his lip curling in disgust, as though Hermione were some sort of rotting vermin. "And now she sits at our lord's right hand because she is his Medicus. There is some so seriously wrong with him that he needs a Medicus to cure him and protect him - because he cannot cure it himself. Would you let your lord be taken care of by a Mudblood bitch only worthy to lick his boots, and have our lord accept her, even protect her as if she were as important to him as Bellatrix? I know that this has gone far enough. And I am not the only one, am I, my friends?"

Carmen's brows rose as many of the senior Death Eaters, excluding himself, stood, face set, although he noted a murmur of nervousness. They were certainly gambling with their lives, and if not that, their statuses with the Dark Lord. Unlike Lucius, who could maintain his own sort of charismatic, aristocratic, dramatic front and who seemed to firmly believe the words he was saying, the other Death Eaters were still unsure. And perhaps it was telling that the younger generations of Death Eaters, the ones that had not been with him since the beginning, were still seated.

There was a clatter of silverware, that broke through the resulting silence. Eyes turned to Wormtail, who stared resolutely at his plate, hands shaking. He, too, was sitting with the younger Death Eaters, one of the few of the elders clearly siding with the Dark Lord.

"Have you got something to say?" Lucius asked, his tone deceptively open and inviting, which should have been the first clue that he did not want to be interrupted.

"Just that you're wr-wr-wrong," Wormtail muttered. "About b-both of th-th-them. M-maybe I am the l-l-lowest of all of you, and Lucius may not be, but the D-dark Lord gave her to us to break her... in our rooms. But we d-didn't." He never lifted his eyes from his plate. "Did we? I never tried, but you failed. O-only Voldemort could break her. But she's not broken now, and she's always been smart. Smarter than any of you. Maybe not as p-powerful as our lord, but I g-guess she can understand him. That's why sh-she's his Medicus."

"Why, thank you, Wormtail, we'll be sure to keep the words of a consummate spy under consideration," Lucius said.

"Your son's not standing," Hermione interrupted. She was looking at Draco, but she turned around in her chair to face Lucius now, to see his reaction.

"He is a fool," Lucius replied. "He's still young."

"You are the fool, Lucius," Voldemort said, his voice even. Hermione may be able to sense that the power coming from him was less controlled than it used to be, but she would bet a thousand Galleons that Lucius could not. He could only sense that he might have miscalculated. He pushed his giant chair back and set his wand on the table, spreading his arms to the sides, showing that he was unarmed. Hermione, too, raised her brows upon the display of vulnerability. She wondered what capability he had beyond his wand. Wandless magic had not been possible since the creation of the mainstream wand and its proliferation to the world's four corners. The skill had diminished almost completely, although unspoken magic had maintained a certain amount of presence in the wizarding world for those focused enough to manage it. Hermione could think of only five texts available in the world teaching wandless magic, and four out of five of them were old foreign languages, the other in Old English. Voldemort could not possibly have... it was not in his notes...

Was Voldemort actually bluffing? Power he had in spades, but the talent she had never seen demonstrated. Hermione's muscles were drawn tight in the strange political challenge orchestrated by such a poor competitor as Lucius. Honestly, even if Voldemort were not up to par, Lucius was certainly no substitute or replacement. Hermione could not name one person for that task, but Lucius never had a place on the list. Hermione wanted to laugh in his face, but knew better.

The wand against her cheek shook a little. It did not move from her, though, which told Hermione that maybe Lucius's bravado was fading, so he was depending on his hatred of Hermione and her place with the Dark Lord to bolster his case and emotional foundation.

"Have I let my old faithful Death Eaters become complacent?" Voldemort asked, eyes assessing each of the standing Death Eaters in turn. "Have I assigned you too important a responsibility? Have I given you too much trust, too much authority, that you question mine?"

"You're sick," Lucius replied. The tip of his wand dug into her cheek. "You are unfit."

"Am I?" Voldemort hissed, walking slowly toward him, his movements betraying none of the anxiety and fear that Lucius's was. "Does a sickness mean that I cannot wave my wand and destroy nations? Does it mean that I cannot strangle you with my bare hands if I chose to sully my flesh with your disloyalty?"

"Yet you need this bitch?" Lucius asked. "You need her. You have the power of the world, but you cannot survive without this... this Mudblood? If you are really so powerful, my lord, cast her away. Or better yet, kill her and challenge the Medicus Order, waste away their nation."

"You used to have a better understanding of politics," Voldemort said. "I will not challenge the Medicus Order. And if you will, you will find yourself and your cause buried forever. Could it be that you have merely grown impatient? You could wait thirteen years in my absence but cannot wait thirteen years with me."

Hermione yelped as Lucius grabbed a handful of hair and pulled her from her chair onto her knees. The scream was more in surprise than pain - he had grabbed near the roots, and all she felt was pressure, no pain at all.

"When we returned, we returned to you, not a wasting old man who needs a filthy Medicus," Lucius said. "Let's see what happens to you when your Medicus dies... slowly and painfully before your eyes."

"Are you jealous of her so much?" Voldemort murmured. It was not so much a question but an expectoration of disgust.

Lucius whipped his wand over his head, preparing to make good on his promise. The dining hall resounded with shouts, shattered porcelain, clattering utensils, the dull thud of flesh on flesh in the urgency of the situation. Hermione saw everything as though it were in slow motion, every detail, as Voldemort reached for his wand, Carmen flew in circles, his mind and therefore his direction completely flummoxed, and Death Eaters either coming to her aid or coming to help Lucius.

Then there was a lightning-fast arc of her own wand through the air and Lucius flew across the room, hitting the wall solidly on his back, collapsing on the ground like a richly-dressed doll. His body, however, kept twitching and writhing, his screams muffled by his sleeves and cloak. It was only when the chaos cleared and Hermione lowered her wand, her lips a thin, straight line, that they realized that he had been under the Cruciatus curse. Hermione had not opened her mouth to cast it, nor would she have chosen that spell had she done so, but she felt no remorse in the use.

"A Medicus may protect herself," Hermione said as though she were reciting a textbook, "when she feels that she, her position, or her client is in immediate danger. The defense must equal the attack." She looked to the wary Death Eaters still around the table. "I believe I've made a preemptive example of Mr. Malfoy. Now," she directed at Voldemort, "if you don't mind, I feel decidedly unwelcome and distracted by the many possibilities your predicament offers me, and I would like to bring my dinner to my quarters."

"You may leave," Voldemort said, his fingers caressing the handle of his wand as he stared intensely at his Death Eaters.

When she was close enough, she leaned over and whispered in his ear, "Be careful not to overexert your magic."

"I know what I'm doing, Hermione," Voldemort replied.

Hermione bowed her head in acquiescence and left the room for Voldemort to his Death Eaters' punishment.