The Brightest Black

"Harry James Potter, if you offer to go hex Malfoy one more time I will turn your Firebolt into a pile of kindling," she bit out through gritted teeth.

Honestly.

Her brother held his hands up in surrender as Ron and Neville snickered.

“Woah, ‘Mione! I was just trying to help…”

She shot a glare at him and then quite pointedly focused on the text in front of her. They had free periods to study, not to gossip about Slytherin boys that were obviously up to something out of character.

They had been at school for over a month now and things were not going as Hermione had imagined they would. She'd been sure that Malfoy would go back on their oath, or at least threaten to. He'd tell the school about her scars, or he'd hold them over her head.

And, telling the world would, as surely as a curse, hurt her.

But he'd done nothing.

He'd done less than nothing. He was doing any and everything he could to ensure they never encountered each other. He'd even turned around and walked in the opposite direction so as to not cross paths with her.

It made her feel disgusting.

The fact that he couldn’t even pretend to treat her like he used to…

It hurt, it really did.

And the worst part was that she couldn’t even explain WHY it upset her so much.

She hadn’t told anyone that Malfoy had seen her scars – not even Harry. All he knew was that she got terribly upset every time she saw Malfoy. To the point where she was beginning to struggle in Potions. Snape had even asked her after class the week before if everything was alright.

“Hey, ‘Mione…”

She raised her head just enough to glare at her brother, “What?”

“If I can’t hex Malfoy, could you at least tell me WHY I can’t hex him?”

She pursed her lips, “No. Now, can we change the subject?”

She shifted in her seat and picked up her quill. If she didn't get this essay done and done well Snape might just write a letter home to Padfoot. She still couldn't wrap her mind around the fact he'd asked how she was.

"What about hexing Mclaggen?" Ron asked as she put quill to parchment.

She froze and glared up at her freckle-faced friend. Her hand turned white as she squeezed the poor, innocent quill.

"What," she bit out, "do you think?"

"I think you really don't care either way?" he said hopefully.

"Neville."

"Yes?" Her fellow prefect asked innocently.

"Can you please explain to these two knuckleheads just WHY we can't hex our fellow classmates?"

"Hermione, Mclaggen isn't a fellow classmate, he's an invader. I don't know why our parents approved him to return to Hogwarts," Harry protested.

She rolled her eyes, "Has he broken any school rules? Done anything illegal? Put any of us in danger?"

"Well..."

"I think..."

"No, he hasn't," Neville stated.

"But, Nev, what about-"

"Ron, that's over. Dean and Seamus let that situation escalate and all three of them have served their detentions. All he does now is send Harry and I dirty looks."

"I heard him complaining to Criston about sharing a room with a pair of shirt-lifters! You know he was talking about Dean and Seamus!"

She had been trying to focus on the potions text in front of her, but at these words Hermione found her attention drawn back to the boys.

"He said WHAT?"

Ron looked at her earnestly, "He called them a pair of shirt-lifters and implied some other things."

"And Criston said nothing?" She knew he was a worthless prefect, but to not report a slur...

"Of course he said nothing. He's a worthless prefect," Neville stated - echoing her thoughts. "He only got the badge because the rest of his class is even worse."

She grew quiet as Harry nodded in agreement. The current Gryffindor seventh-years were rather lacking. Well, at least on the boys' side. The girls' were much better than her own roommates. If only she'd been born a month earlier she could have roomed with Katie Bell rather than Lavender Brown.

Katie didn't have a penchant for giggling.

"Well," she started, "I will certainly keep an eye on him, but as long as he toes the line there will be no hexing. We don't need more enemies than we already have."

Ron grumbled about that, but the other two boys said nothing as they all returned to their studying.

XXX

Draco felt Pansy tense up next to him as soon as she unfolded her copy of the Daily Prophet. Personally, he didn't care to read the rubbish that they had taken to publishing lately. Not that they hadn't been publishing rubbish for years - but it had at least usually been entertaining. Now it was just downright embarrassingly awful.

He put down his cup of tea and turned to read over Pansy's shoulder.

He rolled his eyes.

Did they not hire fact checkers at the Daily Prophet?

"You know, I've never even met a muggle, but I'm fairly certain that their teaching methods are as good as, if not better than ours."

Pansy shot him a look, one delicate eyebrow going up, "Why would you say that?"

He shrugged, "I got bored once when mother took me to visit her sister. My uncle," his nose wrinkled a bit at the word, "keeps one of those muggle automobiles around - since he still has connections to the muggle world - and I took a look at it. There are so many knobs and dials that you must need a great education to understand them. Not to mention that thing they call an 'engine' that makes it run. I've never seen anything so incomprehensible. And I was told that in some places muggles as young as fifteen can use them competently. And-" he remembered to add as he knew they had an audience by now, "-muggles are certainly no smarter than us. Ergo, they have good teaching methods."

"Draco, your brain works in mysterious ways," Daphne Greengrass stated from her spot across the table.

"I didn't realize you had an uncle with muggle connections," Theo said with surprise.

Tracy smacked his shoulder, "Theodore Knott! Do you not listen to me? Narcissa Malfoy's oldest sister married a muggleborn. Andromeda Tonks née Black was burned off the family tree for that. But the two sisters mended bridges several years ago."

Theo's angular face twisted in disbelief, "Really? I don't remember hearing that."

Draco snickered when Theo threw him a wink and Tracy promptly began scolding him for not ever paying attention to her. Daphne gazed on her two friends with mild amusement as Draco looked back down at Pansy.

She had an extremely calculating look on her face.

He suddenly felt worried for the staff at the Daily Prophet. No one got away with attacking her family.

That thought made him look up and over the head of Daphne. His gaze searched until it found a familiar head of black hair. She was facing away from him, but he could clearly see the newspaper in her shaking hands.

And, for the first time in weeks, when he thought her name he didn’t see her helpless in the hospital. No, he saw her angrily defending her family when he dared to insult them.

His breath caught in his throat and he was seconds away from standing up and…and…

He froze.

And what?

What could he do?

“Draco?”

He blinked and turned to look back down at Pansy, “Yes?”

“Would you mind helping me? I believe I have a few letters to write.”

He blinked again, and it suddenly hit him that he could do something.

“I believe we have an empty class right now. Would you like assistance now?”

She rolled her eyes at his polite speech, but stood up anyway. As soon as he was on his own feet she grabbed his wrist and practically dragged him out of the Great Hall.

Before he crossed the threshold he thought he saw a small sliver of smoke curling up out of the newspaper in Hermione’s hands.

XXX

Hermione's hands were shaking in anger by the time she put the paper down. How dare they!

It wasn't enough for them to attack Harry's sanity or her and Ginny's competence. No, now they were attacking their parents!

Saying that those who can't do, teach.

Ergo, Mrs. Longbottom, Dora, and Padfoot were only teaching now because they could no longer handle being aurors!

They'd even dug up the werewolf registry and publically outed Uncle Remus!!!

And what they were saying and implying about Mr. Weasley!

Anger burned within her, fueled by her magic. How DARE they attack what was hers?!?

She was seconds away from igniting the entire paper on fire wandlessly when Luna walked over and snatched it from her hands.

Hermione twisted on the bench to glare at her blonde friend. Instantly a soft feeling of warmth rolled off of Luna, calming her anger. Cooling it, making it truly dangerous.

Luna's usually soft, doe-like eyes became as hard as crystal while she read the article. When she reached the end she folded the paper neatly into a hat and then placed it on her head.

Hermione could only assume that the Ravenclaw had known that folding it in such a manner would make the headline say: Ministry a Scam! Rather than: Ministry Reveals Marauder's Academy a Scam!

Ginny snickered, "Well done, Luna!"

Luna smiled sweetly, though her eyes were still as hard as diamond. She leaned over and kissed Ron on the cheek before looking over at Hermione.

"I think you write beautifully. And there are so many delightful facts out there."

A slow smile slipped across Hermione's face as she understood just what Luna wanted.

They wanted to print lies? Well she'd drown them in truth.

XXX

It took about a week of research to obtain all of the information she needed. She sent a few owls to Mr. Frank and he'd happily found the muggle research papers she requested. The Hogwarts library had held the rest of the information she had required.

Now, sitting in front of her were about two dozen clearly written and well-researched articles on the Marauder’s Academy. She knew the Daily Prophet would never agree to publish it, but they weren't the only publication in the world. Each copy of the article had been tailored for a different publication.

She hadn't wanted to, but she'd asked Padfoot to send her the family seal. The Black family may have died down to only two carrying the name, but their name was almost legend throughout the wizarding world.

The seal would get her letter opened.

Her introduction letter would get her article read.

The information contained within the article would get it published.

She was even given permission for the articles to be translated into any language as needed.

For years she'd been making a list of things she wanted to deal with. Well, apparently the future was here and it was time to get started on that list.

XXX

Rita had not been having a very good few years. She’d always told herself that everything was forgivable if it was done in pursuit of a story. Unfortunately, the government didn’t agree with her.

It hadn’t helped that she’d - somewhat - inadvertently attacked the Blacks. That family wasn’t known for being forgiving, or accepting of attacks gracefully.

She was realistic enough to admit that she’d overestimated her own abilities.

The only positive thing – in her mind – was that they had decided to punish her legally rather than personally.

It meant she was alive.

It also meant that she was in the very small low-security ward at Azkaban. Dementors stayed away from there during the daytime; only roaming the corridors at night. She also had access to a small library - one that always carried a wide variety of newspapers.

Granted, the newspapers were almost always quite old by the time they received them. They received every newspaper for almost an entire month all at once.

Why, just an hour before she’d read a Daily Prophet article from almost three weeks ago, on the tenth of October, that had made her snicker in anticipation. Her replacement at the Daily Prophet – an upstart little witch if there ever was one – had sought to succeed where Rita had failed.

She’d attacked the Blacks.

Since finishing that delightfully terrible article she’d been scanning newer papers. She passed over countless articles destroying Harry Potter, attacking Albus Dumbledore, and declaring it to be impossible that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had returned.

There had been nothing in the Daily Prophet. Though she had found it interesting that no reporter wrote more than one negative article about anyone related to the Blacks before disappearing from the paper entirely. Including that little upstart witch.

She’d had to turn to a stack of Canadian papers. The Circadian Leaf wasn’t what she had ever considered an interesting paper. They were much too nice about things, not to mention they had a terrible fondness for fact-checking. Something she never allowed to get in the way of a good story.

Likely why they always refused to carry any of her work.

She didn’t even have to open the paper to read the article. It, along with a massive moving photograph of the teaching staff dominated the entire front page. Down at the bottom she could see that it continued on page A3.

“All right everyone! Pack it up! Supper then bed! Dementors will be here in an hour!”

The harsh voice of Auror Silvan cut through her thoughts. She hurriedly stuck the paper inside of her prison robes and joined the handful of other low-security prisoners on their way to the small cafeteria.

Less than an hour later her stomach was filled with watery stew and she was locked inside of her small cell.

A sharp, narrow beam of light poked through the bars on the door and she held the paper up to it. She slowly read every word. By the time she finished the first page a grin was twisting her face and it was all she could do to contain her excitement as she flipped to page A3.

That girl could write! If she could do something so deliciously wicked as this article, while passing the Circadian Leaf’s fact-checkers…

She didn’t feel so bad now about underestimating the brat and her potential bridegroom. Who knew a Gryffindor could think so deviously?

By the end of the second page her grin had turned into a sharp wild laugh. One that hid from her ears the sounds of stones crumbling, people screaming, and doors being blown off their hinges.

That is, until that narrow beam of light became much larger as her own door exploded.